Zinester Beats Winter

I feel pretty damn happy with myself today! A rare occurrence on a day where the sky is so gray, it’s practically black.

Though Tai Chi Thursday didn’t happen because I woke up with excruciating cramps, I decided to finish up on the mini zine I started yesterday about fighting winter blues. Here’s a picture of the finished product. I shot this photo in the office today while our central heating didn’t help me with my icy fingers, and I had to work with my gloves on.

One of the tips I give is to create anything at all. “Creation beats destruction,” I write. And as is pretty obvious by my mood today, creating this zine made me super happy, and winter skies didn’t stand a chance.

This pretty mini is now off to the press and then, on Zine-Making Monday, after I write the final piece for my PMS Perzine, I’ll go to the post office to send a bunch of zines including this one.

Peace, love and victory is mine!

 

 

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Get messy and follow the bleeder: Like my page, PMS Mess!

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War on Winter Mini-Zine

My activity for today was to create a mini zine. So I spent my day at the office making a mini zine with tips for fighting winter blues because seriously that’s what I’m trying to do and it’s becoming pretty fucking difficult when we have a combination of crazy winds, hail, rain, snow and thunderstorms in the forecast.

Yes, shit.

As my luck would have it, I ran out of glue, so my mini zine is all in pieces which is why I can’t share it with you at the moment. But this is the cover I will be using:

It’s a computer collage I made a few years back as the cover for the freedom issue of Af magazine. I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to use it for one of my own zines, but yes, I’m using it for my new mini zine.

I think the zine as a whole came out rather nicely. I’m especially proud of myself because instead of using computer graphics and Google Image searches, I drew my own stuff! My lack of talent at drawing was not so bad, if I do say so myself, and my attempt was successful. So hell yay!!

Peace, love and dear winter, prepare to meet your doom!

White-Out the Winter

Since renewal is pretty much the theme of the new issue of my PMS Perzine, I decided to try a new style of writing and wrote a very short fiction story.

Originally, I wanted the story to be about a 20-something-year-old woman who tries to fight her winter blues by doing one of the things she loved most which is going to her favorite office supplies store and look at the cute journal designs, only to find that the store has closed until further notice.

Which, by the way, is exactly what happened to me today, except I’m a 30-something-year-old-woman, and I have better ways to fight my winter blues. But yes, woe is unto me, my favorite office supplies store is closed until further notice, and I’m upset as fuck. Where do I get my zine ammo now? How do I fight my winter blues?

My short fiction story turned out quite different than what I had intended, but I think it’ll do. It’s about a 30-something-year-old woman trying to fight the winter blues by looking for a best friend.

Which, by the way, also hits pretty close to home. Looking out the window this morning, I saw the first blue sky since last week. It’s been gray and depressing this whole time. So as I was doing my meditation part of Tai Chi Thursday, I thought “If the sky can clear, maybe my future can, too. Maybe I will find a best friend at some point.”

The story also ends on a positive note. I felt it necessary after the “closed until further notice” sign on my favorite store stared me in the face. Just a bit of positivity in a fiction story. At the very least.

Peace, love and your mind is like a boundless sky.

 

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Get messy and follow the bleeder: Like my page, PMS Mess!

Summer Sweetness

Here is a nice little story that may restore your faith in humankind, just in time for Shavuot.

As some of my followers may know, I’ve recently ordered a Stephen King book from Book Depository. The item was dispatched within three business days, as they promised. They said it would take within 10 business days to make it to its destination, i.e. me.

I waited over two weeks before going to the post office to see what the hell was up. They had no idea.

The following day, I received a message via Facebook from a stranger who said he is trying to track down a person bearing my name and maiden name who lives in Jerusalem because he received a package that was mistakenly delivered to him.

So not only is he not my Facebook friend, he is a complete stranger. And he didn’t simply return the package to the post office as most people do, he actually went out of his way to track me down and deliver the package to its rightful addressee.

This is a big deal. Especially for me because this is a Stephen King book we are talking about here. It is tantamount to sacred scripture. Any other person would have just tossed it, and that would be sacrilege!

So it turned out that he works in the center of town, where I also work. He just dropped by my office to give me my package. The million thank-yous I told him didn’t seem to be doing justice to just how grateful I was. Really, how awesome is that?

To top it off, today is hot as hell. FINALLY! I can do away with the hoodies and the layers and the winter gear, and replace it with kickass tank tops and summer dresses. Not to mention, my baby will stop fussing around when I dress her because I probably just won’t! There is some baby chub that requires some serious smushing. A little pair of shorts or a cute little onesie and finito.

This is the positivity that only sunshine can bring. Say what you want about Israeli heat, blue skies breeds smiles, there is no denying that.

Peace, love and sunscreen

 

 

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Corpse

I’ve been a winter hater, like, forever. But never like this. This winter is getting on my last nerve and if I don’t get sunshine any time soon, I’m gonna fucking scream.

This past weekend, I was in Be’er Sheva.

And it simply. did not. stop. raining.

You know these people who love rain because it’s awesome to be indoors, in bed, under a big fat winter blanket, with a blasting heater, drinking tea or some shit. The problem with this so-called pleasure that these amoeba-brained winter-lovers seem to forget is that they are not bears and they don’t hibernate. They will not spend their entire winter in bed, under big fat winter blankets being all warm and cozy. Eventually, they will have to get their ass up, get out of their warm winter covers and into heavy winter gear – coat, tuque, gloves, scarf, boots, the works – and out into the wet, coldass, winter wind and frost and suffer every miserable minute of this crappy weather. Your warm cozy ass is nothing more than an illusion. Get your ass out there and face the everyday reality of the chicken leg you keep in your freezer.

After going through a whole weekend of nothing but rain, I got back home, doubled and tripled my layers, blasted every heater known to man and resumed detachment from this frosty reality under my enormous winter blanket.

This morning, when I woke up, I wanted to murder my blanket because it only served to remind me that I am indeed not a bear.

When is it gonna be summer already??? I want the sweltering scorching heat. I want to dress my daughter in shorts and a tank top. Fuck all these layers already! I wanna sleep in my underwear and wake up in a pool of my own sweat. Fuck these ice-cold fingers! I’ve so had it!!!

I honestly do not understand you people who love winter. You might as well love swimming in a pool of diarrhea. It’s all the same to me. The love of winter simply sabotages my common sense.

Peace, love, cold and stiff.

Sunshine Fuels Production

I feel ultra productive right now. I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with the weather. Today is nice, warm and sunshiny. For the first time in a long time I left home without my raincoat. Word has it that it will only be getting warmer this week and it makes me giddy with productive inspiration. Israeli skies are definitely the skies to be under this February!

So this morning, I got up at the bright and early hour of 9:00 (seeing as I wake up every day at 10:30, yes, it is early for me). I had my mandatory morning tea and piece of cake, got dressed, grabbed my dog, and went for a 40-minute power-walk. It made me feel so good that I decided to change my pre-made schedule for this upcoming week and cleared my mornings for more power-walks. Then I had a rice-cake with cheese and yellow cheese for brunch before leaving for work.

I just had a fresh veggies snack and I officially feel too healthy. I need sugar. So keeping with my productive streak, I printed three recipes to try out this week – blueberry crumble, blueberry cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

I gotta go grocery shopping.

I wanna play guitar.

Oh, sun is the best thing for making stencils!

I also need to make a zine.

Today is V-Day and Metal Night. Definitely celebrating both.

I wish I had more hands.

When such things pile up, instead of doing stuff, I just sit around trying to figure out what to do first, and end up doing nothing.

Is there such a thing as being too productive?

Peace, love and SWEET POTATO PIE!!

Heart-Shaped Star

My birthday is coming up on Tet-Vav Tishrei which falls on September 27 this year. And yes, it is Tet-Vav and not Yud-Daled as some people keep telling me. I was born at night, after the stars came out, so that makes it the next day, that is Tet-Vav. So there!

As usual, the full moon is the most important thing for me on my Jewish birthday. Since the time I started observing the cycles of the moon in relation to my cycles and my body, it became imperative for me to see the full moon of Tishrei every year. One year, there was a sandstorm on that day which completely blotted out the moon, and I was utterly depressed and riding an enormous tidal wave of rage. I wrote an angry entry in my diary and nearly tore through the page with my pen.

Last week, we once again had a crazy sandstorm that was so bad it made it hard to breathe. Pregnant women, children and the elderly were advised to stay indoors, with the windows closed, and the AC working overtime. Since no rain would fall for another couple of months, I feared that the sand would persist all through the month and I will once again be faced with a faded smudge of white on a diarrhea-tinted night-sky on my birthday, and my levels of pissed-off-ness would go right off the charts.

But now that the dust had indeed settled, here’s another thing that might ruin the moon visibility on my birthday: the full lunar eclipse which is set to take place in the early morning hours of the 28th. That’s cutting it really fucking close, and I hope to the Goddess and the moon angel that I will be able to see the full pearly moon before it turns to red (as they say it does during a lunar eclipse).

Also, I wonder what it means, if it means anything, in terms of astrology. I never really put my faith (or fate for that matter) in horoscopes. But I do believe that the moon and the stars and the planets in our galaxy affect events on our planet in some way. I think horoscopes are a poor indication of this phenomenon, but it does happen somehow. So I wonder what the lunar eclipse will bring forth.

I also recently found out that there is in fact a connection between the Zodiac system and Judaism. I don’t know why I never realized this before. I mean, if anything, it is so obvious that Libra would fall on the Jewish new year. This is a time of judgement and of justice. The Goddess measures our good and evil deeds on a scale, just like the Libra, and we atone for our sins on the Day of Atonement in order to tip the scales in our favor. I’m not sure what the other Zodiac signs mean in relation to the other Jewish months, but this Libra timing is too perfect to be a coincidence.

The moon has been dark earlier this week. I think it will start peeking sometime tonight as a thin crescent that I like to call a fingernail clipping. Hello moon! Welcome back!

Peace, love and still a proud Libra!