The icy hold on the midwest is just starting to ease and thngs are mild and melty today and for the next few thankfully. I spent the weekend in Rockford for a belated holiday gathering for my Dad's side, which of course brings all the ick to the forefront again. I mostly spent the evening stress eating lasagna and peppermint bark and silently begging that no one would mention my mother at all, but it's impossible, of course, and not anyone's issue but my own. It's not like you can just erase someone, but when I cry or even when I try not to, I get really shitty cry headaches, so those aren't really very much fun in supposed holiday festivities.
Otherwise, I am plugging along through new chapbooks and orders and getting ready for a big online shop update in early February--new prints and paper goods, as well as some original things (watercolors, nature prints) that have been piling up in the studio for over a year. I have a brand new sketchbook/planner coming tomorrow in a an order from Staples, so I plan to spend some time this week transfering things between the old one and the new.
I did manage to get up the page for this year's zine subscription, which is out of the gate with the horror poems & collages of /SLASH/ , for which I was going for a high school girl's notebook with the cover (each one will vary slightly in the design.) February's offering will be the little book of love poem pieces and I'm still deciding whether or not to incorporate some artwork or whether the pieces should just stand as themselves.
