Friends

She knows who she is.

Sadly, it doesn't feel good to be right. At all. I should stop even caring. It's a complicated thing.

don't understand why you're on the train you're on...but maybe there's a reason you're they're for the ride.

Such is my confused analysis of the night.

And I wish the mama would come camp out here with me with the Jada pug.

There's no way I'm going to be here forever. And Casey Key is....beyond sublime.

I have a lot of work to turn around, but got my classes fixed up and enabled.

But I have this restlessness. I don't know what to throw at it. I've thrown some rum. Some righteous indignation. I've thrown it some success. I've thrown it a particularly hot man. I took it on a short vacation. I let it run on the long leash. I've let it sleep in for a few days.

I have to figure out what it is growling for...

Yeah, yeah, the decade doesn't start till next year, blah blah blah, whatever. I'm writing this now because 2000 was a big year for me and 2000-2009 looks better to me than 2001-2010. Plus, a period of 10 years is a decade no matter when it is. So there. I wanted to do one so I wrote one. Feel free to take it!

1. Where were you when the year changed to 2000?
I lived in Illinois, but my mom, brothers Nathan and Seth, and I were in Florida on vacation. That night we arrived at Word of Life Florida for the first time ever. I wanted to spend New Year's with my feet in the ocean (since I love the beach and there are obviously no oceans anywhere near IL), so we found the nearest "beach" (we found out later the locals call it "Hudson Hole" because it's not much of a beach) and I had my feet in the water as the year changed.

2. Where were you when the year changed to 2010?
I was at my brother and SIL's house with friends. We played games and set off fireworks. I was exhausted because of previous days' events, but it was great. And of course Isaac and I kissed at midnight.  =o)  I had wanted to have my feet in the ocean for the start of this decade too, but it was too cold and I was too tired.

3. List the things that happened to/for you in each year of the decade. (You can name just big things, or anything that stands out to you.)

(I'm doing mine in chronological order in each year.)
2000 - Graduated high school; started college (as the youngest in my classes); got my first non paper-route, non-babysitting job as a server at Steak 'n' Shake; had a guy I liked like me back for the first time since I was 5 years old; fulfilled a lifelong dream and went to Australia and Papua New Guinea on a mission trip; finally moved out of "stinkin' Lincoln", Illinois; started my first year at Word of Life Bible Institute in Florida; while there met a cute, short, funny guy named Isaac who became a good friend. 

2001 - Became best friends with that guy, Isaac; had my life changed taking part in WOLBI's Passion Play (so did Isaac); turned 18 years old; spent the summer as a counselor on WOL Island; realized I wanted more than friendship with Isaac; graduated from WOLBI first year; went to WOLBI second year in New York; 9/11 shook the world - we didn't get to see any footage till that evening because the TVs/internet weren't hooked up yet; Isaac and I started dating; spent a week in NYC with an open air evangelism team; Isaac flew (his first flight ever!) out to visit and meet my family on Christmas break, and we held hands for the first time.

2002 - Family moved to Jacksonville, FL (finally someplace WARM!); went back to NYC on OAE; went back to Australia & PNG as a trip counselor; graduated WOLBI second year; came to live in FL for the first time; had a rough few months adjusting to living with my family again, not having my friends or boyfriend within walking distance, going to secular college again, and my favorite aunt died unexpectedly; found an amazing church called Westside Christian Family Chapel; went to Connecticut just after Christmas to see Isaac; nephew Bernie was born; Isaac proposed, I said yes, and he gave me my first kiss.  =o)

( 2003-2009 )

4. What has been the biggest change for you in this past decade?
Ha! Everything, seeing as I was 16 when it started. I've since been to college, had several jobs, got married, bought a house, started the process of having a child, etc. I would say those are all pretty big changes!

5. What do you hope will happen to/for you between now and 2020?
I hope that by 2020 we have 4+ kids, that some Constitution-following politicians have been running the country for years, and that the Lions will win the Superbowl. (OK, that last one might be a bit too much to ask. How 'bout just a winning season?)  ;o)

I was building some 5 minute teasers for the classes I am to teach this semester.

I found a quote ...something about how we ( as humans ) live in the past to such a degree we spend half our lives in a cemetery.

I can't speak for "we" ( as humans ), but as a post Gothic figure, walking through cemeteries has been something I've found soothing when I don't know the people there. It is easier to imagine they've found a better place, the white light and that the physical placement of their remains is a sort of art and poetry. That remembrance is motion and art.

Is life partly in the cemetery bad? Doesn't history have a place in the now? Don't the lost get to enjoy our found?

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.” Bishop W. C. Magee

I'll revise to state..."the woman who makes no mistakes usally hasn't had a lot of fun."

I'll revise more clearly..."the woman who makes no mistakes in love has not truly loved."

I might be more succinct in offering..."the woman who makes no mistakes isn't someone I want to do body shots with during Fleet Week."

And really..."the woman who makes no mistakes ... has no saucy and no sound advice to offer."

And I'll tell you this...mistakes can be monetized.

Trying out the new Facebook feature on Livejournal.

Also, I can't believe there's people out there that don't like Marcus, because he's a dog. Clearly the cats have brainwashed them. I've decided if I ever get a cat I'll name it Sucram, so there can be the epic battle between awesome dog Marcus and awesome cat Sucram.

Freezing. Power outages. Computer drama. Stuff. None of it fun.

Please God, help me get my work-legs back.

I have to enable the two courses I'm teaching this semester and my work laptop has decided to keep not communicating with any useful files and applications I need.

Help.

Help.

Help.

My hands are like ice.

Marcus is a kinetic bark box. He runs around so that he can store up the energy he needs to go woof woof woof woof woof!

This morning Kin and I decided we were going to eat a healthy breakfast, so we went to the store and bought some bagels. I also picked up some pineapple flavored cottage cheese, on a whim.

We get home, and I'm all excited because I haven't had anything pineapple flavored in ages. I open that puppy up, pull back the freshness seal?

Mold.

FUCK.

So I dash back out to the store, and ask to speak with a manager. The cashier thought he had done something wrong (he hadn't, I assured him.) When the manager came up, I showed up the container.

"Just grab another one" he said nonchalantly. Sounds like a good fix to me!

So I go to the back of the store and grab another one. I head back to the cashier, and he says "Did you find one?" I pop off the lid, pull back the freshness seal...

Mold.

FUCK.

So the cashier and I go to the back, and we're opening these things. First one? Mold. Second one? Just a little bit, but, mold. Third? Moldy McMoldity. Fourth? . . . off color, but not moldy...'

It dawns on me that, you know, maybe cottage cheese isn't what I want for breakfast after all.

Or ever, for that matter.

2010 Resolutions

Find happy places, spaces and real genuine heart-full people who walk the talk. Nothing but the real deal.

Bring sexy back.

Make more mistakes and use those mistakes for good, better and funny stories.

I want to find an ice blue eyed manly man that's inclined to be local and doesn't mind cutting wood. And HAS to wear boxers. Tall. Leggy. Yeah, like HIM--delicous sexy HIM, but here. Right here. In my life in a good way.

Keep up with Zumba and related fun. Contemplate joining the herd of running people going by this house. Or biking people.

Make sure to make sure Sadie continues to have a fun life. Buy her a life jacket...and new "surf board."

Chart a course that allows me to do less shows, more stores, bigger work, more things, madly fun objects. Continue developing a highly identifiable style based on what key things that have created my quiet love of life in Florida.

Keep nowhitetent.ning.com growing, fluid, helpful and genuine. Continue to encourage and help others find their art/craft selves, support systems and affordable shows in beautiful places.

Continue building a successful ecommerce system and find a better way to work with customers and do better work.

Make sure I'm ready for Christmas this year.

Find a way to build and maintain an inventory.

Find a way to keep dreads in shape and stop tying them back to avoid them. Give them a place. Honor.

Spend time with family. Make sure mom knows she's welcome to be wherever I am.

Try to save more money.

Consider I need a studio and create a life that will allow, encourage and fund it.

Love people. Start breaking down some necessary walls for a necessary change of vantage point.

Think of a larger move. Of a different way of looking at life. Build some spaces for joy and maybes.

Keep bully free.

Don't let anything in the past that didn't work or hurt me back into my life.

Continue to build a life where I can own my own time and work full time on art or art related projects.

Find a bar with hot beautiful sexy men that ... I just love to write and marvel in. Like Bert's Bar this past Sunday. I want to mix it up with that slice of fun loving sexy, rugged individualists. Self assured women. Funny men. Good hearts. I need a place of great mojo to write some really powerful work.

To be in a position to help people as I can, but say "no" gracefully when I cannot.

Develop a sounder, better way and places to let off steam between maintaining dependability and a tough schedule.

Fix and update resume. Consider taking programming classes and learn about the "backend."

Resume writing TO DO lists weekly and marking things off. Need to mark down the accomplishment of little things.

Admit that I'm scared..that all this was not supposed to be all like this and so much...and DO IT ANYWAY.

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now three years in the holding. Haven't deleted it from my LJ.

Here, was happy...if complex happy. A lot of work happy.

I rather beligerently told one of the running man ( the road in front of my house is full of them and I've begun to love the bike riding bell ringing Germans ...) that he was articulate and attractive and he didn't have to be mean. He's the guy I saw making fun of this girl every time she walked away to the bathroom...dumb as a box of rocks and so on. I know. But, it's one thing for House to be on TV. Real life is another. Seriously. He's hot and got a working brain--what's the gain on humiliating someone?

I don't like bullies.

Anyway, he let me know he knew where I lived and what not which I'd hoped to be useful intel in terms of finding out about other people as he knew everything, however, it is only I guess dreads that make the coconut telgraph. Maybe some other exotic behavior like my Thriller dance on the way home. I haven't had guy drama or anything. I've been in fact, rather librarian like writing, reading and being generally solo and otherly engaged.

I did well at Matlache. Let me tell you, the men that hang out in Bert's Bar on a Sunday are smokin' hot. They aren't belittling women. You feel like you're about to get hugged up, rugged up and loved up even when they walk by. It was that ahhh so sexual shockwave of happy. And people sang along with the band. I need to go get a hotel and stay overnight.

You have to know, Alan wanted ( I believe ) everyone he left with his suicide to be miserable.

And its still functioning pretty well on me.

I'm not the weakest link though. You know, I'm trying to still use it, though it is increasingly fragile and difficult.

I was standing in the store in Matlache again tying to feel what my future required or wanted or could be. I don't think I'm a store owner. That store owner is so kind. She might also give me a hookup in Delray Beach. She says I should do a show run in Rhode Island in the Summer.

I'd like an adventure like that. But I need to be able to take it as a loss. And as fun.

At the show Saturday I felt some anger. Not grateful as I should. I really was stressed about the woman with the camera ...the man asking me a lot of questions. I'm happy to help people with their work, I'm not happy helping people with "my" work.

Anyway the other night after some rum drinks I walked down the beach with the pug and asked for the 100th millionth time for Alan or Dad to show me there's something out there after death. That in all this was reason...and maybe even, love.

When I looked up there was a cloud in this specific configuration. It is the base outline for my pug pics that I sell a lot of. More specifically the one of Sadie.

I'm not sure it was communication from the dead, the pug herself or random rumness. But there it was..a sort of mask not unlike sending the Batman beacon into the sky.

At Flagler...I might have gotten a feather stuck in the sand sign where the water was washing back into the sea. Maybe. But what sort of sign was that?

Then I had a dream about a local Nokomis bartender who flitted about like Tinker Bell and told me after I downloaded on her the hefty weft of mindfuck rattling my brain cage--- she said --- JUST PAINT. Not much else, which would be her style. She's not one to waste time or words. Or to listen to a bucket of drivel.

But you have to know, "just paint" is not an easy road. In Matlache, the store(s) owner showed me some work by an East coast artist. He primarily makes his living off three stores--not shows. It was interesting, fun stuff. I think she was saying I should 3D up some work and incorporate more found objects.

I would like to walk away from shows. But I don't have the structure in place to do that.

Tomorrow, I go back to work with a stunning and challenging workload that would give many of you a nosebleed. I'm not going to cry.

I just still have a hard time with trying to find a purpose with all these things I've set in motion without Alan being somewhere down the road...even to just talk to.

My most primary resolution is to deal with this. I can't figure out if the appropriate goal is acceptance, forgetting, honoring, hating or ?

But, I have to say standing in Matlache today on the Pine Island I so refused to go to while he was alive, I was listening very intently. And checking out the man herd.

There's a world of beautiful in a man's arms that runs past solace into forgiveness.

I have three free weekends before I'm totally going under water til end of May.

There's a man I want to tear into before all I have is splinters, paint and rope to sleep with. Of all things, I keep thinking of his hand on my shoulder as I was beginning to fall asleep. For him, there's a book in my heart that has a heaving bosomed woman happy in her robust, tawdry worn pages.

Teaching two classes on top of everything else...well, wasn't the best move. But..I'm going to make the most out of it. I have things to offer that are sound and life changing.

And I do believe sometimes it is a sign that has Beer:30 on it.

And having been collecting them for weeks now, a box of rocks is not dumb.

Not at all dumb. Which is a final, somewhat funny irony.

has over 11,000 hits.

My mermaid one I just added a few weeks ago is over 300.

I don't know how many of these have converted into sells or customers or even fans...but that's some significant stats.

It is fascinating how a "local artist" can be everyone's "local artist."

strangely...the thing in the economy that is hurting me most is the cost of luggage and carry-on luggage. If that impacts my little business in terms of a marked shift in consumer behavior...what could it be doing overall?