Razzmatazz

I'd never played Razz before. On a lark, I signed up for a cheap tourney.

I made the money on my first outing. :)
I LIKE RAZZ!!

The Denim Apron

In the midst of all the stressors, there was only one thing that brought me to the verge of tears. Hanging in the back of a crowded storage area I came upon one of my mother's old dark blue denim work aprons. It was lightly soiled with dried clay and a few other less identifiable substances. It reminded me vividly of my mother's life as a working artist. I sniffed, hoping to catch a lingering whiff of her scent, but there was only dust.

Like most everything else, the apron went into the dumpster ~ officially trash. And a little piece of my heart was broken.

Knee Deep in Lawyers

Where there is death, where there are taxes, there also must be lawyers. I have already spent many hours talking with expensive lawyers and I know that more of the same awaits.

Cleverly, no two of them can be found to agree on anything. Do you suppose they teach them that in law school, or it part of associates' apprenticeship?

I say this despite the fact that some of my very best friends are attorneys.

Anticipatory Nostalgia

I had my first pang tonight. Coming into the studio, smelling that peculiar combination of old dried clay and plaster dust, it suddenly came home to me how unique, how irreproducible this place is ~ and how there will never be anything like it in my life again. I wonder if, in selling this place, I am somehow betraying a whole way of life, one rhat I myself perhaps gave up on too easily.

Tomorrow will be the first of several days of throwing things out ~ it's going to be a veritable orgy of discardation. And I'll feel the pain of it as of knives whose tips have been dipped in resentment.

Who am I? What am I doing? What will I become?

Back to Boston One More Time

I'm off in a few minutes to the airport.

I'm headed back to Boston to clear out my parents' studios, get everything into storage, and close on the sale. My sister will be joining me. I expect it to be another physically and emotionally exhausting passage.

I'll be very glad when this is done and I can concentrate on getting the financial matters in order.

Not to mention dealing with my own life: job, taxes, kitten, whatever.

My mantra: this too shall pass, this too shall pass.

Simpsonized

Everyone's doing it, why should I be any different? I actually find the various likenesses somewhat uncanny.