Metaphor

My friend Selena sent me this picture. My new friend, Selena, whom I keep running into. Our surprise encounters are precisely timed, at church, at the pool, walking on the local path. Today, at the carousel downtown.

Selena snapped this picture of me and when I saw it, my chest sank.

This photo captures perfectly the metaphor of this season.

Because there I stand, firm, while the rest of the horses and smiles and oompa music whirs around me.  I am incongruous, not even supporting my baby on the pony bobbing up and down. She is dressed in her Halloween costume because I woke up thinking today was Halloween. And then I hauled her and her brother all over town wondering why no one else was in costume. I am smiling, waving like a homecoming queen, on a carousel, merry horses bobbing up and down around me, their heads arched forward, but never advancing further another inch.  I stand, I smile, I wave.

The flip am I doing?

What do I do each day?  Bounce around a room, point, yell, draw circles around words that form ledes that form ideas that form furrowed brows in the eyes of my audience.  Sit in my office, point, click, circle, sigh. Drive, arrive, pick up, put down, the horses and Matchbox cars and trains rumble around me. I stand firm, I wave, I smile.

I don't know what I am doing here, in the conserva-patch of this orbiting globe, in this season where I don't know if it is November yet and does it matter since I'm still sweating, in this body where I play grammar guru and puppeteer and kitchen witch and lover all in one day.

But I know I am supposed to be here.  The eyelashes on my eyes, hiding behind sunglasses, are all numbered.  Each and every encounter with each and every person here on the carousel is precisely known.  I will stand firm while the ponies bob and spin. I will smile and wave, and wonder who let me out of the house with those socks.

Be in the Biz

I am having a wicked blast teaching a class in publication tools and design this semester.  There are roughly 283920483 outtakes to the actual business of teaching this class two days a week. For example, a couple of weeks ago, we designed bottle labels for a sparkling juice beverage that we, as professional beverage makers, invented. Doesn't that sound like a blast and a half? Blast!  My students produced some amazing work full of color and pizazz. A regular design pizazzerie. Now one of the students had a creative delay (see also: procrastination station) and he brought me project a few days weeks after, like a streetcorner swigger, he pulled that bottle out of a bag and then...

And then we both laughed.

Because, label design prowess aside, I was feeling very much like my office had turned into a lab for dropping off samples of...you know...a different kind of liquid, n'ah mean?

We're now moving on to our propaganda unit. Soon the students will be Here's the demo poster I've created.  I'm so proud that I welcome you to download it as a free printable. Bon apetit!

Download pdf here awesome2

Love from Design HQ, Kendra

Joy-filled Season

There is no denying that this has been one of the most joyful seasons in my parenting life. The fact that this has also been a season in which I have spent the least amount of time with my children is no coincidence. Make no mistake, I love spending time with my children, and I do spend plenty with them, despite this new regimen of classes and office hours and sprints back and forth to Mac Labs at 11 p.m. to set up technologies that will just make a liar out of me. But let me be honest: my children are smiling more and my Baby Girl has run through the Creation story in skit form and my Little Man has started spouting vocab words like woah, and I have had very little to do with all of this. Oh sure, I hired the outsourced care. I scoped out the school. I earn the scrilla that writes the checks. But I am very much the mama who rides in like a hero at the end of the day to hear all about the day's playground drama and what kind of cement mixer passed by our house. My capacity has been reduced. I am more than a freelancer, but less than a full-timer if we're really counting direct service hours in parentland. Of course my children are always on my mind, they are inextricably linked to my heavy heart. I enjoy their company more than I remember enjoying it and I attribute it to all the support I have right now in helping them to explore the world.

I am generally okay with it. The guilt does come in waves and sometimes, because I am in the South where mothers of small children with careers seem to be an anomaly, I feel sucked in and spit back out to shore by it all. I stand over my sleeping children, warm little pajama-clad marsupials breathing in all the peaceful molecules in our home and breathing out all the yawps of glee of the past day, and I think, Was I there enough for you today? Did I give you enough hugs and peanut butter today? Will you remember this day ten years from now as a day in which we put away the silverware together and talked about hot air balloons, or will you recall how I got all sorts of bent out of shape because you kept interrupting me reading a Mercer Mayer classic and FOR THE LOVE OF PEDRO CAN YOU PLEASE STOP SNARFING ON YOUR BROTHER'S SOCKS.

All of this enJOYment of my children comes in contrast, though. Had I not the privileged opportunity to stay home with them for months and sometimes whole years, I am not sure I would feel this way. Grateful doesn't even come close to expressing the hearty thanks I have to my husband for working all of those insane jobs (with the insane) to provide that opportunity for me, for us. The days of placating newborns through the witching hour, of wrangling toddlers who boycotted nap are a part of my past career, but the skills are transferable to my current position and the memories of the sweetness and the struggle inform all that I do now, all that I am now: Wife, mother, professor, hapless student of this joy-filled mess.

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outdoor photo credits to Lovey Loverpants