19 April 2020> We moved into our house exactly a year ago, so happy anniversary, ox. Granted it was the shell of a home + it would be sum time til our furniture arrived so we were sleeping on the floor. This shutdown has made it crowded + contentious to run in parks + usual places but downtown in our nation's capitol it's a ghost town, awesome for running. U can run down Penn or Mass ave in the middle of the road + not have to worry about cars. Just wish it wasn't allergy season (tho they weren't as bad yesterday as last week when we busted out in hives + sneezed for hours after) + the other day we bruised our heel (or we shd day re-bruised our rite heal for the 3rd or 4th time since we 1st did it running barefoot on the beach in Santa Barbara yrs ago) cuz we was dancing around like crazy doing aerobics in our bare feet (what happens when you're cooped up in your casa w/ cabin fever)... same heal that never quite heels, bruised to the bone. We talked about COVID-19 caloric intake the last few posts, but what about burning calories? We're fortunate to have a home gym (w/ an ellliptical + spin bike) but sum days we just crank tunes + move our body around, a hodge-podge of aerobosize, tae-bo, yoga, skanking, pogo-ing, dancing around, lifting weights, throwing ourselves to the ground, etc... we even made a playlist for the occassion if u want to try this at home:

Made sum art today... bin meaning to for sum time but got rapped up in making music + finishing Textiloma + we don't got a room in our house to make a mess + there were too many mosquitoes last fall outside + now it's allergy season but today was a nice day so worked on a new piece in the backyard, tho we're not ready to show it yet since we need to varathane it (bunch of janky stuff that might crumble off if not). We're thinking we want to embark on a new Casalingo series... larger scale stuff (the 1 we're working on now is ~3' x 6' ft). Weave never made "art" before, except designs for books, never thought of it as something we'd hang on a wall in our home. But now that we got a home + we're under lockdown staring at our walls figure we may as well make cool stuff that's intresting to look at. Like w/ our cooking, we don't follow recipes + there ain't no rules to making this "art". The materials are sourced from stuff we have laying round the house from doing home improvements, stuff you'd get at the hardware (Casalingo) store, rather than an art store. Last year we went to an art store + was shocked at how much "artists" pay for a blank canvas, when u can just find something layin' around... a piece of wood, cardboard, whatever discarded item we find in the back alleys of DC (before COVID stopped us from rummaging around in people's bins). And same for the materials we're gonna use—rather than buying expensive paints from art stores wheel just use leftover household paint or stains or whatever other material (nails, screws, wire, thread, fabric, wallpaper, etc.) that we seam to have accumulated this past year, so in a way it's also recycling. Guess the other thing is our brother (+ co-author of Textiloma) was always the visual "artist," the 1 that went to art shcool. Now that weave finally finished Textiloma perhaps the baton has been passed on to us? Tho Kevin sourced supplies from art stores, at least twards the end he started painting on doors + using power tools + household supplies. Before we start a new art series, spose we shd update our portfolio w/ pieces from Textiloma. Here's a few (click for higher rez), see portfolio for more:

In updating our portfolio, we realized we forgot to post images from the 1^st volume ('SSES" 'SSES" ^"SSEY') so we also added sum images from that (dat cd be deemed "art"). As with Textiloma, these images were collaged digitally using original artwork by our brother Kevin, but in sum cases we created the images, like this 1:

20 April> Anoche had a knight mare (coinsidedance that both night + mare allude to horses?) that we were hiking sum trail + came across a guy that had all these grizzly bear paws laying around like he'd been hunting them + was talking how there had bin an attack nearby, so we got all paranoid thinking the grizzlies wd take vengeance against all humuns. Then we were at db's (friend of ours w/ cancer that that just before the lockdown we went out to dinner with + made plans to go hiking but obviously that's not happening now) + was aksing her how to hike sum trail (a leg of the Appalachin) + she gave us a handrawn map but also acted like maps were for woosies + that we shd discover the route for our self. So we set off + was running in the intrest of time cuz it was getting dark (8 pm) + also cuz we was afraid of bears + we ended up on this "trail" 1st thru a bad part of an inner city + then thru a museum until we ended up down a long dead-end hall + had to turn back + go the way we came.

The other day we found Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris in our liebury boox + figured we needed sum comic relief right now.... sum of the initial stories was funny + his earlier works are hiliarous, but his shtick's getting old + tired, seems he's just run out of things to say + there's this undercurrent of racism. Sure, race has always been a comedian's bread + butter but for sum reason in writing (in 1st person narrative) it's a bit unsettling + guess the book was written in 2013 when people were a bit less sensitized, but still. We're also still disturbed by the callous use of his sister's suicide (also in 2013) as material to draw from (even tho she said over + over that she didn't want to be part of his routine). In this later interview in Vice (w/ Blake Baily, whose brother also killed himself) Sedaris talks about what a pain in the ass it is to have a drug addict sibling. After reading thru our journals to write Textiloma, we remembered how frustrated + helpless we felt at times dealing w/ our brother... it's true drug addicts can be black holes of hopelessness that command all-consuming attention + can drag friends + family into the hole w/ them. And yes, our brother was a "remarkable mess" as Sedaris calls them (his justification for why it's worth writing a book about them), but it still took us 23 years to write Kevin's book for him cuz we grapple still w/ this dilemma... if we wrote the book then we might be exploiting his tragedy, but at the same time if we didn't write the book then he would never be remembered.