Retirement: Online Art Workshops

Home again home again...

I hate blue paint. Have I ever told you that? Well, Sunday afternoon while I was at Sanctuary Studio I was given another good reason to hate blue paint. This is an extremely *small* example of why I hate blue paint-here is the BEFORE:

Here is the AFTER:

What the hell happened? Well, I had used the same bottle of phthalo blue all weekend long. I remember having had problems with the bottle a couple of classes prior and telling students to take the lid off, but to please put the lid back on when they were done. Well, they did put the lid on but not the right way and not 100%. *sigh* SO Sunday afternoon, I decide that the book I'm working on that the spine needs to be green not yellow (no picture to show you since we had to throw it away). I go to squeeze out some blue and the frigging top flies off of it and blue paint shoots EVERYWHERE. Oh. My. Effing. Almighty. Shit. Fuck. Every bad thing I can think of comes through my mind. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Oh no. Oh please no. I look to my left. There is blue paint on two of Sonora's white Ikea curtain panels. I look behind me. Paint on Sonora's cabinets. I look on the floor. Blue paint on the blue floor. I don't have to look in front of me as there is paint in globs all over my project I am demo'ing with, paint all over my drink, paint all over the wipe container. Paint all over the new journal I am working on. I look at me. Paint all up and down my arms. *sigh*

My wonderful, amazing students jump up and just start wiping everything and cleaning up blue paint. Sonora is unbelievably kind telling me again and again not to worry about it. I am probably bright red at this point. I have never had this happen in a class...not like this. We clean. We wipe. We scrub. They tell me to go into the bathroom to clean myself up as I am up to my elbows in paint. *sigh* I go into the bathroom and start to wash up. There is paint everywhere. Paint on my shirt. Paint on my dress. Paint in invisible places on my blue denim apron. I want to hide. I want to crawl into a hole somewhere. Needless to say, I am not happy. I want to be tickled pink and not painted frigging blue.

When I relate the story to my Mom the next day she recalls the time I was carrying a box of my paint from a class across her living room and a bottle of blue with the lid not on tight jumped out of the box and spilled all over her rug. She said "You and blue do not get along well." Really? No shit. And people wonder why I use so much pink in my work.

Other then the blue incident, I had an awesome time in San Anselmo. I am looking forward to teaching there again in 2008. I promise next time I will be more behaved and I won't fling blue paint everywhere.

I was very much restrained on this trip. Not having much money helps (LOL). I did get to Flax in San Francisco on Friday (I hate mapquest directions!!!) and did a wee bit o' damage there:

From Flax I went to Kinokuniya-all three stores (pen store, upstairs, downstairs) and I couldn't find a thing to buy. I was there over an hour. I remembered my parking ticket that needed to be validated so I thought I'd get a couple of these Manga things that I thought were rub ons from what the picture showed. (Later on, I found out that they're not rub ons-grrrrrr-they're clear stickers). Any ways, I handed the lady my ticket and I do have to say that the people at the counter were unbelievably rude and would not validate as I hadn't spent $10. Um, last time I was there I spent over $130. Isn't that enough to make up for it? Shouldn't I qualify for 13 validations. OMG. I walked out irked with the stupid $6 "supposed to be" rub ons. So, Diane, you're not the only one they're rude to! The SF store was very rude to me this time-grrr....

I got in the car to start my trek to the hotel in San Rafael. Oh My. I had never driven over the "hills" in SF before-at least, not being behind the wheel. The roads really do go straight up and straight down. When you get to the top of some of them, you really can't see over the top of the hill at times. Bucket seats do not help. My old Toyota never would have made it up these hills-never. Talk about roller coaster ride. I also drove over the Golden Gate bridge but this time it wasn't 11 pm, foggy and scary. It was still very dark at 8 pm but not scary. My drive to find the hotel was interesting. Weird directions and weird roads led me astray and I ended up at San Quentin. That was fun! I turned around and as I drove on the freeway I looked to my right and there was my hotel. WTF? Soooo I managed to figure out it was one of those stupid side roads that run along the freeway forever and how to get on the damn road. All was well.

That night, after checking in, I managed to eek out two journal pages:



Yes, I am still pissed and reeling about what happened in Jena. I've written about it before and in my journals and if you don't know how I feel, you can read the spread in my journal.

Saturday and Sunday I taught. I had a great time. Everyone was wonderful. I love the atmosphere up in San Anselmo. I had a great time and it seems like my students did too!! Thanks Sonora!!!

Sunday night I left San Anselmo and drove to Berkeley to meet up with with the amazing, rip roaringly funny Alix and Kathy. Needless to say, we had a great time-talking, laughing and eating yummy food at Skates on the Bay. We met up again the next morning at Bette's Diner on 4th Street for a damn good breakfast (pancakes for me!) and a shopping extravaganza. We hit several stores and I was very good. I bought one piece of paper from Cody's-one. No books this trip. How weird is that? I found this Folkmanis white mouse puppet at Paper Source that I could not live without-I had almost managed to not buy anything there when I spotted him sitting with the toys and slipped him on my hand. He instantly sprain to life and wanted to come home with me. Next stop was Stampers Warehouse. Y'all know how much I love Stampers Warehouse. I'm looking forward to teaching there in November. I got into a wee bit o' trouble at SW...buying new papers and rub ons but I still behaved myself relatively well. It was a ton o' fun as always hanging out with Alix and Kathy and seeing Terrece and Georgia. How many days til classes in November?

*****

For some reason I am haing trouble with the keys on my keyboard. abdefghijklmnopqrstuwy are working fine but other those lousy keys zxcv are stuk. ery frustrating indeedy! I an't type words like ookie, ine, fuk, ealous, and ylophone. Sheesh.