Resolution 1 day 1

I can't imagine why, but somehow, for some reason, R and I both woke up today and decided that, having drunk a healthy amount of champagne and eaten an unhealthy amount of sushi, olives, fried rice and assorted aged cheeses, along with a bit of holiday themed Belgian Trappist something or other aleish thing, we both, very organically decided that this would be the day to accomplish a major, mammoth project. Namely, we decided to acquire and install a new Ikea shelf. Not just any shelf either, a massive towering behemoth, hand carved by caged Vikings from iron wood which will sink in water. It is nearly midnight now, and it would be a dim beginning to this project indeed if we started out with nothing to report. So, i am admitting here before i admit it elsewhere....to R that is...that while i was manly and diligent, and moved furniture and speculated about the placement of knickknacks and fed children and swept and dusted and heaved boxes and sliced into cardboard with my new Gerber epic (available wherever legendary blades are sold) I snuck in my creative time.

We agreed, shook on it (well, slapped high fives on it) that fixing up our home would count as creative time. It seemed like a sound idea, but it also felt a bit sour. Not that considerable creativity wasn't at work along with the labor. In fact, in the darkness of my living room, hunched over the flickering light of a computer screen, R's vision for our living room has been conjured into reality behind me. If that's not creative, then nothing is. But all the same, I'm not creative in that way, and I wanted to begin this month, this project, and this year correctly.

You should know, I am used to this kind of creative theft. Over the last years i have written dozens of stories, all of them casually rejected by magazines at one point or another, but they are written. So I know something about making determination find a place for things when needed. Today seemed like such a day, a day to rise to the challenge of mammoth undertakings...which also involve emotionally ravenous infants (which are, for the layman, a lot like soft raccoons that you feel delightfully responsible for).

Most of you reading this know that i am determined to be a published author, and my smash and grab technique for purloining minutes in which to write anything from a single sentence to a line of poetry is pretty well perfected. Nonetheless, today called for desperate measures, and I didn't manage to write. I find writing engages my brain in too engrossing a way when overtaxed by children and shelving units.

Today i made music. Suffering from Ikea thumb ( a real medical condition, ask my brother, he is a doctor) I quickly tinkered up and published two pieces of music I had been humming all day. Here they are, available in mp3 format so you can enjoy the fruits of my first day of resolute labor on the go, or on your stereo system. It is also available in ogg vorbis format, in case you are some kind of nerdy weirdo who uses Linux or something.

I made two, I and am willing to give R one of them if she asks. Either the cool iceberg one, or the pretty mariposa trees.

Happy new year: