Happy Late Birthday Indeed!

washiwashiwashiwashi!
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I won the paper fetishist lotto tonight.

This incredible gift of washi and other beautiful papers that I recieved tonight has pulled me out of my hole to blog a bit. It is just spectacular and I haven't even gone through it yet. I need to find a good place to store all these pretties. I have some pretty wonderful, thoughtful and generous friends.

Speaking of friends, we took a little drive down to RI to see HeatherJeany, meet her husband and her precious new baby boy. Packed up all our gender neutral clothing along with the much loved but sadly outwiggled Moby Wrap and we took to the road Saturday morning after a sudden warmup after a bad storm. We had a great time. She's the best, her husband is very sweet and her baby is adorable and so tiny!





I actually have a lot of new work that I haven't blogged about yet, new work that I even love but something is holding me back. I keep waiting for the perfect words to talk about them, but I don't have time to come up with the perfect words these days so I end up here writing about paper, friends and cute babies.

One might say I am at a weird point in my art where I am trying to figure out what to do next. I've been going on a bit of a different path these last few months and it is continuing and it is exciting but sometimes very difficult.

I miss you guys. I miss the morning routine of tea, oatmeal and blog writing and blog reading.

March will be different. Can't February be over already?

daily themes

theme for the day - Day 1
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I've started doing these from cards that I wrote and put in an empty drawer. At night I shuffle them up and pick two. Then when I sit down to do some art I keep them in mind. We'll see how it goes. I didn't have much time for art yesterday so all I ended up from these suggestions was this simple sketch, but it was good to get back to my daily sketching.

Today I have:
Change Tools
Read a Page from the Closest Book (that would be Eat, Shoots and Leaves



My birthday ended up better than I thought it would be when I woke up feeling horrible to bad weather early yesterday. Before I knew it the skies had cleared and it was a beautiful spring day for me. And since Jon had the day off we were able to enjoy it together with our daughter. And that is all I need.

We've been in Boston for five years now so I know winter is not over, but I do think it is safe for me to hope that we will have more good days than bad.

Now to show off some recently listed reproductions from my mLeeRedux. I'm working to keep both that and mLee fresh this week.

Nothing Says Happy Birthday!

She Sits in Darkness
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Like cold, rain, wind and being sick to top it all off.

It's my 30th birthday today and outside is depressing on a day when I really need it to not be.

Seriously, February is not a good month to have a kid in most areas of the United States. It is hard caring for a newborn in this weather with bundling them up and illness and all that fun stuff new parents just love.

And it isn't fun for them when they are older. This is the second time in a row that I have been sick and isolated on my birthday. I dragged myself out to a little birthday dinner on Saturday night, but due to weather and traveling for the long weekend only three people came. When you have something planned in February you need to anticipate people dropping out or it getting canceled last minute because of a storm.

If we ever choose to have another child I plan on trying to avoid months November through March as due dates. Early September was a great time to have a baby. And Boston summers are a lot milder than Chicago summers so it wasn't all that bad being huge during the summer. And it certainly wasn't as dangerous as being huge in icy conditions!

While I firmly anticipate that I am on the right track in my life finally and that my thirties will be better than my twenties today is still such a bummer. I got my hopes up thinking that my dad would send me something this year. He told me that he would send me a little something along with some of my sister's old baby clothes but predictably that never happened. And you know what, it hurts.

And I miss my mother today. A lot. I picked up a book for blee yesterday and thought about how if she were around then blee would always have plenty of books from grandma. Thankfully she raised me well and I know what to get. It was an exchange and I had a very limited selection to choose from so I got Harold and the Purple Crayon. It is a little to old for her, but it never hurts to start the collection. There is a Leo Lionni (Fish is Fish and Frederick) box set that I want badly.

I was supposed to go to a babywearing group in Cambridge today as the meeting this time is actually a lot more accessible than normally. But with this weather I am not so sure anymore.

At least I am not puking on my birthday like last year! And I have a lot that I am truly and deeply grateful for this year. It would just be nice, yanno, to not be hacking up strange things on my birthday for a change. *edit* thinking about my symptoms and the fact that my father in law had pneumonia I am starting to suspect that I have a case of walking pneumonia. Freakin hell! And the doctor won't even be open for me to make an appointment! Double doh!