So, yeah…I suck, as in SUCK at drawing anime.  I give it a shot every once in a while and it’s worse than “badly”crafted.  It’s like someone gave a loaded paintbrush to one of those “smart” elephants and tries to tell you that the sloppy looking painted picture is something other than splashes of paint on a canvas.

Animal Handler:  “Look!  Harold the Wonder Elephant just painted the Mona Lisa!”

Me:  “Dude, that looks like the elephant held the brush in it’s trunk while you moved the canvas in circles.”

AH:  “No!  I didn’t move it in circles!”

Me:  “But you admit to moving the canvas as the elephant just stood there with a loaded paint brush in it’s trunk, right?”

AH:  “Well, yeah, but hey how many elephants out in the bush can paint?”

Me:  “How many elephants in the bush have had a loaded paintbrush handed to them?”

AH walks off grumbling about mouthy, smurf-lady who thinks she’s an art critic.

Um…where was I?  Oh yeah…anime and me sucking at it.  So, I’m under extreme stress right now with a bunch of crap going on.  Mostly it’s my very beloved cousin was in a terrible motorcycle accident in Texas and I’m trying to get my crap together for Than-the-man and I to drive out there.  Big Daddy can’t miss work so he can’t come.  He’s ok with that as he’s not the biggest fan of the best state in the world.  Psh!  Who needs him? Ok, so I do…

Um, where was I again?  Stop making me get off track people!  Yeah, I’m talking to you red haired guy with the glasses.  Stop making me get side-tracked.  And you, lady in the pj’s…it’s fricking 3 in the afternoon where you are…get up, get a shower, brush your teeth and go outside and live a little.  Spending all your time on the computer is not healthy.  There’s a whole world out there to explore!

(sigh)…see?  I’m so easily side tracked…remind me to tell you about the bank story….

Anyway, I can’t sleep.  Overly-anxious about getting to Texas just to be there. I LOVE my cousin.  She was my first hero.  I LOVE HER.  Have I mentioned how much I love her? So anyway I have this black box (it seems I paint all boxes black, eh?) and some really cool paint colors that I’ve picked up recently.  I decided to paint each side a different color and once that dries I’m gonna FORCE myself to perfect my anime drawing so that I can draw anime faces on each side – or I’ll just draw Pokemon type creatures on it.  Either way, I’m giving myself no way out of learning this stuff.

Here’s where I stand on the project as of now:

So there’s what all four colors are.  I left extra black space on the top as that’s where the box fits.  I haven’t measured off the sides of the box top yet so I can paint it like the sides with the thin black strip all the way around.  It’s late and I don’t want to attempt it.  I’m anxious, not insane.  There’s a difference buddy…slight, but still a difference.

And now, for something completely different (thank you Monty Python!)

Than and I went to the bank today.  For the 3rd time I’ve had to go in because they keep screwing up ordering our checks with the new address on it.  First time I went in, I changed the address and the banker ordered the checks for me (we get free ones with our acct.).  A week or so goes by, no new checks.  So I stop off in the bank and talk to a 2nd banker and he looks up my stuff and sees the address change but the 1st banker didn’t order the checks.  (sigh).  Ok so HE makes sure of the new address and orders my checks.  A week goes by.  I go to the mailbox and find the new box of checks! YAY!  Correct address on the outside of the box, but on the inside, the checks have the.old.address.

Really Wells Fargo?  You guys just can’t hire people to push buttons correctly or what?  So in the midst of all this very, very stressful time what with me getting a new disease (oh yeah, that’s Disease No. 4 for those keeping count), Shelly lying in ICU in Texas and me desperate to get there, I find that Wells Fargo bankers need lessons in how to push buttons correctly.

Today’s banker gets “Jen Who’s Had Enough And Is Completely Overwhelmed At This Point” (try fitting THAT on a business card!) She gets it all right and even calls the check printing company to make sure they are seeing the same info she’s showing in the  bank system.  Yep, it’s fixed.

Then I ask this banker, “Btw, where is Than’s Savings account money?  It’s showing a zero balance and we haven’t touched that account in over a year and it had at least $15.00 in it“.  She didn’t know.  No one can tell me.  I have their Research Dept figuring it out.

The banker chick then mentions this little gem to me:  “Btw, why aren’t you on your husbands Savings account?”

Me:  “I am.”

Banker:  “No, no you’re not.  And did you know that if anything happens to him you legally can’t touch the money? (it’s like $50.00)”

Me: “I am on that account.”

Banker:  “No, it shows right here he opened the account in 2008.”

Me:  (heavy sigh):  “No, I opened both the checking and the savings in Texas in 1999 the year we got married.”

Banker:  “We show you only opened a checking account.”

Me:  “Someone’s smoking crack and I can guarantee you it’s not me.“  She’s acting all conspirator-like…as if G was sneaking around on me opening up savings accounts and putting $50.00 in there.  So I call G at work and the 3 of us have this conversation that goes on and finally the Banker gets told by me and G that their dumb-ass bank made us switch our savings to a money market account in 2008 to avoid fees if we don’t keep a certain amount in the account.  She’s still denying that I opened a savings acct in Texas in 1999.

By this point (after we’ve hung up with G) I’m at the “I can’t take anymore stress” point.

So I snap.

COMPLETELY SNAP.

I don’t get mean.  I get goofy.  I just start laughing.  Hysterically.  Than’s sitting next to me, being a good boy the whole time this is all going on.  But then he sees me start to lose it and he gets mad.  At the banker.  And at Wells Fargo.  And my 9 year old son slams his hand down on her desk and GROWLS AT HER saying, “LOOK WHAT YOU GUYS DID!  YOU BROKE MY MOM!”  I am telling you right now – he REALLY DID THAT.

It made me laugh even harder.  It was so freaking funny.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  He got all momma bear protective.  He’s seen me take some pretty harsh hits lately with my health (esp. my health), this trip to Texas, etc., etc. and he just wants to wrap me in bubble wrap and not let anything else happen.  Meanwhile I have a target painted on me and people keep lobbing things at me.  I’m ok, though….God’s got my back.  And front.  But Than-the-man ain’t letting NOBODY mess with his mommy right now.

I had to make him apologize for freaking out the normal people.  Sometimes when we walk through stores and we do our normal weird stuff (Than’s Interpretive Dance in grocery stores is hysterically funny), I say, “Than stop…you’re freaking out the normal people.”  And we laugh our butts off.  But I have to teach him right from wrong and he had to know that growling at the banker wasn’t right.  She’s not the one who did it to me, it’s the bank as a whole.  I try hard to teach him to “never shoot the messenger”.

The kid’s getting an allowance raise though.

I’m completely sick of these 2 black boxes sitting on my table making me feel guilty that I don’t paint anything on them.  I can almost hear them mocking me:

BlackBox 1:  “Hey Loser, think you might wanna pick up one of those paint brushes and you know, PAINT me?”

BlackBox 2:  “Don’t call her a Loser, man.  She’s been busy.  See Jen? I got your back.  Remember me when it’s time to paint, ok?”

BB1:  “Yeah, remember the brown-noser sucking up to you.  It’s completely disgraceful what some boxes would do to get attention these days.”

BB2:  “I’m ignoring you!”

BB1:  ”Yeah I bet you are…hey tell your mom I said hi.”

BB2:  “What?  You don’t know my mom!”

BB1:  “Sure I do…she’s something else, that mom of yours.  A Ritz cracker box, right?  She’s hot…gives all new meaning to ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’…”

BB2:  “DON’T TALK ABOUT MY MOM LIKE THAT YOU PIECE OF PULP!  I WILL GET YOU, I’LL THROW WATER ON YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP!  SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN BUDDY….YOUR WOODY BUTT IS MINE!…I’LL…I’LL…”

(Jen walks over and picks up BB2 and says, “Well you look like a nice box and you need to be painted.  That other box gives me the creeps.  Did you know that underneath that black paint he’s got pink and purple hearts?  Really icky girlie!“)

BB2:  (smugly looking over at BB1)  ”Well, well, well….who’s got ammunition now?  Eh, My Little Pony Box?”

BB1:  (hangs head in shame)

Yes, I know…I need serious psychological help.  That’s a given…

Here’s some progress pics of Box 2:

So yeah, when I penciled these designs on the box I thought they looked so cool.  Then I painted them and now I think, “Man, I got carried away.  One design on each side would have been sufficient, but no I had to go curly-q crazy.”

(sigh)

badlycrafted.com indeed

The worst part?  I don’t think it’s “done”. I think the top (first pic) needs some pink on it.  I have to give it a day or so to try to contain the impulse to go too crazy.

A friend blessed me with a gift card to Hobby Lobby today.  I did something for a group project she worked on (I don’t want to give details here ) and I was surprised by the gc.  I don’t do things for people expecting anything out of it so I am literally SHOCKED when stuff like this happens.  I almost don’t know what to do.  I get embarrassed.  I used to try to refuse the gifts but a wise person told me that was insulting and to just “shut it and take the gift.” LOL

So a gift card to Hobby Lobby is like winning the lottery to me.  It’s probably the absolute best thing you could get me.  When Than and I walk in the doors at HL (G refuses to go in there with me) I stop, put my hand to my ear and say, “Can you hear that?  I believe that’s the Heavenly Choir singing, “Welcome Home, Jen!” “  Than’s at the point where he just does that polite laugh thing you do when your Uncle Fred pulls a quarter from your ear.  You know, “Oh that’s so clever!  I’ve never seen/heard that before!”  At least Than doesn’t burst my bubble.  He just lets me ramble on.

Someone remind me to give that kid an allowance raise.

We went in and I, for once, didn’t need pencils, pens or sketch pads.  Christmas had been very, very good to me.  So I thought, “Hmmm…what do I want?  Besides the entire store, that is…”

I won’t drag you through my thought processes as it gets quite convoluted and sometimes scary.  Suffice it to say I walked out of HL with a veritable cornucopia of acrylic paints and new paintbrushes.  Than walked out with one of those wood slotted lizards:

http://www.orientaltrading.com/design-your-own-unfinished-wood-lizards-a2-48_5182-12-1.fltr?source=google&searchTerm=lizard+craft&ms=search&BP=8877&Ntt=lizard+craft&cm_mmc=google-_-OTC+Fiesta-_-Crafts+-+Lizard+-+General+-+fiesta+crafts-_-845db11f990b4c4d9526b89405ac7bdf

This is like what we bought but not exactly.  Plus I didn’t buy it from Oriental Trading and no way would I spend $10.00 on unfinished wood lizard/alligators.  They’d have to paint that bad boy for me and I still wouldn’t pay that much.  Cheapy McCheapskate, thy true name is Jen.

Like my professional link above?  I could win a Web Award for how awesome this website is put together.  Why it doesn’t look like crap, does it?  It looks like I have a clue as to what I’m doing…um…yeah…

Anyway,  besides painting the lizard this really cool turquoise color (will show in another post – it’s drying now and I don’t want to disturb it), I started painting a jewelry box I bought at Goodwill.  It is hideous.  It’s actually too girlie for me.  And that’s saying something.

I found it on the shelves at Goodwill hidden underneath something.  I think Goodwill was even too embarrassed to have this on the shelf.  It’s like Hello Kitty and Strawberry Shortcake decided to go into the jewelry box making business and came up with this.  Then it was so awful that they got in a fight, dissolved the business and threw this in the trash.  On Trash Day, the garbage man refused to put something this hideous inside of his garbage truck so he kicked it really hard and it flew across the street, into the open door of Goodwill and landed on a shelf.  The Store Mgr didn’t know where this hideous box came from but just in case his boss put it out there he slapped a $2.00 sticker on it and then buried it under some fake flowers.  He hoped against hope some far-sighted schlub would come along and buy this thinking it was actually pretty.

Hi, I’m Schlub and I’d like you to see the pretty box I bought.

Than was embarrassed that I was buying this.

So I made him carry it around the entire store for me.

Mom.of.the.Year.

Right now the box is on my table with 2 coats of black paint on it.  I’m probably going to regret not putting some sort of primer on it, but I’m impatient and this is badlycrafted.com.

I can’t wait to figure out what to paint on there.

I’m hoping it has nothing to do with pink and purple hearts.

UPDATE:  I couldn’t leave those ugly pictures in here without showing a progress picture.  That much ugly might scar younger readers of this blog.

Here’s where we are as of 11:41pm on 1/12/12:

  It will need another coat or 2 of black on the lid before I can go any further, but at least it’s not pink, purple and white.