happy as a little girl in spring

My daughter had a nagging cough for over two weeks, and sure enough, I got it. I'm on about day five or six, and it's doing a number on me, that's for sure. The worst part of it is that it's made hash out of my vocal chords, so my voice sounds just awful. All day long, I sound like I just woke up from a bad three-day bender. At the very least, I sound like Bea Arthur. At the very worst, I sound like Bea Arthur's DAD. And he's dead.

I coughed so hard in the night last night, that one of my bottom ribs near my waist is really sore. When I have to talk, it brings on a coughing fit, which really sucks at work. Each time I answer the phone, the people feel they have to comment about how I don't sound like myself, causing me to have to talk even more to state the obvious: Yeah, I'm sick. Wonder how you could tell. Huh. (And hells yes, I've been complaining about this. I'm a wimp.)

Anyway. Regardless of that, life is good. My son got his cast off and will be playing soccer using a hard clamshell thing they created for his forearm, so his wrist has mobility and he can put on his goalie gloves. My mom is coming up from Utah to visit this weekend, and that spells more good times. We will travel to watch my son play on one of the days of the state tournament, and it should be a great weekend. The weather has been in the upper eighties this week, which adds to the joy. It's so nice to enjoy spring for real. Travel across Montana during this time of year is great fun for an artist. It's gorgeous.

I recently started a new ceramic project at the ceramic studio, which I'm excited to complete. I'm also working on a collage using ripped pieces from magazine pages, and I hope it turns out. I've never tried this before. I feel my art coming back to me and it's a great feeling. I may have a graphite portrait commission for Father's Day for the wife of a co-worker...which reminds me ~ I need to call her. Father's Day is coming soon.

Hopefully I'll have some good ideas come to me for this blog as well. I've been way too lax lately and need to write something of quality. If you have any suggested topics, please share. Some of my best blog posts from the past came from "assignments" people gave me. :)

"When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Quite tasty

I have a perverse enough sense of humor that when I saw the menu item "Camel Toes" at the trendy sandwich shop yesterday, I had to order them.

It was hilarious when the waiter brought our food to the table. "And who has the Camel Toes?"

Uh.....that'd be me.

Yo, Kate!

Aaaaand,

A shout out to my sister, Kate! She called me last night to let me know she got a full ride scholarship to study nursing! She's been working so damn hard for this for years, and to now be paid to do what she had been working so hard toward all along, well....that's simply awesome.

I'm damn proud of you, Kate. Ya done good. I'm so glad you're my sister.

Yo, Keith!

Here's a shout out to my brother, Keith, who is in town for work for just over a week. He's my sibling I know perhaps the least, and I'm so damn glad for this opportunity to get to know him better. He's been coming over and hanging out with me after work, and it's been great fun.

Already he's teased me for being like our beloved Madre when I've called him my son's name and when I said three names before getting to the right one when talking about one of our siblings. We've had some great discussions and some serious laughs as he showed me his favorite website on the internet: cracked.com

We sat there laughing for almost an hour at the part labeled "Craptions" where funny pics are posted and people can submit captions to the pics.

I'm really enjoying getting to know my awesome brother better. His birthday happens to be this week also (a source of pain for him, being away from his friends on his great "drinko de Mayo" birthay), so I hope that being with us isn't too much of a let-down. Perhaps we can think up something suitably un-tame to do so he'll feel more at home!

Heh. Imagination going wild now...fun.

What was I thinking?

I wore a turtleneck today, without thinking about the fact I'd be entering a bunch of invoices into my computer and also paying payables. This means a whole lot of looking back and forth between my stack of invoices and my monitor.

My neck is being rubbed raw. Damn.

The good news is, I'm getting a lot done. There is that.

***Edited to add that I just looked outside, and see that it's snowing. Again. It snowed on Monday enough that I actually had to scrape my car off at lunchtime. Maybe the turtleneck's not such a bad thing after all. Ugh.