How Would You Feel?

Seriously, I would like to hear your answers. Here's the deal: I was talking on the phone to my Missy girl Monday, chatting away about this and that. Suddenly, her voice lowered and she became serious.

"Mom." You know the tone, like let me get your attention, please. "I have something I want to tell you but I don't want to upset you."

Oh dear, now how does a Mom not succumb to a good pre-freak-out upon hearing those words? Still, I just couldn't see anything being all that bad, as I've been managing to stay intimately informed of her world, comparatively. So, I drew a deep breath and replied, "Okaaaay. Shoot."

Well, she proceeded to describe how the ex-boyfriend Diego destroyed -- tore up -- all the layouts I'd created for him. For weeks now, he's been acting like a lost soul, in control one minute and wildly nuts the next. He's left numerous nasty / goofy comments on Missy's MySpace; it often seems to Missy that he stalks her at meal times in the cafeteria or en route to class while acting like it's random chance; and a mutual friend of theirs from high school calls and extends way too many invites to come visit their dorm room to hang out (like the old days), promising Diego will not be there yet there he is every time Missy has accepted as if the friend is being used to force a meeting, thereby making it really difficult to continue to be friends all the way around.

Nothing he's done has deterred Missy from her desire to remain broken up and in fact his actions confirm to her her decision was the correct one. So, I guess him destroying the layouts was a lash-out in frustration or something. Seems a little too overboard to me, though, since the ones he has up at school do not have Missy in them at all.

At first, my response was to just shrug my shoulders and say, well it figures. As if, I don't care. But as yesterday wore on, I did care. A Lot. And I did not feel a stitch of anger, but just a spreading sadness.

Missy continued, "I feel bad cuz I know that although you support my decisions 100%, you were sad we broke up cuz you were really fond of him."

So true, so true.

Which is why, I suppose, I am feeling sadness about what he did.

Not only did he tear them up, he threw them on his floor and left them there. She saw them and confronted him about it. He said he couldn't stand to look at them. She said, you could have given them back to my Mom. She would have liked to have layouts of you in her scrapbook. She's still very fond of you and was sad we broke up.

She said he didn't even seem to care. Well, geez, I know that says more about him and how he handles stuff than it does about whether he wants to hurt me or not, so I don't believe he wanted to hurt me. It just saddens me that my creations can lead such a precarious life once they leave me. Or be thought of as just so much paper.

Ever had anything similar happen to you? Just curious. Because now I'm not that willing to scrap for the new boyfriend, even though Missy has already asked me. Or for her roomie, even though she's asked me. Makes me really wish I knew how to do digital scrapbooking and enjoyed it. It suddenly made me realize that you never really give those away. You just give away copies.

I guess I need to sit down and discuss with Missy, and see if digital will do for those two friends. Wow, never thought this kind of thing would be my motivation to actually cross the scrap platform. Just goes to show we never know, from day to day, do we?

Okay, Channel Change! lol

Daily Card Trick
I said I was gonna drag them out, one a day, so here we go. Birthday card for one of my nephews who turns 11 today. Happy Birthday, Teddy!
I must be getting hard-core in my use of scraps, because I didn't even try to mesh old with new on this card, even in the midst of my boy-card phobia. My approach was remarkably hard-ass. Like, I didn't even put real buttons over the fake ones like I usually do. To be fair, though, that's a kind of girly treatment, anyway. I chose the postage stamp deco scissors to trim the edges of these 3 year old die cut card elements, and cobalt blue ink for the edges. Also a couple of Dymo tape words to fill in for words I didn't have die cuts for. Yup, the creating went fast too.

I need to whack out about 30 dozen of these kind of cards and make some kind of material dent in my scraps and stash. Sure. On my To-Do voodoo, fo sho.

Well, the need to take the trash cans to the curb is calling my name, so I'll close this for today and play Beat the Garbage Truck, hehe. Hubs conveniently forgot it was trash day, I guess. That's okay, I'm the Crack-Filler-Inner, doncha know. Have a great Tuesday, everybody!

Anyone up for this?

Sorry. I didn't really mean anything by that. Just liked it as a title, hehe.

I've been in the Bat Cave since last I posted, doing accounting work and hating every minute of it. Whoa is me (sniff sniff).

And on my breaks, I began creating in my new journal. I'm doing the pages outside of the journal, then tacking them down into an old discarded cheap spiral-bound notebook of Missy's. I thought I'd try to use papers, etc., from my scraps stash on every page if possible. Then, I thought I could also try to use junk mail, too. What would that make it, journal trash? Since I'm more of a writer than an artist (like 60/40 maybe), I'm also using it as a free-writing practice vehicle. Just something to mess around with...no expectations of beauty or workanship. At. All.

And may I say that so far it shows, LOL. Yeah. I don't want to spend forever on each page. I just want to "get them out of me" and be done, and leave them until such time if and when I might want to go back and pretty them up more. The journal is primarily for free-writing, illustrated free-writing...which is why I decided to title the thing Essays in the Language of Art. That doesn't really describe it accurately, but that came to me and I liked it.

So I don't know if it's correct to call it an art journal. It's more like an illustrated diary, but not really even that. No set theme. No set topics, anything goes. Could end up being a journal about nothing at all. Move over, Seinfeld. Yeah, I wish.

One of my nephews has a birthday in 5 days, so I need to get my arss in gear and make him a card to go with his $20 bill. Nothing's percolating upstairs, though. I just wanna make journal pages, LOL. I feel displaced, like I misplaced my creativity with cards. It's my boy-card phobia, I know. So tough for me. And not a good time for it, either, as I have 3 nephews with birthdays in the next 30 days. Eegads, that's kinda scarey. Every card has to be unique, too, cuz 2 of them are related and all 3 are different ages. I would love to reach the day where I spend a weekend making all my relative's cards for the year! I've tried before. It doesn't happen. It's a combination of my Type-A deadline-driven motivation and my lack of speed in all things creative.

I read on my friend Vicki's blog about Blog Action Day on October 15th. If you click on the banner blinkie, it takes you to their website where you can read all the details. I am definitely doing this! My idea is to do a journal page about giving junk mail a real and higher purpose by making art with it. Please think about participating and if you do, don't forget to register your blog at their website and embed one of the banner blinkies on your blog.

Just great.
I've been like this lately towards everything. Bleh. Watching myself gettin' behind on stuff and not really caring. One of those rare times I wish I still had my uterus and ovaries, so I'd have PMS to blame, ya know? hehe Well, not really. Histerectomy = Good Thing. On so many levels.

Well, guess I need to post a bit about my health regimin. What a segueway, LOL.

reg·i·men /ˈrɛdʒəmən, -ˌmɛn, ˈrɛʒ-/
Spelled Pronunciation[rej-uh-muhn, -men, rezh-]

–noun 1. Medicine/Medical. a regulated course, as of diet,
exercise, or manner of living, intended to preserve or restore health or to
attain some result.

Things are good, under control. Another "save" in my book of yo-yo's. I suppose I should confess: things appeared to go South the day I drove to pick Missy up from college, which was this past Friday. She'd emailed me saying she wanted to pig out at Luby's Cafeteria, except our local one is not that great. Not bad, just not great. So, just as soon as we got on the freeway to go home, the first exit, there's a Cracker Barrel, and so we exited and ate there.

Now, I was a reasonably good girl. I ordered badly (fried catfish plate with mashed potatoes and greens, and raspberry lemonade - actually I ordered the tea but Missy wanted to switch and as Moms are want to do I took her drink). So I drank stupid useless sugar and ate all my catfish and most of my greens, but truly only a few bites of the potatoes. And then when Missy wanted the apple dumpling a la mode for dessert, I insisted on the sugar-free ice cream and I only took one bite of the dumpling and like 5 spoonfuls of the ice cream. And I was very full. So full that by the time we arrived back home, I was ready for a nap. Bottom line on Cracker Barrel: it could have been much, much worse.

I awoke from my nap to Hubs coming home from work, and guess what he brought with him? Half of the stromboli he'd ordered for lunch from this awesome Italian place that is catering their special project. (Yes, when they work a special project, Hubs and his coworkers get all meals catered. Such is Life in the discombobulated world of mega corporatism, sigh. Not complaining much, though, as we cook much less and I usually don't have to wait til he gets home to eat dinner cuz he's already eaten.) Anyway, I'd never had real stromboli, so of course I had a slice, then another. I displyed super-human effort to keep from slicing a third one, lemmetellya. M-M-M-M-Good, man. And I have no idea what was in it except a massive amount of mozzarella and some kind of boiled meat and wonderfully delish marinara.

Okay, by Friday night, my shame having caught up with me, I walked an extra large number of my step-laps and somehow managed to not eat another morsel. This was hard, as by now my stomach was stretched and I was continually hungry.

Saturday started off well, back on the program. Missy went off on her scheduled bridal party shopping trip with the bride, and life returned to normal. I was flirting with fasting for the day (other than my required yogurt and fruit quota), so when Missy returned with a doggy bag box and announced they'd gone to Olive Garden and here were her leftovers just for me, I was primed for temptation (having eaten next to nothing). Ah, the delectable taste of Spaghetti and Meatballs with a breadstick. I slurp-inhaled every molecule. I doubt my dogs could have cleaned the plate as well.

I kind of forget what else was eaten after that. I doubt it was anything else bad. Probably a tv dinner from my Healthy Choice collection. Missy came in and announced that her boyfriend Jonathan and roommate Anj were driving down to pick her up tonight instead of me driving her back to school on Sunday. At this point, all I was thinking about was how great this was: I didn't have to drive for two hours and my life could go back to normal. So, kiss-kiss and be safe and great to see ya. It's so weird how quickly Hubs and I got used to her no longer being at home, so much so that we prefer it. We're in that period where she prefers being at school and we prefer her being at school, and there's no resentment or hurt feelings. But still a bit awkward. We all agreed she won't be home til Thanksgiving, and that's so refreshing and relaxing. Here I was thinking I wouldn't be able to live without her and look how quickly that changed. I'd feel guilty, but I'm too busy enjoying not having to deal with a 3rd person at home.

So, Sunday I got back on track for good and made sure my steps number was high. When I finally weighed on Monday, I was only a half-pound above my last weigh-in. So, all I can think of was that I'd lost weight between the weigh-in last week and Friday, that I didn't know about, and that's why there was only a half-pound increase. Which I've now lost as of today, Wednesday. Back to the same weight in a week. See how lucky I was?

Blogger Challenge Catch-Up
I need to get current with these and no time like the present. Here's are the questions I've missed (this catches me up until Friday, because Thursdays was posted tonight):
When doing a layout, do you chose to mat or not mat your photos? It depends, frankly. More often than not, though, I do prefer the look of matted photos. It just adds a nice dimension and helps the eye to focus on the photos.
When you are stuck and need some inspiration. where do you turn? For cards, I like to look both at sketches and at what others have made with the materials I'm using (if possible). I usually start at 2peas' user gallery and do a search of the materials. I like to look at Maria's and Di's card sketches. Many times, though, the circumstances are such that I end up having to come up with a completely original card. Maybe I use a little touch here and there that I've seen. For layouts, I have to browse different galleries, magazines, books, not looking for a specific layout per se, but those little touches again. Often I'll combine a few of them, putting my own spin on them. Occasionally, I will get a mental picture of a complete layout, and on those, if I don't sketch it out first the layout can lack balance, since I'm not trained in graphic design or have that natural "eye". So, in each case, no matter what the piece, I do look at others' creations. I usually stop when I get an idea in my head and the finished piece looks like my own, so I look for inspiration and to get my own juices flowing. If I didn't look first, I suspect it'd be way much harder for me to conceptualize something.
Have you ever made layouts/cards to sell at craft shows? If so how did it go? Never have done the crafts fair thing. I have sold cards on commission, making them to the customer's specifications, and I've also made smaller layouts that were auctioned for good causes. I doubt I'd sell cards any other way, because of the time I put into mine. I've lucked out being able to charge at the high end of the range for them because these were people who contacted me and wanted my work without any price dickering. So even though I guess you'd say I got a good price for them, it honestly wasn't that worth it to me, didn't feel like I got repaid enough. I've thought about selling them on ebay or etsy, but so far I'm still not motivated enough. I'm never saying never, though, not this year.

Well, enough of that for now. I'm also behind in my blog visiting for my inner circle girls, so that's what I'm gonna do now. Til tomorrow, peeps! May your Thusday be as good as it gets!