Hot Lips

Today is Day 4 of getting up early for no good reason.  Poo.  I thought my contractor dudes were going to show up on Monday to put my bathroom together, but I have yet to see them.  And today is Thursday.  We didn't have a set date and I'm sure if I had slept in today they would have been knocking on the door bright and early.  But all that is neither here nor there (begging the question -- where is it?).  The bigger issue is that it is March already, and we all know what that means.

It is time for my annual confrontation with my personal trifecta.

I have never been able to simultaneously master three particular areas of my life and every March - for reasons I cannot now recall, although it has something to do with March Madness - I give it another shot.  I am attempting to paint well, eat well and exercise well.  I was thinking about my trifecta the other night and I realized that were I to give it an acronym I would have to say I am attempting to PEE.  Paint, eat, exercise.  Awesome, right?  Looking at it another way, I've got EEP, the initials of my friend Eric.  You can see his blog here and his website here.

Anywho, my first step was to give something up for Lent.  I know, I know, I'm not a practicing Catholic, but all this happened on the first day of Lent, so there you go, I'm taking advantage of the coincidence.  And what did I give up?  If you think I'm going to say chocolate, you obviously do not know me at all.  I gave up sloth.

Yep, that's right, sloth.  And not the three-toed variety.  We're talking the "habitual disinclination to exertion" variety (thank you dictionary.com - I couldn't have said it better myself).  You know that expression about things in motion tending to stay in motion?  Well the opposite is also true.  Things not in motion have a hell of a time gettin' a move on without some external influence.  I have become habitually inclined to take the path of least resistance, which is to say when I am lying on the chaise with poodle reading a book, I tend to stay lying on the chaise with poodle reading a book.  The only one around here getting a good workout is my library card.

And this is a problem.  So yesterday I got up early and waited for the potential arrival of contractors.  After an hour I figured they weren't coming so I made a lovely breakfast of sausage and scrambled eggs with shallots.  I can't remember what I did for the rest of the morning, but early afternoon poodle and I packed our gym bag and headed out into the world.  I put my running shoes on for the first time in months and although I only clocked two miles on the treadmill, two slow and pathetic miles, a girl's gotta start somewhere.  I feel so much better after I exercise, and yesterday was no exception.  Dinner was chicken soup with a crap ton of broccoli and some leftover chicken boobs, so I feel pretty good about what I ate yesterday too.  That just leaves the P.

I painted the background of this canvas the other day and finished it last night.  This was going to be my teaser photo for you but since I didn't write this blog post last night like I intended and I took some beauty shots this morning, here you go.  I named it "Hot Lips."

My first cow.  A wee small cow, 7" wide by 5" high.  Happy me.  That rounds out a successful day of PEE.  I hope this is the start of something good.

In poodle news, someone got a new coat.  It is a hand-me-down from Jane's dog Carly.  Carly is a Rottweiler so the coat is a bit big on poodle, and when Jane reached in the jeep window and put it on her, poodle was already wearing a sweater underneath another coat.  It was cold that day.  When we got home and poodle jumped out of the car I almost fell over laughing because she looked like a little pork sausage.  She's not quite sure what to do with this coat because it is so much bigger than all her others.  When we went out to run errands on Sunday she wore the coat and I tried to get some pictures before we got in the car.  This is the best I could do:

Our first stop was Costco (I know, on a Sunday, but it wasn't as bad as I expected) and when I got back to the car poodle was in the front seat.  Naked.

Huh?

Did I forget to lock the car doors?  Did someone break in and steal her coat?  It took a bit but common sense finally prevailed and I checked the back seat, which I had flipped up when I put the box of food in the way back.  There was the coat.  How she got it off I have no idea.

We also went to Lowe's to pick up the bathroom vanity.  Ann met me there since it wouldn't fit in the jeep; she took it home and brought it to me on Monday for which I am very grateful since I'm not sure how I would have gotten it here otherwise.  Last stop was at Home Depot to pick up my kitchen sink.  Now the only major item I am lacking is the kitchen faucet.  Range and microwave are being delivered on the 12th and Kevin from Morrisville Lumber will come get the final measurements for my countertops as soon as the cabinets are installed.  Which means I've got an immediate date with some primer.

Gottagobye.