Happy Nov. 1 ~~ I'm going bonkers...

It better not be a sign of things to come for the month, or an indication that my new meds are not going to help me handle stresssssss.... but I am just totally overwhelmed right now by alien bullsh*t... ATTACK OF THE ALIEN BS ... LOL. Well, not really alien stuff, just a snowballing of a lot of trivial, unimportant crap I've collected on my To-Do List that has decided to come home to roost and crap on my forehead on this day of all days. Is it God, telling me to take care of this stuff? I don't know, but someone is telling me to.

More later, but let me get my Creative Every Day project for November 1st uploaded and out of the way, before more alien rambling. No, I don't have a Disney obsession (no insult intended to those of you who do). This is Sleeping Beauty Princess from the SandyLion Disney Christmas Collection, and the card was made using sketch #14 from Maria's April sketches. Here's the sketch:I flipped it left-right, and now that I look at the sketch with my card, I see it would have been nice to put that horizontal layer of paper strip on the base paper, in the middle. I had been thinking it would detract from the Disney pp, but the scrolly lines are really faint on the pp. Oh well, live and learn, eh?

I bet I know what you are thinking...stickers? Well, hey, does my princess really look like she is a sticker? (A vellum one, at that.) I did lay the snowflake stickers directly on the pp, but that was because I wanted them to be in the background more. For the princess and the "Fairy Tales" text stickers, I adhered them to colored cardstock and then cut them out, thereby making cardstock elements out of stickers. I like the outline all around it. I "inked" the edges with a Marvy pen for more dimension, then I adhered the text element with foam tape to give it even more dimension. Made a crown with my crown punch, added the rhinestones with my KIGloo, added the snowflake stickers. Finally, I gelpenned and glitter-penned in a bunch of spots. Click on my card to bring up a larger photo where you can better see the glitter going on. I am developing a real affinity for glitter....

Now, say what you will, but I think this rivals a storebought card. I plan to give it to either my 7-yo niece or to DD for a Christmas card. And, I feel like I challenged myself by actually using the Disney stuff, and by creating something "not cool" according to the current "in" style. (Gotta come up with a nickname for that, because that's fast becoming my style, LOL.)

So, enough about that. Where was I? Oh, yes, Aliens. Oops, one more thing first...

I've also challenged myself for November to use Maria's sketches for my cards, whenever possible. Just so you know. All of her sketch page links, by month, are on her Stampin' Inspirations blog, and she is listed on my sidebar.

And my 3rd November challenge is to make stuff for Christmas gift-giving. And 3 challenges at one time is my limit, if not my un-doing, LOL. Maybe that's why I should be on anxiety-attack-watch? LOL

Okay, so enough about that, again. Where was I? Oh, yes, Aliens. LOL

Just for grins, I'll recap my last 18 hours or so, not counting sleep time. I was fine yesterday. In the afternoon, I started looking through my old photos that I very neatly have filed by year in my Hobby Lobby photo boxes. These are original old photos, from the beginning of time (LOL) to now. Why was I doing this? Because of Halloween. Somehow, I'd hit upon the idea, like it was an original thought, which it was to me but not to the rest of the scrapping world, that maybe I should scrap by holiday and season. Like, scrap ALL my Halloween photos, layout by layout. But, start doing that in August or Sept, so I'd have them ready to share by October. Cool thought, huh? There have been a ton of threads at 2peas titled, to the effect of, "Show me your Halloween layouts", etc. That's what got me to looking through the old photos and seeing just what I had for Halloween.

Now, I realize it's a bit late to do Halloween. Heck, it's probably too late to do Christmas now, especially with having to make gifts. But that's a neat idea and mindset, don't you think? If you aren't a chronilogical scrapper and if you are not caught up in the least. Two big if's.

Anyway, to move this along, I ran across some photos of Missy in 1992, she was 4 and that Halloween she was costumed as Simba (Lion King). I will wait til another day to share the photos, but you just have to trust me when I tell you that when I laid out those photos on my table and got them arranged like my brain was urging me to, I got the most fantastic idea for a layout. Missy's expressions in these photos are priceless. And all kinds of ideas began moving like ADD in my head. I was jazzed because the photos are good, don't need editing much at all, and they are scrapping photos! There are six of them and five of them are necessary to tell the story, and they tell a story! Anyway, I was on Cloud Nine.

And so all I wanted to do was get right on that project, right? Wouldn't you? I mean, it was Oct. 31, I'd finished my Disney card for today, and brain cells were popping!

And it was at that exact moment when all the Aliens decided to come busting out of their hiding places....

Right off the bat, you should know that in the frame of mind I was in, I was primed to treat any other requests for my time with a bit of resentment. But the first 14,000 time-suckers I managed very well, good-humored, maturely.

First, I went in to unload the dishwasher and discovered that it was kaput, DOA, not gonna be revived. This Time. (Hubs and I have been fully aware for a few months that this moment would be forthcoming, as it's going on 12 years old and has been a great appliance, but ain't it a beach when that moment comes at the wrong-arss time.) So, I called Hubs and said, look, It has finally happened, and I don't really care what brand we replace it with, it needs to be replaced pronto, asap, and there's no cooking until that happens. He says, well you are gonna haveta go online to Lowes.com and pick one out, and I'm not installing, they will have to. Okay, so I get on there and look at the ad flyer for this week, and lo and behold, free installation on the dishwasher of my dreams. Well, my dreams are quite Kmarty, but it's got a stainless tub, sanitation cycle, commercial grade, and on sale for $598. I'm happy. I've posted a photo of our particular model,but we got the black one for $100 less (all stainless on the outside is more expensive). I linked the product page cuz if you are looking for a dishwasher, this one is a great deal! I do morn the loss of the mechanical controls, though. I prefer old-fashioned dials to those electronic button-thingys. Less to go wrong and have to be repaired. Ah, the curse of old-fart wisdom.....

After that, my time was just stripped from me. One ridiculous problematic thing after another came hurling at me like elves scurrying about on Christmas Eve. I hadn't discovered the dishwasher death until AFTER I'd unloaded it and put away all the dishes, which were not clean. Had to go back and reclaim them all, then wash them all by hand. And I have to lean forward at the sink just enough to where my back goes into trauma along with my neck, which is why a dishwasher is so important to me. So, I had to deal with the pain, not pretty. I had to pay some bills that were due and had to take them to the p.o. since the postman had already been by. Then I had to go get gas, because hubs forgot to do it. Then, I forgot I was going to take shots of Halloween decs in the neigh-BOO-hood (layout idea), and since it was the last day, I had to go do that.

But it was all manageable until right before Hubs came home. That's when everything began to get ridiculous. I had to go buy something to eat for dinner, because no cooking. Then, had to go get some paper plates. Then, every single thing I touched either fell out of my grasp or toppled over somehow. Wiped up several spills and bent over picking stuff up countless times. Nerves. Raw. Need to relax.

Usually, the computer does that for me. Last night, no. Too many emails. Digital freebies that I'd been looking forward to getting so I can actually learn how to scrapbook digitally that wouldn't download, after trying again and again, and good for only thru last night. Couldn't type without a million typos because I've put off clipping my nails. They're long and pretty, but a pain in the arss. I usually wear them short for that reason. Had to go clip those. Totally forgot my usual late afternoon shower time (and still haven't had one, but I'm headed there, I promise). Totally hid out and didn't give out candy to the Trick or Treaters (this had been planned, because as usual we had an 85-degree day here and so the skeeters were rampant last night and no way are they living in my house with all the door-opening, and if I had candy and did give it out I'd have been a real witch anyway). Spilled frickin salt everywhere and had to clean that up. Then had to cajole and prod Hubs to get down to Lowes to order that dishwasher before someone else did and we'd have to wait 3 weeks on it like we did the range hood last spring. (Our Lowes kinda sucks, but it's better than our Home Depot, our Sears, and our Conn's, lemme tellya.)

Then, my mother-in-law calls. Why did I answer the phone? Had to let her tell me all about Hubs' Dad's upcoming biopsy, his doctor visit, some kind of miracle mineral water from Arkansas that the doctor laughed at but really works, and various goings-on of all the siblings. Thankfully, Hubs beeped in from Lowes, so I had an excuse to hang up and take his call. Then one of my clients I don't like calls...at NIGHT...and wants to pick up another copy of his tax return at 7 a.m. today cuz he lost the one I gave him. Dumb-arss me says okay. Then I realize, he hasn't paid me yet. Had to call him back and tell him I need my money and it'll be another $10 on top of that. He gets indignant (yeah, I'm a bad guy, it's only been 6 months since I did the return) and says okay, but he's going elsewhere next year. I say, do you promise? Oh, and deliver your payment today and once it clears the bank, you will get another return copy. He says he'll bring cash and can he get his copy. Fine. So I stay up and print that out. Another 45 things go wrong, but I will quit boring you.

This morning, I get my money (have to get up early for his sorry butt) and good riddance to him (been wanting that to happen for years), and things begin to calm down. I get a chance to deal with stuff I want to deal with, Heather wants me to look at some new art of hers and that was really fun! I think, okay, I'm back to normal. Maybe I can start that layout! Alas, I discover I need some elements that I'm either going to have to order or print out from online images. And I have a crappy ink jet printer. So, gotta attack another thing I've been putting off: researching for a new photo printer. I put in about 2 hours on that, and then I discover some ink refills I had bought for two of Missy's ink jet printers. Maybe they still work. So, I need to stop the research and instead dust those off and clean them up and put new ink in and see if they will work, because I am so cheap that I cannot just throw out the whole mess and buy a quality machine. Which I am still going to do the second I use up all this ink.

Then it all starts up on my computer. It begins freezing up on me. I don't know how many times I had to restart it, then I had to just push the button on the CPU to turn it off and then back on. Turns out that SOMEONE whose emails of their newsletter I get had a link in it that had a malicious adware program in it. I've got all the anti-whatever programs on my computer that a person could have, but it goes nuts if it actually encounters something it has to fight. Sheesh. I'd love to email this newsletter person and tell them the link they told everyone to check out is narly, so I did. She writes back and says what? Gotta be a problem on your end. I give up. Go back to trying to download the digital freebies and the dang 4shared site is still timing me out. What, did I download there once too many times or something? I give up. At that moment, the lady next door wants to chat. Got rid of her after too long. Then, I get another copy of that newsletter with a note that says the link's bad and has been taken out. And it says thank you to somebody else for letting me know. Dang, can't even get proper credit! Then, every single big name vendor alive has a holidays ad in my inbox, so it's started already folks. Walmart, Pennys, Kohls, Amazon, Epson, Sam's, and on and on. Had to read 'em all, too, cuz there might have been something in there that was on my list. There wasn't.

I kinda had a small meltdown-slash-tantrum right then, cuz it just all came to a head and I could not hold it in anymore. Then, I took a long, hot shower, followed by a big cup of Dreyer's French Silk ice cream. And now I'm blogging.

So, I am really late for today's blog entry. But after the trip I've had, I say better late than never! Have a good, stress-free night. I plan to! LOL