I've come to appreciate moments of relative calm.

UPDATE on my ding: I got a quote for $670, asked the perps to pay $400. I spent forever whiting out our personal info from the quote only to accidentally fax them the original anyway. Augh! Fire myself for incompetence. Am just kind of sick about this - I'm afraid that now that they have my personal info they will come attack/key/maim my young.  I could put their personal info here but I won't do that. Suffice it to say, I've looked it up and, besides being quite generous Republican supporters, the husband (who was in the car with his son, the "perp" and mondo dingeroo) is the son of a rather famous Milwaukee couple who's been honored within the last 12 months at a gala fundraiser.  Money. And I'm dumb enough to do this research AFTER I only asked for $400 on a $670 quote, and my husband is due to be unemployed in 18 days. That's what I get for trying to be fair. Sigh.  Anyway, I have too much school stuff due this week to let this continue ad infinitum. 

Yesterday I had nothing planned with the kids. Read=no deadline of time frame to hustle them anywhere by any time. Ahhh, right? Hahaha! I managed to make that difficult too! At one point, we had our agreed-upon list of walking errands (Henry must be ok with not only the agenda but the Ordering of Things, and then it's relatively smooth sailing except then Helen decides to just screech or whatnot)..anyway, we were kind of ready to go and Helen grabbed my (luckily cold) coffee off the table onto herself, my school text and notebooks, and the floor AND in the same moment Henry, who had been sitting and playing with this sound-sensor motion Thomas train on his HEAD realized that every time I or the baby shrieked about this coffee mess, the back wheel of the train caught up his hair and twisted it inside! Which caused more shrieking, which caused more twisting until I had the wherewithall to SHut it Off. Then I turned it back on, whistled twice (to make it run backwards), and voila! The hair was freed. Points for me.

Then he mopped the floor out of "being tired of waiting for us" and I hope it's not the last time he tires of waiting in Just That Fashion.

Then, I had a customer call yesterday for paintings! What's this? I have an art business? I haven't managed www.steinmanstudios.com in a while, maybe should? Ahem, oh yes, why yes, certainly I can come up with something witty. Give me a moment (or a shower, a sitter, and a freshly mopped floor?).

Then, I checked in with the wildly bad customer service at Chase Bank. I have a separate blog's worth of fresh doodoo about them, but suffice it to say, if you call the Commerce of the Currency which is a governmental body, and alert them to practices, they will give you the Magic Executive Office number, and they will actually tell you the right answers to things. And seeing as there may be ten people out there who HAVEN't heard my story, I'll paraphrase. I wrote our monthly giganto check to the Cobra people at my husband's previous employer, who are in Duluth, GA. Was tracking the check because of course you want your family's health insurance to stay intact. So. Imagine my surprise when I went online, as I do, and checked my bank balance, and checked for posted checks, found that one, opened the "view check" and saw quite plainly that it had been altered! Heart in mouth, the company name had been crossed off and written out for CASH in big letters. And worse, it had been DEPOSITED into another bank (Guaranty Bank, Headquartered right here in Brown Deer, WI, but with a branch, oddly, in Duluth, GA). I quickly called Cobra hoping they had some kind of crazy workaround to the normal way of depositing checks, and they let me know that no, not only don't they do that, but where is my check. Primal Scream time. Suffice it to say that I notified Chase, on April 14 (check had posted April 8), and besides telling me "the race is on - you better get to a branch to try to beat the people from taking out the money" they were quite careless, and managed to lose the paperwork I had to file at a branch (Fox Point Branch, in the Best Buy parking lot - again, not my favorite place ) - and then deny it. It was lost in interoffice mail. My favorite Chase employee quote was from loss-prevention specialist saying "We've just gotten so big, who knows where our interoffice mail goes." Thanks.

So, I'm thinking of switching to M&I Bank. Anyone had any good bank experiences lately? I'm fresh out!

In other news, the latest in D2D asks has arrived. This phase targets SHS Alumni, so I got the letter. I didn't get the SHS Alumni newsletter, because I haven't FINISHED it yet and every moment I live and breathe I think OH NO I have to finish that. But my PC is upstairs, and I can't get to it unless I put the kids in the van and run up there, and that isn't right.

Meanwhile the D2D army marches on and tries to take on as little liberal, academic, education-based water it can. As you may know, I'm very interested in how alumni feel about the first major fundraiser for SHS. It will be nice to have a track that can be used for track meets, and a field that will work for regulation soccer. Bleachers that aren't falling down, all that. I'm a little worried from the picture that the new steroidal bleachers will block the sun to the pool. I am RELIEVED the dome has been scrapped. And I'm a little worried about AstroTurf..there are new studies looking at the lead content in them: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-20-articial-turf-lead_N.htm

Anyway, the dome, that took things into ridiculo-land for me. Something that would make the whole deal maybe more palatable would be a matching plan, where we sister up with an MPS school in dire need of sports facilities, and at least make the effort to help them out too? Maybe that's too "Old Shorewood" of me to think that way. I'm also concerned about D2D being a temporary team, and when it's done, they'll disappear. Who will pick up the slack at the school, and will the records be shared with the school of who donated what, and will people be able to rest assured that the record of their donations is held at school past the D2D flash? These are things I for some reason am asking, .. so far I get weird looks, like that isn't a current issue. Oh well.

I've got to get sketching! I am thinking maybe for the art that will come to Shorewood, maybe a permanent marker for the Pig 'n Whistle location...maybe a retro tin pig'n'whistle would be affectionately welcoming people to the land of people who eat soy beans on purpose. Kind of a juxtaposition and a statement that says we're real, and yes, we have a sense of humor. Tut tut. We're a unique community and not a cookie-cutter burbo. I also am pleased to say I have a fun painting in (yet another) silent auction this weekend! (Did I mention my new business model involves creating art for silent auctions? Although this leaves me a little out of the "making a living' loop!!), for the Bal du Lac and the Milwaukee Art Museum, which is being co-chaired by friends Al and Kristin Fraser. Am I going? Ha ha. But I send my painting to enjoy it for me. 

AND, advice for the day, if you find yourself thinking you need a bigger house, a new kitchen, or are biting your hand over someone else's new granite countertops, consider going to graduate school. I'm serious. Take a class! Get your head out of STUFF and up into thoughts. Granite Countertops deplete the Earth of a nonrenewable resource anyway, and will soon (mark my words) devalue your house anyway because of their cost to the environment. So if you consider yourself Earth-conscious or remotely "green," stop coveting your neighbor's granite. Tis not green 'tall.

Of course it is tax time. I do enjoy forms, and taxes, I think because as an artist my head is wandering around the ether and my feet are usually forgotten in a crunched up pose, but my hands grab pens, paints, keyboard, pen and paper happily and I like to fill out a form or two. I dig it. Maybe because I'm an artist it validates me to have a Schedule C to frame my life and my supplies, plus a refund..always good.  And I feel happy that I understand depreciation. I feel really like a competent adult. Even if I don't know how to do the math per se, I know it's a Schedule 179 and I know there is a time frame for all things. I'm the family peeve calling around making sure everyone's got their money in ...which is funny, as I totally side with my mother-in-law who refused to pay quarterly because "they're just going to buy bombs with it.."

So speaking of depreciation, I had the nice sparkly thought that my marriage is actually appreciating, as my husband apparently knows me quite well and uses this information for good, for which I consider myself lucky.  Today I had a little meltdown (it was my day to run errands, get the car dinged hard by a *** boy in an SUV (I caught them, I was sitting checking my mail and WOW did I jump when that door hit mine) (new item on to-do list..I have to schedule some body work for the car)) so Steve told me to go get grounded with some coffee grounds (only he could understand that jacking my head further into the clouds is a grounding thing for me) and that (the car thing) started me thinking how an item begins to depreciate as soon as it "walks off the lot". I happend to be in the Best Buy parking lot by the Lands End with the Most Ill-Fitting and Not-Cheap clothings for womens that when you're heading for rock bottom, stop in there and try to dress yourself like an overgrown mushrooming 80's high school preppy complete with headband Outlet, and I'd just had what felt like a mild stroke wandering around the ill-lit Best Buy, trying to find a myriad of things from Cyberchase DVD's (none) to a simple 9Volt (my husband calls it a "transistor radio" battery) (NOT in the battery section, mind you, but nearer the Bubblicious at the checkout) to a laptop computer. I had been shadowing this nice couple who was shopping for a computer for their daughter entering med school. It was a nice thought. I almost offered to be their daughter for purposes of role-playing, but thought better of it.  I've been bold lately and it's been alternately horrid and funny. Demanding a painting audit for payment at Sprout - bad...deciding to use German phrases as IF they were yiddish to get along with my Jewish fundraiser cohorts-funny..ok maybe just to me, but I L-O-V-E-D the A-M/A-Z double-take. So anyway at Best Buy I just kind of loitered and watched. I need a camcorder too so I lost track of them for a while (why do they break? Why do I go back for more? But baby just started walking today!! Hurrah! And so need a camera...because should have made movie yesterday).. Anyway, these were well-meaning, intense and quite linear people who were not picking up what BestBuyBoy was laying down, and didn't differentiate between Mac and PC (I'm thinking they're not going to the HD TV section next).  But so I was thinking about depreciation and parents who buy their children laptops for school. I know they want to do the right thing, without considering the educational discount the student will be afforded on a pc AND the MS Office Software (esp by going direct for mac at an apple store or online), and they're unaware of the inevitable sheet of paper the student will be handed on the first day outlining the software requirements for the class. (I don't think I ever mentioned here that Steve and I met as computer lab consultants at Northwestern University ...we used to bring Henry there too..Swiss Family Robinson Computer Lab)  I know the temptation to do the right thing and have it all there for the student is overwhelming, but consider this. The laptop starts to depreciate the day it walks off the lot. It's April. School will start in August, maybe even September. The student most likely does not have a paper due before then, but will probably unpack that laptop and load all kinds of cr*p on there in the summer, or at least spill some cr*p on there before August.  One or more peripherals will get lost, possibly the USB cable that came neatly tied in a little twisty-tie, and suddenly there is a problemo. Then come to find out that model doesn't burn DVD's, and assignment #1 for the elective is to make a little movie or CD or something...then what? Then student is going to the computer lab anyway, and laptop is back in the dorm serving as a lunch tray or worse, a bun-warmer for chilly roomie or roomie tryst.  The laptop is depreciating at the speed of light at this point. Stop the insanity. Buy nice sheets before school, those ridiculous special XLong twin sheets, as those will be needed on the very first day. But the laptop? I'd wait and see the requirements the school provides at Orientation, what educational discounts exist, and what software is necessary to purchase. Ya can probably even check it out online beforehand. A better education for higher education is allowing your precollege kiddo to go to the library and work amongst other people and pay for printing, as the toner on that fancy new printer is bound to run out right around exam time, and that student is going to have to know his/her way around a printing card anyway. And those computer lab people can run the gamut.

Whew. OK. ON the plus side on this depreciation topic, I actually bought myself a computer today. !? It's still in the box. I just finished my paper for class, but see, I'm IN class, and I have all these needs to type things and without deelay (don't, please, note the post time here. Remember all those gentle encouraging coffee ideas? hm, yes. Ask me anything about the brand positioning of donorschoose.org though, I'm all over it). After that kid totally freaked me out (was I SHOT? Was there an accident?) and I talked to my understanding husband, I drove to Bayshore, went to the Apple store, and bought a MacBook with my educational discount and even got a little keyboard skin to protect at least some part of the thing that is going to eat grape juice pdq I can feel it.  I have half a mind to wrap it in plastic wrap but have geeked out on reading online and realize it could verrrrry well overheat if I do that. Anyway, so now I have my MomBook as I call it "White, for Easy Cleaning"...I swear I should work there. I would say things that were raucous but right on to people like me who case the place, know that's what they want, but can't get over the whole "Have a Copy of MS Office for PC at Home" thing. Well. Mr. Corey showed me a nice free online interface called Neo Office or something like that (I've forgotten the whole transaction because it makes me lightheaded to think about it) AND I got a free printer (now we just have a ridiculous number of printers) and so there you go. I can't wait to be able to make imovies. I have been supposed to have been making little documentaries of my arts grant for YEARS and I kept whining "When do I get my imoney to make imovies guys?" so now, thanks to doing our taxes, we had a little for me to do that.  I now have no excuse. As time is a-wastin, the thing's depreciating downstairs I can hear it. I have to teach some Green next week, so I'm going to head to the Green show at the Woodsomething gallery on Locust this week. I can't wait. Seeing Green I think it is. I'm excited to make fifty recycled paper Earth clocks tick tock folks...but that's next week.  Also pending is my grande free Calatrava painting for the Bal du Lac. Nothing like bringing coal to newcastle is there?

IN OTHER NEWS - I have started a LIST of Riverbrook Stories, see to the right here. If you send me a story to my email, ( I will post it anonymously unless you ask me to use your name).  I think there are a lot of stories that would lend themselves to a kind of tribute book for them. I would be honored if you would share even a simple memory or idea about the place that is soon to be no more. Something about what Riverbrook (formerly Pig 'n Whistle) is to you, or why you like it, or what funny things happened to you there, please share. This is the time. The time is now. It's being RAZED.