Impressionist

I've always wanted to do one of those wine & painting things. THere's one in my town, about 2 miles from my house. We've lived here for 3 years & I've never gotten around to it. Thankfully, my sister B is awesome and kickstarts things. She invited me to do one where we would attempt to recreate a Monet-ish waterlilly thing. This is what I started with. Blank canvas with some circles. Intimidating.

This is what it was supposed to look like at the end:

We were given aprons, two brushes & 4 colors of paint: red, blue, yellow & white. We mixed our own colors, so there's built-in instant individuallity even if all of our brushstrokes were the same. It was neat to learn a little more about color theory as we mixed up stuff.
Here's my finished product. Not too shabby.

 And seriously, it was a blast! There was Pandora-style radio station playing, and it was a bit like karaoke Russian roulette. Only with no bullets, because I knew all the songs. So that was fun. I didn't bring a bottle of wine (only because I didn't have one handy that I felt like opening) so I was super classy and had Jack & coke. Woot. It was nice to chat & catch up with B, and then, because of the SUPERB location of Let's Art Party, we walked next door and had delicious Austrian food at Jorg's, where I got this teeny tiny beer. Adorable & delicious.

Hobby, Diversion, Pastime, Leisure Pursuit

I have only a few hobbies. I scrapbook & make cards two or three times a year. I play World of Warcraft in a very casual manner. I don't garden or make preserves or sew or knit or quilt. The real things that take up most of my free-time are music and renaissance restivals. Singing at a renaissance festival is what I do every weekend in April and May, every year that I've been in the DFW area. This will be my eighth season to perform, my third to sing, and my second to teach. So, starting Saturday my weekends belong to the Scarborough Academy of Performing Arts and Queen Anne's Lace.

Yes, that's 16 weekends but it only really works out to 28 days, which is ony 7.7% of the year. For the majority of those days I will be outside for a minimum of 8 hrs--at least half of them more than 12 hrs. I'll start in the cold, possibly in the snow and ice, and finish in the blistering heat of Memorial Day weekend, which almost inevitably comes with rain of some sort. I do this for fun.

And it is fun. It's challenging and sometimes frustrating, but there is a rush and a thrill that makes me keep wanting to do it again and again. It might take a special kind of person to want to give up more than a quarter of their weekends to play a highly elaborate game of make-believe mixed with street theatre of the interactive variety while wearing clothes designed to mimic a time and place 500 years in the past and at least 40 degrees cooler. Thankfully, I'm that kind of special.

Now, it's not all downhill just yet. Sunday is mostly mine. And I'm not teaching all of the days, so I have a few hours here and there to take care of some last-minute spring cleaning (long before spring officially arrives).

In my Barbie dream world, I'd manage to get the bookshelves organized--not in an alphabetical, thematic, or any other logical manner. I just want to have books and things that belong on shelves on the shelves and not sitting in boxes on the floor. My Barbie dream world also has clean floors and counters, so let's not think that it's actually going to come to pass anytime soon.

I do want to hang curtains though. I have some lovely valances for the living room and beautiful tapestry curtains for the dining/music room. I would love to get one of those nifty wall stencils that says "If music be the food of love, play on..." to put above the little opening to the hallway.

Truth be told though, I'm going to spend a lot of those few breaks doing utterly unexciting things like... napping with my cats piled about me, cooking with my husband while watching Netflix, and maybe going to see a matinee movie.

Cleaning and necessary housework will happen during the week like it always does. Laundry will get slower as costuming takes its place in the rotation. Meals will get crock-potted and left-overs will sustain us. We'll come home tired and possibly bruised. We'll tell stories about classes and people we met and things we said that we had no intention of saying. We'll begin to detest our alarm clocks and the smell of sunscreen... because it's fun. I'll put on my 35 lbs of pink, fluffy costume and sing and be silly. I'll wander about acting like a superhero from the planet Cozmetix and making up tall tales to suit my mood. Then I'll come back to my job, Monday through Friday, dragging myself through the work week telling the stories of the things I did and hope to do next time.

But for now... I'll read up on my lesson plans, and review my music, and check costume bits for tears while sitting on my couch, covered in cats, watching Netflix.

Camping, Roughing it, and Inks Lake

When I was a child, I would go camping with my family.  Yes, it's true.  I camped.  In a tent.  I enjoyed it, even.  I'll give you a moment to collect yourself and put your shocked face away.

Here's what I remember from those formative years:

• Mosquitoes will always get into the tent.  They love me more than any other human I've ever met.  Therefore, camping is itchy.
• Air mattresses will never stay inflated.  If they do, you will slide off onto the ground anyway. 
• No matter how smooth and perfect the ground looked before you put up the tent, there will be a collection of pointy rocks right where you want to sleep after you put up the tent
• If I stare at my bobber attentively for 3.5 hours, it is inevitable that it will bob in the two seconds that I stop to scratch a mosquito bite.
• Blue Gills like to bite your toes.  This is why I don't like to swim in bodies of water where I can't see all the way to my toes.  I'm sure the fact that my brother would torment me with stories of giant man-eating catfish has nothing to do with it.  Mostly. 
• Inks Lake has more visible wildlife per square inch than any other place I've been.  One afternoon we saw deer, owls, toads, chipmunks/ground squirrels, regular squirrels, hawks, water moccasins, and something else... most of those critters tried to share our camp site.  It was exciting only because none of those things had more than 4 legs.  4 is my limit of legs for things that I like.  0-4 is good.  More than 4 is dodgy, and if you've got more than 6, I'll probably squeak in a wholly undignified way if you get within 36 feet of me.  Just so we're clear.
• Once upon a time ago, Bisquick made these shaker things of pancakes.  You poured milk into a little yellow plastic container, shook it up and voila!  Pancakes!  That's roughin' it.  Pancakes on the Coleman stove. 
• The things inside lanterns that create the light look like baby's socks.  They are not baby socks.  You can not take them out of the lantern and put them on your baby doll.   
• Mummy bags are warm, and fun to hop around in, because then you don't have to expose any skin to the air that's less than 72°. 
• A motor boat is a very expensive, though effective, hair dryer. 
• I cannot water* ski. It is a skill possessed by all my family members... except me.  I can, however, find new and exciting places for lake water to go.  My sinuses were squeaky clean, that's for sure!
• If there is a difference between a ground squirrel: and a chipmunk... nobody cares. Since the difference isn't as important as the one with the rhyme about the snakes where one kills you & the other is harmless, I tend not to care.  Well, Alvin & the Ground Squirrels just doesn't have the same ring to it, but both of them really like Planter's Dry Roasted Salted peanuts, so there's that.

Ground Squirrel

Chipmunk

 <------------------->

 

 

*Snow skiing, however, I was passably good at.  I mean, intermediate.  Blue squares didn't scare me.  Black diamonds did.  And anything with moguls.  Why would I purposely want to ski over speed bumps?

When in doubt, stick it out or Hippos vs. Ballerinas

So, I've vacillated between posting this and only telling it to my friends in person, and obviously you can tell which side won that debate, and it's mostly because of phrases like "drunken monkey" and the need to for a public service announcement regarding physics.

Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, I went to a bachelorette party for my dear friend Muffin*. Part of that party was a pole dancing class. Yep. Pole dancing. Like what some strippers do. So, in a room with 15 of Muffin's friends, we learned some basics of how to throw ourselves around this pole, slide about and walk on our buttocks. It was more silly than sexy, but it was really fun. It was fun because it made being sexy something that wasn't mysterious or unobtainable. It was a safe place to try moving our bodies in new ways, with someone who had insight to guide us. And you ain't seen nuthin' 'till you've seen a bunch of shy white girls (and me) trying to move like Beyonce. Seriously.

But we had fun, and it was a good workout. You use your arms & legs & abs & laugh a lot, so there were definitely calories burned.

Then, a year and change had passed when I saw an opportunity for further hilarity