on cleaning and art shows

It was a low-key and very rainy weekend. By Saturday afternoon I felt a lot better, so we spent pretty much the whole day doing some serious cleaning around the house and watching basketball (slash reading, if you're me). I must admit that my commitment to deep-cleaning my house has totally slacked the last few months. I would like to blame it on the new job...???...except that that really isn't fair, since I'm not working any more hours and really love what I'm doing...so I'm not sure how that could have affected my ability to scrub toilets and showers (and work out), but I have nothing else to blame. Except maybe increased laziness? Maybe I'm too productive at work and so I need to slack off a lot more when I'm at home? That's probably it. At any rate, I have been seriously contemplating hiring someone to come do the dirty work for me. Mainly bathrooms. And mopping. Let's talk about how we've lived in this house for almost four years and I could probably count the number of times I've mopped on an embarrassingly low number of my appendages. Sick. Tip: Check your 'five-second-rule' at the door if you're at my house!

After our ambitious cleaning-fest, we got dolled up (well, more dolled up than wearing our PJs, which is what we had been wearing up until 5pm) and went to an art opening in Athens. This is totally not my normal scene, but something Matt really loves doing, plus a friend from work is on the board of this art group and invited us, so...we went! It ended up being fun because the art was ridiculous (well, some of it. Some of it was cool. But art is...well, art, and I just really don't get it in general) but no one was taking themselves too seriously, so we could enjoy it.

One of my favorite exhibits was this sort of interactive one where the artist just made a bunch of faux cinder blocks. They were made out of some sort of...substance...that was extremely light and foam-y, but they looked JUST like real cinder blocks. So everyone (you know, all the two year olds and me) was having fun building things, playing with them, and accomplishing amazing feats like balancing them on our heads.

And even though they weren't heavy, it was still quite challenging to balance them up there. It requires having achieved like Level 10, Gold Star status in Being a Lady (you know, having such excellent posture and balance that you can walk with anything balancing on your head?), which I clearly have.

Here I am with Katherine, my co-worker/artiste friend. The exhibit behind us is juxtaposing the American anti-union sentiments of textile workers in the early 1900s with the factory conditions of textile workers in China...or something like that. Oh yeah, throw in the word 'ideology' in there, too, because I think that was a really important part of this piece. Clearly I am very educated.

So that was a fun and different way to spend a Saturday night. You're lucky I'm not re-telling the tale about the amazing, life-changing performance 'art' we witnessed. If by 'amazing' and 'life-changing' you mean 'OMG do people get paid to be this weird?' and 'I can never have those minutes of my life back' and 'I need a lot more wine to begin to think this is worth watching.'

Yesterday afternoon was spent the way I spent my childhood dreaming 'grown up life' would be. As in, after church we went to the library. We came home, and I did not move from my reading on the couch until 10pm. Well, except to get food. And it was glorious. Now it's back to work for a short week (we get Good Friday off, what-what??!) and in the middle of the week there'll be an appointment with the RE (follow-up for Matt's surgery, and MAYBE I'll make myself an appointment while I'm there....we'll see) that I'm looking forward to slash dreading. So despite the fact that it's late March and still freezing cold outside, I'm hoping it turns out to be a good week. If not, I'll probably just look up some 'performance art' on YouTube and have a good laugh at something that isn't supposed to be funny. Cause that's how I roll.