Bringing Back the Blog

Hey 'Barbie Girls (and boys - I can't forget about boys...even if I tried)....

I'm back!

To be totally honest, reviving this blog was NOT on my to-do list for March.  It wasn't even on my radar.  Here is what I thought I'd be doing this month:

1. Finishing up the mural that I've been working on at my kids' elementary school.  This project has been a major time-suck in the very best way.  I've put in hours (and hours) designing, enlarging, transferring, tracing, and painting a mural full of inspirational quotes given to me by the school's principal.  Phrases like "Go From Good to Great" and "Be Better Today Than You Were Yesterday."

Although, after spending so much time in the school during school hours, I think maybe more useful phrases would be "If you want to kick something, kick a ball, not your friend, and definitely not your friend's balls," "Do not hold the bathroom door shut when other people need to use it" and "Please let someone know if you puked in the hallway so no one slips in it."  But I'm the artist, not the copywriter, so whatever.

I was at the tail end of this project when COVID 19 started to take over the podcasts I listen to while painting.  The kids had finally stopped asking me "Why are you painting on the walls?" "Does the principal know you're doing this?" "Can I help you paint?" 50 times a day.  They still managed to bump into my ladder several times a day but change doesn't happen overnight. 

2. Getting my beach body ready.  My "holiday season" started in September with Rosh Hashana and ended on a cruise in December (pre-COVID 19, THANK G-D) where I ate my way through a rainy week in the Caribbean because why not have soft serve ice cream every hour on the hour?  Two and a half months of WW and three days of the stomach flu later I am finally a half pound from my goal weight.  January and February was about "making healthy choices" and March was going to be about toning up and getting rid of that insulating coat of leg hair that was keeping me warm all winter long (sorry, Husband).  As I type this I'm supposed to be sitting in a massage chair getting a pedicure by a woman wearing a mask to protect her from nail polish fumes, not an upper respiratory infection. 

But we canceled our trip to Florida this past Sunday morning.  We'd been hanging on as long as we could, figuring worst case scenario would be catching a little cough on the way down and recovering in the sun.  Best case would be an empty plane and not having to get up at six am to get the chairs by the pool that got optimal sun exposure (or, for those dermatologists reading, zero sun exposure).  But shit started to get real when school closed for three weeks (or more), large gatherings were discouraged and then prohibited, and we decided that the chance of infecting my parents who we'd be staying with for the first three days was not something we wanted to risk (despite their insistence that they are the healthiest seventy year olds in Naples, claims that they have lived a good life and finally pleas to just come down and save them from each other).  My sister already resents me for stealing all the attention growing up, could I live with her blaming me for her young kids not getting to know their grandparents? Nope. 

3. Politics.  One of the reasons that this blog has been in a coma (medical analogies seem appropriate these days) for the past 5 years is because as my kids got older and more independent, I was able to stop obsessing about elementary school benchmarks, toddler nutrition and potty training and start obsessing on the larger world that my kids are growing up in.  Side effects of this parenting approach are that my oldest child asked me today if a verb is a describing word, my middle child lives on refined carbs and considers veggie cream cheese an adequate way to get his RDA of "green stuff" and my youngest peed his pants two days ago because he didn't want to come inside during a game of two v two basketball.  He's 6.

But I have been the graphic designer for three winning political campaigns and have three more underway.  One was on the ballot in today's postponed Ohio primary and I was supposed to be co-hosting a fundraiser for a state representative candidate tonight.  I love being able to take important information and dumb it down -er- make it pretty, so that the average voter can understand it and make the right (preferably left) choice. 

Now that Ohio voting has been postponed until June 2 (thank you Mike DeWine, never thought I'd be grateful for a Republican but these are strange days), I don't know what will happen with the local issue or the two candidates' campaigns that I am working on. One of the candidates won't even know who his opponent is until after the primary. Door to door canvassing, fundraising parties and yelling at family members who only watch Fox News over Sunday dinner is discouraged if not explicitly forbidden.  Is it enough to hope that the PTSD of this experience will rear its head in November and convince people to vote for candidates with the people's best interest in mind instead of their own egos? 


So, with my professional work on hold, my vacation plans cancelled and advocacy limited to re-tweets that, let's face it, only get read and liked by the same 25 people who think the same way I do, I have some free time on my hands.  Like, a LOT of free time.  I could spend this time parenting, home-schooling, cooking nutritious meals, cleaning out closets and doing all the gratitude stuff that other moms are posting on social media.  But I had a hard enough time getting out of bed this morning.  I need something creative.  Something that doesn't involve bribery, schedules or chore charts.  Something that won't involve cleaning the up the kitchen. Again.

So, I'm bringing back the blog. Stay tuned.