Grooveshark Therapy

Though Pat believes new music is a sham and it's all been done worth doing I persist in searching for new music therapy for myself. 

I surprise myself when I like stuff I stumble on. I use Grooveshark.com to surf through artists and songs. Mostly I click the "similar" button until I run out of leads. Then I listen to the list I've compiled while freewriting.

It is an honest to goodness art therapy approach to music. It's curious. That's my main goal. To remain curious.

There are little things my past therapist said that break through again and again. Like "remain curious." This was a suggestion for a healthy marriage. But I find it applying to all sitch-oo-a-shuns.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosionopened for The Breeders in 1994 at Indiana University's Little 500 celebration. I was there. So Christian. So shocked. 

Today I find Jon Spencer Blues Explosion  behind the "similar" button for White Stripesand I find myself transcending the living room. Sweaty concert because everyone had to wear at least two flannel shirts and look really bored. I just bounced up and down in place but the whole flock of flannels in front of me were slamming each other and looking bored. 

I wore peter pan green cotton tights under black denim cutoff hip hugger jeans with a blue tartan plaid shirt untucked. 

Sometimes there's a girl, well, she's the girl for her time. 1994 central stupid Indiana. I worked for and studied under a lot of actively anti-Clinton Christians at a conservative private church University.

Tennis Therapy for PTSD/Anxiety a.k.a. Better than Lexapro

She does yoga after tennis. I am her Mama.

And Gosh Darn It People Like Me a.k.a. My Depression Opens Its Maw

It took me way too long to think of these cards. I had to cry and ask for help from Pat and Sunny. But it's time to replace my painful thoughts and my good friend and mentor suggested I make these cards for the 103rd time. I finally listened.

This picture is my art therapy today with watercolor crayons

It's called

"Zat You Self Ezteem?"

This is an ongoing struggle of a painting. I don't want to give up on her because she's incredible but I've convoluted the original energy of the composition. She could be almost done with one brilliant move. Or I could end up cutting her out and adding her to another composition.

So, if y'all don't come to my blog some days, like Sundays, I'm going to not get my feelings hurt. As much as today anyway. I'm having a nice anxiety/trigger backlash and it makes me pathetic and approval  hungry. 

Luckily for me Pat and Sunny are bathing me with approval today.

This is helping too. 

"I think I'll drive on until I get there. 'Cuz I'm a ram yes I am."

Pat's Review of the B52's Show Last Night on Spinner.com

B-52s Rouse the Crowd at California Casino Gig

My Kate Pierson Earrings from Prom 1993/My Grown Up Boots

Just found my power boots in the garage. I bought them to give me confidence while teaching poetry to high school kids and to remind myself that I am an adult. I haven't worn them for two years.

I found my prom earrings from my Kate Pierson dress-up prom. Unfortunately they don't have any spring left and the triangle fell off the other earring as soon as I touched it.

Pat's B52's Spinner article/Date with Fred Today

B-52s Used 'Cosmic Thing' to Cope With Guitarist's Death - Spinner

Candi's Got A Wig!

We are meeting Fred in his casino hotel room before soundcheck for an interview. Pat and I are gussied up and jamming to "Bushfire" right now.

Another Corset Girl to Keep Me Company

I'm doing a series on corsets. Yes, it's very metaphor-y of me. Nothing feels exactly like a good corset except a panic attack.

I'm All Smurfed Up With No Where To Go a.k.a. I ain't got no car

Breaking B52's News! I'm Gonna Meet Fred Friday!

My rockstar-interviewing husband is taking me to see the B52's Friday at the Chumash Casino. He interviewed Keith Strickland a week or so ago. Strickland (reverence leads me to last names) told him a virtual blow-by-blow history of the band.
Spinner.com, now fervently in love with my very own husband, is having Pat tack on an interview to our swag concert night.
Before the show. In all my starstruck glory. I sit, Yoko-like, and watch Pat do his thing. Then I'll continue to make participatory art until I'm very very old. Just like Yoko.
You know, Yoko and Kate Pierson mutually admired each other. We're practically all best friends!

Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld Cast in the Coens' True Grit - ComingSoon.net

Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld Cast in the Coens' True Grit - ComingSoon.net

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Olympic Rains This Year On the Central Coast of California

Her name is Sunny and she takes all this very personally.


Do you see the size of those raindrops? Central Coast of California winter. Monsoon. Landslides. Slats of neighbors fences doing Olympic figure skating leaps and hitting your chimney in flight. Because, did I mention 60 to 70 mph wind?

I remember one Olympic year. Oh yes. I was newly emancipated from living on campus. My first apartment! My first cat! My first bottle of wine with a friend at a table of pasta and black olives. The first time I cooked the pasta all the noodles sloshed out of the colander and onto the linoleum. We laughed and laughed and wondered aloud whether I should be trusted to live alone. [foreshadowing] Then I made more pasta. This was Indiana in 1995. Grunge was my bag for sure. Lots of flannel and Stone Temple Pilots and Camel Extra Wide cigarettes.

My other red headed friend, the one with an online shopping addiction--unopened boxes shamefully hiding under her bed (she showed me)--came to watch the gymnastic hysteria. It was the time that adorable little thing hurt her ankle and Chris Kattan carried her off the floor. No wait, that's not right.

My amazingly beautiful Pre-Raphaelite faced red headed friend sat in my grandpa's hand-me-down recliner and cried. I noticed a pile of dried up cat poop under the recliner and was mortified. She had shown me her shameful boxes. But I would not show mine. I waited until the next morning to pick it up.


When I watched the aforementioned SNL skit later it was with another beautiful friend. This one from Greece.  So gorgeous I let her walk all over me for three years and then lost her forever. She was visually perfect and yet during that SNL episode I caught her pinching her cheek because she was convinced she could give herself a dimple. I told her about facial muscles and that surgery was the only option for new dimples. I hope she got over it before growing into a salary or a sugar daddy.

Yoko Tells Mother Jones something Sassy like: We Create the Human Race

Before printing Yoko's interview Mother Jones editorialized that the reader should prepare for "sass." I can't help but thinking that Yoko's ownership of her power as a woman led them to say, "look at how cute and feisty she is." Well maybe we can read her words again here and notice their big T truth.

MJ: Why do women artists often find their work obscured by their partner’s talent?

YO: Well, we’re obscured because [men] want to obscure us because they’re totally frightened. I mean, we have so much power that if they start to admit that power they think that maybe they’re going to sort of lose something. They’re insecure. Of course, all of us are such insecure people, but because we have such power to actually create the human race, that’s really big, you know

I'm Surfing Again!

Look at me. New surfboard. New hat. At my new friend's house.

But that was last year. In 2009 I surfed from April to June and then had a nervous breakdown that slid right into bankruptcy and business failure and, well unemployment and plenty of time for art therapy.

When I was surfing a lot I would relish the bumps and bruises. I thought the purple of this black eye was great with the yellow edging. A nice watercolor. And it matched my sunglasses!

But now I am surfing the web. Adding myself to Twitter. Streamlining my blog. Trying to launch my new incredibly lucrative career as a fine artist and writer. 

Pat has a week off not next week but the next week. He has promised to walk to school with me and Sunny in the morning. Stop at the cafe and get coffee on the stroll home. Load up the boards and hit the smurf! We will probably do a little surf road trip to Refugio Beach. Or something so romantically charged I won't be able to do it justice in color or words.

We Midwesterners are into Feeling Guilty

This is Pat's take on having TV back.

I Accuse My Television -- Life at the Crest of Happiness

My mailbox, my street. The little copse of trees at the horizon of the street are the entrance to an Audobon official viewing spot for rare birds in the estuary. The glassy high tide is reflecting Black Mountain and the State Park golf course.


My adorable house.

The red-berried driveway of my tiny town's grocery owner.  Next door to my adorable house.

See that little mound in the haze between the trees? That's Morro Rock. Our coast's pride. Postcard fodder.
If that's not good enough, I saw Martin Sheen this morning. Yeah, dentures and square wire rimmed reading glasses. A very literary navy blue sweater and navy slacks a little shinier than the sweater. Lace-up loafers. He had to jumble the coffee mug and stacks of vague folders to unlock his Volvo. I said, "good morning" but he didn't flinch or look over. Though his energy shifted my way. No, he wasn't really Martin Sheen but he looked wonderful and I'm so glad I saw him. I thought about how I consider my little town to be a hamlet of magic wonder.

And if that's not good enough Pat got our cable reconnected yesterday. Though I was a moral holdout I am completely backsliding into media junkie. I've already watched Diana Krall live in Paris, 42nd Street,  Tina Turner live. I have an Ella Fitzgerald documentary saved. Well, also an Elvis Costello concert, Satchmo documentary and a profile of Goya's painting style.

My anxiety is scattered to the wind today.

Sunny told me on our walk to school her theology knowledge had filled out and she was ready to share. Well, ok. It went like this:
"Lord was the first person ever. Lord is God's mother. She taught him how to make people and then she made his other mother but I forget her name."
"Mary?"
"Yeah, Mary!
Of course this turned into a high-pitched meandering song the rest of the way to school. During the song I imagined all the mistakes Lord's son made and then how his son was perfect. Huh. Weird. Sunny's trinity.

The guy that hooked up our cable also wired our stereo for us so that the vcr, dvd and tv all play through our kick ash stereo! So now I'm watching/listening to Mystery Science Theater 3000's I Accuse My Parents.

Sharpie Self-Portraits

My Kate Pierson Costume -- prom 1993

Domesticate the Moments of Your Life

Sunny took this picture of me

a) posing for a painting

b) bustling

c) wearing an anxiety costume

I am also wearing a turban but she cut off my head. 

I'm Your Bulldog -- new watercolor

this is from my senior prom. That's my best friend Christy back there.
My expression says back off she's fragile and amazing and not appreciated enough by the likes of you.
Not you you. You know, the editorial you.

This painting was my way of supporting her today.
I refuse to believe that 2,000 miles in this day and age is suppose to stop me from comforting my bosom friend.

George Gently -- new watercolor by Candi Poet

Gertrude Stein said

Artists don't need criticism

They need love

What To Wear to The Casino

Pat is taking me to see the B52's next weekend so I must decide what to wear!

You may not know that I love Kate Pierson. In fact, you probably don't know, unless you are my high school boyfriend or Christy (hi!) that I dressed up like Kate Pierson for my senior prom. I bought this hot little turquoise short chiffon skirted dress, The sleeveless top was covered with clear sequins so the color swirls would show through. I had my hair teased and flipped professionally before the dance.

So, I spent hours in my boudoir tonight trying on dresses. Ok, it was CoutureAllure.com.

And I never wished more that I had a good paper doll of myself.