the procrastinating girl

Photo Finished

The new year is less than two weeks old, but it's already time for a sweeping generalization.  I believe it is out to get me.  Around most corners, there has been what feels like some kind of inexplicable cosmic force slapping me across the cheek.  And I don't do inexplicable cosmic force.  My Sunday was the best example.  With several hours unbelievably to myself, I decided to be efficient.  Right.  I wanted to burn CDs of pictures from the last (mumbled number of) years, then go have prints made and begin assembling albums.  Because, you know, we. don't. have. any.  Upon sitting down in front of my laptop, already totally impressed with myself, I immediately noticed something was quirky with iPhoto.  Things weren't dragging and dropping.  I could drag, but then I couldn't drop.  Then I couldn't export.  Then I could, but I couldn't export enough.  I definitely couldn't burn anything.  But I was about to spontaneously combust.  I called Apple's infamous helpdesk where everyone sounds like they just hopped off a surfboard and picked up the receiver.  The good news is that my pictures are indeed safe.  The bad news is that for now they are safe, but stuck on my laptop.  Although, the more I think about it, I do carry it with me often.  Pictures from our trip to Quebec?  Well, I happen to have them right here!

Pink Slip

Yesterday Zoe busted out, 'Mom, how come you say you're going to do something and then it never happens?'  I asked her if she was secretly trying to make it onto my blog.  Actually, for the third day in a row I promised to take her on the oxymoronic 'really fun errand', but kept blowing it off.  There is a post office pink slip wedged in between an empty Snapple bottle and some really gross change in the console of my car.  Every day it becomes a little bit more tattered.  And sticky.  But it's a good one.  Over the summer we took a private pottery lesson at a studio in an old yellow barn outside of Quebec.  Tres magnifique.  Now our finished masterpieces have arrived.  If only I can get the slip out from under today's granola bar wrappers.  And Zoe and me to defy the odds.

Genetics

I had the rare opportunity to dine last night with my original immediate family.  Seeing all of us gathered around the table, it would take a nanosecond (or an earthworm) to realize that we all share the same DNA.  There are a couple of give-aways.  The first is that we are wee people.  And there is a whole lot of dark and curly going on.  Less obvious is our shared passion for left-ist politics, the natural world and Mel Brooks.  So as I listened to my brother, a man from whom I actually differ in many ways (let's start with the cats), tell how he and his lovely girlfriend Libby made it to the van Gogh exhibit on the very last day it was showing at MOMA, I wondered whether we had something else in common.  He waited on line to enter the museum for 45 minutes with all the other slackers, I mean, reallybusyimportantpeople who made it just under the wire.  If you remember, my family went down a couple months ago and caught the van Gogh mid-stream.  Chalk one for TPG.  But if Ethan is similarly afflicted, maybe this procrastination thing is just in my blood.  Why fight it? 

New Year, Nothing New

Happy New Year to everyone.  I realize that some of you may have been expecting a kind of year-end round-up here at TPG.  You'd want to look back on the great, intoxicating highs:  How I located that missing safety deposit box key.  Or how those Cascade bottles finally got out from under the kitchen sink.  And of course the terrible lows:  How I let my family and my constituents down by soliciting a ring of high-class call girls.  But after about three minutes of thought, I decided I would just go blogging on as usual.  Oh, resolutions?  I'm sorry, my brain just exploded.  No.  Instead, my first order of business for the new year was to hang my totally brilliant Stendig calendar, the one that has been waiting for such attention for months, rolled up in its long skinny box in the corner of my dining room (um, yes).  But even 'the first order of business' in my universe can be a relative term.  So on the third day of the new year, I am happy to say that the calendar has made it out of the box and is now lying unfurled on my dining room table beneath heavy books to flatten its shape.  But sadly for me, THIS position has a real shelf-life.  We're having a dinner party two weeks from tonight.

The Last Picture Show

There are eight million people on Manhattan.  And today it felt like, well, lots of them were at the van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.  This was a special installation that showed the artist's use of color in depicting the night sky.  An interesting theme, although it sounded more like an excuse to give "The Starry Night" a change of scenery down on the 2nd floor.  Maybe it complained to management.  Anyway, to enter this exhibit, you had to get an extra free ticket that noted a specific time.  We deliberated too long at the information booth and were stuck in the last group at 4pm.  Along with a good chunk of humankind.  It would have been very easy, and desirable, when we saw the long line of bitter, tired art lovers (or, more likely, wannabes, as museum members could enter when they wish) to just bag it and go home un-Gogh-ed.  But even at their early ages, I wanted my girls to catch more than just MOMA's greatest hits.  So we waited.  After we entered, I pushed past the swarms (crowds, along with food courts and theme parks, are so close to my heart) and held my four-year-old up to see a painting that depicted a different starry night than THE one.  It was gorgeous.  But she said, 'You know, I like the swirly 'Starry Night' better.'  Still in preschool and already a critic?  My work was done.

Spare Pots

Last weekend at Sydney's birthday party, we entertained 13 little girls with arts and crafts.  Unluckily, when you order any supplies, they typically come in packs of 12.  Since then, and for the foreseeable future, the surplus 11 of, you know, everything, has sat in various states of undress in my office.  The main issue is the flower pots the girls decorated.  What am I going to do with them? 

-  They could be very uncomfortable hats for the girls' 7,000 plus stuffed animals.
-  I could have a set playdate activity until 2010.
-  I could enjoy 15 minutes of fame in local paper after giving to Zoe's nursery school.
-  They could provide five-ish minutes of solid 'drop-off-the-roof' fun.
-  I could try to return them (The receipt is... where?  Right.)

Actually, I'm hoping to donate the whole lot to a little girl who needs a birthday party.

Cleaning House

I own 18 different household cleaning products.  Eighteen.  And, yes, the now five empty containers of Cascade under my sink count as one.   As I was poking through my cabinets, I could hear Carol Channing's voice from Free To Be You & Me whining about "soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach."  Of course, I seem to be incapable of keeping them replenished.  The trouble now is the dish soap.  It had been low for some time, but I thought that was deceiving.  Isn't that stuff ridiculously concentrated?  Well, it's gone.  No matter how much water you add to create bubbles to pass for faux soap.  Someone at Colgate-Palmolive needs to create one OxyFabulous superpower that will get the cranberry juice out of my white tile kitchen floor, celery green pottery dishware and light pink skirt (I spilled an entire container a few weeks ago.  Still sticky).  And save me from having to keep track of 18 different bottles of chemicals.  For years at my gym, the showers had one pump.  It read:  Body Wash/Shampoo/Conditioner.  Genius?!  Of course, I'm a lot less lip-plumped than my lockermates.  The single dispenser sadly didn't last.  So, does anyone else smell an opportunity? 

I, Photo

Yesterday I uploaded about 25 truly underwhelming photographs from my reunion.  Once the transfer was complete, my eye caught the grand total of my digital library.  Want to guess?  4,883.  Want to know how many of those exist in real-world photo albums?  Zero.  I am not kidding.  I've had a few individual pictures developed.  I've even purchased the occasional album with lovely toile fabric or mod geometric print.  Beyond that, the process has been stalled indefinitely since the first time I pressed "import" on iPhoto. This is me sabotaging myself yet again, because I am totally sentimental.  For years, I have kept all my letters and cards in the same light wood cigar box.  And still have old mix tapes, even though I have nothing on which to play them (saving my neighbors from an afternoon interlude of Journey, The Commodores and Howard Jones).  I would love to have a visual record of my life that was accessible and orderly.  Maybe tomorrow I will unearth my empty albums instead of going to kickboxing, even though last week superscary Herman told me "Good job today" (or was that "Get out of the way?").  It feels a little late in the library to start such a project, but the timing may actually be right.  I just spent the weekend looking back.  And I'm still really in the mood.  

Vignelli Numero Due

I had an epiphany last week.  These don't always work in my favor.  In 1991, I had what I thought was a great idea to paint different colored circles on the wall behind my desk.  My roommates convinced me to stick to words.  Anyway, this lightbulb involved Massimo Vignelli's Stendig calendar.  The Stendig is a mammoth piece of wall art.  It actually hangs in the MOMA.  To me, it's the simple black and white calendar my Aunt Felice had in her kitchen when I was young.  The Stendig could solve two pressing issues in my house immediately and cost-effectively (it's only like $30).  First, I have one very obviously empty kitchen wall, and second, as I was told most succinctly by my 10th grade history teacher Dr. Christie, I "have trouble seeing the forest for the trees."  Stendig would give me a bird's-eye view of the month, as opposed to my current method (um, method?).  So I went online, credit card in hand, only to see they are completely sold out for 2008.  Late to the party as always.  At least I am already on the wait list for the 2009 calendar.  It's a small step forward.  But for the next six months, my wall will remain empty and my schedule in disarray.  Naturalmente.

Update: Vignelli's subway map sits in its tube at the side of my bed.  I trip over it every morning.

Signori Vignelli

Out of nowhere, Italian graphic designer Massimo Vignelli has loomed largely in my life this week.  Ok, first, I was at the library recently during an awful stretch without home web access, when I saw that the original NYC subway map was being rereleased in limited edition and signed by the artist.  And some of the proceeds were going to charity.  I can be impulsive when the time and occasion calls for it (I think Diane Chambers said that), so I jumped.   It may seem an ironic purchase.  I loathe the subway with every fiber of my five foot and (if I stand very, very straight) one inch being.  The stench.  The varsity sport of rat hunting.  Theproximitytoallmankind.  But I just love the simplicity of Vignelli's map.  And that blessed font Helvetica (Vignelli was interviewed for Helvetica the documentary.  Fascinating.  I swear.).  Anyway, yesterday, a gigantic tube containing the map arrived at my door.  Yes, I have to frame it, then find the perfect spot for it on my empty walls.  Multi-step processes are always my downfall.  But I am excited.  Please stay tuned for Vignelli part deux...