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>Coprolite is fossilized dinosaur dung. My universe as a whole is much more complete now that my mental vocabulary has been refreshed by this elusive term. ‘Twas one of those instances where the word is just on the tip of your tongue but to your utter dismay and despair it shies away into the obscure terminology abyss. We get the keys to our house today…’twill all be over soon, then I will slowly begin my “reintegration into the blogsphere” process. It will not be pleasant, but must be done.
That is all.

Voulez-voulez-vous escrow

>Technorati Profile

>I’m not sure if it was in a previous blog, or a conversation, or just a random thought flitting about in my head at one point, but…I owe an apology.

Home Depot is one of my favorite art supply shopping destinations. Lumber, nails, staple guns, paint, brushes…the place is a veritable artists’ utopia. Save for one thing.

The home improvement yuppie shopper.

The Louis-Vuitton clad women in their clickety-click mules shuffling about the paint department, their kids running amok amidst the potted plants. Their pussy-whipped husbands discussing crown molding and lighting fixtures whilst scratching their asses. These materialistic suburbanites mindlessly consuming to make their home the most tricked-out ornate monstrosity in all of their sprawling clear-cut master-planned community. I loathed them. I sent them leering glares as I tried to wedge behind them to get to the Oops! paint section. I hoped they’d all rot in hell.

Today Bryan and I went to Home Depot. I did not go for nails. I did not go for wood glue. Or caulk. Not staples not dropcloths nor lumber.

I went…

(dramatic pause…)

…to price lighting fixtures.

(gasp!)

Indeed.

Thus, I owe an apology. I apologize for not only judging them so harshly, but also I apologize that they also happen to be complete horse’s asses. But that’s another blog altogether.

We don’t close ’till the 15th but I’ve already joined the ranks of these laminate-flooring automatons. Although I feel I should be in a separate branch altogether, as my house is not in a sprawling clear-cut master-planned community. My house was not built in 2005 with automated everything and garden tubs in every bathroom. My house is not a cookie-cutter nightmare.

This is my house. This is my 1968 remodeled rambler with no automatic garage door openers, no automatic sprinkler systems, no jets in the bathtubs. Hell, it doesn’t even have a microwave, which might prove problematic for me as I have no culinary skills whatsoever. My house has amazing landscaping, 3 acres of state-protected forest in its backyard, and is teeming with so much character and personality it makes my skull crack. In a good way. Whatever the hell I mean by that. Makes no sense but yet I keep it going. Should I let it go now? Indeed.

So now I shall direct you
here
to see photos of my new abode, since re-posting them in my blog would be not only redundant but keep me from my hard-earned bath. I’ve been dismantling my studio all day. I’m offending myself.

voulez-voulez-vous mi casa, su casa

>Please understand one thing. Yes, I have been lazy. A tad neglectful perhaps. But I assure you it was for a good cause.

For the first time in my 30+? years, I own (o, co-own…sorry honey…) a house.

<a href="http://www.windermere.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Listing.ListingDetail&ListingID=7117802
“>Ch-ch-ch-check it out.

I will return with details when I am far less busy and overwhelmed.

nite.

voulez-voulez-vous-mortgage.

>in this life more beautiful than a well-stretched and primed canvas. The well-formed corners, the resonating “thummm” when you tap the center…it just strums the tuning fork in your loins, I tell ya. Shivers down your spine, even.
I have spent the last 2 days on this beast. Assembling the frame, gluing and nailing the corners, then stapling the canvas on two staples one side at a time, which means staple staple, stand up, go to opposite side, squat down, staple staple, stand up, go to the right, squat, staple staple, etc. whilst pulling the canvas as tight as possible over the frame for each staple, which leaves serious chafing and blisters when you are finished. Please keep in mind this canvas is approximately 3.5 X 4.5 feet dimensionally, and the staples are about 3/4″ apart. I will begin to accept your sympathies now.
Once that’s done, the canvas needs to be sprayed with water and allowed to dry two or three times to encourage the canvas to shrink in order to remove any wrinkles or creases that may have occurred. This particular canvas took several times in strategic areas with a water-filled Febreeze bottle and a space heater. I was getting pissed. Bryan knew I was fussing. As a joke, he comes down to my studio, my sacred haven, points and jokingly declares, “hey, ya got some wrinkles!”. I was not amused. I banned him from my studio. He is no longer welcome. But after a few more hours of process, complete and total tautness was achieved. I then told my husband to kiss my ass.

The priming is the last step, and the most time-consuming. The first coat of gesso (basically thin, white paint) goes on (but I use white latex wall paint as it’s more durable and cheaper). Once it dries, it has to be sanded sown with fine-grit sandpaper to remove the little fuzzballs that inevitably appear. Then you put another coat of primer on. Sand. Prime. Sand. Prime. By now the primer should be opaque and smooth enough to work on. If not, it is about this time that you lapse into a catatonic schizophrenia or set your studio on fire. Fortunately for me, neither was necessary this afternoon. But I still have one coat to go. I shall report back tomorrow.

People just don’t appreciate how much labor goes into building your own canvas.

I have found that building my own canvas creates a much stronger emotional attachment to my work. Which also increases my difficulty in parting with them. Which is something I need to work on.
My paintings, all 27 of them, have been occupying the walls of my apartment their entire lives. The only ones viewing them are me, my husband, and the rare guests we occasionally invite over.
For this I have been reprimanded by more than a few.
Apparently my paintings never leaving my home is an insurmountable waste.

So naturally the process of shooing them out the door requires incentive and motivation on my part. I need to have slides taken. I need to send these nonexistent slides out. I need to get my ass in gear. I need to get some freaking self-confidence about my work.

*sigh*

voles-voles-vous introspection.

>A friend of mine was given the task of creating a “choose your own adventure” story, which were books I was addicted to as a kid but had forgotten over the (many) years. In case you haven’t ever read one, “choose your own adventure” books were stories which at the end of each chapter there were several options for what should happen next, and the reader was given the privilege of choosing one. Each choice was given a corresponding page number to flip to in the book which was a continuation of that particular selection. Of course you always cheated and read all three choices, which kinda defeated the purpose, but you were also the same kind of kid that only opened the cereal box for the toy inside and said to hell with the cereal, so you are capable of anything.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to write a chapter. So here goes:

Chapter 1: The Unfamiliarity of Writing in the Second Person.

It is Thursday. It is wholly unremarkable.

You lean back in your chair, sigh aloud, stare at the ceiling.

Sitting up, you return to staring blankly at your computer screen, vaguely trying to recall what exactly it was you were supposed to be doing.

(purple)

Shaking your head, you attempt to collect your thoughts in a feeble attempt to regain productivity. What was it…

(purple)

You abruptly sit upright, hands grasping the armrests of your chair. Your eyes inadvertently dash from left to right as your brain tries to comprehend why exactly

(purple)

keeps manifesting itself in your cerebral cortex.

It is far too early in the day for this. Thursday. You could never get the hang of Thursdays.

You once again lean back in your chair, contemplating taking off early. Only…

(round)

Your eyes have forgotten how to function properly. They began darting rapidly around, investigating the situation.

Regaining your composure, you stand and stretch a bit, inhaling deeply, and…

SMACK!

Shaking off the effects of the random assault, you open your eyes in time to notice a rather large, violet-colored tentacle dangling in front of you.

Oh.

You don’t dare look up. You should look up, but you don’t dare look up. You don’t need to. You already know what’s up there.

To save you the effort of glancing upward, the large, bulbous body of the octopus that has discreetly adhered itself to the ceiling of your desk begins to descend.

It is Thursday. It was supposed to be wholly unremarkable.

If at this point you:

Wish to wrangle the tentacles of the octopus around the handle of a rather oddly-shaped velvet-covered broomstick, go to page 12.

Ask the octopus to enroll in tap-dancing lessons at this little studio you know that is rather reasonably priced, page 43.

And if you decide to grab an egg-salad sandwich and head out for some golf, do not turn to any page. I hate golfers. And I’m not altogether too fond of egg salad, either. So go away. Quit reading my shit.

voulez-voulez-vous no happy ending for golfers.

>I find something very interesting.

I use Blogger.com. Did y’all know that? I know, hard to tell.

Anyway.

I find something about Blogger quite…peculiar.

Every time I blog I do a spell-check. Not because I am a bad speller, but because I am a bad typist. And because my space bar does not perform with 100% consistency.

What I find peculiar is this:

In the massive cadre of words included in the Blogger.com spell-checker, there is one noun that for some incomprehensible reason, was not deemed necessary enough to program into their site.

You ready? I don’t think so. You can’t possibly be ready for this.

Here goes.

The word incomprehensibly withheld from the Blogger.com word bank is:

blog.

voulez-voulez-vous incredulity.

>As a tribute to Easter weekend I have decided to take part in my own personal resurrection.

Note: I have not recently delved into the fine art of Necromancy. But I’ll save that possibility for another blog…

No, the resurrection of which I speak is my studio in the downstairs garage. Thanks to winter being so ruddy cold and unpleasant my studio was neglected; I just moved a few of my more important paintings upstairs which made my husband not at all pleased as I kept placing them in rather inconvenient locations throughout the living room. I just closed the door and let my beloved studio sit there for several months as there is no heating and, because of our violent windstorms we suffer here on a frequent basis, the frigid cold air would work its way in, not providing an ideal working environment.

So in a frenzy of boredom and malcontent at having to keep my works-in-progress upstairs, I decided it was time once again to reopen the doors to my studio and get back to work. Unfortunately, I encountered some obstacles.
Despite my own weak efforts, my studio had become an unwilling impromptu storage facility. Christmas decor had taken it’s toll, the old steam cleaner had worked its way in. Folding chairs, bags of old clothes, dog kennels…all of which, unless you are working on a rather odd still-life, are not exactly what you’d call official studio equipment.

Once the extraneous odds and ends were returned to their rightful places, I came across some pieces I had started and completely forgotten about. Which is agreeable, as I do require several active projects going at once. I do this so I can jump from one to the other rather than stagnating on one particular piece for weeks on end and suddenly finding myself resenting it. It’s my thing. Let it go.

Another bonus involved a box of stretcher bars I had ordered some time ago but had never unpacked. Also a bonus. I just have to make sure I have enough canvas on which to stretch it. Then it has to be primed, a subject matter must be decided upon, then I will have yet another active piece to add to my already impressive arsenal of unfinished canvases. I should have them all finished sometime next decade.

So this is where I have parked myself.

I should try and sell some paintings to pay off my ruddy cell phone bill.

voulez-voulez-vous I do not have unlimited minutes.

>Fog.

I am in a fog. A depressing creative fog which has impaired my ability to conjure up any wit or cleverness and hence impaired my ability to blog. A blog-fog. Yep. That’s it.

So this is all I’ve got:

I’ve recently decided to alter my typical conversational response from “uh-huh” and “yeah” to indeed. It throws people off a bit. Intimidating, in a way. Most people aren’t prepared for it. We’ve become indeed-desensitized. Intolerant, even. Obsrerve:

– “So, my man callz and say, ‘I want tostadas for dinner’ and I’m like, ‘foo’, get ya own damn tostadas’ and he’s all, ‘bitch…you do-za what’s I say, and I-za wantin’ some tostadas!'”

To which I reply,

– “indeed.”

I am thus presented with:

– “Indeed? What da hellz that, indeed? What, choo tink youz all bettah than e’erybody else? Bitch, ya don’t know shit. Indeed. To hell witchoo and yo’ fancy talkin'”

(Note: the above conversation is indeed fictitious as I could not tolerate conversing with nor being associated with people who actually spoke in that manner. I would have to thump their skull with the Blue Book of English Grammar.)

I think I shall attempt to resurrect other words in the English language that seem to have gone the wayside. I’m sure we can re-integrate them successfully into modern conversational vocabulary. It will take some work, I’m not denying that. But if we band together, things will happen.

Such as:

Feckless: lacking purpose or vitality; feeble, ineffective; careless, irresponsible; from Scottish “feck”, for efficacy, short for effect+less.

(I particulary like this one…)
Chasmophile: a lover and seeker-out of nooks and crannies.

Isn’t that brilliant? It just rolls off the tongue…“chasmophile”…

I’ve got some more alluring yet curious words for you, but since I am a victim of the blog-fog, I shall save them for a later date to preserve blogging material.

Voulez-voulez-vous chasmophile.

Postscript: if anyone has some fascinatingly odd words to contribute, please feel free to leave them in my comments section. I assure you I will accept full credit for them and give no mention of you.

>That if you run out of cell phone minutes and, as unaware of this fact you may be, keep chatting away for days…weeks…it adds up. And if it adds up enough, they will take your cell phone away.

Happen’d to me.

I now owe Cingular about $500.00. Isn’t that just obscene? Who the hell have I been calling, anyway?

In light of recent events I have thus resurrected my home phone. ‘Twas a bit dusty. It is functional, yes. But I do not have the same emotional attachment that I have with my cell phone. I left it at home this morning and felt virtually naked without it.

If any of you are the ones I phoned, I hope you appreciate the words we shared. They were expensive.

It was probably a bunch of mundane, arbitrary drivel of no real importance.

Story of my life.

Needless to say, without my phone, I am distraught.

The cherry on this blissful cake of joy is that my husband is out of town for three weeks. I am the epitome of self-pity.

Poor poor me.

Please leave me comments of sympathy and well-wishing. Thanks to my not giving anyone my home number, I am officially cut off from the world. I need some reassurance that it is still out there. And that the Spurs are still kicking ass.

Voulez-voulez-vous poor me.