Art in honor of NATIONAL POLLINATOR WEEK! and a story.

 

 This one is done! Except not signed yet in this photo.

I've been working on my caterpillar triptych a lot the last couple of days and managed to finish this one about an hour ago!

Last night I worked on the little flower buds while watching "The Wedding Singer." I hadn't seen that movie in YEARS and it's such a good one! I was so thrilled to find it on (and they even showed it twice in a row)!

The paintings are also a great distraction from obsessing over house hunting / endless thoughts of decor and my imagination running wild / realizing that packing suuhhh-hucks and I need to just go buy a bunch of packing tape already and stop putting it off (but I hate to leave paintings halfway done for weeks/months on end..........)


 Um...  I guess from that paragraph you can tell how scatterbrained I am at the moment.

So scatterbrained this whole week, in fact, that I missed an allergy-shot appointment on Wednesday so I had to reschedule. They fit me in this morning at 9, and of course I was running late (I was trying to finish up the black on the caterpillar!). I wasn't speeding or going crazy because of running late, just feeling frazzled.

I accidentally went through a left-turn-yield-on-green light, following the car in front of me, not paying as much attention as I should have been- I totally admit. I guess one plus side is it wasn't like I just ran through it in the middle of the green-light cycle, that would probably have been worse. But then again had no one been in front of me, I would probably have paid a lot more attention to what was going on in the intersection. Since I ran through it when it must have *just*changed, the cars across from me hadn't started moving yet. But wouldn't you know it, right in front was a cop who saw me and honked at me and then pulled me over.

I was so embarrassed.

I never do things like that. I HATE when people run red lights, hell, I am all for red-light photo enforcement. I'm sure since I followed the person in front of me, it looked like I was saying "SCREW YOOOUUU!" to the folks across whose light had just changed to green.

So the cop asks me if I know what I did. I responded with "I thought I still had a green arrow.... but I guess I didn't."

"NOOOOO!... you DIDN'T and you almost took off the front of my car!"

Ok... that was an exaggeration because if I had looked up when he honked and seen his car thisclose to me, I may have literally peed in my pants. Instead I looked up and my first reaction was annoyance... not panic.

I get that what I did looked like a dick move, but both cops were standing there by my car and kind of making wise-cracks the whole time. They were really laying in to me, and I deserved it, I know, but it seemed like it was getting to be a bit much. I was on the verge of tears, and stuff like that doesn't make me cry. Why were they treating me like this??

It dawned on me later that maybe... it was because of.... my car. (Is that like pulling the race card? I don't know.)

They saw the obnoxious fluorescent color, tinted windows, and I'm sure assumed I was just some young punk who habitually drives like an @$$hole. All I needed was a big loud muffler. I am pretty sure that they saw the car and formed an opinion instantly and jumped at the chance to rip apart one of those drivers.

I don't blame them. I would love to do the same.

But I still wasn't a fan of feeling judged. Maybe they would have treated me the same if I had been driving a station wagon or minivan. I have my doubts.