The Last Day of Tomato Season

A What-I-Did-List from 1999, Defending Ted Danson, Hourly Comic Day, Rogue Googly-Eyes, and More!

documentation of last of my backyard tomatoes

I love a routine, and one of my favorite routines is going and looking at and picking my backyard tomatoes. It’s the end of October, and it will get cold soon, so I decided to say goodbye to my plants this weekend with one last pick and a quick painting to document the last 31 tomatoes of the season. I don’t love this painting, but I am glad I jammed it out this afternoon while Hank is hanging out next door at Grandma’s house. And I painted during the DAY vs. hunched over my painting table late at night. I am not thrilled with the final piece. Still, I am glad to have documented my tomato-gathering ritual and enjoyed the process of paying attention, gathering, thinking, recording, and making.

Monday, August 23rd, 1999. Photographed on Sunday, October 27th, 2024, on my kitchen drawing table.

Speaking of attention and noticing, writer Rob Walker contacted me a few weeks ago about submitting a prompt for his excellent newsletter, The Art of Noticing. He asked me to create a suggestion or playful “assignment" to help readers better pay attention and engage with the world. Full disclosure: Rob Walker gave me my first big piece of media attention in 2006 when he wrote about my Credit Card Drawings for his Consumed column in The New York Times Magazine. I felt like I had won the lottery for him to give such good words to the very early stages of my documentation practice. I had been drawing my credit card statements for a few years when the article was published, but my Daily Purchase Drawing project was only about eight months old, and his validation gave me a confidence boost to keep going.

Day as a list: Sunday, March 20th, 2020. Early pandemic days. Please appreciate the fact that I am very pro Ted Danson.

Since then, I have always felt lucky that he has continued to pay attention to the things that I do and has even collaborated on a few things with the common thread of highlighting items that might have gone unnoticed. So, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t phone in this prompt. Many ideas popped into my head, but I kept thinking back to the first time I was forced to slow down, pay attention, and document the everyday. It was for a design project in college where we were supposed to write down everything we did in one day and then take the information and create an illustrated map.

I don’t remember making the map (I have literally zero memory of it or any evidence that it was ever made), but I kept the oversized sheet of paper on which I scribbled the day’s events from when I woke up (7 AM) to when I went to bed (1:30 AM). I am not sure why it was such a big sheet of paper, but I know that I clicked with this process of recording things that were out of the ordinary.

Another Day as a list. Yes, it’s a to-do list and a I did-it-list from April 22nd, 2023.

Yes, it’s like journaling, but for some reason, the list form makes it more clinical and removes the need for me to make anything exciting or interesting happen. I also think that because it’s more clinical, you end up recording details you would never journal about.

Twenty-five years later, this oversized piece of paper is a treasured object. I love this documentation of a day in my life at 22. The details about what I ate for lunch or that my friends Chris and Eda borrowed my car to go to Walmart would have been long lost to my memory had I not written them down. I also love that I went to Kmart to buy a planner and to Hallmark to buy cards. I also made a radio station on something called Imagine Radio, and I declared my dream of working for Modern Dog. Hello, it’s 1999 calling!

My Hourly Comic from 2019

I also like Hourly Comic Day (which happens every year on February 1st if you want to join in for 2025). I have casually participated in this since 2019, and it’s a documentation of my pretty mundane day. My favorite thing, however, is reading about other folks and how they interpret their days via this documentation system. Some favorites include Carson Ellis, Vera Brosgol, Lucy Bellwood and Pam Wishbow.

But sometimes, pulling together a whole freaking comic about your day is just too much of a lift, so I humbly submit my ATTENTION prompt: Write down all of the things you do in one day. Make a simple list. Document your daily events. Note the weather. Note what you eat. Note what you buy. Note who you talk with. Note what you do. Don’t try to make it exciting. Just notice it, write it down, and then stash it away. You will be glad that you did.

Daily Purchase Drawings for 10.18.24 through 10.24.24

This week has been filled with Hank getting sick and then getting better and repeatedly watching Back to the Future parts one, two, and three. Fun fact: It’s the Back to the Future season since all three movies happened in September, October, and November of 1885, 1955, and 2015. Please celebrate accordingly. Also, when you are at a fancy restaurant, and the server asks if you would like tap or fizzy water, you will be charged for the fizzy water when you respond fizzy. I should have known this before my 47th year on this planet.

More Afghan research. I bought two of the six that I found at Village Merchants on Division.

I still have Afghans on my brain. I completed two more blanket drawings and started the base layers for a few more. Next week, I will attempt to see how these translate to riso.

This one was completed while watching Back to the Future Part Two.

A 2024 Hulk is awful, but this 20-second YouTube edit of him only saying brother from the late 80s is pretty awesome.

Hank and I walked to Fred Meyer this morning to look for a birthday present for my sister Kory, who turns 40 tomorrow. We did not buy her this altered Hulk Hogan action figure, but we both appreciated the person who made this googly-eye face edit.

Note to self: Carry googly eyes at all times.

:-) KBB