I’m doing it, guys. Now that I’m feeling a bit better, I am getting out of the house and making good on my “get off my ass” New Years Resolution. I went to the Museum of Arts & Design to see large and small scale paper art at the Slash show yesterday (though I thoroughly enjoyed the Ghost Stories exhibit as well) and if you’re going to be in NY through April, I highly recommend it. It certainly made me want to pick up my xacto blade again and start working on some ideas that started percolating while I was at the show. Some of the miniscule, detailed cuts of those large scale paper pieces were beautiful, but mind boggling in execution, however, I know I have the patience for this kind of stuff. I once created a 20″x24″ pointillist still life drawing in high school using fine tip pens. For hours and days and weeks and probably months, I sat in my room after school everyday and obsessively made tiny dots after dots after dots. Once I realized how insane this project was, I knew I had to finish or else I’d feel like quitter (true), but when I was done months later I felt like I had earned some kind of superhero status on repetitive tasks and gained the patience of saint (not true, as evidenced years later when the kids appeared).

In any case, after a meeting this morning, all signs so far might be pointing towards making some art again.

But here, folks, lie the ever-ending vicious circle. Art making requires free time -> Paying bills requires working -> Working takes away from free time -> No free time means no art making. Uh huh.

The hustle for work and a subsequent meeting next week plus some interesting (and not really in a good way) news indirectly related, but crucial to the business has given me an anxiety migraine tonight.

As I joked to a friend today, I need to find a patron. Yeah, that’s it. Let’s bring that practice back.

Right before the Great Site Crash of 2009, otherwise known as LunarFail and sometimes referred to as @#*&#$@*, the family and I took a midweek trip to MoMA. It was Veteran’s Day, no school, and we just felt like going somewhere before dealing with work. It’s true that we don’t go to museums often - the cost has become prohibitive these days, but I was fortunate to recently receive a year long Family Pass in exchange for a photo of mine that was used in a MoMA publication. Sweeeeet!

There are other perks to a membership other than motivating us to visit the museum often. There’s a 10% discount on the cafe, for example, which has tasty food and a fun bustling atmosphere, plus all the high chairs are Stokke in every imaginable color. I mean let’s face it. When you’re going to MoMA with 2 small kids, it’s not really about looking at the art, but more about nervously steering your kids’ wandering hands away from priceless pieces (Mia actually rested her hand on a chair at the Bauhaus exhibit which had the guards running). But there’s the cafe and the grand spaces and all the escalators as well as the outdoor sculpture garden which is a space the kids can run amok in. It was fun (btw, Mia’s wearing a cool hat sent to her by her penpal Pauline whose mom runs Line + Liv. Hello Pauline!).

So what’s going on with the site? Nothing. Still. Yeah, I know. Some of you have emailed asking how I can be so calm. Honestly, I don’t know. I alternate from being mostly calm to wanting to kick some serious whoop ass, but to whom? It’s frustrating for sure, but getting angry will just get us worked up so we’re just dealing in the most zen way possible. Plus I have work deadlines and I don’t have time to be pissed. In truth, this may be a blessing in the most weird, warped way because really, who doesn’t want more business? But we’ve been getting a steady stream of orders coming in from our other third party e-commerce sites as we’ve now redirected the site to our old original homepage circa Spring 2008 with links to etsy and foodzie and it’s kept Mark more than busy. To think of orders 6+ times this volume is scary and it’s what concerned us in the first place. Between you and me, I’m not sure we would’ve been able to handle it. So yes, we lost a lot of sales opportunities, but at least our Friday is not of the “tear-your-hair-out-busy-and-sleep-even-less” variety and we are still making sales so this is not as monumentally tragic as if could be if our site was our only source of revenue.

Still, it’d sure be nice if our site went back up. I miss looking at it. 54 hours now they’ve held it hostage. At this point I’d like to at least have access to my files so I can throw it up another server if I need to. This is so depressing.

…we didn’t need to. Old Navy sponsored an “urban” pumpkin patch and brought it to us. We didn’t end up going pumpkin picking this year due to various work things and inclement weather, so I was happy and curious to go to this event held in the cobblestoned streets of the Meat Packing District, right across the street from Pastis (and yes, I was jealous of every brunch goer there that morning). Held under huge tents because of the drizzle, the pumpkin patch was quirky and cheeky in an Old Navy way (lots of creepy store mannequins in the patch and a “petting zoo” of costumed mannequin dogs). With a $5 per family entrance fee with proceeds donated to the Food Bank of New York City, you could eat as much candy, chocolate, popcorn, cotton candy (the kids’ first taste of the stuff), apples, pears and drinks as you wanted (I totally fueled my craving for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and shoved some in my bag for later too). And the pumpkins? Free. The girls painted theirs up in thick layers of paint which would have taken forever to dry so we left ours there and took 2 new ones to decorate back home. See those all red ones? Claudine had a Richard Dreyfuss moment and got into a red groove when she painted 2 all red, monochromatic pumpkins. All in all, a really fun event in a charming downtown location, waaay too much sugar, and all for a good cause.

Long before BiterGate a reader left a comment on an old post criticizing the brightly painted red toenails on the girls. I don’t mind (constructive) criticism, but when someone questions the values that I’m teaching the girls about beauty and self esteem and snarks that I probably let them wear makeup too, well, I’d rather you ask about why I let the girls have painted toes than assume the worst. You see, aside from the fact that I don’t think it’s a big deal, there is a story behind it (isn’t there always?). It’s true that the girls have had more pedicures in nail salons than I have in my lifetime (I’ve only ever had 4), but it started with my dad, of all people.

One summer when we were living with my parents while renovations were being done to our apartment, my dad would often take Mia, who was then 18 months old, to the property of stores that my parents own. There was a playground around back and in the next little strip adjacent to my parents’ was a nail salon. The women who worked there would often let Mia play in the salon while my dad took care of business around the property. The following summer, Mia started getting little pedicures with flowers whenever she would come by. She’d toddle over to the rows of bottles and pick out a color, bring it over to the table, get her nails done and then sit with the other women at the drying station, chatting and striking up conversations. When Claudine was old enough last summer, my dad would take both the girls out and she too would get her nails painted. It was their little ritual whenever we went over to my parents’ for the weekend - to go out to the stores, play in the playground, get pedicures and then get treated to huge cups of frozen yogurt at the new yogurt place on their strip. Who am I to argue with this? But more significant to me is the fact that my dad initiated this bonding ritual. This is a man who didn’t allow my mom and I to wear colored nail polish when I was growing up. We could only wear clear. I don’t know when he decided that pink nails were ok on a 2 year old, much less on us, but this seemingly innocent and fairly insignificant act for me symbolized a little triumph - for feminism, for being able to make your own choices on what to wear without being dictated by a man, for the fact that sometimes, people can change in little ways.

I think you know what the moral of this story is. Speaking of mean, seems like there’s a lot of chatter recently about mean comments being posted in blog land. Which is why I love this.

Guys, it’s cold. I’m not talking “here I am and I’m gonna wimp out ’cause it’s not summer anymore”. No. It’s cold for real. I know that it’s just a temporary cold snap, but the past 4 days really jolted everyone into premature winter reality with coats, boots, scarves and mittens. Like, we’re not ready for this quite just yet. Plus there is something weird going on with our furnace, so we have no heat (trying to remain calm and hoping that it won’t cost an arm and a leg to fix). But despite the gloomy skies and wet cold rain, we had a pretty fun weekend. We had intended on going pumpkin picking on saturday, but after seeing the forecast we bagged on that idea and asked the girls what they wanted to do instead. Mia picked the Met Museum. We said Ok. We bundled up and headed to the Upper East Side but we never made it to the museum because we came across a new (to us, or maybe it is new as it seemed sparkling clean, bathrooms and all) playground right next to the museum. The rain seemed to hold off so we spent the day at the playground and then took a leisurely stroll through Central Park. The leaves are only just starting to turn, so it was a bit of a disconnect to be so cold and still see green lawns and trees.

The drizzle and wind returned today which put a bit of a damper on the annual Harvest Fair in our neighborhood held nearby us, but the girls actually got a chance to go on a pony ride this time since there was no ridiculous line to wait on. Faces were painted, and we all crowded into the Old Stone House for crafts and music. I can tell that Mia has a new musical crush, from the likes not seen since the days of Randy Kaplan, a former neighborhood singer/songwriter who Mia used to have a huge crush on when she was 2 and whose music and stage show was the only kid act I actually enjoyed (Randy’s CD, Five Cent Piece is Miss C’s current favorite). Now that Randy has moved on from the East Coast, she seems to have found her next local obsession in Jon Samson and his band. Like Randy, he’s very musically talented, highly entertaining, funny, and improv-skilled. If you’re in NYC, check out their upcoming shows. I predict this new CD will be on heavy rotation (along with Michael Jackson - still!) around the house.

You know how you sometimes discover cool things only to find out that it’s been there all along right under your nose? When we were buying paint for the apartment a few months ago, Mark and I got lost looking for the paint store, but discovered that the town that my parents live in actually has a charming town center with a park. Like, say wha? How many years have they lived there (10) and this is the first time that we’ve known about it? We finally took the kids for a picnic in that park last weekend and it was lovely - a perfect Fall day. The leaves were just starting to show the slightest tinge of color and the ducks, geese and swans kept the kids entertained.

Later that day we returned to the Nassau County Art Museum grounds to look at the sculptures (another relatively recent discovery). It’s like a mini Storm King practically in my parent’s back yard. And so this is how we spent our cookie-free weekend, recovering from a crazy 2 weeks of too many cookies.

When Mark’s mom is here, she is usually content to stay home and hang out with the girls, but one thing we wanted to do was take her to the High Line, our new favorite place to take out of town guests. I loved how the landscaping, flowers and plants changed with the season and look forward to visiting in the winter (can you imagine how beautiful this place will look during a snowfall?). You can see more photos of the High Line from our first trip here.

I got a totally unexpected email today from Auster Events, the Brooklyn firm that organizes the Atlantic Antic. They read the blog post about our Antic experience and apologized for their misjudgment in placing us in the “kids” block (I didn’t even know we were in the kids section). I was floored and touched by their email. This is how you conduct a business, folks - make even the smallest vendor feel important and wanted. We decided right then and there that we’ll give the Antic another go next year, armed with lessons learned from this year’s experience.

Oh, and our leftover hot chocolate didn’t go to waste. We brought it over to Mia’s class picnic this afternoon, which was held right across the street from our house, luckily enough. It was enjoyed by all.

One last thing. I get emailed a lot of the same questions, so I made an FAQ. Look to your left under “About”.

OK…I never really thought to go fruit picking before we had kids. Sure, I spent a month picking blueberries in Maine one summer during college, but that was hard work for money and the chance to experience something different than my upbringing in an urban environment. But for fun? No. We did really well with various U-Pick activities this year though: strawberries, peaches, lavender, and now apples and raspberries. The kids really dig raspberry picking: “5 berries for me and one for the basket”, “No! I’m not picking for the basket, I’m picking for the eating”. Ok, Miss C. Whatever gets anything fresh and healthy into your stomach is fine with me.