Pretending

One of the fabulous attributes my son inherited from being the offspring of two creative people is an astounding imagination.
He has created a slew of characters over the last year and millions of stories he places these characters in. Every day when I pick him up from daycare to drop him off at school  he tells me as many stories as he can fit into that time.
The main characters are Invisible Guy; who came to live with us last year after Evil Cow attacked and killed his entire invisible family  and Bob; an old homeless man who came to live with us after Hayden and Brian saw a similar man walking down the street by my work. Bob lost his job painting restaurants after he painted too many windows shut and then Hayden had to give him a robot/cyborg arm after a horrible explosion.
Brian and I both think it's quite awesome that he's so elaborate with his stories. But sometimes I just want to talk to my little man about him. What he did at school instead of why Bob can't fix bikes anymore with his cyborg/robot arm.
Today I had to explain what the white mark on my side window was, and while explaining that birds just fly around pooping on things unexpectedly Hayden decided to order some frog poop from his magic phone bracelet (invisible of course) and pretended to wipe it all over me, while I was driving.
I'm sure some passerby thought my 5 year old was beating the crap outta me. If they only knew.

Weekend Redux: Saturday Swap Meet, Sunday Funday

A couple of months ago I had an idea to hold a local musicians swap meet/garage sale. The picture in my head was to get some local bands, artists, tattoo shops and everyone else in the local art and music scenes together to network, promote, and sell our goods to the public for free. I sent out a bunch of messages on Facebook, Craigslist and talked to some friends to get people involved.
It slowly came together and ended up better than the mind picture I had taken, like how Instagram makes every iPhone picture better.
Vegas has First Friday which is a large monthly event in the downtown arts district where the two scenes get together. But it's large and it's not free for vendors. Being a zine girl through and through I tend to look at things in a DIY way and doing a smaller, free, more "metal" and "punk rock" event was my idea.
It was a beautiful day and a lot of vendors came out and had a good time. Hayden played with some other kids and had a blast all day.
At one point, while taking a break from being the social butterfly he is Brian held my hand and told me he loved me and that he was proud of watching my ideas come to life, which made my day.

We're planning on doing another one in May.

Sunday we spent the day with some friends and bbq'd. Hayden played on a new scooter my little brother David gave to him after he and my dad fixed it up. I am battling my yearly onslaught of allergies, but over-all
we had a great weekend!

READ!

Being a former zine publisher, graphic designer for a newspaper, and lover of books I have a deep seeded love for paper and ink. The smell of copy machine toner drives a chill down my spine as it brings back memories of late nights sneakily making copies of my zine at my work or ditching class to sneakily use the copy machine in the teacher's lounge at my high school. I quickly learned how to fix five different models of copy machines to cover my tracks after thousands of paper jams.
When I lived in the high desert of Southern California with no television or radio I dove into stories. At 12 I worked occasionally at an antique/knick knack store that carried all kinds of books. The smell of a dusty hard bound collection of stories inspired me.
When all these e-readers came out I was determined that I wouldn't give in and waste my money on one. Well, the universe was determined to crack my stubborn-ness. I won a Kindle Fire last week from a program with my advertisers over there ----->
I got it in the mail last night and already have 13 books downloaded.

No time for blah...

Being sick drained me of my patience over the last two days. Then I dealt with four hours last night of facebook messages, text messages and bullcrap regarding booking my birthday show in March.
Poor Brian was stuck with the backlash of the stress and the frustration but still made me an awesome grilled cheese sandwich and comforted me while we watched Workaholics.
I took some b12, drank a vitamin water and today is a much better day already.
I've been super busy putting together a Local Musicians and Artists Swap Meet/Garage Sale that is happening this Saturday.  Between emails, flyer design, event invites, advertising, vendor confirmation and my regular life I didn't have time to get sick or feel blah.
I'm very grateful my partner who helps pull me out of my funk no matter how stubborn I am. ♥

Weekend Redux: Helping Friends, Showtime and sick.

This weekend we helped some friends move into a new house, played an awesome show at The Bikini Bar and then Hayden and I got sick which pressed pause on our fun for a couple days. I'm still dragging and fatigued but will hopefully get over this soon. Here's some pics.

Last photo I stole from my friend Ashley's fb.

Quality Time

Yesterday I took a day off of work to spend the day with Hayden.
We hung out and a fun day together. We did homework, watched tv and went shopping.
He picked out an awesome Angry Birds hat that we were both super excited about. He also loved looking at the fish and the cats at the pet store. He wanted to name them all Laser.
He did have to go to school so our day was cut short but we had a blast with the few hours we could hang.

Days like this make it hard to go back to work the next day. But honestly I could never be a stay at home mom. Even working full time isn't enough, I have a band that requires practice at least once a week, shows once a month that require booking, promotion, flyer design. I have my blog. I have freelance design jobs for t-shirts, flyers, etc. I am a work-a-holic and rarely take a full day off.
I just don't like being idle unless I'm deep into a television show, video game or movie I guess.

I did pamper myself a bit with some nail polish obviously sending me on my way to be on one of those Housewife shows. Mine would probably be titled : Heavy Metal Screaming Non-Girly Girl Non-Housewives of Las Vegas.

Happy ValenTIMES Day

From Hayden

We made 37 of these lollipop Valentines for him to share with his class today. It's his first Valentines at school and he was super excited. He woke me up with a hug, a kiss and said "Mommy Happy Valentimes day, you're beautiful. Daddy and I love you sooooo much!" My heart was a puddle. Then I had to clean it up and get ready for work.

Weekend Redux: All about the kids

Saturday Hayden got to attend his best friends birthday party. They celebrated at a ceramic painting shop. All the boys picked dragons but Hayden picked out an Angry Bird. Which he has of late become obsessed with.
He has been collecting Angry Bird temporary tattoos from the grocery store machines.

Sunday we got to hang out with our most awesome friends Steve and Heather who moved to Southern California from Sacramento a year before we moved to Las Vegas. We've been friends for years and hardly get to see each other anymore.
Heather and I were pregnant at the same time and their son Julian is 2 days younger than Hayden. We knew we'd be forcing our boys to be friends since they were babies, but now they are both 5 and no forcing is necessary. It's rare to find friends who raise their kids the same way we've raised Hayden and it shows with how the boys get along so well.
I miss having great friends close to us and I especially miss having friends with kids who "GET IT."

Here's a great family pic our friend Brian took at last weekend's First Friday.

Valentines Date Night

Brian and I don't get to celebrate Valentines on the actual day due to pay checks and such so we're planning a night out the weekend after. This is the outfit I would LOVE to wear for a nice Valentines date (or any date night really).

School of Hard Rocks: The Ego

In the last ten years of being in bands throughout California and Vegas I've watched a lot of bands and musicians do really awesome stuff, like get backed by a label, go on tours, release international albums, etc. A handful of these musicians have been people I would consider friends. Some of them never forget the people who supported them on their rise up.
But then there's the musicians who act like assholes once they move on to bigger and better things. They never answer your emails for show requests, act like they're too good to be seen with you in public places, or while you're talking to them at NAMM hand you an autographed poster of themselves.
Some even start acting like assholes before they move on to bigger and better things. In particular a local band who gets a couple endorsements, starts playing more shows and then starts acting like they're the best band to ever come out of the scene while talking shit about the other bands who've played alongside them for years.
I've bit my tongue for the most part about certain shit like this over the years, mostly because one of the hardest things about being a female in a scene dominated by males is that when you complain, speak your mind, or do your best to professionally handle the issues within your scene you get labeled a bitch.
By nature I'm very direct, blunt, and avoid candy coating stuff to appease people. Sometimes this can get me in trouble but most of the time it's the best way to get shit done.
So to the assholes reading this drop your fucking ego. Your band isn't better than any other band in the scene unless your winning awards and selling out shows. And even then you should appreciate the fact that the bands you played alongside are keeping the scene going that helped make you who you are.
I've done my best to keep myself grounded and I always keep in mind that no matter what we accomplish there's other bands out there better than us working twice as hard.


“ Ego is the biggest enemy of humans ” Rigveda

Weekend Redux: Art, Temporary Tattoos, Football, Food!

This weekend: we strolled the downtown First Friday art walk where we found some awesome Star Wars art like the Boba Fett skateboard above and the Storm Trooper old school tattoo style print. Hayden had a blast on a giant bouncy slide. 

Saturday he discovered temporary tattoos and wanted to be just like dad. As a band we destroyed a copy machine in a video/photo shoot. Sunday consisted of football, food and friends. 

Awesome-Sauce: Links of the week

Awesome-Sauce is my word of the month. Here's some awesome-sauce things that grabbed my attention this week.

-North Brother Island is a 13 acre island off New York that's been abandoned since 1963. Photographer/Historian  Ian Ference has taken some amazing photos there. The island has an awesome history having housed Typhoid Mary.

This Video:


Yesterday I stumbled on Sometimes Sweet's Open Letter to a budding college journalist, Lisa Khoury who wrote an opinion piece on why women shouldn't get tattoos. I felt the article was poorly written and ignorant, especially in this day and age. Then today Lisa posted a response to all the negative responses she got over her article. Being a former magazine editor/journalist myself I know what it feels like to get a negative response to something I've published. It's hard for a young writer to get personally attacked. She's learning the hard way to write objectively for her college paper, especially now that she's drawn so much attention. However, she "continued a conversation" on a point that a huge chunk of the readers didn't agree with, and just as a conversation face to face would have gone, it turned into an argument. We may not agree with her but she has the right to her opinion, and now has had to learn to be careful how she expresses her opinion.

 WHAT THE F SHOULD I MAKE FOR DINNER?

30 Things to Start Doing For Yourself

This awesome Tree House Restaurant in Japan

And this beautiful setting for an amazing dinner with friends. Unfortunately Vegas doesn't offer landscapes like this.

Healthy (metal) Living: Mango love

On my lunch breaks I have to drive across town to pick up Hayden from daycare and drop him off at school. Most days I am able to give myself a little time for picking up lunch, like yesterday's Target run. Today I was pressed for time so I stopped in at Tropical Smoothie for one of my faves: Mango Magic with Splenda. I absolutely LOVE this smoothie. I also loved my mango greek yogurt yesterday. I never really paid attention to mangoes as I should I guess. Now I totally want to make some awesome mango recipes at home.
I'm making a grocery run this evening in preparation of a work chili cook-off so I looked up mango recipes and found these:

Adzuki Bean Mango Stir Fry

Mango Grilled Chicken Sandwiches

Rum-Glazed Pineapple, Mango and Chicken Kebabs

Pineapple Mango Pie

Healthy (metal) Living : First Entry

Back in December I decided to try a little harder to get healthier. One of my first steps was reducing the amount of beer I drank throughout the weekdays. I was drinking heavier beers with tons of fat, carbs and calories and having 1-2 an evening during the week and more than I'd like to publicly admit on the weekends. After cutting it down to 1-2 a week for three weeks I lost eight pounds.
It's hard to cut down my beer drinking at shows, especially when I lose weight and dress up I tend to get more free drinks. But I noticed at the last few shows that one beer fills me up and then I want lighter mixed drinks. Mixed drinks also give me better stage presence, my liquid courage which I need seriously, NEED cause I get bogged down with my self-conscious worries and then look like I don't belong on stage.
Last night my husband Brian and I had a discussion about me working harder to lose weight. Mr. I-CAN-LOSE-WEIGHT-WHILE-EATING-FAST-FOOD-EVERYDAY has to work to gain weight while I'm working 5 billion times harder to lose it.
He's super supportive; one of his most amazing qualities. He fills me up with compliments that keep me motivated which is what a partner should do. Last night he told me that he noticed my butt was lifting up from my weight loss and it looked really nice when I walked up the stairs in front of him. Totally funny but motivating none-the-less. It motivated me to buy some healthy lunches for work and kick off a healthy eating regime for myself.

I started today with a VitaminWater Zero, Chobani low fat mango yogurt with a couple spoonfuls of Bear Naked whole grain granola. I also threw in a new daily dose of b12  (I bought all of this plus a 4 pack of low fat yogurt for under $10 at Target.)  I will also be dusting off my elliptical at least 3 times a week for 30-45 minute stints.
So this is my first entry documenting my journey of Healthy (METAL) Living. My goal isn't really to lose a bunch of weight since my BMI says I'm within my normal weight. My goal is to get FIT and feel more comfortable wearing a bikini.

Music Video Dreams

I've been obsessing over this video. I know I'm late to the Die Antwoord trend, but with most being NSFW I had to wait to watch them and now I can't enough.



The Tension trailer is also pretty bad ass.

I've been wanting to do a video since I first started writing songs with a band, about 11 years ago now. I have ideas that rush through every time we finish a song, but unfortunately we haven't been able to complete them.

Hopefully I can get some software for my laptop soon and start working on some stuff. Even the simple videos can be amazing.


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