look out, I have a lot to say, maybe

This could be a long post. Or not. I'm never really sure ahead of time, just let it go with the flow.

I'm still painting like mad. I've got it all scheduled out now. Six more days of painting. One day to varnish everything. And a few days off in that time span to work on other things (so I don't go totally insane) or be doing something else altogether (like shaking my booty on stage on Saturday, you KNOW you want to see this!) According to my schedule I'm going to paint two more today though. Hmm. Well, hmm. Tomorrow is supposed to be a no-painting day so maybe I can squeeze in two tomorrow. Sigh.

I need to work on the chicken drawing and I must must must get the Sheltie dog sketched out, ack! I need more of me, some clones or something. Or maybe just minions.

My plan for tomorrow is to sort through all my chickens (the real live ones, not the paintings). Normally I would have set up the breeding pens by now. Obviously I've been a bit lax on that, and it's been this huge dilemma of what on earth do I do with the birds. See the trouble is I don't want to do anything with them. Don't want to sell them, but also don't want to hatch a gazillion of them. I've gone through this the past few years but it's worse now. Why? I guess it's kind of all changed for me, and there isn't one particular thing that caused that. Politics and stupid petty crap definitely played a big role now and totally changed my perspective on showing and a lot of the people involved. Raising a lot of birds is a lot of work. I'm really busy with other things and don't necessarily want to be tied down to cleaning brooders every week and feeding chicks every day for months at a time. It's really expensive traveling around and showing, and I think if I'm going to be spending money traveling around it ought to be for art/engraving shows. And of course there's the fact that my heart just isn't in it like it used to be. It's been 22 years. I still love the birds, I think a Rosecomb is the most gorgeous thing out there. And I still dearly love a lot of the people who I have become friends with over the years. I can't give those things up. I thought about it, and it still crosses my mind that selling out might be the wisest thing to do, but I can't do it. Not yet anyway.

So I haven't really formulated my plan yet. It'll involve barely hatching any birds. I raised about 75 last year. That was not a bad number at all, I think I could do that again. But I need to sort through all the birds and get a better sense of what I do have and how many of them are good breeding stock birds. I suspect I'll be selling off a variety or two, but I need to talk to the person I'm hoping will buy them. I don't take this lightly, I've worked so hard with these birds.

As for what to raise, well, there's another dilemma. I sure like how the Blacks turned out after last year's outcross. That should be continued. I'm horribly disappointed with last year's BBReds. I think I kept 2 pullets, and the cockerels were all crappy birds with wimpy tails. Could have been bad luck and simply the fact that I raised fewer over all (and therefore of course ended up with fewer good ones) but I'm not sure of the wisdom of repeating those breedings. Not that I have much choice, I have so few birds already.

The smart thing, to improve the BBReds (which still gets me kinda fired up, I would still love to win a show with one of them) would be to cross the Blacks and BBReds again (and also raise some straight Black). Trouble is there won't be any BBReds in the first generation of that, so it's at least a two year commitment. Can I stick with that? I honestly don't know. I also have to consider egg sales. I can't sell BBRed X Black eggs to the vast majority of people, they want instant gratification and aren't going to dig the whole "you gotta wait two generations" thing. So...eh? I don't know.

Maybe I'll figure it out tomorrow. And I find myself saying "it would be so much easier to let someone else deal with them." I can't do it though.

Anyway.

I'm surprisingly mellow about Rakkasah coming up on Saturday. I feel pretty good about the dances. Well, in the sense that I know them, not in the sense that I like all of them, but that's another story. After successfully shrinking my new bellbottom pants (they were too long) I tried on the whole outfit today and I have to say it's pretty hot stuff! I look pretty good! I need to do my nails and get everything all packed up on Friday, but it feels like no biggie. And that's nice, because I'm stressing out over enough other things in life right now. Like life itself.

Anyway.

So... the dating thing. Yeah. I started doing the whole online dating thing last summer. Six months. My account expired last month and I did not renew, and I think I'm officially putting the ole heart up on a shelf for a while and giving all that a break. It's not something I talked about much (after all, I said I wouldn't) other than the occasional woe-is-me when things went south, but obviously nothing worked out. It's been a wild ride in the last 12 months. I have no regrets, I've met some interesting people and have at least one friendship that I know will stand the test of time (maybe two, time will tell!), had the most amazingly fantastic vacation ever (well that was before I did the online thing, but it's still related). I tried hard. And it didn't work. More than once. So I think it's time to kinda step a back a little and focus entirely on other interests. It's not that I'm off the market (oh no, far from it!) I just want a break from the effort of trying. I don't understand what the problem is. I ain't perfect but I ain't all bad! (there's a line in a Dolly Parton song that goes something like that, I like it). Really! I'm good people! In fact I'm pretty damn fabulous. I guess it's just going to take someone pretty special to see this. If you know him, wrap him up and send him my way okay? ;-)

And guys, and gals... it's okay to not be interested in someone. Really, it is. But don't be one of those people who says "I'm going to call you on Friday" and then not do it. Have the balls to say you're not interested. Sheesh. Common courtesy, peeps.

Rant over. Aw heck, I'd better do a little more painting. Crap.