Um. Yeah. So all of this happened recently. And it's not even everything.

Oh wow.  It's been two weeks since I've posted, huh? 

I think I've been busy doing a lot of things that I could blog about, but now I can't remember a lot of it.  But here are a few things.

1.  I almost got covered in a lot of jelly at the grocery store and then I saw some cowboys riding horses through downtown Atlanta on my way home.  No, that's not a dream I had one night.  It actually happened.

You see, I was on an aisle where I was looking for a marinade and it was near the jelly.  An employee was stocking jelly and he had boxes of it on a rolling cart.  The cart was right in front of the sauces, marinades, etc. and I was leaning around behind the cart to get the bottle I needed when the employee picked up a box of jelly, the entire bottom of the box fell out and a whole box full of jelly jars crashed to the floor and broke.  There was jelly every freaking where and I was crunching all over broken glass.  Miraculously I had no jelly on me at all even though this all happened approximately 6 inches from my feet.   He looked at me with such a horrid look as though he couldn't believe what had just happened.  I looked back at him with a sad face and said, "Oh no," because I know how to react and make people feel better.  His co-worker simply mumbled under his breath, "I guess I'll go get a mop."  Yes, dude.  I guess you will.  Then I was driving through downtown on my way back home and I saw 3 cowboys riding horses through the middle of Atlanta.  So all in all, that was kind of a weird day.

2.  I used the marinade I got when I almost bathed in sticky jelly to grill out the next evening.  A couple of days after I was outside in a tshirt in spring like weather grilling chicken and vegetables, this happened:

 And I know for those of you who live up north that looks like a light dusting of snow.  That is not snow.  It's solid ice.  I stepped out on my deck with all of my body weight (which is a lot) and it didn't crack, it didn't leave a footprint, etc.  Solid ice. 

Overnight that night is when the snow came and then we had this:

 

Which I know still looks like nothing for those of you up north, but for Atlanta that is a giant mess.  Two days later, it was in the 50s and over the weekend it was in the 60s but I still had ice on my deck until yesterday because it was so solid and thick.

Since I was stuck inside for two days, I decided to get some fun stuff done.  So I did my taxes.

Also, I know those of you not from around here know that when they call for snow down south we all decide we need to make French toast suddenly so we all stampede to the grocery store and fight each other over bread, milk and eggs.  They were telling us this storm was going to be catastrophic and Biblical (yes, they used those words) so I had friends who said they couldn't even find any frozen vegetables by the time they got to the store.

I live alone and buy groceries each Friday evening for the following week because I'm a partier who hangs out at the grocery store on Friday night so I had stocked up way ahead of time before I even knew we were supposed to get snow.

This is where I was the night before the storm:

I stocked up on paint for the two huge commission pieces I needed to work on.  Especially because the guy had just emailed me two days previously wanting to know when they were going to be done and I really had barely started on them.  (It had only been a week or two since we finalized all of the details so it's not like I had been putting him off for months or anything.) 

He wanted abstracts with lots and lots of texture.  Do y'all know what I've never painted before in my life?  Abstracts with lots and lots of texture.  He showed me photos of a painting he wanted me to base the pieces on - not to copy them identically, but he wanted me to use the same colors, same texture, etc.

And I said, "Oh sure!  No problem!  I can do those.  Easy peasy." I said this because I'm a fool.  I'm used to painting not abstract and not textured paintings on canvases that are 16x20".  He wanted 24x48" and he wanted two of them.  That's 8 feet long and 4 feet wide total, y'all. 

So I took the photos he gave me to the art supply store and looked around and found a product I thought would work for the texture (a product I've never used in my life) and consulted with an employee in there and she agreed it would give me the closest look to what he wanted from me.

This is the canvas with the texture stuff.  It looks like the ceiling of the house I grew up in:

And then I started with the 1st of 5 colors:

Y'all try not to be jealous of my gorgeous neon fish tablecloth,  okay?  It was on clearance for $3 somewhere and I knew I would be getting paint all over it so I didn't really care what it looked like. 

TWENTY HOURS later, this is what they look like.  I don't enjoy spending more than about 2 or 3 hours on a painting.  I was ready to stab someone by the time I got done with these.

A close up of the texture if you care:

The next time someone asks me to do humongous abstract paintings with lots of texture I will say this to them:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Unless they want to pay me about twice what I quoted this guy.

So yes, while my neighbors all walked up to Little 5 Points and hung out together in a 'hood bar to enjoy the ice/snow day, I did my taxes and painted these *^&%$ commission pieces.

3.  The snow ended on Thursday around noon at my house.  On Friday night it rained. 

And oh yeah, we also had an earthquake.

I had just gotten in the bed and about 2 minutes later, my entire house shook.  My bed shook, my windows rattled, the chain on my ceiling fan was bouncing against the lights, and I couldn't figure out what it was.  It lasted for probably 5+ seconds.  I immediately looked at the clock so I would know exactly what time it happened in case I needed to know for some reason.  It was 10:24 p.m. and I was watching the local early news like I'm 85-years-old.  I thought something had fallen on my house.  Or a group of people were running across my wooden deck.  (Because I don't know about y'all, but that shit happens a lot.  I often have groups of people come to my house, open up my front gate, come down the driveway and walk behind my house, and run back and forth across the deck while it's raining outside and the deck is covered in thick ice.)  Then I realized I didn't hear anything fall or anyone running.  All that happened was everything shook.  I thought, "could that have been an earthquake?  Naw.  People will think I'm crazy if I say I felt an earthquake."

About 10 minutes later the anchor on the news said, "We are getting reports of an earthquake hitting a few minutes ago."  And I felt an inkling less crazy than I normally do.

4.  So on Tuesday it had rained almost 24 hours straight.  Between Wednesday and Thursday, we had approximately 34 straight hours of sleet, freezing rain and snow.  On Friday night we had rain and a freaking earthquake.  And on Saturday this was happening in my back yard:

 

The flowers are blooming.  

I have to run now, but I still have to share with y'all about an internet sensation who is coming to my house in April to sell sex toys (oh yes, that is true).  And I injured myself again on Sunday.  Twice. And some weird stuff happened on my drive yesterday.  And my mom had surgery today.  See?  I have a lot to say!

Talk at y'all later!