Musical Interlude

I don't know when David Byrne started looking like my high school chemistry teacher...

and why I had wandered away from his genius...but this combo of sounds is one of my new favorite listens

 

 

Thankful Thursday

 

It is Thankful Thursday again!!

So... if the world is to end tomorrow...it has been one wild ride and I hope we all feel nothing but pure happiness when we vaporize.

 

If the world doesn't vaporize then I will be posting a list of all the things I would still like to do.

So be prepared.

 

Until then here are a few images I found VERY amusing today:

sourced from HERE

 

Julien David  balaclava inspiration: Abominable Snowman  

recycled lunch bag jacket: United Bamboo

 

I would trip in these for sure,
but boy my butt would transform into something else after a few times around the track

Yang Du Animal print shirts



Thankful Thursday

One of the many reasons I am thankful today:

my niece: Princess Batgirl
photo by my sister-in-law Candice Wiesblott



Winter

 

Day dream for today:

 

How I spent my Thanksgiving

One month ago I tested mildly elevated for a CA125 ovarian cancer marker test.

It was considered an early warning sign for a cancer that is often diagnosed way too late.

Through the tears, I saw this as a gift and a reminder that life always offers surprises.

 

under the power of many mantras and bathed in love

 

On November 16th at 11 am I had surgery to remove the 5cm endometrioma that was causing all the commotion and concern. I knew going into the surgery that I might loose my left ovary to the disease.

I'm allergic to everything...
 

 

two hours after surgery, still a little green but walking per doctors orders
 

my swollen tummy and bruised button two days post surgery

 

My doctor was able to remove the cyst and save my ovary, she also declared that she saw nothing cancerous or cancer suspicious during the surgery. *
I can now report that all pathology came back clear...we got it in time!

 

I have experienced an OVER POURING of love, and kindness from friends and family.

I am beyond words, embarrassed from the fuss...but humbled and so so honored.

I can not thank you enough, really.

 

my oldest friend stayed with us for the first four days
She and hubby made it easier to ride the waves

 

Today marks one week since the surgery.
I have not taken a single pain pill, no need for them as there has been no pain!

I have spent it re-cooping and laying low.

My hubby has mostly convinced me that although it feels like I could sneeze or cough my innards out of my incisions, that is not the case. 

 

I have also spent a good bit of time burping and laughing.

Thankful Thursday

 

Today is thankful Thursday and there is a long and emotional list of things I am thankful for.

I am keeping them to myself today, so meditate on your personal lists too.

 

Breathe and celebrate the wonderful in your life.

 

Wordless Wednesday

I have a bunch of posts coming up but for today, I am sharing a laugh:

thanks Ellen

Wordless Wednesday

Where are there yaks in California?
Just how far has this meat traveled?!

alter ego

corrupting the youth with sugar and late bedtimes

Something to add to my list

So I have an actual "when I fall into a ton of cash" list. It is an active part of daydreaming for me.

How would I use cash, if I had it all around me, casual income, excess amounts and no looming bills or what have you. You know what I mean....

Well seeing stuff like this fuels me...it is what makes me want to introduce art to the public, the laying of hands so to speak. Such wonderful things the mind can do and explore:

 



I have also added " take all the classes at AS220" to my list....

you can see all the other ideas under "The List"  at the top of the page.

Inspiration

We all feel shaky at times, some more then others...but this image was so inspiring to me

I had to share it and the link about the image

 

Ahhhh, I can do anything, anything I have a passion for

and so can you

 

Anais Nin at her press, self publishing her work


http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/30/anais-nin-letterpress/

 

print by HoneycombPrintshop

 



Lovely Blog Awards

 

 

I am so lucky to know so many amazing and interesting people!

I feel honored that I have received this Lovely Blog Award.

Per the conditions of winning this I am suppose to reveal 7 random things about myself, and pay it forward...so that is what this post is about!
Super fun

My 7 random things:

1. I am incredibly superstitious. So much so that sometimes I will not let you say certain things at certain times. See I can not even tell you what that is and why! See, I have incorporated this so well into my life that I barely know that I am doing it anymore!

2. I often have the desire to honk at random people for random reasons. I drive a lot and often times when I pass a car that has someone picking their nose, or talking on the phone or if someone is just walking down the street I want to honk my car horn at them. It is like the least used thing in my car... I barely use my horn. I wonder if anyone has ever had to replace their horn from overuse?!humm

3. I LOVE the smell of wet earth, maybe it is from all my gardening, or that it evokes childhood memories, but I find it so very comforting. If they made a spray of that smell I would spray it on my pillow so I could smell it as I drifted off to sleep.

4. I am convinced that there are ghosts in my house. I wake up almost every night thinking that someone is in my bedroom watching me sleep.

5. When I get dressed up, I spend a good bit of time putting on make-up (this might be because I really don't know how to do it so I am teaching myself at the same time) and then after looking at myself, wipe it off with my hands leaving my face in a state of half made up/ half back at square one.

6. I watch home shopping channels to see how people talk for so long about light bulbs or other things like that. I am training myself to be able to talk to anyone about anything!

7. I sometimes can not see the defining line between people and animals and so when I look at animals, like baboons, I only see a being, no different than you or me. It is amazingly beautiful when it happens. It is like seeing a rainbow appear.

image via Flickr

 

I have had to adjust the conditions a little to maintain anonymity of my gifter (per their request) 

So I am going to give BIG shout outs to some amazing blogs that are well worth reading: 

 

Here are the blogs I read the most/ favorite blogs:

 

Such beautiful writing,

like a combination of dreaming and deep thoughts with sweet swirls of humor and whimsy:

Middle of Life

 

A wonderful working artist friend, her blog is an inside peek at her studio and work.

Always interesting and colorful:

Pentimento

 

 Eden always has me laughing. She is the Guru that started NaBloPoMo many moons ago and
got me to try blogging more often and with purpose:
FUSSY

Love this blog, everything is pretty and snazzy, it is wonderful eye candy and has GREAT tutorials:
Casey's Elegant Musings

Another dear friend- we all love supporting those dream chasers and makers!
She is a talented painter AND a talented graphic designer too
Monteve Clay's business and soon to be arriving blog:
Spider Monkey Design
send her some love

OK until I get a new bee in my bonnet that is today's post!
Love them all!!

 

Thankful Thursday

 

 

A photomontage of all that is running through this thick skull of mine:

 

 

I am thankful that I do not have to use floral tools to get work done.
A little pet peeve of mine is the "make tools pretty so girls will want to use them"

I am thankful that Hubby likes to make pancakes from scratch

I am thankful for idea time with friends so we can work creative kinks out
and eat cookies

I am thankful that I get to see cool stuff like this in the early morning hours
That is the sun rising through the fog!

Wednesday: Soapbox

Today is wordless Wednesday:

 

I love these women and men!

 

 

 

Sometimes...

Yep Sometimes I am that girl

The make-up, fashion magazines, and nail polish girl.

Cat in my lap and an overpriced salad in my belly

But rest assured, I know that the women I see in this referenced magazine are not real.

You can't fool me, there are no pores.

Everyone who has a basic understanding of science understands that you can not be alive without pores. So all these over photoshopped women are just paper dolls

with $15,000 handbags.

But my oh my what pretty pretty pictures and colors

Breaking the streak

Dublin, Ireland 2012

I have not had my morning/afternoon/nighttime cuppa tea in over a week.

It was not a conscience decision, I just kinda stopped cold turkey
when my cold parked itself in my head.

So this last week had felt strange, like I am forgetting something.

Hubby said I have broken my habit, that the first three days off caffine are the hardest.
I haven't had headaches or been itchy...but I have missed it.

Mostly the ritual of drinking a hot yummy cuppa in the morning...like I was telling my insides to wake up or something.

Well, today I am meeting a friend for tea...I am going to have a cup of chai

I feel kind of bad about it, like I am going to dive into a guilty pleasure knowing that I am going to fall into the deep end of the pool and allow myself to float down to the bottom slowly and ever so effortlessly...but I am also so looking forward to it.

I'm here, keep your pants on....

OK so I have been busy...really busy, filling my head with images and sounds and sights...

I will share some of them with you now....

OK I ate this in the town that the Twilight boy was spotted in nursing his broken heart.
I kind of wanted to see him, even though I am not a twi fan...but I just had a lovely conversation with my sweetie instead



Here is the Edward Hopper painting that made me weep
at the SFMOMA.
(Click on image to see it larger)

Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Untitled (Rat and Bear, Sleeping), 2008/2009; installation

This is a piece called Rat and Bear Sleeping...that scared the shit out of me...they breathe...well look like they are breathing and I was afraid that they would get up and grab me.
I think I am still a little traumatized from it.

I got a head cold...I slept on the couch so I could sleep sitting up...it is not pretty.
I am giving you real life here people!

I completed my edition of bookplates for this show

This is a neighbor showing off his ocean caught fish...

much to the delight of the neighborhood girls.

The fish was horribly embarrassed

This is what I saw last week in TJ's, little girls in 4.5inch heels...

I am not sure I have moved past this either.

The wall of yet sold artwork from the local art auction.
It was hot and packed and there was loads of tequila

building next door to SFMOMA
click on image to see it larger and discover what I saw

More words in my next post...

Social Pressure

After much social pressure and hearing " you MUST read this"

 I was handed a copy of the 50 shades book.

I must say I had ZERO interest in reading it and after it sat on my bedside table for almost a month, maybe in a continued silent protest... I finally picked it up as I needed to return this book to the person who was kind enough to loan it to me.

PLUS I needed to give it a shot, after all it was "just a book"

Well, it is a book...and it has sex in it and in all honesty, I started reading it much like any other book I pick up in the bookshop....open to a random page, read a paragraph and see if I could see reading it any further....

 I figured there wasn't a lot of character development towards the front, so that is where I flipped it open...after reading for about an hour in bed alone.

 Hubby came in to check on me....

***

Stop reading now if you liked the book or don't want to hear my soapbox moment about sexual freedom and liberty.

He started laughing, saying I didn't look too happy.

"what do you think of it so far?"

I looked up and said, well my first impression was that he was a REALLY bad lover.

He told me to give it some more time.

At that, I handed him the book and he started to read and then roll his eyes and then laugh.

We both laughed a lot reading the book.

He agreed, the writing was bad, the story was silly but, we were both thankful for the laughs.

Sadly, this was not meant to be a comedic book.

I must say, the amount of "oh crap" and "see how wet you are" made me cringe, and I was bored out of my head from the email exchanges.

Now I know other women LOVE this series, and I think that is great for them but...

it really made me wonder why?

I know we are still struggling as a gender to find ourselves, to act on our sexual impulses and

be OK with wanting and needing sex.

I guess the fervor this book has caused with women maybe just highlighted for me that a majority of women are still not asking for what they really want or need sexually.

I guess I am a lucky girl, for my lover just wants me to be sexually over the moon, and he is willing to do anything to make that happen.

Demand that from your lovers ladies!

Demand that for yourself!

Then you can write a really hot novel and we can all be smiling from our one handed reads.

***

(stepping off the soapbox, and putting down my megaphone)

Some other women I know have said they refused to read it because of all the hype.

I told them I would report back.

Here I am reporting:

It is silly, the guy is creepy and self centered. The female lead is self deprecating to a level of annoying at the beginning and then just boring after that.

The sex is mild, and if you haven't had some saucy/kinky sex by now, get cracking, because this is not saucy/kinky sex....you can think of far more interesting sex...trust me, I know you are creative!

In the end, I thought it was beyond boring and disappointing.

but hey, we all beat off to a different drummer.

Weekend of color

I actually had an amazingly productive weekend!

It has been far too long since that has occurred and I don't want it to stop.

Here is a visual montage:

I did the walk for First Thursday and saw the SB Museums exhibits
this exhibit as well as a lovely collection of Van Gogh to Munch
some of the work I was lucky to see in other venues overseas in years past.
None the less it was a wonderful visual treat.

Saturday was spent exposing new plates while hubby saw the latest Sci Fi movie that
I had no interest in.

We sampled out first Beignets from a new local Cajun/creole restaurant

Breakfast was hidden under mountains of powdered sugar!
Sugar comma was soon to follow

Local agriculture museum

the reason for visiting that little museum,
An amazing painter that I have been following for years
and her lovely work
pretty horses, pretty horses

The remainder of the day was spent printing an edition that is traveling back east.

Ahhhhh Heaven

Thank you for your patience

 So now that I have your attention

thank you Elle for breaking barriers and allowing a man to grace your cover.

Apparently, he is the first man to be on the cover of the magazine.

I personally don't think he is too horrible to look at.

(swooning at those lovely deep eyes)

Plus, on another note, his tattoos seem to work, nothing bothers me more then a bunch of tattoos that seem totally chaotic and mismatched and scattered. I guess it is the OCD that lives inside me, when I see his sleeves they work...organized chaos.

OK, enough eye candy.

I want to soap box for another moment here:

Swim suit season is around the corner.

One of the worst parts about living in the land of beautiful people,

is that anyone who is not a yoga instructor or a professional personal trainer

 is shunned from wearing and or feeling good in a swim suit.

I am not sure why they are called these, because of the people I know who have them, they do not use them to swim in...or bathe in...so they really should be called sun suits.

Ok, so I include myself in this group of sun scared, shunned, and sun suit phobic women.

I own one again, finally...for years I refused to own one because

I didn't like the way I looked in one.

Then we went to a lake house with friends and I decided I would not explode if I had one and someone besides my reflection saw myself in it....and it was hot and I would be glad to have something skimppier to wear.

This being said, a fashion blogger was recently featured on a morning news show because she posted her "fatkini" photos and then other women sent in theirs to her.

You can see the whole thing HERE

I applaud it and find it interesting what women see as fat within themselves and what we have been taught to think is fat or thin or normal or freakish.

So I guess the whole point of this post is still lost to even me,

but it seemed really important to talk about.

I am fearful of the sun in general, if you have seen me in "real life" you will and can attest to the fact that I am pale, paler then pale. In fact, when we went to Hawaii or that before mentioned lake I hide in the shade. I love being outside, but fear the sun.

I got burnt A LOT as a teenager so now I am in a constant state of fear that my whole body will be covered in cancerous moles or something...

so instead, even when I fantasize about a getaway in a beach chair with a huge umbrella shading everything but my toes....but cancer can even grow there.

So maybe my full shaded chair can still be on the beach or lake and a nice cool breeze on a warm day....hell I could even use a lemonade or a iced alcoholic something with a paper flower or something.

Ugh, I think now that this post is really just insight into my current mental state.

Scattered.

but colorful

Moral of this rambling:

 wear sun screen, dream big and don't be afraid of sun suits

or how beautiful and wonderful your body really is.

Post birthday

OK so I have really sucked at posting to my own darn blog...I am tired of saying sorry about it so this is my last time!

so there.

In the last two and a half weeks, my mother has essentially almost literally imploded and I was running back and forth like a crazed lady trying to keep things straight, keep myself emotionally in check, inform way too many people about every move via text messages,
and get some food and or sleep.

Yes, these were often interchangeable.

So now that the pace has slowed down...to a lower humm of chaos. 

I am back at trying to tackle the lofty aspirations I have for myself and my art calendar.

Sadly, in the wild and crazy wind of it all, my birthday approached and
when it arrived yesterday I was spent.
I had nothing left for myself or to give to others.

This made me very very sad and I started my party early the day before
 by throwing myself a pity party.

After about an hour of crying, I pulled myself up by my tattered and worn bootstraps
 and got myself out of the house.

My goal was to get hubby a CD that he really wanted.

I was grumpy still, not totally happy with my choice to leave my own party early...

As I was driving to the shop, via side streets (just to keep me out that much longer) the car in front of me slowed WAY down for what looked like a little leaf in the road....well when I saw three men standing on the sidewalk watching, I pulled over. It was not a leaf...it was a baby possum!

the smallest little wild thing I have seen in a long long time!

not the one I saw but just as cute and small

These men, stopped traffic in one direction and I stopped it in another, and slowly and lovingly escorted this little lost baby back into the garden it had wandered from.

It was a good deed, we were all very happy to see it waddle back into the undergrowth of the urban garden and hopefully tell the tale to its momma there.

At this point my mood shifted totally. I didn't want to go back to that stupid party...it was silly

I stopped at the overloaded and sensory overwhelmed beauty supply store and

I bought myself a bottle of the liquid gold that seems to tame the mane, I only buy once a year:

$20 a bottle for conditioner seems too much
so instead I buy it once a year and ration it out

After that I bought some brownie mix and headed home to eat some leftover Chinese food and bake brownies for work. Hell, if my birthday was gonna suck, it was because I was gonna let it.

I would have none of that.

When the sun finally came up, well actually, when the alarm finally went off (far more accurate)

I made some "I am awake sounds" to let hubby know...once he made his, he grabbed me and said, HAPPY BIRTHDAY...that made me smile and then I sang at the top of my lungs and much to the cats disapproval this song that was playing on the clock radio:

This act had us in hysterics in moments....

it ended up being a quiet birthday. A vast vast change from years before when there was usually a party or loads of friends. But it seemed fitting, I was emotionally spent and it was about all I could muster. As I am now in the day after birthday reflections, I am very thankful for my hubby who wrote me a crazy romantic love note on facebook which just about knocked me out of my chair...my family who loves me dearly and the friends who took time to wish me a happy birthday.

I really really am OK...a little shaky at times, but it is gonna be another exciting journey around the sun this year!