The Pain Of Growing-Up...

Thursday was a rough day for Erin. After the high of receiving her Grade 5 essay award for the entire province of New Brunswick on Monday night, the week went downhill from there. She’s getting into those mood swings as she heads towards puberty and the thought of eventually having 3 females in the house to tiptoe around during certain times of the month already has Nick thinking of switching to plastic cutlery or putting up a bed in the baby barn!

She came home in tears after school and wouldn’t really share much of what had happened until late at night after I got her tucked into bed. It turned out that she’d been teased for several things; playing football with the boys, starting this campaign to clean up the school property, singing so well in class during the National anthem and finally for still believing in the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa.

Sigh! Any parent who has already had this conversation with a believing heart, knows how difficult the next little while was. Many of my friends found the discovery that such things didn’t exist a minor event in their lives. I can remember feeling sad for each holiday that first year... as if some of the magic had gone out of my world.

Then, as I grew older, I realized the importance of keeping that sense of wonder alive in my heart. Who is to say that there might not still be some corner of the world, undiscovered by our rampaging civilization yet, where unicorns can still graze? Who is to say Nessie or Sasquatch might not be out there? The quote on the bio page of my website contains one of my favourite quotes of all times from author Madeleine L’Engle:

‘The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only !’

So there were tears and sobs, questions and sighs, cuddles and insights into some of the realities of growing up. There were also reassurances about what it is to be a believing soul, of how we become part of that Spirit of Giving that the first Saint Nicholas embodied, and how I don’t ever plan to stop believing in some things completely.

There were also promises and admonitions not to thrown these facts out in her younger sister’s face during some fight, so that Bethany may have the time to believe until she is ready to ask me the same questions.

Will the magic of Easter be any less tomorrow morning? Not at all! I will finally have one child free from this ridiculous new notion that the Easter Bunny brings toys just like Santa. I will know that for me, this is the most important day of joy and wonder in the whole year that has nothing to do with chocolate (though that is tasty!), and I will also find a way to look across the room as my oldest daughter and catch her eye. The smile I send her will be one that welcomes her on yet another of the milestones in the adventure of growing up.

Learning To Appreciate What You Have...

After all the challenges of these past few weeks, I can honestly say that it has taught me to be grateful for what I do have. Every day there are tangible examples of why I should practice gratitude as an attribute.

Learning that friends of ours are going their separate ways after trying for almost a year to hold things together for the sake of their children. It has made me tell Nick how much I appreciate him and all the ways in which we manage to make our marriage work.

Knowing that as all these wonderful new opportunities and challenges come Nick’s way, as he prepares to assume the Principalship of Magnetic Hill this summer, it is ok to feel a teeny bit jealous of your own husband when everything in his career seems to be gaining the recognition he deserves and new opportunities for growth when I still feel like I am fumbling for what to do next.

Understanding how many lives a single person can touch as I get set to bid farewell to a colleague from my radio days. Local newsman Dave Lockhart passed away suddenly this week at just 60 years old. Remembering him and how he touched my life as well as listening to the many tributes that poured in was a reminder of what legacy we will leave once we are gone.

Believing that there must be dark times in order to understand the times of joy and be grateful for them.

In the past few weeks I have received e-mail telling me that I am a spy, harassing innocent people who are just trying to share with others, that I am greedy, selfish, foolish for wanting to try to make a living from designing, that I am actually as wealthy as Martha Stewart, that I should get “a real job” that is hard like they have, that I am charging way to much for something that is just made of paper, that they are not hurting anyone by sharing patterns, that I probably break all kinds of laws myself by speeding or cheating on my taxes..... I almost dread seeing those e-mails more than the ones that promise to enlarge things or hot stock tips!

When it comes right down to it, I know that Integrity cannot be bought. If I spend my life trying to create images that make people smile or look for wonder in life, whether it is in watercolour or with thread... If I try my best to stay true to all that I believe and all that I am... then that is the ultimate work of art that I share with the world.

I stumbled on a quote tonight that I’d written down in a journal over 22 years ago.

“What you ARE is God’s gift to you. What you BECOME is your gift to God.”

It Was A Daniel Powter Kind of Day...

Surely by now, especially if you watch American Idol, you know the song BAD DAY by Daniel Powter? If you haven’t heard it, spend the 99 cents and download it on iTunes because it is the perfect song to play if you have a day like I had today. It’s playing in the background over and over as I type this. Actually, any of these little oddities would have been annoying on their own. All together, they were a bit overwhelming!!

I had a Weight Watcher’s meeting to lead this morning and arrived to discover that our centre had no flip chart paper to write on. Engaging people in discussion is so much easier when you can write down their responses!! I checked with my Regional Manager and she asked me to pick up any paper I could get at Walmart. Luckily, I knew my topic well and I had the van today, so off I went. Neither Zellers nor Walmart sell flip chart paper, but I did manage to buy a big “Dino Doodle Pad” of newsprint paper and get back in time for my meeting.

After this I went over to Shopper’s Drug Mart and bought 2 dozen eggs which were on sale 2/$3.00. A great deal when you consider it isn’t Easter for our girls unless they get to dye some hard boiled eggs. I went to the bank to deposit the Hoffman cheque from February’s sales to discover the dollar was at an all-time high, so the exchange rate was 1.12!!! Not much profit on exchange there anymore.... and that’s what used to let me absorb the higher shipping costs from Canada. I came home around noon and set a dozen to hard boil on the stove when the phone rang and a panicked graphics client proceeded to tell me about an ad they’d been unable to put together by themselves and e-mailed the pieces to me for a rush job! I went down to fire up the computers and make sense of what they were saying, downloaded the e-mails, opened the file that they insisted would “be really easy” and stared in horror at what they had thrown together! This is the problem. I just can’t copy and paste their monstrosity into an ad without needing to fix it (especially the bad english grammar) if it’s going to be a file I send on to a printer somewhere. Of course in all of this chaos, the eggs got totally forgotten until they boiled dry and started to burst, making fairly loud popping sounds that had me racing up from the basement office just before the air could get thick with smoke!

Looking at my watch, I discovered that I had about 10 minutes to scarf something down for lunch before I needed to pick Bethany up at the bus stop. Thank goodness for cereal and milk! Once I picked Bethany up, I went back to Shoppers to buy another 2 dozen eggs to re-boil while I was up in the dining room/ kitchen area helping Bethany with homework. The cashier was the same one who’d served me just hours before and wondered why on Earth I needed more eggs... so of course I had to explain that my house now smelt like burnt eggshell... which set them off so much that they forgot to give me the $17.00 change from the $20.00 I’d given them. Of course, I didn’t discover this until I got home and put the eggs away then went looking for my change! I had to pull out the phone book, call the store and ask them to check if their cash was over by $17.00. They called back about 1/2 hour later to say that yes, indeed it was and that the money would be waiting for me in an envelope near cash #2.

I helped Bethany get her work done then the phone rang and Wichelt wanted to know what new fabrics I might need for any summer releases. I told them about “Santa’s Dragon” that I was working on and we discussed some possible colours, but then I also had to let them know what was going on with the recent round of copyright infringement. They were horrified when I told them that I was thinking of taking a break from designing after my 100th design... but I had to be honest with them about how I feel trying to be creative knowing that I make something that is easy to steal!

After Erin and Bethany’s homework was done, I went down to check e-mail to see if the contact names I needed for an advertorial article that I am writing for the local paper had arrived yet, I found a second and third e-mail from the same client promising the printer that I would adjust a file of cover artwork for them as well... but it is a file that I didn’t create for them!!! Nearing my breaking point, I e-mailed my client back to point out that I would have to recreate the whole file from scratch since that wasn’t a job they’d assigned to me... therefore it wasn’t possible in the 12 hour overnight turnaround they were giving me. It’s hard to tell a well paying client that you can’t do something, but I’m also not responsible for someone else being behind schedule!

Since Nick was down at his school for the Internal Review Process that each school in the District is facing, I drove Erin to Guides with Bethany in tow. We went by the self-store to drop off some leaflets and pick up others. I stood there in the setting sun and stared at a 10 x 10 self-store full of printed leaflets and cardboard shipping containers that I had to have made for dealing with TLC that I now pay almost $150.00 a month to maintain and started to cry. If I had had a match at that point, I would have been roasting marshmallows over a lovely fire!

But now, as I sum up some of this days lunatic events, when the moon isn’t even full for another 2 days, I have to laugh at it all. I still have my health, my family and my sense of humour, even if my passion and my future seem questionable sometimes. What artist ever truly feels secure?? How many dreamers and doodlers even try to make a living from what they do??

Yes, I had a Bad Day. Yes, it felt as if “ the magic is lost, as if my blue skies have turned to grey and my passion has gone away” but this is only 24 hours. My life may feel off-line today, but a day only lasts 24 hours and this particular one shall never come again in my lifetime. The house now smells of scented candles, everyone is asleep except the hamsters and I... and after 20 times through, I can finally put Daniel Powter to rest along with this blog entry.

One Publisher’s Facts Say It All...

One of the publishers in the cross stitch industry who knows that I started a blog on Multiply.com to try to educate pattern sharers as to how much their actions were hurting the industry they claim to love and promote sent me these scary facts and powerfully written message. They did ask that they not be named, but I thought this information too important not to appear on my Dragon Musings Blog too.



In 2000, we published 52 cross stitch books. These ranged in size from leaflets to 48 pages. By 2002, we were down to 31 cross stitch books. In 2003 as scanning and posting charts began to get really bad, we started devoting our publishing dollars to knit, crochet and quilt because the copyright violations seem to be less prevalent among those consumers. We published 26 cross stitch books that year. In 2004, we published 25 cross stitch books. Last year we published only 11 cross stitch books. Through the first 5 months of 2006, we will publish only 3. I don’t know how much more proof you need to show what copying has done to the cross stitch business.

There are other implications beyond the atrophying of our cross stitch book output. Very few of our profits are reinvested in cross stitch, as they have been for 30+ years. What little dollars we do spend on cross stitch are spent on kits which, of course, are far more expensive for the consumer to purchase. We have a higher profit margin on kits than we do on books, a lower initial investment, and when the kit chart is scanned and posted online, it’s only one design, not 103 that we’re losing the sales on.

The few cross stitch books we have published in the last couple of years have been published at a higher retail. We expect to lose a certain percentage of our sales to copying. Therefore, we have to raise our retails to make up for the lost margins. This is identical to what retailers have to do to make up for shoplifting.

And sadly, we haven’t been able to publish any of our big 48 page books, which are such a tremendous value to the consumer, in nearly three years. We simply can’t afford such a huge investment that we know we’ll never be able to recoup because of copying.

The irony here is that these women, who so clearly love cross stitch, are single handedly destroying the pastime they love and, in the process, ensuring that designs cost more and more to buy. Their mentality reminds me of litterbugs who so blithely toss a coke can out the window and say to themselves “It’s just me and it’s just one coke can. It won’t make any difference.” Oh how wrong they are!

What can I add? Those kind of numbers speak for themselves!

Celebrating Joys and Achievements...

This is the season of birthdays in our household. By the end of the weekend, I will have celebrated the birthdays of the 3 most important people in my life... my husband’s, Erin’s and Bethany’s all in a matter of 20 days!!! The older that my daughters get, the more I am in awe of their potential and absolutely baffled at where the time has gone. I can dig out my journals from 11 and 7 years ago when I thought that I would never sleep the night through again in my life and have to chuckle at some of the things I scribbled in the dark during a 2 am feeding.

Last Friday was also report card day and both girls had absolutely spectacular report cards. As I wrestle with the recent wave of copyright infringements and ask myself why I ever wanted to try such a risky and vulnerable way of earning a living, I know that one of the reasons that I chose Art over Emergency Medicine (both were very strong callings and both tempted me as careers) was because I saw art as being an easier way to balance earning a living with raising a family.

Real parenting, the type where you actually spend time with your children and help them acquire the skills they will need to succeed in life is incredibly demanding. No wonder so many adults who have children spend most of their waking moments scheduled to death or wondering how to squeeze more hours into a day. While designing cross stitch, doing freelance graphics, illustration, copy writing, translation, voice over work and prepress work for the past dozen years hasn’t been exceedingly lucrative, it has let me be home when the girls get home from school and spending time with them to get homework done, provide enrichment opportunities and tutor them in reading or French. If that means that several hours of my own work gets done after they go to bed, so be it. They will only be with me for another decade or so.

It is simply amazing to watch how they are growing. Erin was so disgusted with the state of the playground now that the snow has melted, that she organized a group of kids to spend one outdoor recess picking up trash instead of playing. They filled a whole garbage bag from one small area and then the school rewarded all the students who took part with a “RRR ticket” (the school focus is reason, responsibility and respect) Bethany stayed calm when one of her friends got hurt on the playground this week, went for a teacher and then stayed with her friend at the office until their parent could arrive. When her friend got worried about an X-ray, Bethany calmly explained the procedure that she’d been through for her arm when it was broken and made a Get Well card as soon as she got home.

Could the past 12 years have been more lucrative for our family if I had stayed in advertising? Probably. Would it have been as rich in other ways? Probably not.

Vertical Learning Curves vs. Roller Coasters

The funny thing about vertical learning curves and roller coasters is that they both leave you feeling kind of queasy! With roller coasters, you pay to go on some large metal ride where you are constantly wondering if the safety features will work properly as you scream your head off on a thrilling, stomach churning and thankfully brief ride.

Vertical learning curves produce much of the same sensations at times but with your feet safely planted on the ground. The same sense of dizziness, stomach churning and doubts... but sometimes this ride lasts longer.... or at least the headache from cramming too much information into your brain at one time lasts longer than a roller coaster ride!

Ever since the information about Multiply.com broke just over a week ago, I have found my days filled not only with my usual work, but hours of learning legal terms, finding out about where and how sites are set up without the proper safety checks in place, checking with some of my friends who know computers far better than I do about how information can be tracked back to the right people, bringing the INRG Legal Defense Fund Committee up to speed on what has been happening in our industry. The first time this pattern sharing started, a whole bunch of designers used their talents to create a book called Celebrations of Stitching. It was not only meant to use our donated talents in a creative way to educate stitchers, but it was also a fundraiser so that we would have money as an industry to take legal action at some point. Perhaps the time has finally come.

It has been hard using energy and time on stuff that I’d rather not learn or have to deal with. My e-mail addy also got added to a list-serve that backfired and got stuck in an endless loop, but for a day or so, we thought that someone had hacked into my computer and used it to send out e-mails because I kept getting replies to replies to... you get the picture. It was odd that many of the companies e-mailing me were from the same country as one of the people I complained about to Multiply.com, but maybe that is just coincidence. I’d rather think the best of people if given a chance. Perhaps this is why the willful abuse of my copyrights by a small but determined group of people is still so baffling and hurtful to me.

Ultimately, we each live by our own moral codes and with our lives as a legacy to what we each believe. That is one of the reasons that Soli Deo Gloria appears on each chart I design and self-publish. That is why I cannot pretend to be someone that I am not. When I investigate a group, I go in as myself.

David Phelps song “Something’s Gotta Change” from his Life is a Church album has kept me sane this past week and is often blaring out of my Mac. It has become the theme song for this season of my life. Hate has to be met with kindness and love, but that does not mean you have to be a victim. I have already looked in the past year at reducing the amount of designing that I do to concentrate on other things that are either more profitable or less difficult to steal from me. Even if I decide to stop designing when I reach my hundredth design soon, I will have left behind a legacy of images that I am so proud of. I have heard from stitchers all over the world in the past 12 years who have enjoyed stitching my designs and that is more than most artists get in their lifetimes.

I also know that I just cannot walk away from an industry I love and still believe in. Something has to change in our society... in how we deal with what is right and wrong... in how things are evolving as we move to a more globally wired community. If I end up feeling called to speak out socially, legally and legislatively or founding a group to lobby for changes to copyright issues and privacy laws that let thieves hide behind false identities. Perhaps then a day will come when someone who creates any image, song, story or item that brings beauty to our world doesn’t have to worry about how quickly people will steal that for their own savings or profit.
It may be a roller coaster ride... and some vertical learning headaches...but that’s what makes life interesting!!

Ding..Dong..The BOX Is Dead!

Yay! At last! The BOX is dead! Never will I let a large box like that be a place to just toss stuff until I can deal with it. I will deal with it all and get it in its place because the few moments it takes to do that are so much better than dealing with tons of tiny things from receipts to skeins of half used floss to old cards, letters, invoices, receipts, beads and other weird stuff. Now the cardboard box is holding all my sorted brown envelopes ready to go to the accountant as soon as I do the totals for each category. Then, I think this new person is going to help me get set up on a better system to look at categories on a quarterly basis and see how things are going.

It nice to be able to focus on the little successes and the little steps forward when it feels like so much of this past week has been backsliding. Its looking as if some of the infringers on multiply.com are indeed Canadians and that makes me both sad and angry. The size of our population spread over the vastness of our country does mean that sometimes stitchers have to travel great distances to reach a store or mail order/on-line order, but the very idea of using our geography as an excuse for their actions is a bit repugnant to me. I can still remember the excitement of reading the r.c.t.n when I first discovered that there were on-line communities where you could talk about your love of stitching, learn new tips or tricks, find out about new releases or designs that were in the works. Sadly, somewhere along the line with the changes in technology, scanned patterns began to be shared as well.

One stitcher sent me a brilliant poster from the French designers association. It showed a blank graph on the poster with the caption “without designers, this is what your pattern would look like!” It was brilliant, simply brilliant.

We say as an industry that we need to encourage the next generation of young stitchers... but who will they learn from? Will their first introduction to stitching be sharing information or patterns? Unless we speak out, unless we make changes to what is acceptable legally, morally and ethically, this type of behaviour may become the norm instead of the exception. At least I know that my children are learning differently, because they are seeing first hand what effect copyright infringements can have.

Productive Anger Is Better Than A Pity Party!

Nothing makes you more productive that a good mad. I had my Pity Party last night when I wrote my blog and cried all over the keyboard. The girls and Nick all gave me big hugs when I calmed down enough to just look blotchy. Talk about a great teaching example for the girls. They see first hand how supposedly innocent sharing or downloading really hurts the person who created the magic in the first place and will therefore speak up among their friends. They know to spend an iTunes card and buy the downloads rather than steal them.
Ironically, discovering these sites came just after booking our flights for the trade show in Charlotte this summer and writing up the entry for the show guide which announced the release of my most complex design ever this summer. It is called “Santa’s Dragon” and the thought that there will be people just waiting to share that illegally as soon as they get their hands on a copy was almost more than I could bear. One poster on the Multiply site last night was raving about getting a copy of Stargazer a full 20 days before her shop in Europe would have it and now she could stitch it for free!! I was ready to just turn my site black and walk away. Why bother designing a product that is so easy to steal? Why invest the time, effort and money to create a quality product when there are people out there who have so little respect for what you do that they have to yell at you when you defend the rights of your own work and continue to steal?

This morning, however, I had a chance to move from sorrow to anger. I also felt the support from stitchers as they e-mailed their support having read my blog last night. So, instead, I set up my own page on at http://dragondreamsjen.multiply.com with a blog and a copy of the Copyrights & Copywrongs poster that I designed for the INRG (since I am the copyright holder) so that hopefully some of the stitchers who don’t realize that what they are doing is wrong can learn what they may or may not legally do. I also wrote a blog entry there and will keep that up as a portal/presence on Multiply.

I was able to write Cease & Desist letters to all of the sites that had my images on them, except for a Japanese one, as well as report those users for Terms Of Service violations. I wrote my local Member of Parliament to see how I can get involved furthering copyright issues in Canada, contacted the people who put together the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival in Toronto to see if we can’t bring this before the media a bit during one of the shows this year, came up with some game plans that fellow designers and I could use to make the companies such as Yahoo and Multiply more aware of the abuse going on, complained to a few of the advertisers that had ads which Google placed on those sites to let them know how their ad dollars were being associated with, talked to our local ISP about ways to dig for identity information and find out about joining one of the groups that works with Interpol and the RCMP here in Canada.

All in all, it was a productive day in terms of trying to defend my artwork and copyrights. It didn’t let me get to the end of THE BOX, nor do any designing, but at least it has made me shelve the idea of becoming a goat herder on a tropical island. Last night that held a lot of appeal. At least if times are tough you can eat a goat. Leaflets aren’t tasty, even with ketchup!

I WIsh I Had The Energy To Get Angry...

I know that will come in the morning. By then the urge to just curl up in a ball in my office and have a good cry will have passed, and I will be ready to deal with the reality that I create things that are easy to steal.

Right now, all I can do is blog. After a day spent doing what I hate the most, trying to sort out invoices and run my business properly, I get e-mails from fellow designers who have found 3 huge sites trading thousands of cross stitch patterns, including many of mine. I am starting to realize that while most stitchers are indeed honest people,a few bad apples have the potential and technology to totally decimate this industry. Sadly as well, when Linn Skinner and her friends first raised this issue in 2001, the industry turned a blind eye and key players in the industry have continued to do so. Now, just a scant 5 years later, I am slowly coming to the realization that it may be just too late to close that barn door. Companies like Leisure Arts, Disney and other giants in the industry failed to pay attention to warnings and prosecute copyright infringers because they didn’t want to look like the “bad guys”. But tonight, I can stare at page after page after page of copyrighted material, with my carefully crafted copyright statements that were just ignored as they were scanned in.

I know the hoops that I am going to have to go through to get these removed. I know the faxes that I will have to send long distance to some copyright agent to prove that this is indeed my own stuff. I know that the true identities of those who are doing this will never be revealed, even though I never bother to hide who I am... and I know that copies of those files have already been “shared” so many times that I cannot possibly blot them all out.
Yet all someone who wants to steal from me needs to do is go surfing, or scan an image and set up a site in a few minutes to share something with the world that they had no hand, so sweat, no effort in creating.

I wish I could get angry. Maybe by tomorrow I will be able to. Right now, all I can do is weep.

Creative Types and Order... or Bag, Spawn of Box

I refuse to let chaos win!! It turns out that THE BOX has spawned a Bag!! I have no idea where the bag came from, but as I was getting down to the bottom of THE BOX, there was a bag, stuffed full of its own mess of receipts, papers, paid bills, notes, sketches, bits of fabric and fibers... some dating back to 2003?? Perhaps BAG is the Mother of the Box?
I shudder at this proof that if chaos is left long enough in a forgotten corner of my office, it will reproduce. This is worse that dust bunnies!!

Actually, this is one of my worst nightmares. For as long as I can remember, I have hated tidying. Oh, I love the order it produces, and I love the sense of knowing where everything is for the day or so it seems to last. I guess that means that I’ve always been a messy, cluttered child. I can remember being sent to my room in order to deal with a desk or surface that finally had to be dealt with, usually right before a favourite TV program was due to come on as an added incentive for speed. Once or twice a year, the second closet in my bedroom, where I tossed everything I didn’t immediately need during these desk and bureau tidies, would have to be dealt with and it felt much the same as it does to me now. It makes me want to SCREAM!

Of course, having iTunes on Party Shuffle has made things more bearable today. I never realized what an eclectic mix of music that Nick and I own until Josh Groban and Great Big Sea followed Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash with a little Kate Bush, Queen and Earth, Wind and Fire sandwiched in there!

The sense of satisfaction is also growing as yet another blue garbage bag (dry paper recyclables) of shredded paper I no longer need fills in the middle of my floor and each receipt gets safely into its proper brown paper envelope, but it has started me thinking about being creative and seeking order.

Are most creative types messier by nature? There will certainly be exceptions to that generalization, just as there are exceptions to every stereotype, but is there something in our brains that make those intuitive leaps or juggle lots of textures, ideas and thoughts around at once that make us more prone to clutter or the act of leaving things unfinished? If I try to train myself, can I make myself take the time to get each receipt which comes into my office filed away in its proper place instead of just setting it down on the desk to deal with later? What invariably happens is that I need to clear the desk, so I set the still undealt with pile somewhere else.... and eventually, you have THE BOX!

There.... the BAG has officially been put to rest. Now there is just the rest of THE BOX to deal with. I must go up and get some lunch first, however, or I will never have the strength to push on an vanquish this foe! (Imagine heroic James Horner music in the background as I lift myself off the carpeted cement floor and discover just what it feels like to have a 36 inch inseam worth of leg go pins and needles!)

Community...Where Is Yours?

I’d planned to write about something else today. Yesterday a touch of some bug had me feeling shivery, achy and total unproductive, so I went to bed at the same time as Erin and slept the night through.

This afternoon, one of Bethany’s friends got off the bus and came home with her in tears because her baby-sitter hadn’t been out at the bus stop to pick her up. Lindsay and Bethany are in the same class and our families share the bus stop every day, so her mom and I have swapped off before, especially if I’ve been at trade shows. This was indeed a daycare day, but no one was there to pick her up... no wonder she was in a panic about what to do!

So I’ve called everyone I need to in order to sort this out and the girls are playing happily upstairs. We’ll get to homework in a few minutes, but it made me realize two things....

One, as hard or frustrating as it is to work from home some days, this is a time when it is really worth it.

Second, when something happens that is unexpected, having a sense of community with my neighbours is really what the word community is all about.

Where is your community? How have you reached out to be a part of your surroundings? It takes a bit of effort and trust to make friends or even casual acquaintances with the people in your neighbourhood, but then in times of trial, you have others to lean on. I can remember a scary night a few years ago when one of our neighbour’s houses caught fire just after Christmas. Luckily the home was saved and the top floor could be rebuilt/repaired, but the kids lost quite a few of their presents, clothes got damaged etc. The outpouring from the community in terms of help, food, clothing etc. was immediate and appreciated.

This morning I learned of the Cyclone that hit Queensland, Australia on Monday morning. While it is half a world away from me here, I am still keenly aware that this too is my community in a way. I have lots of fans in Australia that e-mail me about my designs and so I am thinking of them as their lives are suddenly turned upside down. I am also reminded that we are all one community on this precious planet. It does seem that with all these incredible changes in our weather patterns and disasters, we are pushing our poor home to the brink of what it can bear. What is MY responsibility in all this to keep my community safe? The challenge is to never lose sight of what each of us can do so that the homes around us and the homes on the far side of the planet grow to be nurturing communities where we can thrive!

CREATIVE DAYS VS. PRODUCTIVE DAYS...

This week has been extremely productive... and that got me to thinking about the difference between creativity and productivity, especially in our insanely achievement driven society. This week was all about facing tasks which needed to be done, even though part of me wanted to stay in “vacation mode”. The more I tackled, the better I started to feel as a bag of clutter went out the door on garbage night, laundry from the trip got done and everything got put away. Yesterday and today are devoted to spreading out every receipt I’ve filed away by category all year long , totaling them and putting them into large, brown manilla envelopes to hand over to my accountant for corporate taxes. Hey... at least I’m not a shoe box full of paper kind of girl. My mom always filed things away and could find things when she needed them. I have a very deeply buried inner Virgo (supposedly the tidiest of the zodiac) and clutter still tried to win the battle, but I like knowing where things are. I have come to one important conclusion in the past year... it would be much easier to find things and keep track of them if I had less STUFF!

Productivity is all about accomplishing tasks... and when the tasks seem too overwhelming, it is often tempting to avoid them, but that really doesn’t help in the long run. So I have had my itunes blasting on my eMac while I try to carpet the floor with odd bits of paper and sort them out again. My files were easy enough to sort through, keeping the current year bits in there and putting the others into the assigned envelopes, but dealing with THE BOX was harder.

Do you have one of those “throw it there now and deal with it later” holders? Mine is a photocopy paper box on the floor of my office that has been there since we redid the place last year. Instead of reams of paper, it holds all the fiddly little bits of paper, receipts, notes, statements and stuff that I “meant to get to”. Often stuff piles up on the kitchen table or counter upstairs. When it gets to be too unbearable, I sort it out, toss out the junk, sort it further into Dragon Dreams stuff and family stuff, then the business stuff comes down to the office. In theory, it should get sorted right there into what it needs... but this past year as I wrestled with fear and procrastination, it often just got chucked into THE BOX. The warped logic behind having it all in one place was that if I lost something, I had one place to rummage through instead of several.

So now I am tackling THE BOX, just in case there are receipts that could be important to this year’s corporate tax return. I am absolutely hating every minute of it, except for the sense of accomplishment and freedom it is giving me as stuff goes where it belongs... or into the trash.

Creativity isn’t about how much you get done and sometimes recharging your creative batteries is all about taking time to be... but creative types also need to remember that accomplishing important tasks is part of treating this as a career, a calling and a business... instead of just a hobby.

Pictures in My Jam Blobs and Drawing With Ketchup...

It’s funny how getting something off your chest can make you feel so lighthearted! Today was a busy day of running around to the bank and post office, getting copies for a Hoffman order picked up at Staples to batch tonight during the American Idol results show after choir practice, but it all felt very productive as well.

This morning, once I got the girls on the bus for school, I made some toast to munch on while I checked e-mail. I know, I can hear the groans about crumbs in the keyboard! In my rush to get the jam spread quickly, I dropped a blob on the counter and then stood transfixed at the cool little whale shape it made. I was about to run and get my digital camera, when I suddenly realized how odd that might be to try to capture a jam blob in pixels. Was I going to show it around like some crazy ink-blob test to see what others saw? Maybe one of the things about being an artist is to see things in almost any shape or groupings of patterns. I can remember being transfixed as a child by marbled floors, foam ceiling tiles and linoleum because I would see all kinds of things in the random patterns of the tiles.

For me, that sudden, swift desire to capture what I’d seen and show it to others is one of the cornerstones of being an artist. It is the seeing of things that others might otherwise pass by... the way the light hits the surface of a texture, the colours, the shapes or the patterns of something in the world around us. I have a whole sketchbook that is pasted full of things like that so I can sit and look through it from time to time.

This is also one of the reasons that I always try to have a tiny sketchbook in my purse and a pen to doodle with. Once, when Erin was younger than Bethany is now, we were at McDonald’s eating supper and I looked up to see a spectacular sunset with a cloud shaped like a dragon’s head backlight by the setting orange sun. I searched through my purse and pockets in vain for something to draw on and came up completely blank. Undaunted, I grabbed a white napkin, stole one of Erin’s french fries and proceeded to sketch the cloud shape onto my napkin with ketchup. I left the restaurant with the napkin held carefully on the palms of my hands so as not to blot it before I could get home and copy the shape into a sketchbook. As I walked through the restaurant and out the door, to the puzzled stares of fellow restaurant-goers, Erin just sighed behind me and said in her loudest voice possible. “Mom, you are SO embarrassing!”

Artists really can draw with almost anything and see images almost anywhere... even in jammy blobs!

FINALLY EMERGING FROM MY CAVE...

There’s something about getting away from home, especially on a vacation, that gives you the time to really think, dream, reflect and deal with things that otherwise might remain shoved to one side during the business of life’s daily task.

Getting away to Austin with my family was very soul-restoring. Teaching wonderful stitchers at Ginger’s and spending time with one of my favourite shop owners also gave me a renewed enthusiasm for cross stitch that has been feeling a bit stale lately. Both of those things gave me the courage to finally write this blog.

I probably should have shared my doubts here months ago, but in a way, I was afraid of letting too much spill out onto these pages. Some of it has made it into my private journals, but much of it just stayed bottled up inside. Now that I am finally learning to work through these challenges, it is time to be more honest here in case it helps someone else down the road face the same paralyzing fears and insecurity.

I’ve always been an optimist and a dreamer. Maybe that’s why the doubts and terrors took me so completely by surprise. It went completely against the grain of who I am and how I have always pictured myself. I just thought I was at lose ends or that cross stitch was in transition and therefore so was I. But every now and then would come a day when I knew I should be designing or working on other artwork to send off to publishers. and the fear or self-doubt would be so great that I would let myself get caught up in busy work, laundry or even invent tasks to keep myself from picking up a pencil.

I think that is why I tried to start my other blog Candles In The Darkness... I wanted to surround myself with positive images and words in the hopes that they would lift up my soul and I would feel that soaring wonder again. Instead, too often, I felt like I was having to sift through so many stones to find one gem of wisdom to encourage myself and others with. Meanwhile, since I thought of Dragon Musings as only a glimpse into a CROSS-STITCH DESIGNER’S world, instead of the world of me, I avoided writing anything at all. Who would want to read about doubt and fear?

In the end, it was preparing for the Dragon*Con jury deadline on March 1st that brought me out of this long tunnel. It was facing the cold hard fact that I had to draw and try or just admit how crippling this self-doubt had become and let it win. It was tempting... very tempting. Far easier not to apply at all and cheer Teresa on this year, as she supported me in my She-Hulk adventures last year, than to face the fact that I might get another letter thanking me for my time but telling me that I wasn’t chosen for the Art Show (ie. not good enough). I was just about convinced that since I’d been drawing with needle and thread in squares and Xs for so long that I could no longer draw the way I had a dozen years ago when I was sending stuff off to publishers on a monthly basis, trying to break into children’s books while working at an ad agency during the day.

What if, when push came to shove, I really wasn’t “good enough”?

The first few days of drawing were torture. Half of my pages ended up scrumpled in the wastebasket because I just couldn’t get past the fact that they all looked like “my stuff”. I began to get a little deadline crazy and decided to just go ahead and finish some of the drawings. I even spent a day close to tears on the final weekend because of a painting that had been sitting half completed in my office for over 6 months. I’d reached the point where I no longer had time to build the painting up in misty layers to make it look realistic. Instead, I opted to finish it in my bold, outlined style and reached a point where I was convinced it was ruined beyond saving... but the next day I came back and finished it off, bringing it back from the point of disaster to something I could live with and even be a bit proud of.

I also learned a valuable lesson about being a role-model to my kids. They would stand there looking at the finished pieces and tell me how cute or beautiful they were with wonder in their eyes. When I looked at the pieces, all I could see were the places where I’d made tiny mistakes or drawn the line just a bit too thick or thin... It just looked like MY stuff, not the many styles I’ve seen out there that I admire so much. I watched my girls draw beside me and noticed how they still drew for the sheer joy of it, not caring if one leg on the princess was longer than the other, not worrying if the composition wasn’t just right... just drawing and giving their hands and eyes the practice they need to improve their skills.

I learned to let them know what a struggle I was having. That I still had doubts and got frustrated when my hands wouldn’t create the exact image that I’d seen in my head. The hugs and support that I got from them and Nick as I finally admitted my fears and worked through them helped more than they will ever know. It also helped to know that a friend I very much respected had her own share of doubts from time to time.

It has also helped to know that almost every artist or creative person goes through the same kind of doubts. I am sure that writers, actors, singers, composers, dancers, news anchors, designers, DJs all face the same emotions at one point or another. Wondering if you’ll be “good enough” to get noticed or famous or respected...

What finally brought me to write this entry... and to transform the subtitle of the blog... was the realization that someone else may find it comforting or even helpful to know that they are not alone. I am learning that the best cure for those fears is just to pick up a pencil and get right to work being creative. To listen to music instead of those little whispers of self-doubt in my head. To stop measuring myself to some impossible standard and just work at producing the best drawing, painting, design or image that I can at the time then dream about the next one. To explore the thoughts about what it is to be a creative soul... which is what Dragon Musings will now evolve into. I started the blog to show those who thought little of stealing or sharing my designs that a designer’s life was not all glamour and glory. Cross stitch will always be an important way in which I make images to share with others... but it will not be the only one I need to muse about. What this blog can really only be is about my journey... with all its hills and valleys.. and my life as an artist... because grown ups really can draw pictures as their job!

Nashville Bound...

I leave for Nashville tomorrow and am actually all packed! I will see the girls off on the bus to school and come home to get everything straightened out before heading to the airport. What a whirlwind 5 days this will be... I am not sure whether to be excited, nervous, anxious or just plain giddy. Shows never lose their excitement/terror for me, even after doing them for so long. There is something about putting your work out there for all to see that makes you feel vulnerable, even when you are an “established” designer. Yet, I cannot imagine myself doing anything else.

Hmmm. Time to double check my packing list and treat myself to a glass of merlot while I watch American Idol!

I’m Now Married To A Principal!!!

In the midst of getting ready for the trade show, we get some fabulous news. After weeks of putting in applications and getting set for 3 interviews for 3 Principalships, Nick went into the first interview yesterday for one of the schools he wanted most and just did a fabulous job. He came home with a grin on his face and a sense of relief that the interview process for the day was over and told me that he couldn’t possibly have done anything better. Usually he comes home and thinks of things he should have said or done... but not this time. Right after supper, the phone rang to give him the news that he’d been given the Principalship of Magnetic Hill School for a 5 year term starting in the fall of 2006!!!

There were happy squeals and hugs from all of us as Nick got caught in the middle of the three females in his life all trying to congratulate him at once! Since this school is just 7.8 km from the school, his commute will now be about 6 minutes by highway instead of 25!! Nick jokes that he might even bike to work a few days this summer when he’s going in to check things out...

I am SO proud of how much he has grown as an administrator these past 2 years. Even though the switch to being a VP at Petitcodiac meant a lot of adjustment for our family, the experience that he got there gave him the skills and confidence he needs for this next step in his career. Way to go, NICK!!!!

PULLED IN ALL DIRECTIONS...

Remember when you were a teenager and you looked at grown-ups? They have it all... you thought to yourself. They earn money, they can stay up as late as they want, they don’t have to go to school and do homework that just doesn’t relate to real life...

I can see that in my children’s eyes already at time - that longing for the perceived freedom of adulthood. If I can share anything with them, I hope it is that EACH age carries its own joys, tribulations and challenges. Since we only dance through time one way, it makes sense to savour as much of each stage as possible instead of waiting for it to be over.

Easier said than done!! As I get ready for the show next week in Nashville, I feel pulled in a million directions at once. I am still wrapping up a design to print and package this weekend so that it can go in my suitcase with me, but most of the designs are already en route to the show to save on weight. Bethany’s cast is off, but they have recommended a wrist guard for gym class and outdoor play, so we borrowed one that a friend’s children wear for rollerblading. That type of equipment isn’t popular in sports stores right now because it is still too wintery to think of bare pavement and roller blades!

Nick is on pins and needles because the next three work days hold 3 separate interviews for 3 different Principalships that come up for the next school year. He is ready for the challenge of his own school and the experience at a larger school these past 2 years has been a great opportunity, even if it hasn’t been without stresses and challenges for both him and our family. It is hard to share a single vehicle when he works over 40 km away!

Time just seems to scurry by like my hamsters on their wheels. I keep wondering each night where the day went, but at least that’s better than getting bored!

So much speculation about how the show is going to go, how the industry is faring, why more people aren’t stitching, how to reach the next generation... I can’t get caught up in that or I might never have the courage to get on the plane. All we can do each day is work at producing the best designs possible, the best quality product and putting some fun into what we do. I am sure that by the time I get on the plane, I will have stopped worrying about what still needs to be done and just look forward to seeing fellow designers and the shop owners who have become friends over the last dozen years.

BEATING DEADLINES!

Sometimes, the best thing about setting a goal or timeframe is actually beating it! I needed to get all of my files to the printer by tomorrow if there was a chance of them squeezing in the two jobs I need professionally printed for Nashville! Nothing worse that taking printed matter whose ink isn’t quite dry with you. First of all, the product is prone to transfer smudges, secondly it still smells quite strongly and third, the panic feelings of wondering if it will be ready are just plain unpleasant.

I actually got the files all done and sent over this morning after a little help with the proofing from a patient friend (thanks again!!). Sometimes you just stare at things too long to be objective. Stitchers are such clever people that they find the mistakes... but that is AFTER you have already printed your press run!!

Now there is just one last model to stitch and frame for the show. Nick and I can do a sampler in tandem. On a solid piece, our tension is a bit to different to look as smooth as I’d like, but on a sampler, he can whiz through the text backstitching, one or the other can handle the cross stitch and then I do the specialty stitches.

I’m also thrilled with how DD-90 MESSY...BUT MINE! looks now that it is back from the framer’s!! This dragon was such fun to design on her pile of treasure. I even hid my ipod in the stash!!! Of course there had to be a teddy bear and some books to read as well as typical dragon loot... Nick jokes that this model needs to hang on my office door as soon as it gets home from all its shows! Hah! Hah!

With the files out of the way early, I should move on to something practical, but my hands feel like drawing today, so I am going to eat lunch and spend the hour before Bethany gets home just working on one of my pieces for the DragonCon jury. A little Josh Groban music in the background and time to draw sounds like heaven right now!!!

THOSE ARE THE BREAKS...

If this is life getting back to “normal”, I think I’ll stay in holiday mode!!! I practically danced my way home from the bus stop on Monday morning as everyone got back off to school and had my most productive day in ages. I am still in a panic that something won’t get done by Nashville a month from now or that I’ll overlook some major error in a chart because I was rushed... but all you can do is try to eat that elephant one bite at a time!

I’m also very hard on myself because I feel like such a slow stitcher compared to Nick or my wonderful model stitchers... but I am accurate, which Nick in a rush sometimes isn’t, and I don’t have to pay myself!

By Monday afternoon the snow was falling heavily, far beyond the 2 cm the weatherman called for. Nick called to say the roads were horrible and the girls’ choir practice was canceled. Once Nick got home, we just stayed put.

By Tuesday morning, everything was sunny and clear again. Nick has a meeting after school at the board office to discuss the positions he intends to apply for in this first round of openings for Principalships for the 2006-2007 school year and it went very well. Now he’s polishing off his resume, updating Power point presentations etc. I stayed up really late stitching, but it was fun to see the design come to live beneath my fingertips.

By Wednesday morning, it was starting to get warm and they were calling for freezing rain or heavy rain by nightfall. My walking buddy and I finally got our schedules to match and we walked in the local mall for an hour. I came home feeling worked out but satisfied and got lots accomplished before I headed up to the bus to meet Bethany. Imagine my horror when she stepped off the bus holding one arm funny!! She’d slipped on the last part of some playground equipment right after lunch, but everyone at school assumed it was just a sprain because she could still move her fingers. No one called me or even sent a note home! I put some ice on the wrist area for a bit and waited for Erin to get home from staying after school for extra help. As soon as Nick came home, I bundled Bethany off to the hospital with me for an X-ray because she couldn’t hyperflex her “drawing hand” at all and my mommy senses were tingling. It was a long wait in the ER, but finally, the images confirmed she did have a “buckle fracture” in the radius of her right arm an inch or so below her wrist. By then, it was too late in the day to get a cast done and the wrist was still a bit too swollen, so we got a plaster splint and a note to get us fast tracked at the ER this morning. I managed to get quite a bit of model stitching done while playing 20 questions for over 4 hours to keep Bethany’s mind off how much her arm hurt.

By this morning, it was pouring rain. I drove the girls to school so that I could express my disappointment at not having received any communication from the school. Her teacher was aghast that it was broken. I certainly didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, but I did want to stress that I prefer to be called and given the option of what to do if my child is hurt during instructional time. Bethany and I went down to the hospital afterwards. She was prepped for the cast, but just before the plaster layer, the cast expert was called to the acute side of the ER for an emergency splint. We played silly puppet games with her jacket sleeve and more 20 questions until he returned. Once we were done, we headed to the bank to deposit my Hoffman cheque in the US dollar account and then to Blockbuster to rent a pile of fun DVDs to watch together (she’ll watch, I’ll stitch and listen) until the cast sets in 48 hours. She can’t really draw until then so she’s very grumpy about that... just like her mom would be.

This morning, we also found out that our new dwarf hamster, who has been with us for just over a month, is as diabetic as Nipper who passed away a year ago. Perhaps females are just more vulnerable to this disease. Erin has been heartbroken all day and cried as she played with her tonight, but I tried to turn that into a life lesson. We really never know how much time we have for anything, so each moment that we do have should be savoured and enjoyed. With special diet, she may live another few months... or even longer. We certainly won’t breed her to our male hamster of 10 months though. I think the girls were hoping for one batch of baby hamsters sometime...

What a week this has been so far!! My framer is on standby for this design as soon as I finish it. One more late night and tomorrow with Bethany should do it. Tomorrow night is date night and I can’t wait to toast the end to this crazy week with my husband and a nice glass of Merlot or a piece of chocolate!!

Looking Back and Looking Forward...

New Year’s Eve always makes me feel reflective. Perhaps it is something about having a new year with all the possibilities stretching out before us that inspires me to dream about what the coming 365 days will hold.

Tonight we are staying in with friends joining us for a night of games, good snacks and great company. Mom and John are also here, so the girls are thrilled to have grandparents around.

It’s funny how hard it has been to blog lately. Things will inspire me to write and then I get interrupted. I am going to try to change that for the New Year and go back to writing smaller entries more often.

One of the most exciting things to happen over the holidays was reading the latest Monica Ferris book that I received as a present. It is set at the show in Nashville, which I am getting ready for, so I could picture everything very clearly. When I got to page 190, you should have heard the SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAL that I let out upon seeing my company name in print. So silly, but incredibly fun as well. When she mentioned the line about a bunch of us being dressed up in garb... I had to laugh. At least she didn’t have me running through the lobby with my sword!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!! May it be a year of dreams and inspiration for everyone!

Happy Holidays... Celebrate the Unexpected!

Response the the fun I’ve tried to have with the website this month has been gratifying. Life should be a adventure and looking for ways to celebrate the unexpected, as well as longing for what is expected. Tonight was lovely at church. The girls sang and played the tone chimes with their choir. Nick and I sat together in the audience, without wiggly daughters, for the very first time. Now everything waits in a still hush. The girls finally asleep and dreaming of presents tomorrow, my house is awash in the promise of advent now fulfilled. Nick and I have sipped on the elderberry cordial that I made from the bounty of our bush this fall... and life is good. May we never stop looking for wonder in our world or celebrating the unexpected!

Calm Before The Storm?

I can’t believe December has flown by even faster than November. Where has the time gone? Rushing from one event to another... from Christmas concerts and staff parties to Guides and Sparks and Junior Choir... My parents once warned me that the years would go by faster as I got older and I didn’t believe them until now!

Today is the last day of quiet in my office before the girls are home for the holidays. Nick works until noon on Friday, but I am keeping the girls home for that last half day since Bethany actually would have been dismissed and back on the bus 2 hours after getting to school! I’d much rather have a PJ/Princess morning and stay in our jammies.

I always look forward to the Christmas Break with a sense of joy and also resignation. I will work on stitching now since that is easier to do up in the living room with the rest of the family. I will look forward to not waking up to an alarm every morning, but I will also miss the quiet of the house as I work on the computer when everyone is out at school.

The show in Nashville will be here before I know it! I am still trying to finalize which designs I will actually invest in printing for this show. THe tougher market right now has forced me to be much more selective about what I release, which can be a good thing. By acting as my own quality control before printing designs, I can be sure that the very best of what I produce makes it into the hands of stitchers. Quality vs. Quantity. I must keep that in mind with holiday cookies as well!!

The Magic of Storm Days...

Today was supposed to be back to back chaos. One complicated meeting and then racing over to church to help put on the Advent Retreat that I helped to plan. A snowstorm and high winds have canceled school for the day, and also the first meeting. With the roads a little iffy in the wind, I decided not to risk venturing out for the retreat either. My minister and I had touched base by phone this morning to see what we’d do and she urged me to stay home if things looked bad. Since our street only JUST got plowed out and the winds are picking up a bit, I decided to listen to that little voice that said “Be Still!”

My kids, however, are out in the backyard right now, bundled up to the gills for a romp in the snow before the winds escalate to the 90 km hour high the weather channel is calling for. Their best friends from across the street have joined them to give Lori-Ann a chance to rest. She’s been fighting pneumonia and the last thing she need right now is two energetic boys underfoot.

This is one of those moments that reminds me why I chose to do what I do from home. It helps ease the gloomy feeling from yesterday when the exchange rate on my Hoffman cheque was so pitiful and the Postal Service announced that rates on everything are going up AGAIN. Snow days can be a magical way of life telling you to just listen to the world around you and move at a slower pace. We modern humans tend to want to impose our will on the planet and have everything to be “business as usual” no matter what the weather is doing. I’m not convinced that this is always best for our bodies... or our souls.

FEELING FROZEN IN ONE SPOT...

The weather is getting colder and I do find myself wrapping my hands around warm mugs of tea more often, but these past few days, I have also felt as if I am frozen in one spot, unsure of where to move next. Not in a bad way, necessarily, just unsure.

We did have some fun on Saturday and have added a new member to our family! While going into the pet store after groceries, just so the girls could have a Pet Fix, we discovered that a new shipment of baby dwarf hamsters had just arrived that week. They were also different markings from Wuffles. I picked up one tiny one who was white with black spots who promptly tried to leap from my hands but didn’t bite the way Nipper had when we bought our first hamster last fall (who passed away after only 5 months). We are pretty sure that Jellybean (full name Jumping Jellybean Jaws according to my girls) is a little girl. she is SO tiny compared to Wuffles who has been with us for 9 months and is palm sized. Jellybean is just over 2 inches! Since we already had 2 cages, we decided to get her. Nick insists it was IMPOSSIBLE to resist 3 females looking at him with big pleading eyes!! I’ve also been told that Jellybean is in lieu of a sweater and I get this present early, but I don’t mind at all. Now begins the fun of making her even tamer and hopefully she will be as friendly as Wuffles as she learns that hands can be nice instead of scary things that scoop you out of your cage!

Just getting that all down in this entry had made me smile and feel a bit unfrozen... but I still feel like I am waiting for something, I just don’t know quite what....

Peace... Quiet... and Health AT LAST!

I’m not really sure where November went. Suddenly the end of the month is here and I am finally able to get some large blocks of work done now that Nick is back at work and I have my voice back. Last week was horrible with both of us home, feeling under the weather, yet still dealing with 2 energetic girls and all their activities. Erin’s volleyball team placed 2nd in her division, but I have yet to hear if that means more matches for playoffs etc. Swimming lessons and gymnastics just wrapped up until after the holidays and there are only 2 more weeks for Guides and Sparks. I can’t wait for the holidays just to relax a bit.

I feel way behind in deciding my lineup for Nashville, but I know that sometimes being backed into a deadline gets me to pick and narrow the field. Luggage weight restrictions and budget mean that I can’t really release more than 3 designs for that show, so I have to try to decide what stitchers will enjoy most... and that’s not always easy! At least it does keep me on my toes!

Baby Steps and Giant Leaps...

It was a whirlwind weekend... the culmination of almost 2 weeks worth of work on two iMovie slide shows for church and drawing a 36 inch square panel on Mylar drafting film so that the families who attended our Advent Festival could colour it in. It will now be able to be taped into one of the plain glass windows at church for the Advent season and easily removed afterwards.

The hardest part of all of this was leaving Nick at home for so many of the special events. This was all supposed to be family time.. and yet, you cannot cry over spilt milk. I can just be thankful that he is getting better in baby steps. Each day we see a bit of improvement and so things look hopeful. It could be so much worse. I am also learning to do a lot of things I always let him do, though I think I will draw the line at using the snow blower!! I have that artist’s fear about things that could chop off fingers. We may just call around and find out what it would cost to have our driveway plowed out this winter so that there is no risk Nick could hurt his back again while it is still healing.

I’ve also been very busy with freelance writing for our local paper. It had been a toss-up between that or supply teaching for extra income to replace what would have come from TLC and Hobby Lobby. The advantage of the writing is that it can be done at home, after the girls are in bed if necessary and I don’t have to set up after-school daycare for the girls on a sporadic basis. You don’t get a lot of warning for supply teaching, so it is hard to know when you will need the after-school care. Since sending them my resume and writing samples, I have been pleasantly busy with stories as we move into the holiday rush. Funny how all those years of copy writing just leap right back to my fingertips!

So this week will be a combination of baby steps and giant steps forward... and maybe some bunny hops in between!

Too Much To Do!

I thought that once I got through the shows in October, I’d have a breather, but for some reason stuff is colliding on top of my desk again!! To make up for some of the income that won’t be coming in from Hobby Lobby anymore, I’ve gone back to doing some advertorial writing for our local paper. Some clients just don’t like to get back to people on the phone and I find that frustrating with tight deadlines.

I’m also editing a movie to play in church this Sunday. iMovie on my Mac will let me add type and music to photos and create a wonderful slide show that I can then burn to DVD. The learning curve on this has been a bit vertical, but I am pleased with the results. What was supposed to be a whole committee working on this ended up just being me, with some help from two ladies who dug through all the old photos for me to scan in.

Nick’s back is still really locked. He went for his first physio today and is now able to walk/shuffle on his own without holding onto walls, but I don’t know how he’s going to go back to work on Monday. We see our family doctor for a follow-up tomorrow, so we’ll see what she says. Meanwhile, I am getting used to the interrupted sleep and having him underfoot during the day... but I’d give almost anything to know that he’ll get better!

Picking Up The Pieces...

It is hard watching someone you love try to inch around the house when normally they are so full of energy. All I can think of is how this must be for those who have their lived turned completely upside down by something permanent. We know, at least we hope, that Nick will get better. I see an improvement just since yesterday, but it has been so hard to see the man I love in pain and feeling helpless.

This has also been one of those coming of age moments for Erin. She is old enough to be scared by Daddy not being the big, strong invincible hero, yet also so sympathetic and helpful to me getting stuff done around the house. Both girls have been such incredible helpers that it has made a rocky weekend bearable.

I’d also forgotten what it was like to sleep in fits and starts. Helping Nick turn over or fetching water bottles in the wee hours of the morning is like being back on those 2 am feeding schedules! If I survived it twice, I can survive it again.

I am SO glad I started the blog about hopeful quotes (my blog called CandlesInTheDarkness) because searching for positive things to share with others has helped me too!

Clean Shed...Broken Husband!

There is a reason why marriage vows include those lines “For Better or Worse, In Sickness and In Health”!

Nick and I spent 3 hours this morning cleaning out the shed. We don’t have a garage attached to the house, so we’ve had a “baby barn” as they are called here in the Maritimes, or shed, to hold the seasonal items such as bikes, snowblowers, holiday decorations etc.

Lately, the shed has started to resemble my office- a place to stuff things until you need them. Since it was getting hard to move around in there to find things, we decided to haul almost everything out and really purge!! Part of my de-STUFFing project.

It was very productive, if somewhat grueling, to realize just how many half empty boxes of things had been thrown in there that, once organized, took up a LOT less space. We filled the van with a load for the dump, found several boxes to go to the church rummage sale of books or outgrown shoes that weren’t needed anymore (ever notice how kid’s dress shoes never really get worn out before their feet grow too big?) etc. I even found my cross-country skis, boots and poles!

We had a late lunch once we finished and then Nick headed up to take a warm shower to see if that would make him feel better. Unfortunately, he got sleepy instead and lay down on the bed. When he woke up, his back had seized up and he could hardly move!

He’s been hobbling around since then. We had planned to have dinner out with good friends, but instead they came over to our house and we ordered food in. Once they left, I got the girls ready for bed, Nick crawled up the stairs and I got him settled in bed. He has one of the walkie-talkies beside him to reach me while I work on the computer tonight. So much for date night!

I’m actually very glad that I didn’t got to the stitching retreat this weekend (the one I usually go to just for fun) because if he’d done the shed alone, he might have hurt himself even more.

I guess we’ll just have to see how the rest of the weekend plays out...

How Do I Explain What I Do?

I got a panicky call from Erin’s teacher on Tuesday. The parent volunteer from our school who normally helps out for the district-wide Science Olympics was unable to attend this year, so she called to see if I could fill in. As it was, Nick was also helping out with the event, so I juggled my schedule around and told her I could do it. Then, Erin and one of her classmates were chosen to fill in for 2 kids who had dropped out unexpectedly, so this morning only Bethany got on the bus and went to school. The rest of the family headed off to Science Olympics.

It was a fun day and all of the kids were really well behaved. The only thing I found odd was that several people came over at different times and said “Oh... taking a day off cross-stitching?” One of them knows that I design patterns and that I’d just been away at two shows in October, but the other two had only heard that “I did cross stitch for a living” and so were asking all kinds of questions as to how they too could get paid to stitch all day. LOL!

I gently explained that I did try to do a bit of stitching on models every day if possible (sometimes it isn’t) but that I mostly designed the patterns, shipped orders, programmed my website, answered e-mail, filed receipts, did freelance graphics, writing, editing and illustration as well. I hate to burst someone’s bubble, but it also isn’t realistic to let someone get a warped idea of what stitching (either as a model stitcher or as a designer) actually pays. I know most of my model stitchers do not count on their income from stitching to support themselves!

Perhaps someday, I will come up with a simple way to explain what I do for a living. Until then, I am just glad to have something that allows me to be flexible with my hours. Erin and her team were on the local news tonight and may also be in the paper tomorrow. She is just thrilled...

My Ways Are Not Your Ways...

I know that sounds more like a sermon title than a blog entry, but I’ve just spent the past hour explaining to my 10 year old daughter that she doesn’t have to find a boyfriend just because the other girls in her grade 5 class are trying to pair off with boys!

I can remember that ache of being so much taller than everyone else... so bad at anything athletic... so much into books and art instead of gossip games... and yet, still wanting somehow to “fit in” or be like everyone else, even though no one else was really sure what that meant either.

It’s really quite horrible the pressure our world places on all of us. To be thin, to be wealthy, to be popular, to be famous, to be powerful... It seems as if more and more kids are trying to accomplish everything before the end of their teens!!

What a far cry from the community we truly long to be part of... where we are valued for who we are, not what we look like, for how we treat others instead of how much we earn. Think of the fine examples of being neighbours such as Amish barn raisings, quilting circles, prayer groups, book clubs, knitting or stitching groups where that sense of belonging or helping one another still exists.

People wonder why I tell them that crafting is SO important. When you slow down and take the time to create something with your hands, you have the chance to ponder the deeper issues, to listen for the still small voices, to spend time with those you care about and share burdens... or recharge your batteries with much needed alone time. We cannot always run at a frantic pace trying to keep up to some imaginary pace setter on the track ahead of us! How awful to always be looking over your shoulder to see if someone is about to pass you!

I may never know how much Erin actually heard from me tonight. Perhaps the most important thing she will remember is that I took the time to listen. I did try to encourage her to just start finding out who she really is instead of changing herself to try to fit in or make someone like her. Words that it took me almost half my lifetime to believe for myself and the second part of my lifetime to champion.

Each of us is totally unique and wondrous in this Universe. We can bring gifts, insights, talents, wisdom, compassion and all manner of things into the world that NO ONE else can do just the same way. Find your own voice and then sing with all your soul. It shouldn’t matter if it is perfectly in tune!

In The Company Of Friends...

There is something to be said about the company of good friends. Nick and I went over to set up for our church’s pancake breakfast, which takes place tomorrow, and one of our friends offered to let our girls and their three daughters play together at her house instead of running around the church while we were all trying to set up tables. The girls had a wonderful time and then we stayed to chat while the kids finished watching a movie.

There is something so precious about spending time in the company of people you enjoy. It restores something deep in your soul to compare notes with other parents and discover that you aren’t the only ones who go through the challenges that rearing responsible children entails.

Friday nights are usually “date night” because when you have a home-based business, it is too easy to disappear to the office all the time. Tonight we shared that “date” with good friends and still felt connected.

It was a productive day getting packages ready to mail out tomorrow. Of the 22 orders I shipped out for the “I’ll Make My Own Happy Ending” design, it turns out that 5 never made it to the stores in question. Those are horrible odds, but what else can I do except send it again? I sure wish that our two postal systems worked better together!!

Finally Getting Tidy!

Today was productive and the garbage bags prove I have less stuff in the house than I did this morning. Nothing like knowing you’ll be having people visiting your home to make you tackle the piles that you’d normally ask your family to function around!

Now, there’s just my office to tidy and that is already underway. I had some patterns to get ready for Hoffman, so after sweeping everything from my desk to the floor to sort, I set the printer in the other room to chug away at printing out covers. I should be able to do a run to the post office if my allergy testing doesn’t take too long tomorrow. I am pretty sure that the trigger is either whey protein concentrate or potassium sorbate, but we’ll see.

There is something so therapeutic about not seeing clutter everywhere you look... so why do we let our lives get so cluttered up anyway? I am trying to coax Bethany into sleeping with less stuffed animals on the bed, but she insists on having the heap of 20 odd stuffies lined up against the wall to snuggle with. Ah well... I’ve been fighting that clutter bug in me for as long as I can remember and am only now learning at 40 how to get everything in its place. Maybe they will learn that earlier!

I Hate The Day After Halloween!!

OK... maybe hate is a pretty strong word. Last night was quite possibly the most glorious night for Trick or Treating that my kids have ever experienced. For once there was no bitter wind, no snow, sleet or rain, but rather a suddenly balmy temperature as many people decided to sit outside on their front steps with the bowl of candy to savour this last gift or warmth before winter makes its presence felt. This was the first year that Bethany was able to keep up with Erin and not have to go back to the house early. They each had a friend along for the cruise around our neighbourhood. Since the forecast had called for a 60 percent chance of rain, I had decided earlier in the day not to spend 2 hours painting myself green for She-Hulk, but I did don the wig, put on my medieval top and boots with my black jeans to saunter around with the kids. The fact that I ended up holding a witch’s broom and hat for Bethany’s friend only added to the general weirdness. At least my friend Cheryl wore the white feather boa that her daughter quickly discarded. That would NOT have been warrior-like at all.

What I found hardest about last night was the candy insanity that only seems to grow more intense every year. We put off buying the treats until Saturday. I was very well behaved as long as the bags were all sealed until I began filling the bowl near the door at 4pm yesterday afternoon. By 4:05, I knew I was in trouble. I had a tiny taste to make sure that none of the candy was stale and then set to making sure we all ate a healthy supper. Sweets are one of my biggest downfalls and getting to pick what I wanted from their bags as my “Mom Tax” for a tiny pile of treats to enjoy was such fun. The girls sorted out their candy and divided it in to two piles: The “I must keep this” and the “Ewwww! I don’t like those!” piles. I let them each keep a dozen tiny bags of chips, Doritos or cheesies and then the wretched excess went back into our bowl to hand out. A small grocery bag for each of them was then properly labeled so that there will be no confusion as to whose bag is whose. After a late night snack and far too much stalling, I got them off to bed and managed to foist the remainder of the chips and candy off on a herd of gangly teenagers that were sauntering down the street. Imagine their surprise when this tall woman in warrior garb threw open a door and bellowed down the street at them. “Do you want the last of our treats?” The ensuing stampede was quite impressive, but the “Gee thanks, Ma’am!” was like a shot of cold water to the ego. A nibble or two from my Mom Tax pile helped a bit.

The cold reality of the day after hit like a ton of bricks this morning as I stared at the wrappers I had left on the shelf near my seat. I lined them up like so many tiny body bags to take stock of what I had actually consumed. The points count was scary... but it fit right in with the topic I had to share with the Weight Watchers group I lead ever Tuesday. Confession time... Leaders are not perfect! I have learned once again that I am just far better off when the treats I give out are something that I cannot stand, That way the only nibbling I do is from the Mom Tax pile.

I wonder how badly egged the house would get next year if I gave out the sticker sheets I saw at Wal-mart? Then again... with a husband who may be a principal next year, it might be hard to be sure what exactly triggered the eggings.

Sigh! Time to give the tiny wrappers a decent burial in my garbage bag and move on.

Going Back To The Beginning...

I found my voice... then I lost it. I found a new path in the woods and thought that every step had to be a grand adventure, but that led me to forget why I had set out on this journey in the first place.

When I first started Dragon Musings, I wanted it to be a glimpse into the everyday life of a singe cross stitch designer... me. While I am great friends with a few other talented people in the industry, the only career I can really comment on is my own. When so many of the pattern sharers were accusing designers of wallowing in cash, being huge companies that didn’t care about stitchers or trying to otherwise justify stealing designs, I felt a realistic look into what I have chosen to try to do for a living was warranted.

But somewhere along the line I got distracted. I worried that if I complained too much, I would sound like I was whining... a trait that I am trying to curb in Bethany right now, so I should set the example. I also didn’t want to burst the bubble for aspiring designers by letting them know what a struggle it is to make ends meet some months, even after a dozen years of designing. I wanted stitchers to see the ordinary side of me, that designers are real people too, we just happen to be crazy enough to want to earn a living from something we used to do just for fun and relaxation.

One of my greatest thrills is to be able to do what I love for a living, but as my girls get a bit older and I have time to diversify back into illustration, I am going to chase that dream as well, especially since the needlework market is, shall we politely say, a bit soft?

Which in a roundabout way brings me back to why I suddenly realized how much I need this blog to head back to its beginnings... a more regular glimpse into the crazy career I have chosen. No more waiting until I think I have something important to say... it’d only be a puff of smoke anyway! No more wondering about implications and tone... blogging is all about the moment in which you write that entry. It gets nailed out there in cyberspace and captures that moment in time much as my personal journal entries anchor my thoughts to paper and clarify who I was at the time I wrote an entry. If time is fluid and we are always given the chance to change with every second that we breathe and our heart still beats, it is better to just get out there and live each moment, as ordinary or incredible as they may be, instead of waiting for the PERFECT moment and then look back to see how much we have missed in the meantime.

As an offshoot of this blog, I also started one up today called Candles In The Darkness that I plan to fill with quotes, inspirational stuff and messages of hope to counteract all the negative out there. I am going to have fun hunting for stuff that inspires me!

Off Again...

Another early morning flight ahead of me tomorrow, another tearful goodnight to Bethany and Erin. This time, there will be no Nanny and Grr to add a balance, but there are birthday parties and Guiding events for poor Nick to get the girls to.

I am sure that once I get there, the excitement will kick in. Right now, I know why I usually go into “quiet mode” after a show. It does take something out of you even as it recharges you. I am looking forward to the new experience of a retreat I have never done before in a pretty part of the world and seeing some familiar faces there. I just don’t want to have to do the 4:00 am wake-up!

The Dragon Finds Her Voice Again...

My grandmother always told me that if I couldn’t say anything nice... I shouldn’t say it. With the recent upheavals in the needlework industry and the strength of the Canadian dollar hurting the fact that most of my income comes in US dollars, I haven’t really felt like I had much to say that was positive. I did promise that Dragon Musings would be a look inside the head of a designer and a realistic look into my life... but I just couldn’t bear to whine and complain when I am still SO much more fortunate that many on the rest of this planet. Watching all of the natural disasters around the world has convinced me that snowstorms really aren’t that awful!

The second thing that helped me find my voice again was spending time teaching at the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival up in Toronto last weekend. It will now be known as the CreativFestival, which is probably more appropriate. It now encompasses everything from quilting and needlework to beading, basket weaving, scrapbooking and much more. While a few people lamented that there just wasn’t enough needlework, I thought that the strength of the show was the ability to reach out to such a wide audience of creative people. Seeing the faces of stitchers who have not only been students over the years but also become friends, reminded me of all the best this industry has to offer. Giving a lecture on how to not only improve the look of your crafts, but also understand why taking the time to craft is SO important to our spirit and our health, was a vibrant reminder to me to heed my own words and treasure my own calling.

In getting the website overhauled and broadened to reflect the true scope of all that I do, I have taken my stand that what I really do as an artist, is to try to create images that reach out and speak to people. Sometimes, it will be with a needle and thread, while others may be with painted rocks or watercolour illustrations.

The Ebay auction for the first two wizard rocks, Orion and Malachai, go live October 19th (Items #7358945644 and 7358947574) . It will be fun to see what the response is to them, if any. Like any business person, I need to constantly perfect and adapt what I do... or be open to new markets when a pathway narrows or a door gets slammed in your face. If you never take the risk of spreading your wings... you will never get the joy of knowing what it means to fly.

Would You Work As Hard?

Someone commented today on the amount of hours I put into building my own dreams and running my own company. They implied that until they met me, they always thought that people who ran their own companies had more time to themselves and more freedom that someone who worked for someone else. They laughed and said that working for someone else seems a lot easier.

I’m not so sure. I’ve been trying to earn a living from my own sources for exactly a decade now... when the prospect of putting my own child in daycare to go take care of someone else’s business so that they could stay home when they felt like it was enough to make the terror of working for myself almost bearable. I love the freedom to be able to adapt my day if necessary. Since Erin will be home sick tomorrow, but I actually have the van, the schedule of the day will be totally reworked depending on how she feels in the morning. At least I have the freedom to make choices like that... or to spend time helping my kids with homework, even if it means pulling some late nights to balance things out.

Would I work as hard for someone else? Probably in some ways. I have a very deeply ingrained work ethic that makes it very hard for me to give anything less than my best. Probably not in other ways... I would probably have more evenings free or rediscover other hobbies.

Would I change anything? Not at all. My 30s were all about feeling insecure about everything. I think my 40s are going to rock!

Set to Turn 40 with a Grin!

The first week of school is over and we are heading off for yet another weekend away, but this time it is up to a lovely spot by the ocean and our church family camp. Instead of basking in the Atlanta heat and sunshine, I’ll be cuddling up to a campfire and watching the stars come out overhead. Instead of painting myself green for She-Hulk, I’ll be spraying on the bug spray... but my family will be with me in one of the most stress-free spots on Earth that I know.

DragonCon was absolutely fantastic. I may put a page up on the website in the next few weeks to show the full transformation to She-Hulk, including the great help from Teresa. I had such a great time aiming for this dream... and winning Best Comic Book Character was just the icing on the cake!

Now I get set to teach in both Toronto and Ottawa next month, then calm descends until Nashville. One of the most important pieces of advice I learned from the science-fiction/fantasy artists there was that when you are not working on an assignment, you work on your portfolio pieces, so I am going to try to schedule in a few hours of drawing or painting the way I do for stitching. I painted some more canvases this afternoon and it had been just long enough since the last batch that I found it fun instead of boring.

I entered my last decade full of doubt at my abilities at being a parent, full of angst at going freelance, full of sadness at how out of shape I’d gotten, full of fear about the gallbladder surgery I had to undergo 6 days after turning 30. No cake and no real celebration that time. I certainly made up for it this year!

So, I guess I am completely ready to enter my next decade with a saucy grin. Here’s to the fact that you never get too old to chase dreams!!

The Dragon Has Landed!

I've arrived in Atlanta and have registered for both DragonCon and the Masquerade contest on Sunday night. Tonight, Teresa and I are meeting with some area stitchers for a great dinner out and then the rest of the weekend will just be Teresa and I wandering around DragonCon trying not to gape at the incredible (and outrageous) costumes around us.

This should be SO cool!!

What I Do For A Living...

It’s late and the taxi arrives in under 5 hours. I can always sleep on the plane and am almost a bit too wired to sleep anyway. I am SO looking forward to DragonCon and yet tonight, I had to put my littlest one to bed in tears. Bethany has always minded time spent apart from me, though she’s happy as a clam to play somewhere else in the house just knowing that I am here when she wants me. Tonight, amid sobs, she asked me why I had to go away for “days and days” for shows.

I explained that one of the reasons I can be there to get her off the bus every school day and help her with her homework every afternoon is because I don’t have a job that’s like most jobs. She has a few friends who have to go to daycare after school every day and so can sort of understand that the time she gets normally is offset by me having to go away now and then for 3-5 days at a time.

This time, having just been to Charlotte for a show as a family, she kept asking why we couldn’t ALL go. It’s rather blunt to have to tell your child “We just don’t have the money to do that.” but in the end, it is a lot more real. Erin is aware of how angry many of the adults are in town today with gas hitting 1.39 cents a liter. That’s about 4 dollars a gallon. Still cheap by European standards, but Moncton doesn’t have that great a transit system, so people are really wondering what they will do.

Would I change what I do for a living? Absolutely not! Do I sometimes wish that I could trade some of the creative freedom for a bit more financial security? Of course! Am I going to have a great time wearing a sword or painting myself green this weekend? YOU BET!

Getting Excited About The Weekend!

It’s hard not to have crossover in my blogs these days as I get ready to leave for Dragon*Con in 3 days. Teresa and I are going to have such a blast in Atlanta! the more details they release about how our section of Moncton is going to be shut down for the Rolling Stones concert, the more I ache for Nick who is going to be looking after the kids this weekend while I jaunt off.

Tonight Bethany asked me WHY I was going to Atlanta. I explained to her that I was following a dream and that some day, she would understand. I love my two girls more than life itself sometimes, but they also will see that you can still have dreams of your own to chase, even after you become a “Mommy”!

The reaction to the blond hair was quite funny at Weight Watchers this morning when I led my Tuesday meeting. They are all waiting to see pictures of me green on stage as She-Hulk when I do the meeting next Tuesday morning, so I will be sure that the batteries of my digital camera are well charged.

I’m actually taking stitching with me to work on... LOL! I think it will keep me calm! I’m absolutely giddy since I found out that Anne McCaffrey, Marv Wolfman and Richard Hatch will be roaming around Atlanta too along with Lynn Abbey, Jody Lynn Nye, Marina Sirtis, LeVar Burton, Robin Curtis, Dean Stockwell, Larry Elmore etc. I’ll be such a fan if I’m not careful!!! I wonder if Lorenzo Lamas remembers staring in SNAKEEATER with me 16 years ago?

The Dragon Goes Blond!

I’m getting ready for Dragon*Con in Atlanta this coming weekend and went to the hairdresser for a trim to keep my hair nice and short under the wig when I dress up in costume Sunday night as She-Hulk... but while I was there I decided to go blond instead of the red rinses I’ve been putting in the past few years. I posted a picture on my other blog for those of you who are curious.

We had a great time at the family wedding in Ottawa and I even got to meet up with my old college roommate who was kind enough to drive all the way out to the airport on HER 40th birthday, with her family, so that we could see each other. Our kids had a blast blowing bubbles in chocolate milk and scarfing down Timbits while we chatted and then dashed for the plane.

We arrived home to find that Nick has not only painted the whole rec room the colour we’d chosen, he even came up with a much better floor plan and moved most of the furniture. I think that he and the kids may tackle some of the black furniture to see if they can scuff it up and paint it white or colours to match the room better this weekend while I am away. With more than 70,000 people invading Moncton this weekend for the Rolling Stones concert, he isn’t going to try to go very far on Saturday, especially since we should be able to hear the concert from the house!

It’s actually fun getting ready to go away on another trip that isn’t all business. Actually, this is just a crazy dream that I’ve had for over 4 years, ever since I decided I needed to take off the extra weight I was carrying. I needed a good carrot that would help me keep it off permanently, or at least for a few years. Looking ahead to 40 back then and declaring that I would “find a major comic/sci-fi convention and dress up as She-Hulk” sometime in 2005 seemed a LONG way off. Now here it is just 6 days away!

I can honestly say that chasing this dream has been as exciting as seeing my name in a cross stitch magazine for the first time, or getting fan mail, or painting something for a gift that you know really touched someone, or learning how to do the butterfly stroke in swimming, or going on a corkscrew roller coaster will Erin this summer...

Whenever we take on a new challenge or chase a dream or create something, we are recharging something inside! I can’t wait!!!