Summer is here, days of no schedule, and the kid’s home all the time.  Sounds blissful and relaxing, right?  The truth is I think it takes a couple weeks to get used to being with your kids all day everyday.  During the school year the family has such a tight schedule and routine that I appreciate all the time we spend together.  In summer, it is just togetherness….a lot of togetherness…maybe a little too much!

Aristotle said that “patience is a virtue”, and I have to admit patience seems to be a virtue I am sorely lacking.  Over the first few weeks of summer, with my children by my side all day I came to the conclusion that I really have a lot of personal work to do.  This was especially apparent at a barbeque when my friend Carlos looked up with a shocked expression after hearing me bellow at my son from across the yard.  He suggested that I call my next column, “Summer Memories”, and then laughed at his own joke.  But he was right, I did need to take a moment and relax a little bit about my kids.

The first couple weeks of summer started out big.  First of all, we went on a trip to our family’s cabin in the Sierras for two weeks.  This was an eight hour drive.  Two things to know about us.  First my husband doesn’t stop the car for anything.  Anything.  Second we never turn on the DVD player for the kids.  I know, I know…crazy!  But we both have some sick sense of old school parenting pride that the kids can sit in the car that long and entertain themselves.  However, our five year old daughter has come into her own and by that I mean, for the eight hour ride to the cabin, Delaney talked the entire time.  About five year old stuff.  We were so exhausted by the time we got to the cabin.  That night I had dreams of made up songs about fishing and donuts.

The talking did not end there.  Daily as we would trek through the woods to the rec center for swim lessons, Delaney would walk behind me singing and talking, and talking and singing.  She reminded me of that Monty Python movie, The Holy Grail, where the jester gallops behind Sir Robin singing about how Sir Robin was a coward.  And because it is your precious child that you brought into the world, you can’t just yell, “SHUT UP”. 
No, you have to ask patiently for quiet, suggest quiet games, and take long quiet walks by yourself just to detox from the constant noise.
But I digress. 

Eventually I began to relax.  The Sierra’s are beautiful, we had no schedule, so vacation became all about the kids.  Our son is happiest in water, so all he really needed was pool time everyday.  We learned that Tobey can tread water for hours and hours, which signifies a potential career in the Navy or Coast Guard.  My daughter signed herself up and won the cannon ball contest at the rec center on the 4th (she had good form), and every evening we would take a nice family walk though the woods.  Eventually we got used to the sound of constant chatter, and as a blessing in disguise my husband’s dad and step-mom arrived in the second week and Delaney had a new audience to hold spell bound. 

Maybe starting summer off with a bang of togetherness has made all the difference in learning to relax and enjoy my kids…all the time.  I am pretty sure learning to be patient is going to be somewhat of a life long quest, but in the meantime I am becoming a little more easy-going about things.  Delaney, in her sweet, well intentioned way, has interrupted me countless times during the writing of this article to talk about paintings, toys, and potential play dates.  I can hear her now in the back yard singing to her dad while he does some yard work.  The truth is we already laugh about how funny she is, and are really lucky that we do get to spend so much time with both our kids…truly the best summer memory of all.

 

 

Once a year we all get a little bit of thankfulness and holiday cheer into our systems and find ourselves bustling across the street to help the old man who maybe shouldn’t even be walking anymore without a cane, climb a ladder to hang Christmas lights.  And then for the rest of the year we get disgruntled at poor customer service and tear up the junk mail from National Parks (carefully taking out the return address labels first).  But this year my new year’s resolution was to be nicer, and when I said nicer, what I really meant was to be a better person.  Several weeks later I began formulating a plan, and I have come up with several steps to becoming a better person, and hopefully doing some good.

 

First off, know thyself.  I say this in regards to the PTA-bless them.  They are wonderful people who do great things for schools.  I do believe that PTA members are made up of two kinds of people, former High School student council members and people who can’t say no.  I spent more than half of my son’s kindergarten year hiding from these well intended people.  When I was finally cornered I had to be truthful in saying that I would spend the entire year trying to figure out how to get out of going to meetings.  I am not a joiner, unless I get paid, and that defeats the purpose of volunteering.  Incidentally, I did paint a mural which suits me far better than say, collecting money for wrapping paper…not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 

Second, believe in your cause.  This is based on a past experience regarding my charitable donations.  I tend to give stuff away.  For a while my favorite drop off point was a church thrift store.  I dropped it off there because it is in the neighborhood and easy to get too.  But then I had an epiphany-we are not church goers.  We have very valid reasons, my husband’s is based on a true philosophical belief, and mine is based on being raised by hippies and an inability to sit still without speaking.  Ask my husband, he takes car trips with me.  So anyway-why were we giving all our former goods to an organization that we didn’t necessarily know or support?   These days I still love giving stuff away, but it might be to kids in Guatemala, rather than a church we sometimes drive by…no offense to the church.

 

The third rule, give back.  This rule comes from my dad.  In the last five months of his life he underwent weekly and then daily blood transfusions.  This simple act of donating blood by someone who didn’t even know him helped him to live a few months longer and have the time to really say goodbye.  For reasons unknown, I feel that it is my duty to pay back all those blood transfusions.   Even though I have four other siblings, for one reason or another, mad cow, hepatitis, fear of needles, the blood donation has fallen to me.  By the time I am done paying it back it will probably be time for someone to donate some blood to me!   I do try to shame others around me into donating blood, including my husband who would run into a burning building, but if chased with a needle would most likely faint.  (Why is that?  The fear of needles seems completely irrational, but I will save that for another time).  I will say about donating blood, it doesn’t really hurt. It only takes about 45 minutes.  The worst part about donating blood is that sometimes you end up sitting across from the person who stares.  This is awkward because you don’t know what to do with yourself, and it’s not like you can leave.  Believe it or not, the person who stares is not always male either.  Either way, its best not to make eye contact, you wouldn’t want them to think you were forever linked because you donated blood together.  And for the record, some might refer to me as the person who sings and fidgets while donating blood.  Nobody’s perfect!   The five year old in me loves the enormous band aid they put over your teeny tiny puncture wound.  Donating blood is the poor and lazy man’s charitable cause.  “Oh, I don’t have any money to donate, so please take my blood!”  Trust me, after the first time-you get used to it.

 

These are just a few little things on my quest to be a better person in order to fulfill my New Year’s Resolution.  Am I changing the world?  Not really.  Do I still get all cranky and act like a jerk…probably way more often then I would ever want to admit.  But the lesson I have learned is, it’s actually easy and mostly a lot of fun to do good things, and if you find something that you either enjoy or feel a sense of obligation to do then it makes doing good and giving back all the better!

So I really failed with that goal of writing every day!  But I have been busy, with commissions and parenting, and did not have tons of time for blogging!!!
Since I last signed on I have been very busy.  We had a big movie party in our backyard with 50 or so people, including a bunch of foreign exchange students, fireworks, and lots of food.  It seemed that everyone had a great time.  I have been busy working on some paintings that I hope to post on this web-site in the next week or so.

Last night my good friend, her family, and I went to L.A. and saw the musical, Wicked.  It was really terrific!  So creative and inspiring!  We want to go back in the next couple weeks and take our daughters, we think that they would love it. 

I know, what is the point of having a blog if you never get around to writing in it?!?  I admit I have been terrible of late, and my only excuses are that it was the end of the school year for the kids and then we went on vacation and I really lost focus.  But my new July 10th resolution is to try to write everyday for the next month and see if I get more into the habbit of this blog. 

Our family vacation was great, I did get the chance to read lots of great books and my kids had the chance to swim and swim so it was very worthwhile.   This first week home has been pretty busy.  I am looking forward to starting some new commissions here in the next week, so I will make sure those pieces are posted onto the web-site as soon as they are finished.  In the meantime I did eat at an interesting restaurant today called Texas Loosey's.  I was sent there to write a restaurant review and the food was pretty good, even if the atmosphere is pretty much geared towards guys, BUT I have to admit their chilli was excellent!!  Basically, everything fried was awesome, so it was a good time all around.  Till tomorrow!!!--Jami

Back from the Southwest!  My traveling companion Oscar (who was on his way to visit his wife Gina and daughter Solymar in Ignacio, CO) and I had a great trip.  We began by running into one of my former college roomates on the shuttle on Thursday morning.  I ofcourse did not recognize her (I have that problem) and later I told Oscar that I might not have been that friendly to her in college.  We only lasted one semester together...but that is a story for another blog.

Anyway, my mom picked us up from the Albuquerque airport and we were on our way for the three hour drive to Durango.  This was a fun and uneventful drive with nice scenery, and good conversation, plus it was nice to catch up with my mom.  After we dropped off Oscar we arrived in Durango or D Town (as Oscar calls it).  The bed and breakfast we stayed in was nice, and from there it was easy to walk everywhere in Durango (including Starbucks) but I do have to say the bed I slept in both nights was HORRIBLE!  It is not a good sign when you have a crick in your back that won't go away based on the bed you are sleeping in...but I digress.  Another observation about Durango is that it has been over 10 years since I moved away from Colorado, and things there don't seem to have changed.  Particularly in the realm of fashion.  People are still wearing the same tee-shirts, jeans, tevas, and fleece vests that they were during the early to mid 90's.   Also, I always forget that Colorado is a crazy dog state.  People shop with their dogs and you see them sitting by their owners at outdoor patios.  Maybe if Californian's didn't have to drive everywhere we would take our dogs everywhere too.  Oh, I guess we do...in our purses.  I should add that Colorado is where my dog, Buffett, was born.  She looks like a scruffy Colorado dog.

The show was awesome!  My artwork looked great up there on the walls of Rain Dance Gallery.  This is such a pretty gallery, and I have to thank Bob and Lori Curtis for doing such a great job, and for putting on such a beautiful show.  It was really nice to meet so many Colorado clients for the first time, and fun to have a show in a great setting.

So we started home on Saturday (without Oscar, he would meet up with me again at the airport on Sunday).  My mom and I were just making our way back to Albuquerque for a party at my mom's house.  The trip was uneventful, until........ I got my very first speeding ticket in a speed trap in Cuba, New Mexico.   OH I AM STILL CRANKY ABOUT THIS!!!!  I might have to address this topic again, because I am trying hard not to use foul language in this blog.

So onto the party at my mom's.  This was fun because I saw my older brother Chris and his wife Angela, and their three kids, Christian, Eric, and Kayla.  It is always fun to see those guys, and the party was catered by the world famous Josie, so the food was awesome New Mexico fare at its best.  I did miss my family at home because they would have loved this part of the trip. 

Sunday was Mother's Day and I went to breakfast with my mom and Byron and we had a great time, and then it was on to the airport, where Oscar was really sad to say goodbye to Solymar and Gina.  And then we were delayed.  This is what I learned about Oscar during our delay.  He is not scared to lay on an airport floor and just fall asleep.  This is an admirable quality because to me it showed not only is he comfortable in his own skin, but he isn't scared of all the germs from the bottom of everyone's shoes getting all over his clothes. 

Finally we made it home around 7 on Mother's Day and it was great to be back with the kids!!!  My Mother's Day Gift was a Joshua Tobey sculpture called Patience.  It showcases a mother polar bear with two bear cubs, and it has always been my favorite Josh piece (and the most fitting).  You can view this piece on www.tobeystudios.com by clicking on Joshua. 

And now I'm home, and back at it.  It was a fun trip, but I am glad to be back with my family.  I will write again soon!

On Thursday morning I leave for Durango, CO for an art show.  Raindance Gallery has a great body of paintings and I am really looking forward to getting out to Colorado for a few days and then on to New Mexico to see some of my family.  I will make sure to post how the show goes, but I think it should be fun.

Happy Mother's Day! 

It has been a busy week, especially for my sister Jessie and her husband Hector who welcomed their first child into the world on Wednesday, April 2nd, Hector Arthur.  This little nephew of mine was born in Birmingham England, so unfortunatley I won't be seeing him in person any time soon...but I do wish I was there to give him some kisses and hugs!  So Crongratulations Jessie and Hector!!

Other things going on have included a ski trip to Northern California with the family.  We put our kids on ski's for the second time last Monday, and they both had a good time, and for the hour and half that we got to ski by ourselves without kids we had a BLAST!!  I do miss that skiing everyday type of lifestyle that I enjoyed in college...sometimes its hard to grow up!  We also enjoyed some sledding and a lot of eating out, and what isn't there to like about that. 

I also read some good books in the past two weeks including:  Beautiful Boy which is essentially a memior about addiction told from the father's point of view and was incredibly well written.  It ought to be required reading for parents, as it was interesting, sad, introspective, and educational.   Next I read Garden Spells, by a new author, Sarah Addison Allen.  This was an enjoyable, light read, especially after Beautiful Boy.  It did remind me a little bit of a Alice Hoffman book, because the plot revolves around sisters, and their family who have a little bit of witch craft in their blood.  Still it was entertaining and I was actually sorry to finish the book as fast as I did.  Then almost by accident I read a teen-age girl book (yes, I did judge the book by its cover) called Bounce by Natasha Friend.  This was cute, and full of teen angst, and all about a step family.  This would be a great book for any young/teen girl ( and truthfully, I really did enjoy it)!  Last, I plowed through Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.  This is somewhat of a Brave New World type of book, which I did not expect.  This would be a terrific book group type of novel to read because it really is full of a lot of moral and scientific, possibly religious conflict that made it fairly interesting.  The writer writes in a non-judgemental way, so at the end of the novel I kept thinking "why didn't they do this?  why didn't they think that"?  It would have been nice to discuss this book.

Last, it was great to do some painting up at the cabin.  This has been a beautiful spring, and I loved the landscape as we were driving with all of the rolling hills dusted with wild flowers.  The scenery was very inspiring. Then to get home and jump back into several paintings I had been working on before the trip was also exciting.  For me, it is always great to see a painting with fresh eyes, especially when they are in progress.  I usually have two to four paintings in the works at anyone time, because they do become somewhat of a puzzle that I find I have to solve. 
Happy April!

As I mentioned in a previous blog, my family and many of our great friends are heading down to San Diego on Saturday the 29th to participate in the San Diego Walk for Autism.  This is our fourth year doing the walk, and fourth year as Team Tobey.  As mentioned in my bio, my oldest child, Tobey, was diagnosed with autism at 2 1/2.  He is now 6 years old and we have found that early intervention has been a real blessing.  Although he has a ways to go, he has improved SO MUCH in the past few years, and we are so proud of him!   We are also very blessed by the support we have been given from our family and friends and through Tobey's school district.  Doing the walk every year is just another great way to say thanks, give back, and have a little party in San Diego with some friends and family who love Tobey too!  Hopefully I will figure out how to up-load pictures to this blog and display Team Tobey for all to see (like I said before blogging has a real "learning curve").  For more information about the walk go to www.sandiegowalkforautism.com or www.nfar.org.

March 25th

March so far has been particularly busy with the kids being on spring break, and me getting ready for my May 9th Durango show.  Right now I am working on Mountain Range paintings and am using photos and sketches from my trip to Ouray, Colorado two years ago.  The paintings so far are turning out to be really exciting with deep greens being the prevalent color.  Before the show I will send out an e-mail alert to check out the portfolio page with Colorado paintings.   I do love Colorado and am really looking forward to getting back out there in May, even though I won’t get back home to my kids till the end of the day on Mother’s Day (sigh). 

The other big thing my family has going this weekend is our Fourth Annual Walk for Autism down in San Diego.  Every year we get a large group together down in Balboa Park and do a 3 mile walk and then afterwards head over to my husband’s dad’s house for Beth’s Infamous Chips.  Beth, (Mitch’s step-mom) makes amazing tortilla chips, which she says are very easy, but no one really believes her.  The Autism Walk is really awesome because we have a terrific group of friends who really go above and beyond to get out there and support our family and Team Tobey.  We look forward to it every year, and always love a good excuse to get together with friends.  I would like to thank our good friend Duane from HomeTown Financial for supporting Team Tobey by providing t-shirts.  They always look awesome.

In the next week my family is going up North for a last week of spring skiing and some outdoor painting time.  I am really looking forward to spending some time outside, reading my pile of novels that are currently stacked by the door, and I think that my kids are looking forward to trying out their scooters in new terrain. 
In the meantime, new work is in progress.  Paintings of various degrees of completion are propped up all over the house, and the creative juices are flowing…I better get back to work!

Baseball Season-Opening Day is Almost Here!

Perhaps this will come as a surprise to some, but I have to admit that I really like Baseball.  And by like I don’t mean watching it on T.V. or listening to baseball on the radio…I don’t like that.  I mean that I enjoy going to baseball games. 

My husband enjoys listening to games, in fact while we were going to school in Colorado, it was nearly impossible to hear a Padre game on the radio, but somehow he managed to find a spot that he could drive to atop a certain hill to hear the fuzzy radio broadcast…a little quirky…but I still find that sort of charming because it shows he is devoted.

Anyway, back to baseball.   It isn’t so much the crack of the bat or the roar of the crowd; for me it’s the food and the atmosphere that keep me going back for more.  It all started when we moved to San Diego after college and I began going to many games and slowly caught on to the world of baseball.  I probably asked many very dumb questions in the beginning, and I have to admit I didn’t get it for awhile.  What happened though was that the Padres ended up going to the World Series during my second year as a Padre fan, and somewhere in the midst of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire hitting homeruns and the Padres having one exciting game after another baseball seemed to click for me and I was hooked. 

 It wasn’t always smooth sailing though.  I was nearly banned from baseball for life during the 98 series for commenting that more people were wearing white than any other color (in my defense I am visual person and that was interesting to me)!  I also foolishly tossed my commemorative World Series towel after the fourth game (now I know we save those things).   The thing I have learned about baseball in the last decade is that baseball suits me.  I like baseball because for 9 innings I have to sit still, and that is good for a hyper person like me. There is something almost therapeutic about sitting in the stands watching the game and zoning out-so to speak.  I like that my husband buys me food and drinks at baseball games.  I love to bring my good friend with me because over the course of the game we solve all of our problems and everyone else’s too, and by the 9th inning are better friends.   I like it when her husband comes to the games because he and my husband watch the game and drink beer and by the end of the 9th inning are better friends too.  I like that even the world’s best hitter sometimes strikes out, and that sometimes the rookie makes the play of the game. I like that someone can pitch a no hitter and become a king, and that there are stats for every single tiny thing that happens over the course of the game.  There is probably even a stat somewhere that says more people wore white to the 98 series than any other color.   I like that baseball is a game of failure, as a sport it probably most mirrors life.  I mean who really makes it on base every time?  Who always makes the perfect play?  It doesn’t happen that often, so when it does it is all the sweeter.  Happy Opening Day!