SOMETIMES MY FRIENDS ARE NO FUN

I hate to sew.  I'll do almost anything to avoid sewing. A horrifying but true fact is that sometimes I run through the streets with my buttons all loose.

Back in 2016, when socializing was easy and fun, I got invited to attend a sewing circle a few days before Valentine's Day. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I thought it was public knowledge that I hate to sew! Why would they want to invite ME to a sewing circle? Sure, I'm pretty and popular, blah blah blah, but still…why me? I wondered if they'd noticed my loose buttons and were staging an intervention. I almost said no, but then I remembered that people who sew are often also bakers, so the refreshments might be awesome. I decided to take the risk, even if it meant possibly returning home with my buttons re-attached. 

 When I got to the sewing circle, the refreshments were indeed magnificent, a tantalizing mountain of fattening desserts. The mood, however, was very grim.

"What's going on?" I said. "Why all the long faces?"

"None of us have a date for Valentine's Day." The hostess bowed her head and concentrated on her sewing.

"Then come to my party on Valentine's Day," I said. "There will be lots of people there without a date. We plan to get drunk and bake pornographic cookies. Then we'll call people on the phone to ask if their refrigerator is running. If they say yes, we'll tell them to go catch it."

Everyone looked up from their sewing projects. Their expressions could best be described as quizzical.

"So, are any of you coming to my party?" I said.

All of them shook their heads.

"Sorry," the hostess said. "It sounds like fun, but it's not my kind of thing."

Other voices chimed in. "Mine either." "Me too." "Thanks for thinking of me, though."

My feelings were hurt, but I strove to sound breezy and unconcerned. "It was only a suggestion. I'm just reminding you there are alternatives to being alone on Valentine's Day."

"Thank you for sharing, Nancy," the hostess said. "It's always good to know we have choices."

I decided to let the matter drop. If they thought it was better to be alone than to go to a drunken porno cookie party hosted by someone with loose buttons, that was their problem, not mine.

Cute as a Button, 2013, gouache and thread on bristol paper, 8" x 10"

A version of this blog post originally appeared on February 16, 2016.

Crayons Never Lie

As a response to the pandemic and its inherent lonely panic, some of my fellow artists produced art meant to comfort themselves and others. I wanted to follow their example, since it seemed like a good idea, but based on eyewitness reports, my art isn’t particularly soothing to me or anyone else.

At one point, however, after being isolated and scared for several months, I decided to calm myself down by doing a squiggle drawing.

Do you remember squiggle drawings? Most people have done squiggle drawings as children and maybe continue to make similar renderings as adults. Basically the technique is to use a crayon to draw continuous-line swirly loops all over a piece of paper and then color in the spaces with more crayons. Using crayons as the art medium is the key to connecting with your inner child. My theory was that by rendezvousing with my childhood experience, where I usually felt happy and safe, I’d produce a soothing piece of tranquilizing artwork.

Alas, my pandemic squiggle drawing ended up looking like “The Scream,” the famous Edvard Munch painting. I actually kind of like it and installed it on a metal file cabinet next to a printout of my favorite Charles Bukowski quote, the one Matt Dillon narrates in the final scene of the movie “Factotum” while watching the pole dancer at Augie’s.

Pandemic Self-portrait, 2020, crayons on bristol paper, 12” x 9”

The Pest

I read somewhere on the Internet that Painting is dead.

I've got news for the Internet: Painting isn't dead. It's over at my loft, eating all the cupcakes and getting in the way of me doing anything constructive.

Self-portrait as a Cupcake Decoration, 2016, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”

A version of this blog post originally appeared on October 8, 2016.

A Holiday Greeting from Planet Nancy

People sometimes say to me, “I’d love to see inside your brain. You have a wild imagination.”

I usually reply, “Yes, we have a pretty good time in here.”

I’m not entirely lying.

Sometimes my brain is as playful as a puppy and as much in need of training. Other times it’s like a raging stallion, and I’m trying my best not to get bucked off and thrown into the underbrush.

Most of the time I don’t know where my thoughts are going, but somehow I manage to muddle through anyway.

A lot of my so-called wild imagination evolves from coping mechanisms. For example, when tormented by screeching construction-grade safety backup beepers, I calm myself by imagining I’m hearing exotic urban bird calls. Or, when I used to have to fight my way through crowds of lunchtime office workers flooding the skyways near my bank, I imagined they were gerbils, which made them seem so cute even when they kept smashing into me and spilling things. You see, I once had a gerbil for a pet, and I loved that little rodent. (I also once had an office worker for a pet, but that’s another story for another time.)

Despite my wild imagination, I’m having trouble making the current state of the world into a funny Planet Nancy story. At this point, I just wish all the bad news would get bored with itself and wander off so only good news can hang around for a change.

So for now…Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy New Beginnings…to everyone!

The Sleeplessness of the Damned

Are you ever plagued with insomnia? I am. In fact, insomnia has been a problem for me for as long as I can remember. My insomnia used to be a lonely condition. None of my childhood friends seemed to know what the word “insomnia” meant, let alone what it felt like. Or so they said, but maybe they just didn’t feel like talking about it. I, on the other hand, tossed the word “insomnia” around like carnival popcorn, along with all sorts of other verbiage I acquired reading Shakespeare, Thurber, Alcott and the Bible, mostly under my bedcovers with a flashlight at 2 a.m.

Lately I have lots of good company with my insomnia issues, friends and acquaintances who DO want to talk about insomnia. Why, just last summer at an outdoor picnic, a group of artists I know held forth on the dilemma of their raging sleeplessness. Everyone acknowledged insomnia is a problem not easily solved, for which I felt grateful. When I’ve landed in the wrong social group, even briefly by accident, there always seems to be some joker who says, “Insomnia can be cured if you stop drinking coffee.” First of all, that’s not true, and second of all, if it is true, I don’t want to know about it.

My artist friends at the picnic started comparing ways to get back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night. I should clarify that this group did not consist of serene insomniacs who pop out of bed, wrap themselves in a bathrobe and go read a nice book until they feel sleepy again. No, these guys were tormented existential types who know what it’s like to be awake at 4 a.m. with every stupid thing you’ve ever done (past, present, future) parading through your psyche like cartoon characters in the dead night sky after a worldwide nuclear explosion.

A lot of people at the picnic, including me, had great ideas about how to squish unwelcome wakefulness, but I won’t bore you with all the solutions because you probably have your own techniques. You might also be crabby because you didn’t get enough sleep last night and are tired of everyone giving you advice you didn’t ask for.

My favorite idea came from someone who said one way to get to sleep is by reciting the letters of the alphabet and matching them with fruits and vegetables.

On the night after the picnic, I decided to try out the alphabet technique. Snuggling my head into my pillow, I started with “A.”

“A is for Apple,” I said, trying not to think about Gwyneth Paltrow or the Beatles. “B is for Banana. C is for cucumbers, carrots and cupcakes.”

“Wait,” I said to myself, “that’s too many. You’re only supposed to have one.”

“Okay,” I said. “Cupcakes.”

I shook my head. “Cupcakes aren’t a vegetable.”

“Yes, cupcakes are a vegetable if they’re carrot cupcakes,” I replied.”Plus, if they have raisins they’re both a fruit and a vegetable.”

“Now that is REALLY too many fruits and vegetables,” I said. “I TOLD you to only pick ONE!”

All of this arguing with myself made me jump out of bed and stride around my loft, which totally woke me up. Then I decided to calm myself down by restarting the alphabet exercise and beginning with Z, which is a much harder letter to match to fruits and vegetables and also a sleep symbol. First I thought “Zucchini.” Then I thought “Zits.” Then I started itching all over, so I dashed into the bathroom and turned on the lights and checked my entire body for zits in the mirror. By then I was REALLY wide awake, so I sidled over to my work area and organized all my paints alphabetically…which totally calmed me down and is what I should have done in the first place.

Lovesick, 2009, oil on canvas, 24” x 30”

Don't Worry...It's Only a Movie

Dating is usually stressful, but the pandemic is making things easier for me. Suddenly everyone is acting weird and paranoid, so I’ve been able to blend in better with the other daters.

On a recent afternoon, I enjoyed a pleasant tete-a-tete with a charming and witty new man. We sat six feet away from each other under sun-dappled trees at a pretty cafe, laughing and acting like we were in a movie about people in Paris.

Everything went well until we decided to pick up some food at a restaurant and have a picnic six feet away from each other in a park near my house.

Because our plan involved a fair amount of walking, I said I wanted to stop by my home, change out of my thigh-high sexy babe boots, and put on comfortable sneakers.

The new man smiled with delight. “Sneakers? That’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.”

Technically he didn’t say “sneakers is an old word,” but that’s what I heard, and I panicked. “Old” is a word which I can’t allow anywhere near me.

He settled back in his chair and furrowed his brow. “I thought they were called tennis shoes. Or gym shoes.”


“I don’t play tennis, and I don’t go to the gym right now because of the virus.” I stood up and gave him what I hoped was a sultry shrug. “I call my shoes ‘sneakers’ because I like the word ‘sneakers.’”

We said no more about my shoes and moved on to the next scene of the movie we were in about people in Paris.

The next day, alone in my lair, I pondered my real reasons for calling my shoes “sneakers.” I’d never said anything like that before, not even to myself. I wondered if I’d been subconsciously trying to appear mysterious yet familiar to the charming and witty new man. I toyed with the terrifying idea that I might actually be getting older and prone to geezerish remarks. It occurred to me the word “sneakers” might be just a simple brain fart, a common malfunction not worthy of so much scrutiny.

Exhausted by trying to unpack the puzzle of my sneaker-love, I wandered into my kitchen. I’d just purchased a watermelon and craved a bite of the sweet summer fruit. When I tried to cut the melon open, the enormous thing kept rolling around on the counter, threatening to jump. To make matters more challenging, the only large cutting tool I possess (besides a giant, scary wood saw) is a hand-me-down, very dull bread knife.

Just as I managed to chop through the dappled green crust, a big chunk of pulp shot into the air, sailed onto the floor, and landed with a splashy plop. Everything within a three-foot radius, including me, got covered with sticky pink goo. When I tried to walk away and find some paper towels, my sneakers stuck to the floor and made suction noises each time I moved.

Because I try to keep my lair somewhat resembling civilization, I mixed up a bucket of soapy water and spent the next 15 minutes crawling around on the kitchen floor, sopping up watermelon juice and scrubbing like a sailor.

Washing the kitchen floor must be a Zen thing because it uncorked my brain, and I remembered why I call my tennis shoes/athletic shoes/gym shoes/running shoes “sneakers.” I used to call them "remedial shoes" because they’re so ugly, but that sounded vaguely politically incorrect. Plus, when I looked up “remedial shoes” online, it turned out remedial shoes are for horses, not people. So I changed their name to “sneakers” because it’s random and silly, especially in light of the fact “sneakers" are a real kind of human shoe which my ugly, comfortable shoes are not.

In other words, I call my shoes “sneakers” because I like the word “sneakers.”

When I arrived at the next scene of the movie about people in Paris, the charming and witty new man had disappeared, but thanks to the magic of Zen floor washing, I’ve solved the mystery of why I call my shoes “sneakers.” I’ve also solved the dilemma of my shoes sticking to the floor, which might speed up the storyline of the movie I’m in about people in Paris.