Over.

It's all over. The other driver in my birthday accident has signed a release of claim. It's done. No more threat of legal action. It's appropriately sunny out right now.

Let the betting commence.

Meet Samantha. She has gimpy feet. The parrotlets will be getting separate cages, which means the other half of the large cage will be free. One of you stands to make a tidy sum of money betting against how long it will take me to wear down Christian. I'd give it a month.

Sucking it up.

I really do hate auditioning. Every time I have an audition, I think of a million reasons why I should cancel, i.e., I don't know my music well enough, they won't ever cast me, I'm too chubby for any role, I'll get nervous and forget my words, blah blah blah. A few days before auditions, I get so nervous that I have trouble sleeping and am a wretched cow to Christian. I get convinced that I don't know what I'm doing and that the auditors are going to roll their eyes and tap their pens and say "thank you!" pointedly in the middle of my first phrase. Then, I show up at the audition (well, today's audition) and the auditors are SO NICE and friendly and amazingly cool and chatty and hilarious that I'm not nervous and I actually sing OK, and it doesn't matter if I don't get cast because I feel good about how I did. Mostly. If I don't think too much about how I sang. Shit. How did I sing?

A fox in every fable.

A few years ago, we went to Flatstock at Bumbershoot, where I fell in love with the prints of Eleanor Grosch, a rock poster artist who was not only adorable but incredibly talented. She has done many series of posters of varying artisty subjects, but her posters of Aesop's fables had me drooling. There were only two in the series of four left by the time I got to her booth, so I bought "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "The Fox and the Crane". Christian recently bought the 2006 Print Annual, and lo and behold, there were two of the prints, which I can now say are award winning when people ask about them. I couldn't remember Eleanor's name, and so I never got to see the series until now. I cannot stand that "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" and "The Fox and the Crow" are sold out and I cannot add them to my sad little art collection. It took me two years to get the prints I do own framed, but now that they are and they look so gorgeous, I want all of them. All. And she has prints of birds. Be afraid, Chris. Be afraid.