There is a rare and pugnacious critter that you may have encountered, called a Laurie Jo Jensen. These creatures require a steady diet of uncontrolled laughter to maintain their vibrant colors and have been known to spontaneously erupt into that unique one-eyed spin-laugh so characteristic of this species. "Ahh-Ahhh....Ahh-Ahhhh!", like some exotic bird calling to its kind in a remote Amazon tributary, echoed throughout our halls. Truly, there's nothing quite like a Laurie Jensen in her natural environment... "Shhhhh....don't disturb it...they're so beautiful in the wild"....And so Laurie visited over the weekend, and I got my much needed dose of her special brand of mayhem. We porked out on Mystery Science Theater (it was a "good and beautiful thing to do"), Extreme Elimination Challenge, Borat ("Good tiiiiimes!"...tho I'm still traumatized by that movie), Brak songs and assorted fits of craziness. We had lunch with my Mom, visited the minis (Noah is getting huge!) and puttered about a bit, before venturing home for a solid night of cackling and craziness. On Saturday, we managed to venture down to Art in the Park and meet my friend, Tina, for wine and Pronto Pups (What a combo! Bon Appetit...eat yer heart out) and enjoyed Boise's largest art fair.
We ate, drank and were merry until our faces hurt, and we both lost our voices within the first day. Sounding like Lauren Bacall can be fun for a few hours, until you start to squeak like spaztic squeeze toys over certain vowels! In the photo, Laurie brandishes the sacrifice we made to the grill gods, in the form of a carbonized skewer of pineapple and shrimp, though I'm happy to report that no eyebrows or bangs were sacrificed in kind...which has been known to happen.
Now I must reveal that my dear hubby had just switched from nightshift to dayshift the very day that Laurie descended, which I'm sure was just the dose of manic chaos he needed...if a 48 hr fever dream is the prescribed jolt the circadian rhythms need! I think the pure shock-factor alone equaled about 2 billion cups of expresso. My poor rats didn't know what to make of all of this, and simply hunkered down in their houses to ride out the storm.
But ahhhh....the weekend was a wonderful dose of the spazzy giddiness I needed, and Laurie certainly needed a quick break from her hectic world, too. Sometimes, pure unabashed insanity is just the ticket to shock neurons back into life which had fizzled into gnarled, charred stumps. Plus, one of the boons of weekend guests is that the house and studio must be cleaned thoroughly to maintain the grand illusion of an organized and spotless abode, in that eternal cat-n-mouse game between hosts and guests. And so my studios are spotless, and ready to be decimated in the new flurry of crazed creativity only Laurie can inspire. Life is good.
Indeed, I'm so bloated on the heady lunacy of her visit that I've actually started to realistically glaze a couple of my new WB plaques, over which, previously, I had been so timid to touch that I'd actually whipped myself into an frothy meringue of insecurity, quivering in a corner. But now..."Why doesn't Sarah care?" There's a certain cackling critter to credit!
Good friends are a treasure. When you least expect it, they remind your spirit of what it believed to have forgotten and makes everything new again. "Give me room....I'm about to spaz!" is my new motto.
And so, I leave you with this quote: "No my friends, darkness is not everywhere – for here and there I find a few faces illuminated from within. Paper lanterns swaying among the dark trees." ~Carole Ann Borges