You Were Born, And So You're Free.

Day before yesterday was my birthday!

I would've turned 40 years ago if I would have known it was going to be that good.



Dave gave me the best presents ever. First, he took the day off work so we could hang out together. Then he gave me about a dozen awesome books. Seriously, my tattoo, calavera, and Day of the Dead art references quadrupled. One of them is a collection of Jose Pasada’s work, which my calavera stuff is largely inspired by. Another of my favorites is this crazy volume of Russian prison tattoos. Dave also got me a new futon (!) and sheets. Soooo comfortable. Then there was a new case for my ‘droid.



We had planned on a roadtrip, but I was feeling strangely apprehensive about hitting the road so we postponed our trip and went shopping instead. Our first stop though was breakfast at Annapurna, where I had an ABLT (a BLT with avocado) and Dave had a breakfast burrito. We stopped at Starbucks for coffee after that then headed to New Mexico Clay to spend part of a gift certificate from my mother and stepfather.



I bought brushes (including this awesome Japanese brush which I’m convinced will make me into a real artist), terra sigillata (which, ha, I just realized I always pronounce "sig-lee-atta" when it's actually "sig-ill-atta"), squeeze bottles for glazing, a current copy of Clay Times, stilts for firing glazed ware, a backup set of carving tools (I have about six sets of the exact same carving tools, but they’re like pens and pencils to me, I can’t have too many of them), a small drill for making holes in leather hard clay, and this strange tool that I’ve never seen before that purports to be useful for rounding the top edge of handbuilt (?) things, I also have some left over on the gift certificate so that I can go back and buy clay later.

Thanks, Mom and Marshall!

After New Mexico Clay, we went to Hancock Fabric store where we picked out some fabric and thread so I can make some hair things. Hair “things”? Yes. See, I’ve recently been wearing my hair in a kind of old school style; I call them milkmaid braids, but others have called them Frida Kahlo braids or even Princess Leia braids (the way she wore them on Hoth until they got to Endor). I started out trying to hold them up with hairpins and bobby pins (which, did you know, the British call “curvy grips”), but the texture of my hair is such that pins really don’t hold. So I derived a way of braiding fabric into my hair and then tying up the fabric. Since I had no fabric in the house though, I improvised by cutting up old bedsheets and cutting the legs off a pair of black tights.



(An early attempt using hairpins. And while I've got my rosy cheeked self in here, can I just say: I had always thought I'd have more gray hair--a lot more actually--by the time I was forty.)

This is turning into a long story, isn’t it?



Anyway, Dave picked out the pink fabric (I asked him to pick out something from the pink section) and I picked out the green nested pentagons.

After that, we went up to a cooking goods shop and bought a Cuisinart 12-inch skillet (which it turns out is too big for our stovetop and sadly doesn’t have a lid so it will have to be exchanged) and a microplane grater and I wire cheese slicer (for use on clay, not on cheese).

Then of course we had to swing by Sephora to buy some makeup. Dave helped me pick out a gorgeous palette of matte shadows from Too Faced and a lipstain in a color called Absolutely Red, which I love. As I was checking out, I got a birthday gift (Sephora’s good that way) of Philosophy’s shower gel in a scent called Vanilla Birthday Cake.



I had, by then, had enough of shopping so we went to lunch at Roachlish (Relish) and had sannies.

I wasn’t ready to stop yet, so we dropped off our new things at home and went to see a show about S.E.T.I. and something called "Impact Earth" (about asteroids and comets) at the planetarium at the Natural History Museum. It wasn’t a very good show, sadly, and I napped through the end of the S.E.T.I presentation and through most of the next presentation. Oh well. But then there was this:



Yes you are correct, that is a pair of astronaut “sleeping shorts” with horizontal strips of velcro on them. We can put a person into orbit around the planet, but it’s only velcro short shorts that keep that person from floating off into space while snoozing. That is a low tech solution right there. Check those out! What do you stick yourself to while you're wearing them is what I want to know. (Probably another astronaut.)

And this is a display of astronaut food, complete with a package of Lorna Doones there in the seven o'clock position.



Lorna Doooones in spaaaaace!



We also bought more books, these from the museum gift shop, for use at the studio.

The day still wasn’t over yet. We went for Indian food for dinner and stuffed ourselves with aloo gobi, dal tarka, and tandoori murg.



That little guy was hanging out in the lobby of the restaurant.

After dinner we stopped by the grocery store, then the studio to check out some of my new work just out of the kiln.



Those pieces are still super hot, so I put them down on the (trashed) glazing table to photograph.

Finally wee came home and had a couple of mini cupcakes for dessert. Dave bought a dozen of those instead of a big birthday cake for me. That one in the middle, the one with the white icing flower on top is a Boston cream cupcake and they are very, very good. Very good.



And that was my day except for this:


A bag filled with many, many awesome things from Kelly and Kevin, including this amazing print (!) and a hilarious poem about turning forty and a hair ornament that actually holds my hair (!!). (This is seriously awesome because the longer and heavier my hair gets, the harder it is to find useful hair ornaments. Most of them can't hold up to my medusa mane.)


Whoa. Just look at that. Just look at it.

Saba also thought it was her birthday when she spied the garland Kelly used to wrap my gift. Seriously, Saba was enthralled by it, so much so that my brain started to calculate just how much her vet would charge us to remove all six feet of it from little Saba’s colon. And now the garland lives on top of our tallest bookcase, away from the paws and jaws of little kitties.



Kitty treat!

Thanks, Kelly and Kevin!

And there’s more yet to come. My brother and I are going meat shopping on Monday for my birthday. My brother has a terrific, never-fail strategy when it comes to gifts: He asks you what you want and then buys you exactly that. This year, when he asked me what I wanted, I told him I wanted some steaks from Kellers Farm Stores, so that’s what I’m getting.

(We were supposed to go this past Tuesday, but there was an unexpected visit to the dentist—DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN!—more about that later.)

Hm. So yes, it was a very good birthday!

This is the perfect birthday song, by Laurie Anderson:



You were born and so you're free.
So happy birthday.