We Are Young

Simon and Graham. 3 years old, 20 months old. Simon won't eat anything, Graham will eat everything. They love Pingu and Room on the Broom. Graham will fall asleep anywhere, Simon tries to bargain before bed. Simon makes us all hold hands when we say prayer. Graham loves to sing and dance with this ↑ hat and a wooden dowel rod for a cane.They refer to all dogs as "Buddy" because that's what Grandma's dog is called. They call Seve's school "Dada's house." They collectively love slides, trains, whistles, and flashlights. And books about slides, trains, whistles, and flashlights. They wrestle, they "help" make cookies. Simon's showing signs of being a germaphobe, Graham's kind of a slob. They're both often sporting temporary tattoos on their arms and legs. And one time, on Simon's nose. It was a bird, I let him keep it on for four days, including church. They wear matching skull and crossbones bow ties every week.

I love these two.

Lighter Still

I got a really kind comment from Kate the other day asking me to blog again. I'd been out of the blogosphere for so long that I didn't even know they'd adopted a sweet little girl. Congratulations, Kate & Landon & Lula!

For the sake of diving back in, I thought I'd start with an obvious and most recent development: I, uh, went blonde? I'd been dying my hair black for so long that I decided I wanted a change. A BIG change. And the process to get this light was really awful.

But these pictures kind of make me feel better about it.

I fried my ends after doing ombre for so long that I just had to chop them off. And there's still a lot of warm streaks in my hair, and then some blue/green streaks from where the ash toner kind of bit right in and wouldn't let go. Because I wasn't trying to go blonde, but that silver/grey that's really hip right now. That's why my roots look grey. They were the only success. But um, I like it? Question mark? This happened only three days so I'm still kind of reeling from how much I hate bleach. I hate bleach. And if I truly want to achieve my silver end goal, more bleach needs to get involved, but  . . . no. No more.

Other life updates:

We bought a house!

The children have continued to age and grow and poop!

I'm now the RS Secretary!

Seve shaved his beard and grew it back in again!

The new Blonde Redhead album is so good!

The film adaptation for Horns was so bad! So bad!

And, well, I'll be blogging again for a bit. It feels good to blog right now.

Correct Good Ghost Feed

Since separating good ghost & julesisaacs.com into my blog and design portfolio respectively, I'm worried people following good ghost are instead receiving feed updates from julesisaacs.com . . . meaning you're getting all the "posts" from my design gallery. To get the correct feed for good ghost, just copy and paste this feed into your reader of choice (I use Feedly):

http://goodghost.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Just pop it in wherever your "add content" button is.

Thanks!
Jules

Binge Writing

For Camp NaNoWriMo I started out with serious ambitions to finish/polish/whatever The Book Smart Wolf but I've been working on that book for so long I'm a little burnt out on it. A lot of burnt out on it. So when April 1st hit I found myself free-writing an idea set in an alternate 1950s where we still have iPhones & Google, Kayne West & Katy Perry. It was about a greaser and soc who fall in love amidst being pursued by a demon. Which sounds crazy and paranormal romance shelf at B&N, I know, but the plot wasn't so much about the demon or modern technology as it was about these two kids overcoming their own personal demons and faults. The demon was metaphorical but also real? It's much more normal than I'm describing, but I really don't know how to normalize its plot for a blog post description.

Demon Days was an interesting exercise in just letting go and writing what I wanted to write about, and I'm happier with this product than anything else I've ever written before. I wrote it for me and no one else, which was refreshing. When writing I normally have my own invisible demon nearby, being all super judgey about my plot points and rude about my writing style. But without that demon to pester me, and only myself to please, the writing came swiftly and easily, like splurging in words I always wanted to type but found myself too embarrassed to. In April I binged on all those words, and I came away fat with a funny kind of happiness I've yet to be familiar with.

Separated

Changes! Changes! Changes 'round here! I officially separated "julesisaacs.com" from good ghost, so now one is a "professional design website" and the other is my personal blog, as it's always been, but now I don't feel so bad about bloating it with photos of my kids. And now I'm able to rant about stuff without the fear of a client raising their eyebrows. Not sure why I didn't just keep the two separate in the first place. Probably because I'm not really a pro-freelancer so much as I'm a "yeah, uh, I can design that, um, here's my web site? Oh, you just want me to maintain your Facebook? Yeah, uh, that's not really what I do . . . but banner ads, yeah, I do that . . ." kind of freelancer.

Maybe this means I'll post more often? Maybe? We'll see. I should be a more courteous blogger and leave comments on YOUR posts rather than fret over mine . . . I promise I'm reading, I've just become a lurker rather than a commenter these days.

If any of you followed good ghost or julesisaacs.com through Feedly, go ahead and unsubscribe from julesisaacs.com, because that post feed is now used as my gallery. All blog posts will now spew forth from this part of the internet. Hurrah.

Indoorsy Type

Seve and I built this cool little tent together for Camp NaNoWriMo, the spring equivalent to the event held in November. Seve does Nano with his creative writing class each semester, and though the November event is well known with plenty of library and bookstore participation, Camp NaNo isn't as riddled with local events. Any, actually. So Seve and I make our own! At the kick-off party we set up an inflatable campfire, projected a looping video of a full moon onto the chalkboard, played some ambient forest noises over the speakers, and hid a microwave in the tent so we could "roast" hot dogs and marshmallows. It was so fun I got zero writing done! Yeah!

But when the tent's at home, I cuddle up and write to my heart's content. The Camp Nano event I'm looking the most forward to this year? April 15th is the lunar eclipse and we've rented out a cool backyard venue to write by the light of the blood red moon. so awesome omg can't wait can't wait

Guess what

EXCEPT THAT IT'S NOT. HA! APRIL FOOL'S!