BJ's first day of school

As sick as this might sound, I feel a wee bit like a proud mother right now. BJ had his first day of school yesterday, and, of course, he was fabulous! His only real hang-up was one section of eleventh graders. But anyways, here are some pictures of BJ, his classroom, and what we've been doing the past couple of weeks, which have, in general, been spent almost entirely in BJ's room getting everything ready.

This picture was taken last week while we started the process of decorating BJ's room. Here, he is putting a border around his bulletin board. Somehow, I never pictured BJ doing this. Perhaps my Elementary-Ed.-major friends from college, but not BJ.

This is BJ and I after day two of decorating. By this time, we had done the time line for BJ's room. All LCA classrooms are required to do a time line, so I did one for BJ using brown packing paper and black paint. We tore one edge of the paper and then crumpled it up to give it the "I just found this in the Dead Sea" look that all Bible classrooms should have.

BJ was given this poster of Jesus, so I (stupidly) volunteered to paint all 13 apostles and Paul to put around this. I, being me, forgot this little promise until 9 o'clock the night before Meet-the-Teacher. So BJ and I had to really buckle down. We cut out the packing paper, he burned the edges with the candles, and I started to work. I painted until three o'clock that morning, and then I woke up at seven and continued painting until noon. We got the paintings up hours before the parents started showing up. On Sunday evening, we laminated them, which accounts for the shininess in the pictures.

This is a close-up of Matthew. I'm rather fond of Matthew.

Last but not least, this is picture of BJ after his first day of teaching. He had been wearing a tie, but that was torn off pretty much moments after the bell rang. Anyways, I think he looks pretty professional.

Remember that cartoon, Pinky and the Brain...

Yesterday, BJ walked into my art room a little disgruntled to tell me that Tony, once again, had ran out the door, and I needed to go get him. Tony, like all cats, is always trying to escape so that he can pursue his true goal in life, that of taking over the world and enslaving all non-cat beings. I got up from the project I was working on, went to the door, and, as always, Gus followed closely behind. When I opened the door, Tony had only ventured about 10 feet into the yard, but even 10 feet can be a lot when your trying to catch a mad cat. Fortunately, Gus sensed that there was a mission needing to be done, so he ran out in front of me, tackled Tony, and held him down until I could get to him and safely bring him in.

I say Gus sensed something, but that is probably incorrect wording. After all, Gus doesn't really ever sense anything. It is more likely that he saw Tony and thought "Ooh! Kitty-cat! Tackle!" Yes, that's probably what happened. But whatever it was, Tony has once again been foiled in his attempt to take over the world.

I'm an artist...we'll leave it at that

Whenever I tell people my major/profession, I always get interesting responses. It is actually half the fun of being an artist. You get to her people say "Oh, how fun," or "How do you make money with that?" Today at church, I got one of the more interesting responses I've ever received.

We have started attending a nice Church of Christ in Lewisville. The people there are extremely friendly, and everyone wants to introduce themselves and talk with us for a long time. Today, a woman in her sixties came to introduce herself. She asked BJ what he did, and he had such a nice, simple answer: "I'm going to be teaching Bible at Legacy Christian Academy." Then she asked me what I was doing. I've begun to dread this question because it is at the moment rather complicated, but I dove into my answer: "I am an artist. I'm trying to book private art and piano lessons, and I am also working on launching a handmade wedding invitation business." She gave me a weird tilt-of-the-head look and then said, "Well you don't meet people like you every day." I wasn't sure how to respond, so I fell back on my normal response - giggle softly and look at BJ for social rescue. It worked as always, and we left for a nice lunch with the preacher and some members.

The lady's response to my answer made me laugh, but it has been on my mind all day. What am I doing with my life? I haven't really got a clue. I'm chasing a bunch of neat sounding ideas, and if they don't work, I dread the defeat of applying for jobs that have nothing to do with art, and if they do work, I don't know if I have the talent, perseverance, or any thing else to actually succeed at them. Some days, it feels like it might be easier to just go back to being an office manager somewhere, have a simple answer for people at church, and do art for a few glorious hours on the weekends. But I've blabbed long enough. This is the twenties, right? We are scared and not sure what we're doing for a decade. Hey Bro- is this existential despair, or what exactly?

Little Tony and the Big Pillows of Doom

Today, Tony decided he, like many cat's in the world, wanted to sit in a window sill and disdainfully look out at the stray cats and other poppers of this world. He chose the window sill above our guest bedroom bed to be his throne. In order to mount this throne, he hopped onto the really cute pillows I recently decorated the bed with, and then made a leap up towards the sill. Unfortunately, slickly painted wood has little grip, so after a good bit of struggle, he plopped down into the pillows, which are so soft and fluffy, they just rolled him onto my computer hard drive which (not so softly or fluffily) rolled him onto the floor.

Most cats might get discouraged at such humiliation (especially since me and BJ were pointing and laughing) but not my resilient little Tonster. Nope, he hopped back to the pillows, leaped towards the sill that, strangely enough, still had no grip, and ricocheted right back to the pillows. He lands on his back cradled between to large pillows(one at his head, the other at his behind) and was left completely immobile. At this point, I believe the humiliation (and our sounds of uproarious laughter) did finally get to him. He seemed to just resign himself to reclining between to ridiculously soft and fluffy pillows, staring disgruntled into the purple, patterned fabric of his prison. I eventually got my breath back and took mercy on him. I picked him up and placed him in his window where he gallantly resumed his reign as the master and lord of all things. I did not see him get down from the window, but I examined the area, and I am happy to say nothing is broken.

TONY'S HOME!!!

When we moved to Frisco, we didn't bring Tony with us because we were planning on immediately heading up north to see BJ's family, and I didn't want to leave him by himself in an unfamiliar place. So we left Tony with his favorite babysitters, Josh and Allie. Unfortunately, car trouble led to a cancellation of our trip and a delay in being able to go to Abilene to retrieve out favorite feline. Thankfully, though, we were able to get down this weekend.

During all the move, I managed to lose our cat carrier. Tony hasn't gone on a ride that lasted longer than five minutes since he was a baby when I brought him to Abilene from Menard. BJ was a little nervous about Tony roaming free in our car for the four hour trip to Frisco, but with money too tight to go buy a cat carrier, we decided to chance it. Of course, I'm not sure what we were worried about it. Tony, being a cat who has been raised with dog's ten times his size, is really not scared of anything, including a car. I had him in my lap ready to comfort him when he freaked out, but instead, he jumped in the backseat and started cleaning Sienna. Eventually, he settled down between Gus and Sienna and took a nap. As much as Tony would hate hearing me say this, it seems he is really just one of the dogs. Of course, he's the fearless, intelligent, cunning dog, unlike the other two.

Randomness

My brother has tagged me to do a blog post which follows these guidelines:

* We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
* There are additional rules that I am choosing to not follow, simply because I don't know enough people to tag.

So, after a few days of careful contemplation, here are my eight random facts/habits:

1. When I was a young child, around four or five, I had nightmares about Saddam Hussein killing me.
2. I like to wrap plain Lays potato chips or plain Ruffles potato chips in lettuce and eat them after I've had a sandwich for lunch. I like the salty taste of the chip mixed with the taste of lettuce.
3. One of the first evenings after BJ and I started dating, I asked him what his favorite word was during one of our late night conversations. To me, the sounds of words are a fascinating topic that I could talk for hours about. Unfortunately, this is not true for everyone. I believe BJ may have encountered his first doubts about dating me on this evening. By the way, my favorite words are taffeta and Chantilly.
4. When I can't relax and fall asleep, I go through the alphabet trying to think of names I wouldn't mind naming my children for each letter: Adam, Bridget, Carson, etc. D is an exceptionally difficult letter for me.
5. Last night, I watched a DVD of Murder, She Wrote episodes and stitched a tea-pot Christmas ornament. I'm pretty sure this alone makes me a freak.
6. Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my Grandma Pierce's house. We would have monster drawing competitions on paper towels everyday. I would try to make my monsters really spiky because Grandma said it made her back itch.
7. When I get sad, I like to watch the Princess Diaries or read books that were written for young girls. I think this is because I have an aversion to growing up.
8. I've often had dreams about kissing random people. Once, I dreamed I had cheated on BJ with Bob Marley. I felt so guilty, I was sure BJ was going to dump me. Also, kissed Dr. Fleer, a professor from Rochester College who comes to lectureship at ACU and who taught BJ in undergrad. I felt so guilty about this dream, it took me several weeks to admit it to BJ.

WE HAVE INTERNET...FINALLY!!!!!

After feeling fairly isolated from the rest of the world, we now have internet! To celebrate, I am giving all my friends and family out there a virtual tour of our new home. I regret that we don't have a good picture of the master bedroom yet, but it doesn't look very different from what it looked like in Abilene. Only now it has two huge closets, a connecting bathroom, and tons of space. Come on in!

Obviously, this is the front of the house. Boring, I know. But I just couldn't start a tour without showing this part.





This is our formal dining room. I really love this room. Growing up, we always had the piano in our dining room so that dad, Bro, and I could entertain our guest immediately following the meal. I've always wanted to continue this tradition. Unfortunately, we do not have chairs yet for our table, but I'm working on that.

I was not able to fit the whole kitchen into this picture, but I did get half. The other half is just the stove top, fridge, and some more cabinets. This will probably come as a shock to most of the people who know me at all, but I actually have enough cabinets that I have one empty shelf! It's a miracle.


This is the first half of our living room. It consist of a futon for reading that is placed directly under a sky-light. I've already spent many hours reading by the natural light. It is one of my favorite places in the house. Also, we have a really nice little bar here. I'm also working on tracking down some bar stools.

This is the second half of our living room. Our furniture actually fits in this place. And, thanks Mom, for the lamps. They look great!





We have a fireplace!!! I've always wanted one of this, but this is my first time to have one. Dad's painting is the perfect piece for the mantle.







This is the guest bathroom. If you come to visit me, you will take care of your business here.











This is the guest bedroom. The quilt was a gift from my grandmother when I graduated from high school. It won the blue ribbon at a county fair. I love this quilt.










Here, of course, is my art studio. This picture was taken before I started pursuing three separate art projects. It is now a disaster as all art studios should be. hehe.






This is our two car garage and our basket ball goal. So, Bro, are you ready to clobber me and BJ at a game of b-ball?










Finally, this is a picture of our new ice maker. It is really awesome having an unlimited supply of ice.