I Woke Up And It's July!

Soup. Thick, dark, made with sour cream soup. That's the weather in MD these days.  I spend most of my daylight time inside. Even going to the pool is better after 5.  If I had a pool of my own I would just sit in it all day on a HUGE raft under a floating umbrella and I would read and listen to my Ipod and drift away these ridiculous summer days. But no-oo--oo!  We have no pool! We have trees! We have woods!  We  have a sloping lawn!  So we pay for the privilege to swim (or hang on the side) of an over chlorinated pool.   Who invented humidity?  Which fool thought it was a good idea to put WATER in the air?  Someone should kick his ass good.  I say this because it must have been a man.  In the pre everything days they never listened to women. That's why we have WATER IN THE AIR! A woman would have said "do you want to drown on land" if the men had bothered to ask!


Deep breath. (Gurgling sounds coming from the lungs.)


There are no mugs these days. Just glasses and bottles of water. Water with ice. Water without ice. Water in a blue, decorated sweating glass.  I do my best thinking with a glass of water in my hand.
And I have been thinking a lot these past few weeks.  My mind is where so much of life takes place.
Come in, and I'll share.  It is soup out there!


What the hell am I going to do?  The new Stampin' Up catalog arrived and I want about $300 worth of product. I was a little disappointed in the selection of stamps this year, but it's growing on me. I think they have some of the best cardstock around and the new In Colors are so much better this year. Must to have them, I tell you!  First order goes in tonight and I'm light headed.  I need a kick in the ass to craft make art again. I need to force myself to go to the basement lower level and put on some loud Lady Antebellum and pull out every stamp, paper pack, embellishment and photo that I have at my fingertips. I have to make the kind of mess that makes my husband ask if we have been robbed.  That is usually reserved for my closet which most often appears as if it has been ransacked.  Three different sizes of clothes, handbags, shoes, the master bedroom handset (lost for 1 year and when I found it I quietly put it back and nested it in its charger), and my reading glasses.  Yes, the reading glasses that I have looked all over the freaking house for; gone out to the car twice where I tore apart the seats convinced they had nested in some crack or the 1,000 pieces that make up the console. I check the top of my head 2 or 50 times and then recall I had dressed in the closet that morning after checking e-mail on my I-pad (device made by Apple to drive you crazy and make you broke) leaving my glasses on a shelf with shoes.  Infuriating.  I have been emancipated by having a separate closet from the husband in this house. I no longer have to hear the heavy sighs while he tries to find his clothes and shoes because the poor thing has to get dressed to go to work to pay for my krap art supplies.  He is not even allowed to peek in there.  Not his business! If I didn't have to go into his closet to forage for his dirty laundry to do the wash, I wouldn't even darken the door!  Since my closet is now my private humiliation, he has moved on to my  "I make art" area for his criticism.  Do I enter his disgrace of a utility room in the garage?  Do I?  Only in an emergency! Only when I need a nail or screw or hammer and don't let me tell you what I find when I open that door!  It's like the apocalypse.  It's like the Denzel Washington movie when the world has ended and he is traveling to the West Coast to deliver a Bible.  Scraps of metal everywhere, piles of debris, things hiding in other things to scare me and hurt my feelings.  I am embarrassed when I scream in there after putting my hand high up on a shelf and having it stick to something wet and thick.  Is he Dexter?  Does he saw through humans out there?  Turns out to be some hardware store bought gorp in a can that fixes something in the house when it's not just leaking out onto the surface of a 20 year old metal shelving unit.  Yes, people, it's true. The man is not perfect but he delivers the art supplies like a warrior who wants to impress his Queen.  Poor bastard.


So where was I?  New supplies.  This illness; this never ending yearning to purchase paper and ink and stamps and dies is the monkey on my back. I am terrified of going to the Ellen Huston site because I know there are new Memory box stamps there!  God help me I don't know what I'll do. Simonsaysstamp?  They must laugh when they see my order and immediately book a trip to Paris. My newest love is Tim Holtz. Not the man (although I'm sure he is very nice) but the product line. My hands shake when I check for the latest stamps and dies and the newest Ranger products.  Only a fellow paper artist would understand.  I will argue, when my warrior sees the charge, that I needed a muse (an army of them) to kick start my creative energy which will, in turn, heal my spirit and body which have taken a beating this year.  That will work.  I'm not above using my recent misfortunes to get what I want.  This is the hallmark of a desperately addicted individual and I will stand up in any A.C. Moore or Michael's and proudly proclaim what I am.  With a 40% off coupon, of course.


Until my new goods arrive, I'm using the TV to pass the time. BravoTV has gone from high brow to huber plucked.  What the hell do they put in the air in NYC to have these housewives behaving like middle school, PMSing girls? And New Jersey?  Was there a tsunami and did it leave behind only Italians who are always fighting with their in-laws? And now we have Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.  I fell asleep last night to Bai Ling climbing the roof of the rehab facility.  I dreamed I was eating sushi and wearing Maryjanes, by the way. Very disturbing.  Anyway, she claims she is allergic to alcohol but she drinks it anyway and acts like a maniac in public places.  (I know some people who would look at me out of the corner of their eye if they knew I was making that statement. What? WHAT? The guy cut me off and gave me the finger!  Almost killed us.  I had to get out of the car at the red light and "talk" to him. In his BMW.  With his stupid Blue Tooth ear piece sticking out of the side of his head.  What? It was in his ear already!  So now it's permanent!  He'll never lose the damned thing! I am sober when I do these things.  Is that better or worse?) But the Golden Goose, the ChristmasBirthdayAnniversaryWeddingGetWell gift is arriving on Thursday. Big Brother 13 for my guilty summer TV pleasure.  Talk about fast heartbeats!  I wait all year for July and BB to arrive. It's just another sickness like the I am an artist supply mania but oh, so sweet.  In between scrapbook pages and boxes of hand made cards I'll be bitching giving my impressions of each house guest as they claw their way to $500,000.  (How cheap is CBS? Can't they make it a million?  What can you do with $500K these days?  After taxes?  Get out of here!)  Oh, so sweet.


So tonights  wine glass has water in it.  It's still a wine glass.  It is the last glass from a set I purchased at Pottery Barn a thousand years ago.  Clunky, thick and slightly tinted green.  My husband hated them.  They are all smashed now but one.  This is a good summer, thick as sour cream soup, water in the air, glass.  It's heavy and easy to hold.  I lift it to my Stampin' Up Demo and the percentage she is going to get from my order tonight.  May she spend it wisely-mostly on other company's stamps and papers.  Poor thing. She has to support her own habit somehow.


Talk later?