Productive Saturdays/Classes Update

Hi Mom.

The last two Saturdays have been consecutively therapeutic. Something about grocery/supply shopping, doing laundry and organizing my room after whirl-winding through the days prior is very relaxing. Even today when I had to wait an hour and a half to get my new tires, I spent the entire time in the Starbucks next door doing some cafe drawings (drawing unsuspecting people quickly). Here are my favorites from today:

There were plenty more, but people tend to move so these were the people that stayed relatively stagnant while I was drawing. I was in the corner by a window for the most part and I know the girl next to me, who was past bored with the textbook open in front of her, kept glancing over. I half expected her to say something but she eventually left and my first official cafe drawing session went unnoticed, which is fine by me. I just hope when I'm a multi-million dollar artist that someone might care if I'm drawing them! (just kidding...except for the multi-million dollar part, my student debts are kind of counting on it.)

After my car was done and I discovered the beauty of new and aligned tires, I drove over to Walmart for some much needed groceries (need I refer back to my last rant-filled blog post?). While I spent a little more than I was planning, it was a good feeling to be able to stand in line at the cash register and watch healthy items (grapes, bananas, spinach, Greek yogurt to name a few) go by and know that at least my shopping habits have been curved. Even if I am still tempted by cookies and pasta here and there, for the most part I've stopped treating food like a reward or a comfort and more like fuel. And I really only want the good stuff.

My fridge is feeling the brunt of it. I am gonna have to give up having cold water (and we all know how much I adore my cold water). Hopefully the bag of frozen berries doesn't thaw out too much, so this is a test run for them. I also had to separate my bag of grapes and box of spinach because there was no way those two rather large box/bag was going to make it. Finally found a use for the can holders that you can only use if there's nothing else in the fridge. Hazzah! Don't judge the amount of milk I have - I was at that weird in between stage of milk where I was definitely going to run out in the middle of the week and didn't want to go back out. Plus I got some chocolate milk because I like to drink some after my workouts.

The beige thing with the red lid is the first smoothie I made today with my new ($20) blender. It's a mix of Greek Yogurt, a banana, some "frozen" strawberries, spinach (never can taste it, only add for additional vitamins), tiny bit of water for easy blending, and a LITTLE bit of sugar - which I added after the initial taste test and nearly lost my vision from the tartness of the yogurt. Hopefully I'll get used to it without sugar, but for now this is the compromise I have for starting to eat Greek yogurt which is full of awesomeness for your body. Baby steps.

In my "pantry" we have a BUTTLOAD of cheerios (overestimated my need this week plus I like to have a variety of flavors), some natural peanut butter (thanks Mom for teaching me the trick of storing it upside down), bananas, my full-of-guilt whole grain white bread (most white foods are suuuuper bad for you but again, baby steps, I switched to natural peanut butter so the switch to pure wheat bread will happen eventually), and Garden Salsa Sun Chips (soo good, maybe a little too good).

So as of two seconds ago, I weight about (I can never tell fully which black line the red one is pointing at on my ancient*cough cheap cough* bathroom scale) 142 lbs. Which is -6ish lbs from where I was during Winter Break. I am super excited for the next week and the week after. Though I know it will start slowing down because my body is slowly adjusting to the Phentermine and the first few pounds was water weight. But I can't remember the last time I've felt so good, physically. This may be a strange observation, but sitting on the floor seems easier...? Normally I'll just collapse and not want to get up ever but now I can sit and get up to get the thing I forgot without groaning and saying, "forget it." I've also got lots of more energy during the day and evening. We all know I am the queen of 9 o'clock bedtime, something my best friend Emily never let's me forget. But now, I don't get tired till around 11 or 12pm, which works out because my alarm is set for 8am every morning.

Classes have been good. Finally have a Figure Drawing teacher who acknowledges my presence and helps me improve. I seriously don't think it could get worse than last semester (knock on wood), so in a way I'm thankful for being thrown in the deep end of bad teachers last semester, because now it's all uphill (knock on wood).

Another teacher that cracks me up is my Drawing 2 teacher. I like him because he explains WHY we do the things we do. For example, right now we are drawing geometric shapes that have dramatic cast shadows. And instead of saying "draw that cube like you see it" which is what ever drawing teacher has ever said to me, he will say, "We're going to be sensitizing your eyes to the values. So we start off with simple shapes in shades of black and white and from there we'll move onto more organic things with color." After Spring Break we'll be having class outside (God help me) and drawing/painting landscapes - the mother daddy of still lifes. He is also funny because I am not a student who will sit by and act confused. I GENUINELY want my teachers to teach me and tell me what I am doing wrong. THIS is why I am paying a ridiculous amount of money to further study what I love. So far every time I've asked my Drawing 2 teacher for advice, he'll give me the corrections slowly and hesitantly, as if I'm going to start crying from a silly perspective mistake or blow up on him because my site measuring was off. I feel like I have to pat his shoulder every time he corrects me and sincerely thank him for answering my question. It's an odd experience.

My 3D Design teacher is one for the books. He's in his mid 60s I would guess and is so beyond done with my generation his bitterness has turned to acceptance. He's very much the traditional art type where he doesn't believe in one way of doing things - which is SUPER cool. I've yet to experience a class like this. He's also quite crass which I think just gives him even more character. When my friend asked him what he thought of her wire gestures so far, he stared at it for a moment, hands at his side and with a straight face said, "Well it's ballsy." 

"That means it's art, that's a good thing," I reassured her. 

My other friend, Ariel, and I were discussing our teachers at one point last week and I asked her if she knew my 3D Design teacher. "I got stuck in an elevator once with him by myself and after a person took it up to the 2nd floor, he went off about how lazy they were being." 

"Yup, that's him."

Yesterday, he let everyone who was done (literally everyone aside from me and one other person) leave early. And then he packed up his stuff, told me and the other girl that had stayed to have a nice weekend and was gone. He's a funny one for sure. 

My Literature and Media teacher is cool. He's very animated which is good considering the class only meets once a week and we spend 3 hours listening to him talk. He sounds JUST like Patton Oswald, I swear. Not really sure what EXACTLY we're doing, even after reading the syllabus. So that should be interesting. Lots of writing I think, so that's good. 

The jury is still out on my History of Illustration teacher (though she doesn't allow laptops during her nearly 3 hour class...back to hand written, cramped hand notes).

This post turned out a lot longer than I initially planned...

(I had this stuck in my head as I finished this post but this gif took me a half hour to make...I'm not a proud person, just a stubborn one.)