wierd to get old

VERY much wrapped up in my baby and election shenanigans. Oakland is doing okay, we've got a breather from the heat and the robberies- feels safe out there, and cool.  Business is falling off, but still there.  Between Obama T-Shirts and Christmas event posters I'm still at this computer day after day, nervous, but afloat.

Weird to get old, man.  An old friend of mine dropped his baby off with me to babysit while he and the Ms headed out for a Shakespearean festival:  I learned quickly that there is no working while caring for a fussy baby.  I still have never changed a diaper in my life, but have got this kid on the way who will almost certainly require changing every so often.  During the course of caring for the baby I had a zen moment of comparing her very smooth and soft skin with my own wrinkled hand.  If you ever want to really feel the earth moving under your feet, compare your knuckles with a newborns nose.  

Presidential debates!  Government gajillion dollar payouts.  My new excellent friend Laurie and I ran around Lake Merrit and found new energy to keep running while discussing the debate.  Running alone I have to pause for breath: running while talking about politics is easy- anger fuels adrenaline.  If I'm getting in better shape it's because I'm pissed off at McCain.

My referral group that I pulled together from scratch is thriving!  I'm so freaking proud of what's happening at my early morning group meetings:  We've got a lot of very serious people in there swapping business back and forth- ain't nuthin but good, there.  I'm starting another one- tomorrow, in fact, only this time it's all illustrators.  Tomorrow at one in the afternoon I'll meet with a bunch of full-time illustrators to talk about what's happening with illustrators, and I can feel in my bones that's it's going to be good...

Just learned yesterday that my 20th year class reunion is coming up.  There is a myspace page and everything.  There's nothing in the world to make you consider where you are at like a high school reunion. 

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Pain management

So Applesauce is about ready to pop.  Anyone who has had a kid knows about the "Weeks" measure- we're at 34 weeks.  I had to ask in our birth class what the week ultimate was, then blushed and looked away when it turned out that everyone else knew.  Well, what the hell, I'm just a guy, piss off, world.

Yes, birth class- eight preggers ladies with their fellows in a yoga studio focused on comfortable positions.  Birth is a really uncomfortable thing to talk about, seriously.  I am a guy who if he was a soldier in the muddy trenches in WWI would be cracking wise right before we all went up over the top to face machine gun fire.  Turns out that cracking wise is not so good in birth class.  Who knew?

Her belly is fat and wigglin. It's nice- it ain't too bad.  Sometimes I think that the best place in the world is the foot and a half or so around her cervix.  I am the snuggly dad when it comes down to it.  I'm looking forward to him/her, and what comes next.

Here's my latest, just for fun:

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birth birth birth, business business, dog dog

My Husky has two things going for her: 1) When she's sick, she lets us know before she spews from whichever orifice. We can get her down to the Oakland streets (Seriously, very polite in dog) to do it there instead of in this Condo and 2) she's gorgeous.  People stop me to tell me how gorgeous she is.  Buildup of goop in her eye makes me worried- I squirt disinfectant and eyedrops into her eye (she puts up with said squirting with great dignity) but it just keeps building up. There's a Veterninarian not three blocks from here, bank$$$ to check her out.  Worried...

OAKLAND is fine, y'all- busy busy busy.  The Ally, my prime watering-spot, is chock full of Berkeley students crooning to the piano, having fun making fools out of themselves singing at the top of their lungs, god bless 'em.  Applesauce is working the night shift at the baby factory leaving me here to myself doin stuff.  She's big and getting bigger all the time.  Today I glanced up at her, then got back to drawing, then looked up at her again and she was BIGGER.  The baby is kicking constantly.  We might have an arobics instructor on our hands. Two months! 

Just for fun here's my latest:

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I can’t imagine that anyone is still reading this...

Oakland is hot hot hot.  There's too much sunshine out there.  We desperately needed rain a couple months ago, now we're just used to being baked.  Everyone hides.  I walked up Lakeshore avenue and saw not a soul on what is generally a very busy city street, but all the air-conditioned cafes were packed.

Applesauce and I were charmed by the pool at our patio when we rented this place back in March, but now she's got to sleep for her night shifts while a crowd of people splash around making noise... sometimes in bikinis, which is nice for me.  I sit at this table cranking out artwork after artwork after artwork.

I draw!  I Photoshop, I Illustrator, I organize, I send shit out and supposedly get checks in the mail for it, though it's interesting that all big clients have reasons not to send checks for weeks on end.  There is a lot of frustration at the mailbox.  I have a mixed feeling of "Wow I'm producing a lot!" vs "I hope I'll get paid soon". 

Nicholas and his kin came over last weekend.. here's photo he took:



Not my kid!  But my kid is coming, around Thanksgiving.

Politics!  This new vice president of McCains took up a lot of my day today.  Poor woman- she's getting clobbered left and right.  I would pay a lot of money not to be her.

Not much more to report.  Nothing profound to say.  I hope all is well with you and yours

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Shoot out in Oakland

teh Crime spree in the East Bay in getting ridiculous- this is the kind of thing you read about in Comic books.  Right now, at ten in the evening, every restaurant owner in the East Bay is checking to make sure his shotgun is loaded and ready.  Ten kinds of crap might be happening as I write this.  I wonder if the restaurants aren't clearing of customers at around nine-thirty. 

Folks talked about it all day- every place I went, someone had something to say.  It's a lot like having the violence in 1998 in St. Petersburg, Russia, happen around me, which is to say, it's so focused on one given group of people that the rest of us feel safe.  Then, it was mafia and business types- here, it's restaurants.  I feel closer to restaurants: How many thousands of nights have I closed as a server at a restuarant?

here it comes- just watch:  Tomorrow or the next day there will be a big story in the paper about a shoot out in Oakland.  Just watch.

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Just a thing

After a lot of drawing and business shenanigans I went for my usual trek around Lake Merrit with Mika the wonder-husky.  You know how your dog always lunges on her leash after birds milling about and you kind of ignore it because you're tuned into your TyPod and who cares?  Well, this time, Mika caught one.

Seriously, I locked her head in between my knees and yelled "Drop it!  Bad Dog! Bad Dog!" and swatted her until she yelped and nipped my arm, leaving blood all over- I thought I was bit for a sec, but it was just the pigeons blood. I looked up from the bitter scene- Mika all vampirish, wolfish, bloody, snarling- and saw a family watching us in horror- the dad told his kids "It's just natural instinct-" and I basically ran away.  I still feel bad about the mortally hurt pigeon, but shit.

Well, shit in Oakland is wacky- Pasta Pomodoro got robbed- probobly (in my humble opinion) by the same guys who have been knocking over Trader Joes as of late.  We've got a gang of Franchise-experienced hoodlums on our hands.  Nobody killed, so it's all just a game for them now.  That makes me feel better about the whole thing, oddly enough.  Ain't nuthin like having your local criminals be smart.  It means they're not coming after me... or randomly beating me up in an alley.  Carry on, fellows, play your game!  It'll catch up with you.

A REAL life Batman would be serving tables right now, waiting, waiting (I crack myself up).  And he'd sure as hell beat the shit out of my dog.  Probobly tazer me, or at least sink a bat-throwing star in my arm.

So my Bday was last weekend- thanks to Smark and Applesauce for putting in an hour or so down at the pub watching me drink.  Oh, god, like it or not, I'm going to forty someday... that's what you think when you turn thirty seven.  Just kill me and get it over with.

(Applesauce baked a lasagna and made a blackberry cobbler for my Bday, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy)

 The best and most shining part of life is the kid kicking in Applesauces belly- looks like a little alien in there.  I'll never see pregnant women the same again.  I'm pretty sure that in my previous life I've always seen pregant women as something to run away from and avoid, but these days every time I see someone pregnant I feel like establishing a perimeter, protecting, helping out, comforting.  Getting soft in my old age.  Infants scream and I think "Aw" instead of "Shut that kid up!". 

Baby's coming, like it or not:  I'm on board.  I'm going through the things that men go through when their significant others are ready to pop, which is to say, I am attacking my business like never before and a little distant from Applesauces constant talk about the kid.  What?  She's nesting and I am too, but she's doing it in our home while I am stamping my feet into the earth, building a community and establishing my business.  I find that there is not a lot of talk out there about men dealing with new babies coming on- folks don't want to hear about it.  It's normal, mundane, not interesting.

Despite that, here I go:

I spent 12 hours today drawing, mechanical pencil to the page, scribbling.  Patio furniture sales tools.  hard to get the persepective right, but did two big drawings, scanned them, sent them out, and the client loved it.  Got a big check in the mail today and I can't believe it.  This whole deal, the my drawing for living deal, might just be working out, knock on wood knock on wood!

Applesauce is all about strollers, cribs, changing tables and a lot of medical stuff that I don't pretend to understand.  She's got to go get a huge needle in the butt because our blood types are different.  She just had a friend give birth whose baby is going through a lot of trouble because of the same shot...

A GAZILLION guys have done this.  It's not problem, it's just a thing.

10:00 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Hola

Hello all!  Wow but I've been neglecting my MySpace blog- if you are getting this, thanks for tuning in- ten thousand things have happened. 

I just got off the plane from Manchester, New Hampshire, by way of Las Vegas, the desert, sick as a dog.  How odd is it that that every time I visit New England I come back with Malaria, or Cholera?  Don't go back east, all.  It's humid and thick with thunderstorms, a lot of greenery and this very odd phenomena called rain.  Do you remember rain?  It's nice for the environment, but it's really weird to wear shorts and have to carry an umbrella.

Lightning is an exciting thing to look at when you are not afraid that it will fire up your state.  The best thing about being in New England was watching thunderclouds and lighting and whatnot.  They've got so much dmaned water over there- the misers!

A few nights ago I got to feel my baby- My Baby!- kick and wiggle in my loved incubator's belly.  Superfly is break dancing in the womb, and I am so proud.

Toby, I think.  As far as names go, Toby is as good as it gets.  Or Charleze if he's a she, just so she can be called Charlie.  There's a lot of debate about that.  Applesauce puts in a good twenty hours a week looking for names.

Picked up Mika the wonder-husky from the kennel earlier.  The veterinarians there were sorry to see her go.  She talks, y'know.  Yawls and stuff.  Very profound.  So now she and I have go this apartment to ourselves for a bit- Applesauce is coming into SFO tomorrow morning and getting back to work, all extended and ready to pop.  The kid is coming around Thanksgiving, like it or not...

And I like it.  It's all good, me being about to be a dad and all.  My clients are pissed, my graphic design and illustration business is lagging.  I pride myself on being a fellow who can handle ten things at a time, but  thirty different things are coming at me faster then the twelfth level of space invaders- I'm dodging back and forth and making the best use of my shields as I can, but those damned torpedoes keep coming on...

Right.  Like anyone reading this hasn't been through the same kind of trouble.  The thing that keeps me hanging in there is that a lot of other people have been through this and came out just fine, despite all. We're  way ahead of the game-  we've got money, we've got family, we've got love.  The only thing that I have to lose here is pride, if I can't make my business work. 

The really cool thing about it is that my business is working- I've got really good clients.  All I have to do is produce.  Work, Ty, work!

Sneezing, coughing and generally being wretched- I had a 100.4 temperature earlier- I wasted the day away reading a Terry Pratchett novel (he was just diagnosed with alzheimers, y'know) and playing Diner Dash. 

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BOOM

California continues to burn... how wrong is it that while California roasts, the beach is the coldest place?  Something wrong in the world.  Applesauce and her uber-woman midwife cohorts conspired a beach thing and succeeded, so to the beach I went, despite all deadlines.  Listened to them talk about kids, made 'em laugh when I could.  Kids kids kids.  Deadlines.  Kids and Deadlines...

DEADLINES!  I am SWAMPED!  more work then I can handle and it's so nice.  Almost all of it is illustration.  Kids stuff- kids characters for a bakery menu, kids characters for a recording artist, kids kids kids.  Very nice to be busy, bring on the paychecks! 

Another very charming concept that landed this week was the screenprinting re-order.  Re-Order, thy name is happiness.  All I gotta do is make a phone call or two, and voila, profit.  I has been shying away from screenprinting because frankly the stress level is high: I've got to commit money and hope the screenprinter does the right thing.  I've been embracing illustration projects because all I've got to do is draw... but Screenprinting= Stressfull and profitable.  Illustration= relaxed and less profitable. 

But the reorder, ah, the vaunted, beautiful reorder... there is nothing like a screenprinting re-order to bring a gentle, thankful tear to my grateful eye.  My wonderful, wonderful reorder has me passing out flyers with new energy.

Applesauce is halfway through the pregnancy now- we had a great ultrasound session.  These instruments are amazing- I saw a cross-sectioned baby back and forth in alien-looking blobs from every angle.  Brain, heart, spine, all else blobbed in and out on the monitor.  The baby had the back of one hand against his/her forhead, so the tech took a screen-shot and wrote "Drama!"and printed out the pic for us.  None of the onscreen blobs revealed a massive johnson.  We're not looking for a sex just yet- Applesauce wants to have as natural a birth as possible... how that fits in with this very high-tech gadget, I'm not sure, but I'm not complaining:  Turns out our baby is free from a long list of ails that I had no idea it could have had, including hoofed-foot, forked tail, tentacles, horns.  My mom summed it up nicely when she said "Babies are so perfect when they come out, so nice and innocent... and then we screw them up!"

thanks mom.  Well, anyway, as of now, we've got a not screwed-up baby.  I haven't felt it kick yet, though Applesauce says she can.

Smark up and headed off to Hawaii all of a sudden, with no warning, sheesh.  She must be doing alright.  Applesauce is going to take off for the first two weeks of August, leaving me alone, alone alone. 

..

..

PARTY!

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A drarin

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On fire

Well, I'M not on fire- this would be a pretty short blog.  But my hyper-sensitive preggers Applesauce insists that she can smell smoke most of the time.  The fires are far away from us, but I bet they are closer to you.  I knew it, I KNEW it when I drove past Lake Shasta months ago and saw the water level lower then I've ever seen it.  This summer is gonna get hot.

Oakland is untouched:  Our little uber-liberal 150-culture bubble has nothing burning.  We had four murders last night, but hey, it's Tuesday.  East Oakland is wonderful- I love these neighborhoods, all five of them:  Rockridge, Grand Lake Merrit, Park Ave, Montclair, and the Laurel.  I can even like Downtown if I'm in a good mood.  Temescal is Berkeley light, to me.  But my current stomping grounds is Lakeshore/Grand.  Pretty freakin cool.

Selling T-Shirts is HARD, man!  I've partnered up with a screenprinting shop on Webster thats got these two guys who are great, I love 'em to death, but they are going through the unbelievable throes that they've got to go through to get good at this shit.  We work in trade my computer gunk for time on their presses blah blah blah don't get me into my sales shpeil, I won't shut up.  But it's like walking through a minefield.  Everywhere problems pop up.  We knock them down one by one, but it's time consuming, mind numbing, unbearable as the heat sometimes.  It's been a couple years now that I've been doing the production end of this business- I'm good at that, but the sales end is kicking my ass around like a red headed stepchild and calling me Sally.

Sales is HARD, man, it's freakin hard.  I was down at a cafe today that wanted a hundred shirts printed up- the petite and pretty Chinese owner called up her back-staff to look at the design I'd put together for them and all wrangled it over, in Chinese, loudly, with me sitting there and wondering what they might be going on about.  The servers wanted a light shirt that hugged their curves, the cooks wanted a dark shirt that stains wouldn't show up on.  I splayed the catalogs, overcame their objections, did all the stuff a salesman is supposed to do until they insisted that they couldn't order until they saw samples.  We hemmed and hawed, we went back and forth and I wondered how the meager profit I would squeeze out of this was in any way shape or form worth all of this.  It ain't.  I'm doing it anyway.  This thing has got to work!

All I want to do is draw, y'know?

My business group- my great project- is growing well.  Some people plant gardens and are proud of the crops, I started a business group and have ten people amiably plowing along over breakfast early early in the morning once a week.  Organically, without my suggesting it, they agreed to bring in a guest each next week and I'm glowing about it.  This thing has got to work!  It will, it will, it's just a matter of surviving until it does.

And then home to Applesauce coming in from her nightshift at the hospital catching babies, preggers herself.  Ain't nuthin wrong with laying there on the bed telling her belly how my morning went while she falls asleep, the husky curled up with us and getting white dog hairs all over every goddamn thing. 

Anyway, gotta shout out to Nicholas- he's got a newborn going on, with a K.  Gotta shout out to Smark for being supercool (always), gotta shout out to Becky for being the last person commenting, thank you Becky! Shout out to Justin if you are still reading this, Heidi up there in Weimer, Gianna up north.  Lalli!  you dirty minded industrial equipment guru.  Sorry all that I am a lousy long distant friend, all.

Just for fun, here's what I've been up to:

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