[i] LoveLife

1 tooth + 5 gifts.

Well. Yesterday was kind of sucky in that I had my face drilled out for just over two hours by an old school and very, very rough endodontic expert only to hear that he can't get the drill bit out of the root of my tooth and that after about 10 grueling hours of work on that poor tooth in the last two weeks - I should consider having the tooth pulled. LIKE I EFFIN' ASKED FOR TWO YEARS AGO. That was a kick in the dink, but the good news is that it didn't totally throw my day because I came home to two really happy kids and two GOOD DOGS and happy kids and good dogs are quite delightful to be around. Even if your teeth hurt so much they make your face feels like it's being twisted off.

The dental work was completely overshadowed by the five really amazing gifts that I saw over the last couple of days:

1. My friend Susan Probetts (from Colorado) popped in to Aubrey House for a minute last Friday and caught me at a particularly off point in my day. I was tired and stressed and over-done. She raced back to her car for "just the thing" she thought I needed and I'm pretty sure that when she handed me the Black Currant Bach Rescue Pastilles she had no idea that she handed me a flooding of memories. My Baba (Ukrainian for grandma) used to have little black currant candies just like that - in a tin just like that - that I have never seen anywhere else. I used to hide away and eat the entire box. My Baba passed away a few days after Pilot was born. In the flurry of activity that is giving birth to your first baby I wasn't alright to fly and I didn't make it to her funeral back home and I sometimes feel like maybe my family thinks that because I was far away and didn't get a chance to see her as often that maybe I don't miss her as much. And that would be so false. I miss her. I also have a very firm belief that she's with me. She was definitely with me on Friday. Thank you Susan.
2. Shortly after Susan left - I got a package delivered in the mail from my friend Paulette (from Nova Scotia). It was an amazing card she crafted up with a truly amazing pair of earrings that she had made for me with the words LOVE and LIFE. Extra, extra special because they were pieces of text from The Prophet by K. Gibran (one of my all time favourite books). I'm sure that I never mentioned that to her so it was just Paulette being awesome and saying/sending/being the perfect thing at the perfect time. Thank you Paulette.
3. Awesome Tamara came to watch the girls and she also brought them (AND EVEN ME!) the most adorable outfits. Tamara, you are so good to us. We love you! Thank you!
4. Norman, Crash and I walked a long walk to the far park. That might not seem like a gift, but it's something Crash and I used to do daily - long before Dan came around. The gift part was getting to spend some time with the dogs in a peaceful and mututally enjoyable activity. Crash is a stellar leash dog and Norman did great. He's going to be awesome. I love walking with good walking dogs.
5. And definitely not least, yesterday Doris (a friend I have never met) sent me an amazing email with some encouraging words that were so nice and so genuine that it touched my heart that she took the time to make sure that I knew what she knew and that is that we all do our very best and to keep on. Very timely, Doris. Thank you so much. I needed that.

So as crappy as my tooth feels and as horribly wrong as the day was geared up to go - it turned out very alright. Actually - much better than just alright - it was good. Here's a couple of shots from the last few days, of June's photo-a-day. (Crash didn't make the cut ONLY because he's not much of a lapdog and these are from iPhoto on my laptop).
Today: My girl tribe and I are going to cut ourselves some slack today. We're going to lounge around, visit with friends and enjoy the cooler temperatures. Pilot is potty training herself and it's been so fun to see her making great strides and taking great pride in her progress. Good thing she knows what she's doing because I DON'T HAVE A CLUE HOW TO POTTY TRAIN! It's like she grew up overnight. I think that Norman has been the key to getting her on the right track. GO FIGURE THAT ONE OUT. [Tomorrow is a holiday here in Canada. Welcome July. Maybe I will get a chance to paint? Yay.]

GO!

Get up + GO.

I'm a couple of days late with this art solution, but that's okay because this was my challenge in the first place. This is my piece for GOventure! Day 5: TREADING WATER. (Elise's is better. I love her book!) The last couple of weeks have absolutely treading water around here. I was pretty over-cooked last week with the combination of a whole bunch of things: Penn wasn't sleeping*, Pilot was mysteriously sick**, I had a dental crap-out***, Norman was peeing**** all over the place. This house was not a nice place to be and I was not a nice person to be around. Lack of sleep was catching me - HARDCORE. I was feeling pretty foul and there were definitely two things that turned that around for me: getting to sleep in on Saturday MORNING AND AFTERNOON (thank you awesome Dan) and getting a little validation on Friday night*****. Those two things took me from completely drowned back to treading water again.

Size: 5 x 7.5  inches
Media: pencil crayon, ink, procelain marker on recycled cardboard

To Elise: THANK YOU for the GOventure! You are awesome. Let's do this again some time soon. To everyone who played along: YOU ROCK. The internet is good for so many things. Sweet deal.

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* Penn was born a magical sleeper and somewhere along the line I TOTALLY SCREWED HER UP. I got an opportunity to read some sleep books on the weekend and we are starting sleep training this week to get her and I back onto a manageable schedule.

** Pilot was not fighting a few new teeth. She was battling with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. GOOD GRIEF! IT IS PRETTY GROSS and totally a new thing to me. I had never even heard of it before. I feel like the planet's biggest shit head for not figuring it out sooner. Poor little thing. She's nearly back to normal, but MAN THAT'S CRAPPY and it would be even crappier to have a grouchy mom that didn't understand the problem. Booo on me.

*** The painful drill bit that got broken off in the root of my back molar during a root canal a week ago is going to be fixed up today by a specialist. OH, SWEET JESUS THIS COULD NOT COME SOON ENOUGH FOR ME. Pain has a terrible way of showing up as anger.

**** Norman is a lovely little puppy and he's getting along well here because he's a gentle little soul. He has some serious separation anxiety that is going to put me over the edge soon and along with the sleep training and the dental work - I'm looking for ways to help him because his next destination is sleeping in the bowels of the basement. He was peeing in his kennel, but I took out his bedding and that stopped. Seems strange to want to sleep on hard plastic, but it's not my problem. He's still piddling around the house, but that's mostly because I get caught up in something else and miss his cues and he's an idiot. I'm getting better. He's getting slightly better, but I think he's just a lazy dog. We'll figure this out. And by WE - I mean me.

***** I went for a myofascial release massage on Friday night and it was the best massage I have had in my entire life. It was by no means a spa massage - it was a muscle treatment. No greasy potpourri smells or hot rocks or fairy music. It was incredibly healing to be heard and validated and helped in terms of pain. It was amazing relief and I think I'm going to prebook with Marilyn once a month for the rest of the year my entire life.
Quick family shot from the weekend. Crash was preoccupied with the puppy rolling on the lawn next door and by the looks of it Norman was eyeing up some bugs. Oh, man it's hard to get six family members organized.

Today: I'm so glad it is a new week. I really am. I feel a thousand times better and I have a good feeling that I will feel fifty-three trillion times better after the drill bit is surgically removed from my jaw this morning. Okay, the actual REMOVING part is probably going to suck, but that part after that is going to feel like heaven. Awesome Tamara is going to watch the girls while I get my teef back in order and then I hope to collectively nap the afternoon away and fuel up for an even better tomorrow.

Sweet, sweet, sweet. GO!

Treading Water (GOventure! Day 5)

Treading Water (GOventure! Day 5.0). I was going to post a video and pass it off as performance art because this week at Aubrey House could very humbly be titled Barely Treading Water. The teething around here has Pilot getting all four eye teeth and Penn breaking some ground on her first couple of bottom teeth. Norman is gnawing up a storm. And me nursing a root canal gone bad. I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't get my painting done for today... but still - I'm pretty disappointed. I'll finish it this weekend which means that I gracefully concede defeat to pretty Elise and her excellent design solutions. That was a fun designer duel. Watch for my final GOventure! sometime over the weekend. Or maybe on MONDAY. Bravo Elise! Thank you so much for playing along and especially thank you so much to all the people who posted links to their own take on the challenge. That was so much fun!

Today: One step at a time. I now own a crapload of baby sleep training books and I'm studying like a school girl and hammering out a plan to get us all back on track. We need it in a very, very bad way. Okay, I need it the most. I also need the myofascial massage that I am getting at 5:30 tonight. Hey, it's been 3 years, two c-sections, 2 babies, 175 or so painting, a lot of YOU-ARE-AWESOME posters, 500 or so sleep-interrupted nights and a lot of sore muscles since I've had a massage. This one is earned. Rock + roll, Friday June 26.

I'm pouring my own double big coffee this morning. GO!

Song + Dance (GOventure! Day 4)

SONG + DANCE (GOventure! Day 4). Hmmmmm.... Definitely not my best work, but it will have to do. Yesterday was one for the books. 2 teething babies and one sore-toothed mom. Actually - I think it might have ranked pretty close to the MOST FRUSTRATING DAY YET with two small people. It was hard. It was hard to see my girl tribe so uncomfortable when I was feeling uncomfortable, too. But, in more artistic news: this GOventure! solution was a combination of frustration + retrospection. I got stuck on "the same old song and dance" and that little phrase makes me think of the stories in songs and soap operas and the unhealthy relationships we go through to find the healthy ones. It made me think of country music and whiskey and cedar walls in old town halls. I was also thinking about deer heads mounted on the walls. The wood texture, the vinyl record, the Fette Fraktur font - all just parts and personalities to a story heard like a song and felt like a dance. Check out Elise's solution today - she's rock solid this week. Don't forget to check out the links in the comments - there are quite a few people playing along and posting their takes on the clues, too. Very cool.

Size: 8 x 8 inches
Media: Digital photographs

I'm gonna close this week with the prompt: TREADING WATER.

Today: We are gonna try to forget all about yesterday and start fresh. I need to pick up some books on sleep training because this Peaceful Penn of ours is making our my nights really, really long. We're gonna go swimming in the morning to see if we can float the growlies away and enjoy the summer heat before we come back to hang out with our favourite Olympic athlete friend Janine (she probably hates being referred to as Olympic athlete all the time, but 'tall, pretty, blonde friend' doesn't have the same ring). If Janine doesn't mind - I might crawl under the deck and have a cat nap to see if that helps with my sore jaw. Oh, I see the weekend coming!

GO!

Pocket (GOventure! Day 3)

POCKET (GOventure! Day 3). This word clue got the phrase "8 BALL CORNER POCKET" stuck in my head and that was pretty much all I could think of for the entire day. Actually, Thumbelina came to mind first and then Alannis Morissette's One Hand In My Pocket and THEN the 8 ball phrase. It doesn't really matter because I was tied up with a teething baby and no art can come of that so I left it until I got home from the dentist last night. Which did not work out in my favour because my root canal ran into a small problem when the drill bit thing broke off in my jaw and I left my dentist's office with it still lodged in my tooth and an appointment with a specialist to have it removed. Ouch. Elise had better luck over on her end. Check it out - she's awesome.  Leave a comment with your link if you're playing along (LOVED yesterday's ideas!).

Size: 8 x 8 inches
Media: oil pastel, newspaper, watercolours and digital type application

Elise tells me tomorrow's clue is: SONG + DANCE.

Today: We are off walking in the AM. New friends, old friends, new babies, old kids. It's summer around these parts and that means you need to get out and soak up as much vitamin D as you can. We're pitstopping at Starbuck's and the park and enjoying the conversation and new ideas along the way. At some point it would be radical if the dishes cleaned themselves and the laundry somehow managed to get folded and put away. Actually - it would be RADICAL if Norman didn't pee in the house today because it's Wednesday and one day grace for this very tired mama would be divine.

Lovely! GO!

Not My Type (GOventure! Day 2)

NOT MY TYPE (GOventure! Day 2). I enjoyed today's solution much more than yesterday. Did someone say TYPE? That gets me going. I would rather buy FONTS than shoes. I would rather look at letters than flowers. And one of the best parts of being trained as a graphic designer is getting to know typography on a personal level. My solution for today got away from the prompt - but, WHATEVER - I'm better known for breaking rules than I am for following them anyways. This is some type I drew up freehand (obviously) in Illustrator. I love hand drawn type. I love chaos. I love the way letters can develop relationships with other letters and lines and I love the way a point can be communicated and better emphasized by placement and treatment of type. SWOON. I HAVE NEVER MET A TYPE I DIDN'T LIKE. Well, that's pretty much a lie because there are a LOT OF FONTS OUT THERE THAT I THINK ARE GARBAGE but there's no font I can't figure out how to ROCK. (Even the ridiculously ugly ones like Papyrus and Brush Script to start the long, long list of uglies. Go ahead and challenge me!) I threw some woodgrain into the letters via PLACE in Illustrator and called it a day. I like this one. Now I'm getting warmed up. Bring it Elise. (I LOVE HER SOLUTION FOR TODAY, too.)

Size: vector based - 8 x 10
Media: digital

LOVED your solutions to the prompts. Play along with us again. Tomorrow's clue is: POCKET.

*Three cheers for our book club last night. I love that we have decided to put a ban on reading!

Today: Lots of playing and walking and staying alive in this humidity and heat. BLECH. I hate feeling sticky and I am already pining for jeans and sweaters. And hot chocolate. And MITTENS. Oh, yes I am. AND I'm gonna end the day at the DENTIST for a root canal. Oh, goodness.

GO!

Green + Dizzy (GOventure! Day 1)

GREEN + DIZZY (GOventure! Day 1). This little watercolour is about as out of control as our weekend was. The GREEN + DIZZY prompt kept showing up in my mind as one of these little mini-windmill things. I don't know why. I originally thought that I'd photograph it, but for some reason I can't remember now, I changed my mind and went for the watercolours. And by watercolours - I mean a kids paint set that I found at Dollarama for a dollar. Which were about as high quality as poop and about as chaotic as my train of thought for this one. Words, letters, intentions - everything spinning around and whirling about in the summer breeze. I'm gonna go ahead and say that this feels like a weak spring from the gate and somewhere around 10pm last night I was cursing myself for thinking GOventures was a good idea. And then I'm also going to SHEEPISHLY ADMIT that if there were no GOventures! then there would not have been ANY painting yesterday and that's not a stepping stone to CREATING time to paint - PAINTING IS.

Size: 8 x 10
Media: Watercolour, pencil + Sharpie on watercolour paper

Check out Elise's solution. She rocks. If you've played along - leave a link to your work in the comments of this post.

Elise tells me Tuesday's clue is: NOT MY TYPE. Yikes, here we go!

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Lots of GO around here this weekend.  My brother Kam was here to run a marathon and that caused us to have a very busy and very awesome weekend. ALL GO. All the time.
Marathons are strange beasts. You will never find me running until my toenails fall off and my body shuts down. No you will not. Unless there is a raging killer behind me - I prefer to jog quickly and to stop often. THAT SAID - my brother Kam totally rocked the house yesterday in his second full marathon. It was a blisteringly hot day. I was busting out with pride. AND I was feeling really terrible because he asked me to hand him a Powerade when he ran by our house (cool that we were right on the route!) and I FORGOT. So, when he ran by and I didn't have his drink - I raced into the house to grab the drink and then jumped on my cruiser bike with two flat tires and tried to catch up to him. THREE MILES LATER - I nearly had a coronary heart attacked and I finally closed the gap and got him his drink. He's fast. Whooops. Sorry about that Kam. How cool. How totally awesome. He is so great. Way to go Kam - we are so proud of you. We had a celebration BBQ for him afterwards and it was great fun to spend some time with friends + family on a hot summer night.
And who could forget Father's Day? Not us. Pilot + Penn are lucky, lucky girls to have a Dad like Dan. Happy Father's Day Dan! (And Happy Father's Day to my Dad who is awesome, too. And ALL awesome Dads!)

Today: We are going on adventures with Kam. Pilot ADORES that uncle of hers so she is going to run his sore marathon muscles into the ground and I am going smile. I love seeing the two of them bonding. It's great. I'm also going to WORK OUT. And finish the laundry. And get on my GOventures! challenge for tomorrow.

Sweet. GO!

GO venturing.

Hi Friday. SO. All kinds of things are picking up speed around here lately. An 18 month old. A 4 month old. A new puppy! Summer. Life is cooking. I've been feeling a creative itch and also feeling like I need a bit of a kick to get moving. I'm a new mom and as much as I'm loving these babies more than life itself - I'm also a person who fills myself back up by spending time making art. I'm feeling a little half-empty at the moment and there's only one cure for that. PAINT. One of my highschool teachers always said "if you don't use it - you lose it". I'm pretty sure he was quoting someone much more famous than himself and I'm pretty sure he was talking about the French language, but I think that it covers just about everything else, too. EATING RIGHT, EXERCISING and CREATING ART. All things we need to get back to doing around here. That gave me a little idea.. So, there's this girl named Elise. She lives in Maryland with her very nice fiance Paul. She's a designerly, crafty, smart kind of girl and I really like her. I like her style. She loves paper. She inspired me with the sparkly TOMS shoes that me and all my neighbourhood 3 year olds are crazy in love. She sent me an amazing letter black and white "P" card for the birth of peaceful Penn - which I thought was incredibly thoughtful. I think she's cool. In fact, she reminds me a lot of myself about ten years ago - except the Maryland part. And the fiance. And the letterpress stuff. And probably the part about being cool. And of course the sparkly shoes, because they were definitely not around in the 90's. But, the point is - she's an ADVENTUROUS SOUL making mini-books and taking pictures and this week she was inspiring me so much that I sent her an email - AND ISSUED HER A 5 DAY MAKE-STUFF CHALLENGE. A throw down. A design duel. Blog versus blog. DESIGNER DEATH MATCH but no one dies. I said HEY ELISE - wanna play a bit of a game? Wanna inspire each other? Wanna play a little ARTSY-FARTSY back-and-forth? Wanna shake up your comfort zone? Wanna see how two different artist tackle the same opportunity?

AND she said YES! so we are off on a week of MAKING ART ADVENTURES and stretching some creative muscles. GO-ventures! Elise-style and Kal-style. Since it was my challenge I'm going to start by throwing up a clue phrase that we will each interpret in our own way to post on Monday. Each on our own blog. My piece here. And her piece there. Oooooh, original art! Then Elise with throw out a phrase of her own and we will tackle that for Tuesday. And so on and so forth until the week is over and we collapse into a sweaty art puddle. A little art, a little explanation, a little inspiration, a little push. I'm excited. Getting creative is a good thing. DO you want to play, too? Bring it on. JOIN US. I challenge you.

GO-VENTURE CLUE FOR MONDAY: GREEN + DIZZY.

Today: I am expecting total chaos and debauchery because we are babysitting an 8 week old puppy named Ozzie. Yup, a toddler, a baby, a Boxer and two puppies. (Dan thinks I'm trying to get myself committed to a mental institution so I can finally have a full night's sleep.) I foresee PEE in my future and I can handle it. I also need to handle getting a mama load of groceries because my favourite brother Kam is flying in tomorrow morning to hang out with this favourite nieces and to take a little jog called the Manitoba Marathon on Sunday. Awesome. Just what the doctor ordered. Good weekend ahead.

YOU READY ELISE? GO!

Twilight zone.

Nothing says GOOD DAY like a LONG NIGHT and a slew of adventures. Penn is definitely fighting some teeth because her nights have turned into total chaos. Bummer for her and bummer for the rest of us because her crying sets off Pilot who sets off Norman whose cry-yelp-barking actually set off a neighbourhood cat and the howling, crying, yipping, meowing, barking was on. It was hardcore. How embarassing! Needless to say - that set an odd tone for yesterday and the Universe did not disappoint. My girl tribe and I went for a walk to pick up some diapers and our walk started with a fire. The Diary Queen's tall sign out front of the infamous icecream shop erupted into flames when we were about a block away. The fire department showed up moments later. The firefighters put out the fire with a big hose and it could not have been more beautifully orchestrated because Pilot now totally understands what the big red noisy trucks are for. One block past that a young man had a seizure at the entrance to our drugstore and as we rolled up so did the ambulance and the guy was loaded up and whisked away. But the way home was even better - a recylcing truck was squeezing past a parked car only it didn't squeeze far enough - it made a terrible noise and wrecked up the entire side of the car as it dragged it a dozen feet or so. Whoops. And wow.

We promptly went home and had naps.

Today: We are power strolling in the morning. We might even have a big group - so that will be fun! The rest of the day is full, too and I have to manage to pick up 200 pounds worth of dumbells and build a basement gym by this evening. With my small helpers. I'm not sure how I will do that, but I'm going to try. I'm very excited about a little 'designer duel' I'm going to publicly issue tomorrow that is definitely going to make little inspiration fireworks go off. A little friendly competition always does that.

I'm excited about this. GO!

Still learning.

She's pretty cute and still a happy, peaceful, mostly agreeable, chilled-out person. Penn, you get more awesome every day. Yesterday was a step in the right direction. Norman was behaving better. Penn was happier. Pilot was a pure delight. Even Dan seemed in betters spirits last night as he took a minute to lay on the floor to play with the dogs. GOOD. So good. We've been trying to make some decisions that will allow us to be less busy so we can enjoy each other a little more - do some things to nurture our family... I'm not sure where I got wired so wrong, but I find it hard not to be super busy and I also find it hard not to say yes to EVERYTHING. Which is just all mixed up because that gets me no where but more tired. We've been running on full for a long while and that doesn't leave much wiggle room for all the little things like babies cooing and naps in the sunshine and happy days at the park and Dan getting healthy and me finding my stronger non-pregnant self.

THANKS for all the emails with advice for Norman and his pee problem. I really appreciate it. I figure it's really just a matter of two important things: I need to remember he's a puppy and that's code for still-learning and I need to be more diligent with remembering that he's a puppy and he doesn't get the same trust or privileges as Crash does because Crash is 6 years old and has earned them. More consistency. More love. More play. More scratching behind the ears. Actually - I'd like to order up a round of that for everyone.

Today: We're gonna try another long walk that ends in playing outside and watering the plants. I think I should have bought FAKE plants because Pilot insists on watering them each about 40 litres 3 times a day and something tells me that's gonna turn out bad for the plants. And probably our water bill. Oh, well. There's bigger fish to fry out there and we're gonna find them!

GO!