I have been up to my eyeballs lately in cute. A couple of art infused weeks immersed in sweet, dear, adorable. And guess what? I'm still alive after it all.

I do have enough of a memory to recollect a time when the word cute was the absolutely worst word in the dictionary - the big dictionary too - not the wimpy pocket version.

An even worse word - than say - I don't know -

turd.

Once upon a time it wouldn't take anything more than someone taking a look at a newly finished piece of art that I was neurotically presenting blinking their eyes at it and proclaiming,

"Why, that's - uh- uh- uh- cute."

It was at this point while my charred skin was curling up and falling from my bones that I would mumble a thanks before excusing myself to go lay on my bedroom floor like a dead thing.

Cute. Cute? CUTE!!!!!!!

My work was cute. Translated into a language I could understand that meant, 'hahahahahahahaha, she actually thinks she can make a go at this whole art thing - what a dope, a dork, a dupe - what a drawer of cute'.

I fought the label - valiantly I might add. I added pointy, pointy teeth to my kittens, shifty eyes to the giraffe babies, gave my ducklings sidearms.

I wasn't fooling anyone.

"Look at the pierced lip on that piglet!" They would squeal. "I haven't seen anything that cute since that one poster of the sad, big-eyed puppy in the hobo's boot!"

And so after years of drawing zebras in pasties, martini swilling sheep, and elephants in compromising situations - I gave up, rolled over, and maybe - sold out.

But suddenly I began to enjoy it when I got the fat roll on a pug puppie's back just so.

I spent happy hours making sure that the sleeping mouse looks nice and tucked in.

I have drawn a line, so to speak. No roly-poly panda cubs. No tu-tued fairy princesses - ever - and may lightning strike my dyed head if my hand makes any form that remotely resembles a unicorn.

Still, that word - cute - has a powerful hold over me. But I've heard that the cure for that is to erase that word with another one that contains equally tremendous mojo.

So here goes -

Turd, turd, turd, turd, turd.

Okay. I feel better now.

One of the jobs I do in order to not have a job is to teach art and writing in the schools. I'll take on any age group. 4th grade? No sweat. High school? Fine. Even middle school is just hunky dory with me. I can't believe how many people think that middle school should have a gate with an "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here" blazoned across it. And if that's the way they feel they should stay away. You really can't afford to be even a persperation drop nervous around twelve to fourteen year olds, you know.

They can smell fear a mile away.

All grades do have their hazards but it's usually not something a raised eyebrow can't take care of.
(I do have a talent for lifting one eyebrow into a perfect Spock 'now exactly what type of creature are you?" look. Man I am never giving that trick up) But the threat posed by the first graders I have been working with this week isn't always readily apparent.

Don't misunderstand me here. First graders aren't bad. This class has been just peachy. Energetic - but peachy.

It's been a little like trying to keep baby snakes in a playpen.

No, the potential risk posed by this age group is dealing with the questions they ask. In addition to teaching indivdual classes I also do big school assemblies and when it comes to the question and answer time I am sorely tempted to ignore that shiny faced child with the angelic grin wildly waving that cute arm in the air.

They might be a first grader.

Because if I do call on them and ask, "Yes, honey. Do you have a question?" They nod their head enthusiastically and say, "I have a brother."

Now that all momentum that I may have acheived with my presentation has just gone belly up I gently remind the dear tot that a question is when you want to know something and a story is when you want to tell something and I wish that I had all day to hear everyone's story but I don't and only have time for questions so, "Now, do you have a question?"

The first grader blinks wisely and says, "I have baby brother."

Other 'questions' that stick in my mind like old gum from a movie theater floor are:

• I had a dog but it died
• My cat has three legs
• My Grandma lives in Florida
• My birthday is this year
• I have to go to the bathroom

Wait, there was one asked by a first grader that actually was a real-life question.

"Why are your eyes so red?"

God love 'em.

To tell the truth I find these 'questions' more amusing than annoying and they give me something to repeat at cocktail parties. It's the questions that adults ask that can tweak me. I mean, first graders have an excuse. They're kind of like pupae. But adults should know better.

For example, someone I don't know calls me to donate artwork for an auction to a charity I have no connection with asks, "Don't you think it would be great exposure for you?"

The answer is no.

Or, someone who learns that I write and illustrate children's books asks, "I have a story that I'm writing and it's about this bunny who's really cute and has all these adventures and my grandchildren love it and I'm sure it will sell a million copies so will you draw some pictures for it and then give it to your editor?"

The answer is no.

Or when I'm drawing little Spring cards for kids to color in for a charity event that I do have a connection with and a little gray haired lady grabs one and asks, "Can I have this?" I would have said yes but that wasn't the end of her query. She turns to her friend and says, "I'm going to steal this and run off copies for my Easter egg hunt next week." And then back to me who was sitting right next to her and can hear every word, "You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

I couldn't say a thing. I just stared at her, trying to figure out if what she had said was as hideous as it had sounded.

It was.

After several more uncomfortably silent seconds she slapped the drawing back down on the table and walked away.

I still can't think of the perfect answer to her question. The only thing I keep coming up with is "drop dead'.

So, first graders are a piece of cake. Like this morning when a curly haired moppet looked carefully at a crumb of green oil pastel on her desk and asked, "Is that a booger?"

I'll take booger questions and first graders anyday.

When Christopher Columbus decided to sail across the sea, thus proving the earth was not flat and he and the crew of his three-ship armada was not going to fall off the edge of some giant pie plate into the gaping maw of the gargantuan magical turtle that supposedly held up the world, he did not have a plan B.

What would that have been, anyway?

"Attention crew. The water's looking a bit too 'wavey' ahead of us. So it's on to Plan B where we return to port and convert the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria into theme restaurants. Don't worry, you'll still be able to keep your sailor shirts and sing your sea shanties, the customers are going to love that and the queen is simply going to go wild over the meatball special. I hear she's a pretty good tipper, too."

No, he didn't. As we all know Columbus stayed on course and is now world famous for inventing America.

Do you think the first person to scale Mount Everest decided he was chilly and the sherpa seemed to be giving him dirty looks and cracking sherpa jokes behind his back so he bagged it and started a mountaineer clothing cataloge instead?

Say it with me.

NO!

Where would we be if astronouts hadn't made it to the moon or penicillin hadn't been developed or if Luke Skywalker hadn't decided at the very last minute to use the force to destroy the Death Star?

We would be in a heap of trouble, mister.

Luke Skywalker and I are so like twins. Neither one of us has a Plan B. We started out with our Plan A's - his was to save the princess who he had a crush on but who turned out to be his sisiter, yuck, and then ultimately rescue the rebellion. Mine was hey, I'm going to write stuff and color things. But unlike Luke I didn't have the help of robots and spaceships and some force. I have had to rely on pure delusion and a healthy dose of self deception to stick it out.

There are some negative Nellies out there that warn you must have a backup plan. They wag their annoying fingers under your nose and tell you in no uncertain terms not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Okay. But what if that basket has super soft padding inside and is in a top-secret undisclosed location and is made out of kryptonite?

And has a force field.

That sure shoots some holes in the naysayers' arguments, doesn't it? But they won't listen. They'll continue to sit all safe and cozy in their little Plan B world while the smart ones like us will stay courageously financially insecure, shivering while our butt is flying in the wind.

But at least we've stayed true to ourselves. Our dream is our guide and no amount of psychiatric medication is going to change that. So stay rigid. Remain inflexible. Blinders make a fantastic fashion accessory don't they?

On the other hand, if I really think about it, writing stuff and coloring things might not be all of my Plan A.

And a meatball special does sound pretty tasty.

Anyone up for a Plan C?

So one day I get a call from a friend. Her voice breathless, all brimming with enthusiasm, she blurts out, "Hey, do you want to go skydiving? You're the only person I know that would go with me."

This was my reply to that little invite.

"Letmethinkaboutthatno."

My friend Kelly does things like skydiving. She can pull a car's engine, reroof a house, and haul fifty pound bags of feed. She is also a little bitty thing with these teeny tiny feet. Really small feet - the 'I need to go to the kid's shoe section of the store and I hope to god they have more than those stupid sneakers with the light in the heel that flashes every time you take a step' kind of small feet.

But the first thing you notice about Kelly is that she doesn't seem like the dare-devil rough and tumble type.

She seems nice.

In fact, the phrase that would most likely spring into your mind is -

"Why, she's nice as pie."

Okay, I have to stop here for a moment and wonder just where does that saying come from? I can understand someone being described 'as nice as a selfless nun who works with amputee kittens' or 'nice as a billionaire that just gave me a wheelbarrow of cash for no reason what- so- ever'. But nice as pie?

Whatever.

Sure. Kelly seems all nice and all and you'd never dream that she'd be the type to leap out of airplanes or get grease under her fingernails. You'd also never ever guess that Kelly is also -

a stone cold killer.

A duck and chicken killer to be precise.

When she told me that she was raising her own meat I had to ask exactly how do her feathered friends go from their fowl lives to being dinner. Kelly ducks her head (sorry) and grinds the toe of her itsy bitsy shoe into the ground. "Oh, well, you see...."

And she goes on to tell me that she waits until one of her flock totally pisses her off. The offending bird could be pecking on a weaker one or simply have an attitude that leaves something to be desired. It has now become quite a different day from the happy, sunny morning on the farm.

It has become a day of death.

Kelly lays low, her assassin's tool hidden behind her back. Slowly, with stealth and cunning she creeps up behind her prey. All sound stops.

And then she cuts off their head with a pair of garden loppers.

Geez lou-eez, I prune my camillias with garden loppers. You can buy them in the home and garden department along with slug bait and those horrible satanic- faced yard gnomes. What would cause a person to look at a pair of loppers and think, 'ya know, I bet these would do a jim-dandy job of separating an animal's head from their body'?

But that's Kelly for you. She's not afraid of a couple thousand feet of clear blue sky between her and the ground or a headless future meal running around her lawn.

Because - she is a dare-devil.

As far as how I live my life, I will never jump out of an airplane that is still operating. I am not mechanical one bit and can't bring myself to squish a spider. But I am a dare-devil.

I'm an artist. I'm a writer. I don't have a 'real job' to fall back on. This is it, baby. When bills are due and assignments are scarce this is what working without a net is really about.

But without the death and blood part.

So kudos to you, Kelly my wild friend.

And kudos to me as I attempt to navigate that razor's edge one more day.

I was a wierd little kid. For one thing, I didn't like other kids. They just seemed so - well -

child-like.

What I did like were books. And I would definitely go through phases as to their subject matter. There was the horse book phase, the girl detective phase and - ah, yes - the Grimm's Fairy Tale phase. Those were such gruesomely delicious fare. My absolute fave was the one about the goose girl who was really a princess but an imposter stole her identity and killed her horse but the princess goose girl saved some drops of her dead horse's blood and the blood drops talked to her and helped her expose the bad imposter person who was then stripped of all her clothes and thrown in a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets of the village until she was dead.

That's GREAT!

My book of Aesop's fables was tamer stuff. Here I could learn valuable life lessons with consequences that didn't include dragging a naked person around in a nail-y barrel until they were all nail- ified. But the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper really bugged me.

So to speak.

It was a simple story. The Ant worked real hard and saved up food and was secure in his future. He had no time for fun or anything like that but that wasn't the point. He was secure. The Grasshopper on the other hand didn't work at all. He farted away all his time, saved no food and starved. In other words, he wasn't secure.

I really couldn't relate to that boring ant guy. I knew I was supposed to. I was supposed to grow up to be a good ant citizen, work hard, save and be secure and then I could die. The Grasshopper skipped the whole toiling part. Sure he died but hey - the dude could party.

There should have been a third character in that fable. Someone to create a little balance. Like, I don't know - a potato bug maybe. Yeah, it would be a potato bug that worked hard enough to keep him in potatoes, put some away in a little potato safe and then score some down-time. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Why am I going on about all this? I'm venting. I have spent the last few days in full on Ant mode. I did not become an artist and writer and to successfully avoid a real job for a couple of decades to be that Ant guy. But sometimes I have to. And that's because I spend way too much time being the Grasshopper - coloring my little pictures, writing my little stories, you know, farting away the time.

I guess I could attempt some balance in my life to avoid cramming all my boring business work into a hell week because I put it off until the absolute last minute by being the potato bug. It would be make sense, really - but - you know, potato bugs are not glamorous or exciting and grasshoppers have the fun thing down pat. I can't help it. I know what my role in that story would be.

So ants can stuff it. Potato bugs can take a flying leap except they really can't because they have teeny short legs and body like a miniature Air Stream travel trailer but they know what I mean.
I mean Grasshoppers rule!

Go grasshoppers!

Party!

Party!

I don't think I'm easily intimidated. Usually I walk around as if I'm about eight inches taller and fifity pounds heavier with arms that have a greater circumference than dry twigs.
(I do have wrists that seem to extend from my hands to my shoulders and that's just something I've had to come to terms with)

But when someone asks me for my card I get all sweaty-fied.

I don't have a card.

Oh sure, I have a whole load of other people's cards. They range from dentists to veterinarians to contractors to caterers to insurance saleswomen to florists to -

and the list goes on.

Their cards are spot on - to the point. They include the usual helpful info like name, address, telephone number, email (love the email because it gives me one more way to avoid direct human contact) and most importantly WHAT they do.

That last part is my problem and why I don't have a card. As a working artisit and writer sometimes I do lots of different things and sometimes I do nothing observable at all. It occurs to me that I could have many cards made up. If I had unlimited funds and storage space weren't an issue that's not such a bad idea.

Here's a few that I might consider.

Nancy Coffelt - Artist - master at choosing the perfect yellow for the polkadots on the elephant's tutu

Nancy Coffelt - Artist - desperately trying to figure out what an art director means by her "per your usual style" remark when it seems as though what she wants isn't my usual style at all but is afraid to ask another stupid question.

Nancy Coffelt - Artist - reluctant badgerer of galleries as to whether anything has sold lately or just where is my check anyway?

Or these:

Nancy Coffelt - Writer - Professional starer at empty monitor screen

Nancy Coffelt - Writer - Caller of friends to read latest work to them and then ask, "Does this suck?" And then before they answer say, "It does suck, doesn't it?"

Nancy Coffelt - Writer - Seasoned wait-er specializing in gathering cobwebs while an editor is considering a book and when that becomes unbearable contacting them to "check in" when it is really a pathetic attempt to get them to say, "Wow! This is fantastic! You will be rich and famous beyond your wildest dreams!"

Or:

Nancy Coffelt - Self-employed person which is really another way of saying 'does not play well with others'.

Nancy Coffelt - Self-employed person proficient at missing section D clause G lines a and b on a contract and later realizing with a horrible sick feeling how screwed I really am.

Nancy Coffelt - Self-employed person skilled at putting off tax stuff until the last minute . Where are my receipts? Where are my RECEIPTS? WHERE ARE MY @#$%& RECEIPTS!!!!

That's nine cards so far and they describe a good week.

Really, they could say anything - from color-er to daydreamer to frequent snacker to goofer-offer to pulling an all-nighter to meet an impossible deadliner.

It could be worse. There could be 'serial killer' after my name. That's pretty bad.

Or cannibal.

So don't be asking me for any business cards. There's none to be found here - unless - you want a card for a good dentist or veterinarian or contractor or caterer or insurance saleswoman or florist - hey, I've got lots of those.

I'm not big on St. Patrick's day. Green is not my favorite color and I think beer smells like bile and what's so bad about snakes anyway? Don't you think that a better thing the guy could have banished from Ireland would be disease or famine or even bad breath for that matter?

Snakes. Hmmph.

I guess the only thing I don't mind about the holiday is seeing leprechauns. (no, not actually seeing leprechauns - seeing pictures of them) Don't get me wrong. Leprechauns are creepy, scary things, all orange hair and smiling when their eyes aren't smiling and that whole shilelagh business.

Those dudes could lay you out if they wanted.

But seeing leprechauns brings back good memories. They are one of the reasons I became an artist.

My sister used to eat Lucky Charms every morning. Lucky Charms are nasty. Let's see, you have both dry, tasteless, bleached out rodent pellets and colored chalk bits all in the same box?

Score!

There are several breakfast foods that are far superior to Lucky Charms. Such as -

• Captain Crunch
• Frankenberry
• Quisp (and Quake, they're the same thing so who do they think they're kidding?)
• Fruit Loops
• Count Chocula
  
• Rice Crispies with about a cup of sugar dumped over them so you're left with the bonus suger sludge at the bottom after they're gone
• Pop Tarts
• Tang

Even though I hated Lucky Charms the cereal I loved the Lucky Charms box. I loved to trace and then later copy that Leprechaun guy and the hapless children that graced its cardboard exterior. It was serious business. Did I get his hat right? How about his alarmingly arched eyebrows? The scarf would sometimes take a few tries, erasing almost through the paper to capture its impish flutter.

But the final product would be worth it. Yet another leprechaun drawing for my portfolio. And I didn't stop there. The "are you an artist?" ads in the back of the tv guide and on matchbook covers were a source of wonder. Would it be the pirate they wanted me to draw this week? Or Bambi? Or maybe, just maybe it would be the pretty lady in three quarter profile with the upswept hair. I loved her.

I loved something else more and some people had a problem with that.

Mad magazine.

I wasn't allowed to have them but the girl who lived across the street's big brother was. I would pretend to want to play with her just to get at that stack of contraband. Before long I was in a corner rendering a fair copy of Spy vs. Spy. I then moved on to Al Jaffee's twistedness and Don Martin's pop-eyed, long chinned and extremely large breasted cartoons.

It was when I was busy making sure I got those extremely large breasts just perfect on the drawing I working on rather than my spelling that I got my first adult audience.

My third grade teacher.

Her hand snaked out. Where was St. Patrick then? She grabbed my drawing and held it an arm's length from her face. Her questions flew at me. What had possessed me to draw such a thing? Had I seen something like this? Who had shown it to me? Was I happy at home? Our class had visited a farm earlier in the week. Couldn't I have drawn some cows? Or chickens? Something more appropriate?

But there weren't any pictures of cows or chickens on the cereal boxes at our house. There weren't any on the "are you an artist?" ads either. I couldn't say for sure if there were any in the Mad magazines but I could find out.

I was going over to my neighbor's later to "play".

No - to become an artist