This weekend was further confirmation of my need to close up all hermit like and spend my weekend sleeping in and cooking and painting and not talking to anyone but the cats.  I feel like an asshole sometimes when I impose those boundaries but winter makes them necessary more than ever. I do feel like I'm able to handle my week much more productively and successfully when I have that carrot at the end of it, an actual weekend and not just the usual hecticness.  But I did finish a new series of paintings, plus actually cooked a bunch of stuff to eat all week, so I'm feeling virtuous and productive despite my hermitness.  I sometimes feel like I have this really great apartment that I've spent lots of money and time on and I never get to really BE there.  Mostly the cats live there, I keep my clothes there and sleep, but that really feels like all the time I spend there.  I want to change that, but given I work 40 hours / week and then another 15-20 in the studio, 10 or so going to and fro all week, most of my hometime is sleeping save a couple hours at night.  So weekends are an indulgence I refuse to give up.

So this week has been filled with reserve collection crazy and bookstore orders in the studio and general business, but I did manage to not only bingewatch American Horror Story's latest season but also to put the finishing touches on the apocalypse book and send it off. This weekend, I've also played around a bit with my brand new set of acrylics from Christmas and hid out from the world, but it's Sunday night, and Monday means back to reality.  Back to the inbox and layouts and all hopefully a little more awake than I've been during the break's early hours.

As for the book, I am feeling pretty good about sending it out into the world.  There is also more progress on SALVAGE's release come spring, author photo and bio choosing, and a cover soon no doubt.  When I'm not doing it, writing again feels very far away (I've been tweaking and editing more than generating the past two months--necessary, but less fun).  I plan on getting back to the blonde joke poems now that that manuscript has been tidied up and sent out, and also sending out some of the new work to journals.

It's been a busy couple weeks that started off with a few slow days at home, a few more days back at work and then I was off to New Orleans, which was beautiful and warmer and pretty for the sake of being pretty. Also seductive in that I several times considered  abandoning my Chicago life and moving down there to set up a little art/paper shop in the French Quarter.  We started the week with shopping in the Garden District, an architecture tour, visiting Lafayette Cemetery. Did touristy things like The Aquarium and a swamp tour later in the week, shopped more for vintage and art in the Quarter, had dinner on Bourbon Street a couple nights. (I ate everything I think I was supposed to--beignets, po-boys, jambalaya, gumbo, fried chicken and shrimp. Or at least what someone who doesn't actually like most seafood would. ) It was a brief repreive from January, which was coming down hard on the midwest this last week. I think my very favorite things were Hotel Monteleone's rotating Carousel Bar and the very cool Trashy Diva store on Magazine Street. I came home with mostly art prints and some other souvenirs. Of course, I also came home to winter and and it's horrible hands clutched around everything and a burning desire to go back until at least April.