Finally out of school! This last semester was the toughest I've had to deal with in a long time, and I miraculously managed to pass all my classes. I went from being pretty sure I was going to bomb Bio to getting an A and passing my mortal enemy, Finite Math, with a C, which I am overjoyed with. Pretty sure I never would have passed it without all my extra credit, but I don't care because I don't have to take it a third time! I've got until the first week of June for a break, then I'm taking two additional summer school courses. My counselor was able to pull some strings and I can graduate with a Liberal Arts Associate of Science degree at the end of 2012, and get a Gen Ed degree by spring if I choose. Hopefully by then I can get enough money to transfer out, but right now I'm just taking as many core classes as I can at a community college since I don't have to pay tuition. Pretty exciting
My family is feverishly working to get ready for a neighborhood-wide yard sale this weekend that has been years in the making, and I've been stuck with artistic jobs. I've had to design some fliers, paint some huge signs, then I got roped into painting more signs by my neighbors. I've made some dog treats to sell on the side, and my mom's gotten me to paint some really cute doll clothing stands that I'll have to upload soon. I've only got one done so far, but I think I'll wind up doing more because they're just so cute and we have a lot of little girls in the neighborhood. I'm REALLY hoping we'll wind up selling my mom's freaky-as-sh*t Howdy Doody puppet. She bought it when my brothers were young thinking they'd love him, but he terrified the bejeesus out of all of us. I'd burn him if I could, but apparently he's a collector's item.
Aaand on top of all of this I've started working at my old job at a pet store again, but they're not giving me as many hours as I'd like. I've been illustrating a children's book since last summer but the author stopped emailing me for about two months, and he finally contacted me again so work has started back up on that. And on top of THAT, I've got a few costume planned for Gen Con Indy this August- an original faun costume, Korra from The Legend of Korra (been working out a bit to get Korra's muscles!), and then hopefully completing my boyfriend's Squall cosplay. I'm pretty excited since I'm more confident in my sewing abilities and hopefully I can manage to style a wig for it. Lawwd, I hope I can pull it all off.
My dog's been giving me a little bit of trouble recently. She attacked a wandering dog yesterday when I was trying to call the owner on her tags, and she was attacked this morning by my neighbor's golden retriever. No dogs ever drew blood surprisingly enough, but it's only a matter of time before someone really gets hurt, and I don't know where her aggression comes from. Originally it was due to fear when we first got her, but now I'm not sure if it's because of dominance over territory or us. Whenever we're not around dogs, she's the absolute best- she's attentive, clever, spunky, and absolutely adores people. I've started to realize she's possessive over us, which I never noticed before because I was only looking for obvious signs (growling when people got too close to us, her food, toys, or furniture), but she's does it in tiny ways, like nudging us when she wants more attention, pawing at us, standing on top of my feet or us, stealing food from the pantry, shoving her toys at us, our mouthing at us. Supposedly these are more based on testing boundaries and not showing proper respect to a leader, and I'm going to work on that, so maybe I can figure out if her aggression is due to dominance over her people or not. I want to get her into some training classes, but I'm dreading it because I don't know if she can handle being so close to other dogs.
*ramblerambleramble*