remember when you carefully wrapped your toddler’s presents, expecting their absolute glee when he or she opened the gift? and then, moments after the gift was opened, with wrappings and gift cast aside, you found them ecstatically playing with the box the gift came in? well, welcome to babycatworld.
b-cat has lots of toys. we struggle with keeping dogdog from devouring them. we gave him fun new things for christmas, but he doesn’t seem all that interested. however, the moment we put a carry-your-stuff-out-box we used at costco on the floor in the kitchen, babycat decided it was his. no matter where we move it, he sits in it. he has claimed it; it is his safe spot. it would be impossible for him to lay down in it; his hulking “big-boned” body dwarfs the box. but sitting in it seems to suffice for him. i guess everyone/every creature has their special spot. so for now, this crest box has become a part of our home.
i might add that it doesn’t match our decor in any way. i’m wondering if he would still sit in it if we spray-painted it black…
it’s not every day you pull into a parking lot and park next to a potato. even at church. we never considered parking in the same spot as the potato. it was clear that spot was taken. and as two artists living in this world together, we don’t question things like that. we parked in the next spot over. i mean, every potato deserves a little respect.
just last saturday evening, out on cape cod, we lingered over seafood and glasses of wine with jonathan, our bass player. we were sitting around his table, chatting about music.
he told us about a group of musicians he rehearses with on an irregular basis. they play a wide variety of instruments and they all just gather casually together and jam on some “good music”. “…and once in a while we play the same stuff…” he stated. his voice trailed off as he thought about what he had just said and we all laughed. we can picture a whole group of jonathans in the room – all exuberant and, each, lovers of all music, all pick-ready, mouthpiece-ready, reed-ready, hands-poised-over-the-keys-ready. that kind of enthusiasm shouldn’t be curbed or restrained. the sheer joy of playing – now that’s the reason to be all together. it’s not about playing all the notes on the page, playing them all perfectly at the same time, playing them with no mistakes. it’s about heart. it’s about the breaths and the rests of silence, the flip-flop your heartbeat makes when soaring notes come together in a sweeping harmony, the tears you get in your eyes when something you just played or heard is sublimely sweet, dynamically touching, deeply resonant, the belly laugh with the ridiculously dissonant moment.
the ukulele sip ‘n strums are about just that. if we can choose to teach anything at those sip ‘n strums, i would choose to teach just these things. the things of joy. music is all about individual hearts…coming together with the immense gift of twelve notes at our literal fingertips. no matter what we play, we are playing the same stuff.
sisu. perseverance. fortitude. stamina. courage. determination. my grandmother mama dear used this finnish term all the time and passed it down to my sweet momma beaky who passed it down to me. a philosophy of life, a mantra, “you gotta have sisu!” mama dear would say. if up against the odds, if forging upstream, my sweet momma would say, “you gotta have sisu!” and so it was without a second thought when it was time to name my own company, the independent recording label that has been sisu music productions for the last 23 years. i can’t think of a better name for all the challenges that have risen – and continue to rise – as an independent artist.
any moment of fear, of uncertainty, brings me to draw on that sisu…digging in my heels and standing firmly in it. it’s kind of a blind faith and has everything to do with that. in the face of adversity, of the scales tilted not-in-your-favor, you just keep on. in the face of fear…everyone has their thing…the thing that makes them afraid…the thing that makes them white-knuckled…you just keep on. sisu.
i was flying back from telluride to denver a couple days ago – in a smaller plane. there was a big strapping guy all dressed in camouflage who got on the plane before me. he told the flight attendant he had been out in the middle of nowhere hunting (successfully) elk and mule deer. he was a rough and tumble kind of guy and ended up seated just across the aisle from me. when the plane hit turbulence, particularly over the front range, his face turned red and he looked over at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “i hate this part!!” i started talking to him then, trying to ease his obvious fear, talking about the wind currents and the mountains…how i could see the airport…we are almost there…just a teeny bit further…wheels are going to touch down any minute…. he was gripping the lock on the little tray table and finally relaxed his grip and smiled. everyone has their thing.
we can loan others the sisu we carry with us. we can bank on the sisu we carry with us. i often credit being-from-new-york for times i have just forged-ahead-anyway, but my sisu roots go way further back than that.
sisu. i stood back from the edge of a deep deep canyon the other day, my beautiful daughter on another boulder a few hundred yards away. i looked at the sky, the sunset playing over red rock. thought about that very moment in time, this moment i was sharing with the part of my heart known as kirsten…this moment that wouldn’t be repeated. and i heard the voice in my head, “you gotta have sisu.” i stepped to the very edge of the canyon, stretched out my arms and laughed aloud.
i wish. i wish stress brought out my sense of humor. i suppose that sometimes it does. but more consistently would be a good thing. how does worrying help, anyway?
this is not my favorite FLAWED CARTOON. although it does actually make me laugh aloud, it also makes me cringe. (and, to take it further, it makes me want to be vegan.)
in the story i tell myself, she puts down the talking-intervention-chicken and it becomes a free-range fowl, roaming with plenty of fresh vegetation, sunshine and open space for exercise.
when you think about bowling, you can literally smell that distinct bowling alley smell. each time we see the boys, we bowl. it is becoming a tradition. i think it is because we are erratic bowlers and they like to poke fun at our lack of bowling expertise. no, truly, they are pretty kind about it. and it is always a blast. after we bowl together, i always say to d, “we should bowl more often.”
sandy and dan (brother and sister) bowl on thursdays. every thursday. they bowl with a team and i know that they look forward to it. it is a staple of their week and balances out everything else going on in work and life. it would be a unimagined joy in my life if i could bowl on thursdays with my brother.
this morsel is a piece of a much much larger painting, called joy. the painting is gorgeous and colorful and one of my favorites of d’s yoga series. when i sorted to this morsel, i was surprised and amused at the bowling ball and wooden lane that i could clearly see there (at least clear to me.) but how perfect. joy within joy.
we have had a recurring theme this past fall, winter and spring. last week, while cleaning the burner plates on our old stove, i found a cache of dog biscuits hidden underneath. now, you wonder how that happened? next to our stove, we keep a beautiful pottery tray that judy gave us. on it we keep dog biscuits (“cookies” we call them.) since i have talked about mysterious appearances of dog biscuits before, i am sure you are connecting the dots.
oh yes. somehow those little dickens carried about ten dog biscuits from the tray to under the burner plates. they had little picnics under there, until they realized the weather under there was pretty arid, even acrid, as the dog biscuits turned darker and darker and were burned on the edges. ummm….that could have been a disaster! what on earth is babycat doing all day and night? clearly he is not paying attention!
so, as incorrect as this flawed cartoon may be, it really does make me laugh. babycat needs to take a lesson…a little more cunning could go a long way.
so, we were trying to have a nice backyard. the pond, the deck, the grasses, the hosta, the barnwood planting stand, the old piano….we were headed in the right direction. but then there’s dogdog. he has this THING. every time we let him out and michele and john’s dogs are out, he races around in a circle, digging into the grass that was there, creating a velodrome (kenosha is known for its velodrome, only not this one.) we tried various ways to address this, to try and dissuade him from running around in the circle, from ruining the grass that we had painstakingly planted.
finally, we decided it would be far less painful for us to just embrace it. i went online and ordered an actual highway sign (the european roundabout sign, because he runs clockwise every time and the roundabouts in our country are counter to that.) we planted a few grasses, put up temporary rope to help the grasses have a chance, pounded in our new sign and sat back to watch.
i mean, EVERYbody has their thing. sometimes it’s just easier to not fight it. it’s easier to just, well, laugh.
every time the girl texts me and says “dude!” i laugh aloud. i have to say i prefer “mom” or “mommommommommom” to “dude” but i’m just happy to hear ANYthing at ANY time from the girl and the boy that ANY name goes. i’m guessing AllMomsEverywhere get that.
there is a sweet bistro in town called wine knot that we love to go to. our favorite spot is at the bar at the end in the corner, where we can people-watch or chat with andy or jeremy, awesome bartenders who, for the longest time, knew to order – wait for it – brian’s amazing meatloaf split and two glasses of merlot – the instant we walked in. there is something smalltownish and heartwarming to be said about this. kind of like one of the things we all loved about watching the show cheers with a cast of ted danson & shelley long, kirstie alley and woody harrelson, kelsey grammar and george wendt and other regulars who became a part of our living rooms and lives. given our new dietary restrictions (gluten free/dairy free -more whole30 compliant and feeling good!) we haven’t been to wine knot as much lately; we are cooking more with glasses of wine on our counter. but sometimes it is nice to just go and sit and visit on a stool in the corner.
this past saturday we were at the cedarburg winter fest, an annual trip for the up-north-gang, an unparalleled and beloved cast of characters. we walk around town, in and out of fun boutiques and shops, laughing at merch together. we watch the parade of firetrucks and snow plows and scurry to the frozen river to cheer for the bed races. it snowed a bit and was very “winter-festival-ish” (as dubbed by dan) this year, as opposed to last year when it was, oddly, almost 70 degrees and forced the bed races to be on the street. we – without fail – end our day together at the crowded pub the silver creek brewing company. dark beers, gluten free ciders, wine and kettle corn are our fare of choice. it’s a total blast. everyone talks at once; the topics are all over the place.
this flawed cartoon wednesday in the melange makes me laugh. the “duuuude”, the (oh-so-wisconsin) “cow-eyes” pun, the bovines at the bar. every opportunity to laugh. it’s a good thing. happy wednesday.
wednesday nights in the trinity choir room are pretty funny. is that because it’s wednesday? is that because it’s easy to have fun singing or strumming the ukulele with a wholebunchapeople or playing handbells while talking about everythingunderthesun? maybe it’s a little of everything. wednesdays are like that. we need the fun, the laughs, the rolling-of-eyes to get through the rest of the week.
FLAWED cartoon is also like that. you may laugh. you may groan. you may roll your eyes. but any way you look at them, they are good wednesday fare.
FLAWED cartoon was another run at syndication (which, by the way, is compared to winning the lottery, according to a friend of ours whose fun strip THE BRILLIANT MIND OF EDISON LEE runs daily and who said he felt like he had won the lottery.) david and our dear friend 20 created this cartoon and i have handled all the technical blahblah of it. we cackle every time we jot down a new idea. ohmygosh, isn’t “cackle” a great word?!?
the wiener dog sled makes me laugh aloud. we are pretty devoted life-below-zero fans and have great respect for andy and jessie on that show, both of whom run dogsleds. john and michele next door have three wiener dogs and i just can’t imagine them pulling ANY sled. and, although i don’t remember her well, i spent my babyhood years with a dachshund named shayne, who tells stories through my momma’s books of the same name. wiener dogs rock, but as sled dogs?
and so, our melange of studio-created-stuff continues and FLAWED cartoon wednesday will hopefully bring a grin to your wednesday-can’t-wait-till-friday-face.
reverse threading 