a diary of words, paper and other ephemeral things
I know you’re upset
But here
I carved a space
In my heart
Meet me there
We’ll have tea
Not too strong
So we can still
go to bed early
We’ll talk about the
meaning of
Our matching fingerprints
You scribble tears on your face
With blue crayon
They fall, rain from your cheeks
Splash into your cup
Allow me to drink it for you
It’s been long enough
You don’t have to do this alone
Episode five of the podcast Living Practice is live 💕 catch it here or find it on your favorite podcast platform.
The Tarot Diaries segment on the four of cups is now live. Swipe through the photos for previews of what I dive into 💚
Below is my sticker design for Care Mail Club. Sign ups are $11 to receive a sticker, zine and original artwork…and sometimes extra goodies 😜 check it out on my ko-fi.
The sticker shone below was from last month’s club mail. it’s available for $3 on ko-fi.
I am currently trying out selling some tiny artworks as ACEOs on eBay after learning about them on TikTok. I enjoy making tiny art anyway, and it does pile up quickly. I use to run an eBay shop back in college. This seems like it will be much less labor intensive (I hope) as far as admin is concerned. Each is on auction for a starting bid of .99, with a buy it now price of $5. I enjoy the accessibility of this practice, as someone who only started collecting artwork a few years ago. Each piece is also 3.5” x 2.5” which is just fun. You can check these all out here: https://www.ebay.com/usr/starmothx. The two images below are also cards I have available.
This is the design that won out for the sticker for this month’s care mail club (sign up on ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/starmothpress it’s available as a one-off purchase or a membership). I have a few others that I really love and was torn as far as using them, but ultimately the bunny was the winner (bunnies are my favorite, besides dogs…and birds.) Here were the other contenders. Perhaps they’ll be stickers in the future?
This evening I would really like to get to some fiction writing, but have also been recovering from a whole collection of illnesses. Last weekend, the family had the stomach flu. It kicked my butt! The kids had it as well, so I was extra beat from taking care of them. Then the week felt like a race from one thing to the next, not a moment to breathe. By the time Friday came, I was dealing with debilitating stomach pain. It seemed as though my ulcer was acting up again. I (stubbornly) did not go to the doctor right away, trying to push through with the thought it would be gone in the morning.
It was not.
The thing is the temperature and air pressure also dropped overnight. The lack of caffeine plus the sinus issues, plus the tension from so much body pain meant I had a triple whopper of a headache when I took the kids to basketball camp Saturday morning. It was all I had to sit there for an hour, and after taking them home and getting everyone settled…I headed to urgent care. They advised me of steps I could take to alleviate the stomach pain as well as meds I could safely take to manage the headaches. I could barely keep my eyes open. I slept most of the day. Thank goodness it was a Saturday.
The next morning I felt much better. Having slept so much I woke up at five. I treated my stomach gingerly, and have been slowly eliminating certain things (such as coffee :() in order to keep everything manageable. Sunday felt a little like a hangover day, today’s vibe was much better but with another temperature drop came another headache.
Luckily it was a mostly quiet day at home. I’ve been catching up on some admin, hence the fact that these items are up on eBay, and I finally posted some stickers for sale on my ko-fi. I’m on a strict order to take Benadryl before bed so I think it’s time for me to get some sleep. I can hit the ground running with some writing in the morning — caring for the physical body comes first.
I did complete this weeks collage for The Tarot Diaries, which I hope to write on tomorrow. The podcast has fallen behind a couple of weeks, but I hope I can recover that as well. It can’t be done in poor health though, so rest it is.
I hope everyone has a safe week. Stay well friends.
More pages from the notebook obtained from the record shop. They are created by Half Hazard Press, and I found them in a new (to me) record shop I was perusing. I also got a Uriah Heap album, titled Demons and Wizards. It was a bold choice considering I had never heard of them but for $9 and a title like that who could resist. We recently pulled out the record player tucked away in a closet, in the hopes that more music enjoyment can be had together.
I am mulling over the idea of how to approach the zine for this month. I am proud of my ability to create a zine each month thus far, as well as figuring out the format to print it within Canva. You can sign up for mail club on my here.
My poetry collection is taking its final shape, I’m settled at between 30-40 poems. I am looking at setting the container to make the corresponding collages. If anyone has any experience self-publishing a book outside of Amazon’s service with text and full color images, please let me know.
A new essay for The Tarot Diaries will be on Substack later today.
I found a fun little notebook at a record store and now I’m filling it with collage
Feeling proud that I finally figured out all the layout and formatting for the zines for my care mail club! Two days to sign up for Novembers mail 💚 new sign-ups usually get a copy of my 28 page poetry zine Forever Place as well as previous stickers still available. Zine will go up in the shop to purchase alone after the 30th 💚
Starmoth Press 