I must be insane. All I want to do is paint. All I want to talk or blog about is paintings and I think I’m driving everyone around me insane too.

I am actually trying to decide whether to go the sticks right now. Where it’s 105 in the shade…I am nuts! Who wants to go to the desert during a heat wave? But they do have a.c. (which I don’t, pant pant gasp!) and my mom will be there with open arms to hold the wiggling Bug.

I’m having a war in my head because I cannot figure out if I’ll get more painting time at my mom’s, where she will watch Baby Bug while I paint, OR if it’s better to stay home and take advantage of the one big long nap of the day. If I drive to the sticks, that nap will be used up in the car where I cannot paint! I have a bunch of other reasons to go to the sticks and a bunch of reasons to stay (like the first is tomorrow and somebody needs to do the bookkeeping and online bill paying) but of course the painting factor is the loudest.

Paint! Paint! Paint!

I want to paint everything! Even the noisy gardener guy outside with his two stroke leaf blower. I would make him as an evil dog with beady eyes and flaming lighting bolts coming out of his blow tube.

I visited the Surf Dog Market for the first time the other day. It’s pretty cool. I really like the “Doggy Zen Garden” in the back and that is part of where the event will take place. I’m excited about the “indoor-outdoor” space. I might have to build a special light feature into one of my paintings just to take advantage of the warm summer night experience. How cool would that be?

The shop itself is a little more dog lover’s paradise and a little less “art gallery” than I expected but I can roll with it. I shouldn’t expect to make my grand painterly debut on the art scene with the muckety mucks. I have a long way to go.

This is just a start and it’s a good start. I don’t think I could handle the criticism of real art critics. I’d probably put down my brush forever which would be really sad because I love painting. I really do. Maybe it’s best to start with people who really love dogs and will probably really love paintings with dogs in them.

The event coordinator for this show is the sweetest girl on the planet. She has to be. She takes in homeless dogs on a regular basis and finds loving families for them. I’ve always loved animals but I find it easier to look away sometimes because sad dog eyes are the saddest eyes of all. They just clamp onto your heart and suck you dry. The next thing you know you are letting them in your house and there is dog hair everywhere and you’re buying those great big bags of dog food that you have to ask for help to get up on the checkout counter. I just can’t do that.

But I can paint. I might not be that good at it yet but I’m just starting out. It really is really cool that I can do something that I really love and they can do something that they really love and we can all walk away feeling like we accomplished something together. It’ll be fun too.

We visited Toby’s brother in Newport yesterday and naturally, since he’s related to Toby, he took some awesome shots of Bug and I at the beach. Baby Bug’s Uncle George is a lot of fun. He caught some sand crabs for Baby Bug and she thought they were great. What’s not to love? They are BUGS! And they have wiggly little legs and they live at the beach….I think she would have popped one in her mouth if I hadn’t freaked out and nearly lost my breakfast.

I hate sand crabs (and all exoskeletal creatures for that matter). They are neat little creatures and I appreciate the wonder of their under-the-sand life with their little feelers eating plankton and such.. But REALLY, to me, they are just beach cockroaches. Ick! Baby Bug wanted me to hold her’s really bad. She kept following me, holding out this wiggly little bug and I had to run away screaming. Silly Bug.

In other news, I painted another painting:

It’s coming along. I’m running out of places to keep them all!