Tales from the Love Shaque: Less than a week!

Til my birthday!! I'll be 42. Surprisingly, I'm not ashamed to admit that. Turning 40 was a lot easier than 30 was. I cried the night before I turned 30. Of course, it probably helped that we'd been on vacation for #40 and we were at Michigan's Adventure for the day. Sort of took my mind off it. Plus I didn't get any cake or presents. Grr.

Has it really been almost 2 weeks since I posted other than the linkup last? Sheesh.

We did Painting with a Twist on the 16th - it was a lot of fun, if rushed. We had a 2 hour class with a half hour added on before and after for "social hour" and we still ran over. Ooops.

So imagine this....a nice beach scene, with palm tree, sailboat, lounge chair, sand castle & bucket. I think a lot of us (15 in the class) took a bit too much artistic license and I got the impression the teacher wasn't entirely too happy with us, altho she put on a happy face. But hey - we had a good time!

So here we have Miss Angela's work....the teacher was in mid-sentence explaining how to blend colors and suddenly said "is that lightning??" Angel was sitting in the first seat, in plain view and yes. it's lightning, And people falling off the sailboat, and a shark, and a lifeguard ignoring the person in the water, a Coast Guard helicopter and a rough sea. Quite awesome.

Oh, this one is mine. I wasn't happy with my clouds, so it ended up being a thunderhead with a rain shaft. Instead of a sailboat, I have an aircraft carrier (with a 72!!) and that darn blue chair kicked my butt, so I painted over it and put a towel and cooler and mine & Randy's initials. I was going to add a fighter jet or two, but when I tried to somewhat keep them small, they looked like bugs, so they got painted over. Oh, I skipped the palm tree shadow, too. They look like giant starfish.

Randy did a good job of following directions, his is pretty close to what was being taught. I love his clouds! I kept watching him and I still couldn't do them like he did. He does have a little guy in the sailboat, tho.

There was a kid next to me who did a pirate ship and had a dotted line and big X on his beach, with a treasure chest next to it. We had a good laugh about that, too.

So, Miss Graceful Angela went to the sports medicine guy last Monday about her ankle that has bothered her since she sprained it in January. He prescribed her 4-6 weeks of physical therapy, which is a good thing since that very same night she went with her usual bunch of dance friends to the gym (which was closed due to the heat) and ended up at one of those trampoline places. And sprained her good ankle. So she's getting therapy on both ankles. But that didn't stop her from going to the fair for 4 days, 10+ hours each day! This second sprain must not have been anywhere near as bad as the first one. When they came home, all 4 girls pushed into the back door at once to tell me. And she was just limping then. When she got the first sprain, she couldn't put any weight on it for quite a while.

I'm sure her teachers love her for that! One evening recently, Miss Gabby stopped over to personally deliver a gift to Angel. They are having the teachers choose the kids they want to teach solos, duets, trios to. So of course Gabby grabbed her & Katie (the Dynamic Duo) for duet! Angel had to end up texting the owner of the studio to find out who her solo teacher is. Miss Naome was a pleasant surprise. Gabby is more hard-core, in your face action - she excels at hiphop where Naome is more into lyrical and jazz. Angel's wanting to ask if she can choose a song from the movie Burlesque. Should be interesting!

Other than that, not much is going on. Oh yeah, We had a chat and she has decided to wait til January to start college. She understands that she needs to find a job and help pay her way thru dance.

Last weekend was torture for me. I had the fun of a mammogram on Saturday morning and donated blood on Sunday morning. Squish & poke! It actually took longer to donate blood than it did for the mammogram. I was out of the house for only about 45 minutes. And that included travel time to the hospital. Quick and to the point, that's how I like it!

Saturday afternoon was a car wash for the dance studio. I hadn't planned on going, but ended up staying for the whole thing. If I'd known that - I wouldn't have worn jean capris or a black t-shirt! It was chilly in the morning, but it warmed up a lot. But they had a great turn-out for the carwash. It was pretty steady stream of cars for the first 2 hours, even with a line a couple times! The auto parts place around the corner donated their back parking lot that happened to have a water connection and also the car wash solution, buckets and sponges. Pretty awesome of them!

So today was her "well-child" check up and she got yelled at for going on a trampoline when she'd been so sick. The doc said she was tough, since most people were sicker than she was with less of an illness. But not so tough that she shouldn't be taking it easy! Apparently a double virus is what caused the hepatitis and her bilirubin levels in her liver (normal is 30) were up over 500!! She could have ruptured her spleen if she'd bumped her side just right. So she's supposed to be drinking 60 oz of fluids a day (which will be struggle for her) until her followup next Monday. Yay!

Randy emailed me today and his boss/coworker/higher up guy (whatever he is now) of many years gave his notice today. This guy's been driving in from Canada every day - an hour trip, not counting the border crossing. Which is insane, IMHO. A lot of the people who have been keeping him sane have moved on, so I seriously think it's Randy's turn! That place pisses me off. He gets paid salary, so all those nights he stays til 10 or later - it's not overtime. I wave the BS flag. Grrr. They make my blood boil. I keep praying that a new opportunity shows itself to him.

So that's all that's going on. I'm starting to get into the Halloween mood, with stuff showing up in stores. And that fact that it's downright chilly at night! And I've seen some trees trying to change colors. I've decided all I need is 2 more skeleton cats. And I'm going to try my first non-static prop for my cemetery this year, using a Shiatusu massager. Fingers crossed this turns out!

Look how cute this is! A woman came walking up to Timmy's and her little boy was driving this police car. He parked it so carefully before they went inside! Completely hysterical! I was sitting at the light at the corner, but had to pull back into the lot to take this picture.