First Artist’s Date

Ack! I keep hear­ing that icky sound that indi­cates that there’s a phone off the hook some­where, right at the edge of my hear­ing. But there cer­tain­ly isn’t a phone off the hook any­where here. I don’t know if it’s just an audi­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tion or if the upstairs neigh­bors have found a new way to be annoy­ing. One would think that if I were going off my rock­er, I’d find some­thing more inter­est­ing to hal­lu­ci­nate about than a telephone.

Any­way, I went out to get the miss­ing blade brack­ets for the ceil­ing fan and real­ized that Sam had my gate card. So, I could have got­ten all pissed off, and I hon­est­ly was­n’t very sweet when I left a mes­sage on his cell phone. I decid­ed, though, that since he won’t be home ’til the wee hours of the morn­ing any­way, and shad­owkatt is off cel­e­brat­ing with my fam­i­ly, it was A Sign. I went ahead and had my Artist’s Date (anoth­er Artist’s Way thing) because I’d been avoid­ing even think­ing about it.

My inner child (Cindy) and I went off to Barnes & Noble. I looked at pret­ty jour­nals and sta­tionery and such and found myself by the puz­zle books. I dis­cov­ered a desire to do some acros­tics. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there were no suit­able books or mag­a­zines that just had acros­tics, so that desire will be shelved for anoth­er week’s date. We wan­dered around the store and I found that Cindy want­ed to look at very dif­fer­ent sorts of books than those I nor­mal­ly peruse and purchase.

Sam called, hav­ing got­ten my mes­sage about the key­card. He was abject­ly apolo­getic. While speak­ing to him, I kept wan­der­ing and start­ed pulling books about his­to­ry, fibromyal­gia, and edu­ca­tion off the shelves to look at. Cindy wait­ed ’til I was off the phone, then said “I thought this was MY time? I don’t like those books!” Okay, back they went. Off to the col­or­ing books it was. She did­n’t like most of them, because they were sneak­i­ly edu­ca­tion­al. As we left the chil­dren’s sec­tion I start­ed look­ing at the home­school­ing books and, more loud­ly this time, she said, “No!” right then and there.

We went to the art sec­tion next and end­ed up buy­ing a copy of Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad. That was some­what sur­pris­ing. I picked up the lat­est ver­sion of Draw­ing On the Right Side of the Brain and a few oth­ers, but Cindy pre­ferred Draw Squad so that’s what we bought. She real­ly want­ed the cal­lig­ra­phy set that was on the clear­ance table, but we could­n’t spend ALL the mon­ey. I did grab a copy of Sage Woman mag­a­zine, which was okay with her as long as I did­n’t start read­ing it then, a copy of the lat­est Teen Voic­es for Katie, and a book from the clear­ance table that I recalled see­ing on curiousmay9’s Ama­zon wish list.

Next, we found the near­est Michael’s. We arrived at 5:55, and they were clos­ing at 6. Whoops! We were out by 6:05, though, with a love­ly sketch­pad, some new mark­ers, and one of those fuzzy poster things that caught Cindy’s fan­cy. (One of these days I want a real­ly NICE set of mark­ers, but the ones I’d want are way expen­sive. And those Pris­ma­col­or pencils—I want!)

Oh! I also have a bas­ket that was on clear­ance at Pier One to hold my pret­ties and sit next to my reclin­er. I do love bas­kets. Some­where around here, I have a series of three cross-stitch pat­terns fea­tur­ing cats, bas­kets, and quilts that I will even­tu­al­ly stitch. Really.

I had a nice phone con­ver­sa­tion with curiousmay9, who nar­rat­ed the parade in Decatur to me as I drove about aim­less­ly. I was sim­ply explor­ing, start­ing to get my bear­ings in the area. Gwin­nett is easy for me—my fam­i­ly moved there in 1977 and I learned to dri­ve there, so I know all the back ways. Being in a new area but still near Atlanta is a lit­tle odd. I just don’t know where any­thing is! But I’ll learn. I do need to pick up a new map book for the car, though—mine was out­dat­ed, so I tossed it when it got water damaged.

Home now. I got in with­out the gate card by think­ing cre­ative­ly. Now I’m hav­ing left­over Chi­nese food—mmmm! I’ve talked with sam­bear a bit. He’s just wait­ing for dark when the fire­works will actu­al­ly be fired. They have to hang around to clean up after­ward, so he’ll be REALLY late. Then he may go help mique_mique with a com­put­er emer­gency. If he does, I fig­ure it would be best if he just stays over there, and comes home Sat­ur­day morn­ing. As tired as he’ll be, I don’t know that I’d trust him to trou­bleshoot my PC! And I would­n’t want him dri­ving fur­ther at that point. I’m not sure what time gamers are arriv­ing Sat­ur­day, to be hon­est. Hope­ful­ly, he’d make it before or with them 🙂

I real­ly should do more house­clean­ing, but I wan­na color!