I came home last night in the rain and was wearing heals. I told myself, I'll park Branden in if he's home, but just long enough to feed the kitties and change into some comfortable shoes. Then I'll move the truck.

I came inside and fed the fur bellies, then went to my room and changed shoes. Branden came out of his room as I was picking up my keys, so I told him I was going to move my truck out of his way.

He said not to bother; he's off in the morning and he's going to a party tonight. Someone should be coming to pick him up soon.

I remember those times...


. . .


We have made some changes at work with how we organize our department. We now have call takers and researchers. I chose to be a researcher for two reasons: 1) I like solving puzzles; 2) I'm really evil in the morning and I think I do not possess the correct mind set to be on the phone my entire day - especially first thing in the morning.

The first full week of this new arrangement came on the heals of the end of a month and the end of a quarter. In the financial industry that's a pretty busy time. I felt a great deal of stress all last week because of the influx of new issues to research. Fortunately, so far this week, things have slowed down a great deal and things are going more like I envisioned them (knock wood).

My stress levels are greatly reduced.


. . .


I've gotten started back into painting ceramics. (Maybe that's helping with the stress too.) I went to the only store I know in Titusville where I can buy bisque or unpainted fired ceramics and loaded up on a few pieces. I've painted a lizard and a panther and am working on a piece that is two tree stumps with mushrooms growing off the side.

Yaw and I met some folks at a recent seminar that are opening up a shop for all kinds of New-Age sort of stuff and they are setting aside space for local crafters and artists to sell their wares. I'll be taking these pieces to them in hopes of finding an easy buyer.

These are not my typical fare, but I think they look pretty good. I'm especially pleased with the lizard. When I bought it I had no idea what kind of lizard it was. The feet really threw me. When I saw them, I thought this must be some sort of fantasy creature (which would fit completely into my normal theme of dragons and such). I started looking up lizards on the Internet and after about an hour's worth of poking around discovered this is a chameleon. Not just any old chameleon, but a Panther Chameleon. Each of its four feet are split into two sections, each one looking like a complete foot. I really don't believe I can describe them clearly, but if you Google "Panther Chameleon" you'll find lots of pictures of them and you can see it for yourself.

Now I want one for real so I can ogle its feet all the time. I know, I'm not right. What else is new?