Sparkle Tiger!

I've been very busy of late writing and writing and writing.  And also, reading.  And editing and dying my hair and doing yoga and cramming for first grade spelling tests with my 6 year old.  I couldn't spell "beautiful" until 6th grade but, I digress.

I think I have, as they say in the biz as "unputdownable" draft for a new book! We'll see what happens.  This writing of fiction is weird.  I just am doing what I am doing and writing what I am compelled to write and hope it works for readers who are into whatever it is that I'm doing.

And also I have become a weekend face painter.  I love nothing more than getting up close and personal with a cheery five year old and transforming them from a sleepy birthday cake high kid into a sparkle tiger, or a mysterious fairy queen, or a monster with bloody teeth.  For real.  It's the best and makes me feel alive and I've learned a lot of things in my little life but one of them is this: You must always make time and room in your life for doing things that make you feel ALIVE.

And sometimes on Saturday nights I drink too much wine and paint my whole family and we run around the apartment (no we haven't moved) growling at each other and laugh till we are dizzy.

The blogging is good.  Keeps me honest. Since my book came out I have realized how much I love and respect all my fellow writers and readers and how we are our own tribe.  XOXO to all

TWITTER GIVEAWAY!

Follow @ArlainaT & RT this for your chance to #win @amyreedfiction's CRAZY. I loved it to pieces & so will you! HARDCOVER, baby.

Amy Reed is a great writer and a real inspiration to me.  I love what she is doing with her work and she is also a kind of bad ass.

I loved BEAUTIFUL and CLEAN and well- what is there NOT to adore about CRAZY?

Yes yes yes.  I'm trolling for twitter followers, but also, I love to promote the work of writers I admire so...


WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Today is the day to win CRAZY!

xoxo

Real blog post soon...

Tiny Beautiful Things

Life is not the easiest thing.  So many events and people and happenings in my life of late are awesome and amazing and beautiful too.  What the hell am I so FREAKED OUT ABOUT?  Well, David Rakoff died, for one thing.  And I know I know he had been sick for a while but I wasn't really paying attention and the news today that he is gone gutted me like a fish before I even had my coffee.  So that brings things to a sharp point.

Summer is on it's way out.  The days are ever so slightly shorter and the kids are ever so slightly taller and tanner and more sophisticated than they were three short months ago.  Reading.  Diaper free. Big boy beds etc.

I feel like something big is supposed to be happening.  Huge and exciting and life changing in the best of ways.  Some mornings, this feels exciting.  Most mornings it feels like I'm just waiting for loved ones  to die.  For me to age suddenly and then get sick and die myself before my kids.

GOOD MORNING!

But then something happens and everything feels OK. Or at least like it's not so full of suck.

Is this what a midlife crisis is?  Could be.  But as I become more and more of the adult I am the closer I feel to the seventeen year old I once was. That's weird right?  But for me, it's a real truth.

This is a long way to say that you should all run to your nearest independent book store and buy TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS by Cheryl Strayed.

She is the advice columnist for The Rumpus and she is wisdom on a stick.  She is grace and badassery and like your mom, best friend, inner true self and God all rolled into one on their best day ever.  Her advice for every situation is spot on and illuminates what is means to be alive and the tools you need to survive.  She uses her own life to connect everyone's life. And that's what great writing always does.

I saw her read at an Upstairs on the Square Event in Union Square.  The place was packed, SRO and I was delighted that she was so popular. I had to stand in the mosh pit area and listened while flipping through art books about Courtney Love and the grunge scene in Seattle, French interior design, dragon art, while Cheryl skewered my heart like an olive on a toothpick.

I love her.  I needed to hear her that night and read her tonight, and tomorrow, and the night after that.
We all should.  So do it!

...And a darling teen writer in Sheboygan won a signed AND THEN THINGS FALL APART.  Just for FOLLOWING ME ON TWITTER!

Here's a little life advice from Ms. Strayed:

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

— Dear Sugar

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

— Dear Sugar

There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding...You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

— Dear Sugar

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

— Dear Sugar

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! AND WIN!

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER TODAY TO ENTER TO WIN A SIGNED COPY OF:

@ARLAINAT

Shameless, I know but for real... I'd love to have a zillion more followers!

Midsummer Nights Dream! Thanks NYFA

She was amazing... wish I got her name!

Sometimes I do things without thinking too much about them and other times I think so effing much I am paralyzed with thoughts and decisions.  This summer has been a real challenge.  First off, I have had my kids with me for most of the summer which has been amazing (Bronx Zoo Camp and writing at the zoo) and annoying (weeklong Beyblade anime festival on our couch).  


We had also been planning on  packing up the circus of our NYC life and moving to a charming house in New Jersey.  We were very excited and very nervous.  Every day at about 10:30 I started weeping in a snot-filled hiccuppy, post partum depression levels way about leaving and let the tears flow for 2 hours.  Then I'd pull myself together and watch Beyblades.  We had a mid August closing date and a picture of the house on our kitchen table to gaze upon as we ate fish tacos for dinner.


Around the fourth of July we realized that the house had some major issues we weren't comfortable with and the deal fell through.  So hard.  So adult.  We are keeping our heads up and will most likely make a move within the next 12 months.  Now that I know we are here for a while and taking a break the tears have STOPPED~! The depression is slowly lifting!


Perhaps we weren't quite ready?  Perhaps the universe was telling us something we refused to listen to for months.  Like falling in love, it's not supposed to be this hard.  It wasn't meant to be and etc. and I believe it.  Our house is out there for us and we are going to find it.

Dangling by a string- never a better metaphor for being alive.

But here is the thing.


Exactly at the same moment this whole housing thing was exploding in our hands I get an email from the New York Foundation of The Arts and lo and behold I won a grant!  That I wasn't even going to apply for because I was so busy and depressed! 


I know!


I am so grateful and encouraged and honored to be in such great company.


And here is a list of my fellow fiction fellows and click here to learn more about the amazing NYFA 

Fiction
Denise Burrell-Stinson (New York) 
Alexandra Chasin (Kings) 
Kiera Coffee (Kings) 
Susan Daitch (Kings) 
B.G. Firmani (New York) 
Scott Geiger (New York) 
Melinda Goodman (New York)
Susan Karwoska (Kings) 
Mary La Chapelle (Westchester) 
Catherine Lacey (Kings) 
Caron Levis (Kings) 
Sara Lippmann (Kings) 
Minju Pak (Kings) 
Bob Proehl (Tompkins) 
Thaddeus Rutkowski (New York) – Gregory Millard Fellow
Amanda Stern (Kings) 
Allison Thompson (Kings) 
Arlaina Tibensky (New York) 


And they had a cocktail party for us and I met a real life Czech Puppeteer named Vit Horejs who is very tall with long white hair and very serious.  I drank delicious beer and ate delicious salsa in a ridiculous snake skin printed caftan my kids picked out because it made me look like a snake guy from Ninjago.  So my husband's all chit chatting with Vit and he says to Vit, "Oh!  You're a Czech puppeteer?  Let me get my wife!"  He knows me so well.


There was a magnificent burlesque dancer!  Tasty food!  People who love and appreciate the arts!  I hate drama but seem to attract it.  Camp has started.  I have a little time to myself to think and write and move ever onward!


Ok.  That's us caught up.  More soon.  I promise.


xoxo

Photos My 2 Year Old Took a Few Weeks Ago

I don't know why but these crack me the hell up.

Dyscalculia 4evah! Math Wits Nevah!

I have no sense of direction.  Still mix up east and west because in my mind, cowboys who went west would be right handed.  And eastern exotic types would be left handed.  This was my logic.

I get math concepts but didn't memorize my multiplication tables really, ever.  Still can't do twelves, although I'm good until I get to 4 dozen.

Struggled with all my inner brain muscles to get low C's in any and all math-related classes.  Chemistry with my beloved Sr. Ellen revealed my absolute inability to figure out mole.

When I won the bean counting contest in 5th grade girl scouts (off by one bean!) I used a complex circular system of my own devising that I came to find out was calculus.  My girl scout leader, Mrs. Popernick, thought I cheated, CHEATED, my lack of math skills was so notorious.

I loved playing the clarinet but was a horrible sight reader of music.

And of course I had myriad and deep other gifts in the Language Arts,  which blinded teachers to my obvious deficits.

I have always known I sucked at math.  I just ignored it and chalked it up to my language side taking up the math energy.  No big deal. I learned to live with it.

Still can't balance a check book (how archaic!) or do long division (who needs to anyway?) or deal with money concepts such as interest, compounding, percentages, and the like (this would be a little useful, actually) or read a map (GPS!).

Couldn't read an analog clock until high school which my entire family thinks is hilarious.

Miss Columbia University Graduate school CAN'T TELL TIME!

Hardee har har.

So on XOJane.com I read a piece on DYSCALCULIA AKA Math Dyslexia and whoa.  It was great.  I just wanted to come out of the Dyscalculia closet and let it be known.  I was never tested or wanted to be. But as they say in Kindergarten "You get what you get and you don't get upset." It's a mild form of dyscalculia but I got it.

DYSCALCULIA PRIDE, yo!

Anyone else have this?  I'm so glad I got the dyscalculia and not actual dyslexia.  The idea of not being able to read with ease and gusto depresses me.  For obvious reasons...