Dazed (#12 and #13)

Day #12:

Dave took the day off from his mother today (his sister came into town and is there) and went and ran errands with my brother instead. While he was gone, I got up, showered and dressed, and worked a bit on my new art journal.

Today's lipstick was one I found among my art supplies, a NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream in the shade Budapest (deep mauve with red undertones). It's one of my favorites, actually, but I lose track of it all the time so I probably haven't worn it in several months.

When Dave came back, we headed out to lunch. The Japanese place we love so much was far too crowded. We tried twice and then gave up. Between the attempts, we stopped by a thrift store to buy a pair of jeans to cut up to use in a sewing project. (Dave also picked up a book of recorder music, since he is into the recorder right now.) Finally unwilling to put off lunch any longer, we stopped by this strange little restaurant we had never been to before. It was Mediterranean food--specifically Lebanese, I think--and the food was really good, but the set up was strange (we ate our lunch out of a bunch of plastic containers) and inefficient and sadly, I don't think the place is going to survive. 

After lunch, we stopped by a fabric store I had never been to (Dave was humoring me since he'd spent so much time away from home recently) and I dropped some cash on ten or so yards of really beautiful fabric. I'm finding that I really love large, strange prints in really wild colors. We spent a lovely hour or so just looking around and picking out crazy fabric.

Then we had a giant fizzy drink break.

Then we did something we haven't done since October: We went to the studio. I started working on a new sculpture that I made a maquette for way back in October. I got as far as the shoulders and neck. 

We took Crunch for a walk and then came home for dinner (fried chicken for me and leftover chili for Dave).

Day #13:

I could not sleep last night. It was awful. I just lay in bed for hours, watching YouTube videos and The Great British Baking Show on Netflix. I finally fell asleep around 3:00 a.m. and woke up at 5:00 and then couldn't get back to sleep. I got up, took my meds, and worked in my art journal. I drew out a half dozen quilting squares from memory and started to color them in with some water-based markers. I have two levels of water-based markers, the high end (that I paid about $2 each for on a super sale at Dick Blick's) and the very low end Crayola Super Tips that I paid just under $6 for 50 markers. And I have to say, they work exactly the same. They're probably different when it comes to things like light fastness, but in terms of how they work for something like an art journal/sketchbook, they are exactly the same. So there you go. 

In the morning (meaning, after the sun came up), Dave went off to meet with his mother, sister, and mother's doctor and then to have lunch with his mother and sister. 

After Dave left, I went back to bed to try to sleep a bit more. I was just falling asleep when my phone rang with a wrong number. I didn't answer, but it was enough to get me up. I was hungry, so I had a sunflower seed butter and blueberry jelly sandwich and a cup of decaf coffee, then I went right back to bed and slept for about ninety minutes.

When Dave got home, I got up, put on some clothes (skipping my shower), and we went out to run some errand. We went to the bank to deposit a scholarship check I got in September or October. After that we went to Whole Foods by way of the giant fizzy drink place. At Whole Foods, as we were checking out, someone tried to steal another shoppers already paid for and bagged shopping cart full of groceries. Two of the guys who worked there chased the thief down in the parking lot, took back the cart of groceries, and let the thief go. 

I don't miss working retail at the holidays.

I'm staying with the pups again right now, so after we got home and put away the groceries, we went over to give the pups a treat or six and take my sewing machine over. I put the fabrics I bought yesterday in the wash and set up my sewing machine and checked out how it worked on a couple of scraps of denim. (The thing I'm sewing is a mix of quilting cotton and denim from the cut-up thrifted jeans.)

I remembered that I hadn't put on any lipstick today, so I amended that by putting on one of my favorites, NYX Suede Cream Lipstick in the shade Stone Fox (deep gray with blue undertone). It's one of two gray lipsticks I own and one of my favorites. I sometimes wish all makeup were gray. I'd like to go around looking like old pavement.  I also took the opportunity to test out something that came from Sephora, a cake mascara from Besame. You have to add a drop of water (or in my case, saline solution) to the cake and rub it with a brush to liquidize it, but it makes a very nice, basic, black mascara. I bought it because I wear mascara about four times a year and the tubes of mascara dry up between uses. This stuff is meant to be dry, so that's not a problem if it dries up, so it will last much longer, I hope. 

In the afternoon, I worked on a sewing project, helped with dinner, then had dinner. Tonight we made roasted vegetables (parsnips, beets, cauliflower, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes) and Dave had some vegetarian sausages and I had some sushi I bought earlier at Whole Foods. While we ate, we watched a video on YouTube of my new favorite comedian, Greg Davies, appearing on a British television show called "Would I Lie to You?" 

I'm exhausted now and it's going to take some elbow grease (and probably some actual non-elbow grease) to get this lipstick off. So goodnight!