in "dog years" he's dead

i remember it this way: John was about 11 and drew a line drawing of his room. i was 3 and didn't get it because i only saw outlines. cartoons were colored in; you could tell Tom from Jerry, Bugs from Daffy, but in his drawing, i couldn't tell window from bookshelf. then he colored in the lamp. suddenly i had a point of reference, some context for scale and the like, and the rest of the picture fell into place. it fell, it so happens, during dinner while i stared at it, hanging on the fridge. i was like that guy in Mallrats looking at the sailboat. suddenly someone asked me a question, probably about the dinner conversation topic, as though no conclusion was being reached and the 3-year-old might have some insight, and i pointed to the fridge and replied "i look at the light." laughter ensued, and it became a catchphrase in my family, meaning, loosely, "i'm no longer paying attention to you and would rather stare at the light fixture," a preschooler's proto-"talk-to-the-hand."

but i wasn't dismissing them, i was meaning to say "sorry, i wasn't paying a bit of attention, you see that scribble that John made this afternoon suddenly makes sense to me, and my golly, that's his funky yellow metal 70's desk lamp right there!" then i noticed the outlines in cartoons, always a thin black ink line like comic books. then i got into coloring books--more lines. then i noticed nothing around me had lines. then i just had to learn to draw.

and so here i am, still making outlines and coloring them in. and my big brother (whose first word was seriously "cookie") turned the big four-O today. and whether or not the baby boomers are right, and 50 is the new 40, i marked the milestone with a snarky little graveyard.

light gray was piped just after the darker gray was applied so the designs were flush, then coated in table sugar for a stony texture when dry. the roses are icing stems and leaves with fondant flowers.

here's a closer look, and truer to color, in different lighting. that's my pinky in the foreground, so you can see those roses were tiny. i'll have more about fondant on cookies tomorrow. look forward to shiny shoes, leafy moonlit trees, a mummy, ghosts in the graveyard, a pumpkin patch, and wormy apples. mmmmm.....

and coming soon, lil' Lucy lemondrop turns 1. till then happy birthday John, everyone check out his blog (see link on the right, "Conan's Fiero") and happy Halloween-'een everyone!