Can't buy me love

I'm doing home-study courses for my massage CEUs this year. The CEU credits are required every year to renew my massage license. Usually I take hands-on classes, which have given me many useful new techniques over the years. This year, I can't be away from Anton for all of the hours a hands-on class would entail, so home-study it is. If I'd been smart, I would have done this while I was pregnant, because it's hard even to find time to read these days!

Anyway, part of my reading material is this book by the Dalai Lama, Ethics For The New Millennium. Here's a passage I especially enjoyed:

Compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source of both inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species. On the one hand, they constitute non-violence in action. On the other, they are the source of all spiritual qualities: of forgiveness, tolerance, and all the virtues. Moreover, they are the very thing that gives meaning to our activities and makes them constructive. There is nothing amazing about being highly educated; there is nothing amazing about being rich. Only when the individual has a warm heart do these attributes become worthwhile.

I am tired of being told I should admire people simply because they have achieved some level of monetary success. The current economic disaster was caused by unchecked greed. I don't want to be another person who obsesses over money and status. I sometimes get caught up in thinking about things I could do with more money, and while that's not always a bad thing, it can make me feel inadequate and frustrated. It's important to remember what really matters.

Fancy vegan

I turned 31 yesterday, and celebrated with the most decadent vegan food I've ever eaten, at Feelings Cafe's Vegan Fine Dining Festivals of Light event. It was a happy coincidence that it happened to take place on my birthday, and that my friend Cate found out about it and passed the info along to me.

Being vegan in Louisiana means cooking at home a lot, or having the occasional meal out of ethnic food or diner-type stuff. That's cool with me for the most part, but I must admit I occasionally miss my pescatarian/vegetarian days, when I could eat at Galatoire's if I wanted to (and had the money...which was rare, but did happen a few times).

The chef at Feelings definitely went for fancy with her meal, which included lentil "caviar" and an entree (fried hearts of palm stuffed with cashew cheese) so rich that it was hard to believe it was vegan. But my favorite part of the meal was what she called "Sri Lankan Borscht." It was a pureed, bisque-type thing (sorry, I'm not so up on the foodie lingo), which was interesting for a borscht. It also had some Indian spices in there, and crispy little fried curry leaves. I could eat that stuff every day. I might have to fool around in my kitchen and attempt to recreate something similar.

It was also, of course, wonderful to have a nice dinner with my husband, without Anton watching and shrieking from his bouncy seat until one of us gave in and held him while attempting to eat one-handed. Ahem. Anton was with his grandma, and apparently decided it was finally time to drink pumped milk from a bottle without fussing and protesting. Good timing, kid.

Ever-greening

It sometimes amuses my husband that the things I do in my quest to be more "green" and economical are things that people did in the Soviet Union because they had no other choice. Like cloth diapers* and using vinegar to clean.

Anyway, I recently realized that a major not-so-green habit of mine was paper towels. I'm somewhat of a paper towel addict. They're just so absorbent! And convenient! And I'm pretty OCD about having clean hands, so I wipe my hands constantly when I eat. I use paper towels for napkins, and sometimes go through several in one meal if I'm eating something messy.

So, I decided I should do something about that.


I got some cloth napkins at thrift stores yesterday. I think I went a bit overboard, when I got home and counted them, there were 31. Also, as you can see, my basket runneth over. But that means I don't have to wash them too often, I guess! I like the variety of colors and patterns.

The cost was around $12. I know I spent $14 total, and most of it was for the napkins, but someone also needed a few pairs of socks.


*They actually had to make their own, apparently. I'm not nearly that crunchy...yet. I'll stick to Fuzzibunz and prefolds ;)

DIY and chipping in

I've noticed something lately among some artists I know, which I find a bit disappointing. It's a focus on money and compensation that I don't remember seeing so much of in the past. I hear statements like, "I'm not doing anything for free" and see some Kickstarter pages that make me raise an eyebrow.

Now. Put down the pitchfork and hear me out. I do think art is valuable. I don't think being an artist should mean living a life of poverty. But I also think that 1) financial challenges can actually lead to innovation in art, and 2) community and volunteering are central to the arts and I don't want to see them disappear.

I will restrain myself from gushing about my days at NTI (almost a decade ago...yikes!) because that could go on forever and would only end in me saying ridiculous things like "free your pelvis!" while sobbing with nostalgia, and who wants to see that? But one thing I really liked about the program was that we were given very little (basically nothing, really) for the scenes we directed and for our final project. If you needed something, you made it, or you found it by asking "Who's got a newspaper?" "Do any of you guys have a striped tie?" And if someone had it, they let you borrow it for your scene. You did not go around asking your friends for money so you could go prop shopping.

I adore low-budget, passion-driven theater. I'm more intrigued by a site-specific piece using found objects than some high-budget musical any day. Personal preference, yes. But I value experimentation, and lack of funds and experimentation are a match made in heaven.

I think Kickstarter is a great website, and I have donated to several projects that sounded really cool and truly could not have happened without funding. I'm not trying to say no one should ever ask for money. But I see some projects that seem to me to be more about laziness and lack of imagination than a true need. If you can't get off your butt and make art without someone giving you money first, then I think there might be an issue there.

Which brings me to the second point I mentioned above. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I seem to be seeing less of the "let's get together and do this thing for the fun of it/because we feel it should be done" attitude that I love about the artistic community. Listen, if some big corporation, or your millionaire friend, asks you to make some art for them, by all means ask them for some money. If your fellow struggling artist friend asks if you want in on her non-paying project but you simply don't have the time because you have to work so hard at your day job, by all means tell her so. [Actually, I'm of the opinion that having a day job can be very beneficial to one's art, but that's a topic for another day] But if your across-the-board attitude is, "I'm not doing anything for free," then I have to wonder why you're an artist. I don't think your fellow struggling artist friends are trying to screw you over by asking if you want in on a project they can't pay you for. If you think they are...find some new friends.

Skill-sharing doesn't always have to be "consulting" for a fee. Your time is well spent when you're being inspired with your friends. Who helped you grow as an artist...only people you paid? I doubt it!

Do what you can do, help when you can help, and see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. If you can't afford to do something, that's cool. Make money when you can and enjoy it - you worked for it! But why look at everything with dollar signs in your eyes? Our scrappiness and generosity have served us well as artists, and we shouldn't be so quick to part with them.

The dust has settled.

I gave a massage yesterday for the first time in months. I'm going back to work soon (on a very part-time basis) and I was worried that I'd forgotten my basic routine and/or lost my touch. It's incredible what the body remembers - I couldn't think my way through my massage, but most of the time my hands and arms seemed to remember what to do. I set up the front room of our house as a guest room/massage room, and found it to be a great space to work in. Lit a candle, put on some music, and did my thing.

It helped that the client was my mom :)

Anton is a relatively happy baby, and is quite content to be my companion when I go to the grocery store or the Farmer's Market, or out for walks. And when we're home, he loves to play in his baby gym. Observe:



I've started on a new project, a theater thing. It will be a collaboration with one of my closest friends, and we're excited about it. I'm in the script writing phase now. I find that I don't have many hours to devote to it, but when I do find a bit of time, I make the best of it. Last week I sneaked off to Starbucks for a couple of hours by myself, and hand-wrote several pages at a frenzied pace.

I've been thinking about the future, and how to balance work and creativity and mothering. That silly struggle women's magazines have been writing about for decades now. I want to find a way to feel challenged, make some money, and spend plenty of time with Anton throughout his childhood. This new theater project, if it works out, would hopefully be a long-time gig, and help me achieve that goal.

Anton's napping, I'd better get back to that goal-achieving work.

The state of me.

For the first time in nearly a year, I am starting to feel "myself" physically. My energy level is up, I have a spring in my step when I walk, all that good stuff.

I have friends who are pregnant now who seem to be feeling fine, and maybe I'm just a whiny baby, but really from the beginning of my pregnancy I started feeling like crap, and pretty much felt that way to varying degrees until, oh, now (over 2 months since I gave birth).

I felt big and sluggish and tired throughout my pregnancy. Then I had to heal from a c-section while caring for a newborn. It's good to put all that behind me. I've been taking daily walks with Anton in the baby carrier. I'd enjoy some different scenery than this subdivision, but at least the weather is nice.

It's odd to me that I can both adore my baby to bits and miss him when I'm away from him for, like, an hour (which is pretty much the longest I've been away from him), AND at the same time miss my "old life." But, that's where I'm at.

Last night, I had quite the ordeal, trying out a new recipe for dinner that turned out to be more complicated than I'd anticipated. Anton was tired but only sleeping in 10 minute increments, then screaming for me, then I'd nurse him, then back to sleep (for 10 minutes). It was really frustrating and cooking dinner took forever. After we'd finally eaten, I felt so exhausted by the whole thing...then I felt depressed that the central challenge of my life these days is cooking dinner with an infant. This time last year, I was working on my Fringe Festival show.

I'm going to try venturing out for longer periods of time, so I can do more creative stuff. I plan to start attending writer's group again, while David watches Anton. I have a lot of pumped milk stashed in my freezer and Anton has been okay with a bottle the few times we've tested it out. I'm hoping to start doing some massage soon, as well.

I've been trying to write, but I can basically only do it when Anton naps, which is also when I need to do laundry (cloth diapers = lots of laundry), eat, cook, etc. I got a dictation app for my iPhone, I'm going to try writing via dictation while nursing. We'll see.

I go crazy without creative outlets. I'd love some tips from experienced artist moms on how to make this work!

Latest reads: Room by Emma Donaghue and Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

So. I've finally mastered reading-while-nursing (much easier on the Kindle than with a "real" book). It has improved my life greatly. I have yet to master typing-while-nursing, though, so I haven't been posting here much. The baby's asleep right now, let's hope he allows me to write about my recent reads before he wakes up.My friend Caitlin recommended Room to me, she thought that, as a new mom, I would enjoy reading this book that centers on a mother-son relationship. I adored this book. The most impressive part of it was the voice of the narrating character - a five year old boy, who has lived in a small room with his mother for his entire life. His mother is the prisoner of a man who rapes her repeatedly, fathering (only in the biological sense) her son, Jack. It was no small achievement for Donaghue to tell this story entirely in the very believable voice of such a young character. The story is told in present tense, as well. I felt like I was there, and my heart was racing at several points in the book, hoping Jack and his mother would be okay. I read this in two days. I kept looking at my baby Anton while he slept, so thankful for him. The book is a wonderful account of a mother's love, while at the same time a bit of a thriller.

Next I read Ten Thousand Saints on my Kindle, which I'd read about in Poets & Writers magazine. The characters are part of the straight-edge hardcore punk scene in the late '80s, and I've never come across a novel about this particular subculture before. I was marginally aware of this scene in high school (although that was in the 90s, I must point out), and went to a couple of shows because I had crushes on boys who were into it. So I was intrigued by the subject matter. I liked this book a lot, and thought the characters were genuine and interesting, and I found myself caring deeply for them. However, I found Henderson's writing style a bit confusing, at times. She loves similies like my cat loves smoked salmon. This book is full of them, like seeds of a pomegranate.

Okay, okay, her similies are mostly far better than mine. But there were just.so.many.of.them. And some of them didn't quite work for me. So then I'd find myself pondering the weird similie, and it would take me out of the story. And overall, the style was very intellectual-poetic, which didn't seem like it fit any of the characters' view of the world. Also, the perspective shifted quite often. Sometimes it seemed to shift mid-paragraph. Sometimes I wasn't sure whose head we were currently in. It was not a huge distraction, but I think it might have been better if she'd just picked one or two, or heck, even three characters through which we could view the story.

The wonderful characters and the unpredictable and intriguing story made me keep reading, though, like a straight-edge teenage boy at a free vegan buffet. Sorry, I couldn't help that one.