Latex paint is the perfect medium. I've been getting suspicious of the idea in the past couple weeks but now I'm entirely convinced. Its the cheapest and the best. I don't think I'll ever use acrylic paint on canvas again.

I can't help it I have to post this its too cute!

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Amber Amenita? Its important.

Hansel has a tent now between the couch and a tall fan. His tent looks out into the garden so its the perfect place to have brunch or read books. We sing songs in the tent and count and prettend theres a t-rex outside the tent. Its amazing what you can imagine with an old sleeping bag. 4 years ago when I was sleeping under the bridge I would have never believed you if yo told me what I'd be doing with the sleeping bag today.


Which one would you rather use?

I have discovered the secret potty training weapon: gummy spiders and the $4 IKEA potty chair. Originally I bought a musical potty chair for $45 and I thought it would have to work because it looked fun. It was such a waste of money. Really, the IKEA potty is the easiest to clean, easiest to use, and most affordable potty. Hansel is obsessed with spiders and we never give him junk food so the enticement of the forbidden gummy spider is extremely motivating as well. He's put over half his poops in the potty this weekend.



This weekend I've done some work on a leather with a rubber patch that spells out "MOM" in studs. I'm a little bit proud of it.


..........Last night I went out to plan B and this was the first time I met DJ Sinead. I have to say I was impressed. DJ Sinead played Dead Kennedys and Crass back to back. I heard no synthpop last night. NO SYNTHPOP! NO CRAP! Only deathrock, punk, and clangy industrial. It was a good night.

I garden because my goal is to learn enough to purchase a home with enough land around it to grow food for our family for a year and I gotta know how to grow it well when I have that opportunity. I want to become less reliant on packaged crap.

I have to admit though, my favorite thing in the whole garden right now is my bleeding hearts, and so far as I know they have no nutritional value. They just make me happy. I don't even like pink but I like these. Hansel calls them my sweet hearts. I think I'd like to experiment with candy making and create a candy that looks like the hearts. It would be the cutest candy ever.





I want honey suckle plants. Those are cute and delicious and I really want to teach Hansel how to enjoy them. Anyone know how those do in Oregon? I have seen them in California.

Yesterday I found out our brother Zebra is gonna be in town for Zombie Prom!!!!!!! Yeeehaw!

Today I put on this creepy face to get some pictures to help me work on a study for a painting I'm working on and we ended getting a few cute ones just for the hell of it too.








Also I have to post the belt buckle. Its the rockinest buckle ever!



I got some canvas and stuff on the way to work Friday and I've already started work on one of them but I'm planning to take my time and do a little every week because its been so long since I worked on canvas. I have never been completely satisfied with any piece I've done on canvas and I'm trying to change that. I've liked stuff I did on walls and doors and on clothes and in books but canvas just feels weird for some reason. I feel it in my bones though..... this canvas I'm working on right now is not like other canvas I've worked on and I know its going to come out super fucking cool. I will give a sneak peak sometime soon.

I'm going to Plan B for some deathrock shinnanigans the Sunday after this Sunday. I haven't had a cocktail in a loooong ass time and I'm thinking of ordering a Zombie. I know I'll be disapointed if I do because the only place I've ever had a sincerely wonderful version of that drink is a restraunt in Krete that put sparklers in the glass. So I need some suggestions. Whats a good tasting fun drink with enough hard liquor to entertain me but not enough to hurt? (I will remind you I'm a light weight)

Make suggestions please!!

Darwin, take me away!!!!!!!

Tonight I've been listening to some of my favorite death inspired music and looking at my favorite death-inspired art. It makes me want to stay up all night painting. I know I can't do that.... I have to work tomorrow.... and I just can't burn the candle at both ends anymore. I think when I get my vacation in a few months I will try to run off to a cemetery for at least one night; sit around with candles and wine and a sketch pad and enjoy the night air. By then it will actually be nice at night.

Its good to be alive.

I'm back to green. I feel like myself again.

Still working on her....

Strangely enough the image is starting to remind me of one of the chambers in Ely Cathedral which is dedicated to the memory of St Etheldreda who's message and purpose has been distorted over centuries to serve the purpose of the church. I doubt we'll ever know who she really was but if you walk on the land in Exning and Ely its easy to feel her presence and her magic still there after all these centuries.

This morning I was aproaching this idea in photoshop but its more a precursor to what I'm intending to paint this weekend. I have this really cool looking gigantic picture frame that me and Jen dumpstered months and months ago in Gresham. I haven't put anything in it yet because it seems to be waiting for a certain picture. If I pull this off as a painting I think this will be the one that frame is waiting for.

I have, for a while, been sketching and making little watercolor images of death represented with life as one being. It might not sound conventional but I actually have a painting in one of my books of a pregnant zombie that I'm fond of. I think I'll be doing a lot of similar work this summer.

I had a dream that I was walking around with Hansel in a children's library. It started getting late and I decided it was time to go home. We made our way to the front door of the library. Shane and his friends were in the library and they tried to convince me to take Hansel and go drink with them under some bridge. I told them no and we left. I was eager to get away from the place because Shane was there. I saw the bus pull up right as we got outside. We got on the bus and sat down and I looked out the window feeling safer as the bus went farther from him.

Suddenly I realized Hansel was not with me. I begged the driver to stop and let me off but the driver looked at me with her eyes narrowed and her brow knotted and said she won't stop until the next bus stop. I was trapped on the bus without Hansel and I felt like Shane had taken him. The bus drove for another mile before a bus stop appeared but where the bus let me off there was no bus going back the way I came. I called Radio Cab and an answering machine picked up with a message saying that they now drive on weekends but if its a weekday to leave a message and they'll go pick up when they get the message. I began to panic and I found myself walking back down the road to the library in desperation. I called 411 to find another cab company but 411 was answered by the message you get when a number is disconnected. The sun started to go down and I knew that Shane was long gone with Hansel and I'd never find them but I couldn't stop trying to get back. Then I woke up.

I hate feeling like even years later and jail walls between us, Shane still intimidates me. I have done everything I can to put it behind me short of packing up and moving the family (and I have actually seriously considered that). Isaiah pointed out that its almost the anniversary of the night Shane attacked Hansel and I tend to have more nightmares about Shane this time of year. Its also getting close to the date he will be eligible for release. I know its selfish to want him to just rot in that place but when he was free he made my life hell. He doesn't know where I work now at least. I really just want to get Shane to sign away the last of his rights and move to Siberia and live happily ever after without harassing us.

For two weeks Hansel has been asking us every hour to take him to "dino church"..... thats what Hansel calls OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). OMSI has a gigantic dinosaur exhibit.

Hansel likes dinosaurs. When we give him Kix in the morning he looks into his bowl and chirps happily, "Dinosaur eggs!" Its a little disturbing when he makes his plastic toy dinos raid the cereal bowl like its an actual nest of eggs and gobble them up. Anything round is a dino egg and anything stick-like is a dinosaur bone. Anytime the neighbors thump on the wall or a cat jumps off a table in the next room its a dinosaur sound. Anytime we turn on the tv he sits there repeting the words "Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. Dinosaur movie. "

So we finally took him to OMSI.


He had fun. Most of the time he was pulling me like an old mule behind him yelling, "Mamma! Look! Dinos!"

And then it happened. He was past due for his nap and started throwing fits. We'd been there a few hours and we decided to hit the road. I'm sure more than a few people who visited OMSI today will keep their souvenier memory of me walking out with a kicking screaming toddler in my arms chanting "Dino Church!" in a pitch that could explode a dog's ear drums.

Today I went to pick up some stuff at the store after work and some guy walking along nearby asked me out of curiousity what kind of job lets me "get away with hair like that". He wasn't saying it in a rude way but it seemed like he could count his life tally of conversations with someone like me on one finger. I told him about my job and that as a parent I consider it my responsibility to set an example that someone like me can be an asset to society. He replied that the world we live in just isn't like that. I wonder if he even belived that I'm employed. I get this shit a lot. Over half my life I've heard it and I've gone through varying degrees of shame and pride on the matter. In the end we all know that regardless of accepting ourselves there's someone else who will not accept us and occasionally they go out of their way to punish someone for not being like them.

Someone I work with recently told me that there are many people at my work who had a discussion about how I've changed the way they think just by being a good worker and a responsible parent. I'm not sure what they expected but apparently that wasn't it. Maybe the world isn't my oyster still but when I hear that, I know my decision to promote the acceptance of my culture has been a good decision.

Have I told you lately that I love hating the Catholic church?