To Catch You Up

It's been forever since I posted any art, so until my memory card returns, I remembered I had never shown this piece, done last year for a round robin tag book.
here is another piece making it's maiden blog appearance. No telling how many things aren't uploaded in my computer...

I've been avoiding my blog. A lot of stuff's been going on this week and while I am proud of myself for dealing with it well enough, I've generally been trying different ways to get away from it all, too. Maybe I was just waiting until I knew how I felt, I dunno.

Have you ever had a series of shocks, little tremors really, hit you all in a week? Each one on its own should be conquerable, and you try. But at some point the multiple hits make it all just a huge bummer?

I know there are many people out there going through truly horrid crap, some with no good outcome at all. I think of those faceless people I don't know, and my own ambivalence and sorrow seems really self-centered. So, I just deal and let it all slumber under the surface.

Life never sleeps, it seems. And as if the big overriding themes of each event weren't enough, little sharp, painful everyday details have been sticking me like a cactus. This week, I came to the realization...no, possibility, still, I'm still in denial...that this week could be my life, the rest of my life.

My Father-in-law has the stage 4 lung cancer, as I've mentioned. Being the silly, sheltered gal that I am, I hadn't looked at the situation and extrapolated it out into the future. My mother-in-law doesn't drive. Now, maybe being the first generation American-born child of Catholic Czech immigrants, from a family of 11, has something to do with it. Most people are molded by their upbringing and background, no matter how we seem to not want to accept that.

She is and always has been a subservient sort of wife: good housekeeper, cook, mother. She never worked outside the home and thus never drove, I guess. She wears thick coke-bottle glasses and doesn't admit to being hard-of-hearing, either. So, who knows why she doesn't drive, but it makes it very difficult nowadays.

F-I-L did all the grocery shopping, but now he can't drive due to being on so much pain medication. They're both 79. He's becoming more and more a really royal pita, because his meds and treatment, as well as his advancing Parkinson's, is all exacerbating his moodiness and tendency to bark orders and cruel jokes. Not to mention his selfishness, from being waited on hand and foot his entire marriage, is getting really aggressive. In short, he is changing personalities before our very eyes. A personality that we all knew lurked within him but one he managed to control, until now.

I don't remember if I'd ever come right out and blogged this, but I was really making progress forging a closer relationship with M-I-L. Now, I guess that's just in time for all this. She has been reacting to her husband's change by first denying it, then griping about it but denying anything could be done about it. I began to figure out that she was still waiting for him to make all the decisions, even about this, about himself.

Well, so I had to tell her, and I did, once. And she made some baby steps, but I'm going to have keep telling her, as the situations call for it. But she's awfully clingy, and I'm sure she's lonely, scared, and feeling alot like I am times 100.

It's like one moment I want to try to dig out my pain, then it reminds me of others' worse pain and I feel really guilty for having any pain. How unworthy of me. I've even tried on and off to model Ruth from the Bible. I'm pretty sure it would be some comfort, if Ruth was schizophrenic.

Ok, so I've been driving them to his radiation. It's like an all-day thing, because I have to double back to pick them up and it makes the driving ridiculously long. It's down in Clear Lake at an MD Anderson satellite facility, and there's a Starbucks right around the corner. Now, I've never been into the whole Starbucks thing, but it has become a treat I give myself. I let them off, then head there. By the time I've gotten my skinny mocha latte, they are ready to leave. Works out good.

So, did I mention they have 5 kids? Funny thing, okay one of them lives at home and is mentally retarded due to complications in the birth canal. She works at a school cafeteria, but doesn't drive or go anywhere alone. That leaves Hubs and 3 siblings. His brother lives in Dallas, so now we are down to Hubs and 2 sisters. Both sisters live about the same distance way that we do, 15 miles or so, but they play this sick game of chicken when it comes to helping out with this. And they are and always have been a noncommunicative family. I mean, they can chit and chat up a storm, but tell someone how they are really feeling about really personal stuff? Ha.

So, I can't tell if they are all in shock over their dad, but they act like they are annoyed and go ahead and kick already. They have lives. So, guess who is getting stuck not only with taxi, but also with phone calls whenever something is weird?

Sometimes I'm the only one who has any compassion for them. Sometimes I wonder if this is how kids turn out if you raise them that sternly and you don't express feelings. They are like, hey, he'll get through it and he can hire someone to do all that.

Okay, so enough about that. The helpers get narrowed down this week to only Hubs and his teacher sister, because the youngest sister's husband got diagnosed with melanoma that has spread to his lungs, abdomen and back. And they've known for awhile but told us this week.

This is the inlaw that I most enjoy, so I'm really bummed about it. But I can't even be comletely Ruth-y about it, because I'm also highly annoyed that now she can't help take care of her parents and spread the load.

Getting the angel/devil trauma I'm experiencing? Here's the third layer. They say these things run in 3's. My mom calls me last Monday to tell me they found a suspicious spot on her lung xray done for a physical. She's really torn up. We both are, but somehow I'm trying to be calm until the doctor calls back and tells her something. Well, we wait all week and no phone call. Thursday she goes back in there and tells them how unhappy she is about having to wait that long to be told yes or no.

Apprently she is pretty bitchy and threw a fit, because that evening they call my dad and tell him both of them are being dropped by the doctor, due to my mom's behavior upsetting other patients. So, here we'll be one week tomorrow and she still knows nothing and now has no doctor. There's another stupid thing they've done and I'm powerless to help.

So, this brings up what I've been trying to suppress for 3 years: I'm immensely angry at times at my parents to hauling off and moving 600 miles away. And then getting ill and old. It's been very hard for me to deal with the anger, so I've just been pushing it down. Now, I'm having to caretake my inlaws, something I should be doing for my own parents. I'm telling you sometimes I don't even know what horrible naughty feeling to feel. I just know it should be one I should feel guilty about. And, I'm pissed about that.

Well, I got the jist of it out.Does it help me feel better? Not yet. Maybe later. I guess one good thing is you know where my head is at. I may not be Ruth or Florence Nightingale, but I do feel I should get a couple of rah's for not totally succumbing to the dark side of my behaviors.

Hopefully now you also understand why I'd think, hey, this might be what the rest of my life's gonna be like. I think that bums me out the most. Terrible to think, I know, but it doesn't make it go away.

Hey on a good note, Missy has my camera memory card and will bring it home with her next time she's here. I didn't even ask her how or why it ended up with her. I just decided to be grateful. I'm not totally rotten. ;-)

King-size Reflections

{Sigh} This post is not easy for me to write, but I've wanted to tell it for 2 years now around this time of year and haven't yet, so I'm just gonna type it and blame it on the D/B/Sh/Care thing.

I may be White and pretty segregated in my daily life and surroundings, but in my own way, I've been touched by the legacy of Martin Luther King and what he stood for. I was born in 1956 in a segregated world and I can remember America as it lurched and heaved and turned toward racial justice. It was a long time ago and, although those times have been greatly romanticized, I can tell you, they were not pretty.

When Hillary Clinton said that it took LBJ to help MLK's dream come true, I knew exactly what she was saying and she was right. LBJ was the last of the old school strong-arm Congressional power brokers. He could blackmail or cajole almost more people than FBI Chief J Edgar Hoover, and that's exactly how he got Civil Rights legislation passed. Why spend that much political currency and destroy his political party as he knew it? Because there was an American Ghandi in the person of MLK to inspire him to do it. And because he had parents who'd taught him it was the right thing to do.

Some folks nowadays like to think that all whites were against desegregation, but that is so not true. My father, for example, grew up in a small college town in Central Arkansas during the Depression in a nice middle class home wanting for nothing as so many others around him had very little. His father was the Postmaster and my Dad remembers his Dad routinely put half his wages into savings every payday...that's how comfortable their life was. Yet, their good Methodist faith compelled them to help those less fortunate throughout those years.

My Dad's first year in college was lived still at home and financed by his many odd and part time jobs, one of which was delivering mail. His Dad made sure this hiring was above reproach by assigning my Dad to deliver the mail out to the Colored community on the outskirts of town. He told my Dad sternly, though, that he was to treat all his customers as well as if they were his own kin or he'd have hell to pay.

My paternal Grandfather was made of that old-time stock of men who considered public service a sacred trust and earned every penny with a smile and then some. My Dad was raised in a home where the N word was never allowed to be spoken. It was considered a cuss word, among the worst. One time my grandmother washed the mouth of my dad's little friend out with lye soap because he'd uttered it after being read the house rules.

So, my Dad carried that mail cheerfully and loyally and punctually to all the people of color in the community that year. In return, my Dad said, he never ever needed a cold drink or a chair to sit a spell in for rest, nor a clean, crisp handerchief to wipe his brow. Ice was meticulously saved for him for an offered glass of water at almost every house. He was always greeted and cared about. We're talking 30-40 people every day, offering him food and drink, just for delivering their mail to them with respect and courtesy. My Dad never forgot that. You wouldn't forget it either.

A few years later, my parents having met and moved to my Mother's hometown to teach school, it was a different and uglier world, still in Arkansas but on the eastern side. My Mother's parents were raised to be racist and were very good decent people, just raised to *know* that whites were the superior race and that the good whites among us took the responsibility to look out for and counsel the Negro. And they did use the *N* word, all the time, like any other word.

My Dad hated it. Hated hearing it. It really wore on him, especially after I was born. He began wishing for me a world without all that racism. Without hearing that *N* word all the time, at the very least.

So, even though my parents had it good where they were, as my Mom's parents were quite wealthy and provided whatever was needed or wanted, they set out to move to a place less racist and nasty, so that I could have a chance to grow up without all that influence toward continuing racism, and my parents could quit hearing that word and could quit being urged by society to be racist. It's probably up to a higher power than me to say whether my parents were successful, but I think they were.

And they weren't alone. They were many many whites who were ashamed of their fellow whites, ashamed of the double standard, ashamed of the fear and denial imposed by segregation and racism. These folks were all waiting for MLK to meetup with LBJ and do the deal. Without these folks, not even LBJ could have gotten that bill passed, or admonish the nation to act charitably and humbly about it, as he did.

That part of this history gets forgotten, especially by those who weren't even alive to remember it. But it's every bit as crucial to King's legacy as anything else. Because those whites were touched and empowered by King's words to do what was in their hearts. Including a nice teacher couple from Arkansas who just wanted a life for their daughter free from racism.

So yeah, that's what I always reflect upon on this holiday. Thanks, Mom and Dad. And LBJ. And Martin Luther King.

the details were sketchy, at best....

[[[note to readers: my fingers are feeling their arthritic pain today, so as few shift-key strokes as possible are called for and it's all lower case for me. hope you don't mind. just making the " and the ! etc. are painful today. suck-ville. oh, well, i *will* not let it keep me from writing, since writing to express myself is as essential to me (almost) as breathing...]]]

My AEDM for 11/7
...felt good to get a sketch under my belt again, haven't done one in so long. i did this while watching tv. i'd seen a woman who was laying on her side talking and fighting falling asleep, and it just stuck in my head. I thought the camera angle was interesting...it made her hair seem like it was floating on air, so I kinda exaggerated that in my sketch....

[[[note to file: put a digital frame around the web images of sketches i show in the future. white background axiom #1,445 and all.]]]]

and, i hope you like my sketching. what do you think? it isn't exactly a 30-minute art meal for me, but it is a way for me to get some daily art done. I studied art in college as a minor to my writing/journalism major, back in the ancient day, before changing to the more "practical" discipline of accounting. in my junior year, i had an epiphany of sorts and suddenly became bent on having my degree be something i could count on to financially support me for the rest of my life. that was a wise move because accounting did pay my bills well during my decade as a single career woman, and it has provided me with a lucrative way to work at home for almost 20 years now.

but i never lost my "first loves" of writing and art-ing, and that's why i turned to them, and re-discovered them, when i was diagnosed with the 5 arth's. it's all made me realize that i never chose wrong in college; there's just a time and season for everything. turn, turn, turn, etc.

oh, wanted to give an update on my online shopping credit-due story from earlier: i was credited that shipping amount to my paypal and the order has been shipped. i dodged the bullet on this one, i think. i rarely shop at smaller online stores anymore, and this experience does not help. i do have a cadre of smaller stores that i've bought from for a few years now, having gotten to know their owners and benefit ted from the great customer service that can result. i try to support that. but it's getting harder to. this spring's shipping increases were especially tough on that, but i do still try.

i really ought to share my short list of smaller stores with you, because many of you have expressed fear and trepidation in shopping online, and these places are worthy of your trust. i'll work up a list for tomorrow's blog entry.

well, my nice and cute dishwasher guy jose is here, so i need to wrap this up here and get my supplies out and ready to clean up after he finishes. his work today has been a bit messy, lots of water on my floor from the dishwasher-on-loan when he pulled it out, i guess from the hose. anyway, looks like my floor is getting mopped today, oh joy.

have a great evening!

It's A Not-Want-To-Blog Day

I'm just not that into it today, but I am into trying to write every day, so I am making myself do it. Don't you have those kind of days? I do, not that often, I admit. I usually love to write, so why is today different?

I've been creating today! Oops, I am breaking my October rule, I know. Just couldn't help myself, I suppose. Playing in my art journal. Nothing finished, of course. Of course. But, I am closer. Promise.

And you are not going to believe one of the pages when I finally upload them all. A hint: it defies everything we've been taught to not do anymore.

It's way too cutesy.

It's pink.

It's "little girl-y".

Part of me keeps lobbying to just lie and say I made it for my little 7-y.o. niece, hehe. You know me, though. Too honest and open for my own good, so I will be owning it as my art. And, you know what? I likey. I am really into the Who-Gives-A-Crap School of Art: in other words, don't try to dictate to me what is and isn't art. I'll do my own thing, thank you. I might even do more. Eegads!

And you thought I was exxagerating about being a nonconformist last week? HA!

Lord, What I Do For My Friends...

Heather has tagged me, with the same challenge that Gina tagged me with last week. It's not Heather's fault, though, and I loves me some Heather and Gina both, so I'll play. Actually, it's not a bad tag challenge, and one that could be done every week if ya had to. Last time, I refused to tag other people (I wasn 't in the mood, ya know), but today I'm a gonna. So, look out, some of you will be tagged, but it's pretty fun to do, so do it, ok?

Here are the rules for it:
1. Link to the person that tagged you (that's me) and post these rules on your blog (like I'm doing right here).
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself (on your blog, we all want to know them).
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Okay, to begin (and I'm desperately trying to think up 7 new things):
1. You probably know that I have a list of fall season TV shows that I watch (ya think? With a TV show calendar just for that at the bottom of this blog? Nahhhhhh). Well, the voting's been close, very close, in my head, but my 2 favorite shows are probably "Damages" and "Mad Men", and BOTH are in ratings trouble and will probably be cancelled! I just cannot get a break from Hollywood.....
2. I happen to think it's important on some level to shower at the same time every day, so I try to do that. I fail miserably, but I do try.
3. I live with a man who abhors leftovers. I, on the other hand, have it ingrained in me to eat them so as not to be wasteful. So, guess who ends up having to eat them? Me, but I finally snapped to recruiting Reggie-Dog as my assistant on this. And I'm delegating more and more, getting more off my plate and onto his, so to speak, hehe.
4. Although I will occasionally sleep on my back, I'm mostly a side-sleeper. And, I rotate, too. (Okay, not continually.) I start out on my right side, then when I get up for my first bathroom trip, I swtich to my left side. I do this with any other bathroom trips (that varies). If I do not do this, I will wake up the next morning with all kinds of arthritic skeletal problems. My pelvis will feel bruised badly.
5. Our mail is delivered late in the afternoons, at the same time in which our neighborhood is the most active (walkers, people driving home). So, I wait until dusk to go out to my mailbox, because I don't like everyone looking at me (might have something to do with the clothes I wear on days I stay in).
6. I read my local newspaper online every day instead of subscribing. I subscribed for decades until a couple of years ago. The paper build-up and the cost caused me to just put my foot down, and I frankly have not missed it much.
7. During the time I was really ill with my 5 arthritii, I got out of the habit of following the local gossip and staying tuned into my community. When I got lots better, I decided to stay gossip-free. When my friends try to draw me back into it, I balk. I like being clueless.

Okay, that's it. Now, I'm going to post this entry, go around and find 7 other people to tag, then I will edit this post to add who I tagged.
Edited to add: Here are the girlies I have tagged!
1. Chris
2. Gail
3. Kacy
4. Kim
5. Mackey
6. Vicki
7. Sandee

And that's gonna do it for me today, because I'm not that into it, remember? {Eyeroll}

Freestyle Friday

Sorry I'm late to the gate today. I've been having trouble deciding on a topic, all morning. Yes no yes no. Maybe. LOL

I just gave up and decided to catch up on the blog reading I was behind on, and now I have enough of a topic gameplan.

Lynn had a good challenge from 2peas on hers. The gist of it is, share four things about yourself that make you the person you are today as a creator/artist. Lynn's answers were pretty dang good, too. I am similar to her, it turns out, on a couple of them:

1. Like Lynn, I love color! It's what first grabs me visually, with anything.
(I also am a procrastinator -- and I work slowly, deliciously so, I love to dwell in my creativity, it gives me pleasure, and I love variety and trying new things, too. But I'm going to try to think of 3 other things about me that she didn't mention per se, so as to not be a total jackstress of her ideas, LOL)

2. I'm a noncomformist. Been thinking about that trait in me lately. I was at Mackey's blog, where I contemplated it again. More about it later, but I think that trait in me has been what has kept me from playing into the whole design team and publication route during my time in that little world. So much conforming required, unless you are touched by luck. Because I'm not prone to conformity, I've been compelled to create originally, which most of the time means it's something you're not likely to see elsewhere but not necessarily cutting edge or what the majority would like. Oh well, glad those things I don't do are not a job requirement, LOL.

3. My tendency is to be a perfectionist and I fight that every day of my life. I fight it because it's so dang limiting. I have made progress, in that every thing I create has at least one flaw and usually several, and I keep going with it and just punt (figure out how to cover it or work around it). I don't think I've ever created anything that was perfectly done, and now I'm so used to punting that I am getting used to it. For a perfectionist, that's real progress, LOL.

4. I favor form and function. It's the practical teachers' kid in me, having been raised that way. I often joke that if I won the lotto, most of it would be saved because I just don't have it in me to spend it all. Too thrifty. I think that is why I packrat stuff. Why buy something when you can packrat it for later use? When I look at altered art creations, the ones I'm really drawn to are not only beautiful but practical, useful. I have very few things that are just purely pretties.

The Different Drummer

I've had times in my life when I had to conform, and when I did it, I did it well. The accounting profession is not one for sticking out and doing your own thing. It's all about conforming to the theories, the processes, the consistent steps. And after almost 30 years, I know what I know like the back of my hand. It actually comforts me to do it when I'm in the work groove. Think Rainman here, I'm not kidding! LOL Well, okay, I'm not autistic, but accounting is so one, two, three, one, two, three, that it almost makes me feel like a number (Seger fans, Unite!) That's one side of my personality and brain. Then, there's the creative side, which I never knew I had until about 5 years ago. I've always been a good writer, but to me that was more analytical and cerebral, thinking; not messy, chaotic, feeling.

It wasn't until I got into scrapbooking and ATC's and altered art that I realized their artistic connections to writing, and that I could indeed be both right and left brained. I am left-handed in a right-handed world, and therefore I'm already trained to be ambi-brained. And it goes back a ways. Even as a child, my highest aptitudes were always math and English. And in college, I really wanted to major in accounting and minor in art, but they wouldn't really let me do that. They were right - what do you do with that combo, anyway? LOL I settled for minoring in marketing with an emphasis in writing. Face it, I was all over the board. And always have been. Too many things fascinate me.

One thing about getting older is getting comfortable in your own skin, and that's where I think my noncomformist ways have helped. Now or never, ain't no dress rehearsal, real deal. So, why not be me? I've been real lucky to have a loving Hubs who indulges me and lets me do my own thing. And since I'm such a thrifty soul, I can do it without breaking the bank. I think it hurts me though, when it comes to losing weight and stopping smoking. Conforming to societal standards are huge motivators for modifying those behaviors, and I don't bite on them. Mine will have to come from within me. The weight loss has been happening because I truly want to more than I want to taste delicious food, but the cigarette is still too enjoyable.

Anyway, there have been times in my past when I resented and even hated my nonconformist tendencies, but I'm glad to now be able to embrace it at this point.

Like the man said, I yam what I yam, and what I'm not, I don't got. LOL, have a good Friday, everybody!

Cutting Edge, My Arss...

You are a pair of SCISSORS!You're cutting edge, baby! You cut through life with ease, always keeping others on the edge. You have the power to simplify things by just cutting them out. But scissors beware - you may cut some of the important things out of your life without realizing it, in your need to keep trim!
Take this quiz!








Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code


I cannot remember now where I saw this...whose blog it was on, LOL. I'd definitely give credit if I could remember. Anyway, I took the quiz and I'm scissors. Cutting edge, oh right. LOL Maybe a couple of times I've used stuff a certain way or ressurrected some technique a few months before several other people use it too, but I just figured that was serendipity, people all getting the same idea randomly. I still think that, LOL.

I'm having sleep issues again. My body clock rocks along normally, on the 16-hour wake schedule, but then goes too long after a few days. I struggle to keep it from being 20 or 24 hours, but I can never win. I try harder, to force myself to sleep at the same x hour every night, to no avail. I haven't had success in years and years. How's that done again? LOL

It's actually caused by the combo of my meds: they would make me sleep more if I didn't fight them and it ends up causing me insomnia.

So anyway, I stayed up last night working on tax returns and I'm feeling punch drunk now. I've been trying to get photos of the cards I did Saturday edited and uploaded all.morning.long. No luck yet. Things are moving in slow motion, you know what I mean? (I can still type tho, that's 2nd nature as long as my arthritis isn't acting up in my fingers.)

I guess I'll show those cards tomorrow, or maybe all this week, just to have something every day to show.

I went over to 2peas and looked at the blog challenges to get the questions, but really, none of them since Friday have seemed to apply to me or whatever. One asked about scrapping plans this weekend: none. The next one asked what one technique I use on layouts: none, I'm all over the map. And another asked about where I go to attend crops: I don't. The closest to that is my Saturday group that I've only been to twice since we started back up in September, and that's more of an educational or workshop thing. I never "crop" there. I've never really done crops.

I've been surfing around to writing blogs lately, in my spare moments. I kind of feel that's where I'll evolve to next. You may or may not know that I freelance when I can. A couple of months ago, I was in the running for ghost-writing a book. Found out last week I didn't get it, but came really close. The editor told me I needed to write more online about my life and get out of limiting myself to a scrapping blog. So I've been lurking around at other writers' blogs to see how they do it, and it's fascinating to me.

This is one of three gorgeous fall photos I was forwarded recently in an email from a friend. I'm so jealous of folks who are getting their fall color changes now. Cuz we aren't. Pout. So, a photo has to be the next best thing for me.

So I've been lurking those blogs. No way I'll ever be able to rehab this one to that purpose, so it looks like a second blog in my future. Again. LOL I've been putting it off thinking about this, but I really want to get started on it. Thinking I'll do it on Wordpress, so many writer blogs there.

Well, I probably contributed nothing of value today, but I did want to make an appearance. I see a nap in my future.....LOL (hmm, wonder how I knew..... winkwink)