Ass Handing

I wrote a long tirade on Wednesday about my usual stuff. It happens we all have bad days.

Then to my shock and horror I get a comment where somebody tries to sock it to me and give me a good swift kick in the pants. Fine and dandy. I probably needed it, but I went back and re-read through the post, and it turns around at the end. Whoever it was that wrote the comment obviously didn't read the whole thing. I may start out with self-pity, but the whole point of writing is to cheer myself up and get me to turn the corner and see that my life is not that bad, it's just the way I am looking at it at the moment. Yeah we have no cash, but it's a choice I consciously made by deciding to not be an architect anymore. If I don't like the hole I'm in it's my chocie to dig myself out. I know that. But every once in a while I have to complain. We all do it.

So whoever you are "Annonymous" before you start to hand me my ass, read the whole post dipwad.

That gets me on another tirade. Who are you that you are so important that you have to be annonymous? Unless you are Tony Robbins himself there should be no reason why you can't have a real name. I am being far from annonymous by writing all this, so out of common decency, get a name, or don't post on my blog.

Motivation

At night when I'm snuggled into the couch watching Chelsea Lately or House Hunters I am always amazed at how little I accomplished during the day. This is when I start planning all the amazing things I am going to get done the next day. I'll write. I'll vacuum the upstairs bedrooms. I'll finish my rug. etc etc.

But then the next day comes, like now, it's 9:52 and I've already been back and forth to Perez Hilton 3 times waiting for new posts. I am inspired to do exactly nothing all day today. It's too cold in the office still to hunker down and do anything. It's way too cold in the studio to go out and work on the rugs. I'm not inspired to do anything that I was inspired to do last night at 8:00pm. Why does this constantly happen? Where does my drive go at 10:00am? I can't seem to get over this each and every single day and it is driving me crazy. I think the problem is that I want immediate results and nothing that I am working on will get cash in my pocket in the next few months and it just strips all of my motivation. I have to make myself get over that and produce small baby step results anyway but it is so hard.

I'm starting to get depressed thinking about the long 6 months ahead of wearing fleece and sweats and shoveling snow and doing nothing but getting up each morning and taking the kids to school. It's too long a run on the same old thing. I want to go to Vegas. I want to buy some new clothes. I want to be able to look forward to Christmas and ALL the cool presents we can get for the kids, but it doesn't look like any of that will be happening and it's getting me pretty blue. I just hate to be cold and so far it isn't even 30 degrees this morning. The space heater has yet to warm up my 8x8 foot office after 2 hours of being on and the wind is blowing at a steady 15-20 miles per hour.

Would things really be any better if we didn't have this huge house and the huge payment that goes along with it? Would we be happier in a warmer climate? Would be happier if Carl had time off and didn't have to be at work at 5:00 am every day? Would we be happier if I was able to sell my rugs? What is the one thing that will change our miserable situation? This is not how we wanted to live. But now that we are so deeply entreanched into it is there any way to switch things up? After you've chosen and created a life with a big mortgage and non-moveable businesses how do you change it back to when you had options and choices again? I'm stumped. I know other people are able to switch up their lives, move to a tropical location and start new lives but is that really feasible in this real estate market? Is it feasible with 3 small children?

It's almost like I need an outside pair of eyes to look in on us and tell us what we are doing wrong, how we can make it better, and what our real options for change are. I've always said that the only things I need to be happy are vacations, books and my family. We don't take vacations. I've had to stop buying books, and Carl is never home. So things look pretty bleak to me as of now. On our current path those things will continue to be missing from our lives. We could stay on this track for the next 15 years and we would both be miserable. So I need to find what will give us back some choices and options and money for vacations and books and time for Carl to spend with us, and time for him to do what it is that he WANTS to do and not the things that he HAS to do.

That has to be the motivation. Those things listed above. That is what is supposed to get me out of bed each day, work on my rugs every day and to write everyday. Those are the only things that I see in my path that could change us from this path we hate to a path that takes us in a new direction. I have to try and remember that when it is 10:00 am and all I want to do is surf the web.

Still Broke

I just spent the last 3 hours going thru all the bills for all the businesses and figuring out how much I get to pay myself out of what is left over. It is a fabulous way to start off the week. It really gets me in the mood to jump off a bridge.
I am officially $1800 short this month. But I am proud to say that I paid CASH for the property taxes. Sure I probably should have charged them so that we could eat this month, but I'm going with my crazy idea that 'we always have enough'. Whatever I spend, something else will come in later this month to cover it. It has worked wonders so far throught out my life, so I'm going to roll with it. This will be a true test of the theory.

Our dreamy vacation plans seem even less likely this week. We've had more truck repair drama and it just never seems to end. Forget vacations, I've got to find a way to get Christmas presents first. It is getting insane and I am no where closer to selling rugs then I was 3 months ago. I need to step it up, but my wool supplier is not too quick, and I need to get a brochure and hit the pavement a little to get things going. It's all moving in theory, but there is no cash rolling in. Until then it's still just a really good idea.

Argggh. I need to be more positive, but some weeks it's hard. You know like the weeks when you are $1800 short and the property taxes are due and Christmas is fast aproaching.

Midol and Amelia Earhart

I used to fly all the time. My dad was a salesman and flew around the country all week and was only home on the weekends. He had more Delta Skymiles and Marriott Hotel points than he could spend in one lifetime. We went on vacation at least twice a year and sometimes more all for free. It was insane. In college I flew back and forth from Illinois to California 2-3 times a year. I never thought anything of it.

Then in 2000 I was flying with my mom from LA to Burlington Vt to my cousins wedding. We changed planes in Detroit and somewhere mid-flight the airplane equivalent of the check engine light came on. The captain announced this and decided that instead of continuing on to Burlington (which was only an hour away) we were going to turn around and go back to Detroit where they had a better service department for airplanes. I was in quiet hysterics. I had my 6 month old baby with me and I was sure I was never going to see his first birthday and I was going to have to watch him die in a fiery plane crash. It was the longest 2 hours of my life ever to get back to Detroit.
I have never flown with my children since. I never flew again until just last summer. I successfully made it to Boston for the AIA convention, Chicago to my friend Chris's wedding, and Minneapolis to rug school. I was having panic attacks sure, but I did it with a little left over dental vicodin and it was easy flying.

Just last week we started trying to plan a vacation for next summer and I found this great little rental house right on the ocean in Kona, Hawaii. I have been pumped just thinking about it. I know it will be hard to fly with the kids, but I thought I would be able to get over it in order to get back to Hawaii, a place I love and haven't been back to since our honeymoon in 1999. I checked out all these cool volcano books for the kids from the library, started looking at flights, looking for activities, and scheduling time off from the shipping business. It was all cool until.........

Last night I took some Midol to try and stave off some knarly cramps. I don't usually take Midol all the time, since I am a caffeine free kind of person, but I really needed it last night and took a full dose around 5:00 pm. At 11:30 I was still awake and definitely juiced on the caffeine. I decided to turn off the HGTV and try and go to sleep and managed to work myself into one huge caffeine induced panic attack thinking about all the horrible outcomes of a plane crash with all my children somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. It was horrible.

Now this is going to seem really strange. I have always had this feeling that I was Amelia Earhart. Something has made me follow her story all my life. I've researched all the places that she could have crashed, know her whole biography, etc. I used to love to fly and even took a few flying lessons when I was younger. I can't really describe it, and I'm not usually really into past lives kind of people, but I have this connection with her that is very strange and I truly believe that in a past life I was Amelia Earhart and suffered the traumatic shock of a horriffic plane crash. None of this really came to me until I had that bad experience on that plane back in 2000. And I tried to use the Amelia Earhart thing as a secret explanation of why I didn't want to fly again. But when I successfully flew last year I seemed to be over it and I didn't think of the Amelia Earhart connection for a while.

Last night while I was in the throws of my panic attack I tried the usual things to try and bring myself back to a rational mode of thought. I tried to think of the warm sand beaches in Hawaii. I tried to think of a nice hike in Sedona. I tried to think of anything that would make me feel better and less anxious about this vacation we were planning on taking. The thing that made me feel a million times better was.... "What if we just went to Florida?" I instantly calmed down. It was then that I came to the conclusion that I wasn't afraid of flying. I am afraid of flying over large expanses of the ocean. Intercontinental flights don't bother me.

This got me all hot and freaked out about he Amelia Earhart thing again. I am not in the least scared of flying to Florida or Boston, or Vegas or anywhere where if we crash death will be instantaneaous. What I am afraid of is crashing in the ocean and drowning or being stranded in the middle of nowhere with my kids and waiting with them and trying to comfort them while we wait for a boat to rescue us.

I know it's crazy, but this is a real fear of mine. Irrational yes, but the only explanation is that I have some kind of rembrance of this happening to me before and I am trying with all my might to try and avoid that in this life. I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but it seems perfectly clear to me and gives me a good explanation for my unexplainable fear. I was Amelia Earhart.  (Let's not even get into the reasons that I named my own daughter Amelia.)

So needless to say we are not going to Hawaii next summer. It will be Florida or Mexico or maybe even Boston. There is no way I can get on a plane to cross an ocean at this point in my life. I might be able to do it later in life when my kids are older. I might be able to do it with just Carl and I in a few years, but I can't take my kids on a trans oceanic flight. It just doesn't seem safe to me.

Am I crazy or just rationalizing?

Koo's Cafe January 1998

It was raining, which was odd for Southern California, but not in January. It had been a cold day and the clouds never really burnt off, they just lingered long enough to notice that is was indeed a cloudy day. The house was small and hard to find despite the old unlit signage overhead. It was stuck between an old 1960’s stucco 2 ½ story building and another little bungalow that might have been inhabited 15 years ago. There were kids on the porch and kids in what was supposed to be the drive way, kids walking thru the low chain link gate. The music seemed to make the whole house pulsate even though the music itself was inaudible. They were the typical Saturday night Orange County crowd. Kid’s aged 15- 30 all dressed in their own subcultures uniform. The guys with too tight jeans and rolled up pant legs with girls wearing polka dot dresses and bandanas around their pin curled hair. The baggy jeaned, dickies jacket wearing guys with tattoos and goatees, the girls dressed all in black with too much eye liner, and then the few South Orange County girls who didn’t know what to wear to a show and just showed up with their work clothes on fresh from their jobs at a mall. Inside the room was all people. There was no end to the edge of the people and the beginning of the stage and the band. The walls of the room were sweating with the breath and the heat of too many bodies in too small of a house to see too big of a band. People mingled in and out of the house trying to see everyone that had shown up. The humidity from the rain had gotten everyone to strip off as many layers of clothing as possible inside the house. There were tattoos and piercings and sweaty limbs moving in every direction and bumping into and tangling with all the other kids. The walls were dark and the ceiling too. The woodwork was unpainted and the floors were creaky hardwood. The back of the house was a maze of small rooms converted into a merch room; the kitchen was selling water bottled and peanut butter cups. There was a couch that was so overcrowded with people you couldn’t see where it started or ended. It was dark, but there seemed to be light coming in from somewhere, probably from the streetlights. Faces were hard to make out, and details were impossible.


When the music started people seemed to stop their wanderings and feel the hum of the band. Heads started to bob and hands went into the air. More clothing came off and the music made the crowd start to wave like a sea in a room that was only 12x20. The band was hidden, but the music was bigger than them and who they were and what they looked like didn’t matter. The drops of water on the walls and the windows started to slide down as the kick drum shook the whole house. It was music that took over the whole body. There was no ending to the sound and the body. They were wound together and the beat shook the lungs. People were not their images. They were just all equal kids in a room sharing an experience like no other. It was the solidarity they were looking for by going out. In the parking lot they would be enemies and blood would be spilled, but inside that tiny room it was all about the music and they all wanted that same escape, to feel like part of the music.

Rug Update

Okay so I'm finished with the first rug. It was definitely an experiment. It still is until I get it fully finished and down on the floor somewhere for photos. I'm still figuring out how much of everything I need and how much it is costing me so that I can come up with a decent price to sell the things for. Today though I ordered the wool for rug #2 and it will be even cooler than #1. It's weird how I was so excited for #1 and now that I'm done with it I can't wait to move on to something else. I love doing this. I was in heaven as I went through my wool tufts to figure out what colors to use for #2. I still haven't figured out how I am going to sell these yet. That is the only hurdle and experiment I have yet to figure out. I know they are beautiful. I have good taste, but the problem is how to let everyone else know about them too and how to do it for lilttle to no money. An ad in Architectural Digest or Elle Decor would be a good place to start, but that is too far out of my non-existant budget.

The really frustrating part is this........ I have no extra money to fund these projects. My architecture income was paying for all this and now there is no architecture income. My goal was to pay for everything in CASH. I have been for the past few months, but I am out of cash. This time of year all extra $$$ goes towards property taxes and Christmas. So my dilemna is do I charge it so that I can move forward and get closer to the day when I will make money at making rugs, or do I sit and wait until there is cash to pay for my projects?

I have made the executive decision to charge it. I'm not happy with the decision, but I see no other way to move forward. I still need to have more samples of my work in order to sell them. I still need to spend who knows how much getting 12 (1'x1') samples of some patterns made in Nepal. The samples themselves will not be too expensive, but the shipping is ridiculous. I had a brochure shipped from Kathmandu and it cost me $50.

I think this is just what it takes to start a new business. All of our other businesses are service businesses. There is no cost of goods. There is no product. So this is all new to me and I'm just stumbling through it. In order to sell a line of products with original designs you have to have samples of the products before you can sell them. There will eventually come a time when things will start to move forward and cash will start to flow, but until then my AmEx is going to get a work out.

Kottonmouth Kings in Flagstaff

Yes, I like the Kottonmouth Kings and here is why........ Back in the day my dear husband's band used to play shows with these guys all the time.

We were fortunate enough to get hooked up by our car repair guy/ Orpheum Security Guard friend who got us into the show for free this past weekend. It was awesome. These guys still put on a pretty good show. I was wearing my contacts, so I couldn't see them too well up on stage, but I had to ask Carl why all the guys still looked much younger than him. I mean these guys should be pushing forty just like Carl, but they didn't look it. We were without a doubt the oldest people there which I also thought was strange. These guys have been putting out albums for like the past 12 years at least and it seemed like everyone at the show was barely 21.

I still dont' know what to classify these guys as. Is it rap? It isn't rap core. There were no guitars. To me it just seems like good old SoCal music. If I had to put a label on it I'd call it SoCal.

It was good to get out for the night. I got "club" dressed up. Pushed up the girls and we headed out had dinner and met another of our weird musical friends at the theater. I had to leave around 10:30 to get back to the sitter but stayed just long enough to hear the one song I actually remember from 12 years ago.....Bump, bump, bump. Oh, it was heavenly and it rocked my little world.

Books and Faison Love

I have been crazy busy the last week. I know I am technically just a stay at home mom right now, but damn, sometimes that is a lot of work. There have been things that need repaired, laundry to do, business taxes to deal with, books to read, home work to do with the kids, shopping which is endless, and just regular stuff. It blows my mind sometimes how I ever did all this and sat in my office all day working on projects. Sometimes I feel guilty when I think how hard my dear husband works all day while I sit at home. But then I realize he couldn't do what he does if I wasn't at home taking care of everything. It's hard for me, but I know I am doing something worthwhile here. I might not be making any money doing it, but it is providing for my family in much the same way that Carl's income does.

I know I ramble about this stuff all the time, but hey this is my life.

Interesting tidbits from the last week.

1. A flame rod from a boiler is very easy to fix, although worth every penny of the $70 I paid a repair guy to show me how to fix it for next time.

2. Couples Retreat is pretty funny, but in retrospect I should have waited for it to come out on DVD. I have been confusing Faison Love with Donald Faison for years. Movie would have been much funnier with Donald Faison.

3. The New Moon soundtrack comes out today.

4. Jack in the Box is food made for people under 30, or people with cast iron stomachs. I can no longer eat there without spending a fair amount of time in the bathroom afterward.

5. I might actually be giving up my $50/week book habit in favor of a great vacation next summer.

6. Due to the reports of the horrible flu season that is to come I will also be giving up my trips to the library. Fortunately I have stock-piled about 60 books here to last me until next summer.

Ahhh Sunset Blvd Memories

This is the very first photo ever taken of me and my husband in March of 1998. Damn we were young and scruffy. We had just seen Portishead at the Santa Monica Civic Center and then stayed the night at the cool tall sea foam green tall hotel there on the beach. If I remeber correctly Samantha Mathis and her boyfriend were standing in front of us. We were right up there at the stage watching what's her name from the band chain smoke while she sang.

This was the time in our lives that we will always look back on fondly. This is when our lives seemed like a movie. Everything was exciting and new and unexpected. We had no idea where we were going but we were having a blast getting there. We were followed by a soundtrack of cool trendy music and surrounded by awesome character actors. Everything seemed to be just about us and our love story. We met, we swooned, drama ensued, we overcame all obstacles and lived happily ever after directly following our fairy tale wedding.

This picture sums up for me what are my highschool football hero moments. If I could go back and relive it all I would. It was such an amazing time and I doubt I'll ever change my life as drastically as I did that first year I was in California. I still remember sitting on Sunset Blvd one Friday night in the back of the van while the boys from the band waited for their drug dealer to meet them to make the exchange. Sure it was just pot and it was no big deal really, but the moment stuck with me and I'll never forget wondering how the hell I came from the small town cornfields of Illinois to buying drugs with my rockstar boyfriend on Sunset Blvd and not giving a shit because I was having the time of my life.

My life now is a far cry from those glory days of debauchery, but those few years made me who I am now. That rough transition from midwestern college girl, to awesome LA rock-star wife was life changing. Someday I'll write it all down, but for now I just wanted to reflect on my "cool years" before I start doing the laundry and cleaning the cat box while figuring out how to pay the property taxes.

Quick One

I'm too busy to post a long tirade today. The rug is almost done and I've only got about 2 hours to myself until I've got to head out to pick up the kids. I will finish this rug this week almost a year to the date when I first went to my class in Minneapolis to learn how to make rugs. It's taken a while, but it looks gorgeous and I can't wait to start the next one. Hopefully I'll be able to post photos on Wednesday. Until then you'll have to keep yourself amused.

The Tipping Point

I'm too jazzed up to do anything today. Thursday is usually housework and laundry day. I steal a few minutes here and there in the office, but mostly it me and Melia trying to clean up the house all day in between Episodes of Dora and Wuzzby. I try not to update my blogs except on M,W,F, when all the kids are at school, but somedays I've just got to write something to stay sane.

I'm on the cusp of something and it's making me anxious. The web site is up, the rug is amlost done, I'm writing my book and everything is trucking alone nicely, but there is something else. I'm having a hard time sitting down long enough to read which says a lot for me. I have so much to do and yet I feel like I'm not doing much of anything. My days are filled with trips back and forth in to town, school open houses and conferences, last minute trips to the store for Miralax for Melia, flu shot appointments, badges being sown on to Cub Scout uniforms, paying all the bills for all the businesses, and still trying to find the time to get in my 2 hours of TV every night. I've read 10 books again this month. My blogs are getting more and more visitors.

Things are almost at a tipping point. I've spent all this time and energy on all of these projects and one of them has got to finally reach over and start doing something. The summer was a long lull, but this fall I can feel things starting to slip into place. It's almost like all the pieces I've been gathering for the past year all going to finally come together. It's an odd feeling. I'm gonna roll wit it.

Things can only get better from here.

Photos

I would love to have more photos in my blog. The problem is that it seems that the only way I can easily get them here is if I take a picture with my iphone, load it to Facebook, and then steal it from facebook on my computer and save it to my harddrive and then upload it here. It's a long round about way to do it, but it gets it done.

The real issue is that the Itunes, Iphone, and Canon Rebel software is not on my computer it's on my husband's computer about 18 inches away from this one I'm writing on right now. His computer is such a dinosaur that it takes 10 minutes to load up, hums incessantly, and it just a pain in the ass to use. He loves it. All the photo software is on there except for my PhotoShop CS3 which is on here. Transfering the photos is a long ordeal involving e-mail and numerous downloads. I know I know we are doing it the wrong way, but that is how the office is set up.

I need to put an end to this insanity. I am not the most gifted computer user, but I can get around. This weekend I am going to get these hard drives to talk or at the very least load the Canon Rebel software on to this computer so that I can show off my bad ass photo skills. My life needs to be illustrated.