zoomaru

When raising a child, much like when being arrested, your words WILL be used against you. Sometimes immediately.
"I don't think being denied a balloon is going to ruin your Li..." "YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE" Nice to have this screamed as your walking through your neighborhood.

If you don't like the green blobs of tooth paste spackled against the white sink, buy white tooth paste!

If you have pets and/or children or are yourself a messy person, do not buy white furniture. In fact, pick upholstery that matches your pet. You should have seen the sofa I got to go with my calico cat.

Only give advice or opinions when they're sought after. Much like bags of free poop, very few people actually what 'em.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. This applies to most anything. Child happily playing by herself? Don't try to interject yourself into the game.

Be kind to everyone, you never know when you might need a little kindness yourself. And this beats the hell out of immediately feeling guilty when you've thought you were being rude to an assjack, and then it turns out you were wrong. man i hate that.

If you can't say something nice, Instant Message your husband with your venomous rantings, it might make them laugh, but would piss off your co-worker. In fact, if you're on ichat or AIM, look me up = pagalina. I'm online 9-5 m-f! drop me a line! Make me laugh!

By the time I got home I was spitting mad. A cartoon dark cloud over my head with little lightning bolts shooting out. It was filled with astericks, exclamation points and curly cues to indicate my pissiness. I was that squat drawing of a little kid, face squinched in anger, stomping back and forth, the one that wanted to run away from home. I changed my clothes and decided to stomp up to the convenience store to fetch some medicinal beer and to try to stomp out some of my pique.

I have my 6-pack beer in hand and a redemptive lottery ticket and i'm actually feeling a little better. Half way home from this 6 block walk, the skies open up and spill giant saucer-like rain drops. On me. It's just too funny by the time I've gotten home to find Ruby and Richard waiting out the storm sitting in the car. They've noticed some jackass walking in the rain and they foolishly wonder who it is. Who's the jackass? ME!

I like to think that I’m not beyond learning from my life lessons. Some I’ve learned but chosen to ignore. As an example, big piles of bacon with greasy eggs and hash browns nearly make me ill. On a Saturday or Sunday morning though, nothing sounds better or smells so delish and tempting. It is guaranteed that 30 minutes later I will start complaining about how shitty I feel. But I “forget” sometimes. Ouch.

I’ve also tried to learn from others’ examples and mistakes; tight stretch pants do NOT make a large ass look smaller, no matter what garish pattern you’ve selected. And some I just have to remind myself of periodically.

This weekend I remembered that being flexible makes life easier, especially when dealing with small children and irate clients. Our three year old is an adorable little firecracker with curls and an impish grin but her idea of speedy compliance and MY idea are totally difference. Actually she doesn’t include “speedy” as part of the whole concept of compliance anyway so right there we start butting heads. But once I loosen up my definition of compliance and timeliness, we’re both a lot happier and things eventually get done. It’s related to knowing when to “Put Your Foot Down!” and when to maybe just let it slide a little if it was just a minor infraction.

So, periodically, I remind myself: Lighten up! Be flexible! If I had the attention span to accomplish it, I’d cross stitch it on a pillow. I’m still trying to finish “Bite Me” from Subversive Cross Stitch.

Another valuable lesson useful in all parts of life is “shut up” ie. not everyone has to know everything. I’m prone to speaking out loud most of my thoughts. I’m very aboveboard and I don’t lie unless absolutely necessary. But abstaining from gut-spilling is totally legit. All I need to do is weigh the outcome of telling versus not telling, and figuring out which has better results.

For example, I had an absolutely horrid boss for about 7 months. I’m not easily moved to tears but this woman had me weeping at night from the stress. When I was given an offer to go elsewhere I snapped it up. Did I tell her what an awful experience I’d had? What a wretched person she was? No. What would have been the benefit of it? Would she have turned over a new leaf? No. Would she be able to black ball me in the ad community here? Most certainly. It was easy to tell her that the other company made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. End of story. Sorry. Buh-bye.

Those are two of mine, what are yours? Leave ‘em and weep in the comments, babe!

Hello Internets! My peeps! My Homies! It is I, Pagalina, here to bring the funny! LOL. (How many blog cliches can I use in a single post? You’ll just have to wait and see. I still haven’t complained about my weight! But wait for it!)

Life has had us pinned to the wrestling matt here at Zoomaruland. Its sweaty armpit pressed into our faces and its enormous belt buckle poking us in the ribs. On the plus side it’s one of those Mexican Luchca Libre wrestlers and his mask is awesome, as is his girth.

Living with our lovely child has lately resembled shacking up with Dr. David Banner and we never know when he’s gonna hulk out on us and go on a rampage. She has been taking steroids for a bad allergic reaction and now we spell “volatile” R.U.B.Y.

And unfortunately this hulking-out is contagious. Battling these raging screamfests has left me a trembling, snappy beast. If everyone could just go eff themselves and leave me alone, we’d all get along nicely. For example, I’m on the phone with a tech-support puke that is cutting me off every time I try to say something AND he’s insinuating that I’m a dumbass. Hmm. He just better STEP OFF, is all I’m saying.

Work is insanely busy for both Dickie and myself. Everything I’m working on has the exact same deadline. I came into work Monday to find everything due Tuesday afternoon. Everything. How is one to prioritize such a mess? All my coworkers are slammed and everyone is pretty edgy what with me hulking out on their asses when they look cross-eyed at me.

Thank god there’s beer. No matter how fat it’ll make me! (See? I DID IT!)

I’ve been in graphic design for (HOLY CRAP) 19 years. Nineteen. Long. Years. What I’ve enjoyed about it is the opportunity to be creative, to wear jeans to the office and to work with other funny, creative people. And I realize it’s the first step of the process, before the work is presented to the client, that is the most fun. Ah! A conundrum. The very people who pay the bills often make the job unenjoyable. I know that any job would be more enjoyable if there weren’t clients or bosses to please, but those are the ones that seem to pay the best.

Art or anything creative is a purely subjective matter. As a creative person, I love seeing things that surprise me. Wow! A bank uses orange as their main color? Now that’s original! Orange would certainly stand out from the masses of blue and green that most banks use. Bankers are an extreme example to use. I’ve found that any company that works with money is particularly freaked out about freaking out potential customers. Can you say “conservative”? I knew that you could.

When I chose my profession, I very clearly remember thinking to myself, that “I don’t think I can work with a bunch of suits every day.” And some days I’ve forgotten that. And then I do work for a financial organization and it becomes crystal clear again. I know there are some rogue bankers and investment dudes that wear boxers with skulls n’ crossbones on them, but for the most part these folks are very frightened of being seen as different from everyone else. Don’t make waves! Conform! BLUE!!! BLUE IS A GOOD COLOR!!! SEE MY TIE? IT’S BLUE!!!! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve designed conservative-looking pieces in maroons or golds or what have you and then been asked to make it blue. When asked what I did all day, I’ve joked for years that “oh, I made it blue today.” Blue is the ultimate safe color, sure to offend no one. It’s as though I put no thought whatsoever into my color choices when the opposite is always true. The client sells pumpkins, perhaps their logo should have orange in it, for example.

So, for all those folks who wished they had ended up in a more creative career, let this be a grass-is-greener warning for you! It’s actually been great, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, but fighting the same sorts of battles over and over gets tiring.

There are lots of ideas spinning about my head. And I’m just not the sort to go off half-cocked. Especially now with responsibilities for family and home. So, I’m going to have to be pretty firm in my head about what it is I want to do and how I’m going to do it. Some of my ideas have start up costs associated with them, and long term financial effects as well. It’s pretty hard to leave a career this far into it, especially the salary involved. I’m starting over if I jump career-ship. One possible way to go is to go part-time in my current job while training for or starting up next venture. Freelance is also an option although developing a client base might be tricky. I’m lucky enough that I can do this job easily from home. And there is a certain attractive quality to answering only to the client, rather than also to a boss with their own pain-in-the-ass ideas.

Ah, nothing like feeling like a 17 year old looking down the barrel of graduation!

We’re all busy people, right? There’s work to be done, lives to be lived, blogs to write and/or read and often not enough time in which to do all that is required.

I’ve done painstaking research (and by painstaking, I mean, hey I read blogs a lot) and have developed a series of codes that will aid in the development and enjoyment of personal blogs. My research indicates that a great deal of writing on these sites constitutes a certain amount of whining on the part of the writer. Looking back over my own archives I see that I whine about the same damn things over and over, although I try to space them out by adding bits about cool art or jewelry, lest you think that all I do is whine. I’ve been struggling with a system that can be universally used and understood. Using just numbers would be obtuse and difficult to remember. We can make a global movement to use these codes and I daresay the internet itself will move faster just by reducing the extra data being posted!

Here’s my list, please add your own in the comments and I’ll start adding it to this main list.

• J-whine: any job related bitching
• Boss-whine: pretty clear
• baby-whine: “my kid is driving me NUTS!”
• sig-o-whine: any general complaints about one’s significant other
• Bummer-whine: for general malaise and bummerness
• fat-whine: I should perhaps use this in “real-time” dialog. I’m sure my hubby would appreciate the additional free time this would allow him.
• existential-whine: “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, everything is so confusing blah blah blah”
• mom-guilt-whine: Other people are raising my child while I’m selfishly going off to work every day.
• design-o-whine: clients are stupid, graphic design is stupid, everything is stupid.
• money-whine: ie. Why can’t I win the lottery? Another hot topic of mine!

Actually reducing whining to a single code or phrase, helps diminish its importance. Perhaps this is also a good way to keep things in perspective. Earlier this week I was feeling pretty pissy. Next time, I’m gonna remind myself “Hey, dumbass, life is good! Lighten the hell UP!!! Sheesh! Enough with existential-whine, already!”