I am so excited!!!!!!!

My senior art show is having it's gallery opening tomorrow night. The past two weeks have been a crazy hodge podge of cutting, pasting, sewing, deco pouging, painting, and other random activities. Unfortunately, this has made little time for sleep or for seeing my husband. So although it's been fun, I'll be kind of glad when it is over.

I just finished writing the artist's statement that will be hung in the gallery. Each member of the opening has to write one. I thought it might be fun to post it on my blog for those of you who won't get to come to the show. I'm planning on posting pictures asap. Wish me luck!

Artist's statement:

"Before going to Kindergarten, I would spend most of my days at my Grandma Pierce’s house. Our normal activity to pass the time was to sit at her dining room table and have drawing competitions. The guidelines for these competitions were as follows: use crayon on paper towel, and draw monsters. So I spent hours trying to draw monsters more scary and spiky than those of my eighty-year-old grandmother.

Art ran through the veins of my family. My Great-Aunt Doe was a gifted photographer who painted her black and white images with pale pastel glazes. Everyone who grew up in Menard, Texas, had their first picture taken in her dining room, which is in the house I eventually grew up in. My father is perhaps the most artistic of the bunch; he is a carpenter, pianist, and painter all in one. And my mother and her mother are gifted seamstresses who sent me to school each year with two week’s worth of homemade clothes. Also, my brother had a passion for the written arts that was contagious, as is apparent by the poetry sprinkled among my artworks.

I grew up with very quirky, artsy people all around me. And I loved it. Art, be it visual, musical, or written, was a tangible presence in my life as I grew up, and thankfully, I lived in a town so small there was nothing else to do but art. I guess it is only natural that I ended up in a department that so many people look at with a skeptical eyebrow raised. When I am asked my major, and I reply with “art”, I always get the same response: “You won’t be making any money.” Yes, I know. But without art, without its acts of creating and of seeing the created and of continuing in the traditions set for me so many generations ago, life would not make sense to me at all."

Living is a stretch for me

As everyone knows who has ever taken an exercise science course with me, I am one of the two most inflexible people in the world (the other being Kayla). So in cross training Monday morning, I was sad to hear we would be doing a flexibility (or shall we say inflexibility) test. The teacher puts us in groups of about six, which meant for me that five people would be witnessing my humiliation. Sure enough, my score was literally a third of every other person in my group except for one girl who had a c-section six weeks ago. She only doubled me. Thus continues my life long hatred of p.e. courses.

What grad school does to a body

I just got home from a test, and due to cabin fever caused by the past two weeks of crazy weather, I decided to do an aerobics video. I asked BJ if he wanted to join me, to which he said no thanks. But with a bit of persuading, he agreed to do the toning section with me that comes after the dance portion.

So I did 30 to 40 minutes of working out and called BJ in for the 15 minute toning section. BJ smirked at first as we did light workout, but as it progressed, he said with a hint of confusion, "My legs are hurting a little." A bit shaken from the discovery that a woman's aerobic video might be harder than he thought, the video moved on to the stomach work out.

And then ten minutes later I hear: "My stomach's cramping and I can't breath" and "I think I'm going to die."

I've decided that BJ will be doing more aerobics with me.

Cursed be all cabinet doors and meditations on marriage

For the past few weeks, it seems our house has gone through three day cycles of clean, disaster, clean, disaster... Yesterday was a disaster day, but I couldn't bring myself to clean it again. So it remained a disaster until my sudden energy burst at approximately 7:30 this morning (a bazaar time for a night owl to have an energy burst). I ran around cleaning like Martha Stewart on Red Bull. That is, until a cabinet door sabotaged my rampage of domesticity. I was bent over cleaning, and when I stood up straight, I banged my head really ridiculously hard on the corner of the door. I walked crookedly into the bedroom, prayed I wouldn't die from strange concussion complications(keep in mind, 2007 has not been a kind year to me so far), and fell asleep for two hours. When I awoke, a sizeable knot had formed on my noggin. My brother said it is the air rising up in my head. BJ agreed. Jerks.

On the bright side, today was mine and BJ's 6 month anniversary. We ordered pizza and watched an old musical. I LOVE being an old married couple. Although I am still a total novice at this whole marriage thing, here are some things I've noticed about married life in the past six months:

1. Fights cool down significantly. Whereas we used to feel the need to state our positions and yell, we have now resigned ourselves to something like this:
Kalyn: (perturbed look)
BJ: (pleading) Honey, don't be mad at me.
Kalyn: Okay.

2. The greatest thing about living together is it feels like I got my life back. When we were dating, I was constantly driving here and there, trying to fit BJ into the openings in my busy schedule. Now he's just here. And I'm just here. Suddenly, I have more time to sew and paint and play the piano, and the best part is BJ is here to be with the me I never felt I had time to be when we were dating. In some ways, its like he is finally getting to KNOW me.

3. With time, excitement cools while you find yourself falling in love more and more. I always thought that butterflies in the stomach were synonymous with being in love. But the butterflies are getting more and more rare while, at the same time, I am finding myself staying awake some nights staring at BJ amazed that I love him more today than on our wedding day (and for the record, I loved him a lot that day).

When I told Mom our plans for our 6-month anniversary, she laughed and said we sounded like an old married couple. I actually don't think I mind being an old married couple.

An evening at the Gensic home which included an inept spinner, a lesbian, a formidable loser, a vicious cat, and me

Using the money Grandma and Grandpa Gensic gave us for Christmas, BJ and I got a pretty nice camera. The other night while having a game night with Josh and Allie, we decided to utilize this new nifty gadget by recording an evening spent with friends. So here is the game of life as played by Josh, Allie, BJ, and me with lengthy distractions by Tony.
The above is a picture of the spinner on the game of life. Incidently, Josh is handicapped when it comes to spinning spinners. This resulted in Allie, the game's technician, acquiring hundreds of thousands of dollars off of fixing the technical difficulty.

This is me and Allie losing a turn. Apparently plastic cars can get flat tires.

This is Tony distracting us. Oh, he's so cute, says Allie and I.

This is BJ prior to losing in a humiliating defeat.

This is Allie coming out of the closet. Josh took it pretty well.

This is Tony when he decided to bite Allie's sock.

This is Tony when he decided to never, ever, ever let go of Allie's sock (approximently one minute later).

This is Tony falling asleep while keeping a firm grip on Allie's sock. His perseverance is startling.

The long, long, long, long road that leads home

The past week has been eventful, both in good, bad, happy, and tearful ways. So here it goes.

Saturday we drove the thirteen hours to Illinois, and Sunday we went the 6 hours to Indiana to spend time with more extended family. I love seeing BJ's family, so we had a really good time. One of the highlights were when Grandma Gensic called my husband a dumb sh** because he kept buzzing her for saying illegal words in Taboo. We traveled back to Illinois on Tuesday, spent more time with the new Mom and Dad as well as Allison and Breandan (my sister-in-law and her fiance). It was really hard to leave Thursday, especially when Dad hugged me and whispered in my ear "You sure are good for that boy." That was definitely one of the highlights of the week.

After driving 13 hours Thursday to get to Abilene, we headed out early Friday morning for San Antonio (4 hours) so that I could be the Matron of Honor in Theresa's wedding. I know that the title makes this kind of obvious, and it's a bit sappy to say, but that was really, really an honor. I've been a bridesmaid twice before, but being a Matron of Honor was completely different. I had a lot of responsibilities, but it was nice being able to do something for Theresa. One of the other best moments from the week was at the reception when I got to do a toast for Sean and Theresa. I talked about how I had seen Theresa earlier in the day the first time they went out together, and I had given her the piece of gum she was chewing when they first kissed, which of course made me responsible for the whole affair. People laughed in all the right parts, and I managed to hold off the crying until the very end of the toast when I got sappy.

Although the wedding was beautiful, it was a hard day because I knew Theresa would be leaving for Kentucky in two days, and she did leave today. I'm so happy for her, but it's a little hard knowing she is so far away.

We went back to Menard Sunday and had Christmas with my family. I love spending time with them and had so much fun. But since I was so tired and it was so different having Christmas a week late, everything just kind of hit me: I had spent a Christmas away from my family, and me and Theresa are now grown up and married, and everything keeps changing. I ended up crying a lot. But I still managed to win a few board games.

Tonight at about six, me and BJ left Menard. I was driving, and about ten miles out of Menard, I hit a deer. A car had be coming in the opposite lane, and the lights had blinded me just long enough that I didn't see it. We were very blessed. We are all safe, and the car seemed to only have body damage. Hopefully, insurance will cover it. It was my first wreck, and I am still a little shaky. My family came and got us, and Bro drove us to Abilene in his car. BJ, myself, Tony, and Sienna are now all four safely tucked away, ready for a long night's sleep. And if you were counting, it was about 50 hours on the road.