Painting Chef - Cheaper Than Therapy

Seeing as how the hateful gods of infertility have ripped a child from my womb… yet-a-motherfucking-gain…I opted to go the Britney Spears route of dealing with the shit in my life. Obviously we are not talking about “Oh my god I married a backup dancer ya’ll. And not just any backup dancer, one with bionic sperm that will impregnate me if I am within a fifty foot radius of him without my handy Cheetos birth control in the bag form. A backup dancer who people actually describe as chicken-fried ya’ll because he is so crusty nasty that there are no other words that seem to fit” form of shit. More along the lines of “Oh look. Another miscarriage. Fucking A.”

But whatever. Still. I chopped my hair off and dyed it. Behold…before and after photographic evidence.

(Pictures will swell like Britney’s pregnant belly if you click on them…kind of like the opposite of what my pregnant belly does…)

Oh, and another thing. Patrick and I are heading up to Martha’s Vineyard for a few days so you lucky people get to stare at my face all through Labor Day. You know. Unless you like have a life and are planning on leaving the house. Which I would highly recommend. Because even I don’t like to look at my face for that many days. I’ll be back on Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday. We’ll see how it all goes. Until then…play nice.

Dear Punk Ass Ovaries-

You suck. So does your good buddy the Teflon uterus. I hate you both and you have made me cry. Again.

Its one thing to just keep me disappointed in you all the damn time. But this whole getting me all excited by making me think you were doing your job when you filled my belly with baby goodness only to take it all away because you’re in a bad mood, this shit is not permitted to continue. You are grounded.

I hope you do NOT have a good day.

P’Chef.

I have a friend at work who has just spent almost $300 on a bridesmaid dress. It is, no question, a very lovely dress. But it isn’t her style and she will never wear it again. We started talking about these bridesmaid dresses and other single-use dresses that stack up in a girl’s closet and I remembered something I’d once read about called “The Princess Project.”

I started looking around and there just isn’t anything like that in the Augusta area and I started thinking… “How FUN would it be to get something like that started?” So I am spending some time Googling away trying to learn a thing or two about this fuzzy idea for a project that I have in my head. By no means is this a new idea, this is just me copying someone else in a different geographical region. But I’m starting to get excited about this whole thing.

So I’m asking you for help, internet. Has anyone worked on a project like this? Have any of you ever started a non-profit organization? Do you know of an organization in my general vicinity that is already doing something like this and if so, will they let me tag along?

If you have TONS of detailed experience you want to share with me and don’t feel up to writing it all out in the comment section of some lame ass blog…just email me. It’s paintingchef at gmail dot com.

Two very big news items caught my attention yesterday. First was the obvious Pluto no longer being a planet thing. This pokes a huge hole in the way I remembered the order of the plants taught to me by my second grade teacher. “Mary’s Very Extravagent Mother Just Sold Us Ninety Peanuts.” It was genuis! And I remembered it! Twenty-two years later! (damn I’m old). Now Mary’s poor crazy whack job of a mother is just selling those dumb kids ninety. Ninety what? Who knows. It isn’t important enough anymore. Regardless, my sister and I both agree that the issue causing us the most angst is the future of that Disney dog. Will he be relegated to symbol status and be forced to rename himself “the dog formerly known as Pluto”? I fear this decision was made rashly by the scientific community without any concern for animated canines. And what about the elementary school kids who just learned the planets last week? Are their teachers greeting them this morning with a “Oh! Just kidding! I lied!” This is far too much stress for a little second grade mind. (I am old as dirt, is second grade still when you learn this stuff? I just don’t remember).

The other was something that will first wear a groove in the road between my house and Kohl’s, followed by the bankrupting of the P’Chef household. VERA WANG! At KOHL’S!

That horrible sound you just heard was Patrick screaming in anguish at what he does NOT find to be a funny joke in the least.

I ran out of shampoo the other day. As I do quite often because I have the equivalent of forty-seven brown Fraggles growing out of my head. At least for the most part they are quietly well-behaved and mind their own business as I would hate to be crazy Fraggle Rock lady walking around with those guys rocking it out on my head all the time. I mean, people might start to talk.

But I digress…I have about three or four different shampoos and conditioners that I rotate between. A number that has dropped dramatically from these days. Yes, I do give into the salon product every once and again and when faced with the option of my new latest obsession, which is all things LUSH, I melt into a puddle of the chocolate and oatmeal cream pies that have found themselves coursing through my veins 24-7 (seriously… oatmeal cream pies, where have I been?) and start throwing money at whoever is closest to me in the hope that I can go home and coat myself from head to toe with some newly acquired Mask of Magnaminty and revel in the scrumptiousness.

Tangent police, please arrest this woman.

So when I popped into Wal-Mart (I know…ew) to replenish my hair care du jour I was suddenly overwhelmed by the seven foot wall of shampoos and conditioners before me. Don’t misunderstand me, my friends. I am the original product whore. If its new, improved, repackaged, or sparkly, it is in my hot little hand before you can say gumdrops and unicorns. I’m taking that bitch home. But I am almost ALWAYS disappointed. Because guess what? They are ALL the SAME. Every single one. I know, I’ve bought them all.

I ask you this…do we really need 42,527 different kinds of shampoo and conditioner? Does it make me a bad product whore to ask that question? The only reason it even comes to mind is because my current favorite had been both repackaged AND moved causing me to spend nearly 5 minutes looking for it. That may not sound like a long time but have YOU ever spent 5 minutes combing a single aisle of a grocery store looking for one thing, KNOWING it has got to be there and JUST. NOT. FINDING. IT? I wanted to pull my hair out. Which…now that I think about it…would have solved the whole problem anyway.

It suddenly occurs to me that this is how Patrick must feel when I send him to the store for something obscure and that perhaps I owe him an apology for the hundreds of times that I’ve been so very mean to him when he screws it all up. Wal-Mart really IS evil!!