Happy New Year!  I know I am a slacker lately with this blog, but that is a resolution to do better!
I also wanted to announce that I am now in two more galleries, The Redstone Gallery in Park City Utah and Gallery 822 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I am very excited about 2009 and am looking forward to creating new pieces meeting new clients!

Football Time of the Year

One quiet evening two years ago my husband came home from a busy day filled with tailgating and football watching with a heavy heart.  It seemed that the Chargers had suffered a heartbreaking loss to New England in the playoffs.  I felt bad for my husband; I really thought the Chargers had a shot.  It was a quiet week in our house, very little ESPN, or newspaper reading.  Little by little he became his old self, and we settled into a nice winter, spring, and summer of watching television and movies together.  We had a great run with the Soprano’s and caught up on all of our movies we hadn’t yet seen.  But I knew it was only a matter of time, just as surely as summer ends and kids go back to school, football season starts.

So now October is here, and to many it means back to school, but to me it means football.  It means Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, Saturday all day college Football, and of course Sunday Football.  September also means football on ESPN 24/7.  There are pre-game shows and post-game shows, there is even a show where five guys in suits and ties stand around re-enacting plays, or imagining plays that ought to be made...I guess.  The best is the show which high-lights a football coach or player who maybe lost a leg or had a family member who suffered a debilitating disease, and yet they still keep coaching, or playing and showing their courage.  That one always gets me.  Football seasons means the start of random phone calls filled with whooping or hollering from a certain friend of ours who shall remain nameless.  Football season means the smell of cigar smoke, and team flags hanging and yards, and for many, many, many women….widowhood.

I have lived with this phenomenon for over a decade, and now I understand that the holiday season does not end until the last of the bowl games are over, so by now I am used to it.  In fact, it would be a strange not to have a football game and occasional yelling as the soundtrack to my Sundays.  I have grown used to Saturday afternoons and evenings with the kids because my husband has a pre-game tradition before San Diego State games.  I look at Football season as a great opportunity to spend some extra time doing the things I like; going to Barnes and Nobel, walking the mall, and eating things my husband is not fond of like sushi or salad.  It is also a good time to connect with other football widows who have sent their husbands out to the garage to watch the game…chances are your husbands are together anyway.  Eventually, because marriage is all about adapting and simply getting used to each other, I find that I catch the fever a bit as the season progresses.  Last season infact, my visiting family caught me briefly yelling at the t.v., it was a play-off game after all!!!

Check out the new paintings I have been working on for the past two months on the portfolio page.  This is the tree series and I really love the direction that the art is going!  Enjoy!!!

October is my favorite month of the year.  It finally cools down, (sort of), my favorite color orange is prominently displayed all over the place, Starbucks starts selling Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and Halloween finishes with a bang at the end of the month.  When I was a kid pumpkin carving was all about technique and planning.  Costumes were created at the last minute by pillaging through each other’s closets (I still save clothing based on the “what if someone could wear this as a costume” factor).  Also because it was New Mexico and always snowed on Halloween, you had to remember coats when deciding what to wear for trick or treating.  Case in point, in sixth grade I went as a very politically correct bag lady and wore a huge, nasty coat, and large paint splattered boots.  Nothing is worse that being a fairy princess and then having to wear a down coat on top of your costume.

When you’re a kid you take for granted that all families are like yours, (or at least fairly similar), so it was a little surprising to learn as an adult that some people really don’t like Halloween (my husband).  Between the messiness of carving pumpkins and people donning freakish costumes, (and acting freakish because they are in costumes), he can really take or leave Halloween.  Every year my good friend Marla hosts a Halloween party and every year my spouse attempts to either wear the same Friar costume he has worn for the past decade, or he prays that San Diego State has a home game and attends that instead.  I, on the other hand, have found a kindred spirit in Marla, and over the years we have done whatever we can to torture our friends with themed parties, Halloween games, and Halloween themed food (okay I admit that part is all Marla…I bring the breadsticks).  One year at the party all the women were sitting around in their wigs, eating brownies with cobwebs iced onto them. A discussion began about how Halloween is really just an excuse for women to dress up like their slutty alter egos.  For the rest of the evening we kindly referred to each other as the slutty witches, the slutty hippie, slutty little Bow Peep,  and the slutty beer wench (although I thought I was dressed as a tasteful beer wench).

As a parent, I seem to have passed the Halloween spirit on to my kids.  They love pumpkins, Halloween books, and looking at Halloween displays in stores.  On the first of October we put up our Halloween village, and they both draw bats and jack-o-lanterns to decorate the kitchen. 

Which leads me to” The Secret”.  A couple of years ago “The Secret” became a best seller, so of course I had to read it.  To me it was mostly common sense about putting a good thought out in the universe, but mostly I realized I had been using “The Secret” for years…this is how I had acquired quite a bit of my furniture (you can’t be too picky when using “The Secret”).  I also realized that I use “The Secret” every year when looking for Halloween costumes for my kids.  When they were babies I would purchase costumes for the kids because what is cuter that a baby in a bear costume???  Eventually Delaney began speaking, and from that moment,  Halloween costumes became a highly orchestrated event.  One year she decided that she and Tobey were going to be dinosaurs.  I could not get her to waver on this; obviously, she had already put the thought out into the universe and was unwilling to change.  So I had to find two freakin’ dinosaur costumes.  Rather than shop on-line, my method was to casually bring up Halloween with every adult I spoke to; the woman in the check out line, people in the bank, women at the park…..  Finally, a miracle occurred in the form of a pre-school teacher who happened to have TWO dinosaur costumes which fit my children perfectly.  The following year I had to hunt down both a robot costume and princess mini mouse costume, and again I used the same principles of putting out into the universe what was needed, and gradually all of the parts of the costumes came to me.  Incidentally, we need a fireman costume and a black ballet tutu….so if anyone has one just laying around that would be very helpful.  Happy Halloween!!

 

This is the year my kids finally are in school all day.  This is the year I allegedly get to relax, and take some time for myself.  The problem is I just am not good at relaxing, and I have an aversion to spas.

My problem with Spas seems to be two-fold, my inability to relax, and to schedule in time to have someone else paint my nails, wax my blond eyebrows, or worse rub my back.    I am in awe of other obviously busy women who have nice looking nails because I wonder if they sit there fretting about all the other stuff they could be doing right at that moment?  Do most people find taking a little time to get pampered relaxing? 

The other issue is, I am really lazy when it comes to myself.  Sure there are many things that I could and should change, but I don’t tend to loose any sleep over it.  I did have an interesting experience of attempting to work out with a personal trainer.  I should have known we were doomed when she spent most of the first session talking about how much the L.A.M.B. shirt she was wearing cost, and that I laughed more than sweated through most of the Pilates routine.  We gave it a few good weeks, with me seeing almost no results because I kept eating and her growing more and more frustrated at my apathy and over-sized work out shirts.  Finally, I went to her home studio to work out on her Pilate’s equipment; which if you have never seen looks a little racy.  So there I was with my legs in stirrups, and suddenly I had the feeling that other things had happened on the Pilates equipment, and in that moment I had a visual, and after that it was all over for me!!  I heard later that my trainer talked about me at a party about how I was a bad breather because I talked all the way through my sessions, which I thought was funny, but it was clear that we had to break up.

Shortly there after I was reading a magazine dedicated to beauty and relaxation and there was an advice column from women who sincerely took the time to pamper and take care themselves.  I realized if anyone were to ever ask me, that I would have no advice except that if you have blond eye-lashes that you ought to wear mascara because you don’t want to scare people away, and last that nothing says mid life crisis quite like getting a tramp stamp after the age of 30.  Because what young, cute, and innocent 15 year old is going to want to see that on your wrinkly butt when she goes to the day spa with her mom? 

 

 

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!