Stayin' Alive!
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I lived through my week!! I know it's morbid, but I was getting so little sleep this week and spending so much time on the road, I was really worried I might get in the car one day and not make it to my destination. But, I have survived, and while life will not go back to what it was before I took on the class and the curriculum work for PestEd, I will be getting better sleep and not working overtime.

I managed to turn in Sudie's curricula and application to United Arts today two minutes before the deadline. Trying to drive into Raleigh at 5:00 on a Friday night is a total suicide mission, and then, once I finally got there (with traffic it took twice as long as it should have), Fayetteville Mall is not marked on street signs. Apparently, it refers to a walking promenade that is closed to traffic, but there is nothing there to tell you that. Anyway, I got all six curricula written out, updated her resume, secured confirmation from a few of her teacher contacts that it was okay to use them as references, managed to finally edit the hour-long digital video of her last workshop down to what I hope are 10 meaningful minutes that I transferred to VHS, reproduced one of her color photos with Savannah Blue as a glossy black and white, and finally hammered out fees with Sudie and got the camera-ready profile page typed up so that, if she is accepted into the program, they can scan the page into the directory and schools can begin contacting her for the workshops. If I do say so myself, I think the workshops are going to be great. I tied them in very closely to the writing and visual arts requirements for the state and for Wake County and, aside from the cost, there shouldn't be any reason any teacher in North Carolina wouldn't want one of our programs for their students. (I'm only a little proud of myself!)

And, this week I got the downstairs painted before Hans got home on Tuesday night! Yay! I surprised myself a little there, too. It looks good and I now have color oozing off every wall. I went with the full sunset scheme I had planned, with the kitchen in an aqua blue that shifts toward seafoam or robin's egg depending on the light and location of the wall with dark periwinkle accent walls, and an orange living room. The only color that's missing that would make it truly representative of a Carolina sunset is the ice pink, but four colors is just too much for such a small space. I'm considering doing the downstairs bathroom in the ice pink, but will probably just do it in orange. I'd like to do it in aqua, but I'm worried that would make everyone look green when they looked at themselves in the mirror, and that's not good. The colors don't sound like they go together, but I think they do. Hans even came home and told me twice how much he liked it - very cool of him since I know the fumes are making him sick. After we moved in last summer, I decided that since we can't afford a beach house to which to escape with the rest of North Carolina on the weekends, I would just have to make this my beach house. I am very nearly there. I still want two large photographs of pink clouds at sunset for my living room wall next to the fireplace, and I want to make some sand sculptures of sea animals to hang in the kitchen on the wall between the sliding glass door and the window, but those are just details.

This week I turned in only a partial query to my class, but I got a message back from the instructor that she thinks my first query is ready to be mailed out. That's a little scary. I bought a copy of the magazine I wanted to pitch the story to on my way home from Raleigh tonight, and I'm not so sure the market is for me. The magazine has a really cool name and I like the way the editor describes its purpose in the Writer's Market listing, but I was almost embarrassed to be walking out of the store with it tonight. The cover has Katherine Heigl posing in a crochet bikini - in what world do women want to buy a non-exercise, non-health magazine with a thin, beautiful blond scantily clothed on the cover? The inside wasn't any better. Ads for eligible men you can email today and pictures of scantily clad couples illustrating an article on how to add sizzle to your sex life. I am not a prude, but somehow, that magazine makes me feel like one. I need to talk to Christina to see if she thinks I should go ahead and make my pitch or look for another market. There is a small chance I'm belittling the magazine because I don't want to actually mail off my pitch and potentially get the green light to write the article, but I don't think so....

More tomorrow. Must sleep now!