Changing My Mindset. Loving the Interruptions.

It's a really interesting experience trying to write with a tiny person attached to my boob. 

Is it ok for my boob to be on Blogger? I hope so...today my boob was out in Marshall's & outside at the tables at both Whole Foods & Panera & in the car at Target & Old Navy. What's the internet compared to that?

There's my girl, with her post-boob snack smile.

And now she's goofing around on my lap while I attempt to write this. And then I decided to get off Blogger & play with my sweet girl. 

That's the change in mindset I need to work on. Because when I write I get very absorbed & don't want to talk & don't want to stop, but I can't be like that, I have to stop. I can't ignore a five month old tugging at my shirt & giggling. 

And now she's doing this. Post bath, post PaPa's lap, post post bath boob.

Of course she's on my lap, & not in bed, & dinner is just now ready, so now we are faced with the "do we move the baby & risk waking her or do I just sit here" dilemma. 

So I'm going to write a bit. Which is why I wanted to start blogging again, to give me something to do in these moments besides stare at Facebook. 

And for the hundredth time today, I've written a bunch in my head while doing other things. And forgot what I was doing or thinking & I'm realizing the tenses on these posts will never make sense, but I will never, ever get down a coherent thought without stopping. 

I guess I just have to learn to love the interruptions. 

Everything about being Iris' mama had been about stopping whatever I'm doing & putting her first. Which has been surprisingly easy for me. But it's meant that I haven't even attempted to make art. 

And she woke! And there was the oh so terrible sad face! And now it's much later & who knows what my original thought even was.

Fast forward to the next morning. It's midmorning nap time.

So maybe I will try to finish this up. It is pretty damn peaceful, snuggled up in bed on a November morning next to a sleeping five month old girl. Who even cares what I was originally going to say?

Sonething about art. And interruptions. And getting use to accepting them. Sure I had things I was trying to say that I forgot because Iris woke up & needed me, but then there are her little hands reaching for me & her fabulous smile,  & then I love my life right now. 

Five Months.

Iris Marjorie is five months old today.

This is what she is doing right now. It's about 8am, November 14th, really sunny in that New England late fall chilly all the leaves off the trees & everything brown & frosty but no snow sort of way.

We've been up since 5am. Who knows why, Iris just thought that was a god idea today. The light has been really nice, I find I spend a good deal of time lately noticing the light, sitting & holding a baby & looking out the window. 

I've got coffee (decaf but good decaf) & am still in my lobster pjs & we are cuddled up on our new tiny IKEA couch with Dusty Rose. 

Here's DustyRose. 

It's a beautiful morning. When we were still snuggling in bed earlier as the sun was coming up, I was missing driving to work at 6am this time of year, watching the sun rise, having the temperature be real chilly for the first time of the season, enjoying the feeling of layers of wool & shearling boots & how good it was to have a hot coffee when I finally arrived at work. 

Heaven knows I didn't enjoy it at the time. Waking up in the dark, walking to the freezing car...hell no. 

But now sometimes I miss the urgency of actually needing to be somewhere, anywhere. It's odd to get up day after day with no real agenda besides making sure a tiny person survives the day. 

I've always really wanted to have a child. That has always been one of the things I wanted most. Now here we are.

It still seems rather surreal that she is here, that she is real. 

The holiday season last year it just seemed so unbelievable that in a year, this whole other person that didn't exist yet would be joining us. Even in June when she was born it was hard to believe that come winter she would be a much bigger girl needing a Christmas stocking & wearing snow suits. 

I think it's hard to have what feels like an unattainable goal your whole life & then achieve it. How do you live then? I guess we are still figuring that out. 

I'm writing super fast because Iris is stirring & I think she's about to wake up. 

I use to hate being interrupted writing more than anything, I think that's why I keep not starting, because I'm not sure how to adjust to writing under the potential interruption at any time conditions of being home alone with a baby. 

But here's to trying. 

Happy Five Months in this world, baby girl. I love you more than anything on this earth & you've changed my life more than I thought anything possibly could. 

And now sleepy little eyes are peeking up at me.

A Few Housekeeping Notes.

Hello! Here we go again. Now it's November, I think it was July when I last checked in. I'm still here at home with Iris Marjorie, & I'm still trying to get myself blogging regularly, because I think it will be good for my brain to write something besides a Facebook status.

A few practical notes: I've decided to combine my three previous blogs (Eating & Drawing the painting/food blog, Scraps & Glue the collage blog, & Bizzcuit the diary blog) into one place, & to blog as Scraps & Glue only from now on.

I feel like my life no longer has room for that kind of complexity & compartmentalization. 

I only can manage to find the tiniest scraps of me time right now, so who knows what I will manage to use it for.

I've also realized that I've been blogging in some form or other for about seven years, & I like having all that writing in one place. It's been a strange seven years, & I wouldn't have thought I'd have arrived here. 

I am a very very lucky girl.

As I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I'm going to mostly end up blogging using the blogger app on my iPhone, so my posts might look a little different. 

For Eating & Drawing I never published a post that wasn't fully illustrated in color, but that's just not going to happen now. 

Instead, you are going to more often then not get the view from my couch via the iPhone camera, while I write with one hand & Iris naps on my lap.

That's my current view. I could paint it, but then I'd have to move the sleeping baby. 

I've done zero painting since I got pregnant, never mind since Iris was born, which is a real long stretch for me. I have been attempting to draw a little, maybe I will post those here at some point.  

Another note: my posts might not totally make sense as I may start them one day & finish them a month later. Time with a baby is weird. 

The best thing about no longer being pregnant is that my relationship to food is slowly returning, so hopefully I can even come up with a food post here & there. We roasted a duck last night & I hope to do something interesting with the leftovers. 

Plus Thankgiving is coming up, one of my very favorite holidays, & the first one in eight years that I haven't worked in grocery retail. We are cooking here, as it is Iris' first Thanksgiving & is also Hannukah this year. Stay tuned. 

Iris is five months old today, & we have big plans to leave the house & run errands.

Wish us luck, & fingers crossed I manage to keep this writing thing up. 

Eating & Drawing: Now with Baby.

"Here is sort of a thing. Damn it's been since April that I posted! That's terrible! Even given my usual summer garden-related blog slump, that is really bad."

That's a draft I found when I logged into this blog yesterday, written last October. Ha, I thought that was bad, now it's July, & it's been well over a year since I've posted anything. Or drawn anything either, to be honest.

And I'm not really sure where this is going to go-I'm writing this now from my iPhone while breast feeding a five week and four day old baby. 

Yup. I found out that I was pregnant ten days after I started writing that October blog post, & Eating & Drawing kind of flew out the window.

My baby girl Iris Marjorie was born on June 14th at 2:27pm & she's sleeping in my lap right now. 

I was thinking that it would be nice to start this blog up again, as I am home taking care of the baby at the moment, & I spend a lot of time here in my breast feeding chair, with not much else besides my phone to entertain me & I'm getting rather sick of Facebook. 

Not sure how much drawing there will be or how coherent these posts will be, written in little snatches of free time here & there, but writing here is a little like talking to an adult so I'd like to give it a try. 

Should this become a mommy blog though? Wasn't this my art blog? Should I get a new blog, since my life isn't much about eating or drawing any more? Dare I put up posts with no visual content?

I think Iris & I will now go take a walk & think about it. 

And we are back. This was a big day for us-we drove to town to walk on the bike path & that went well so we went to cvs to pick up Iris' birth announcement cards. 

This is the fourth week that Iris & I have been home alone together (she will be six weeks old on Friday) & the first time that we have gone anywhere alone together besides doctor's appointments & our breast feeding support group. 

I'd imagined before Iris was born that we'd be spending the summer taking walks in the woods around home & working in the garden together, & that hasn't really happened. 

It's been very hot & unbelievably mosquito-y here this summer, & this has left us trapped in the house. For really the  first time in my life. 

I really like to walk, I really like to be outside, that is so so important to me, & in the last six weeks I have been inside more than I ever have in my life. 

It's weird. I love this girl so much. I would do anything for her in a way that I have never even felt close too with any other living thing. I am happy to do anything for her, but it is odd to suddenly feel like I can & do exist without what I used to consider my basic needs: art, fresh air, exercise. 

So, yeah, long story short, we did take the damn car ( I hate the car, I hate to drive, & driving with a tiny baby is just that much more terrifying to me) & go out today & that was good. 

And I wrote on this blog again & that was also good. 

I guess I will keep this up. See how it goes. Bear with me-there might not be much or any art for a while, & the only way I can really write is on my phone with one hand with the baby in my lap, so forgive sloppy spelling & grammar for now. 

Will there be any food? We will see, my post-partum feelings about cooking & food are complicated but that's another post. 

Hi y'all. Welcome to the new Eating & Drawing. 

I had a baby! Wild. Who would have thought that would ever happen, back in the Drinking & Drawing days. 

But here we are. And she us definitely the best thing I have ever done in my life. So stay tuned. 

Egg Day.

Happy (late) Easter, if you're into that sort of thing.
Or "Egg Day" as my mom adorably said in a text yesterday.
"Egg Day" seemed appropriate, as we did begin our Easter Sunday with very fresh eggs for breakfast, courtesy Easter morning from Lulu & Miranda. Being relatively new chicken owners, every egg is still something to celebrate.
As a half Jewish/half Catholic girl raised in neither faith, I mostly celebrate holidays with food. Not to say that I don't take holidays seriously. I celebrate anything. I am a big fan of any excuse to cook a festive meal, pretty much. Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, whatever, bring on the food.
& the rituals. Christmas trees, menorahs, Easter baskets, Mardi Gras costumes.
Upholding traditions in some form is important to me.
I plan on making chopped liver & matzo ball soup this week in honor of my Gramma Bess & Passover. (I celebrate all the Jewish holidays with those things, they make me think of her the most).
Easter I've always been fond of: Spring is something to celebrate, egg dyeing is a nice ritual, & there's something about the Easter myth that appeals to the drama queen in me. Plus, Easter is a holiday where I have traditionally managed to avoid family obligations & spend the day the way I like, at home cooking a good old fashioned Sunday dinner with the person I love.
This is the first Easter in a long time that I haven't had to work, & our first married Easter.
We spent it exactly as I hoped. We ate a delicious breakfast of our own eggs & bacon while listening to some of the truly excellent Christian Country hits of Randy Travis, then we dug in the new garden all day.
We are attempting to clear by hand an about 60x60 foot square of abandoned & totally overgrown garden space.
On this Easter Sunday we tilled two new 45'x4' beds & planted sugar snap peas, yellow beans, French Breakfast & Easter egg radishes, golden beets, & blue potatoes, then dug a cold frame to harden off the kale & Kohlrabi & broccoli & cauliflower seedlings we have started indoors.
I'm really getting to know that pitchfork. I'm pretty proud of the calluses I've gotten on my palms, these last few weeks.
Then we cleaned the chicken coop (yay farm chores!) & hung out laundry on the line (I love finally being able to have a clothesline here!) & other weekends tasks, trash, sweeping, dishes, etc.
So we totally deserved the completely indulgent Easter dinner we had.

Egg Day Dinner 2012.

 Roast Duck marinated overnight in wine, garlic, sage, rosemary, chili peppers, olive oil, & salt & pepper. 
We bought the duck on a Friday night as a weekend impulse & grilled the legs that night, served with curried rice & broccoli. Then marinated the rest of it over Saturday night & roasted it Sunday.
Owen's famous Cheesy Bacon Mashed Potatoes.
I swear that man is insane. One pound of bacon, both ricotta & fresh mozzarella, & 1/2 & 1/2. Into mashed potatoes. I love him.
With some leftover Kale Pesto because I like to eat a green thing & I'm still on the Kale Pesto kick.
Topped with, of course, Duck Gravy.  Huge amounts of Duck Gravy.
God damn I'm glad a married a man whose good with gravy. 
My leftovers for lunch at work were kind of insane. Yeah, I'm just eating my roast duck & cheesy bacon mashed potatoes & duck gravy over here, don't mind me.
I went to bed completely exhausted & satisfied last night. Good food, seeds planted, house & coop clean. 
Right now I'm making a soup from the duck stock. Fridge soup, don't you know it!
I have a huge pile of seeds on hold I'm gonna buy at work tomorrow. There is a whole cleared bed we haven't even touched yet.
I don't mean to always be all Pollyanna on y'all the time here, but mostly, stuff's good. I don't think we have anything real to complain about.
I guess somewhere along the line I've turned into a positive thinker. Or I'm just happy.

Spring Cleaning, Kale Pesto & Hey, It's Garden Time Again.

Hey y'all it's spring! Hence the lapse in posting. A new garden to till, seeds to plant, & since we actually have a yard here raking & clearing of flower beds & all that fun stuff. Including grilling outside!
Hells yeah to having a huge yard in a gorgeous place.
Watching chickens frolic while grilling meat is where it's at.
It's been busy busy times around here. I've been putting in many hours at the day job (numbers numbers numbers) & we have land to clear, since our cottage came with ample abandoned garden space. We were going to rent a rototiller but since for the past two weeks I've only had Sundays off, it just didn't work out & we couldn't resist starting to dig.
Then the awesome sense of accomplishment that comes with doing shit by hand got to us & we'll probably just finish it that way. We invested in a nice shiny new pitchfork. I'm totally loving it.
On top of all that, I agreed to make a painting at my boss' request as a present for my co-worker's son's first birthday, & that is guaranteed to make me a nervous wreak on all counts. I am always apologetic when people buy my paintings, I'm terrible at creating work on request, & I don't know anything about babies. Plus I love this co-worker, so even though I was being paid it really mattered to me that she like the finished product.
Here's what I came up with:

March 2012: Teenaged Chickens Love Kale. 

There you are. I CAN work on commission! Call me for all your chicken painting needs. Really, do that.
I need an agent. Or the right sort of self-esteem. 
I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Those are two of our now eight week old chickens. They do adore kale. 
So I've been doing that, working, gardening.
I have this week gone on a spring cleaning spree. The house has gotten rather of out of hand with everything else going on so my goal this week has been to take on at least one major cleaning task every night, since I no longer have a painting deadline & I have a real weekend off this week so the garden can happen then.
I am quite fond of Easter. As holidays go, it pleases me. As does Passover. I do have a Catholic & Jewish soul I guess. I want the house in a good place by then. My plan is since we have spent every holiday since we got married last September running around between in-laws this one we are staying home & I am cooking a leg of lamb & we will eat chopped liver & matzo crackers first & we will spend the day living fabulously & decadently & enjoying each other. Hell, we have chickens now-we can dye eggs laid in our yard!
Oh yeah, Kale Pesto. Yes this is a food blog! Kale Pesto.
I'm obsessed with it. I feel like finding a cheap way to make decent pesto in the winter is achieving a major life goal for me.
I buy a lot of kale in winter because it's cheap & I'm poor & I like eating green foods.  I get bored with it though.
Secret fact: I'm a very food adventurous & love vegetables but until Owen had his vegan restaurant cooking job & learned a certain kale & cumin seed trick, I hated eating kale.
 What can I say? I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts & we had Kale Soup in the elementary school cafeteria quite frequently. It isn't easy to get over early food trauma like that.
 KALE PESTO has really blown my mind. Although I greatly anticipated garden food season, we are not there yet, not at all. Still a few weeks away from asparagus & fiddleheads & ramps, even.
A bunch of kale is a couple of dollars & making a quick pesto out of it is a cheering way to eat summerish food right now in early April when you want it but it is not here yet.
Recently I have made a kale pesto & chicken apple sausage lasagna. I made a nice pasta thing with kale pesto, anchovies, & cannelloni beans. Kale pesto makes a delicious sandwich condiment, & is fantastic mixed in scrambled eggs. Good over grilled applewood smoked chicken (we have a huge downed apple tree here). 
Recipe, Sort Of: Kale + Olive Oil + Cheese + Garlic + Salt & Pepper + Chili Pepper Flakes &/or Splash of Sriracha (Optional, I like it hot), into the food processor. Quantities to taste. Any cheese works fine.  
There you have it. There are always new things to learn about food. Thank Christ. I'd be so bored otherwise.
Kale Pesto! Fantastic!

Virginia Is For Lovers.

Still More Summer 2011.

I want to get the old ones up before I start with the new.