Oh, how I want to write something witty and creative! But instead, I just went and looked at a whole bunch of other artist's websites. Artists who are being shown. Artist who are selling their work. Artists who are out there selling themselves. I feel like the teeniest guppy in a puddle-sized pond. Make that a sea-monkey. Meet Elena, the adopted Sea-Monkey! (sigh) Notice how it keeps smacking its head against the wall.

It's Banned Books Week! It's amazing when you read WHY some of these books have been banned. For example, take The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis. Banned for use of magical imagery. The same people who want to ban Harry Potter for being satanic are after this one too, and probably can't be bothered to learn that the entire series is a Christian allegory. Just amazing. linkage: Forbidden Library Banned Books Project Official Banned Books Week page of the ALA What are your favorite banned books?

Spent a little time at Wild Snowflake's abode {which useta also be mine} to swap food and chat. I gave her tomatoes, which is the only thing that grew in my garden this year; she picked up Halo Farms Peach ice cream for me. {For those of you who went to TSC and remember making Halo runs, drool with envy.} She has a long-awaited brand new blog. I think tonight I am, once and for all, tackling one of the many items on my list so I can scratch it off once and for all. My problem is that I don't just want to create something for the sake of creating it, I want to do it right, and preferrably the first time so I don't have to do it over again. What I've been trying to work on is a store for the website: for starters it will just have cards and then it will expand to shirts, mugs, and bags. I know next to nothing about how to do this, so I think I have to go with a "phase one" approach and see what happens. I think I really need to jump in and see what the water feels like instead of asking everyone else how cold it is. It might be just perfect.

Listening to Beatles, Beatles, and more Beatles today. In the car, I'm listening to the Rutles, which I know is not officially the Beatles but is like finding a hidden vault of very clever and silly Beatles songs. Now at work, I've got the illegal somebody-bought-it-for-$10-on-the-train-CD that has every Beatles album on it, pretty much. I'm not overly concerned about the illegalness of it all since I already own all these albums anyway. If the folks at work are lucky I won't start singing along until, say, 10 o'clock. In other news: tomorrow is the International Day of Peace. Spend it chalking. Spend it in bed. Spend it singing. Just do something.

I am now caught up in the dilemma of having some really creative and exciting things to do, and when I come home from work, all I want to do is sleep. I have one wonderful project I'm working on, and the second I think I have everything figured out about how to do it, some detail comes up that I hadn't thought of yet. I make my lists, and then there are 15 zillion other little mini spin-off lists that I still have to deal with before I can scratch the first thing off the list. It's frustrating. Once I finally get it done, everyone will look at it and think, that's what all the agonizing was about? I have to remind myself: baby steps. Micromovements. On an interesting note: I have now eaten pickles and ice cream together. Not in the same bowl, but within a few hours of each other. This is such a stereotypical thing to do that it scares me on a certain level, and yet it fascinates me. As Homer Simpson said, "Disgusting..... yet straaaaaaaaaaaaangely compelling."

We're having a baby! This is something we've hoped for, wished for, and prayed for for a long time. Now the little one is finally here, and we can hardly believe it. I'm about 3½ months along. I am in disgustingly good health, I have had NO morning sickness, and the baby is doing great! At the last doctor's visit we saw the ultrasound and the baby opened and closed his little fist — he waved at us! I've lost my heart completely to this tiny little being. I say "he" only because I think it's going to be a boy and because I can't say "it"; I know nothing for sure. We may find out, we haven't decided yet, but we have a lot of time to decide. Please keep us in your prayers... and I'll be keeping everyone posted. (This isn't going to turn into a "babyblog" but there will be days when I just have to share.) You can read more here. I'm so happy — and happy to be able to share this with everyone.

Just a heads up to let you know that the web page will look a little different this Wednesday. Last September touched me more than you would think for a girl whose whole family turned out to be safe and sound. I wound up keeping a journal of sorts: I painted every night and wrote my feelings of the day around and even on top of the pictures. I thought that maybe I would share them all some day. I still can't. So instead of a gallery, there will be one page, one painting, one thought. My memory. And please don't take this the wrong way, but please, please, please, DON'T forward me any mass emails about September 11th. I can't watch a single thing about it, and I can only handle it in tiny doses. I really don't ever need to see a single picture of people jumping out of buildings again. I remember it all too well. On an inspirational note: my friends Jen Starr and Erica Cohn (of Harmonytryx fame) had the honor & pleasure of singing background vocals for Phoebe Snow, Beth Neilson Chapman, Delores Holmes, & Bar Scott (I've sung with her; she is a beautiful soul and a gorgeous songstress). The concert is called "Voices of Inspiration" and was given by the widows & families of 9/11 victims to honor the firefighters & workers of ground zero. The television station UPN purchased this & it will be aired on 9/11/02 @ 8PM. That's channel 9 in NJ and NYC & it should be aired on a national level on UPN. It may also be on @ 2PM as well. So if you want to hear beautiful music sung by talented ladies I know, check them out and let your heart soar with their music. There are lots of good, happy, and cheerful things that are going to be coming to the site in the next few weeks. Trust me, they're going to be VERY exciting. :) One of them should be making its way to the site in the next few days. So keep a look out.

My little brother gave me the coolest (and nostalgic!) birthday present: the first DVD in the Battle of the Planets series. We used to get up at 5:30 every weekday morning and watch it with my dad before he left for work. He always missed the last 5 minutes, so we would give him a recap at dinner. I wanted to be Princess, and I wrote the storylines in my little diary; I thought they were romantic and adventurous. Is the classiest animation you've ever seen? No way. Is it great to watch in your p.j.'s and pretend you're 10 again? Heck yeah.

This weekend I witnessed a truly odd thing. Paul and I were walking in the park, and just as we got to the near side of the pond, I saw what I thought was a huge leaf on the grass. Until it got up on its hind legs and waved at me! It was about 5 inches long and looked like a minature lobster. I yelped and ran around behind Paul (no WAY was I going near that thing) and tried to figure out whattheheck it was. It was then that we noticed 4 or 5 others, clambering out of the water and crawling across the grass to the street. The closest thing we can figure is that they were crayfish, and for some unknown reason they were migrating. Unfortunately, it's a very busy road and we saw at least one that didn't make it across. {The rest were en route to my house, maybe?} This is NOT something you expect to see in New Jersey, miles and miles from the shore. We told our neighbors, who planned to take their little ones over to the park for a little crayfish rescue. I love animals, cute or crustacean, but there was absolutely no way I was going to pick one of those things up. Blecch. I would love to find out what they thought was going to be on the other side of that road, and if they ever found it.