It’s been awhile…
I’ve been doing some freelance work lately, including a full-length brochure for a medical billing company and this trifold adapted from it:
It’s a departure from the looser creative work I’ve done, and it’s definitely been a challenge. I learned a lot while working on this project, and that’s always awesome.
Letting Go
This month in ABCDLady:
My parents are moving back to Bangladesh this year, reversing their migration to the United States thirty-odd years ago. A forty-foot container loaded with sofas, dishes, mattresses and knick-knacks is on its way around the world to help them adjust. They are leaving because my mother wants to be there for my grandmother as she deals with my step-grandfather’s dementia. I feel like I am being abandoned. I want to shout, “Hey, what about me? Toddlers are demented too!”
Read the whole article here.
How to Cook Rice
This is a project I began for Manna Food Center in Montgomery County. Eating well on a low budget is difficult, and food banks are especially stretched right now. Bulk, raw, whole foods are the most nutritious and cost effective–but unfortunately, many people don’t know how to prepare such foods. Language and literacy are often a barrier, so I went with a simply drawn (and therefore easily and inexpensively reproduced) comic strip format. If you know a food bank that might make use of these, please let me know and I’d be happy to send a PDF version along.
The guides are currently being used by food banks in Los Angeles, Yolo County, San Benito County, Central New York and by the Capital Area Food Banks here in the Washington DC metro area.
A special thanks to Los Angeles Regional Food Bank for translating the guides to Spanish!
Here is our first “Whole Food Guide.”
How to Improve Your Marriage
Read my piece in Boudoir Magazine’s April 2009 issue.
Lately, my husband B and I have been fighting. We both have a lot to say, and neither of us particularly likes to listen, so everything spirals up and up until exchanges about taking the clothes out of the dryer become full blown three day long I-can’t-believe-I’m-with-you events. We don’t like the fighting and have tried to stop it. We tried “I” statements (“I feel angry because you are an idiot”). We tried never arguing in front of the kids, but we sure missed those little guys over weekends spent whisper fighting in the bathroom. As a longtime fan of daytime drama, I am at a distinct advantage in these battles. I channel Erica Kane: I toss my hair, narrow my eyes and go for the jugular. Trouble is, Erica is a size negative two millionaire who is always impeccably groomed. She’s on her eighth husband. I am a soft around the middle freelance writer who doesn’t always have time to shower. I can’t afford eight husbands.
Junky Tuesday
Originally published on McSweeney’s here, very long ago. Scroll way down if you want to read it on that site, or just read it here. True story.
During the course of my son Ali’s life, I’ve learned about trans fats and pesticides and things my mother did wrong. So I eat fresh organic berries and drink pomegranate juice and don’t buy sugary cereals. One afternoon, though, I picked Ali up from kindergarten, swung my station wagon into a spot at the mainstream grocery store, slid my pregnant body out from the tight space behind the wheel, and, as I opened his door, announced, “It’s Junky Tuesday.”
As we approached the store, the glass door swung open with reverence. We skirted the produce section and targeted the snack-food aisle. I chose spicy Cheetos. He chose Doritos. We agreed on Funyuns. Into the cart went a box of Swiss cake rolls, a tub of mini glazed donuts, and a six-pack of ginger beer.
At home, we turned on the Food Network (a compromise between General Hospital and The Magic School Bus) and spilled one of the ginger beers on the futon. When we were a third of the way through the Cheetos and Doritos and halfway through the Funyuns and had eaten a couple of donuts and split one package of the cake rolls, we couldn’t eat anymore. I heaved myself up and vomited a bit, and Ali retired to his bathroom with a long book. We’ll do it again sometime.
Bird Installation
photo by Martine Burkel
The elementary school kids I teach made this awesome installation (with a little help, of course). They cut the two parts of the bird out of scrap fabric, sewed them using the classroom sewing machine (how cool is it that their classroom has a sewing machine?) and then stuffed and closed them off. We tried to make a mobile, as they were studying the work of Alexander Calder at the time, but the balancing was a nightmare so we dragged in a fallen branch and stuck it in a pot. We’ll take it apart at the end of the school year so each child can take home his or her own bird.
P.S. There’s another exit!
