Purse Search, Purse Hell

Still haven’t found a summer purse. Can’t carry the black leather tote in the summer because I’ll poach the phone in a black bag. So I’m on the lookout for a summer tote.  But aliens have invaded the brains of purse designers, making them design backs with enough buckles, straps, and whip ends to win the Preakness without a jockey. And never fear them breaking delicate ankles. The bags I saw tonight were thicker than the skin of a politician cheating on his wife. Who needs to be carrying a bag with an 8-inch bottom?  Get an LL Bean tote if you need that, but please give me a tote that doesn’t make me look as wide as a street sweeper.

In fact, here are some rules for all you purse designers to sell on Etsy, Ebay and store outlets:

1. Stop using magnets. Please. I know they are cheaper than zippers. They also mess up debit cards, metro passes, hotel room keys and iPhones. And no, I don’t want to carry my iPhone in a separate bag. One, good, big bag will do. I looked at 300 bags tonight, and two of them (both priced at more than $300) were magnet free.

2. Use a lining that isn’t black. I don’t want to have to carry a flashlight to find something in the dark recesses of my purse. Use a lighter lining–tan, gray, red. Just not black.

3. If you are going to add a cellphone pocket, please measure a cellphone first. And not just yours. Measure an iPhone, too. The purses I saw tonight are apparently designed for gum-chewers, as  the pockets were neither deep enough nor wide enough to hold my cell phone.

4. All those samples from Restoration Hardware you’ve attached to the outside of the purse can be exchanged for a decent outside pocket. It’s where I’d like to put my keys or cellphone, or my boarding pass or even that tower of precarious bills, change and receipt that the grocery checker  balances on your palm, leaving you to walk out of the store carrying because you need both hands to put it away.

5. If you are going to build a vertical purse, please put a lot of pockets on the walls. Otherwise, everything falls into the dark bottom and bulges. I already have a body that looks like that, please make my purse more practical.

6. Make the strap adjustable. I know the Size 00 you designed it for can get it over her tiny shoulder, but if the strap is so short that I have to apply antiperspirant to the bag  to be able to wear it without ruining it, the strap is too short.

7. Give the top a closure I can use with one hand. No magnets, please. In addition to the problems in Item #1, a magnet shuts the middle, leaving both ends open, inviting the pickpocket riding next to me on the Metro to help himself. A zipper is the best. A zipper that closes from both sides is best of all.

8. Please don’t tuck that extra foot of lining you have leftover into the bag. A lining that fills up the bag and hides half the contents of the bag is no friend to those of us in a hurry to find the checkbook.

9. If you are going to use a double handle, measure carefully. If they aren’t the same size, the longer one will keep flopping off our shoulders.

10. Many women like to carry a magazine or a file folder in their bag. Please don’t make it 1/8 of an inch too short. Make it fit, or make it a lot smaller. Don’t be a tease.

–Bags, from top:  Red, shiny bag: Antonio Melani Small Hobo Bag $199.00 at Dillards; turquoise pleated bag: Prada Tessuto Gaufre Hobo $1,195.00 at Neiman Marcus; taupe multi-pocket bag: Plenty by Tracy Reese Multi Pocket Drawstring Hobo, $335.00 at Nordstrom.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who carries a journal, colored pencils, an iPhone, and a book in her purse. She is convinced that the right purse is out there, with clean lines and no frou-frou. See Quinn’s website at QuinnCreative.com

The Dream and the Dreamer

For years I’ve been interested in dreams. I’ve had recurring dreams, meaningful dreams that I still remember vividly, and dreams that have come true much as I dreamed them. I once dreamed a portion of someone else’s lif and had them verify it.

What’s bothered me about dreams is that they seem personal and meaningful, but dream interpretation seems to be a impersonal, reduced to symbol searches. Many books list the items in dreams and assign them a meaning. You dream of flying, it’s a sign someone is going to die. In another book, flying is sex. (In that book, everything is sex. It doesn’t need to be 300 pages long, one would have been plenty.) [Editor's note: WordPress automatically assigns links to posts based on keywords. Please be careful before clicking on the automatically generated links below this post.]

Another school of thought says that you are everyone in your dream. I’m not sure that works for me, either. Many of the people in my dream are known to me and many unknown that represent an idea or warning for me, but they aren’t me.

I think dreams are far more meaningful, and I don’t believe they are random images your brain fans out because you’ve eaten pepperoni pizza late at night. I believe dreams are a connection to the collective unconscious–the past of your cultural ancestors. I think dreams are a map of our lives, a colorful tapestry of adventures, a guide to the path we have chosen, an illuminated manuscript of both our imagination and our possibilities.

Currently, I’m enrolled in a seminar on dreaming, run by Robert Moss, the originator of active dreaming. Moss believes we can re-enter dreams, either in meditation or in subsequent dreams.

I’m keeping track of all this dreaming for both my dream journaling course and for some workshops on how to wake up to dreams, making them a useful part of your daydreams and waking life.

May 9 update: I had a dream in which I saw a woman who was a potential client in a crowd. She was very blond, almost glowing. The rest of the crowd was very dun-colored, as if a gray wash had been put over the whole scene. She began to bekon to me, but I couldn’t get to her, the crowd was too thick and not moving. [end of dream]  I woke up and had this strong urge to email this person. So I did. Two days later she called me and said she had had a job come in, and hadn’t thought of me until she saw my email. I accepted the freelance job. I’m calling this a Quinncidence.

–Image: Dreamer, color pencil, aquarelle pencils on 100-lb. Bristol Board, Quinn McDonald (c) 2008 All rights reserved. This post is also under copyright by Quinn McDonald, who is a workshop developer and leader as well as a certified creativity coach. See her website at QuinnCreative.com

Sounds like. . .words that spell trouble

There it was again. In a reputable magazine for artists. “The collage peaked my interest.” Luckily, it didn’t, or you would never have a peak experience again. The collage piqued your interest. Totally different word. It’s from the French and it means to give it a little stab of interest. Peek is to look, peak is a top of a mountain, and pique (pronounced peek, that’s why it’s a problem) means to be interested in.

Last week, in the newspaper, I read that woman had performed while she was ill. “She was a real trooper.” Only if she was a policeman. In this case, she was a trouper. Because she was in a troupe of actors, dancers, or other performers. And the show must go on.

In today’s newspaper, I saw a grocery store that had a “souper sale.” I thought it was a joke, maybe tomato or chicken noodle soup was on sale. Nope, just a typo. A super big one.

Some other words that give us trouble:

It’s is never the possessive. When its tail comes to rest, the dragon will be sleeping. No apostrophe. That’s hard, but the only meaning of it’s (with an apostrophe) is it is.

Disinterested means fair or impartial. It has nothing to do with not being interested.

Peruse means to read carefully, not to skim.

Lie is to recline, lay is to place. I lie down on the bed, I lay the baby back in bed.

That’s enough for one day.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved. Image: altaread-austin.org

May flowers

Early summer is here in Phoenix, and the trees and cacti are doing their best to put bright colors into the landscape. There is a tree with blooms like a purple wisteria (it’s not, but I don’t know what it is), and another one with amazing purple-and-white blossoms that look like orchids. Mulberry trees grow here, which I find amazing; I thought they needed more humidity.

Having learned to distinguish an agave (native) from an aloe (not native to the desert, but have adapted well from their Mediterranean climate), I’m caught up in the flowers. The agave sends up a post of bright yellow flowers before it dies. The aloe blooms year after year, once it reaches maturity. My favorites are the on

the thin-leaved aloes, with long, waving stalks of coral flowers that look like bells. They develop a small, deeply lobed green and purplish-red fruit that grows on the stalk, attached on a short stem.

I’m keeping notes; in a year it will all be commonplace.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who believes that nature has lessons for us, if we’d only get out and notice. Quinn develops and runs workshops on creativity, communicating simply and effectively, and journal-writing. Image: from Quinn’s visual journal. (c) QuinnCreative.com 2008. All rights reserved.

Time, Measured in Spices

Standing at the kitchen stove, cooking supper, I reached for the pepper grinder. Almost out. When I bought the jar that stored pepper as well as ground it, I was horrified at the expense. “Oh, well,” I thought, by the time I need more pepper, I’ll just use the peppercorns from the pantry.

I remember not wanting to buy large quantities of paper towels, toilet paper, detergent. I wouldn’t be in the apartment long. I refused to buy spices, as it was a waste when my husband would be joining me shortly, and I’d have my kitchen back.

So when I ground the last of the pepper tonight, I counted how long I’d been out here alone: Six months. Half a year. The house is still on the market (C’mon, St. Joeseph!), I talk to my husband on a cell phone, and I have no TV, no real furniture, and most of my art supplies are packed in boxes in the basement across the country, waiting to be moved.

I’ll admit I’ve purchased art supplies. I simply caved around month three, and have added to them since then. But the spices just did me in. I’ve ground my way through entire jar of peppercorns, waiting.

No doubt, other women have waited longer. I was one of the women who waited for a husband to come back from Vietnam. The best way to tell that story is to say that the one I’m waiting for now is not the same man I waited for then. It was a long time ago.

Day by day, I’m changing and so is he. No longer all that young, we are learning how to live apart, how to do without, how to create independent lives. None of these lessons are ones I wanted to get advanced skills in. Neither do I want to move back. I like it here.

So we are caught in time. Him there, me here, running out of spices.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and training developer in communications topics: writing, giving presentations and dealing with the corporate culture you find yourself in. She is also a certified creativity coach. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Mascara Tree Sketch

There’s a clip on YouTube of a man drawing Bette Davis with mascara. It’s speeded up, and it may be edited, but the result is amazing. He uses the mascara wand as a brush and makes it work with line, shading and value.

After seeing it, I wondered if it was real. So I grabbed by two mascaras–Avon and L’Oreal Voluminous, both in brown/black, and went to work. Surprisingly, neither one had enough color to make it work well. The Avon wand was also quite flexible, great for applying mascara to eyelashes (after all, that was what it was designed for) making it hard to control.

A trip to the drug store, and I had my teen-reliable mascara–Maybelline in double black. The bottom of the container is pink, the top green. I don’t think it’s changed in 30 years. And it worked.

The trunk worked best because the uneven application makes great rough spots. The branches benefit from the the application of the brush held so the bristles create the long leaves of the willow tree.

Ink, brush, paper: cheap. Art in mascara: Not priceless, but washable.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. She is a collage artist and teaches workshops, but not in mascara painting. Yet. Image: “Don’t weep, willow” Mascara on paper. (c) 2008 Quinn McDonald, All rights reserved.

When You Are In The Wrong Job. . .

Once upon a time I had a job that paid very well. Almost from the beginning, I began to see some problems. My boss was often vague and unclear, and I worked hard to protect the writers whom I supervised.

Then, one day, my boss vanished. He was there on Friday, gone on Monday. There was a reorganization, and a new boss appeared. During the first week, she asked me at least a dozen times if I minded that I now had a female boss younger than my oldest child. Each time I said (truthfully) that I was happy for new leadership and clear direction.

All went well for a while. When my boss encouraged me to exercise (I was an early morning gym rat at the time), I thought she was concerned about life/work balance. Turns out she thought I was fat. (I prefer to think of myself as “sturdy.”) She never said it directly to me, I overheard it in the bathroom one day, when she didn’t see me in the last stall.

When she began to set work goals I could not meet, I began to work harder and longer, but as I jumped through one hoop, it would be discounted and the next hoop held up. Some of them seemed to be on fire. My boss wanted me to push out one of my direct reports because she wasn’t bright enough (she was plenty smart) and another one because he didn’t have the right “corporate image,” which translated as “looks geeky and is overweight.”

The last year of my time in that company was torture. I began to believe that I could not do anything right. Some of the people who worked with me began to see the writing on the wall and avoided me. After years of a good relationship with one direct report, she reported me to human resources because the plant in my office had outgrown my title. (Yep, in that company you could have plants only if they were in accord with your station. Big, important plants were for corner offices only.)

I was especially slow on catching on. I worked harder, longer, and desperately. In the end I left because I was going to be pushed out. I took a job at less pay, in a smaller company, and eventually opened my own business doing what I know and what I love: coaching, writing, and leading workshops

Some jobs are not worth the money you get paid, even if it’s good money. There are times you have to save your own life and leave a job that is eating your soul alive.

Jennifer Alvey, a smart woman who left the practice of law when it began to suck her soul out, now helps other attorneys who are unhappy leave their work. Don’t wait until you develop ulcers or serious health problems. And if you are ready to leave the law, drop by Jennifer’s blogsite.

–Image: Shrewsbury-ma.gov

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who helps people in transition, including from one job to the next. (c) 2008. All rights reserved.

Phoenix plant life: weird, but real

In the East, the plants are well-behaved, leafy, green and they follow the calendar in their growth. In the desert Southwest plants grab whatever moisture they can when it’s there, bloom, spread their well-protected hard-cased seeds through wind, hooks, or by serving as food, and then the next time it rains, the cycle repeats. To make it work, plants put out big, bright flowers on tall stems, or a flower that has lots of opportunity for birds and butterflies.

I have no idea what this is, but it’s doing its best to be around for a few more years.

Addition on May 1, 2008:  It’s an octopus agave. After about 20 years of life, the agave sends up a stem, blossoms wildly (the yellow part is actually thousands of small blossoms) then dies.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who is amazed at how busy nature is in the desert Southwest. See her work at QuinnCreative.com Photo and words (c) Quinn McDonald 2008. All rights reserved.

Target Chocolate Taste-Test

Chocolate is my Waterloo. I could make serious life-choice mistakes while under the influence of chocolate. So when my local Target began to carry dark chocolate flavored with amazingly exotic flavors, I grew weak in the knees and strong on directional instincts. My car knows the way to Target all by itself. All I have to do is wave an empty Lindt wrapper under it’s nose and it’s off.

Target has a house brand called Choxie. It offers a variety of flavors in light and dark. Being a dark-aholic, I tried the dark Key lime flavor. I also purchased a Lindt dark bar flavored with Orange bits, a dark with chili peppers, and a Frey dark chocolate with lemon and pepper. I really like the flavors of peppers, although I am not a fan of spice so strong that my mouth hurts.

The Choxie Key Lime had an interesting filling–bright taste, which might be limey. Had I not had the bright green package to remind me it was lime, I might have simply thought “sour,” or maybe “lemon.” But the greatest disappointment on this bar is that the chocolate doesn’t taste like dark chocolate. It tastes like white chocolate, which is to say, not like chocolate at all. I remember in the 70s someone told me that carob tasted just like chocolate and was much better for you. I bought a carob bar and thought I’d bitten into the wrapper. Nope, it was the carob, which, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, tastes completely not unlike wet cardboard.

If you are a white chocolate aficionado, my apologies, but white chocolate has less chocolate flavor than the skin tanning coco butter, which it resembles in taste, if not smell. Coco butter tan cream smells more like chocolate. There are a few white chocolate producers who substitute solidified vegetable oil for coco butter in their white chocolate. Makes it easier to work with. Which sums up my interest in white chocolate.

Back to Choxie. For the price, not so bad, if you are not deeply into chocolate. Unfortunately for Choxie, it’s got no Moxie. Not for me.

Lindt is a Swiss chocolate maker for whom I have deep respect. Their dark chocolate is deep, rich, and avoids the pitfalls of many of the darkest chocolates–sour, sharp aftertastes. Their intense Orange is just that–it tastes intensely and unmistakably of real orange–the slightly bitter pulp and the rich, sweet juice. The bar is thin and the orange bits a bit crunchy. At less than $2 a bar, this is worth driving to Target for.

Lindt also makes a dark chocolate with Chili peppers. So far, it’s a clear favorite. The peppers make their presence known as a warm heat on the tongue and palate, balanced by the intensity of dark chocolate. It is absolutely perfectly balanced. Even the picture on the wrapper is wonderful, with a pure red chili pepper against dark chocolate–exactly what to expect.

Frey (the bar tells you to pronounce it “fray”) is another Swiss chocolate maker. I purchased their Lemon/Black pepper bar. How could a pepper love like me resist? I was hoping for a tang of tart lemon, followed by the floral spice of good pepper. It didn’t happen. The dark chocolate was fine, no complaints, but the lemon was simply sour and I still haven’t found any evidence of pepper.

I’m willing to give Frey another chance with another flavor, but so far Lindt is the quality winner. Guess I’ll just have to head over and pick another couple of bars.

–Image: Choxie Key Lime bar and Lindt Intense Orange photograph by Quinn McDonald, who is loving the idea of reviewing chocolate. As she buys wine by the graphic design of the label, she may be better off as the chocolate critic. She also teaches writing, journaling, and is a certified creativity coach. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Math Magic in Nature

The things we learn in school are often written off as esoteric–things we never use or need in real life. Except all around us are amazing geometries that are not only meaningful, but give life structure.

Phi is a number–.1.6180339. Like Pi, it continues forever. There is a way it was derived, but there is something even more interesting about Phi. The number can be scaled into a grid. And the grid gains meaning in nature–it can be found in the way rose petals shape the bud, the pattern of sunflower seeds in the center of the flower, and the way branches are spaced along the trunk of a tree.

Even if you’ve never heard of Phi, you are walking around with it. The length of your hands and lower arms follow Phi, and so do your facial features. Leonardo Da Vinci figured out much of the applications.

Here’s a quick way to check: your foot is the length of your lower arm. If you are flexible enough, place your heel on the inside of your elbow. It will reach to your wrist.

Shells that spiral follow the path of Phi. The eye, fin and tail of a dolphin align with the ratio. A line drawn between the pupils and down to the corners of the mouth follow the Phi proportion. We consider a person attractive if the lines form a square. Your two front teeth form a rectangle in the Phi proportions in height and width.

You can see more examples and you can download a grid and use it to check it for yourself. And I promise not to tell anyone you are using geometry and loving it.

Image: flower of life, derived from Phi and the Fibonacci sequence

–Quinn McDonald suffers from some forms of math fear, but loves geometry. She is a writer and creativity coach. See her work at Quinncreative.com