Really, people, I am not in the mood for any bullshit today. Yesterday brought many frustrations, and yesterday is over. So I�m going to brush off the annoying client this morning, the snide comment from a manager, the weighing responsibility of an old woman�s impending death as we continue to drag out her settlement, the fact that my mother still has not called to apologize for hanging up on me yesterday, I�m going to brush it off and take a deep breath and try to let it out slowly without voicing the scream that is building within me. I can do it. It�s Thursday, after all.

One thing that never fails to cheer me up is thinking about upcoming plans or fond memories. So let�s do that before I start crying because I REALLY do NOT want to be here today. We�ll start with a fond memory made just this morning - I dropped my father off at the airport. We laughed most of the way there. I gave him a kiss on each cheek, a tight, lingering hug, and sent him on his way. As he began to walk away from me, he mentioned that my cats somehow made their way into our microwave and ate all the cookies. Oh, Dad. Blaming your naughty actions on the pets never gets old for me.

Tonight I will be attending a happy hour for local businesses in Kensington - an opportunity to talk about the gallery and feel people out for potential neighborhood promotions. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Then, I�ll be meeting up with a local artist to have my finger fitted and to give him additional specifications for the ring I�m paying him to make for me.

Last night I carved a little pumpkin. I carved a little smiley face in it. The evening with Spider Monkey, Nanners and Queenie was a hoot, with odd comments and silly zingers. I would have had even more fun if I wasn�t such a stress-case. Pressured for time as it got later, pressured to be creative, and all I could think was, My pumpkin sucks. It sucks and I suck and I�m not creative, and I�m stupid, and my pumpkin is stupid and I don�t even know why I bother. Then I felt stupid for thinking those thoughts, and I became inwardly angry with myself for feeling the way I did, for allowing the stress of the day to alter my confidence, to damper my mood. I wondered why I just couldn�t enjoy the act of carving the slimy, icky pumpkin without worrying about what my design said about me.

True, true, I can tend to be quite the head case. I don�t usually let on, though. If I were to verbalize many of the thoughts shooting through my synapses, I would be too confusing for many, too much work to be around. So I deal with it. And in the end, I pushed the thoughts away and decided to like my little smiley faced pumpkin. The girls said it was cute. M.s. said it was cute.

And me... I just really don�t want to be here today.

-Barbarella

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