When my daughter was small (until she became a giant),
she wrestled daily with Jungian archetypes… She was fascinated by the Actor/Storyteller… and the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf was a favorite.
Oh, that Boy!! She was disgusted and fascinated!
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Youth Is Wasted
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Don’t Look Away!
Ahh, there is nothing like a Midsummer Night’s Homebirth!
Oh, and here’s a card. I’VE BEEN BUSY, OKAY??
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Marinate & Ruminate & Distill & Purge
Don’t you hate looking at photographs when you’re not in them?
Me too!
Oh, and I made this for my gals.
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Deja Vu
We bought our house on the Cape in 1982…
this was the same year that The Go-Go’s penned their masterpiece.
Coincidence?? I THINK NOT.
Summers on the Cape were filled with so much adventure! There were trees to climb, sea-creatures to discover, rocks to paint (it’s complicated), and cans to return for 5¢ — imagine returning an ENTIRE BAG of cans. Your very own money to spend on candy at the Barnstable News. I dragged a garbage bag of empty cans up Millway, past the dead bodies
to claim my prize. I did not anticipate this being such a great windfall… The Adult behind the counter counted all of my (mostly beer) cans (thanks Uncle Gary!) and the total staggered me.“Two dollars and thirty-five cents.”
I gasped.
I walked past the wall of candy, right to the freezer full of ice cream treats. One box of six ice cream sandwiches, all for me. ALL FOR ME!!
I was a girl on a mission: Eat all six, share with no one, and never breathe a word of this to any of my siblings. 
I held the package to my (boyish) chest, and ran until I was sure I was alone. Across the street from the cemetery, and next to an abandoned house, I ripped open the box and started eating. 1…2…3… still going strong… 4… slowing down… 5… Five! Only FIVE! What a failure! I staggered home, and benevolently offered the final sandwich to my little brother. (What a fool he was for not even questioning my backstory!)
Present day: Southwest Airline’s Boeing 737: 40,000 feet.
I made these:
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July: Barnstable County
Would a plate-smashing scene make this trip more authentic? Maybe. Oh, but here we are bored out of our minds…
It’s tiresome, really! Just ocean, ocean, ocean… day in and day out.
And nobody even documents my joie de vivre! Sadly, I must document myself.
Jen sent me her selfie all the way from Zeichen Press Headquarters:
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When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Back on the Cape again…
Aren’t the kids so sweet? They have so much fun… Wait… WHAT?! How did I miss that??
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First, Poison The Ants
An ANTfestation in the shop required aggressive use of insecticide. Two waves of spray-on poison were needed to completely wipe out the colony hiding behind the Great Wall Of Cards.
We murdered thousands of ants
before Jen and I had an important meeting to decide which cards should be included in our next release.Wait, after the genocide, but before the important meeting, Classic Pam got ahold of another baby rabbit. (See blog post: Fear and Dread) There was some backyard bedlam involving the dog and five kids chasing the cat… I got caught up in the chase but ended up somehow kicking the hopping baby rabbit. Don’t ask me how that happened.
DON’T ASK.
And without further adieu… the moment you’ve all been waiting for… OUR… NEW… CARDS!!!
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Life Is But A Dream
“We’re Creek People now, mom… We’re Creek People…”
What began as an optimistic, joy-filled journey down Minnehaha Creek turned into a somber, personal purgatory.The creek didn’t mean to be a metaphor for life, but it was.
IT WAS.
We made it out alive and I’m so glad, I didn’t want to have to eat one, or more, of my children.
Did you know it’s Jen’s birthday today?? She celebrated by printing cards for Paper Source in our studio-turned-Easy-Bake Oven. She treated herself with a fan pointed at her back.Tradition dictates that I make her a card. So, I did.
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Fear and Dread
I’m not afraid of heights or clowns or rats or bats or cemeteries or sharks. But I AM afraid of centipedes.
Once upon a time, I vacuumed up a centipede that was wearing Bill Cosby’s sweater.
But enough of that!
It’s August and time to dread Winter.
My research shows that Hell is being trapped in a snow cave with 1,000 centipedes. And here’s a card for Christmas.
WHAT?!
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Bionic Fran Goes To the Post Office
The much-anticipated matchup between Bionic Fran and Wonder Woman is finally here!
Tickets are available by our back gate and the fight will be held in the driveway.Come early and pick an unripened tomato to throw at the loser.
The event takes place as soon as Jen finds her way out of the mountains — I know her pockets were stuffed with breadcrumbs, so I’m sure she’ll be fine.
I’ve been pretty busy while she’s been gone… The intern and I talked a lot, I picked up two dead birds and one dead baby rabbit… I brought orders to the post office… I made this birthday card…
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Ampersands And Counting Skills
Counting is not as easy as it looks. The intern and I had to count cards (we love to gamble) for a big Kate’s Paperie order.
Holiday cards in June?
My life is an endless sacrifice.All of that counting tasted terrible, and so to cleanse her palette, the intern put a lot of ampersands together. That looked exactly like this:
And because I need attention, I made this:
See, it’s a profound cultural statement? DO YOU SEE?! -
And Classic Pam Taketh Away
Jen held the garbage-pail lid and I swung the hammer, it is our shop gong and is ceremoniously banged when we receive an order over $1,000.
We bang it one thousand times and then Jen gets to printing.
Paper Source ordered a new (for them) card:
Oh, what do I do after the gong show? I chase and scold the cat.Classic Pam has single-pawedly wiped out an entire rabbit family.
Tsk, tsk!
This one survived…
until it peed and died in my hands.ALSO, Urban Outfitters (a real mom and pop joint) wants samples of some of our cards.
Settle down. SETTLE DOWN. They’ve led us on before — I’m not going to fashion a wooden stool into a potty chair so that I can sit by the phone day and night.I’m not. I’M NOT.
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Vacation Drama
Jen has been toiling away at Zeichen Press Headquarters and I have been thinking about her toiling away at Zeichen Press Headquarters.
It’s hard for me to think about that when I am so busy staring at the ocean.
I also took the time to create this:(I’m a giver.)
But I did make her a card.
(I hope she doesn’t really want me to help though.)
So I think that makes us even. -
Pilgrimage Part XXXI (Return to Brigadoon)
The pilgrimage to Cape Cod was like a lil’ slice of Purgatory and I wept with joy as we pulled into the driveway. I also wept when we discovered the house-mascot had been murdered in cold blood.
Who would do such a thing?Don’t worry, everything else was in order:
The boats are in the harbor.
The hydrangeas are blue enough.
And the dead people are still dead.
PHEW!
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Monkeys On Pogo-Sticks
My application for Mensa included a $20 bill and a film.
I hope they accept me — I want that laminated membership card.
I also incuded a couple of my own cards:
No, no… it’s not a miracle. Just one woman’s attempt to make the world a better place.