Pretty Little Liars

I never told you the story about how we ended up with this year's Christmas card picture. Probably because it involved bribery, subterfuge, jerry-rigging, and outright lying. And also, I barely got away with it, so it definitely wasn't one of my proudest moments as a parent.

I tried to learn from last year's photo shoot. I really did. I made a mental list of all the things that drove me nuts last year -- the not sitting still, the general unpreparedness, the chaos. More than half an hour before I started taking pictures of my actual kid, I rearranged some furniture beforehand, switched some ornaments around, took pictures of just the tree, tested angles and lines and foci and lighting.

Except, I lost a part to my tripod, so I had to try to do all those things with the camera balanced on a precarious configuration of boxes, toy bins, shoes, and keys. It worked out about as well as can be expected. Well, better, I suppose, since I managed to avoid both breaking the camera and setting anything on fire.

When it finally came time to sit Shae down to take the actual pictures, I had everything ready. The chair was in place, I had all the props -- all one of them -- ready to go, and I had my Big Fat Lie all set up.

"Shae, I want to take pictures of the Christmas tree, and I need you to sit in this chair so I can test the light, okay?" And here is the true Christmas Miracle of the season: SHE ACTUALLY BOUGHT IT. She sat in that chair and moved when I asked her to and posed like a pro for 293 FRAMES before she caught on, and by that point we had it narrowed down to four possible photos.

I gave G the final vote, and as you can see, we went with the fourth picture above. All in all, I am very happy with how our cards turned out this year. And if you're not already on the list and you want one, send me an email or DM me on Twitter and I'll get one out to you, too.

Happy Holidays, yo. Sparkle and shine, and all that.

Lions and Tigers and Bears (LOLwut?)

So, riddle me this.

If it didn't say "Bears" right at the top of this drawing, would you have been able to figure out what this was?

Yeah, me either.

Wordless Wednesday: Turkey (?) in the Straw

Visions of Sugarplums

I have to admit that I have never really been much of an artist -- not a draw-er, anyway. I love to color, but I am one of those unfortunates who can't make a straight line with a ruler. My palm trees are passable, but I'm not really all that great at Pictionary (especially because I always get nigh upon impossible things to draw, like "evade" -- like, really?). Charades? Hell yes. But you don't want me on your team for Cranium unless someone else can do the illustration bits.

However, my inability to create traditional visual art (i.e., paintings and stuff, not digital scrapbook pages, which are more graphic design than actual "art" most of the time, at least when I do it) does not mean I can't appreciate other people's work. I can (and do) lose myself in museums, especially ones with decent Impressionist collections. Drop me in a room with soft natural lighting and some Monets and Renoirs and books of Romantic and Imagist poetry and a big comfy armchair and some tea (Earl Grey, hot), and you might never see me again.

Of course, as much as I attempt to enjoy art, I don't always understand it. I'm fully willing to admit that why I love, say, "Bend in the Epte River near Giverny" so much, or "The Bathers," is because I can look at those works, tell what they are paintings of, and then let my imagination run wild, creating stories about these people and places, trying to think up words to describe that particular time of day or that particular shade of pinkish-green or that particular angle of light. I have a hard time with some modern art, because I just don't get what it's supposed to be.

As in the above exhibit. Shae drew this, obviously, and she's already better than I am, although ... what is this, exactly? A large fish? A fairy princess? A Christmas tree? A Rorschach test? I am not (entirely) making fun here either, or being snarky. I honestly want to know. I want to understand. She clearly had a grand old time making this picture, and I want to encourage her to keep doing this. I want to fill my refrigerator with her artwork, however cubist or deconstructionist it may be.

And I can't wait to introduce her to Jackson Pollock. Because that stuff all looks so angry to me, but doesn't it look like a hell of a lot of fun to make?

High Art (Emphasis on the "High")

I have been having that Dream again, the one where I am standing near the stage of a high school auditorium in a pair of well-fitting jeans and bright yellow Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star low-tops and a black turtleneck with a long blue sweater-coat with what looks like deceased Muppets around the collar, and I have my hair up in a tousled yet sleek bun that manages to be messy without being bumpy, and my glasses are clear frosted rhinestone encrusted cat's-eye numbers and they look good, and I have between my fingers a long 20's-style cigarette holder and nobody is giving me any shit about smoking indoors, because I AM AN ARTISTE, dammit, and I am the director of the Best Goddamned Community Fucking Christmas Pageant Ever.

And yes, I know EXACTLY how many things are wrong with that paragraph, not the least of which is the fact that it is absolutely the run-on sentence from holy hell.

ANYWAY. One of these days I will tell you in great and embarrassing detail about TBGCFCPE, because in my head I have the whole thing planned out, but in the meantime, let me share with you someone else's Vision of Pure Entertainment Perfection:

via NPR's Monkey See Blog

I am struck, primarily, by the following:

(1) HOLY SHIT, THIS IS REAL. I mean, video of it exists on the Internet, so it HAS to be real, right?

(2) The backup dancers' outfits would make more sense if they included Solid-Gold-Dancer-style tinsel wigs instead of those ridiculous clown mops.

(3) I really, really love Florence Henderson's dress, in all seriousness, and if I could get it in my size, in a slightly more A-line cut, and with a shorter hem, I would totally wear that to the company Christmas party.

(4) You know you are a sad, irreparable dork when the woman who plays Alice, dressed as a duck, is way cooler than you are, Peter Brady.

(5) When I win the lottery and I buy my Pleasure Palace in Cabo, I am ABSOLUTELY going to make sure that I build my own personal nightclub, and it is going to look like this set.

(6) HOLY FUCKING SHIT, YOU GUYS, THIS IS FOR REAL.

(Sorry, but the Management of this Blog is unable to provide you with brain bleach after reading this post. Please consult your nearest mental health practitioner or drink Jaegermeister until you numb the pain.)

Cupcake Calendar: February

Yeah, yeah, I know. Last month I promised to get this month's calendar page up on time, and I didn't. Epic fail on my part. For those of you playing along at home, that's 5,368,941 promises that I made on this blog broken.

Anyway ... here is the February calendar page. These pictures were taken the first weekend that Shae lived in our house. Nobody slept for a few days. She was in a new place, with new people and new sounds and new animals and new routines, and we are all, "Holy shit! There is a BABY in our house RIGHT NOW."

When she moved in with us, we didn't even have her room finished. We literally went from zero to parents in two weeks. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Before she moved in we spent almost every evening with her at her former foster family's house, and then we would come home and root through boxes and throw stuff away and assemble furniture and panic and maybe eat if we remembered.

Then when she got here, we were afraid to move. She's never been fragile, not exactly, but she was so small, so foreign, a tiny little alien being for us to observe. We watched everything she did as much as she watched us. I could never -- still can never -- get enough of watching her sleep. Her strength and smarts continue to amaze me as much as they did then.

Although we still live in fear that something could go horribly, terribly wrong, right now we are speeding towards the Big Day when things will become official, when all the rest of this will be just a memory, those days before she and we found each other floating through space, a parentless child and two childless parents, on a collision course with destiny. BOOM!

But I still remember that first weekend, when she had no switchplate on the wall in her room, but otherwise, our lives had never been so complete.

Thanks, But No Thanks ...

Sometimes I feel like I missed out on some of the "good stuff" because we adopted instead of having our daughter the "old-fashioned" way. You know: stretch marks, pre-eclampsia, contractions, epidurals, pooping on the delivery table, etc. And breast-feeding.

Breast-feeding is separate because ... well, it's a special thing. I actually wish I could have breast-fed, but there are Rules about that when you foster-to-adopt, and obviously we didn't want to screw anything up, so we didn't try to push the issue. I am envious of breast-feeders, as the best that I will be able to do is share my devotion to Mountain Dew with the Cupcake someday.

One thing I don't regret, though, is the politicization of breast-feeding. Some women do it, some women don't, some women can't, some women won't -- none of anyone's business, not that most people will leave well enough alone. Since it isn't an issue for me, I don't really have to deal with it. Nor will I have to deal with ... anything like this item in the link below:

>> WARNING! POTENTIALLY GROSS AND LIFE-ALTERING! <<

Somebody was giving one of these away on their blog. (Don't remember who, sorry.) Um, yuck. I ... don't even know what to say. I had to send it in to Craftastrophe, because this is right up their alley. (Obvs.) Yeah, try to sleep tonight knowing that there are people out there who make money making those things. Yick-a-roo.

Cupcake Calendar: January

Previously on "OMFG That Bitch Is Totally Frakking Crazy": I whined about needing a vacation. And now I am getting one. Key West. February. Smoking deal on a room at a nice hotel, thanks to Priceline. Bathing suit and books already packed. Don't know what else I will need, but Cupcake, of course, will need an entire new wardrobe, which we are already working on. (Can't get my resolutions done within the affected year, but I am all chop-chop! when it comes to the Cupcake.) I promise not to talk too much about it until the week or so before we leave, because I'm going to be mostly dead from working too hard. (Which is still slightly alive.) To be continued ... dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuun ...

Now it's time for Arts & Crafts. Back in September when I starting worrying about Christmas I decided that I was going to make a Cupcake Calendar for the important female relatives: the Grandmothers and the Aunties. Plus, I wanted to have one myself, because then I could change up my kid's pictures without having to go to all the trouble of printing a picture, picking it up from the CVS or wherever, opening the frame, inserting the picture, etc. More than one step = too much trouble! (I keep telling you people, I am a slack-ass.)

This isn't the first time I made a calendar -- I did it before, in 2006-7, when I made a calendar of all the grandchildren on my mother's side of the family. I thought it turned out really well, even though my grandmother never actually used it. It's still in the plastic bag on top of the hutch in her dining room. From time to time when we visit, I take it out to show the baby, so she can learn to recognize everyone. It was a fun project, if a little exhausting, because I am not always very creative, and also I am a bit anal-retentive (I know, right?), so there were a few pages that were repeatedly redone because margins weren't uniform and some pictures were wonky sizes and actually it's hurting my head just thinking about it now.

So when I started the Cupcake Calendar, I set a few ground rules for myself. No more than four pictures per page. Use Picture Manager to crop and resize so that stuff would be at least in the same proportions. (I started this project before I discovered the Picnik tool on Flickr.) Relax, for God's sake. Remember that these people are going to love it anyway, no matter how craptacular or craftastrophic it turns out to be, because these people love Cupcake. Try to have fun with this.

I started at the beginning of the 2008 photo files, used some of the earliest shots we had of Cupcake (she wasn't with us in January, but we did start spending time with her in February), carefully scoured the Intarwebs for the perfect background for the scrapbook-style mat I was trying to create, and this is what I came up with for January:

I did the same thing for every month of the year. Well, not the same pictures, obviously, but the same process. I probably spent 2 hours picking out the photos for each calendar page, and then another hour or so per page reasearching backgrounds, plus the time I spent farting around with Publisher to match picture box outlines to the wallpaper, making the outline boxes fit properly, looking at the Print Preview page from across the room, autofixing and un-autofixing and re-autofixing, etc. I was kind of a wreck. (Which is different from usual how, exactly?)

AND THEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT SHUTTERFLY'S CALENDAR MAKER. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO TELL ME THESE THINGS!

Anyway ... this was going to be a story about how when I look at this calendar on my cubicle wall every day, I remember that very first weekend that we were "parents," how absolutely terrified we were that we were going to do something wrong, that we were going to be complete goofbags when it came time to change a diaper, how this is the only weekend that Cupcake spent with my parents where she actually took a nap, etc., etc., but instead here I am telling you about how oh my God, I spent approximately eleventy million hours a year on the Innartubes and I didn't know that there were programs that magically made calendars.

Maybe next month I will (1) get the calendar page up on time and (2) actually tell you some stories about the pictures. But I make no promises, because I will always be crazy.