Not my best day...

Wednesday was bill-paying day for me, no foolin'. I began the day just going to check out to see if that computer virus was causing any harm, then ran my anti-virus, then started in paying bills online.

You know it takes me forever to do stuff that just 10 years ago I could do brain-dead, but I was going good until my internet connection began slowing down in the afternoon. I was ready to quit paying bills and only had a few more. Talk about aggravating. It probably wasn't a good idea to keep on. Just should have saved the rest for today. But, then I began getting a load of emails in my inbox to look at this art and that art, etc. So, I kept on through the slowness.

By the time Hubs got home from work I was totally scattered. Could not focus on a thing. Shoulda just laid down for a nap, but I was behind on my to-do list. This is just one reason why my condition right now during my treatment totally sucks: I cannot control my concentration well any more and so if there is a deadline involved I better get it done early.

I think I now know why elderly people have to pester you until you do their work. For years as an accountant, that irritated me to no end. I just couldn't understand, why no patience? Well, now I think I have some idea.

Anyway, by about 10pm, I was way behind and tried to sleep, but now I was too keyed up. So, for the last 6 hours I've been trying to get some done and have managed to only go through emails, do the dishes and two loads of laundry. Oh and take a shower. That won't win the Olympics of Chores, will it?

Worst part was, I missed posting a blog entry for Wednesday. {Pout!} I was on a roll!!! (Said like I'm Marlon Brando not being a "contendah" in On the Waterfront...lol.)

Now, my left thigh hurts. So does the left side of my lower back. I'm feeling little tiny spasms. This cannot be good, ok? I hate my frickin body. I wish I had a masseuse who made house calls...at 5 a.m.

Off to try to take a nap and relax and quit thinking about stressful things.....

Just a quickie today

Just posting a quick entry today, and I'm late at that. LOL It's 2 p.m. here. Here's a recent photo of my fur babies, taken Monday, I think. I've had to spend a chunk of unscheduled time babysitting my dogs. This is so not in the plan. And it really frustrates me, but they both can break my heart with one look, so I become their sucker.

Hubs was supposed to clean out their house on his last day off (Sunday, the 14th) and get it ready for cold-weather inhabitance. Yesterday, under questioning, he admitted he did not do that and then copped an attitude about it. He's into his let's-bring-all-my-job-problems-home-and-kick-the-dog-and-bitch-at-the-wifey mood, and I am looking at this from a responsibility standpoint. As in, you cannot ignore your pets just because you don't feel like dealing with it. I am physically unable to do it. (Well, I could do it, but if I did, I would irritate my pinched nerve in my neck and be in agony for days. However, I'm mulling over doing it, because it needs to be done. Oh, the joys of marriage! Not.)

My head hit the pillow last night around 1 a.m. and I slept like a hibernating bear. Woke up around 10 a.m., pretty refreshed. A few aches and pains, but a morning stretch helped me work a few of the kinks out. I will have skeletal pains due to the cold weather, but I love cold weather so much. It's very very cool here. Last night I know it got down to 39F and may have dipped lower after I fell asleep. Sheila, the smaller dog, eventually went to their house to sleep, but Reggie stayed in his chair, on top of his towels. This morning they were both up and fine, so I guess neither froze to death.

Well, I've got to run some errands and take care of some extraneous crap that's come up, so this is it for today. Hope everyone has a great Hump day!

Lost in Thought Today

Already. And it's only 8 a.m. my time. Of course, I've been up since 2 a.m. Yes, Ladies and Ladies, you are watching a sleep disorder in action. Not like it's fatal. We manage. It just really leads to a random life. Just as a structured life is restrictive, so is a random one. Beats death, though, bigtime.

I think the biggest frustration I have is not being able to really plan a schedule I can stick to. Like, today I'm supposed to go get my teeth cleaned. Well, that ain't gonna happen, because I do not have a personal driver (and I, unlike Brittnee Spears, have a good excuse as to why I don't have one). I will need the driver to get there because my appointment's at 2 p.m. and I'll be super-drowsy by then, we are talking half a bottle of Robitussen drowsy. If I stayed up that long. That's only 12 hours since I woke up, too. But I'm drowsy now. I know I got 6 hours of sleep, because I forced myself to stay up until the end of Pushing Daisies last night. You'd think I could last 6 hours awake without wanting to take a nap, wouldn't you?

So, I am waiting to call the dentist at 9 when they open to reschedule. Hubs and I don't care for the lady who works the desk, so the thought of giving her a teeny bit more work to do is satisfying. (I have a very good reason for disliking her. When Hubs goes, she bullies him into paying too much and then says we are not overpaid. This forces me to have to do a complicated account reconciliation to prove to her that we are overpaid. Only then will she back down. One time she even laughed and said, you're right. Without even looking at my recon! I was ticked.) So, I will get my jollies today by messing up her appt. book just a tiny bit and keeping her from having a 100% show-up rate day. If her boss were not a good dentist, we'd be gone from there, however, dentists we like are very few and far between in my area. Most are of the dental chain store varieties, or old timers who aren't on our plan and can therefore charge us whatever they want to. But then, when you have Marlene the Billing Bully (that's my name for her...Hubs uses another B-word name) trying to collect what she wants to charge, what good is having your dentist be on your plan and supposedly limited to the negotiated rate? Yeah, please do not tell me we are not already on socialized medicine. It's just handled by the insurance companies....badly, badly, badly. And that's comparative to the government-run Medicare, too. I do my parents' Medicare billing and they can be brutal, but we are usually talking about a difference of $35.00 in the end, not $530.00, which is the amount Hubs overpaid by this last time.

But, I digress. Lots of reasons there why I don't think today is a good day to get my teeth cleaned, LOL. I would rather be asleep.

Actually, I'm kind of tormented by something. Well, mildly, heavy on the mildly, tormented. Okay, troubled. 100% troubled. Really wishing I had the balls to fully discuss it here, but alas, my balls escape me at the moment. So, I will have to suffer in silence. Still trying to talk myself into "be patient, things might turn out better than you think". We shall see. All I will say about it is, if you love something, let it go. And forget the other part about it coming back to you, in case it doesn't. (We are not talking about people here, but creative ideas.) Now see, I've already said too much, LOL.

Well, as much as I'm not in the mood for doing a tag (sorry, Gina), I said I would so I will. I may not tag people by name, though. I rarely ever do that. Something about it smells like a chain letter to me, LOL, and I don't do those.

Here are the rules which you must abide by if you are tagged.
1. Link to your tagger (Gina) and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs. Um, no. If you read this, consider yourself tagged, okay?
1. I am a nonconformist, have been all my life except for brief periods where I tried hard to conform and succeeded but felt miserable.
2. I've recently discovered that living the artistic life and mindset has changed my mechanism for being motivated to do the everyday mundane things. I used to be able to get interested in stuff like laundry and ironing. Now, all I think about is, I could be creating, and my chores all seem like drudgery. Having to learn how to re-motivate, the artist way.
3. I have extremely strange sleeping habits (wow, I bet you didn't know that!). In fact, sometimes I cause my own insomnia problems by getting up after only 2 hours, because that's when I get the first urge to tinkle, like clockwork, and if I go back to bed I then go into the deep sleep that can sometimes last 6-8 hours straight. And I fight it if I cannot aleep that long for some reason.
4. I've become a bit of a germaphobe, understandably. I always spray my nose with my Nasonex prior to going somewhere and I never go there without my Purell hand sanitizer or wipes, which I use immediately after going where it is I'm going. Then as soon as I get home, I wash my hands and swab the insides of my nostrils with rubbing alcohol, just in case the Nasonex wasn't working.

More weirdness, eh? ...thinking...

5. Um, okay, lately I've developed a liking to using a gluestick on papers in my art journal. Not on my scrapbook layouts, though, but maybe. Sometimes I use it on cards, but not alone. I have a slight horror of something falling off a card I made. And gluestick is not that flexible a glue.
6. I cannot stand roaches and bugs like most other women, but if there is one in my house, I am all over it in attack mode with my fly swatter, my bug spray and my paper towel and shoe. I've been known to yell "Die!!!" just as I'm going in for the kill. I began behaving this way many moons ago as a teen, when I was woke up one night by something brushing on my cheek. Turned on my light and it was a huge flying roach on the wall. Something in me just snapped, right then and there. Up til then, I'd been a screaming pansy about any kind of critter.
7. I underwent intensive allergy testing at a prestigious clinic in Houston a decade or so ago, so I know without question that I am highly allergic to shellfish. Yet, my favorite eat-out meal if I can get a good one, is fried shrimp. I will eat it until I pop, then have almost a full-blown throat closure in the car on the way home. Every time. Bonus: And I have learned over the years to do meditation and deep breathing to open my throat back up, too. No joke. It's always a struggle, but it works. I can also get my heart to stop fluttering and beating fast, whenever I have a panic attack, which is oddly usually when I am run down and worn out.

Okay, glad that's over with. Have a great Thursday, everyone, and take my word for it, don't think about things too hard today. (winkwink)

Watery Wednesday Wrap-ups

I do hope those of you who read this blog remembered that I was up to my arss in tax returns and would not be counted on to blog with any regularity. Just in case you thought I drowned....

I almost did, but only figuratively. Man, the procrastinators on my client list are just gonna have to speed things up next year, cuz I'm getting too old for double all-niters (yep, I did not sleep from Saturday evening until Monday afternoon, then took a nap and stayed up again Monday night, just barely making the midnight deadline on my last 2 returns). When folks bring you moving boxes full of craps on the Thursday and Friday before a Monday deadline, ya kinda haveta stay up. But, no worries, they will get theirs, for I will remember this at invoicing time! LOL

Bad thing is, I did not have time to do my usual thorough start-to-finish on each client, so all my paperwork is still to be done for them, like document file copies, printing, collating, packaging and invoicing. And that all needs to be done this week in order to get paid before Christmas, because it starts all over again right after that! And plus, I want some time off. I want to at least pretend to be a seasonal worker! LOL

So anyway, back to drowning...good segueway to the one thing I did do yesterday (Tuesday) besides sleep all.day.long. I took off with my camera and snapped some shots of water for this week's Funky Photo Friday challenge. I really had fun doing this, although it was more difficult to get interesting shots than I anticipated. Once I figured out to use my zoom, though, it got easier. Didn't get up early enough to catch sunrise and didn't want to wait long enough to get sunset, so I had to settle for overcast midday. Then, I took the photos and editied them in PaintShopPro, some lightly, some heavily. So, I learned some new moves, not that I'm gonna remember them, LOL. One can hope.

That first shot (above) looks like a waterfall, right? Well, It's not. It's water rushing out of a bayou dredging outflow pipe into a containment pond. What I did was zoom in on the water when I snapped it. Then, back at my computer, I used the curves function to add some heavy duty whitecaps. I love how it came out, but I confess I did not know beforehand that I was going to do that. I was just playing around with the different things in my PSP. I had read of lots of people using this functions, so I thought, what does this do? Me likey!

This next photo (at left) is just barely edited with an unsharp mask and a tiny bit of brightening. This is a tributary gully creek that winds through my city and has the infamous nickname Gator Gully. More than a few alligators have been sighted on its banks over the years. There's luckily a safe concrete perch near the banks where I stood to take the shot, so no Aimeslees were sacrificed for it, LOL.

I have to admit, I had the most fun editing this photo (at left). This is just a boring old shot of our dirty brown bayou and bank near my house that flows into Galveston Bay. Boring shots like these make me want to glitz them up, so I went exploring in PSP's Effects. This one was done using the Rotating Mirror Reflection Effect. What it does is rotate part of your image however you tell it. This one is a very slight rotation, clockwise -- can you see it? What is cool is that it created a digital smush in the upper righthand quadrant that kind of looks like there's a buddhist fairy with wings sitting there on the grass. Click on any of these for a larger view.

Well, I have to say that during my overtime at work I almost literally ached to do some creative playing. I missed it that much. And I even missed blogging. Yet, no rest for the weary. As I explained, I'll be working on finishing up the paperwork, tomorrow it's to the dentist for a cleaning, and then I will be on vacation until November 1. Not from blogging, I'll still blog daily (ok, that's the plan). But I won't be crafting for that time. The crafting supplies are going to get packed up and put away, and I'm going to tackle the remaining parts of our house reorganization.

My goal is to have most of it done by Oct. 28th, which is the next day off for DH. I need to move my computer and internet cable to my front office from the family room, as well as clean up all the accumulated crap from the family room and the front dining room and office. Then, once that goal is met, I can work in my spare time on cleaning out the back 10' x 22' room behind the garage and making it into our fitness gym! I am so jazzed at the thought of getting that done that the mere visualization of it is enough to get me moving, even when I'm in pain. Hubs wants it badly too, and we really only have this remaining window of time open, since I need to use Missy's room to store stuff in while I move other stuff around. And she will be home for Thanksgiving. So, the craftings gotta go for now. Also, I won't be online as much, but that's going to be a good thing, because I've noticed that my old bones are less painful the less time I spent at the keyboard, ya know?

So, you have all been told! LOL Please, if ya see me online alot, feel free to whip me and yell at me to get back on plan! I just feel that if I get somewhere with this, my life's gonna improve to the next level, cuz all of this clutter and stuff not being where I want it to be is bugging the caniption outta me. And being able to use all of our gym equipment, OMG, I literally cannot wait!

Have a great HUMPerdink DAY, everybody. (Gina, I will do your tag on Thursday, okay?)

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!








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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)