Well, what do you know? I survived the second half of July.

I could see ahead of time that the second half of July was going to be busy. I realized that for about two weeks there was just going to be some suckage. But whoa... July totally kicked my ass. Up one side and down the other. It was brutal. In, you know, a total American middle-class kind of way. I need to keep some Perspective. As bad as it was, I always had the people that I love, three meals a day, a bed to sleep in at night and air conditioning and cable. But beside that, it was brutal.

Do you ever just feel like you are ready for some new problems? I'll say that to Mark sometimes, when we're having the same fight for the fifth time about some silly (or not so silly) thing we each think is settled. Could we have a new problem, please? I'm tired of this one. The problems I'm tired of right now aren't problems with Mark, though. Things are actually going really great between the two of us. I'm so glad I have him here to share my life with. He's been so great while I've been going through all this crap. But seriously, I've been banging my head against some of the same problems my entire adult life, and I am damn tired of them. Could I possibly learn and grow a bit? I would like some new problems, please. Preferably ones that aren't as difficult as the old problems. *Sigh* Let's all look at the cute kitty and forget the problems for just one second, okay?

Okay, I don't know about you, but I feel better now. That's my own little smidgen in her favorite resting place, the box from Mark's bike helmet. She's kooky. She has two very nice, smooshy beds, one with a catnip insert, and this is where she likes to curl up. The inside of a tiny cardboard box. Such a goof.

Let's move on to some of the good stuff. One of the busy-making things from July was the fact that I had an author in town for a step-by-step photoshoot last month. But that was also one of the awesome things, as busy as it made my week. The author was totally wonderful, and the book she's writing is on metal clay, something I've been wanting to learn about for awhile now, and having an author in town was like a week-long class in metal clay. We even had some extra time on the last day of the photoshoot, so I got to make a ring. It's not perfect, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.