..After a word from our sponsors

These past few weeks have been quite the busy ones.. I quit my job, took the GRE, applied to grad school, found another job, baked more banana bread than Curious George could ever eat and wrote a tome of new poetry. Christmas seemed to sneak itself in there, didn't it?

A few years ago I illustrated a children's book about the nativity story. I have a small box of the beautiful, first edition hard copies left I should probably start peddling:

So here's my shameless sale pitch:

If you know children, have children, or have ever encountered a child, this is the book for you! Send me an email and we'll get down to business.

In the meantime, I have turned our little den into a tissue-paper snowflake extravaganza. Christmas cards this year are handmade, yes, though I'll have to admit that the kitsch that another person with an art degree may achieve in such an endeavor is wildly lacking in mine; this card would be at home on your refrigerator, right next to your first grade art project where you were introduced to Elmer the glue bull.

Vale la pena.

I feel politically endowed somehow, with this official badge:

Yes, I did.

Spelling it out:

This Christmas, everything I'm giving (including my holiday cards) will be completely handmade. Given the state of most of our bank accounts to daily expenses ratio, plus the fact that I know so many artists/writers/crafters/bakers/thing-makers, this seems to be the absolute best way to get into my usual holiday fervor with nothing but construction stress (and what's a few lost sleep hours to way-too-much spent cash?).

All that said, I still have an Amazon wishlist, and there are absolutely books that I desperately, hopelessly, endlessly want for my own.

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Since my last, somewhat embarrassing and manic post about all the wonderful new things I'm doing in the place of the things I should be doing, I need to appease my ego by announcing that I have successfully sent off my first-ever submission to a residency. Hurray! I am now in the full throes of GRE study, which is proven to be a slow but somewhat painful process while I'm reminding myself of math that I have never, not once, in any capacity had to employ outside of my high school classroom. My brain feels kind of like a plucked chicken.

Undergoing such a futile process can cause me to tumble into discouragement, and so I offer the following excerpt that's been the proverbial light at the end of this muddled tunnel:

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

--David Whyte

To the library!