My stepmother walks into the living room.  A half-eaten bowl of homemade, vegan chili  mixed with cheese that is anything but is on the TV-tray in front of me, a piece of toast on the side.  I have never eaten toast with chili, nor have I mixed my mashed potatoes with my chili (this was a common meal combination during my childhood), yet my dad makes me toast and asks if I want my chili on top of my potatoes every single time the meal is made, to this day.

“You look just like your Aunt, Mary Rose,” she says.

I smile.  Mary Rose is a lawyer, and I know precisely what she means.  My stare (at the screen of my laptop) is piercing, my neck is contorted and pain is written all over my face, but most importantly, I look like there is no way in hell, nor on “God’s green” Earth, that I’m going to close the laptop until I resolve the problem that is driving me nuts.

What was making me utterly mad, in both senses of the term?  The theme “Carrington Blog” that I’ve been struggling to make work for me for over a year, that has never allowed me to replicate the clever design I pulled off after learning CSS and using the “Andreas04″ template on wordpress.com, and that has finally failed me completely, as it will not allow any of my widgets to be displayed, must be done away with.

I like this one.  “Yoko”.  And I felt some pretty intense relief when I typed in my URL and heard Damien Rice’s voice for the first time all day.  So, I’m going to work with it.  Obviously, it will take some tweaking, but this time I’m going to make the page’s design a true expression of my personality, and what “Practice of Madness” stands for.  So, stand back if messiness makes you go “eek!”, and I’ll let you know when the new design is done.  Otherwise, work with me while I make this page look as beautiful as it deserves to!  A task very long overdue.

scars XO