I'm back. Exhausted, exhilarated, uplifted. Manymanymany more details will be coming, but I can say this: I met the delightfully zany SARK. And she already knew who I was. How's that for excitement? ps ~ if you're reading this and I met you last night, either for the first time or just for the first time face to face, it was wonderful to see you. Hope you had as much fun as I did.

Another day of excitement... I'm going to see SARK tonight with my wonderful Mom!!! I'm bringing: a camera, a copy of my favorite SARK book {Inspiration Sandwich}, bubbles, and a small bucket of chalk to give to her as a thanks for all her inspiring ways. Am I giddy and a little star-struck? You betcha!

This really gets me steamed.

SO excited.... I just put the package containing the artwork for the CD I've been working on in the FedEx box. Soon it will be winging its way to New York, where it will be pressed and printed and become a real CD. {My voice and my art will be on it!} On the way back from the box I picked a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace growing wild and tucked it into my hair as I sashayed back to work. Think it's a coincidence that it's Succulent Woman Day today? Oh, I think not....

Today is Succulent Woman Day {according to my SARK calendar}! suc·cu·lent (suk'-yoo-lent) adj. 1. Full of juice or sap; juicy. 2. Botany. Having thick, fleshy, water-storing leaves or stems. 3. Highly interesting or enjoyable; delectable Thanks to all of you who are the living version of #3. I'm glad you're a part of my life.

Yahoo and hooray, I'm back from vacation. I read, slept, read, hiked, read outside, painted, slept... well, you get the picture. It took me a couple of days to loosen up {of a couple of bad paintings} and do a few fun and good ones. We saw in the Solstice at 5 am, on the dock at the lake, watching the sun come up, and greeted the Summer with all the birds, fish, and dragonflies around us. After all this nature, it's going to be kind of a shock to sit in front of a computer all day today... maybe I can slip away at lunch for a walk or something.

Thanks to all who wrote a nice note, I'm feeling better. I need to refocus on my art, which is why I'm taking a week away from the computer to paint and read and do yoga and just be with my hubby. {I promise to scan in stuff when I get back.} So in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the site. ps ~ Today I was linked to at Dress Up Games... if you haven't played dressup with the French Toast Girl, now's your chance.

Feeling rather down about art, design, other people's opinions of it, and web pages in general. Any cheery thoughts are greatly appreciated.

I am really digging this new John Mayer song, "No Such Thing": "I'd like to think the best of me Is still hiding Up my sleeve They love to tell you Stay inside the lines But something's better On the other side..."

My day started off just right this morning — with yoga and french toast. Plan on repeating tomorrow and as many days after that as I can manage. It's funny; I've been talking for so long about starting up yoga again and have been doing so sporadically, and just as I was about to heave another sigh of I-really-have-to-get-my-act-together-ness, Paul comes home with 2 yoga mats, bricks, straps, and orders us this DVD with multiple workouts on it. I stopped in mid-sigh, surprised out of it. Instead of thinking about it, he just did it. And planned for the two of us to do it together too. I joke about "butt-kicking for goodness" as my battle cry, but sometimes when I need a butt-kick to get me back on track, Paul's example gets me there.

Something really annoying happened to me today where I was exposed to rude, inconsiderate behavior. I wouldn't even mention it except for the fact that I was proud of my reaction — I behaved politely and professionally, and I stood up for myself. In the past I would have been a wimp and agreed with everything the other person said because I could maybe see their side of it too. I can still see their side, but when people get caught in some wrong-doing they try to laugh it off, and I wasn't going to laugh along just to make her feel better. {Note: this was not office related. Work is groovy.} The evening took a much nicer turn when I went over to a friend's to sing. We're not certain what just yet; we just enjoy the singing together part of it. {Luckily she can play the piano, since my piano repertoire is limited to "Martha My Dear" and various other Beatles songs; "My Cherie Amour"; and the ever-popular "Fish Heads".} In any case, harmony ensued and I had a wonderful time.

What Jelly Belly flavor are you? I'm — Find your flavor here!

This is actually not too much of a surprise, since I just bought shampoo with the delightful name of "Tangerine Tickle." The marketing folks got it just right: I bought it for the name {and the fact that it was 97¢!}. Where else can you find something that cheap that puts a grin on your face? This is going to have to get added to the toasty list, because it's waaaaaay under $20. linkage: Today Paul McCartney weds again. Good for them.

This weekend Paul and I went out for bagels and noticed the girl behind the counter had a brightly-colored card pinned to her shirt above her name tag. Being super nosy friendly, I asked her about it. It was a coupon for a free hug. "Yeah, the hug lady comes in every weekend and makes sure each one of us has one on. It's supposed to remind us to be courteous and friendly towards everyone we come into contact with today." How amazing is that?! They don't even know her name, they just call her the hug lady; and apparently we missed her by 5 minutes. I have a plan to lay in wait to meet her and to give her a hug.

The recitals are done! DONE, I tell you! I did the woo-hoo-recitals-are-done-dance last night, which looked something like this {click on "Who's Your Daddy" and you've got it}. Tonight we're partying with the other teachers and their spouses. I'm a little down that it's the same night that Beatlemania is coming to town, and I really wanted to go. The only time I've ever seen them was in college, when Heidi and I sat right in front and danced to EVERY song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Paperback Writer"; you name it, we danced to it. We impressed the guy playing John so much that he jumped down off the stage to dance with us to "Lady Madonna", all dressed in his Sergeant Pepper uniform.

from a GREAT book I'm reading right now: "For God is anything but sterile, and 'the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of man.' I want God to be foolish. I want being-in-God to invovle a certain amount of Dionysian giggling, rude snorts, pennywhistles piping through woods where there are bonfires blazing and figures leaping in very ancient dances. Maybe others want God to be black-and-white, a figure of neat divisions and clear-cut law, but I want God to be in flagrant swirling Technicolor. I have seen what it is to be a Very Good Girl, and I'm not sure that's what God's goodness is like. I think maybe God's goodness has a fair streak of mischief. Or so I hope." ~ from Angels & Dragons: Of Sorrow, God and Healing by Molly Wolf

Night 3 of 5 piano recitals It's one of those "I'm up for a challenge, bring it on!" kind of days. I think it's because I started my day with a complete nutritious breakfast, which consisted of french toast with strawberry syrup, whipped cream, and fresh-picked-right-out-of-my-garden-two-minutes-ago strawberries; and a cup of tea with fresh mint leaves, also of the f-p-r-o-o-m-g variety. {Insert huge contented sigh here.} Wearing a sundress and picking strawberries on a sunshiny morning can't help but put me in a good mood. The only thing that would have made it better would be to eat breakfast with my husband. Or to have him play some nice piano breakfast music to eat french toast by. That would work too. ps: the illustration above, which has nothing to do with strawberries, is for the song "Harmony Tricks". Paul wrote the music, I did all the illustrations. Creating books together is pretty fun.

Last night I was talking with one of Paul's adult students about Beatles records and what the B-side was to "Yesterday." {Never mind that I wasn't born at the time, I know this stuff.} He pointed out that most kids today don't have a clue what a B-side is! Okay, his kids know, but they're the exception. Then this morning I heard that the new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary is adding in some new words, but one of the ones they're taking out is "record-changer." How sad.

Tomorrow night is the first of many piano recital nights! There are so many adult students that they have the first night all to themselves; and then the following nights will be a mixture of all ages of kids for the rest of the week. It means we have manymany nights of dressing up, taking pictures, clapping enthusiastically, and slicing up ice cream cake. We've gotten it down to a science: where to take the best photos, how to hand out programs, when to take the cake out so it's sliceable but not melted, how to make sure it gets eaten. I'm really looking forward to the whole thing. And I'm also looking forward to the end of the whole thing, because that means summer's officially started and I get waaaaaaaay more Paul hours of the day. More Paul = a good thing. While Paul's printing programs and setting up chairs, I've been under self-imposed house arrest to finish up the CD cover. So far I've done the front cover painting and two versions of the back cover to try out. {So far, so good!} It's funny; I always need to do multiple versions and then I almost always pick the first one I came up with. I think this is some kind of throwback to college, where we had to bring in 50 thumbnails of a project to show we had thought it through. It never hurts, I guess. When I was in my senior portfolio class, we had a summer assignment to come up with 100 prospective logos for your letterhead, resume, portfolio — by the first day of class I only could come up with 97 but I hoped that would probably be okay. Apparently, I was the only one who actually did anywhere near that many; most of the class did 20! Oh well, I've always been a teacher-pleaser. Anyway, the winning logo for me was somewhere in the 50's, so I guess it was a good idea. {Incidentally, the class picked it out as being the one that most represented me, and it was the little girl with braids over there on the right who became french toast girl over the years.}