Midnight cowgirl

01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst Habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What color eyes do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
26) What's your favorite place to hang out at?
27) Do you believe in ghosts?
28) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
29) Do you swear a lot?
30) Biggest pet peeve?
31) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
32) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
33) Favourite and least favourite food?
34) Do you believe in God?
35) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
36) Favourite band(s) of ALL time:

here's the completed painting. it still needs about a day's worth of work for finishing touches but its pretty much finished. i'm going to do a series in this style, it's hard to stick to one thing but its better than having several completely different and unrelated works, right? i mean if you're going to do a show they cant all look entirely different from one another, there needs to be a common element to them. her leg looks a bit too skinny so i'll need to fix that...

I don't know what it is about Jacksonville but I'm painting again and I'm convinced it has to do with the place. It's been about 6 years since I last did anything creative! I have a big canvas and I'm halfway through my first painting, and I'm lining up so many more. Here we have monthly art walks which involves artists all getting together in the city and displaying their art on the streets and in stalls. Buildings are dedicated to this event so some artists get to display inside the buildings too. The quality of the art is not amazing so this has definitely made me bold enough to paint and want to display. I don't feel dwarfed by talent like in Sydney. Here it feels like you can actually do something, get noticed, not laughed at. We'll see. The best part is, Dennis is doing the same - he's drawing and painting right alongside me. Yesterday we went to the hardware store to find out all the tools we need to stretch our own canvases. You can easily go broke buying canvases for the scale that we both want to paint in. Our philosophy is, the bigger the better. We buy the largest canvases found in stores, the next step would be custom made sizes which would cost around $300 each. Ouch! So we can probably make them ourselves for $50.
When I was blowing glass the favourite thing for my teacher to tell me was "if you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it blue."
Anyway, there's a bar here which I love. It happens to be walking distance from us and they try hard to make it an underground affair. It's completely unmarked except for one letter S on the door, which stands for Sinclair. So already when you go in you feel special. They decorated it in antique style with a big heavy wooden bar and Art Nouveau cash register, and have antique nick knacks all over. They also have amazing art - paintings of famous writers hanging on the walls. I'm in love with one of John Steinbeck in particular. Here you can sort of see it in the far corner above the bar:
http://jacksonville.com/files/edit…
The point of this was that I would really love to hang some paintings in there. Once I have a few, I'll ask them if they'll take them in, that would be awesome.
I would also love to get some girls to come and model for me for some future paintings. I wonder how easy it would be to get a girl to come and agree to take some photos (or how expensive). Would it be weird to come up to a girl at a bar and ask her if she wanted to model for me? Recently Sinclair (can you tell that we hang out there a lot) had a burlesque show and live drawing evening. I later met one of the two fetish models, she seemed nice. I'd love to get her to pose for me sometime soonish.
I'm excited, I haven't felt like that in years :))

Some reasons I love Jacksonville: you can walk 10 minutes from our building to a mini Darling Harbour, sit on the deck overlooking water and eat amazing sushi, tempura shrimp, salad and drink iced tea all for $15 per person. It's so awesome. I don't even want to think what a lunch like that would cost you in Sydney.

i have these on facebook but i'll post them here as well as requested. ( Collapse )

I love the US. This is Jacksonville, a town where people feel self conscious about living in, and crinkle their noses when they find out that I moved here from Australia. I have no idea yet about what New York or San Francisco are like, or any of the other large cities but I'll get to know them well I'm sure.
Here's what my life is like. Right now Dennis is away for a month in Australia and I'm here alone with Belle. We're in a beautiful place - our apartment is enormous and luxurious, and at night it transforms into a nightclub style bachelor's penthouse, bathed in coloured lights. Everything's here because it looks good, sexy and stylish. We have zebra pattern satin sheets on our memory foam mattress. Yeah, you can really put a wine glass on one side and jump on the other without spilling it. There's a well stocked full bar. Our bath tub is so large that when you have a bath you can pretend you're in a pool (or a hot spring) if you close your eyes. In the parking lot is a luxury car with cream leather seats and a sound system that makes you want to close your eyes and lift your skirt.
There are more windows than walls here. The view is great, especially with my binoculars - I just witnessed a guy peeing in the bushes in a parking lot. Walking distance is a big 5 level library with a dizzying collection of books and dvds. We have about 40 books here right now, most of which are rare and beautiful and completely out of my reach in Australia. 3 of them are very large, hard bound with coloured photos of gems from all over the world and jewellery that looks like it's about to pop out and land in my hand. I have a book on where to find gold and gemstones and how. I have 5 foreign movies - none of which feature Bardot, sadly - maybe next week. I'm deep in the book about the 60s.
It's great. My life is amazing. I have the most incredible man in my life - I feel so lucky, like one of the chosen people. The way I see it, he walked into my life and decided to make it great. Everything I do, everywhere I go is beautiful and I sure as hell appreciate it every day. Everything I see in him is beautiful and I would feel like that even if I lived in a homeless shelter. Things are just things, and materialism is not something I worship, but things can make your life a wonderful experience.
I'm so in love with him that most times I feel speechless and unable to describe the depth and intensity and complexity of my feelings. It's beyond anything real and physical. It's beyond daily life. All of that stuff that people call shallow fades into laughable insignificance, because it's nothing. I sometimes wonder how this thing, that feels so vulnerable and beautiful can be so strong. The sheer joy of existence is what I feel right now and it all comes back to him.

If she knew what she wants
(He'd be giving it to her)
If she knew what she needs
(He could give her that too)
If she knew what she wants
(But he can't see through her)
If she knew what she wants
He'd be giving it to her
Giving it to her

But she wants everything
(He can pretend to give her everything)
Or there's nothing she wants
(She don't want to sort it out)
He's crazy for this girl
(But she don't know what she's looking for)
If she knew what she wants
He'd be giving it to her
Giving it to her

I'd say her values are corrupted
But she's open to change
Then one day she's satisfied
And the next I'll find her crying
And it's nothing she can explain

Some have a style
That they work hard to refine
So they walk a crooked line
But she won't understand
Why anyone would have to try
To walk a line when they could fly

No sense thinking I could rehabilitate her
When she's fine, fine, fine
She's got so many ideas traveling around in her head
She doesn't need nothing from mine

I like my relationships to be strange. Its true, I've just got to admit that to myself more often. I'm not made to live how everyone else lives. I like different and difficult to understand people, I like knowing I break conventions, I like making my friends wonder and shocking my family. Sometimes I rebel against myself and pretend like I'm just normal, totally normal and would be happy in the suburbs and 9-5. But that's not me. I've tried it and I've done it and I always find it lacking and unfulfilling. I don't know why, I guess it bores me and depresses me and makes me feel ordinary and mediocre.
So now I'm in a relationship that's not defined, and there are no labels for it and I doubt ever will be. I don't know anyone who lives how I live and does what I do and I've never read about it, seen it or heard of it being done, not in the same way. There are no manuals for it and no advice anywhere, there are no guidelines or expectations. It's new territory. And I like that, I really do. A lot. I am pretty sure that everyone would have strong reactions to the way that I live but I'm used to strong reactions. I can live with that in exchange for knowing and tasting something completely new and unexplored. It makes me feel like a pioneer discovering new land. It's probably the most important and meaningful thing I've done with my life. No, it definitely is. This morning I was watching my cat explore the outside of the house for the first or second time in her short life and I knew how she felt.

I went to see my family yesterday. It was my mother's birthday and I wanted to see everyone before I go to the USA. Always a strange experience and yesterday was no different. Topic of discussion was my weight pretty much the entire time. I lost some weight but not a huge amount, and to them apparently it was extremely noticeable. Most of them thought the weight loss was fantastic, but to my mother I was close to anorexic.. Now I have a healthy % of body fat, something like 24% which means I can lose a few more kilos, and most people noted that I should do that. But nooo to my mum, who hassled me for the last 20 years to lose weight, I was anorexic. I don't think anyone in their right mind would call me skinny - I am size 10 for goodness' sake ( I think in America that would be 4?) so I have no idea what her problem was, except she was really "concerned" and wasn't happy for me in the least.
Well at least I got full approval from all my male relatives.
There were many lectures on getting married and having children, and just as many telling me not to worry and do what I want. There were many people who told me I was getting old and just as many laughed it off. My family is so damned weird, seriously. Not to mention absolute rednecks.. I was having a conversation with my 24 year old cousins about gay people and apparently they "hate faggots" because they are Russian and that's what Russians do. do they? I told them they are nothing but rednecks and they shrugged. They also said they would never ever go to America, but couldn't give me any reasons as to why. Seriously if they could rub 2 brain cells together, I would be surprised. Still I do love my cousins as I watched them grow up. I just wish that they grew up with a brain - their father is (somewhat) open minded, why can't they be? Anyway. It's disappointing. I dont even ask my boyfriend to come and see my family anymore, too embarassing. Can't wait till I'm in America.

Why does it feel like in normal daily conversations with friends and strangers it's almost like one isn't allowed to mention their other half? Actually it happens mostly when I talk to women. Almost like if I mention him, that means that I have no brain and personality and my opinions are not my own. That's just the feeling that I get - like it's some secret understanding that one isn't supposed to talk too much about their partner. Like it somehow becomes "codependent" and weak. "I'm a strong woman, I pretend I stand alone." It's annoying - I like talking about my boyfriend, his opinions, what he thinks and says - I spend most of my time with him! Of course I'm influenced and he takes up a large part of my thoughts and has a hand in who I am. But it's somehow wrong? It doesn't make me any less of a woman.