Picasso I ain't!

Yesterday Hecate and I met in Northern Civilization to hang out. We met early and left early because of the HUGE winter storm that was headed our way.

After I arrived 25 minutes late because I overslept like the dumbass I can sometimes be, we dined at Arbys and got caught up on the usual stuff. (I had to tell her about a former Sam of mine who wanted a date but then proceed to tell me about having to come up with an excuse (LIE!) to feed his fiancee... OMG! WTF! WAJ! [What A Jerk!]) Then we headed out to paint pottery.

I have zero artistic ability. I can barely draw stick figures. I have no talent when it comes to painting or drawing or sketching or knitting or crocheting or anything artsy or crafty. I love art history and I love to look at art, but to create it... well, for me, it's not my strong point. All that being said, I had a great time.

After getting slightly lost on the way to the studio, we finally arrived. We were the only ones in the brightly painted shop, other than the owner, which was good since I asked lots of questions and we moved about a lot to get supplies and stuff. We browsed the bisque pieces and each selected a coffee mug to paint, ironically. We also selected the SAME piece to paint, double irony.

We got our paints and brushes. I sort of had a vision of what I wanted it to look like- something to do with coffee, pink and shoes. But when one has no artistic ability, one needs to describe her vision to someone who can do more than straight lines and produce the desired art on said coffee mug. ie: The woman who owned the place drew a shoe on my mug for me.

Hecate and I sat and painted in contented silence. I think she was amazed that I could be quiet for so long. The radio was on to music I liked and we chatted and listened to music and painted. It was a quite a fun time, at least for me. My mug looked like... I tried, while Hecate's, on the other hand, looked beautiful with her Chinese symbol and lettering. It turned out great and nice and neat and professional looking, completely unlike mine...

And in one week we can go back and pick up our "creations" after they are fired in the kiln. And I promise to show pictures here next week when we get them back.

I love doing stuff like this, even though I have no art ability. And lemme be the first to tell you, I don't try and pretend to have art ability either. (I'm also not one of those people who say they have no art ability and then can draw a complete replica of the Sistine Chapel and be all modest. I really can't do ART!). Several years ago when Mac was just little and I was dating Canadian Sam we painted at a similar type of place and it just stressed to out because mine always looked awful compared to everyone else's work. this time it didn't matter, as long as I had fun doing it- and I did. Don't sweat the small stuff and this was small. Important, but small. And fun, which is all that matters!

It seems that all my friends and family have some artsy ability, or crafty ability, whereas I'm lacking. I like to try and I have fun. I do like to mess around and scrapbook, which is crafty but I will never make a page that will be featured in a magazine. I just like to give it a whirl and if I'm please with the results, then I keep trying. If I frustrate myself into NOT having FUN, then I stop. I don't give up, but I realize this is something I'm trying as a hobby or for fun and if it's not FUN, and not a life requirement, then I'm just not gonna do it. Life is made up of too many things we MUST do that aren't really all that fun so why add on more?

So, painting pottery scores high on the fun list. And I can't wait to go back and make a saucer to match my mug... or paint one of those cute frog statues... can I have a pink frog?

No stadingstill life,
Maggie

Writers Converge

What a great response I got to my post called The Writing Nook! Thanks for that!

And fellow bloggers Bragger and Lynn also want participate in their own way, so I'm going to post the topics here, at least until everyone gets tired of it!

Now, if any of you want to write along, fee free. Let me know if you do and I can link you to my posts each Saturday, which is when I'll be having The Writing Nook- if you want. or I can add your writing to my blog- love me some cut and paste!

Now Hecate and I read each other's writing in advance and we pick our favs from each other's work. If anyone wants me to read their stuff ahead of time and select a writing I like the best, let me know and we can work something out (send me a comment and let me know not to publish it...).

Here are the topics for this week:

Jan. 11 ~ You are in a motel room

Jan. 12 ~ Write about acceptable losses

Jan. 13 ~ After midnight

Jan. 14 ~ Write about the horizon

Jan. 15 ~ It’s Saturday afternoon. You’re not at home

Jan. 16 ~ Write about a bed

Now remember this comes out of a book that has a journal-a-day writing so that's why the dates are included... This should be lots of fun!

Happy Writing,
Maggie

Satchels and Shoes- you can never have enough pink!

Here is my pink alligator Liz Claiborne bag and my pink ostrich Fatbaby boots. In front of my pretty pink Christmas tree. On my beautiful afghan made by Curley.

I bought myself the boots when I lived in the Wild West. I love these boots, but if you note the rubber soles, you'll see you can't wear them to ride or you'd be tangled in the stirrups if something went wrong; they were more of a fashion statement. And a funny story about the bag: my friend the Photographer was just starting her photo business and asked me to help her shoot a wedding. As payment she gave me this bag! I love it!

In Shoes We Trust,
Maggie

The Writing Nook- "The Amazon broke the Princess"

So my friend Hecate bought a great book with a daily journal topic and writing prompts. It's to help the lost writer, or the person who needs idea for writing and journaling. It's a very cool book.

One discussion led to another and she is emailing me the topics a week at a time. I'm writing my responses, sending them back to her, and she is picking her favorite among my writings. Then I am going to post her favorite one of mine of the week. I'm doing the same to her. And then I'm going to post her favorite here each Saturday- something a bit different than a meme. You never know what you're going to get with this little project.

The weekends are a veritable wasteland in the blogger world so I thought this would be a good place to introduce "The Writing Nook".

Here is the first one. The topic was "write about a wound"! I hope you all enjoy!

When I was in the 9^th grade, a big horsey girl who was the star center on the basketball team was assigned as my guard in a PE class basketball game. I didn’t NOT play sports; I danced but had zero coordination for anything to do with a ball. And I hate gym class, considering it one more thing to make my high school years miserable.

And I knew it would not go well when Ms Jock was blocking me. I couldn’t touch the ball without her plowing me over. And since she towered over me by about 13 inches and had played basketball since she could hold a bottle, nor could I block her or be defensive or offensive or whatever I was supposed to be doing. I could barely stay on my feet let alone do anything remotely related to “playing” this stupid game in a stupid all girls PE class as a stupid frosh in stupid high school.

Crunch! She went up for a rebound and I got in her way and she landed on my foot. Which promptly broke. And I promptly lay on the floor writhing in agony. Of course no one would listen to me when I said it was broken. The super jock gym teacher just drug me to the sidelines where I sat on the sideline with ice on my foot. Then I hobbled to the office and waited for my mom to get me. She did, and took me to the doctor's office.

At the doctor office we took of my shoe and sock and it was GROSS. My foot, which was normally a size 7 and thin and milky white, was now double in size and so purple it was black. It was nasty. My toes were resembling Vienna Sausages. My ankle bones looked like buttons in the midst of the swelling.

The x-rays showed nothing broken through the swelling. But lo and behold, two days later it was x-rayed again because I still cried when I had to walk on it, and it was broken. It was still swollen, still black, still couldn’t move my still sausage like toes. It was broken. I got a cast, one of those old fashioned plaster ones. When the doctor put the cast on he and I sang most of the score to the Broadway musical The Music Man. (I don't know why. It's just the way my doctor was.) My dad painted a huge Christmas tree on it since this happened 3 weeks before the holiday.

Good news- I was done with PE for the rest of the year!

I'm a writin' fool,

Maggie

Click here to read my favorite Hecate writing out of this week's assignments!

Is the plural of penis peni?

Farrago (I bet he's wondering how he's drug into a post with THIS title) mentioned the Craigslist website and something called meet-ups over on his blog. I read about his success and great experiences & I thought this sounded like fun. The way he described it was like single folks meeting at places for outings- dinners, shows, museums, etc. I moved back here and thought I would see if North Civilization had such an activity on Craigslist.

I Googled it and click all the right city info and events and such. And guess what I get when I hunt for meet-ups in my area? Pictures of penises- lots and lots of penises.

After being slightly embarrassed and mortified, I became sort of intrigued. It was like a bad car accident and I couldn't look away. I mean, after seeing about 10 pictures of penises, I was sort of desensitized by the actual "members." (side note- I think penises just prove that if there was a God she had a sense of humor through the creation of the penis. They are JUST not attractive. Useful, yes. Most of the time pleasurable if used correctly, yes. Pretty- NO!!) But I became more interested the actual wording of their "ads" for meet-ups.

First, I think these guys are shameless and wacko. They will be the ones who leave your dead body in a seedy motel room he's rented by the hour. He'll use the skin of your body for his costume. Lotion in the bucket, anyone? The scary factor aside, though...

This was hilarious! Penises everywhere! Of course they were all erect and these guys have no idea what women are gonna think of as hot... First, if you're going to take a picture of your penis and post it on the Internet, the least you could do before shooting the picture is to kick your dirty underpants off the floor and out of the way. Or don't take a picture of your wang with a stack of kids' board games piled in the background. Or a cluster of WEDDING PICTURES on the shelf behind you!!!!!! And have these guys heard of trimming the forest? PLEASE! A hirsute is nasty!

And they say things like "I don't even want to know your name, I just want to f*** you..." or "married man looking for secret fun" or "Handsome 66 year old man looking for an 18-21 year old female to spoil, spank and fondle- light S&M to be expected" and he had a picture of his dong and his naked, red, saggy, recently spanked, wrinkly, old man ass. NO! And NSA means "no strings attached" if you answer an ad... OMG- wrong, wrong, wrong.

So, of course I have to tell Hecate about this and she sends me a link to a blog site called Desperately Seeking... Something? The creators of this site have taken the nasty penis shots from Craigslist, compiled them onto a blog, and wrote their own captions... OMG! This is some seriously funny stuff! It's adult content- you have been warned.

Moral of this story- Craigslist is scary, that many penises on a web page are scary, and never trust Farrago. By the way, I still don't know the answer to my original question that titled this whole post!

There are times when being blind wouldn't be so bad,
Maggie

TMI-The " Would you rather..." Edition

1. Would you rather be stranded on an island alone or with someone you dislike/don't get along with? I think I would be freaking out so much on an island alone that I would even take along someone I don't like. I can always go to the other side of the island if it's too unbearable. Since I have no camping abilities or outdoor knowledge, I would like another human around.

2. Would you rather accidentally walk in on your parents having sex or have them walk in on you? Since my mother is dead, that would be super creepy for me to walk in on them... so I guess I'll go with them walk in on me (Though both of these options are gross!)

3. Would you rather be snapped by paparazzi during a nipple slip or while exiting a car with out any underwear? (guys, consider similar circumstances) Nipple slip. You just can't live down the no panties thing... (Brittany, Sharon anyone?)

4. Would you rather not have sex for two years or not be able to use the Internet for two years? No sex for 2 years. Been there, done that and could do it again.

5. Would you rather find true love or 1 million dollars? A million dollars, easy. I've had true love- show me the money! I've never had a million bucks before.

See where TMI all began...

Kissing and telling,
Maggie

Made one laugh and one mad- not bad for a day's work

A long time ago in a lifetime, far far away, Hecate and I ate dinner at Cheddar's, where I proceeded to get rip roaring drunk on their super yummy margaritas which were the special that day. Peach- I think.

I was loud and obnoxious. I threw lettuce at people and on the floor. I made phone calls- drunk dialing. It was bad. I was bad. I cannot believe she didn't disown me on the spot. I can't believe we didn't get thrown out. I can't believe they let us back in last weekend! Thank the goddess she was sober and smart. I would tell you more about that day... but I don't remember anything else- it's a little hazy.

So, fast forward to last week, and Hecate and I got together in North Civilization to chat books, eat and hit used bookstores, and maybe see a movie. Since I picked the eatery the first time we hung out, it was her turn this time- Cheddar's, her fav place as well as the scene of my past drunken crimes.

The waitress said there was a wanted Poster of me in the backroom because we told her of my previous drunken escapade because I refused to order a peach margarita that I really wanted and which was on special again, but I wanted to be functional for the rest of the day. And though we didn't get thrown out, we wondered if we were going to.

I ordered us an appetizer of onion rings, which were super yummy- light and flaky, with 2 dipping sauces. It looked so pretty when served- the presentation was fun- we deiced to take a picture of it. We arranged the table and I took some shots, sat back down and we proceeded to visit and laugh and have a good time. Until the manager came to our table.

I had not thrown one bit of food, I swear. Neither had Hecate! He kneels at our table and starts laughing. He said we managed to crack his bartender up with laughter because we whipped out a camera and took pictures of food, NOT each other. Us, being folks who like to take pictures, must looked like "well, duh, it was a great shot" on our faces, because he kept going on about it. So we told him about me living in the Wild West where we didn't have restaurants which worried about presentation. He laughed and moved on...

I finally took out my camera and tired to take pictures of Hecate, which she avoided and swore at me over, waving her finger. (And when she does that she scares me since she's a witch and I'm worried she's gonna accidentally put a spell on me or something very Charmed will happen and lightening will zing out that finger!)

We did have a fun time and the food was great and the company was even better! The chicken and shrimp with the pineapple pico de gallo was to die for!

Later in the day, we trolled some book stores and the mall. And then we settled in at Barnes and Noble for a good chat. I would like to say that in our defense, we are sort of loud talkers, me especially. But this was a NON quiet bookstore, in a MALL, with little KIDS running around, and teenagers being LOUD. This was not a library. And we weren't being rude to other people- we were just really into our own conversations. And people around us were talking out loud as they milled about. And if people heard us, we didn't really care, because it was a public place, after all. All that being said...

As we sat side by side in a conversational grouping of 4, we chatted. At first there was a teenager and some older guy sitting across from us. We talked and told each other funny stories- and Hecate had me rolling with laughter over stories about her kids (Toilet seat of death!), especially her son. We just... chatted and we were being us. The older guy leaves and we both figure out that he was listening to us the entire time, to the point where he held his cell phone to his face and faked a conversation, in which he never said a word, so he could stay longer to listen, and laugh. I wonder if he was recording us on his phone?!?

So the eavesdropping guy was replaced by another old guy, who was the father of the teenage boy who was still sitting there, doing his thing. About this time, I get on a roll about the future which leads me to make a comment about if my shrew of a grandmother would die and leave me money, I wouldn't have to find a job and could go back to school. Which got me on a tangent about the shrew of a grandmother. Hecate and I giggled over it. Yes, I know what I said was horrible and mortifying to a total stranger but Hecate knew the down and dirty details of the horrible-ness of said grandmother. Suddenly the old guy says to his son, "Are you ready to go?" And the kid said yeah and got his stuff. The old guy said , "We might as well since it's too loud to read here anyway" and as they walk away he says really loudly, "Shrew of a grandmother indeed" and then we couldn't hear the rest of it. Well- OMG- Hecate and I look at each other and then burst into hysterical giggles like the inner 13 year girls we are. And we proceed to make fun of him. And then we proceeded to go on the other side of the store and look over our shoulders in case he sent the Barnes and Noble police after us.

It was funny, though...

So even though we didn't get make a scene at Cheddar's we did manage to make a small one somewhere else... Hecate and I are going together to paint pottery this weekend- I wonder what will happen there?

Big loud mouth girl even when sober,
Maggie