Be afraid. Be very afraid.

It's one of those days. One of the days when I have very little to blog about so I'm going to subject y'all to looking at tons of my new(er) paintings. Better grab something to drink.

As usual, I'm posting the good, the bad, and most definitely the ugly. Every artist has some, uhm, mistakes and I'm definitely no different. And my normal disclaimer applies: I'm by no means a professional photographer, I have very crappy lighting in my living room, and the glare on some of these photographs is horrible. Think of these as looking a tiny bit better in real life.

But not this first one.

It looks as crappy when you're holding it in your hands as it does in this blog post. This is a crazy piano painting.

This next one doesn't totally blow my skirt up, but I don't hate it either. Not like that piano one anyway. I think this one is just a little too plain and simple. It needs something else but I'm not exactly sure what it needs. I'll give it some thought and maybe change it someday.

A splattered cross. This painting was a lot of fun to paint. But it sure was messy. I guess that's what made it so much fun to paint.

I kind of like this heart painting. I think it's less because it's a painting of heart and more because it's bright, fun and makes me feel happy when I look at it.

This next floral painting was one I painted when I taught a class. I was kind of nervous to teach it because I sort of suck at painting flowers. The paint on the flowers is really thick and textured and so the glare is especially bad on this piece. Not one person in the class painted their painting like mine. We tell people they can "do their own thing" but it's very rare that not one single person follows what the instructor is teaching. Every lady in this class painted this in completely different colors than what I taught, they painted different kinds of flowers, etc. I think it's because they were drinking whiskey. Whiskey makes the ladies do some odd things.

I'm probably going to paint over this martini glass one day. It's less than thrilling to me.

One night Claire called me and I told her I was standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the studio while I talked with her because I had been in the middle of a class when she called. In case she has ever wondered what I was painting when she called me that particular evening, it was this sunflower. Maybe Claire will call me again someday. I enjoyed talking with her a lot but for some reason, I couldn't shut up that night. I rambled on and on and I felt like I was talking insanely fast. She barely got anything out of her mouth because I wouldn't stop talking for even a second. That's probably why she hasn't called me since that night. I suppose I could call her though - the phone lines work both ways after all.

I like the way my pineapple painting turned out. But let me just tell you.....I was sick to death of painting it while I was in the middle of it. I thought I was going to scream if I had to paint one more stupid diamond. Do you see all of those itsy bitsy diamonds all over the entire body of the pineapple? Each one of them was painted four times because it required layers of brown, gold, black and white paint. I could not wait to finish. And by the way, that is not white paint smeared all over the left side of the painting. That's my mad photography skillz coupled with very poor light. That, my friends, is a terrible glare.

Okay, why don't we travel back in time to December for a minute. I bet I painted 10 or 15 different holiday themed paintings. I wasn't sad to see the holiday season end is what I'm saying. Thankfully, most of my Christmas paintings sold. A few of them didn't but I only brought two of them home with me. The rest of them are in the discount section at the studio. If no one buys them, one of the teachers will probably paint over them or something which is fine with me.

I actually love this Rudolph painting. It makes me giggle when I look at it. But it will probably get shoved in the back of a closet or something because I don't think I want to look at it year-round.

And here is one of Santa driving towards the big city in his VW Bug.

There really are no words adequate enough to express how much I hate this next painting. I had to teach this for a class - I did not paint it by choice. I have nothing against painting a bowl of apples, but who on the face of the earth came up with this combination of colors? Black, red, pink, white, gold and green. Isn't it horrible? The students are allowed to change their paintings and use whatever colors they want. As the instructor, I have to paint it as the original artist painted it because that's what shows on the calendar when students register. I have to teach what they signed up for. I really wish I had been able to change this one. And it will be just my luck that the original artist will stop by my blog and read how much I dislike their color combination.

The next painting looks a little wild. Because it is.

We painted the lady as we normally do in plain ol' acrylic paint. Then on top of the acrylic, we added wax, pigment powder, liquid gold leaf, and dimensional paint. It looks really cool in person (if I do say so myself).

Remember last week when I posted about another painting that had wax, pigment powder, gold leaf, etc. but I told y'all the wax cracked the second I walked out of the studio because it was so cold outside? This is that painting. I still haven't re-melted the wax so it's still cracked really bad (you can see it especially to the right of the girl's head). I'm all about keeping things real on here so I went ahead and shared it with y'all even though I haven't fixed the cracked wax. It will look better than this when I find the time to repair it. But one thing I can't fix is the fact that I placed the girl's left hand so that it looks like she's grabbing her dancing partner's package.

Some funky wine bottles. Nothing too exciting about this one.

Y'all, I'm not even sure what to say about this next one. She might be an alien. She might be evil. She might be some sort of cartoon superhero. But whatever she is, she's weird looking, isn't she?

There is a long story why I have two different versions of this next painting. It's not a very exciting story so I won't tell it on here. One version is with bright colors. The second one is more black and white. I like the black and white version the best.

I really wish y'all could all see this next one in person. I am sooooooo happy with the way it turned out but this photo honestly doesn't do it justice at all. For instance, there is actually some light turquoise blended into her skirt and you can't tell at all in this picture. You also can't get a real feel for how blended and soft I managed to get all of the colors. This is probably the most difficult painting I've ever painted. And it's one of my favorite ones I've ever painted. And I'm bummed with the way the photo makes it look.

Okay, if you're still here, you made it through them all. Can y'all imagine how crazy my house is going to look when Hot Brazilian and I move in together? We'll just call it eclectic because I have more than 50 paintings and none of them go together in the least. And these are just the ones I paint at the studio. I haven't even shared the ones I do at home in "my style" of painting. I'm not sure Hot Brazilian knows what he's getting himself into. Especially because he likes a house to be all white because he finds it relaxes him. White walls, white furniture, white everything. He's going to want to move out within a week. Heh.

Oh okay, I am wide awake and it's going to be a while before I can go to sleep, so here are a couple of more for you to suffer through.....this is what "my style" of paintings look like that I do in my own free time and I have about 20 of them. How on earth am I going to make this style go with the ones above? Well, I don't think I'm going to.

(Excuse the black blob in the bottom right hand of the painting above. I didn't care to divulge my last name to everyone on the internet.)

I've been interviewed! And I embarrass myself. But that's normal.

I'm not really sure who started this, and since it's a little after midnight and I just got home from the studio about an hour ago, I'm not going to spend any amount of time trying to figure it out, but 3 Carnations was interviewed by a blogger and she, in turn, offered to interview her readers. Since I don't have anything else to blog about, I jumped right on that offer and she emailed me her interview questions this afternoon.

Here is what she asked me:

1. Is there a single great perk to working in your law office? Fancy lunches catered in? Tickets available to sporting events?

Hmmmm, we have quite a few perks including eating leftovers of not-exactly-fancy catered lunches (deli sandwiches usually) when meetings are held in our office, free bottled water, sodas, and flavored coffees, they will prepare our Wills for free, they will cover one real estate closing for us, they let us have our employee Arts and Crafts show once per year, and we used to have Cake Day once a month where they brought in approximately 20 different cakes (but that's been cancelled due to the economy). However, for my own personal situation, the best perk is the fact that they pay my insurance. They pay for medical, dental, vision, and life and that is totally awesome because it saves me tons 'o bucks each month. If I ever add Hot Brazilian to my plan (if we ever finally get our crap together and get married), I will then have to pay for it myself. But our firm pays for all individual plans so, for the time being, I don't pay a dime for my insurance coverage - I just have to take care of co-pays when I go for my regular check-ups and my deductible if I'm ever unfortunate enough to have something serious happen. Another favorite perk of mine is the free peppermints at every receptionist desk. We have 6 receptionist desks so that's a lot of free peppermints!

2. Do you hope to have children someday? If not, will you say "My cats are my children" when people ask about it?

Quite honestly, I don't hope to have children. I have nothing against kids - in fact, I'm quite fond of them. Just not if they are my kids. Heh. This is going to sound awful but I'm being truthful here: I think I'm too selfish to have kids. I enjoy being able to paint anytime I want to. I enjoy being able to lay around for a couple of hours on the weekends and taking a nap if I want to. If I feel like going to the bookstore and hanging out by myself for several hours, I can jump in my car and do so. I can wander around art supply stores for hours if I want to and that's something that is fun for me. I love, love, love my alone time. And I adore quietness. It drives me mad to be around a lot of noise all of the time. And I could not stand it on the rare times I have had to watch kids appropriate television. Plus, the expense of having children scares the crap out of me. Hot Brazilian already has kids and he doesn't want any more so we are a perfect match.

If I ever say "Bailey is my child" you all have permission to punch me in the nose. I love her to pieces, but I tell people she is my cat, not my child. I've probably responded to people who ask if I have kids, "No, but I do have a cat" but I've never said my cat is my child. And by the way, she already throws up on the floor, sheds like crazy, and wipes her poopy covered ass across my bed from time to time so that's another reason I don't think I'll have kids - I already have enough messes to clean up.

3. If you could only have one condiment in your refrigerator, which would you choose?

Oh my goodness, this is a hard one because I love condiments. I guess I would have to say mayonnaise (the safflower mayonnaise from Whole Foods).

4. Who is one person with whom you wish your relationship (familial, friend, business or otherwise) were better than it is, and why?

Definitely my dad. I've written about this a number of times on here but to try to summarize, my dad is very closed off emotionally and it's hard to really know him. He can talk your ear off telling you stories, but he can't talk about his feelings, things that really matter, etc. I think he wants to be able to, but due to the way he was raised by his mother and his grandmother, and the fact that my biological mom (who he loved very much) died at a young age, he decided to always sweep everything under the rug, act as though nothing bad ever happened, and we were never allowed to discuss things with him. I think he's really lonely now that he and my mom divorced. They weren't happy together, but at least there was someone around. I worry about him a lot. I've tried to reach out to him but he's just not able to open up. I keep reminding myself that I'm not perfect by any means and he has never asked me to change anything about myself, so I've learned to accept that he is the way he is, but I absolutely wish things were different. I haven't given up on him though.

5. Have you ever had a perm? If so, did you regret it?

Oh honey. Have I ever had a perm? I lived in them while I was in high school and college. I graduated from high school in 1986. Big hair was in back in the 80's and I had wimpy, flat, lifeless hair. I permed my hair to within an inch of its life. And then I would still use tons of products and a spiral curling iron. And that little ozone problem we have? I'm probably responsible for at least a 25 foot section of that hole from the gallons of aerosol hair spray I used multiple times a day. But I'm proud to say I never had the huge bangs that stood up 6 inches above my head. Oh I wanted to, but my hair would not cooperate so now I can say I'm proud I never walked around with that horrendous look going on. And sadly no, I never regretted my perms. Back then I thought I had to be like everybody else. If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have never had a perm because now I realize it's much better to be your own unique person - sad, ugly, wimpy, flat, lifeless hair and all. Oddly, my hair is now naturally curly - in fact it's a little foggy outside tonight and I have ringlets all over my head from the dampness in the air. The curliness has just happened in the past few years. Old(er) age does some strange things to a person. My hair turned curly for my 40th birthday. I'm hoping my gut and butt will disappear by the time I hit 45.

Oh okay, here's the photographic evidence of my perms.....

This one is on my 17th birthday. It's a little blurry, but you can make out the brillo pad permed hair, the super fancy, plastic white beaded necklace, and please pay close attention to the fact that I'm opening up some lovely garment made of acid washed denim. As far as the upholstery on the sofa, you're going to have to ask my mom to explain what she was thinking about that one.


And this next one is probably the most humiliating picture of me of all time. But y'all, in my defense, I got compliments on my hair from complete strangers all the time with this perm. I would have guys walk up to me and ask if they could run their fingers through my hair. Granted they were drunk off their rockers and if they tried their hands would forever be stuck in all of the gel, mousse and hairspray, but still. People loved my hair. It was the 80's and none of us had any taste whatsoever apparently. Because can y'all imagine walking up to me on the street and telling me this mess was beautiful? Believe it or not, my hair was not colored even though the top half of my hair looks many, many shades darker than the bottom. I'm blaming that on the lighting. Or something. I'm not really sure why it looks like it's two different colors. I was in college. And I promise I had not taken one drink even though I'm waving around a bottle of vodka (or perhaps it's a bottle of rum....it doesn't really matter though does it?). With a ribbon tied around my permed hair. And my shirt buttoned all the way up to my chin. I am crying from the humiliation. And God? If you ever were sitting around bored and decided to help me get as skinny as I was back in the day, I promise I would never dress like this again. And I would never wave around a giant bottle of liquor and pose for a photo while doing so. And I really, really promise I'll never get another perm or make a face this stupid. Amen.


If any of you would like to be interviewed, give me your email address and I'll try to think of some questions for you. But only if you agree to post some super embarrassing pictures of yourself.

An uncharacteristically short post today

For the past couple of nights, I've slept like a baby for the first time in months and months. I couldn't be happier. But I have been having some really strange dreams y'all. I already wrote about the dream I had after the studio flooded last Saturday afternoon.

Last night I had a crazy dream involving being in a run-down, previously abandoned mall, forgetting I was wearing a microphone, an IT person cutting off part of his finger, and me then having an unfortunate vomiting incident with people listening to it over the microphone in another part of the abandoned mall. Then they had to listen to the IT guy vomit in response to me vomiting. All the while I was on a search throughout the mall for a blank canvas to paint on because without one, I could not teach my class. I promise I very rarely drink. And I've never done drugs in my life. I just have some totally wacked out dreams.

I think all of this means I've been hanging out at the studio too much lately. And by the time Sunday rolls around, it will be the fifth day in a row I've had to be at the studio so can you imagine the dreams I'll be having by Sunday night?

In other news, when I returned to my office after lunch today, I found something really weird. Someone left a rubber glove on the top of my ever-growing stack of filing. Why? Why would someone leave me a rubber glove? I do not use rubber gloves in the area of corporate law. I deal with stock certificates (boring), by-laws (boring), articles of incorporation (boring), and indemnification agreements (boring, boring, BORING!). No rubber gloves needed. If anyone has any idea why someone might have felt the need to leave me a rubber glove, please let me know.

A boat sure would have come in handy this weekend.

Earlier today, I watched the swearing in of President Obama with approximately 30 of my co-workers in a breakroom on a television with rabbit ears. I feel so much hope for our country. But my biggest hope is that I don't have to watch television with rabbit ears again for a long, long time.

So, on to my busy, busy, busy weekend......

Friday night I went to the studio for a class. We did a really fun painting and we added wax, liquid gold leaf, pigment powders, and dimensional paint to it. I was thrilled with how my painting turned out. The owner of the studio was super impressed with my work and said it looked exactly like her original. Therefore, you can guess how thrilled I was when I walked the approximately 8 feet from the front door of the studio to my car and in that time my wax cracked all over my entire painting because it was so cold outside. I'm going to try and re-melt the wax, but with the dimensional paint on top of it there is a real chance that I'm going to completely mess the entire thing up. But it looks horrible with cracked wax so I'm going to risk it and see what happens.

Saturday morning I returned to the studio, worked on a couple of things, and then taught a class. I taught a class using palatte knives instead of brushes and some of my students did not exactly love the palatte knife technique. I offered them brushes, but they decided to soldier on with their knives and in the end, they were happy with their paintings.

I had one group of students who decided to stay after class ended to wait for their pieces to dry. I am very glad they did because they became very useful to me. Palatte knife paintings tend to take forever to dry because the paint is incredibly thick and textured so I knew they would be there for a while. The five of them were in one car together so they could not stack wet paintings on top of each other in the car so they really didn't have a lot of choice. So while they started using our fancy drying equipment (hair dryers) I started cleaning the studio because one of my friends (also a friend of the studio owner) was having a private party at the studio that evening. I removed the butcher paper from one table (we let them mix colors on the table so the paper is a mess at the end of class and must be thrown out) and started walking towards the back door where we take trash to the dumpster. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was water flooding into the studio from under the baseboards.

I walked outside to throw the paper in the dumpster and saw a flood of water in the alley behind the studio too. Remember I said it was so cold the night before that the wax cracked on my painting? Well, it was also so cold that a pipe froze in the empty shop next door to the studio and then it apparently burst at the end of my class. There was water gushing from under their door, spewing from holes in the walls, and oozing out of cracks in the brick wall. I called the owner of the studio and told her what was going on. She then called me back and asked me to take all of the canvases out of the canvas closet and I told her I already was in the middle of doing that. Our studio is 2400 square feet. Within 30 minutes, the water had soaked the carpet halfway across the studio and there was a puddle approximately 2 inches deep in the middle of the floor. The water was still gushing in. The students who were still in the studio started helping me move everything out of the other storage closet and we then had approximately 150 - 200 canvases plus supplies all over the place.

The students left eventually, the water was still flowing into the studio like a river, and the owner finally made it at the same time the landlord's maintenance guy showed up. He opened up the shop next door and got the water turned off. Then he went back to his shop, got his industrial shop vac, and started cleaning up the mess. The owner and I set up a table in the second closet and stacked everything back in there since it was the least soaked of the two closets and we couldn't leave crap all over the studio for the private party.

We were supposed to run over to our friend's house at 5:00 for drinks and appetizers and then everyone was coming from her house to the studio. She lives about 2 miles from the studio so it was very convenient. The studio owner and I didn't make it to her house until 6:00 and we had to leave at 6:30 to go back and unlock the studio and get ready for everyone to come check in. Although the carpet was still wet, the party went great and everyone had a great time.

I arrived back home around 11:00 p.m. completely exhausted. I fell asleep and had a dream that one of my girlfriends and I were visiting a very poor area in India and got caught in a small village that was flooding. I was crying and screaming in my dream it woke me up and I discovered I was crying and screaming in real life too and had tears streaming down my face. It was not a good dream. I always like to look up the meaning of dreams and it seems if you dream about a flood, it means you need to release some sexual desires. Hot Brazilian has been gone since July. I dealt with a flood that day. I was pretty much destined to have this dream I'm afraid.

Sunday morning at 11:30 I met my mom, aunt and cousin at The Cheesecake Factory for lunch for my cousin's birthday. We then bummed around in a bookstore for a bit and then went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Have any of you seen it? OMG, it was a wonderful movie and I would highly recommend anyone go see it. It's emotionally heavy, but it was just great. I arrived back home around 7:00 and crashed on the sofa and basically never got up. I slept there all night.

Our office was closed yesterday for MLK's birthday. I got up fairly early - fairly early for a day off of work anyway - and I jumped a car off by myself for the first time in my life. Turns out that's a simple thing to do. Hot Brazilian's car has been sitting behind my house with a dead battery for, uhm, a while. I don't really care to say how long because I should have done something about it a long time ago but it's hard to squeeze car repairs in when you work full-time all week and teach classes every Saturday. (This coming Saturday I have to teach Van Gogh's "Starry, Starry Night" and I would greatly appreciate all of your good thoughts, because - wow - Van Gogh.) I went to my mechanic, got a new battery, then went to the art supply store and stocked up on canvases, bought a bigger easel to use at my house, and then went to the grocery store because my cupboards? They were bare. Well, in actuality it was my refrigerator which was bare, not my cupboards. I got home and promptly fell asleep on my sofa for almost two hours. This was not a good thing for me to do.

I woke up around 6:00, cooked dinner, cooked some other stuff to take to work for lunches all week, and then fell asleep again on the sofa watching tv. This was a really bad thing for me to do.

I woke up around 10:30 and went and climbed in the bed. Bailey curled up against my legs as she always does, and about 15 minutes later she started snoring like a 90 year old man. I was cracking up. Then the wind started blowing. Loudly. Something was apparently loose at my neighbor's house and kept banging against the side of their house. Also, a gate or something was apparently swinging open and closed somewhere near my house repeatedly and I lay in bed listening to the banging on the house next door and a very squeaky gate. It was very irritating. At 1:30 a.m., I was still tossing and turning and wide awake. I got up, went back to the living room and watched some Tivo'd stuff until 3:00 a.m. I finally fell asleep at 3:00 a.m. and was wide awake again at 6:00. Shockingly, after an incredibly busy weekend and my crazy night of sleeping/not sleeping, I am not falling asleep at my desk today. I can't say I've been particularly productive today, but at least my eyes are open. And Claire, I'm sorry I have not yet responded to your email from Friday. I will reply though. I didn't want you to think I was being rude.

Here's hoping the rest of this week is a little less chaotic. And a lot less flooded with water.

I think I have some sort of disease. And I think my mom finally had a date. She's in denial.

Oh alright, I know some of you are living with temperatures hovering around negative 20 degrees, but y'all it is cold down here today! When I was driving to work this morning, it was 12 degrees. When you've lived in Atlanta your entire life, 12 degrees is cold. But I think I have some sort of problem or some sort of odd disease. Because I love it when it's 12 degrees! I came to work with a thin, 3/4 length sleeve shirt, and a light-weight wrap. No coat, no gloves, no hat. And to me it felt awesome outside! Now if we got multiple feet of snow on top of it being cold I would not be as pleased. But I love cold weather. The air seems cleaner or something. Everything feels fresh, crisp and invigorating. I hate hot weather so the summers here are like torture for me. Tomorrow morning it's supposed to be 14 degrees. I could not be more thrilled! I know, I'm weird.

Something I'm not thrilled about is the fact that I arrived home last night, put away the groceries I bought on my way home, cleaned out Bailey's litter box, threw in a load of laundry so that I would have some clean undies today, took a very long hot shower, and got out of the shower to discover Bailey had pooped in the middle of my bed and THEN wiped her poopy bottom all the way across my comforter. I had just totally cleaned out her litter box less than 30 minutes earlier for goodness sakes! She had a new box liner, completely new litter, etc. I don't get it. She did this a few months ago for a few days in a row and I was less than excited about it. I'm quite sure no one would be excited about having cat poo wiped across their bed. It is a pain having to wash my comforter every day. If it wasn't going to be 12 degrees overnight, she may have found herself thrown out the front door. Not really. She's spoiled and I would never do that to her. Instead I yelled at her. I'm sure that's going to do a lot of good since she's a cat and doesn't really care if she pisses me off. That's kind of her job.

In other news, I've told my mom she went on a date but she is in denial and swears it was not a date. Y'all tell me what you think:

Last Christmas (a year ago) I went to her place for dinner one night. She had a beautiful floral arrangement on her table. I asked her about it and she flippantly said "oh my friend Ed sent that to me to cheer me up for my first Christmas as a single person." I inquired about Ed and she told me it was a guy she worked with at the newspaper here in Atlanta (which is where she and my dad met) 35 years ago. She said they were just friends.

She had not mentioned Ed since then to me.

Back in October, she moved to a suburb of Atlanta called Woodstock. We all tried to convince her that moving to Woodstock was a terrible idea because her commute would be awful (if you're familiar with Atlanta, she works by Perimeter Mall). She could not be convinced and now she commutes almost an hour each way. She tries to act like she doesn't mind it because she knows we will all say we told her so, but sometimes I can tell she hates the commute.

Well, imagine my surprise about a month ago when she happened to mention that her friend, Ed, lives in Woodstock too! Isn't that convenient? She mentioned that he lived there because she told me she met him for breakfast one Saturday morning and then he drove her around the historical part of Woodstock and she told me how cute the little shops are and that we definitely have to go shopping there soon.

My mom's birthday was last week and as part of her gift, I gave her a gift certificate for an hour massage. I took her to dinner on her birthday and less than 10 minutes before she opened the gift she mentioned that she really needed to go have a massage. Score for me! She was so excited when she opened up my gift and told me she was going to schedule a massage for this past weekend. I gave her the name of my masseuse and highly recommended she schedule with her. (Geez, it sounds so hoity toity to say I have a regular masseuse but I decided last summer to start treating myself and a wonderful spa opened up at the back of my neighborhood less than a half-mile from my house, so I bought a membership. It's only $49 a month for one hour-long massage per month and since I don't have any credit card debt to pay monthly, I decided I could afford to pamper myself. No, it's not Massage Envy - I think someone asked me that the last time I mentioned this place in a post. And sadly nothing weird happens at this spa for me to blog about unlike every single time I go to a nail salon for a mani/pedi. I still need to write a post about the mani/pedi experience I had in December. And I think I may go again tomorrow so I will probably have two crazy mani/pedi stories for y'all. And wow, this is a long aside contained in these parentheses. I will stop now.) My mom called a couple of days later and said she had an appointment for this past Sunday.

On Saturday afternoon, I taught a painting class (I teach pretty much every Saturday now). During the class my mom called and left a message on my cell phone. (I tell my class when I'm introducing myself that at some point during class they will hear my cell phone ring and that it will be my mom because no matter how many times I tell her what time my class is, that's when she calls. They all laugh when she calls which she does every Saturday. I have not told my mom that she is part of my introduction and that my classes laugh at her every Saturday. I have to leave my volume up because sometimes the owner of the studio calls my cell during a class and I have to answer it to see what she needs. Wow, yet another long aside.) Anyway, I called my mom back on my way home. During the conversation, she said "you won't believe this, but I had to cancel my massage for tomorrow. I'll have to reschedule." When I asked her why, she said it was because Ed had called her and asked her to go to lunch and a movie. Of course since I'm approximately 12 years old, I replied with "oooooooh, mom has a date!" She swore up and down it was not a date. And I swore up and down that it was. She kept insisting that they are just friends and she didn't want to ruin their friendship by dating. I told her that's the best person to date - someone you've been friends with for a long time. Then I asked her this question: "Does Ed think this is a date?"

She was completely silent.

I started cracking up.

She then admitted that she believed Ed did think it was a date. So I told her that when they were sitting in the movie theater, if she had the desire, she should just reach over and grab his hand. She started squealing and said that she would not do that (apparently she's 12 years old too). She then told me I should write a book called "Daughters Dating Advice to Their Mothers" but I told her that grabbing his hand in the movie was pretty much all of the advice I had to offer her at that particular moment and that would make for a very short book. My mom thinks I should write books about a lot of things, but I really only know a little bit about a lot of things and not a lot about any one thing to write an entire book about something. I told her it was okay if she dated and reminded her that it's been almost two years since she and my dad separated and it's been a year since their divorce was finalized.

After her "date" I asked her how it went. She still swears it's not a date. She swears she didn't grab his hand. But she admitted that she had a really fun time with him.

Y'all, that's a date. Right?

It's definitely going to be one of "those" Mondays

I don't dress up particularly fancy for work every day. I don't think I've worn a pair of pantyhose since the day I made that huge mistake and married my ex back in October 1998. I really, really hate wearing hose. I've only worn a suit a couple of times in the two years I've been at this firm and they were pant suits so no hose were needed. Normally I wear slacks and a shirt. We're fairly casual for a law firm - especially those of us who are not attorneys. The two attorneys I work for rarely have clients in the office and if they do, they meet in a conference room and it is only on the rarest of occasions that I have to go get the client and escort them to the conference room and be seen by them. Some of the men still wear ties every day but not all of them. Some of the women wear suits every day but most of them do not. I've found that I am way more productive when I'm comfortable so I kind of wish I could wear yoga pants and a t-shirt to work, but I can't be quite that casual. It is still a law firm after all. We're only allowed to wear jeans two days per year and that's only if we make a donation to a charity. If we donate, we're given a sticker, we can wear jeans on that particular Friday and we have to have our sticker on us somewhere.

This morning, I really didn't feel like getting dressed for work. I think it's because I never got dressed yesterday. I spent the entire day packing up boxes in my art room and sorting through art supplies to decide what I want to keep, what to toss, etc. I did this in my yoga pants, t-shirt and bedroom slippers.

I did get dressed for work though. Only I didn't get completely dressed. As I reached toward the door knob to leave for work this morning, I could not seem to get over the fact that I felt different than I normally do when I wear the shirt I have on today. I felt free. I felt loose. I felt, dare I say, comfortable in my work clothes.

That's when I realized I had not put on a bra. I'm blaming it on PMS even though I don't really get PMS.

I'd rather have a band of diamonds around a certain finger on my left hand, but whatever floats your boat.

WARNING: Don't read this post if you're easily offended.

If you were a millionaire or won the lottery, what kinds of things do you think you would buy when you really wanted to drop a load of cash on something that most people don't usually buy? A super expensive pair of shoes? Botox treatments? A wardrobe from Versace? A trip somewhere fabulous?

How about a vibrator? No? Me neither. But if you are interested, Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) apparently has decided to follow up his music career with something quite different. He has designed a vibrator complete with a band of black diamonds and a guitar pick attached to it. And it comes with a leather cord in the cap so you can "take it out on the town" by wearing it around your neck. I'm quoting the article about taking it out on the town. I've taken a lot of things out on the town, but never a black diamond banded vibrator swinging from my neck.

And by the way, it's accompanied by its own song....."Let's Do it Again".

It can be yours for only $1,400!! What a bargain.

Don't believe me about this craziness? I can't make stuff up like this. Here's the article.

For those of you who can't afford this at the whopping price tag of $1,400, pick yourself up a Bedazzler and some rhinestones. It's probably about the same.

I've changed my mind.

I don't normally make any New Years resolutions since I fail miserably at them, but this year I changed my mind. I thought about it yesterday and decided I needed to set some goals for myself. Here are my 2009 resolutions:

1. I will not lose weight this year. I am putting my foot down. I just won't do it.

2. I will not sleep soundly for 8 hours every night. I have way too much to do and sleeping just cuts into my productivity. No more than 4 hours. Apparently that's all I think I need anyway.

3. I will not cook dinner for myself every single night. If I decide to have a bowl of Cheerios, no one can stop me. Or maybe I'll eat a handful of Wheat Thins and call myself fed.

4. I will not keep my house spotless. If Hot Brazilian wants to clean up Bailey's hair that floats all over the place on a daily basis once we move in together, then so be it. But I'm going to just let it collect in a corner until I have enough to construct another cat for Bailey to play with while I'm at work all day.

5. I will not fold my laundry the second I hear the dryer buzzer. If I want to treat the dryer as my own personal dresser and retrieve my underpants from there every morning then that's exactly what I'm going to do.

6. I will not hang my paintings on the wall when I bring them home from the studio. I will continue to add to the pile of approximately 50 paintings leaning up against the wall in my art room. [Seriously y'all. This is a problem. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of the paintings I have.]

7. I will not blog every day. Even when Nablopomo comes around in November. I just can't take the pressure.

8. I will not learn how to say "no" to my family. Anytime they expect me somewhere to experience more of their craziness, I'll show up early for the privilege.

I'm not so sad to see 2008 go away forever. It wasn't the most horrible year of my life, but it certainly had its ups and downs. I started the year off going to court with the girl who ran into me in December '07 so hard that she pushed me into another car and then tried to claim she wasn't following too closely, and ended it with Hot Brazilian's car sitting in my backyard with a completely dead battery. In between, I fell more in love with Hot Brazilian and fell completely out of love with a lot of other people I know. I have felt a little more success with my creative endeavors and teaching painting classes, but failed miserably at my part-time Pampered Chef business. Financially I feel quite a bit more secure than this time last year. I have remained debt free and have added a bit more to my savings account. I have 20/20 vision thanks to being brave and deciding to have Lasik surgery. Other than being way overweight, my health is in great shape - I've been to a chiropractor, the dentist, my "girlie doctor", the mammogram place, an all natural/alternative doctor, and even had an EKG from my regular doctor and everything seems to be in optimal working order. Even though I don't have the most exciting job in the world, I have a good job and I'm extremely grateful for it. I have wonderful friends. While my family is quite dysfunctional, we all care about each other an awful lot. I am truly a blessed person and I thank God for that every single day.

And I'll be even happier when Hot Brazilian gets his cute butt back home. He says since he's been down there, he no longer feels Brazilian. He feels kind of like an outsider. He thinks he was born in the wrong country and should have been born here because he feels American now. Which makes me happy because I was a little bit concerned that he might go down there and not want to come back here. He thought he was coming back this month but now it looks like it's going to be late February or early March. Part of it is because his kids are on their summer break from school right now and he wants to spend as much time with them as he can, and part of the delay is because of some other stuff I don't really want to blog about.

And for those of you who have a cat who owns you? A word of advice. I started packing up my art room at home yesterday in preparation to move. I have a bunch of shelves to store stuff in and I had two sections shoved up next to each other right under a window. It was Bailey's favorite place in the house because she could sit on top of the shelves and look out the window. It was on the back of the house so I left the blinds up all the time for her (it isn't a window I walk by regularly - I have to actually go in my art room for anyone to see me and there's only one house behind me and they would have to use binoculars to see what I was doing) and she spent a good amount of her awake time sitting there. I boxed up everything on those shelves yesterday and moved the shelves so I could stack boxes there. The shelves had not been moved in about a year. OMG I can't describe how gross it was. I think I vacuumed up about 5 pounds of cat fur that had floated down in the teeny tiny crack between the two shelving units. But seriously, do any of you regularly take everything off your shelves and move the shelves to clean between them regularly? If so, you should be proud. I do not do that. But I'm so glad I did it before a crew of moving guys did so. Can you imagine how mortified I would have been?

I spent New Year's Eve in Birmingham, AL working at one of the studios over there. I went with the owner of the studio I work at here in Atlanta (her sister is the founder of the company and they have several studios in Birmingham). It was total craziness! We had 72 people in the class and they were allowed to paint anything they wanted so that means we had 72 people painting 72 different things. There were only 3 of us to help them. We had pizza, tons of snacks, champagne, etc. Needless to say, when the big bash ended at 1:00 a.m. I could barely stand up. Especially because that was actually 2:00 a.m. Atlanta time and I had worked all day at the law firm, then drove 2.5 hours to Birmingham and worked there all night. By the time "S" and I got to our hotel room, both took showers, and climbed into bed, it was 3:00 a.m. I slept like a baby for the first time in a couple of months. And it was the first New Year's Eve in years that I didn't lay on my sofa and cry half the night. I was way too busy to get all sentimental and sad.

I hope 2009 is starting off great for all of you. Thank you all for being such awesome bloggy friends in '08.