Zing Diddly Crumpets

See Magic trixie's mom? See her expression? tha's how I feel right now as I prepare to take an overseas flight and we just got hit (an perhaps it still is snowing) with 7 inches of snow! O' Hare is the king of cancelling flights. I do not relish the thought of getting to the airport super early to go thru security and then spending the hours on pins and needles to find out if you are actually going to be flying or not. International flight have lots of lead time for the security...Good Mojo Good Mojo...
And there's 300 cancelled flights worth of people there already...

186 pages down...186 pages left to go...

I finally finished Magic Trixie #2. Break out the champage and chocolate! After months of life throwing horrible obstacles in my path...I packed up the final spot illos yesterday and sent them off to Harper Collins! Yay! So. One hundred and eighty six pages of painted art in the can ( minus covers and title page art and spot illos) and only one hundred and eighty six left to go. And, while I am very pleased with Miss Magic Trixie and her monstery pals. I can honestly say, I wouldn't mind a plain old pen and ink vacation! It will be lovely to go to a convention in Spain next week and do some pencil drawings. I do not know why I didn't think that drawing and painting 372 pages would not be a bit daunting...it seemed like a breeze at the time. But, I will be very proud of myself once I've finished all my books. Really, I think it's at about the 53 page mark that your brain goes..."Isn't this enough? Whaddaya mean I have another 40 pages to go? You must be insane!"
So I will be happy to recharge my batteries with some travel and photographing and walking and meeting new people...( do I have my watercolor travel book ready to go? Yes...I always do...but those will be different. It will be non deadline related art...and maybe monochromatic even) or doodles! Probably done while sitting in a cafe over a glass of wine or something... So, here are some of the fruits of my labor shrunk down to uploading size...I'd love to share all of them with you, but you'll have to wait til July when Magic Trixie #1 comes out.
And, thanks to my neighbor Teresa's birthday, I did get to celebrate with champagne and cupcakes. Sure it was for her birthday, but my "take one home with you", breakfast cupcake was all for Magic Trixie!

love is lovie love love

So this is an old photo of me and Brian but it is one of my favorites. Why? Well, as you can tell it was hard to contain my happiness and it was all but streaming out of my pores. I should have had one of those religious painting halos around my head or golden rays of sunshine or some other estatic special effect. I have to say it makes me giddy to feel my lover's arm around me or to have his hand in mine as we walk along. It makes you feel safe and also special because it's like everyone knows that you have someone who is crazy about you and that they are proud that you are their gal. Makes me feel shiny. And doesn't he have the best smile?

Didn't see much of that growing up so I'm sure that's why it is so important to me now.
In fact, it made me think of this girl I knew in high school. I remember meeting her parents at a party once and being amazed at how much in love they were. They were much older than my parents, but they were always smiling and winking and joking with each other. And I don't think I'd ever seen adults hold hands so much. At one point in the evening the dad was offering advice to all of us girls about the type of men we should accept into our lives.
In his thick italian accent he said, "If a man's wife is no happy, then he is no happy. Because if she is always smiling, already his life is better! If he no listen to you, if he do this ( and he made knob turning motions at his ears to indicate tuning out like a radio) you no want him. A woman always talks from her heart, and the man gotta protect her heart! It's my job to help my girls whatever they want. She say, "honey, can you.." and I say "Of course!"
At the time we all were giggling about his demonstative way of speaking and his kissy face ways...we thought "whoa! I guess old people still do it and junk... ewwww!
I hadn't thought about that couple since I was a teenager. But, I was over at my friend Kristina's house the other night for dinner and we were talking about being anxious to start some seeds germinating indoors (and how it's better to have a lightsource that you can raise and lower like the platform in Frankenstein). And so her husband Ron says "Just tell me where you want it and how much space you need and I'll build it." He was doing exactly what my school friend's dad had been talking about. And Kris, who had a great smile, smiled really big and Ron got a bunch of kisses and the love was palpable.

So, be a valentine everyday. Pay attention to your friends and lovers and parents and creatures around you. Take note of what makes them feel loved or what they need and help them do that thing.

More Lukey

When Archie was sick in December (and I suppose Lukey was, too, we just did not know it and he did not show it) Lucien cuddled that guy so much more than he usually did, and they were good cuddlers. One afternoon, Brian found them both in the box nice and warm, but both heads next to each other. (usually they had a lot of yingyang action going on) and saw Lucien put his arm around Archie. I worry about Arch now, because while we love him more than anything, he has no feline friend to cuddle with or clean. And, it's cold dark winter and we are all cooped up in the house.

He was so pleasant and good natured. You could always count on him to follow you wherever you went, to sit on your lap, to watch tv with. He's walk on two legs for a treat. If he was ever mad at me, I never knew. Sometimes he'd be prickly if we were out of town for too long and he did not get his tv time...but, that quickly passed. Mostly you could count on him to chirp at you when you talked to him, to purr when you pet him, to come when you called him, or whistled or clicked your tounge. When he was outside in the sun, I'd ask him"Hey Monkey, (cuz he used his hands lots to pick stuff up or grab things from you), are you hungry? You want some lunch? C'mon!" and he'd get up and trot up the stairs to get fed. I wish I had taken video of him...chasing a grasshopper, or that squirrell that would chatter at him that he'd chase around the yard, or when he was up on two legs grabbing a treat, or when he stole the corn on the cob and ran into Brian's office and was holding it down with both feet and eating it. There was corn flying everywhere. And was he growling. Ha, his kill. If only we had a security camera or some such back then. I'll bet there were some amazing moments that no human got to see.
But he was a sweetie. I miss his unconditional love, his smiley face and his kind eyes. It's a wonderful feeling to know that a being trusts you completely. You felt that from him. Everyone should be able to trust like that. In a perfect world.
Best of all was when we'd all be on the couch, covered in blankets, cuddled up watching a movie or something. And both the fellows liked to curl up on me when I was knitting. I am comfy, I guess...no one is interested in the yarn.

I suppose I should drag out the "What's Michael" or "Cat Getting Out of a Bag" by Jeffrey Brown and revel in cat behavior. If you don't have "Cat Getting Out of a Bag" run out right now and do so. It's hi- larious. Well, it was to me.