P r e t t y S k e t c h y

Living the lovely life

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
   

 

 

  My Mom was here this weekend and I was meaner to her than I ever should be. I don't know, there is something about a Mom that is always a Mom and something about a daughter that is always a daughter. I am a brat sometimes, I always feel terrible after. I do like it when she visits though. We have fun when I'm not being insolent because she's trying to tell me how to do things a better way. Ha.

Snookie

 

Today I went with my sister to put our family dog Snookie to sleep. I didn't think I would cry as much as I did, I mean I knew I would cry a little but man, it was so sad. We've had him since I was 11 or so but he's lived with my sister since we all went off on our own. He was 16 years old and his life was starting to get more and more painful so she didn't want him to suffer. He was a really sweet little dog and will definitely be missed.

How many naked people did you see this weekend?

This weekend my cousin Patrick came to visit. Prior to last December I was unaware that this cousin existed as he is something like my third cousin (our grandfathers were brothers) and I only have 2 relatives that I know of on the Lawyer side. He e-mailed me out of the blue last December after he'd heard about my art through a family member and checked out my website. Since then we've been writing pretty hefty e-mails back and forth every few weeks. Now that I'm a lot closer to California and he's an unemployed loafer he decided to come visit. I guess he did come visit my family in Canmore once when we were kids. He e-mailed me a photo his Mom found from then. Check it out...

Good times right?

Well the good times continued this weekend and I have lots of photo documentation to prove it.

Some waterfront good times...

We went to the market, had lunch by at the waterfront and walked around the pier and talked. Patrick introduced me to the concept of the My Space Angle and so we spent some of our down time trying it out. The best two...

Patrick...

and me (ideally I would have a lot more cleavage though). It's kind of a waste that I never was on My Space.

Patrick decided that he needed to try out some Seattle microbrews so we headed out to Ballard Friday night in search of a pub. Getting me out to a bar is no small feat but it was pretty okay. I think I'd take an evening of drawing at home while watching The Office over being out at a crowded pub generally though. After the bar we headed over to 'the sev' where I bought a York Peppermint Patty and Patrick bought a forty which he consumed while walking down the street and finished up on the hood of my car.

We got a homeless man outside the convenience store to open it, ha.

Because he didn't have a bottle opener the homeless guy opened it really poorly (on a windowsill) and Patrick had to make sure he didn't cut his lip open on the bottle. It was so white trash, we laughed really hard about it all.

On Saturday we decided to go and see Bruce Lee's grave but we got sidetracked on the way there by this...

What? A large crowd of naked people with bikes!? We had to turn around and check it out. Patrick hopped out to snap a photo and I found a place to park...

yes, that is me in my car awkwardly pulling up behind a naked man securing a load in his truck. He was bent over when I pulled up, aghh!

It was so weird to pass a park and see a bunch of naked people on bikes. Naked people in real life are soo unsexy, ha. I love Seattle.

After gawking for a while we finally made it to Bruce Lee's grave...

here's Patrick looking like a dork doing a kung fu pose.

It was a beautiful day so we took a walk around Greenlake and ate snow-cones.

So beautiful.

That night we went to a hipster dive bar and checked out a few bands. Patrick is kind of anti-hipster so he wasn't too into the crowd but I loved them. He listened to the bands and drank experimental hipster beer and I drew in my sketchbook and checked out hipsters with Buddy Holly glasses and skinny jeans.

My sketchbook page from the night...

it's sort of half-done but I didn't feel like finishing it tonight.

We realized towards the end of our visit that we hadn't taken any pictures together so we got on that right away. Photography by Granny, ha.

Look at us all cousinly, I look sooo short here, ha.

It was a good weekend, Patrick left this morning and I spent my day watching an America's Next Top Model marathon on TV and doing laundry. I have to be in Olympia this week for staff training for my new job. I'm kind of nervous about it even though I know it will be fine. I'll write again when I can. Happy week all.

Melissa...

is my sister.

She is the one getting married and she is a pretty ridiculous girl. In the picture above she was cold and this was the warming outfit that resulted from her scavenging in my closet.

We had our weekly wedding planning date this Saturday and the whole thing was too funny to not write about. We had 3 flower consultations booked for the day, the first at 11 am on the north-side so she was supposed to pick me up at 10. She is the type that tells me to be ready at 10 and then shows up 15 minutes early so at 10:20 when she finally returned one of my many calls I was a bit worried. It was needless though because when she showed up an hour and a half later telling me she'd slept in I realized that she was very very hungover.

Now you all should know (if you don't already) that I have never been drunk or even close it so the whole experience of having a hangover is left up to my imagination. Spending the day with Lis confirmed my resolve to never drink to excess. A list of stupid/hilarious things she did during our planning day:

1. Ate a Big Mac for breakfast and then complained all day of feeling sick. The McDonald's was immediately following her visit to the toilet as soon as she woke up to relive all the alcohol she'd ingested the night before. She then ate a cupcake as soon as we got on the road.

2. We went to a wedding shop to look for cake toppers and she found one she kind of liked but felt she needed to shop around more before she purchased it. It was the last of it's kind though and she was worried someone might buy it. So, instead of asking about their return policy she decided she'd hide it in the store. She chose a spot against the back wall on a shelf amongst some forgotten balls of twine. She made me look out while she hid it and when she pushed it behind the balls of twine it fell down a 2" crack behind the shelf where she was unable to retrieve it despite her attempts to pull the shelf out alone. I refused to help because the shelf was huge and it was stacked with tons of stuff we'd have to remove in addition to a wall display that would have to be taken down in order to pull it out and we totally would have gotten caught. Plus I was laughing really really hard. We looked for more cake toppers all day and never found one she liked as much, ha. If she wants that one she'll have to go back, tell someone who works there how dumb she is, help them pull the shelf out and then purchase the topper (which most likely broke from the fall). The rest of the day I commented about every half an hour "hey remember when you threw that cake topper behind the shelf", I alternated between that and discrediting anything she said with "yeah well, you're drunk".

3. We had to pay for parking on Whyte because we had a florist consultation and when we stopped I gave her a bunch of change for the meter before we got out of the vehicle. When we got out and needed to put money in the meter she had somehow lost all the change I had given her 30 seconds before. Finally we found it in a heap of snow below the meter where she'd dropped it. After we picked it all up and fed the meter she then proceeded to lose all the change in her wallet not once but twice in a snowbank.

4. At the aforementioned flower shop the lady asked what sort of bouquet Lis was looking for and Melissa silently stared at her for about thirty seconds before I cut in with an explanation. Well maybe not silently, she uttered a few unintelligible monosyllables.

5. After the same appointment Melissa almost walked out without her purse.

6. We went to chapters to kill time later on and I had to go to the washroom. Melissa decided to go with me saying she felt sick and maybe she'd feel better if she could make herself throw up again. She waited while three people used the washroom so she could attempt to throw up alone but the bathroom never emptied enough for her to be able to. The whole thing was pretty funny.

7. We had Indian food for dinner and when we were leaving they had a bowl of seedy looking stuff by the till. Melissa asked what it was and they guy told her it was a breath freshener that helped with digestion. She took a spoonful, put it in her mouth, started to chew and made one of the most hilarious faces I have ever seen her make*. I had some too, it was rather like eating potpourri. She ran outside and the second the door opened she spewed it all over.

A definite positive of Melissa's hangover was that she was waaay more laid back than normal. The whole day killed me. I'm sure all of this was too much information.

*This is the most hilarious face I have ever seen her make. That's my other sister Beck attempting to comfort her. I LOVE this picture.

10 Things I Did This Long Weekend...

1. Sang 'Colors of The Wind' with my friend Laura more times than I care to mention. I also exchanged Facebook passwords with her which led to a war of Pocahontas related status updates. ie. "Laura Cuell is running the hidden pine trails of the forest."

2. Ate really good Japanese food. If you live in Edmonton you need to try this place.

3. Went wedding dress shopping with my sister, Mom and Laura. My two favorite photos:

This dress was a no, which is why I'm allowed to show it. Still pretty cute though.

Laura and Lis in the last store of the day (it was a very long day).

4. Played M.A.S.H with Laura in my sketchbook on the floor of a wedding dress store.

5. Watched waaay too much of this. I am uncool, I know.

6. Got my kitty screen print in the mail. It is currently in the basement studio being weighed down by acrylic gel and water bottles in an attempt to get it to flatten out after mailing.

It came in a cardboard mailer with this wonderful packing tape on it which of course I peeled off and kept (below).

7.Went on a Starbucks date with Beth. It went somewhat unsuccessfully though due to Remembrance Day hours so we had a hanging-out-on-my-bed-blogging date instead.

 

Proof of our good times. You can't fake excitement like this.

8. Drooled over this. I want one sooo bad, hopefully at the end of the month... BUY MY ART! Subtle hey?

9. Continued to read these books both of which I love so far.

How to be an Explorer of The World by Keri Smith

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland 

10. Watched Meg eat a lot of Pringles.

 

Just to clarify, Meg is lovely and beautiful and this is in no way a regular occurrence (her stuffing her face with Pringles crumbs and laughing them all over the table and the book she's reading). I am so going to be in trouble for this. Ha, it is so worth it though, I didn't photograph the entire sequence of events for nothing.