The Hamazon

My depiction of a Picasso looked more like Sloth from ‘The Goonies.’

Draw Something is the planet’s newest awful time-wasting life-killer. It’s an electronic Pictionary for two people with smartphones or iThings. The words you choose from can range from easy (sad, mop, rainbow) to somewhat difficult (bestie, meat dress, tebowing). One time, Jessica Simpson was an option and I was like… really? She of ‘I don’t know what tuna is!’ fame and The World’s Longest Pregnancy? How would I draw her?

One thing I resent are people who have a stylus to work with, for more detailed pictures, while I have ten giant Samoan digits. I swear it took me 30 minutes of draw-delete-draw-delete before completing the word ‘Xerox.’ Now that was a red letter day.

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Frida Kahlo cupcakes

I had the chance to participate in the Greenwood Artwalk thanks to my favorite non-profit, 826 Seattle. Their artwalk installation was based on what MD called Edible Artistic Telephone.

Her explanation:

“Students were given pieces of original artwork (mostly classic pieces) and asked to write stories based on those. Then, the student’s stories were given to local artists to create their own interpretation of the writing. Then those original pieces were given to more students to create more stories. Then those stories were given to more artists to create more original pieces of artwork. See? Artistic telephone!”

People made food for the installation based on the original pieces of art, which 826 assigned to us. I was given Frida Kahlo’s painting, ‘The Two Fridas,’ a painful, straightforward homage to the Self and heartbreak, and one of the Kahlo-iest of the Kahlos. Great! I thought. Nothing says yum like surgical pincers and bleeding out in a wedding dress.

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Now that I’m 36, I don’t know what to call myself. It’s not like we walk into rooms and announce ourselves formally — “Marika of West Seattle! Thirty-six! Ladyperson! Lover of Tater Tots!” — but when addressing myself, I have no idea what to say. I still feel like a girl, but the word ‘girl’ conjures up

pigtails, jump rope, crocodile tears, the inability to look clean after eating ice cream;

hairspray, attitude, unframed Depeche Mode posters, ignoring Mom’s advice to ‘put a jacket on’;

heart-thumping firsts, metallic prom gowns, broken curfews, the treacly taste of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine;

overpriced textbooks, an English professor crush, getting the munchies, coffee shop conversations about bands and God;

résumé writing, fruity cocktails, GIRL POWER music, precariously high heels;

sleeping in, road trips, hopeful interviews, falling in love with The One before meeting The Actual One.

Now I eat ice cream with a spoon without wasting any of it, frame all of my art, read from a Kindle, wear flat shoes, rarely sleep in, and always wear a jacket. There’s no curfew and no heart-thumping firsts because a lot of them are behind me, at least the ones I was actually looking forward to. Rock music: SO LOUD. Hairspray: environment sad. I wake up next to The Actual One and always have an updated résumé on file. And I never walk into a salon anymore and say, “Do whatever the fuck you want. Hot pink? Fine. Chop it off? Whatever.” Now I just ask for the gray to be covered… and to look cool but not, you know, too cool.

This isn’t to say I’ve got my shit together and that I levitate above the swollen, inept masses; I just grew up a little bit. Not a lot,  but enough to be noticeable had you known me at 26. I thought being 36 would be different somehow — like I’d wake up with a new haircut, a mortgage, and an extended lease on life, but no. The differences lie in what I know I will not or cannot do now, like

Ecstasy (a drug I never got around to);

cubicle work (a beige-colored death march plus health insurance, basically);

buy shoes from Payless (they’re cheap for a reason!);

stay up until dawn (only unicorn blood can cure sleep deprivation in humans over the age of 35);

camp in a tent on the ground, anywhere (a view of nature is majestic enough for me);

own some kind of hairy pet (not in this apartment, anyway).

So what am I now? The things and experiences that made me a girl are technically behind me.

A woman makes me think of Michelle Obama. A lady is old, or British, or both. Chica and gal are safe to call others, but people who self-reference themselves in that way (“I’m a go-get-em kind of gal! I’m a super sassy chica!”) should have their throats ripped out, fucking Roadhouse-style.

I recently sent this in a catch-up email to my two best friends:

When you turn 36, are you technically still a girl? I remember meeting 35+-year olds and thinking, “Wow, they sure are COOL for being so fucking OLD.” And now? Here we are. The older I get, the less far back I look, and when I deign to reach back into the recesses of remembrance, I pluck the good, shiny eggs from our worn-out basket. I don’t want to let go of the truth, the real stories that got me here — good, bad, ugly, though mostly ugly — but neither do I want to descend upon them like a shadowy girl from a land beyond time. Life is hard and sweet and bursting enough without dragging the past into it. And the future doesn’t look so uncertain to me anymore, but I think that’s because I’m okay with uncertainty and not because the future is set in stone. Would a girl feel that way? A girl of 36, a girl four years away from 40, a girl who has an almost 14-year old? Probably not. I guess that’s called ‘progress.’

Labels don’t really matter that much, or rather, they matter as much as you let them. I’m also brown! And loud! And tall! And weird! The thing is, I’ll always be brown, loud, tall, and weird — but I can’t be a girl forever. The older I get, the more I feel that transition from girlhood to whatever hood I’m living in now. A friend of mine calls it Oldergirlhood. What would you call a female roughly mid-thirties who liked tea and crumpets and challenges and f-bombs?

Two thumbs: this guy.

A rainbow-colored arsenal

As a lover of all things design, interior and beyond, it pains me to live in a space that sucks the aw out of awesome. Everything is  beige-y flat and 1970′s yawn (except for the shower, sink, and toilet in the bathroom that are a head-scratching pink). We could pack the place with 87 clinically-depressed clowns during a long Seattle winter and they wouldn’t last a week.

It’s time to make this awful place clown-worthy again! I’m happy we’ve begun the process of cleaning out corners, getting organized, and creating realistic spaces for both of our needs. His needs: an office for working out of the home, a man cave, privacy. My needs: a social space, a writing surface, an organized kitchen to play in, light. Our needs: a bedroom where the floor can be seen by 1-4 human eyes at a time; a system for wayward clothing.

So far, we’ve carved out an office for him, a writing space for me, a nice bedroom for us, a good social space for our friends, and made organization our daily bitch. It’s taken forever, but I’m finally starting to like where we live. Almost; barely.

Part of this apartment overhaul includes going through storage, letting stuff go, and cleaning things up — things like Justin’s amazingly awesome He-Man collection. I’m a pacifist at heart, but our fortified castle would just be a castle without actual fortification, so we’ve armed ourselves to the teeth with lots of colorful plastic weaponry. Mostly to defend against animated half-men in tights on steroids.

I cleaned up all of the toys, giving them a bubbly communal bath — yes, even Battlecat — and have plans for featuring them somewhere in our apartment. They’re just too awesome to keep in a box.  Maybe a staged battle, hanging from the ceiling, or a wall of mounted shadowboxes, or continuous, multi-room He-Man scenes? There’s a lot of options.

A friend said I should document this process by posting photos of things I like in our place — in an effort to stay positive instead of freaking out about where the ants are coming from or why our oven is so fucking small or if pink toilets were ever en vogue — and I agreed to it.

Operation: Positive @*$%?&#! Thinking has begun, and the Hamhaus should be better for it.

Filed under: When You Text Me On Easter

A client asked me a couple weeks back what I was doing for Easter, and I answered honestly: working. Because Jesus rising or crafting or snow-shoeing has zero impact on my bank account. This has been proven year after year. Her response was to be properly horrified and exclaim, “But who would work on Easter?!” Well, for one, probably Jesus. Resurrection can’t be easy, is all I’m saying. That shit takes effort. And two, I’m going to say heathens. That’s my category.

I told her we were open on Easter but not working a full day. “But when will you make it to church?” she asked, worried I’d miss out on Zombie Jesus Bunny who throws up magic chocolate eggs (or whatever happens at church — it’s obviously been a while). Again, the honest answer worked: “Later.”  She was relieved. “Oh, thank God!” she said. Instead, I thanked Mike and Steve, my religiously non-intrusive parents. Not once did they ever make me go to church on Easter. They didn’t even have the decency to pretend like we should go, which I still appreciate to this day.

Anyway, I didn’t lie. I’m totally going to church later. A wedding or funeral, most likely, at an unspecified date in the future.

Regarding Easter, Facebook was interesting this year. There was a 50/50 split between the effervescent, pastel-clad Believers and an extra-large group of mouthy zombie fans. I imagined an epic battle betwixt the two and never figured out who would prevail. The zombie lovers would have to climb down from their high sarcastic horses pretty quick, and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but effervescence is an actual weapon when used correctly. Growing up in a small town taught me that.

Holidays, no matter what your religion — be it for Jesus, Cake, or Bacon — are really a time to be with friends and family, and by that I mean eat fancier food than usual. Ham, for the most part. Sometimes you get dressed up for Easter, though I don’t know why, and sometimes it’s like any other random Tuesday. I wonder what it was like growing up in a family that did the whole shebang: Buying new Easter dresses, going to church, making a huge meal, and having a big, loud, messy dinner with people wearing ties and getting drunk. A creepy uncle you stayed just out of reach from; a crush on an altar boy. Maybe I’d carry a nosegay (the word ‘nosegay’ sounds nothing like what it actually is) with too much baby’s breath in it. Or maybe I’d have a baby in the bathroom at prom.

Being Heaven-bound would be the best perk, most likely… but Heathenry has served me thus far, and I cannot in good faith turn my back on Her.