I love my man.

Just saying. He is awesome. He puts up with all my crazy. And dude, I gots me lots and lots of crazy. How he always just manages to stay calm and smile and tell me it will all be ok even when I am being all emotional is beyond me.

He lets me, be ME. I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to act a certain way, I just get to have fun and play and be however I want. And he loves me exactly how I am. And I love him exactly how he is. And that is the most awesome thing I have ever experienced in a relationship. And don’t even get me started on the… heh! This is a kid friendly blog! Shame on you for thinking I would go there!! But seriously, WOW.

I can not be luckier.

Just got overwhelmed with my emotions and had to share. As you were….

LOOKEE!!! My coloring books!!

Ok, these are just the prototypes they used for the sales calls. Currently at the printer and should ship to Hobby Lobby in about 2 weeks. Woohoo!!! I will have them for sale on my site here as well. They come with 8 trading/fact cards and I am SO EXCITED!!!! While I did all the work for these last year, including all the reference research, the fact research about each breed, the history of the breed, plus the actual painting of all these, etc – (SO MUCH WORK) I have never seen these put together until just this weekend, so you are seeing it just about as soon as I did! (You can click to see them all bigger)

Topsy Turvy

Oh yes I did. Yeah, well, no one will be laughing when I have awesome tomatoes all season long!!

And also, because she is so super awesome and I adore her style, here is my daughter’s outfit she picked out the other day. (I can’t show her face because I NEVER, EVER comb her hair and therefore she looks like a hobo child. – heh – That is a private joke that only a few people will get. But I had to do it because it makes me laugh. hee.)

And I have some awesome, great news about my coloring books coming SOON!!!

New digs…

So for the past few years that BBE and I have been dating he has had a house. An awesome house I admit. But we loved where we lived and it was close to the kids’ dad (half a mile actually.). But times? Times they are hard. And paying for TWO houses is um, not the happiest thing. The house has been on the market and no one is biting. I mean, when you can get a brand spanking new house for the same price, who would buy a 20 year old house? And the more we worked on the house, the more it grew on us. The more we went out to the house to weed and make it nice the more we thought, “Ya know, this is a pretty great house.” So then BBE said, “Ya know, if we move into that house, with the money we save we can get a hot tub, new bedroom sets for us and the kids, save even more money for college and their first cars…” I interrupted all this logic with, “Honey, you had me at hot tub.” Check out our new digs. And before anyone worries that we are messing up things for the kids I have promised them that they can attend the same school and will drive them in every day. (This house is 15 miles from where we currently live.) Have I mentioned it is AWESOME? And yeah, you are ALL invited over for the house warming party once we get the hot tub installed.***

love this house…

Where the hot tub will go.

Me taking pictures at the house. This mirror makes you look skinnier than you are. Which is why I have to post this picture. And who should not live in a house with magic mirrors?!?! HA!

***If the house sells in the next few months, we might not move.

Art? What art?

Soooo. I have trained for a half marathon. And ran it. I got horribly sick. And I got better. I got bleaching chemicals in my eyeball. And fully recovered. (but still thinking about sportin’ the rockin’ eyepatch. I really think I could pull it off. hee.) Work is great. My boss is back. My workload is back to manageable without working nights and weekends. Things with the boyfriend are fantabulous. Kids are most awesome. Life is grand indeed.

Except. Um, this IS an art blog. a blog about my ART CAREER. And um, what the hell happened to it? Well folks, it didn’t go the way of the dodo. Even tho it feels like it. I am working on a commission right now. The only one. But I am not advertising. I have not updated my website in AGES. Well, what happened? Well, I burned myself out a bit I suppose on the coloring books. Then things with the coloring books, while all still moving forward, have stalled to the pace of a snail. A very old decrepit, cane-using snail. Hobby Lobby is still interested, rest assured, no orders cancelled, just have to clear some shelf space they say. I got another encouraging email that some other folks representing some very large stores with many, many chains loved my work and are very interested too. My agent wrote to say an editor at a very well known publishing company loved my book. All good. All moving sloooow. So you get your hopes up, then you wait. YOu get excited, you celebrate. Then you wait. And somewhere in there you feel like that damn little boy cried wolf so many times that you just finally tied him up, put tape over his mouth and stuck him in the damn closet. And so in order to deal with all the waiting I have just been concentrating on the bill paying kind of work and not the dreaming kind of work.

And ya know what happened? I am kinda sad. I don’t feel like me. I have not doodled or sketched or dreamed up ideas or thought of things to sell on etsy in FOREVER. And I am trying to get it back, but I seemed to have shut that closet door really tight. Maybe padlocked it even. I MISS checking email each day looking for that one from a new painting client, or my agent, or someone who just bought a painting of mine of etsy. I miss the POSSIBILITY in my life. Of being SO SURE I will not work in a cube one day, but just not being sure when is all. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, I truly do. My coworkers make me laugh and I make them laugh and I get paid for work I believe in. But I don’t remember the last time I couldn’t wait to get home, get the kids settled and after dinner get to my ART. And ideas. My dreams, my loves. My silly doodles that make me smile.

I am trying to be patient with myself. To go at least unlock the closet door and let that annoying little kid out. Cause I know one day when he comes screaming to tell me, while it won’t be a wolf, it will be an opportunity and I don’t want to miss it. And if I keep getting scared of the waiting and the disappointment that it is not happening in MY time frame I will miss it because I won’t be looking for it or open to it or able to hear it at all.

And I know this sounds like I am depressed. I am NOT. In the LEAST. I am just sad that I have come to a place where I have lost my passion for my art and my dreams a bit. And I want it back. I guess missing it is a pretty good sign though. 🙂

A story…

Background info to this story: My kids have been at grandma and grandpa’s for spring break this past week. They live in N.C. We meet halfway in S.C. to pick them up. ALSO I ran the half marathon last week then got the DEATH FLU the day after. I almost died. For reals. Went to the hospital and everything. Ok, not almost died for real, but really thought I was. They thought I had a blood clot in the lungs and everything. It was cool! No, not really. But I was SICK. So sick. Fevers, coughing. Not fun. No work for a whole week. To sum up: It sucked. Then this week I went to the dentist. I have had 4 front teeth replaced with veneers and it is a long story that goes back to breaking them off when I was 11. I have been gong to the dentist for this since January. Many, man needles. But things were going wrong this week and the dentist had to do some more gum surgery. That’s right, I said MORE gum surgery. Have I mentioned HOW MUCH FUN February and March have been?! And apparently now April is making a bid for most painful month too! Hey April, how about you chill out on me, k? So that brings me to my story….

Sooooo….yesterday I am working from home right? And I need to leave at 12 to go get the kids, right? So I woke up at 7am and just started working, right? K. So at 10:30am I am all, “Hmmm, I look pretty crappy, I better shower before I go, but I need to hurry cause I still got do some work.” So I go into the bathroom and start the shower. Then I brush the tangles outta my hair. And my hair, it is long, and it is honestly a wonder I am not bald, cause it falls.out.everywhere. I mean really, I shed like a dog. But I digress. So, I am all, “Wow! So much hair. But, hmmm, look at this grey. THREE grey hairs! Man! And roots! I really need to do my hair. I have that hair color I TOTALLY got on SALE at Target for $4 with the extra shampoo and conditioner. That was really a deal! Man, I really can find bargains!” Oh!! It is 10:45am! I am taking WAY too much time! “Focus, girl, FOCUS!” So I think, if I HURRY I can get the hair color on, do a bit more work, then rinse it out in the shower and VOILA! Awesome hair! Off to get the babies. My multi-tasking skills are MOST AWESOME. Right? Yes.

So I am all very, very happy with my multi-talking self. So I am dancing and singing while I am putting the hair color on. Cause ya know, I dance and sing. A lot. Much to my children’s horror. And so what that no one is here, I am dancing and singing to myself, and much fun is being had. Until. Until…

I HUGE dollop of the hair color lands right into my eyeball mid-boogie!!! “ARGH!!!!!!”””” I scream. “It BURNS!!!” I have no recollection of this, but I whipped off the gloves and went into IMMEDIATE high school chemistry mode and began rinsing the BLEACHING CHEMICALS outta my poor eyeball. The pain, SO.MUCH.PAIN.

So I drive to SC to get my kids and my mom is all how is your bloody mouth? But then I take off my sunglasses and she says, “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR EYE!?!” And I am all, “Oh, um, is it bad? Can you tell?” And she is all, “CALL A DOCTOR YOU MORON CHILD OF MINE!!!”

So I didn’t. But this morning I woke up and it is all swollen and not so happy and much with the owiness. Soooo I emailed my doctor and was all, “Look I REALLY am not normally so all about the getting hurt, and I know I have had to talk to you a lot this past week, but um, could ya maybe call in some eyedrops for me? My hair-coloring boogie-woogie went all sortsa bad. Could ya? It hurts to see and look at stuff.” I am awaiting a reply.

But I figure if I lose the eye I can get an EYEPATCH!! And I can BEDAZZLE it! With DOG designs!!! And it will be SO COOL! And I can hide valuables in my eye socket cause who would look there?!?! And people will see me in my green, doggie, flower covered car with my coolio eye patch and think, “There goes Michelle! She is so awesome! And that eyepatch! Only SHE can pull off a bedazzled eyepatch with so much hootzpah! And have you SEEN how great her teeth look lately?!”

Awesome.