The Katz Meow

I am *GASP!* working today AND I have another interview on Monday. The interview earlier this week went so well that I got a polite e-mail saying thanks, but no thanks. The thing is that the job and location turned out to be so shabby that when I walked out, it made me so HAPPY that I could WALK OUT AND NEVER RETURN. I went home, whistling. If someone tells me I don't have the exact qualifications for data entry, I can live with that. In fact, I'll take it as a good sign.

The next job interview is at a place I'd actually like going to--so send me your prayers, good vibes, and wishes of luck. I need them!

As of today, I am sitting in a quiet reception area, with views of the rooftops of midtown and original paintings by Alex Katz. I gasped when I saw them. They are BEAUTIFUL. One, at the far end of the room, between to conference rooms is VERY famous. I think it was on the cover of one of his books. Can you believe it? Incredible art--well known art in a place that acts as decoration between conference rooms. The decorator has FABULOUS taste, but I think I may be among the few whoever stopped and to spend hours staring at them. There are worse ways to spend a day than alone with Alex Katz paintings.

I arrived at the job this morning and was told to be prepared to find an alternate route home, as the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center (a block away) is happening tonight. I almost laughed out loud because I've been literally using the tree lighting ceremony as an example of what you wouldn't catch me anywhere near in New York--due to the amount of crowds that you have to deal with on any REGULAR day. Now, look at me! I'm at the red dot of the bullseye!

In other news don't forget to order a Great Gals Calendar by December 14 to ensure delivery before Christams and the New Year! You can do so easily, by pressing the BUY NOW button on the sidebar. Not to conratulate myself or anything, but this may be my favorite of the 5 I've made.

OR, if New York, you can buy them at my SHOW TOMORROW! Won't you come and hear me play songs?

Dec. 1, 8pm
Micky's Blue Room
171 Avenue C (between 10th & 11th)
New York, New York

I am wishing you all something surprisingly sweet, be it an Alex Katz painting, a sweet job interview, or a new way home.

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

I love the small miracles that trickle in when you think you are, as they say, sh*t out of luck. Post anxiety attack at no work AGAIN, followed by delicious calm after my 15 minute yoga routine, I braid my hair and start for the door, when the phone rings and my friend Juju is on the phone. Dear God, Juju! I practically cry out: HI JUJU! I needed a call from a far off friend. BADLY. It was so great to laugh and hear about her own woes. Sometimes it helps to get over your bad self and listen to someone else's stress for awhile. Other people are dealing with life too and it felt good to be the ear for awhile instead of the mouth! Also, to hear the sweet sound of a far flung friend's voice on the phone was life-infusing! I felt NORMALIZED.

All this is to say that I've been struck with an increasing phenomenon in my life since I started this here blog, and especially since I moved to New York. I hear less and less from friends and family. At first, I thought oh, people are busy--which is true--but I 'm realizing that blogging has one drawback. The people closest to you (in heart, but not in location) think that by READING the blog, they are IN TOUCH WITH YOU. I've literally had a few people drop me two line e-mails in response to an e-mail, that have said (in one way or another), "I am dying to know what's up with you--I'll check your blog."

WHAT THE HECK???

Don't get me wrong--I love that people I love and know are reading my blog (Hi everybody!)--but you know what I like even more? TALKING to them! I know that in a fast-paced electronic age, this probably sounds as archaic and CRAZY as rubbing two sticks together to get a fire going, but I guess I am OLD FASHIONED. Also, just a note, maybe (and I know this is going to SHOCK some people) this is only one PART of me and my experience. Not only that, but hey, maybe I'd like to know how YOU are doing.

There is a lot you can do on the computer--the advancements are startling! You can buy almost anything, find information on the most MINUTE subjects, listen to music, find a doctor or childcare, and yes, publish your daily life. You can't however, hear the laughter in a friend's voice or the excitement of a new idea, or the desperation of a bad day. You can't get the subtle nuances that make up the people that matter most to you, no matter how good the story on the screen reads.

I've been feeling this for awhile, but getting the sudden, surprising phone call from Juju this morning brought it all home. As I live and breathe, friends, hearing your voices and the dailiness of your own lives is the nourishment I've been missing. I am just as guilty for being caught up in checking blogs, writing less e-mails--but I am here to tell you that I STILL miss you.

Whoever you are, reading this, whether I know you or not, turn off the computer and pick up the phone. Call up a friend. I bet you that it will be the missing piece of the puzzle that you've been groping under the bed for.

Holy Links in Post, Batman!

Did y'all have a good weekend? Mine was social--thank the sweet stars--and good. Thursday was just as I had planned--I spent the day in my pajamas and an apron. I got to watch one of my favorite films on the planet, It's a Wonderful Life, with Graham, who had never seen it. OMG, I love that movie and I love my man! He cried at the end! Friday, we rode the Fung Wah bus to Boston and had another post-Thanksgiving feast hosted by my friends Nathan and Coppelia. The next day was spent having coffee with an old friend and her family--which was a total pleasure. So inspiring and fun.

Yesterday I had dinner with my friend Nate and we went out and saw Walk the Line. I cannot stop thinking about this movie. It's not the most amazing movie ever, but it filled me up, and touched me in an unexpected way. The best parts were watching Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sing together. Their voices--OH! THEIR VOICES--were so great and inspiring. That was really at the heart of June and Johnny Cash's relationship and so it seems apt that these scenes are also the heart of the movie. I was awake most of last night thinking about it.

Unemployed AGAIN today--though, GOOD NEWS! I have an interview at last! On the way into town among thoughts of Johnny Cash, Joaquin Pheonix, and grumbly thoughts about my temp agency, I began assembling ideas for an unemployment survival kit. Mine today consists of taking care of business, reading beautiful poetry, listening to music, and doing at least one thing that makes me enjoy life. I recently listened to David Sedaris' SantaLand Diaries, which made me laugh outloud and feel better about searching for work in New York.

Oh, the pleasure--it's always the answer to everything isn't it?

Things to Be Thankful For

Summer n' Graham

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays on the planet, because we get to celebrate all that we have by eating a TON of delicious food with a bunch of people you at least kind of love. Not a bad way to celebrate. This of course rules out all the stress that it can involve, like traveling and family dynamics, and terrible moments of eater's remorse.

Last year I got up at 5 in the morning and drove 9 hours from Santa Cruz to San Diego to pick up Graham at the airport and spend the weekend meeting his family for the first time. It was INTENSE. They were all so sweet--the Parsons clan welcomed me openly, and tried to make me as comfortable as possible. Yet, the 21 hour roundtrip drive by myself, and all that smiling and no alone time with my boyfriend, who I only got to see once a month, was EXHAUSTING. Plus, there are certain things that I missed about my own family's Thanksgiving meal. Real whipped cream, for one, as apposed to Cool Whip. Or hearing great music, (everything from Cassandra Wilson to Neil Young)while cooking all day.

This year will be a little bit different, because Graham and I are on our own for the holiday. I'm actually kind of excited. I can't think of a better way to spend the day than cooking all day and watching movies, with my sweet man.

Which reminds me of what I REALLY like about this holiday. It's the time to really think about all you have and say thank you. I've been a big old complaining machine lately, but there is A LOT always, to celebrate, to say *PHEW!* I am so relieved about, so grateful for. Although I am jobless, we still have enough money to buy a small turkey, some stuffing, and yes, REAL whipping cream for the pumpkin pie I am making tonight. But mostly, I am so thankful for what appears in the picture above. Wherever I am, as long as I am with Graham, I am with family. For this alone, I say Thank you thank you thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The When-All-Else-Fails-Plan

As of tomorrow, it will be another week of unemployment and sitting on the futon, frozen with terror as my debts rise and the sense of uselessness takes over. On the way into town to spend the morning at the CUNY library to search for jobs, I heard a woman's beautiful operatic voice rise through the echoing subway station and it hit me: the memory of my if-all-else-fails plan.

I remember reciting this plan before I moved to New York. After spilling the automatic response of what I'd planned to do in terms of a job in New York to everyone who asked, I'd add at the end, "Well if all else fails, I'll go into the subway and busk it." Of course, I never really believed in this plan, because I am a CHICKEN, but it sounded good and romantic.

This morning, as I raced to another train with my dripping umbrella, it struck me upon hearing this woman sing, and looking over at her, leaning against the wall in her overcoat and dress, and her little hat at her feet, brimming with a couple of dollars, that I may have just hit the moment that ALL ELSE HAS FAILED. I need some income--ANY income. When you are at a moment of desperation, you start counting your resources--among your resources are your skills. Playing guitar and singing is one of my skills--maybe it's time to use them in the most basic sense.

I have to be honest, I am terrified to do this. Nothing says SOCIALLY AWKWARD like a woman standing among a crowd of hurried New Yorkers, with a guitar, singing songs about peace, love, and misunderstandings. Everywhere I go though, there are people who do this. Some of the most TALENTED and GIFTED people are doing this everyday, on the street, inside subway cars, in the corners of subway stations. You are BRAVE, people. As of tomorrow, I may be among them. More grist for the mill, as they say.

Again, I beg of you, wish me luck.

Good Vibes

Graham and I had the incredible pleasure of having our friend Jen R. visiting us from California this weekend. I think both of us are so starved for company that we flocked around her like two groupies, laughing a little too ecstatically and eagerly at anything and everything. I almost wanted to turn to Graham and say, "Can you believe it? It's A FRIEND OF OURS!" Because, while we enjoy eachother's company very much, lately we've been missing the company of ANYBODY ELSE.

Jen R. is seriously great and the only thing lacking was her seriously great boyfriend, Steve, who was home in California with their cats, Sugar Kane and Cat Power. A good thing about hanging out with them both is that we're all a good match. Jen and Graham can go into depth about New York Times journalists and the opinions of economists on the state of the Religeous Right, and Steve and I can gab on and on about the genius that is Patti Smith, or how Cyndi Lauper is one of the most underrated musicians of our time. As it was, Jen had to do DOUBLE DUTY by discussing the unruly river that is Courtney Love's life AND the unruly river that is the United State's relationship to Afghanistan. She did very well. We did a TON of things. Everything from political assemblies to Magnolia Bakery to a French Gangster film to bookshop loitering. She also showed us a few things--including a restaurant that serves breakfast with an individual pot of my beloved Peet's coffee! Graham and I were very sad to see her go.

During her visit we went to pick up the calendars at Kinko's. Going to pick up the calendars after they've been copied and bound, has become a yearly test in my ability to handle confrontation and terrifying acts of poor customer service and shoddy workmanship. There has never been a year that I haven't had to handle either horrible mistakes in the binding, copying quality or in the execution of the entire job coupled by not to mention some of the RUDEST and STAGGERINGLY INEPT ways in which people at Kinko's deal with their mistakes. I could tell you horror stories. Every year I swear I won't go to Kinko's, but I always go back because when you have a budget as tightly wound as mine, the difference of a dollar a copy matters. So you can imagine, my UTTER SHOCK when I went into Kinko's in Union Square and almost began to weep because not only was it the HIGHEST QUALITY this calendar has ever been copied, but it was the QUICKEST and FRIENDLIEST service I have ever gotten in my FIVE YEARS of making this calendar. I told them so repeatedly. They told me that everyone was admiring my work and what an incredible job I did. Basically, it was a GIANT LOVE FEST on 21st Street. Graham and Jen were beaming, I was tearing up, the people at Kinko's were puffing up. It was ALL GOOD. Who knew that in the center of New York City you would get more good vibes than in Santa Cruz, California, where they pride themselves on good vibes (but instead yell at their customers when they point out that the binding is upside down)?

AVAILABLE NOW!

Miss July
Originally uploaded by summerpierre.

Finally the day has come! Great Gals 2006 Calendar is available for purchase!

12 portraits and bios! Scads of birthdays! Efforvescently illustrated by Summer Pierre (procrastinating artist extraordinaire)! What more could you WANT??

Past purchasers may remember that in lieu of birthdays there were sometimes made up holidays like "Go See a Movie By Yourself Day." Well, if you can believe it, I found even MORE birthdays--so now, officialy, there are 365 days of great women! If you were born on December 10th, like my cousin, you share a birthday with the poet Emily Dickinson! OR if you were born on August 26, like me, you share a birthday with the Velvet Underground's Mo Tucker and Mother Theresa! How is THAT for a combo??

This is a perfect gift for all the great women in your life or for any COOL person on the planet (and you know who you are!).

To place your order, look no further than the sidebar and press the BUY NOW button! To secure delivery before Christmas and the New Year, please purchace by DECEMBER 14!

Your mother! My mother! Your sister! My sister! They are ALL Great Gals!

Stop and Watch the Buildings

In New York, there seems to be this unspoken rule that you don't want to appear like a tourist--which there are thousands of everywhere, on any given day. You see them gathering in clusters outside the Empire State Building in sweatshirts, posing next to the policeman and his horse; Or you see them with shopping bags the size of Montana, slowing traffic in the sidewalk by their slow pace and their numbers covering the entire width of the sidewalk, like a blockade.

I'd be kidding myself if I said I was a New Yorker. I'm too much of a newbie. I still get upset by beggars on the subway, I say, "Excuse me" when I need to get by and "Thank you" when I do pass. Yet, there's this part of me that says: PLEASE KNOW I LIVE HERE. I caught myself this morning literally thinking that some guys, loading up a truck, would notice I was a New Yorker, because I ran across a street, with traffic hurdling towards me. Of course, even if those guys gave A HOOT about my presence there, they would know I was new in town, because no REAL New Yorker RUNS across a street with traffic speeding towards them. They WALK, with an air that says "Cars? What cars?"

I find myself acclimating to this city as if it were a giant Junior High School. I walk quickly, with my head down. I try to never look at anyone directly. I cross streets when there is a break in traffic, not when the light dictates. It's a move-get-going-or-move-out-of-the-way sort of pace. It hits me over and over again though, that when I keep myself at that pace, with my nose to the cement, that I am missing out on something important to me. I am missing the experience of knowing where I go and where I am.

I've discovered that if you don't look up, you miss the real wonder that is New York. When you look up to the sky, and you see where you are--among all those giant buildings, and traffic on a historical street--it is nothing short of dizzying. This IS in amazing city. I sometimes cannot believe I live here. I turn a corner and I am suddenly on a street, I've only seen in photographs. But there have been days, weeks that I have missed the beauty and awe-inspiring weight of this city because I thought I'd look like a tourist, and I never once looked up.

So now, on my way home, when I go through Grand Central Station, I stop at the balcony every night and look up at the green ceiling with the constellations. I know I look like all the other tourists that have just blown into town, but I don't care. Looking up at the bull emerging through the clouds or the bee and triangles just takes my breath away. I am filled with wonder and relief.

I am reminded of a story my friend Betti told me once. She was a teacher in Washington, D.C. on a Sunday outing with a group of disabled kids. It was hard to keep them all together, and she was hurrying them toward one of their destinations, when one of the kids said, "Stop! Let's stop and watch the buildings."

So, wherever you are, in New York, or in Little Rock, Arkansas, or in Menlo Park, California, let's notice where we are in this big, wide world. Let's not hurry, but stop and watch the buildings.

Homemade Lanterns

Even though I overslept, got on the wrong tain, dropped things on the floor of a crowded subway car, I'm feeling particularly hopeful today. This is a very good sign. It's no secret that I am plagued by moods. Yesterday, after posting, I felt okay for the most part--my heart filled with timid hope. Then I got some disappointing news in the afternoon and I just felt everything plummet. I didn't want to go home and have Graham have to deal with another evening with Zelda Fitzgerald.

Plus, I wasn't ready to go home. I didn't want to do the same-old, same-old. So I bought a new journal and went and wrote in a cafe for awhile. It was enough to make me realize that I haven't created anything in days. I read recently in one of SARK's books that when she feels a need to complain and compalain, it usually means she needs to create something. After 4 pages of complaining, what I really needed to do was go home and create!

Well, DUH!

So I went home and Graham was his usual sweet self and after eating dinner, I set to work. I made 2 lanterns out of music paper, a glass jar and candles. I set them up on my creativity shelf and turned off the lights. It was SO BEAUTIFUL. It reminded me of when I was a kid and set up tiny Christmas lights in all the rooms of my dollhouse. I turned off the lights in my room and sat transfixed, as the dollhouse came to life--all aglow in its six rooms, like a stage play. The shelf above my desk glowed like the dollhouse, making the glitter in a wooden box I had decorated, shimmer in the candle light.

Then I made a collage. People, I cannot express to you how collaging is my new therapy. It totally ROCKS MY WORLD. Something comes over me--I lose all time and the acrobatics of my mind. I LOVE the colors, the textures, and the freedom they provide. Now when I don't like a painting I've done, I CUT IT UP and it becomes a whole other thing all together. Plus, today, as I sit on the 27th floor of a building in midtown Manhattan, I love to catch sneak-peaks of the collage I made in my journal. It's like have a portable part of my studio with me. SO GREAT!

Do I need to say that I felt WHOLEHEARTEDLY better? It didn't even take an anti-depressant or a even a chat with my shrink. I may be the world's SLOWEST learner--because it's ALWAYS the simplest answers that help me out; it's ALWAYS the things closest at hand. All I needed was a little homemade lantern to show me.

I can't wait to go home and do more.

In The End, You Just Have to Jump

I wasn't going to write about this, but I thought it would be good--in the interest of talking further on hope, doubt, fear, trying on ideas, and doing it anyway. All things that I think about constantly and think are universal.

This weekend I attended an open house for the School of Visual Arts for the graduate program in Illustration. I went in light heartedly--thinking I was just going to check things out. I went in with an open heart just thinking, I'd try a shot at reality, instead of fantastical thinking. As I sat there in the classroom, listening to the warm ramblings of the head of the school, the room packed with other arty hopefuls, I began having alternating chills of hope and self loathing. I loved the description of the program. They have a mandatory creative writing class as part of their curriculum! They believe in the art of story telling! They don't want anybody who knows exactly where they are going! They like people who have been working on their own and now want a community! My heart bloomed like Annie singing in the halls of Daddy Warbucks' mansion: I think I am gonna like it here...!

Then, I looked around. All around us on the walls was the recent published work of SVA students. There were pages from the New Yorker and the New York Times. Polished illustrations, clean and vibrant and interesting. Way beyond the scope of what I felt I could do. I heard terms like, "We get 100 applicants and only take 20." and "We once got this guy who applied and he was SO BAD." If I applied, I had an 80% chance of not getting in AND I might become an amusing tale to be told at prospective student events. "We got this application once--hoo! Boy, was she LOUSY. I mean, I think she used WHITEOUT on some of her drawings!"

Then it was question and answer time. Why is it in a handful of people--no matter where you go--there is always THAT GUY who has his own agenda, but decided to pose it as a question. He was angry about something, though I am unclear what. In a loud, pushy voice he began asking what sort of GUARANTEE they could offer him to be able to weather the massive changes that always occur in media. When Marshall (the head guy, who was giving the presentation) began to answer, saying that there are always changes, the young man interrupted him and said, "Yeah, but there have been MASSIVE changes in the last ten years. What do you have to say about that? How do you prepare your students?" Marshall began telling about how there are always changes--both in personal vision and commercial vision. He pointed at a students' work, fresh from the pages of New York Magazine, and said how the student at first had been inspired to do computer coloring, but now even he was getting bored by it. The guy who asked the question nodded animatedly and said, "Yeah, it IS boring!" Finally Marshall just stopped and said, "Look, the bottom line is, it's always an act of faith. We're asking you to go on a leap of faith. We are here to teach how to tell a good story with your art and to go out in the world with that. We have found that there is ALWAYS a place for that in ANY medium--be it film, theater, books, newspapers, whatever. But in the end, it's an act of faith."

I spent all day yesterday freaking out about applying there. The dragon at the gate was HUGE in my mind. It was shouting things at me like, "Who do you think you are? You are NAIVE and bad and you use WHITEOUT!" Today I remember what Marshall said about that act of faith and I am reminded that to do ANYTHING that matters to you takes an act of faith--whether you are conscious of it or not. You can add up the statistics, do the math, apply logic, do cartwheels, but in the end you just have to leap.

So I am leaping. There's nothing to prepare for, because what will happen, will happen with or without me. Whatever I learn from it, will come.

New York SHOW Alert!

I've just got wind from the powers that be, that I am playing a REAL LIVE SET at Micky's Blue Room, in the East Village, December 1, at 8pm!

For those of you in New York, COME ON DOWN! For those of you who know people in New York, tell them ALL ABOUT IT!

Summer Pierre
Dec. 1, 8pm
Micky's Blue Room
171 Avenue C (between 10th & 11th)
New York, New York

Yahoo!

Turn Around Bright Eyes

Daily migraine report: None today, thank you! I'll take it and breathe EASY. I had it all night and woke often. I think I kept waking Graham up. It was one of those nights, we'd wake up face to face and greet each other: "Hey there." "You're the best." "No you are." and then we'd go back to sleep.

I'd like to welcome to the world MATEO LANGDON SANGER! My childhood friend Tonya just sent word of his arrival into the world on November 7. While she is not my first friend from childhood to have a baby, I can't help but feel all teary when I think of the girl in sixth grade who wore tight striped jeans on her skinny legs and sang "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the way home from school. She maintained that tragic song totally described her relationship with Roger Carsner, a boy in our class, who was a foot shorter than her, and whom she had "gone with" for 5 days. He broke up with her by the sandbox. Mateo, your mother was a good actress in all the school plays, and she HATED the smell of peanutbutter on someone's breath. She was my first friend whom I could share tragic romantic yearnings with and now she's a MOTHER. I would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to Tonya and Bill and to Mateo. May you be a very happy family indeed. Mateo, call me if you want any info (a.k.a dirt) on your momma--I have an incredible memory and can give you LOTS of stories! Until then, WELCOME TO THE WORLD!

Time to Blog

Another migraine day and I am at work. Oh, fantastic. Gots to love the drilling pain in your head and the thoughts: please do not throw up; oh, please oh please, don't let me hurl. Ah, well. Nothing I haven't experienced before.

Time for a list!

Things that are good:
1. Employment.
2. Graham is always a good thing, a good idea, a good place to be.
3. Lots of arty stuff afoot.
4. My calendar will be out by next week--anybody needing an unusual, sometimes funny, arty, packed with information, gift for someone you love, I HIGHLY recommend ordering a Great Gals Calendar 2006 from yours truly. Only $18!
5. Time to blog.
6. The place where I am currently employed not only serves breakfast, but they have a tea time at 4pm everyday with food and tea!
7. I am seeing family in 6 weeks!
8. Not getting completely devestated with jealousy when you find out that someone you used to know and used to do shows with, is now doing appearences on the Oprah show and signed to Warner Bros.
9. Maira Kalman's illustrations for Elements of Style. Has anyone seen it? She is my IDOL!
10. The INCREDIBLE expansive feel of Grand Central Station. Seriously, that place is nuts with traffic, but SO BEAUTIFUL. I love looking out from the west balcony and viewing the giant room and its green ceiling. I feel all that has happened and continues to happen, starts or ends in this incredible destination.

Reunions

THIS IS MY 100th POST! CAKE for EVERYONE!

Okay, this week is already SO MUCH BETTER than last week. So far, I will be employed all week and maybe next week too. This not only helps my morale, but my pocketbook as well. Not a bad combination!

Also, I just solidified plans to spend Christmas with a leg of my family contingent that moved in the last year to Nanaimo, British Columbia. This is very exciting indeed! It's a zig-zag sort of couple weeks. Graham and I are flying to San Diego a week before Christmas, to attend his brother's wedding. Then I fly a plane to Seattle, where I jump into the driving car of my brother Josh and his golden wife Heather, where we cross the border and get on a boat. A week and three more flights later, I return to San Diego (and to Graham)and we meet up with the Pierres for a rare family reunion. After that, I somehow have to figure a way back to New York--but that is the LEAST of my worries.

My Pierre grandparents called me last weekend to ask if I was still coming to the reunion. I took the opportunity to ask my grandfather how his SIXTY-FIFTH highschool reunion went. I asked him if there was anybody left. He said, only eight people showed up--which was just fine with him, because the event people did such a good job, it wasn't an issue. Wow, that is some GIFTED event planning! I didn't tell him that I didn't even attend my TENTH year reunion, so I can't imagine at 82 wanting to attend my sixty-fifth!

Grandpa Pierre is not one to talk much, because he's also an arty type (a.k.a socially moody), and also because his hearing is bad, so it was a real treat to get him on the phone. My dad had told him that I was really interested in the family history, so he wanted to shoot off what he knew--which he maintained wasn't much. What wasn't 'much' kept unfurling to such great depths as, I apparently have a great great great great uncle, who was a general in Napoleon's army, and my great great grandfather made instruments and played in the San Francisco Orchestra. One of his drums was featured in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest drum in the world. I like knowing that I come from such GREAT STOCK as this.

My gradma Pat got on the phone and wanted to know if I was interested in the Lawrence Welk show, because she was buying tickets for everyone. "Or maybe you'd like to go to Sea World instead?"

Yep, it's going to be a real grab bag of a Christmas. A wedding, half a dozen airplane rides, a new country, distant descendants of a Belgian General, and Shamu. I tell you, I CANNOT wait.

Things Work Out #2,562

Earlier last week, I was bemoaning a job I didn't take for $50. Remember I had said I was trying to figure out how to make up for that $50 I wasn't going to be making? I didn't do much of anything that day because of a wretched migraine. Well, I just got a check for some services rendered and there was a $50 bonus! Hi-YA! THANK YOU UNIVERSE! I bid my ratty hat to you!

A little bump that says I GOT YOUR BACK, KID. Not a bad way to begin a week, I tell you!

Now, if only I could get discovered, and the war would end, and I could be guaranteed a flight for Christmas, and a job I would love, I won't EVER doubt again...

Well, I'll be a Monkey's Uncle

Well, it looks like I've been tagged by the lovely Erica! So here goes my answers:

20 random things about me:

1. I believe in ghosts
2. At age 7 I had a brief phobia of ink bottles. Inexplicably, I believed that George Washington’s eyeballs would be floating in them.
3. I was senior class president of my high school
4. I love pinwheel cookies.
5. I have double jointed ankles.
6. I still miss my grandmother 13 years after her death
7. I am good at mimicking voices
8. Nothing makes me want to dance more than James Brown’s “Sex Machine”
9. I’m on my 71st journal.
10. I made my little brother laugh so hard that he literally pooped his pants.
11. I lived on a commune until I was 4.
12. I HATE the sound of fabric rubbing together—it nauseates me.
13. I don’t care what anyone says, I loved the movie, “Love, Actually.”
14. My guilty pleasure for music is Journey. When I’m alone and “Don’t Stop Believing” comes on—I turn it UP.
15. I have two older siblings I have only met once.
16. I was a vegetarian for 6 years and never once stopped craving meat.
17. my middle name is Sparrow.
18. I met Michael Jackson when I was 12.
19. I love roller coasters.
20. I sometimes miss working for Partners In Health.

7 things to do before I die

1. write and publish a novel
2. write and publish a memoir
3. go to East Africa
4. make a living doing what I love
5. get married
6. take a class by Lynda Barry
7. have a multi-media show with my art, music, and writing

7 things I cannot do

1. play pool—I utterly suck.
2. drink—I get migraines.
3. love possums—they freak me out.
4. believe in the war in Iraq
5. small talk for long
6. play it cool
7. play chess—I have no desire to, ever.

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex

1. humor
2. kindness
3. empathy
4. beautiful eyes
5. beautiful shoulders
6. beautiful arms
7. good with kids

7 things I say most often

1. “Meanwhile, back at the farm…”
2. “yo!”
3. “I love you” (to Graham)
4. “I’m picking up what you’re lying down…”
5. “Are you serious?”
6. “Whatever”
7. “Grahammy!”

7 Celebrity Crushes

1. John Cusack
2. Benecio Del Toro
3. Mark Ruffalo
4. Gene Hackman
5. Peter Sarsguard
6. Sam Rockwell
7. Daniel Day Lewis

I would like to take this opportunity to tag the lovely FELICIA!

Head Case

Migraines blow. No kidding. The last two months I've been on a roll--at least twice a week. I had a dream the night before last that my head was split into three parts and one of the parts was in a great deal of pain. When I realized that part was in pain, I awoke with a migraine already errupted in the dark, early morning. Usually it gives me some warning so I think I might have a chance to nip it in the bud, but not yesterday. Luckily, it went away by the time I went to bed last night--which my migraines haven't been doing for awhile. Then I wake up this morning and I feel the pressure building for ANOTHER ONE. So I took what I have, which is excedrin and do some yoga stretches to try to draw the blood down from my head. It has put it off, but that was hours ago and now I am feeling it break through the feeble dam I tried to build this morning.

I'm sure it's stress, but it's just so friggn' EXHAUSTING. Also, it doesn't help that I get angry at pharmaceutical companies that have a monopoly on the drugs that DO help. If I had insurance, I could get a discount and STILL have to pay $300 for a 30 day supply of Zomeg. One of the sweetest gifts that the employer-of-the-job-that-got-away gave me while I was working for him was 6 sweet pills of Zomeg. His wife also suffers from migraines, and once he found out about my plight he brought some in for me. It was like having my life back suddenly. Even if I didn't get a migraine, just KNOWING that I had those pills was such a relief. Then when I got a migraine, I knew my day wasn't over. Within an hour, I would be back to normal. Well, due to the last month, I went through them like brushfire.

I cannot express how debilitating migraines can be. THEY ARE NOT HEADACHES. They are filled with the most concentrated pain, accompanied by nausea and exhaustion. It SUCKS. They have taken away COUNTLESS DAYS of my life. I guess it's one of the MANY prices I pay for BEING SENSITIVE (aka ARTISTIC). Oh, how ROMANTIC. Right now, I just want one morning to wake up and not be afraid of one coming on.

Sorry for the sad sack blog entries lately. Sometimes that's just how it goes--I'm in the dark cycle right now, waiting for the light to come. It will, of course. It's just hard to see it, when your head is in a vice and there is no relief.

It's Do or Cry

I don't know if I am completely nuts or what, but I turned down a work assignment for today. I even uttered the words "It's not worth it" to my temp agency. I regetted saying those words, because I don't want to come off as smug to the people who employ me, but there has to be a point when you say, my life is worth more than feeling miserable for FIFTY BUCKS.

This is a radical thought for me. Usually, I am such a survivalist I feel I have to put up with ANYTHING in order to make a penny. I can hear ALL my parents (and you know who you are) groaning at my sudden self-righteous indignation. Don't get me wrong--I don't feel I am ABOVE anyone or anything. It's just that I am 33 years old and I want to say for the fist time in my life, that my little itty bit of a life is worth something.

I got my worst-case scenario temp job on Tuesday. I was a fill-in receptionist at a major corporation. When I say 'fill-in'--I mean for SEVERAL receptionists. I was the floater that covered everybody's lunches and breaks. Here's something I'd like to say on behalf of receptionists ALL OVER THE WORLD: They are one of the MOST UNDERRATED office employees. They are expected to have all the answers, to be the face of the engine for the company, meaning they are the company's first impression to the outside world. They are often treated with little respect by both employees and by their visitors. What is taken for granted is that they know EVERYTHING. So, being a fill-in receptionist, with minimal to no training is a nightmare. You sit there, like a target, afraid that anyone will ask anything of you, because if you don't know something it is BAD. I came home crying and depressed feeling like I was five years old, because someone yelled at me that it was "appauling" that I was working for them.

Then they wanted me back yesterday.

So I went and there was more sweat, less tears, only a few more near-humiliations. Oh yeah, and a Russian guy named Alex who literally stared at me all day, groping me with his eyes, asking me with a smirk: "So, vhat ees your name?" Did I mention this is one of the lowest paying gigs I've ever gotten? Then they wanted me back for today. I said no.

I just figure, there has got to be SOMETHING, ANYTHING better than feeling that horrible to make fifty dollars. So this is my goal today--to make it up, to kick in the creative gears, and make myself some income. Tomorrow I go back to where I was before. It's only a couple of days of work, but the pay is SO MUCH BETTER and so is the environment. Also, I think it's time to start really shaking my resume infront of people's noses. I've got to find work--it's do or cry time. I'm too old to feel five years old at the hands of a stranger.

PS For something to make you laugh in absolute delight, check out my friend Kirstin's latest post of her son Griffin's costume for Halloween.