savagemama

Blake Haygood has always been fascinated with machinery and ideas of things that don’t exist.

As a kid growing up in Forsyth, Ga., this idea took form in the science fiction he read. Today, as a working artist and part owner of the Platform Gallery in Seattle, Haygood is intrigued by fanciful objects like free-floating gears that break apart. Reborn, retooled and repurposed, these objects find their way into his art.

In Haygood’s Missoula Art Museum exhibit, Depending on Your Perspective It Might be OK, the images suggest workability and impossibility, humor with a touch of despair. While the constituent parts are recognizable enough—mechanical even—the shrapnel cast off of these objects signals they are no longer workable, no longer functional. The relationship of these objects to their former function is an impossible one and somehow, says Haygood, “humorous and goofy, sad and falling apart.” [Read More]

I’ve got a little secret.

And no, I’m not pregnant.

I’m running the Missoula marathon.

I’ve been running with a local training group since early March but have been hesitant, until now, to come out and say I’m training for the marathon. I’ve run long runs, I’ve gotten new shoes. But until a 16 mile run up Miller Creek two weeks ago I was still riding the fence. When I crossed the creek for the final time that day and sat under the shade of an Aspen tree I decided to run the full marathon.

I can do this.

I’ve done it before.
Read More »

I’ve got a little secret.

And no, I’m not pregnant.

I’m running the Missoula marathon.

I’ve been running with a local training group since early March but have been hesitant, until now, to come out and say I’m training for the marathon. I’ve run long runs, I’ve gotten new shoes. But until a 16 mile run up Miller Creek two weeks ago I was still riding the fence. When I crossed the creek for the final time that day and sat under the shade of an Aspen tree I decided to run the full marathon.

I can do this.

I’ve done it before.
Read More »

Do you remember when you were in middle school and you really wanted to go to the football game to see that boy but when you got there you ignored him all night until ten minutes before your mom was to pick you up? Then you stood there in your Keds, under the bleachers talking to him awkwardly until your mom finally beeped her horn for you to hurry your sweet seventh-grade ass to the car.

Well twenty some odd years removed from middle school, I employed the same tactic yesterday in Costco. The object of my affection: an iPod.

I drove to Costco trying to convince myself we needed a few things. We need sausages, I thought, cheese, tortillas and maybe while I’m there I might swing by and take a look at their ipod selection. Maybe.
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We returned to Montana Tuesday after 14 days in South Carolina. We are relaxed, happy and readjusting to our lives here. Lucille is asleep after a long night with a high fever. Eliza is at preschool with a sack of seashells and more than a few stories about her relative who speak to her slow and sweet. I’m sitting here on our deck in Missoula feeling more and more at home in this house and wondering if the light shifted while I was away or if somehow, in two weeks, I forgot how drop-dead gorgeous it is in Montana.

Today all I want to do is sit in the sun, look at the brilliant blue sky and take long deep breaths. Here are a few things crossing my mind in my sleep-deprived haze.

Little Lucille seemed so pitiful in the middle of the night with a 103-degree temperature. She lay on my chest, her heart racing, her body working hard to get rid of whatever it is that is bringing her down. Bloody air travel, one friend said. And it’s true. “No like it,” Lucille kept saying in the middle of the night. “No like it, mama.”
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I once knew a woman who said of her boyfriend at the time that she’d rather be pumping gas in the rain with him than do about anything with anyone else.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about my family.

A few glimpses of our trip:

We returned late last night from the South Carolina coast where I got my wish
– Eliza and Lucille splashed in the Atlantic, shoveled sand, built castles and looked for shells. On our first day there it rained but we hit the beach anyway. My mom, my aunt and my step dad jumped waves in the ocean and my daughters joined right in as though they’d always been meant to.

Yesterday, on a break from possibly the most perfect day at the beach, Eliza said to my mom, “I’m so glad to see you.”
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