Well, THAT four days of work was simply exhausting and it is time to get some rest. Heh. Seriously, the first week back to work after being on a dream vacation is like being dumped with cold water. Shocking and very uncomfortable. Thank goodness my coworkers are funny people to work with and in general I laugh throughout most of the day while I work.

We are off to sunny Florida to visit the Boyfriend's parents and show them pics and movies of our trip. As I have been making the DVD's and looking at the images I realize I maybe always had a camera in poor Best Boyfriend Ever's face, and probably ordered "Now KISS me!" as I snapped the picture about a bazillion times - that screams romance right?! - but what else was I to do?!? I had to document the trip, right? And make sure it all looked perfectly romantic and we never EVER argued or got irritated at all even when he was walking too fast and the street was slippery from a morning rain and my flip flops had no traction on the Parisian streets and I almost fell right on my big ol' American butt and had no one to grab on to because Best Boyfriend Ever is the "NO dilly-dallying!!" type while I am the "Oohhh! look at this! Ohhh, honey, look at this piece of fabric! Oh! look at the pastries in THAT patisserie!" type. Right. Uh huh. The pictures are PERFECT. heh.

So we are driving down in a few hours hoping he gets off work early enough to get down there with enough time for me to get an evening walk on the beach. Sigh... This year the family did not do the big beach house vacation (which was why we went to Europe and no I STILL don't care about how bad the dollar is there and no I WILL not do the conversion on the two pairs of jeans I bought in Berlin where apparently woman HAVE curves AND don't wear their jeans so low that you belly hangs out over your jeans just to ya know, remind you every second of the day that you should be doing more sit ups. The jeans are AWESOME there and I don't care what they actually cost me!) and I have to say, I am missing my ocean fix this year. I am thinking we might need to rent a little beach hotel room sometime in September for a long weekend to get it in. Might as well keep having vacations as much as possible, right? Right. I mean what is life without relaxing and enjoying it as much as you can? RIGHT.

I do have to do a bit of work this weekend. Not they paying kind, the FUN kind. I have to finish typing up all the text for the various books and poems that I have saved up in journals, on scraps of papers and on backs of envelopes. I wrote a companion book for the book that my agent is shopping to publishers right now and she wants to see everything else I have written too. There is one book in particular that I think I have been working on for something crazy like 4 years now. The image in the masthead is from an illustration in the book. A few very close friends have seen it, but no one else. I am trying to get it just right. I can feel it, it's there, but I can't quite get to all of it - get to what is in my heart and in my head all at the same time. Often I will wake up in the middle of the night, or right before I am falling asleep I will hear the perfect line for one of the scenes and I have to get up and write it down before it disappears. The images are all in my head and most of them sketched out, but the perfect words keep floating like fireflies flitting about and I have to be very quick to catch them as soon as they begin to glow. This book just might kill me, or it will be the thing I am working on until I am 90 and in a rocking chair still grasping at the shiny lights and missing them. "Damn, I almost had that one, but it's gone again!"


And now I will give you flowers for your Friday. Some Happy Sunflowers to take with you into your weekend from the streets of Berlin outside the train station.




And to make you laugh as you start your weekend, about THE BEST sign I have EVER seen for a Port-O-Potty, those clever, clever Germans! All you graphic designers out there, aren't you jealous that YOU didn't think this up?! You know you are! I am jealous that not only did they think it up, they got their boss' to APPROVE it!!

ah....all makes sense now doesn't it?? I wish I was as clever as the artist that made the postcard....I still love my bandaged bunny tho! I sold Scuba Dog this past week and while I know it went to a good home up in New Jersey (yay for New Jersey!!) I will miss it. It hung in my bright yellow bathroom and every morning it greeted me and made me smile. So I replaced it with Metro Bunny and that makes me smile now too. But still, Scuba Dog will be missed!





It's funny, I do love selling my art, of course I do, but it is hard every time to let them go - even the commissions of other people's pets. I honestly get such great joy from painting silly dogs, cats, any animal and when I finally drop them into the mail never to see them again, it is hard. how corny is that? At least I do know they go off and make other people happy. And I can tell my the email from the person that bought it, Scuba Dog will be making a whole bunch of new people smile. Besides, if I kept every painting I did, my whole house would look like a crazy lady lived there, all those sill dog paintings everywhere on every wall...oh...wait....too late.

I painted this yesterday - a wonderful rainy day perfect for just staying inside and painting the day away. I had to paint a few paintings for commissions and a basset rescue and a golden retriever rescue that I was asked to donate to. Plus this little bunny...I cannot take credit for the idea - I saw it on a postcard and fell in love with it in a children's bookshop in Paris. I had no idea what it meant and why the bunny had bandages on its' paws! The next day I found out why and loved the image even more. I made a quick sketch of the postcard before sending it to my bunny lovin' best friend in Dallas and then painted it on canvas for myself yesterday. Anyone who has been to Paris know what the story behind "Metro Lapin" is? I will post the answer in photo form later!