4:23 p.m.

When I was seven, I broke my arm so severely that it was poking through the skin. When I was a teenager, I had numerous baby teeth pulled at once by my dentist in order to make room for adult teeth. Two summers ago, I attended 10 bridal showers, 7 bachelorette parties and was a bridesmaid in five different weddings and a personal attendant in two other weddings. None of these past painful life events holds a candle to the agony I feel waiting for the last few minutes of a Friday afternoon to pass.

Is that a tad bit overdramatic?
I don’t think so.

Work is going well. We had a tough week, here, but I think things will be looking up. It’s amazing how much of your professional life is spent dealing with office politics. Especially in a department that is full of women. I don’t mean to be sexist; I just want to say that right off the bat. But there is a huge difference between working with men as opposed to working with women. We think differently and react differently. Notice, I say “differently” and not “better” or “worse”. There are pros and cons to working with both sexes. As a rule of thumb, I try to avoid confrontation and conflict as much as possible. If faced with tense situations, I clumsily make jokes and avoid eye contact at all costs. That seems to work with men. I tend to use humor as a defense mechanism, just like Chandler Bing.

But it’s different with women. There always seems to be this underlying current of emotion that I cannot tap into. I don’t understand it. And this week, my attempt at humor fell flat. Even though I’ve been told I handle adversity well, I sure don’t feel like I do. I think my lame attempts at jokes sometimes make me seem flippant and dismissive, when in reality I’m actually just trying to relieve the tension. I know how serious a situation is, but I don’t necessarily want to admit it. Sometimes, though, I completely misread the situation and end up looking and feeling like a fool. (Well, like more of a fool than usual anyways…) So this week, I’ve tried to just keep my head down and power through…I’m just not sure of what exactly lies on the other side.

So! This is the weekend I will truly move into my studio space. I was a bit of a party girl last weekend and spent my nights out and my days recovering on the couch. But that will not be the case this time. I hope to move everything over and begin my first two projects—the lovely portrait of my friend’s daughter and a cover for our patient information binder. There are so many things I want to get for the studio, but that will take time. Patience (not to mention frugality) is not a virtue I possess all that much and all I want to do is go buy everything that Dick Blick and Hobby Lobby have to offer by way of art supplies. But I must wait… Hopefully I’ll have some pics of the space to put up. My blog has been devoid of photos lately. Sorry ‘bout that!

Peace and Love