Tuesday is the only day of the week that my schedule has a permanent entry and even there, ‘permanent’ is only ‘if I feel like it’.
That’s the day I’m supposed to go to the shop, drop off what I’ve accomplished and pick up new orders. It’s also when I get paid and since I’m usually broke, I tend to show up. Plus, it’s always fun. I like all the ladies who work there and the customers are less like customers and more like members of a club; we’re all into needlepoint, which is more of a lifestyle than a hobby. Like golf, or fly fishing. Or high stakes poker. I enjoy going into the shop and getting my pretty on. The legacy of Joanne is that the PF is always beautiful to the Nth degree, with something new to offer every day.
Plus, I’m usually broke. Artists starve not because there’s no market for their work but because the supplies are darned expensive and getting more so all the time. You can skimp, of course but just like any decent chef will tell you: you can’t make the best steak out of inferior cuts of meat.
I also think art is like a joke: if it has to be explained, it’s no good.
So there’s my professional philosophy: Good Art is an Expensive Joke!
No wait…that can’t be right.
Yesterday I picked up over a dozen new orders, which is awesome! I’ve got some new things to work on but orders keep the lights on so it’s always great to have a long list of those. Having a ton of work to do, my next step was obvious: toss my bag full of orders on my office floor and head north to spend the day with BoopityBoop.
We’ve been having a freakish warm spell the last week or so. 60s in February is delightful and unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. If I were 20, I’d probably buy into the whole ‘climate change’ thing. But I’m closer to 90 than 20 and I’ve lived through too many warm winters, cool summers, late springs and oat bran to buy into any ideology that just coincidentally, wants to dictate how I live. Give me 20 February’s like this in a row and I’ll concede something different is happening, even though 20 years, in a geological sense, doesn’t constitute the ‘blink of the eye’. Then you’ll have to convince me this is a bad thing.
I’m loving it!
So after lunch, we gave the girls a bath, which is always fun. Because there’s two of them, it takes about four times longer than to bathe one baby. You have to factor in the amount of time and energy the baby not in the tub will demand of you. They rarely just wait quietly in their bassinets, thinking oh, Mom and Nana are busy with Sis, I’ll just see what’s trending on Twitter… No, they pretty much object to being ignored while that other kid gets all the attention. It’s going to be really fun when they’re both big enough to sit in the bathtub together!
They do love the tub. They try to pretend they don’t; they both glare at you with their hilarious little frowns and arch their backs for a second, like they don’t love the warm water but the only time they really object is when we take them out of it and wrap them up in a warm fluffy towel. Even then, their angry shout is cut short the second Mom wraps them up and hugs them. They’re soft and fluffy after a bath.
We dressed them up in sweaters and hats, wrapped them in blankets and took them for a lovely walk around the block. As long as the stroller kept moving, they were in Heaven. When we finished, neither wanted to get out of the stroller but both were perfectly happy to be snuggled into the house.
It’s a big day with any newborn when you achieve either a bath or a walk and we managed to do both with twins.
We are really getting good at this.
I should probably go get some work done.