Tara The Same. But Not The Same.

Things About Me That Are The Same As Always:

I drink a V8 from a can with a bendy straw every morning.

I read storybooks out loud.

I get irritated easily.

I have a husband with impressive hobbies.

I have kids who inherited mad video game skills.

I clean house to Mary Poppins songs.

I like to build Lego towers.

I like epic novels and commercials that make me cry.

I like scary movies, and show tunes.

I always remember the words.

I sleepwalk.

I hang out with my parents every weekend.

I like to realize the things that have shaped me.

Things That Are Different About Me:

I started drinking coffee (a lot).

I started running (sometimes).

I started eating an apple a day.

I think perhaps I'm less cynical (but no less irritable).

I left the dream job that I had for fourteen years.

I started my own business with my sister (today).

I realize that I have yet to be completely shaped.

I think it's all those apples.

I just bit into something.

And now I just know.

Like when Donny hammered the first nail in his nose.

If he can do that, then I can do this.

And that's how I'm different.

But the same.

And glad that I'm not doing it alone.

Because my sister eats lots of apples, too.

Shelf of me.

Looking out at the here-to-come.

That's my Braid Creative & Consulting business card. (See the business card in stripedy pottery?) Kathleen talks more about our new adventure here. We're having an exciting day to say the least.

The Cry List

We always made fun of my mom for crying at movies, TV shows and commercials, especially when we were kids.

She would try to discreetly wipe away her watery shame but she'd have to sort of push up under her glasses (in the eighties her giant blue and pink tinted octagonal shaped glasses) to get a good swipe, so that was sort of always a big giveaway, quickly followed by a "Moooomm... are you CRYING?! Geez!" and the funniest thing, is we'd be watching, like, uh... Roseanne or something like that.

Now I do the same thing.

I don't have giant amazing eighties glasses (dang!) so I can be a little more stealthy about it. But I'm not always successful at keeping it secret.

But here's the deal. I cry at almost everything that is what I consider "a perfect moment."

Now, I'm talking pretty much just entertainment/art/TV/movies/music here. I'm not talking about weeping over taking my kids to their first day of daycare or Donny leaving for New York or when our dad had a heart attack. We (especially me) just don't get very crying prone about stuff like that. In real life I mostly just cry when I'm mad.

But in non-real-life these are things I have cried over in the past, oh, let's say 60 days:

1. Toy Story 3 (like every time my kids watch it, so let's say ten times in the last two months): when the ominous, abused and eerily silent Big Baby (our hands-down favorite character) remembers the little girl Daisy he used to belong to before he became ruined by the world, and has a big plastic baby revelation (my kids always get all excited right before the Big Baby "ma-ma" part and start looking back and forth between the TV and me because they think it's cool when I cry during their shows, Charlie always gets this big goofy grin on his face, but then he sort of tears up, too because he "gets it," which I know will soon pass as he gets older and will just transition into ridiculing me for it.)

2. Bill Cunningham's New York: went to see this documentary about this Mr. Rogers looking eighty-year old man who's life work has been riding his bike around NYC photographing real women in their street fashions but he also happens to be the most influential fashion photographer from the 1950's til now. He is so sweet, humble, goofy and singular in his life's mission that you can't not watch this and feel something. It's a crowd pleaser. But of course, I'm the dork that has to run to the bathroom after to have an "ugly cry." I can tell if I am repressing an ugly cry if I have a discreet single tear that is fat enough to roll all the way down my neck into my bra. That means if I was in private (like watching the musical episode of Buffy in my room) that I would be having a flat-out bawl.

3. Seeing Oklahoma spoken word poet, Lauren Zuniga go on about rows of revelation-promising energy drinks and "little boxes on the hillsides" at a recent poetry, er, jam? Slam? Thingy? Whatever, I was the dork getting all weepy.

4. The opening credits to Game Of Thrones. Every time. The HBO show is just so-so, but the books by George R.R. Martin are so, so good. And the opening animation is like this mechanical moving-gears, little miniatures, music-box-like map of this "world" and it's just so well done and such a neat homage to this amazing epic world that Martin has created. Note: it is not sad. Do I tear up anyway? Affirmative. Other opening credits that make me misty-eyed include: thirtysomething, Cheers, True Blood, The Wire, Sopranos, United States of Tara, original Weeds opening, The Office, and WKRP in Cincinnati... "baby you and me were never meant to be, but maybe think of me once in a while..."

5. See, I don't just cry at sad stuff. I also cry at cool/lame stuff, a quick list from recent weeks would include:
- three to four times during American Idol finale

- am anticipating crying during a Mia Michaels choreographed number during this summer's season of So You Think You Can Dance
- finally saw Crazy Heart, only cried during end song which was best part
- um... cried in Tron... Tron! What the heck!? I like it. Whatever. Maybe it's a Jeff Bridges thing.
- downloading the main theme music from The Social Network soundtrack
- season finale of The Office... ack! Of course I cried. I cry right now just thinking about Michael Scott getting to be a husband and a dad and finally be happy.

Kathleen told me she's been watching a lot of My So Called Life lately. Now, Claire Danes as Angela Chase? I've always said she is the ultimate ugly-crier. You cannot watch her meltdown in the school bathroom or in her teenage bedroom as her forehead crumbles and her chin gets all trembly and bumpy while her nose runs and her lips get kind of all spitty... and not want to cry with her.

Kathleen also said My So Called Life reminds her so much of me at that age.

Huh, can't imagine why.

My Little Apprentices

So I saw this speaker at our local TEDx conference, Jeff Sandefer, give a great talk about education revolution and how our kids are not widgets and so on. One thing he said that really stuck with me, was that before the Industrial Revolution, where everything was assembly-lined, including our schools, that parents used to "apprentice" their kids in their own trade.

I thought "you know, I can draw, Chris can draw," I am going to teach Charlie our "trade." On a side note, I've also been trying to teach Charlie to "use his powers for good and not evil." (No, not because of this devil drawing.)

So a couple weeks ago I really started working with Charlie. Showing him how I "broke through" to the next level of drawing when I was his age. And, get this, it really worked! His pictures are looking sooo good. I picked him up the other day from after care, saw an amazing Finn drawing stuffed in his backpack (Adventure Time With Finn & Jake anyone?) that he had done from memory and was like "that's awesome!" Then this too-cool-for-school eight year old girl with crimped hair and about a billion arm wrap bracelet thingies who was standing there, gravely said "he's a true artist." Yes. Affirmation of your peers. I lived for that kind of stuff back then ("back then," heh... who am I fooling?)

But last week this apprenticeship took a commercial turn, let's say. Ironic since my actual trade is advertising agency creative director. We were all hanging around on the back steps and Charlie found a stick in the backyard.

Inspired Charlie: "You know what I'm going to do with this stick?"
Me: "What?"
Inspired Charlie: "I'm going to make a flag..."
Me: "Okay..."
Inspired Charlie: "A flag for Sprite!"
Me: "...."

And that's what he did. He is obsessed with Sprite. To him it's like it's the nectar of the gods. It's the only soda he ever gets to drink, and he's only allowed to have a cup when he's not using his powers for evil. Then he always takes this huge swig and swishes it around in his cheeks before he swallows. It's the American Dental Association Approved technique.

So he deadly seriously draws this flag on white paper. (With Sharpie, no wimpy pencil lines underneath... grasshopper is learning quickly). He has me help him tape it to a stick, and then, well...





...flies his freak flag.



But here comes Sam. He must have the flag.



And he's pissed.



So he gets the flag. We may have to apprentice Sam in hostile takeovers some day.



Then everyone gets snarly.



Then Mommy saves the day.

Sam doesn't fly anyone's freak flag but his own.

Balloon Consuming

Earlier this week I attended the Creativity World Forum 2010. Strangely enough it was down the street from the ad agency where I work. I'm not saying it's strange that something with the word "creative" in it is happening in Oklahoma. Quite the contrary. It's probably more the words "world" and "forum" that just seem a little bit... er, out there.

But on the first day of the conference, I was greeted by these amazingly "out there" huge interactive balloon sculpture installations. They're part of a "Branching Out" theme by artist Jason Hackenwerth. You can even walk inside them. They are kind of insect/anemone like on the outside. Strangley suckle-ish on the inside. But, very, very neat. Kind of takes balloon animals to a whole new level.



So, one of Donny's tricks... or should I say sideshow acts (none of it is a trick really) is to swallow a balloon. Like this one. But usually longer, actually. It's a crowd-pleaser to say the least. Kind of pervy. Really gag-reflexy. He even did it once to Justin Timberlake's Bringing Sexy Back at a wedding reception.

It was Kathleen's wedding reception.

And she was booty dancing around him in a circle while he was doing it.

Sometimes as part of Donny's act he'll stick a deflated balloon in his nose, and then cough one end of it out of his mouth and then sort of pulley it back and forth. That one is just plain appalling. It's my favorite.

So from the Hackenwerth sculptures to hacking-up stunts, you can see how plain old balloon animals will just never cut it for me again.