This has to happen. This needs to happen.

I was making potato pierogi, and idly thinking about things I’d seen on Facebook today, as one does. This Bruce Springsteen/Jimmy Fallon piece ripping Gov. Christie is brilliant.

I was thinking that Bruce was right in saying that Fallon does a better Bruce than Bruce, when the penny dropped: there was comedy gold to be mined today. Remember Dueling Brandos? I see Dueling Bosses, in a three way with Fallon, Adam Sandler and Bruce his ownself. Someone needs to get on that, stat. People need to call people.

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail addressed to my ex-husband. We have been divorced for 24 years. I never used his name while we were married. When I married the Renowned Local Artist, I changed my name to his. He (the RLA) and I bought this house together in 1993. The ex never had anything to do with this location.

I cannot tell you how hard it was to see the Antichrist’s on a piece of mail addressed to my home. I cannot tell you how violated I felt to have his presence thrust on me like that. Violated. I was crying and shaking. I woke up at 4 this morning with a migraine and spent the next two hours throwing up.

I sorted out the confusion with the owners of the data base that supplied the sender of the letter, but I am still shaken. He is listed on that site (People Finders, FYI) as a “known alias” for me. I find that so hard to understand, seeing as how I never changed my name. It has made me concerned about my credit…the man never paid a bill on time in his life (or his fair share of a dinner tab, or anything else, as far I was concerned) and to have him listed as an alias for MOI???

I may have to go throw up again.

So. Part of this whole third act thing is our relocation to my childhood home, updated to suit our more hipster aesthetic. I’ve spent the last half hour searching for evidence of something I seem to recall from some art history/ethno/cultural exposure: That there was at least one early culture that with some regularity buried the architects of monuments/temples/etc. under their own designs to ensure good hoodoo. The architects’ deaths were arranged to work with the building schedule. No evidence was found, but then, one doesn’t care to search too hard for a string of key words like that, eh? In any event, the reason for the search was my sad realization that I must have been one of those people sending poor innocent architects to their untimely deaths, because my architect karma in this life is batting zero. Over the last 20 years, the RLA and I have engaged 3 architects for three projects. The first was insanely overpriced, showed us no respect, couldn’t be bothered to produce drawings and ultimately delivered a completely unacceptable set of plans for something that was twice the agreed budget. The second round of plans came from an old friend from my home town. Expensive for the likes of us, but the drawings were beautiful and exactly what we wanted. Then the market crashed and there was no way that the beautiful studio could be built. This third go round has elements of the first: the first set of drawings were procured by dint of force. They were priced and whaddayaknow, the first estimate to build came in at exactly TWICE the budget. That was a couple of months ago, and despite emails, pleas and general nagging, nothing.

When I was very young, I used to read whatever I could find in my mother’s library. By the age of ten I was reading James Thurber, I loved The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I loved the movie version with Danny Kaye, but then, I loved Danny Kaye. That there is a reboot currently in the theaters starring Ben Stiller gives me hope that perhaps one of my other favorites from the period will be rediscovered. I refer, of course, to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and I fear that this blog will descend to that level. I pray that we don’t end up in full Money Pit.

I’ve written before about my Christmas memories; that I have many and conflicting emotions about them. As merchants, my family went all out for Christmas decorations in the store, but at home there was no Christmas, we celebrated Chanukah. There was no overlap. We had a Jewish, if not kosher, home and a commercial establishment that catered to a Christian community, and for them and for the bottom line, the store celebrated Christmas. The whole family worked in the store during the season. We closed as early as we could shoo the last customer out of the store on Christmas Eve, and had a party in the shoe department (that’s where the chairs are, people) for the store family (all the employees, duh). Then the nuclear family walked over to Grandpa’s house and had a drink and then we all went and ate Chinese food, as one does.

But my friends, those Christians for whom we held Christmas in the store, they all wanted me to enjoy and have Christmas with them. They felt I was missing something, so they gave it to me: tree trimming parties, cookies, ribbon candy, wrapping and unwrapping. And best of all, Christmas food. Today I am remembering my dear, dear, dear friend Kay Thompson and all the Christmas mornings I spent at her home. I remember the year she received her diamond studs from her father, I remember her Porsche 914 (the squashed, flat frog), her Doberman puppy, the equestrian ribbons in her bedroom. I remember her annoying little brothers, Charles and David (who are probably highly respectable businessmen in their 50s with grandchildren now, sorry.) And anyway, that sentence maybe should read that I remember annoying her two little brothers.

But most of all, I remember her mother’s left over ham, fried up and served with red-eye gravy. Kay’s mother could take my one-syllable name and stretch it out to three. Kay and I would just roll our eyes. I wish I could tell Kay today how much I love these memories, and how sad I am that she’s gone, even though we rarely spoke these past 15 years. Just knowing that she was out there in the world made me happy.

Happy Christmas to all. And may you create new memories this year.

About to head back to the studio to make patchwork bags from vintage scraps given to me years ago by Russell Corbett. From his grandmother’s stash. I think, upon studying them, that many are commercial production scraps…20 layers in one cut of a shape that can only be a neckline or armhole. Dress-weight cotton prints from the 30s or 40s, it looks like, and I swear that some of these prints I’ve seen reproduced. These are not reproductions.

I have ideas to pursue.

Today in my studio, I am feeling at home. In my body, in my room, in my space, in my head. That’s a big thing, sometimes, to feel at home. The RLA took some photos of me yesterday to submit to a charity calendar thingie, and I do not like to have my photo took. Years of being behind the camera and in the darkroom have left me convinced that the belief that that the camera somehow steals your soul is not so far-fetched as the rational would have one believe. Even though I wanted to do this, it was hard for me to do, and to let someone else have the camera, even someone I trust as much as the RLA. Two of the resulting shots are quite lovely.  They do not steal my soul so much as admit a glimpse of how I am seen by my husband, who just happens to be one of my oldest (it goes without saying my dearest) friends and a very fine artist. It is a very heady thing to be a muse.

I can’t remember the last time I saw myself like this, if ever. Maybe the photos I had taken when I was thirty, of my back and shoulders, hair up, head turned and profile back-lit. Pre-tats, pre-chicken neck, pre-surgical scars. My father kept a framed copy on his dresser. In the photos from yesterday, you can see some wrinkles and some grey. I am turning 59 next month, and my 50s were a hard decade. I earned this face and this body and looking at this photo, I find am very much at home in both of them. I didn’t know until I saw the photo how much at home and at ease.

I have so many ideas for work, and as I am sewing a large quilt, my mind keeps working on these other ideas. I have to keep a note book next to me so I can sketch and write or else I may forget the details.

Or perhaps more accurately, I have yet to find it. Today’s multi-tasking includes cutting and pinning a larger-than-queen-sized quilt from fabrics that I won over the internet in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. Yeah, it’s been hanging around waiting to be born, what about it? It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time, y’know? And now that I do, I am finding it hard to not just sit on the back deck with a cup of coffee and stare at the bird feeders and the squirrels having their way with the seeds. At any rate, in order to keep some sort of sanity while I do that cutting and sorting and pinning, I have stepped in my studio to write this entry.

That led to a few moments of felting as I waited for my laptop to boot up. And when I put the heart down on my sewing table, it picked up the colors of the lonely, still unfinished colorwork sock that has been riding around in my knitting bag for a year or two itself… And the sunlight fell on both in such a lovely way, through the filter of the creeping ficus in the lattice over the koi pond just outside this room, that, well, I had to stop and take a photo of it before the light shifted.

Quite lovely, non?

But I digress. Since I can say what I like, now, I’d like to say this: Oh, little boy who is my nephew’s friend, don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. You’re fine. In fact, I predict that within the next five years, you will find yourself the sweetheart of the MENSA sorority. You rock on with your unstylish mop of long hair, and your rumpled shirt. I saw the competition at the bar mitzvah, those preening little boys in their suits, thinking that they rocked the world… You, my pet, you are the real thing, though you may not even know that yet yourself. Don’t let anyone ever change you.

And now, I must go back to the quilting squares. They aren’t going to cut and sort and pin themselves, you know.

A year ago today, I sat with my mother, holding her hand, playing every version of “By the River of Babylon” I could find, reciting prayers and generally midwifing her soul into the great beyond.

I played this, too.

Well, it is way too late in the season to begin recapping Sons of Anarchy, but Miz Shoes has to say this about the last episode: Adam Arkin.

Halfway through the opening sequence, I turned to the RLA and said, who is directing this espisode? This is beautiful. At the end of scene, I stood up and applauded. The writing was beautiful, but of course, but the acting and the directing in this espisode were stellar. Again, bravo and golf claps and some serious respect to the director. I have always loved watching any of the Arkin clan at work in front of the camera, but this just blew me off the sofa.

In other news, today is the RLA’s birthday, and I am baking him a red velvet cake and making a promise to him: I will try to stop playing with wool in the house. Until I move into the free-standing studio, I will content myself with non-alergen-filled projects like beading and hand sewing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do or do not, there is no try.

It took longer than anticipated. It still needs some tweaking, not to be confused with twerking, and there may be some parts missing. Nevertheless, Miz Shoes is proud to unveil Girlyshoes Three Point Oh, now with more LOLZ.

What do you think?

I give up. I have spent close to two hours with my hosting service’s tech support. They are stumped. I have sent a tech support request to my CMS. I’m going to go work on a quilt now, because the sewing machine works. Unlike my brain and the back end of this blog.

I swore to myself that the first thing I was going to do once I left the office was revamp this blog. Today I found two installations of the software I use to make it. I’ve never cleaned my virtual house and now I am going to have to do a clean install of my cms, rewrite everything and redesign this site. Not that I couldn’t update without that, but it would probably result in three installations and more problems. The last time I updated I lost my photo libraries and archives, and I never had the time to figure out that problem, so it’s time.

Say goodbye to Girlyshoes, and hello to Girlyshoes Three Point Oh, now with more cats.

Or it will be soon.

They did fine by me, my team. They didn’t/couldn’t get my sense of humor, but they recognized that certain things cracked me up and gave me pleasure, so on the occasion of my leaving, I was thrown a party the centerpiece of which was this cake.

Guys, I love you for this. As for last night? It was the best send-off a dame ever had, even if in the old days we would have closed the Road, rather than warmed up the seats for the night crowd.

Miz Shoes makes no pretensions about her age: she is older than dirt. I graduated college in 1975, when most of the readers of this blog (if there are any left, that is) were still in diapers, if not in utero. I have worked as a graphic designer, a paste up artist, a web master, a sales girl on the Apple store floor, a nude figure model, a (very bad) camp counsellor, a piece-work painter of cheesy wind chimes and a commercial photographer. I have been a creative director, an administrator for an outreach campus of MiamiDade Community College on South Beach back in the 80s before South Beach was rediscovered and made over, and a college instructor of photography and graphic design. I have milked goats, tossed bales of hay and weed, run an unsuccessful political campaign for a loathsome individual who would have been a disaster if he’d won, done titles and special FX for non-theatrical releases & commercials and held a union card to do it and one of my t-shirt designs (for the Y2K non-event, to be exact) was accepted into the Smithonian’s permanent collection. I have stayed at jobs for as long as 12 years and as short as a week, but since I graduated college on my twenty-first birthday (one of the universe’s more piquant jokes, I feel) I have worked. Full time. The longest vacation I took was 2 weeks, and the longest period between jobs maybe 6 months.

All of that comes to a rather inglorious end on Tuesday, August 13, 2013. I quit my job, and the ten days notice I gave runs out on that day. At 5:30 pm EDT, I walk away from the corporate world and into my studio, there to make what I like to consider my art. I have been collecting art supplies and tools since 1975, stockpiling against this day when I might have the time to create, but not the money to buy the raw materials. I have enough fabric for three dozen quilts, enough wool for pounds and pounds of yarn, and enough yarn to knit a hundred sweaters. I have patterns and silks and oddments and ornaments. I still have my eyesight and my hand/eye coordination. On August 14, I will have the time.

Where do I begin? With this, my blog. I have loved writing and telling my stories for as long as I have had a voice, but knowing that the Big Brother of my corporate overlord was watching my words for me put a huge cramp in my style. That ends on August 13, too. So welcome back to the monkey house, my gentle readers. Buckle up. Now it’s going to get interesting.

Miz Shoes has a confession: she has, in less than two hours, become a devotee of DaVinci. Oh, not the maestro I studied in art school, nor the magician in the titular fictions of Dan Brown, but the anachronistic, badly written, desperately acted, beautifully filmed and costumed DaVinci’s Demons on a cable network the name of which escapes me, because I am watching it on the RLA’s iphone routed through the giant monitor that functions as a television.

The writing is execrable. No, calling it execrable is an insult to hacks and shitty writing everywhere. It is anachronistic to a degree that would embarrass a freshman writer in film school—a bad film school. Not only is it bad, it assumes that the audience has the art history knowledge and attention span of a gnat, and utterly incapable of following a plot or remembering relationships. The actors, bless their hearts, each and every one, struggle mightily with dialog that makes George Lucas look like, to be appropriately historic in reference, Shakespeare. While beautiful, the title animation is reminiscent of the title animation in Pillars of Earth. The slow-mo is part kung-fu movie, part Matrix. And yet…

And yet Miz Shoes is compelled by this. During her school years, Miz Shoes spent many an hour in rapt attention to the lectures of William Betch, the best damned art history professor the University of Miami was ever blessed to have on faculty. To see those sketches, as well known and dear to me as family photos, to see them come alive, no matter how thick the cheese crust, is bliss. To see the scale models of his wings, to see, however fanciful and improbable, the test flight… well, Miz Shoes swoons. It doesn’t matter that the character is written to be half Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and half Peck’s Bad Boy. It doesn’t matter that the Pope’s Nephew and Assassin has done graduate-level work at the School of Bad Robert Downey, Jr. Impressions and Teeth Gnashing. It doesn’t matter that the writing is, well, has Miz Shoes mentioned that the writing is bad? She has? She hasn’t mentioned it enough. But it just doesn’t matter.

When’s the next episode?