Can't get There from Here

It's not just the title of an REM song anymore, today it was the story of my life.

My painting teacher was impressed with my Blythes but unimpressed with the way they were presented. I hung them on the corkboard during the critique on Tuesday in plastic, protective sleeves which tended to hang strangely, even when tacked on all sides.

So .. she advised me that it might be neat to blow them up and mount them. I had no idea where to do that and I knew my school didn't have the equipment to handle the job. She advised me to head up to Even-Smaller Anonymous University because they had a great lab for handling big print jobs.

So .. I went.

And I got terribly, terribly lost.

The town is even smaller than the one I live in now, but I still got horribly lost. I took the wrong exit. I entered the residential area. I ended up in Bumfuck Egypt, feeling carsick, headachey, and needing to take a piss really BAD.

I found a strange market that looked a lot like an old general store you'd see in a badly sepia-toned image of a "ghost town", you know .. like those places made up to look like ghost towns but they actually aren't?

Tumbleweeds, crickets chirping, you name it.

I went inside, and a lady who seemed as if she had been smoking Kools since age 4 gave me wrong directions AGAIN and would not let me use her restroom.

I had nearly decided to go home and try another day, but I was so damn close! I've lived in huge cities and never gotten lost like this. I've bragged about my keen sense of direction. When I FINALLY took the correct exit and saw the school standing in all it's glory, I had to hold back tears of joy.

Ok, not really.

But it was a wild day, and I *hate* getting lost. Especially in these tiny towns that barely make a dot on a map when you try to find them.

The Reward:

My Blythes are printed onto 17 x 24" glossy Lustre paper and soon to be mounted onto foam core. It's my first large work and I'm proud of it .. I hope there will be many more in the future.