Fingernails, Cleavage, and the Cracker Barrel....

Last Saturday, before my trip, Kevin roused me and said that we had to run out the door if we wanted any good stuff to be left at the yard sale in the historic neighborhood, and we don't have to eat because we were going to breakfast afterwards. He announced that we were eating out or doing take out all day today because we both have a crunch day, and we shouldn't have to worry about food.

We went to the Mayberry Diner, and the Blue Ribbon Diner, but none had breakfast. People MUST go out to breakfast in Burlington, NC, but where do they go? After driving around, we found that every bruncher in town was at the Cracker Barrel. We got seated right away, but we noticed pretty fast that there were quite a few people looking at us: pointing, shaking their heads disapprovingly and whispering. At first, we thought it was because Kevin had a baseball cap on (inside a building in the South) to hide his bedhead, but after a few more John Deere caps walked in, we figured that it must have been my clothing selection. When Kevin woke me up, I threw on a camisole with built in shelf bra , a skirt, and some sandals, and you would think I was walking around in my underwear the way they were looking at me. Jezebel. If they looked closer, they would have disapproved even more, as I had lots of blue and green paint under my fingernails. Dirty Jezebel. I use my fingernails as a maul stick. With the fine work that I do, it helps to grow my fingernails out and use them to steady my hand while I paint, without smudging the paint.






















Once when I had some really intense weeks at FIU and I had not been in the studio for a while, I had a dream about Charles Eldred, my mentor. He came to me in the dream, and saw that my fingernails were long and polished, and said "what's wrong?! You're not working!". It always makes me smile to think of that when I can't get all the paint out from under my nails, and I have to go out in public.