Prima Gallerina

I feel like I am in highschool again, only I am getting paid to be there and do the work. Case in point: it is 11 p.m. and I am so tired my eyeballs ache, but I have three reports due at an all day meeting tomorrow. So what do I do? Stay up all night, finish the work and be incontinent tomorrow or go to bed, bank on how smart I'll be after a good nights sleep and hope to god that the hours and a half I have in the morning before the meeting is amazingly productive and that I somehow am able to churn all this out.

Either that or promise my first born to a little gremlin and have him spin it out of thin air as I snooze. Wouldn't it be grand?

Posted by Bernice Sequin at 11:06 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

On Saturday night I took the opportunity of having two long-lost friends in town to be an excessive freak and drink more booze then I've probably done all together in the last six months combined. And shooters! I never do shooters! Between swigging the red wine, I also indulged in Jaegger (I don't even know how to spell it!) and at least two ounces of the raunchiest tequila I think I've ever had in my life. Even three sheets to the wind I had to stuggle to hold it down. It was an ugly, slurring, stumbling, falling on my ass in the middle of the dance floor kind of drunk. Oh, it was ugly and I am still feeling the pangs even today.

And you know who I blame? The gallery, of course. I've been working so many hours that I was just craving a stupid release. All of my overtime and squinting into this stupid screen resulted in a mass of pent up ugliness that was either to explode on someone in my office or on myself, via alchohol induced vomitting.

Oh lord.

Posted by Bernice Sequin at 5:57 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

Tonight, after eight and a half hours of work, I mosied my fashionista ass down to our local pedway mall for a fashion show/arts fundraiser/dance thing in support of a local modern dance company and one of my co-workers who was walking in the show (for those of you not in the know - or those of you who don't watch America's Next Top Model - "walking" means she was modeling). It was kind of pretty and I felt all important with my complimentary ticket, glass of sparkling champagne and the rose petals scattered at my feet. The dancing was great, the clothes alternated between absolutely hideous (think black garbage bag dress and mid-calf length leggings, ick!) and fabulous (a wonderful brown knit suit cut in all the right places). Maybe it is my obsession with all things top model and project catwalk but I was really struck by how completely uncomfortable and lost most of the models appeared. I could just hear Tyra Banks and Miss Jay whispering in my ear, "That's not fierce! A model needs to be fierce!" and unfortunately, few of them lived up to my television-driven expectations. I found myself internally critiquing everything from the vacant expression in their eyes to the awkward walking in stilettos to the mostly terrible choice of music (Born to be Wild). The highlight of the night was this funny art thing when a group of men came out and did a choreographed dance down the catwalk, all clad in paper skirts. It sounds crazy, but it had me grinning so wide that my teeth hurt. The best part was seeing Carlos, the owner of a local Italian deli and likely among the most colourful men in the city, bouncing up and down in a pink paper skirt, a wrapped sausage in his hand, his jerry-curl mullet bouncing up and down in the late afternoon breeze. It was priceless and well worth the hour of otherwise mediocre performances and fashion.

Afterwards we all sauntered into the store that was sponsoring the fashion show and I deigned to imagine that I might find a cute scarf or hat to add to my cute little fall wardrobe. My head spun when I saw the insane prices - $120 for a scarf! A scarf! That is about $100 more then I would ever spend on a scarf given that at the places I currently shop at, $120 could likely buy me three shirts, a dress and a sweater (a bit of an exaggeration but close). So, like the classy gal I am, I guzzled a few glasses of the cheap champagne and left, all the while sneezing from the (likely) expensive perfume that rich people seem intent on dousing themselves with.

Posted by Bernice Sequin at 10:21 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

I am such a git. I was supposed to have this fun weekend but I keep missing the people I am supposed to have fun with. My new telephone plays Fur Elise, and apparently that isn't obnoxious enough a song for me to even notice that it is playing. Bugger! As a result, no dance party on Friday, no drinks last night and no brunch today. Instead I spent Saturday pm at work. So the message, find a phone with a more annoying ringer.

Today though I am going shopping for a new fall wardrobe and nothing delights me more. Except maybe fresh steamed mussels, which I bought from the fish store yesterday and intend on having for dinner tonight. Oh glory!

As for the gallerina business, it is going well. Crazy busy but as well as can be expected GIVEN MY BOSS QUIT ON WEDNESDAY AND HIS LAST DAY WAS FRIDAY. (Holy Mother of Gawd! Sacre Bleu! &^%^%$^#+!). But more on that later. The mall is calling my name in the sweetest voice....

Posted by Bernice Sequin at 12:24 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

Yes. Despite being on the tail end of a lovely last-weekend of summer I am feeling desperate today. I've had a strange weekend, fluctuating between being overjoyed by time alone reading in my slowly browning yard, or walking the dogs - to feeling completely in despair over a variety of things, all valid, none of which I feel I can really nail down. I keep telling myself that my over-emotional state is due to PMS, and I am sure that is partly true, but only partly. I have a lot of things to be glad about:

1. a job that I love
2. lovely weather of my favorite variety - warm during the day and wonderfully cool at night
3. pets that I adore
4. a kind and loving man in my life
5. a house that feels like home to me
6. a sense that I am where I should be, rather than a niggling feeling that I am missing something going on just around the corner
7. books I have loved reading, like this one

Really there are a lot of things to be happy about. But there are also these buggers:

1. my grandfather (really more like my father as he raised me, my own father having abandoned me and my mother before I was born) has a lesion on his lung and at this point we aren't sure what it is. It doesn't look promising though as he was in construction most of his life and during that time, they loved to use asbestos, which they have discovered causes lung cancer.
2. so much overtime that I occasionally feel like my head is about to crack open like a coconut and an awful sense of urgency in the pit of my stomach like I am forgetting something/screwing something up/going to be found out/in terrible trouble/sinking in quick sand.
3. I let my oldest friend move away from town without saying goodbye to her. I had a reason, I was busy and she was being a bit of an ass. But in the end, none of that should have mattered and I should have made even ten minutes to say goodbye, even if wasn't willing to do the same for me. If anything ever happened to her, I would never be able to reconcile not taking the time out and be the bigger person and wish her well.
4. I haven't emailed my father back (biological who just came back into my life this past spring) in about a month. I want to but there is something keeping me from actually doing it. It is weighing on me but I am frozen into some stupor, unable to act and unwilling to really analyze my feelings about it.
5. I just feel overwhelmed and a little bit lost - a bit like a woman made out of tightly strung elastic bands. I really, really don't want to snap.

All this sounds very dramatic but writing about it makes it somehow better, or at least more manageable. I am just such a nostalgic fool. I love fall, it's my favorite season and I look forward to it every year but it makes me so sad. Anther summer is slipping away and there will never be another one exactly like this and although in many ways that is a good thing, the control freak part of me (which, let's face it, is a big part of me) hates that there is nothing I can do to slow things down. I think this feeling is amplified by my grandfather's potential illness and the idea that these loves cannot ever be permanent, no matter how nurtured they are. Like everything else, they pass and I am still trying to hold on to every moment and the harder I grasp, the quicker things seem to turn to smoke and slip through my fingers.

XOXOX

Posted by Bernice Sequin at 7:23 p.m. | Permalink | Comments