Wicked Tales from the Wonderful World of Daycare (Ode to Raquel)

I was a very lucky new mommy back in my corporate days. 


1. I had an easy, good baby who was a great sleeper
2. My boss/dad let me bring my newborn to work
3. My next door neighbor was a licensed daycare provider.


Seriously, as my beloved sister-friend Vicki likes to say, sometimes it seems like I was born with a horseshoe up my ass. 




Here I come, better entertain me!

But good luck tends to run out eventually.  My next door neighbor had the nerve to retire and baby Joey was getting very demanding while I was working, expecting me to actually interact with his gigantic headed self instead of allowing me to shuffle him from activity to activity like baby circuit training… Gymini to bouncy seat to jumper with a bumper.  As much as I’m sure my dad’s other employees enjoyed the distraction of Joey wandering around the office in his walker, pulling papers off desks, it was time to find a new solution.


Enter Raquel, patron saint of daycare and margaritas.


Raquel was an in-house nanny for a work buddy of my husband Joe.  After her second daughter was born, Raquel decided to start a daycare in her own home.  Joey was her very first customer and he loved her dearly, almost as much as Joe and I did.


Raquel told us when Joey was ready for potty training and trained him in a day or two.  She gladly kept Joey overnight when we wanted to have a mental health getaway.  She gently guided us in the right direction with each new milestone.  She was stern with the children in her care when they were stinkers and laughed at them when they threw fits.  She never turned away a kid with a fever or cough or runny nose, each kid was like her own.  She had dance parties and races and went for walks with her slew of happy little kids whose variety looked like the old Benetton ads.  She gave thoughtful gifts to every child each birthday and Christmas and attended our family parties as an adopted Zumpano.  When Max came into the picture, Raquel’s husband Jeff looked in his baby face and said with pride, “I can tell he's really smart.”  They were like family and we thanked our lucky stars for them.  When I started my pencil portrait side business in earnest, Raquel ordered a family portrait and we laughed at how bald pale Jeff turned out looking like a ghost haunting the rest of the family.



There it goes.  Missed it AGAIN.

In our massive school district, kindergarten was half day, which caused a problem.  Raquel had been a convenient distance from our first little house, but when we moved to our current home, it was a long round trip.  We enrolled Joey in Kindercare, which bussed him to and from his school.  Max stayed at Raquel’s and Joe and I split the pick up and drop offs.  Joe was calm and organized while I panicked, rushing from Raquel's to catch the Chicago train taking me to my new job which would eventually fire me... the cartoon catapult that launched me into fulltime artistry. 


Eventually Max joined Joey at KinderCare and I cried, knowing I would miss seeing Raquel’s smiling face every day until summer.


We adjusted to KinderCare and our boys found new friends and favorite teachers.  Their best KinderCare friends were Jimmy and Tommy.  Jimmy’s birthday was one day before Joey’s and Tommy was a little older than Max.  The four of them were a perfect blend, adoring each other in the sweetest little boy way possible.  They were a wrestling pile of giggles and secrets and games.  I became friends with Jimmy and Tommy’s mother, Lisa, the way you do with the parents of your kids’ friends.  Convenience led to real closeness with Lisa.  We told each other everything - our pasts with tough fathers, our dreams of writing, our fears.  We admitted our parental shortcomings and we forgave each other’s kids their faults.  We sat at McDonald’s play land for hours and hours, allowing the kids to buy desserts so we could talk longer when they tired of germy plastic climbing.  When Lisa told me she didn’t know how they would afford full time KinderCare costs over the summer, I told her about our magic Raquel, who didn’t charge us a fraction of what she should have.  As Lisa lived in Round Lake, the trip would be even longer for her.  So we allowed them to drop J & T at our house each morning and pick them up from our house in the evening.  Every other Friday, we would keep all four kids overnight or Lisa would pick all four up so each couple could have a date night.  It was heaven.


Except that Lisa hated Raquel.

I was shocked as J & T started to say rude things about Raquel.  Lisa would criticize Raquel for disciplining her boys and blew silly things, like Raquel playfully whacking her daughter on the butt with a flip flop, out of proportion.  When Tommy wore the same unwashed white t-shirt for several days, Lisa was pissed when Raquel washed it.  Lisa was permissive to an extreme and her boys misbehaved at her house.  At mine, they listened to rules and followed our lead.  Lisa was starting to officially weird me out.  When she called me at 5 am on a Saturday morning to accompany her to the emergency room to have a catheter re-inserted, I was disturbed.  She wasn’t working at the time, I was only able to sleep in on weekends and I love sleep.  Clearly she felt close to me after four years of friendship, but as I squeezed her hand during the uncomfortable procedure (for both of us), the ER trip was more of Lisa than I expected or wanted to see. 


On the last day of summer, it was my turn to pick up the boys.  J & T bragged to my boys that they NEVER had to see Raquel again and that their mommy didn’t like her.  I stopped the car, turned around and barked at them that Raquel was our family and I DID NOT want to hear one more bad word. 


The next day while my boys were at school, DCFS showed up at Raquel’s. 


We were so furious, so betrayed, so shocked that a family that we trusted to appreciate Raquel’s generosity would turn on her and on us.  The DCFS agent told Raquel that the call had come from Round Lake… Raquel only knew one family from there.  I called Lisa in shock and anger, demanding an explanation.  Lisa stammered denials and finally blurted out that she didn’t need a friend like me, hanging up like a coward.


She never allowed the boys to see each other again. 


Joey and Jimmy were best friends from ages 4 – 8.  They were inseparable.  Joey wrote letter after letter to Jimmy, confused and hurt by the lack of response, asking who Jimmy’s best friend was now.  Hurting for him, I sent Lisa pleading emails and tried to appeal to J & T’s father, suggesting that just the dads and boys get together.  He seemed open to that, but called back to say that Lisa felt we should go our separate ways, obvious embarrassment in his voice. 


I’ve never been so angry or disappointed in a friend.  I couldn’t sleep and I still think about it more than I should.  I opened my heart, my home, my family to Lisa.  Raquel was a huge help to them financially; they would have been in trouble without her.  Lisa thanked her with a slap in the face out of pure spite and maliciousness.


Fortunately, everything worked out fine for Raquel - she didn’t give a shit about stupid old Lisa.  Ten years later, Raquel is still the daily salvation of grateful families with small children.  She rescued me when I foolishly attempted to step into her shoes and care for my brand new nephew, becoming dear to Joe's sister and her family as well. 


We attended Michele’s Quinceañera as a family this year, and it was wild to see Raquel’s adorable nieces all grown up… gorgeous young women who remembered Joey and Max who had been too little to return the favor.  Joey and Max tower over Raquel and they happily hugged her without teenage restraint.  The room was filled with Raquel’s family from Mexico and with a few adopted families like ours who she has embraced with so much love and laughter.  As our gift, I drew a portrait of Michele in her fancy dress. 

If you’ve ever received a portrait gift from me, you know I really, really love you.  (Not that I don't love you if you haven't... calm down. )  It’s a personal gift that I only feel comfortable sharing with those who know it comes from my heart.  And my heart is full whenever I think of Raquel and her dear family.

Margaritas soon, Raquel??

 

Wendy Zumpano
www.pencilportraitcards.com
www.facebook.com/pencilportraitcards

Cheerleading tryouts in the Fine Art world

Let’s say you have a hobby that you enjoy.  You knit or read fortunes or glue stuff on other stuff.  You want to start a business.  How do you start?  What do you do?  If you got fired and had about ten minutes to start making money somehow, could you do it?

After I stopped blubbering about getting fired from my corporate job in 2005, I started peddling my pencil portraits at craft shows.  I had no clue how to go about it; I’d never even gone to a craft show before.  My last day at work was February 28, and my first craft show, at our local county fairgrounds, was in early April. Considering I did some serious post-job sulking, I’m surprised I got started as quickly as I did.  Fortunately, that first craft show turned out to be a decent show, just ten minutes away.  I still do it up to three times a year.

Nothing makes my former mechanical engineer father happier than designing something and building it.  I brag regularly about how he invented the moving walkway.  He’s also brewed up some other handy contraptions over the years, like a pulley system that allowed our old Volkswagen Rabbit to yank his speed boat out of the lake and a custom desk that runs along one wall of my brother’s old room and into the closet.  It’s gorgeous.  My dad is in heaven working with his hands. 

When I signed up for my first craft show, I had to come up with some sort of booth, or exhibit.  I had a cutesy idea in my head of suspending a sign from a big pencil.  I sketched it quickly and emailed it to my dad, asking if he could help. 

I think it was just a couple days later that we went shopping together at Menard’s and my dad built a pencil for me out of PVC pipe.  The supports that held up the pencil could be stored inside it.  He put together special clamps and floor supports that attached to the table.  Look how much that dang pencil looks like my drawing!  My dad is brilliant.

There's a big pencil, so you know I'm good.

I spray painted it bright yellow, covered the metal tip in contact paper, made the pencil lead out of the end of a plastic ice cream cone from my kid’s play kitchen and fashioned an eraser out of foam paper and silver curling ribbon.  Years later, the lady in charge of that first craft show still asks me, “What happened to your big pencil?”  It made an early, immediate impression when I didn’t have much else to show. 

I printed out some inquiry forms, hoping people would fill them out at the show like the corporate conventions I'd worked with my dad.  I made a sample book that included photos my clients had given to me and the resulting portraits.  I crossed my fingers.  Looking at this first display, I can’t even believe how little I started out with.  Twenty-four people filled out forms.  My husband and I excitedly shuffled through all those potential orders, mentally counting our load of cash.  Of course, only a couple people actually placed orders, which was a lesson I’d learn over and over, eventually making me the poster child of skeptism I am today.  No matter how sincerely somebody praises my work, promises that they’ll order a portrait, that they'll call me tomorrow, come back the next day with photos, very few actually follow through, because they are busy with real jobs.  Nobody needs a portrait that bad.

Craft shows worked well for me as I learned, little by little, what I needed for a professional display.  There were few traditional artists at craft shows and I felt like my work was more impressive when I was next to potholders, lamps made from booze bottles and "sh*t on a stick" (as art fair insiders affectionately call lower end craft shows).  I wasn’t confident that my work could stand up next to talented painters and sculptors.  

For outdoor shows, I bought an E-Z up tent from Sam’s Club for $200.  Ouch.  At the time it felt like a big investment.   I had no clue how expensive my outdoor display would eventually be.  At first, I displayed my portraits by spraying the backs with adhesive and slapping them on foam board.  I hung them from fishing line tied to my tent supports.  Snazzy!  The foam board would get dirty and beat up, but I felt like a pro.  People actually ordered portraits by looking at the foam board flapping around in the breeze.  Do you recognize pretend-dead Grandpa in the middle? 

What an artistic water bottle you have there.

I enthusiastically sent this photo with my first fine art show application to the Prairie Arts show in Schaumburg.  They laughed (probably) and rejected me in a frosty letter accompanying my returned check.  People had been so kind, building up my hopes with all kinds of nice compliments.  I was shocked that they wouldn’t let me in their fine art club.  How dare they!  Little did I know, the photo of an artist’s display is just as important as the quality of the work, for fancy fine art shows.  Let’s observe the fact that in this photo, my artwork isn’t very visible, it is CROOKED, there is some crap underneath and on top of my table and I am clearly a complete hack.  When applying to a fine art show, a panel or jury decides whether your artwork and display are up to snuff.  You can’t look like a 12 yr old created your display, no matter how adorable your drawings are. I had flashbacks of trying out for high school cheerleading, smiling in terror and hollering the routines, all hopeful and doomed.  I didn’t have a clue what I was doing then and I'm still learning.  But I wouldn’t give up.

Once I understood the  importance of a professional display, I promptly half-assed it, as usual. 

Cheap lattice provides the best yield of splinters during set up.

I do not like to spend money.  At all.  On anything.  So rather than invest in some art display walls, I built folding screens out of lattice – the wood bric-a-brac used underneath our deck.  They were rickety, uneven and needed to be plastic-tied to my tent or they would fall down. At first, I thought they’d look better if they were painted white.  I figured my kids could do the painting, since I was always looking for something that would hold their little boy attention for more than five minutes to avoid my impending insanity.  After I spent a good half hour setting up all the stuff, they painted for about four minutes and then wandered away. This was their usual peekaboo window of interest in anything that took me more than 20 minutes to prepare.  More paint was on the lawn than on my screens.  Rather than finish it myself, I decided the portraits looked better hanging on the natural (cheap) wood than on white wood.  So in addition to the lack of sturdiness and unevenness, a couple of the screens were about ¼ covered in gloppy, dried white paint drips.  Classy! 

Here I come, fine art world!

Continuing my “only the best for me” approach, I coughed up $10 a piece for 16x20 plastic frames from Wal-Mart.  I soon discovered that the plexiglass immediately got scratched and/or cracked and/or accented by uncleanable smudges.  But what a difference from dirty, crooked foamboard.  I was legit!  Sort of.  Regardless of the lattice screens’ endearing faults, my work looked a hell of a lot better in frames, especially from a distance.  Plus, the total cost for my three home-made screens, hinges and amateur carpenter labor: $70.  Cost of the professional display walls that I would eventually buy: around $750.  Cost of the big girl tent I’d eventually buy:  $1000.  Weight of the plastic bins full of frames with actual glass in them: back breaking.  My set up was quick and light back in those days.  I’d pop up the crappy screens, hang my beat up plastic frames, done!!

I limped along for the first three years, building my business on a shoestring.  I upgraded my website, www.pencilportraitcards.com, building it myself using a Godaddy template, listing my show schedule which was starting to include some nicer shows.  (Don't look at my show list right now because it is from last year.  I broke my website and am currently in the middle of procrastinating.  Seriously, I was going to fix it today, but went to lunch and wrote this blog instead.)

As my shows improved, I asked fellow artists for recommendations and check out their set up. Every time I’d see better displays, I felt more and more embarrassed of my flea market setup.  I’d cart my stuff to the next church, high school or fairgrounds and look around at my glue gun creation neighbors, thinking, “Is this really where I really fit in?  Next to the bedazzled t-shirt lady and the doggie treat guy?”  Occasionally people would ask me, “What are you doing here?”  My price point was way beyond lawn art or silk flower arrangements.  Some people would pick up my price sheet, shudder and put it right back down. As time went on, I built a library of portrait prints that I could sell on site, rather than always leaving each show with nothing in my pockets except hope.  I drew historical figures and sports images, offering multiple sizes and greeting cards.  Sometimes those $4 cards made the difference between a good show and a miserable one.

Finally, I bit the bullet and bought mesh walls for my tent from www.flourish.com, for $750. 

Actual booth photo that is taken on my SLANTED yard.

It looked better, but the setup of my “walls” went from a few minutes to the better part of an hour.  During my first craft shows, I used to wave good-bye to Bob Schmidt, a sports collectible guy and one of my favorite fellow crafters.  He’d have tons more to pack up and he’d shake his fist at me as I’d skip out among the first to leave the show.  As my set up got more complicated and professional, he’d laugh at me as I’d be staying with him later and later, still breaking down after most of the other crafters had packed up their American Girl doll clothes.  I’d added shelves, lights, a carousel of greeting cards and an extra table to my set up.  “Ha ha, you used to be out of here in a half hour!” he teased, when I was still packing up 90 minutes later.  Packing up is NOT the fun part. It's faster than the set up, but usually done while pouting. I built a crappy pull-cart with a piece of plywood and hauled my growing display out to my gas-guzzling Durango, sometimes in pouring rain, often tipping an overloaded pile of stuff and breaking something while swearing at the top of my lungs.

In my 5^th year, I had to face the fact that my cheap tent wasn’t going to hack it anymore.  It was leaking and pulling apart at the seams.  One time, the center pole poked through the top of the tent after I’d had everything set up.  I had to take everything down, reposition the pole, and set up again, while crying and feeling sorry for myself.  Nothing panicked me more than the first time it rained outside AND inside my tent.  Crafters cleverly use hula hoops and pool noodles in the corners of the cheap tents to keep it from sagging with pooled rainwater, leaking buckets into the tent.  I’ve lost a lot of work to rain, which is never a friend to paper.  Replacing a few soggy prints is nothing compared to the unfortunate souls stuck in serious storms… the cheap tents can crumple like tin cans, blowing out into traffic. After consulting www.artfairinsiders.com (such a great resource), I chose a Showoff Trimline tent, which is one of the easiest of the fancy tents to assemble by yourself.  Spending $1000 felt like a swift kick to the gut, contributing much stomach acid to my panic attack that always accompanies any big expense.  Setting up my old tent was like opening an umbrella… the new one had to be built in stages.  But it was water tight. 

The first time that I set up my brand new tent at a show, I built the domed canopy structure on the ground, like I'd practiced.  It was a windy day, and when I attached a second leg to the tent top, the wind yanked it like a kite and wrenched it straight up, snapping off a piece of my brand new expensive structure.  I held the broken piece in my hand in horror, realizing that I would have to load everything back in my car, go home and get my cheap leaky tent.  I had to miss my Bunko group for the first time and I cried on the phone to my Bunko friend Karen, feeling sorry for myself again.  I have the emotional constitution of a five year old.  After I got a replacement part shipped to me, I made sure that the tent top was weighted down any time there was even the slightest breeze before I put the legs on.  It's a nonstop learning experience.  Sometimes my husband and boys help with setup or breakdown (hallelujah!)... mostly I'm on my own.  My husband insisted that I buy a nice cart this year and it has made a world of difference. 

Fancy!  But those curtains take forever to put up.

Now the majority of my shows are fine art shows… I get into most, but many are still too selective to let me in… maybe my display still isn’t fancy enough, or maybe my work isn’t good enough either. Each time I apply to a new show, I still feel like I'm trying out for cheerleading, yelling as loud as I can, trying to smile, fearful I won't make it.  But unlike my failed cheerleading career, I make it in fine art a good part of the time.  I’ve even won some ribbons at a few shows and I’ve landed some larger clients.  But as the shows get nicer, my display is starting to feel like it needs yet more upgrades.  And then it's suddenly as if I’m out there for the first time again, with my card table and big ole pencil.

www.pencilportraitcards.com
http://www.facebook.com/pencilportraitcards

Back to the drawing board

Guess what I should be doing?

Drawing.

Guess what I'm doing?

Farting around.

I've been drawing pencil portraits since the late 80's, full time since 2005.  In my pre-artist, corporate days, I had no choice but to drag my sorry, possibly hung over ass out of bed at an unholy hour.  If there was something important going on at work that day, I'd probably lost a good 3-4 hours of sleep flopping around, freaking out about it the night before.  I have a number of self-soothing mental tricks I try to play on myself when I'm worked up at night.  They rarely work.  I'd lie there and picture sabotaging myself in a variety of ridiculous ways.

To make up for my meager allotment of sleep, I would debate before bed whether my curly hair could make it another day so I could snag a shower's worth of extra morning snoozing.  Or I would choose my business clothes ahead of time and maybe even inspect them for baby spit up or coffee stains before my coworkers pointed them out during the work day. Regardless, work mornings would find me tearing around, swearing and stomping, throwing papers all over the kitchen island looking for something or other, ravaging the junk drawer for parking change, flying out the door in a panic.  I'm chronically disorganized and quite dramatic about any inconvenience.  This is fun for my husband because I'm always inconveniencing myself and usually him, too.  Those mornings were not fun.

I always waited till the last possible moment to wake one of my boys.  It is a crime against humanity to wake a sleeping child. 

Those chubby little fists laying next to their pink angel faces... just shoot me.  They looked like I was robbing them of at least five more hours sleep.  Something howled inside me when I woke them.  I'd tickle their backs, snuggle them for as long as I could before changing/dressing/feeding them, doing all I could to ease them into their happy little boy days away from me.  All the while I was trying to ignore that loud TICK TICK TICK of time passing too fast.  I thought the worst part of those mornings was a full out sprint at the train station, or the horror of potentionally MISSING the stupid train.  Being a few sweaty strides away from closing commuter train doors is almost as bad as a minor car accident or getting a ticket on the way to work.  So easily avoidable and so damn infuriating... you can't even believe it's happening.  But the train was nothing.  That clock ticking was my life, my babies, my house, my stress level.  Time was never, ever my friend.

My corporate job in downtown Chicago wasn't bad, although it often seemed like I was being punk'd by my career path.  The IT world is quite methodical and precise.  Add accounting and it's almost hilarious that I worked in it... exactly the opposite of every creative, emotional, distracted aspect of my being.  It was a bunch of grown ups always wanting to analyze serious stuff instead of joking around with me.  Actually, I got away with a lot of smart ass comments during serious meetings, which is kind of awesome. I carved out a creative little niche for myself and kicked a little ass, as much as work drove me beserk, I was proud of my accomplishments, my little sales trophies.

And then it was over.  After 20+ years of a losing battle of balancing work and home, it was all over.  They say that men define themselves by their work, but women do, too.  All I'd ever been was a professional (okay, sort of immature, but still corporate) person.  I'd won some awards, gained respect in the channel.  Now I was just fired.  I kind of deserved it for thinking that I was indispensable, threatening to leave and criticizing my boss.  As much as it hurt, and it hurt bad, there was a big shiny satin bow on the axe that fell on me.

I lost my job when my youngest, Max, was starting kindergarten and Joey was starting third grade - the first big year of homework. I've been there every day for hugs goodbye and hello, snacks, help, friend-rides.  When Joey was able to take the bus straight home for the first time - no day care pick up, he walked in the front door, his sweet little voice calling out, "I'm home!" It was just about worth my complete professional humiliation.

Transitioning from a corporate life to becoming a full time artist was hard. I cried over my my lost job for almost two months.  I'm a mess like that when something - anything - is wrong... a blubbering pile of woe is me.  More fun for my husband.  Growing my new little business was a different kind of stress.  It's a will I fail kind of stress. It's a how am I going to make a pencil into a bill paying magic wand kind of stress.

It's been a long and weepy road.  But my mornings... especially now that the boys are big and can pick out clothes (kind of) and wipe their own asses, there is no comparison to how my mornings have changed.  Ahhhh, my mornings.  In the first few years, I used to walk the kids to the bus stop in my running clothes, go for a run and get right to work.  Eventually it turned into coffee, yogurt, email and Facebook before running, often meaning that sometimes running doesn't happen.  It sure isn't happening this morning because I did something really weird to my right butt and thigh muscle at spin class on Monday morning.  Thank you, Fran, spin dominatrix.

After marketing my portraits for seven years, I'm not in such a panic anymore.  But maybe I shouldn't be quite so relaxed either.  Running a small business that was just starting to take off right before an economic crash has meant tightening our belts.  Sometimes to the point of looking like that creepy picture from Ripley's where the woman has a 9 inch freak waist.  Shouldn't I be hustling a little more?  Maybe take a page from my old corporate days and sprint for the train once in awhile?  I really want to get HBO again.

Yeah, yeah enough farting around.  Back to the drawing board.  Right after I answer a couple personal emails and see if I can find my creepy ex-boyfriend on Facebook.

www.pencilportraitcards.com
http://www.facebook.com/pencilportraitcards