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2006-10-27 @ 11:54 p.m.
when even flirting won't sell your art...sigh!


I am sitting on my royal throne of ice-packs d'Ass, at the moment. I'd ask one of you if you wanted to come massage my ass, but I'm afraid that, well, one of you might actually come and to be honest, you look like an unsavory crowd.

Anyhoo, I'm just recovering from my one day arts and craft show down at the place I used to work. It ran from 10-4 today, but it really seemed much longer. Why? Because I had taken 7 paintings down last night in a large U-Haul packing box and pretty much re-sprung my sciatic nerve on the way down to the car. Ow. Fortunately when I got there I was able to get "J" to carry the box upstairs, but by then the damage had already been done.

I mainly went last night because I wanted a good spot on the third floor, because no matter what anyone says, the fourth floor is full of a bunch of women selling doilies with sequined kitties and bookmarks made out of string. And frankly I didn't want my artwork associated with that. Plus I'd have to sit and listen to women talk all day about crocheting pajamas for their ferrets. I just wasn't up to that. At least on the third floor, we were closer to the kitchen...it was mostly artwork and jewelry and it got a lot more foot traffic.

Unfortunately when I first got there, the girl running it sort of grimaced when I said I had 7 paintings. She said, "Well, you may only be able to put up 2-3." What????? I wasn't about to take that for an answer. So I just proceeded to unpack everything anyways, and well, heh, just hung everything up and Voila! The awittykitty art extravaganza! I wasn't about to leave anything that had popped my sciatic nerve, packed in a box. No way. She didn't say anything. I later apologized for being a drama queen, but said that my art was important to me and that I wanted it to be seen. She just nodded her head.

Roar!


And yes, I know its hard to believe that I might possibly be a drama queen. Simmer down.

So today's arrival at 9:45 was much easier. No lugging of art. I just came in and sat down. I felt bad for the kid whose drawing of a violin was next to my wall of paintings though. He walked in, looked at all my big bold paintings, looked at his little delicate drawing of a violin, looked at the bold paintings, looked at the violin and then reached up, took his painting off the wall, walked over to a table and sat down and put his painting on the table. I guess he didn't want the competition.

It was a weird day emotionally though. On the one hand, it was great because people were really wonderful about saying nice things about all the different pieces I had brought in. It was particularly interesting seeing how different people liked different pieces. For some reason, this painting elicited probably the most comments:


Everyone really seemed to like this one. One guy even asked if it was Oscar Wilde. I said, yes. And then sheepishly admitted it was really supposed to be British actor Peter O'Toole if you squinted. I then assured him that if they bought it, it COULD be Oscar Wilde if they wanted it to be. This guy is one of the shrinks who works in the building and I know he likes golf, so desperate for a sale, I later offered to paint him a large psychedelic golf ball on top of a tee shaped like a ______ (I left it blank since I didn't want to say anything naughty to a shrink. God forbid!!!!!!! He laughed and said maybe next Spring.

But unfortunately I didn't sell anything today. I had one woman who was very interested in this.



And I was very excited, since I knew she was in management from another local nonprofit agency and she had asked to take my picture with my art. She came back twice, but then never came back with the all important checkbook. Sheesh! It was only $25 framed, lady! She had even asked me a strange question. Was I willing to give it up? D'oh, I have it at an art show with a price on it. What do you think?

The other weird part of the day was having all my former co-workers coming up to me and saying, "So, how's your new job at ******?" At first I was explaining in great detail how the job was just too physically demanding, the frosting cans were 25 pounds, yada, yada, yada. And then it got pared down to, "Well, I'm no longer there. I just couldn't quite handle the physical demands" and then by about 2 p.m. I was just kind of mumbling, "I quit." In a way I felt like a failure. A month out and I'm already unemployed. One thoughtful person even confided to me, "Oh, I didn't think you were going to make it there anyways." WTF? Thanks.

Fortunately a comment like that was leveled out with an overwhelming amount of people saying they missed me and why didn't I come back and work there.

Exactly!

But its not exactly up to me, is it? Kinda like whoops....I made a mistake. Can I get my old desk and cell phone back?

My old boss has been extremely ill since I've been gone. I had called her once about coming back and she never returned my call, but I think it has less to do with me than her health. I do miss it though. I especially miss the people I work with since I had such good camaraderie with them. Especially "J" and "B". "J" is so much fun to tease. He reads this diary even though he would never admit it, right "J"? Bad bipolar, bad! I always tease him about his age. He's only about 4 years older than me, but if he says something about like when he was a kid, I'll say, "They had electricity then?"

I was really on a roll today though. They hired a new guy about 27 and that little brat actually looked at me and said he was attracted to "older women". Can you imagine? Geeze! But he was wearing a crystal around his neck and he commented on my pentacle. I wanted to warn him about the Jesus freaks in the computer department. The last day I had worked for the company, they had hauled me into their little room of Jesus paraphernalia and tried to convert me to Christianity for a good 25 minutes. Remember? I did get my revenge of sorts. About a week after that when I went for another appointment with my case manager, I had reported them to the human resource department. Its fine if you want to try and convert someone out on the sidewalk, but not at work during business hours. So I did see one of the Jesus girls at the show today. Did she acknowledge me in any way? Nope. She looked right through me like I wasn't there. Now was that very Christian?

So that was my art show today. No sales. Lots of compliments. I would have preferred the reverse, but what are you going to do?

Oh, and incidentally, the guy I went out with last weekend?
Handyman....I kept wondering why I had never heard from him since I thought things went pretty well. Just for fun I went for a stroll through my AOL Spam folder and there his e-mail was from last Saturday. Bugger! As in, he had written it the day we went out. Dang! He was probably wondering why that bitch (me) had never had the courtesy to return his note. And it was fairly lengthy too. And nice. So I immediately wrote back and apologized. Hopefully he believes me. I also shyly invited him to my naked artwork art show next week. How totally bold of me, aye?



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