i have been remiss...

in the midst of the crafting frenzy, i have completed neglected to post a public thank you to my back tack 2 buddy! she is the best -- generous, on target with the choice of items she sent me and did i mention, generous?

here's a list of what she gifted me with:

a roomy bag...made with shades of sage and aqua with cool knotted handles. of course, it's difficult to describe, and me without a digital camera. the bag has a groovy inside pocket and a gussetted bottom so it will stand where it's set down. great!

stitch and bitch book...i need knitting patterns and this one has some funky, fab, hip ones i can't wait to try out.

knitting pattern a day calendar...when i said i needed knitting patterns, i wasn't joking and now i have another 365!

three lovely, soft, perfectly pink skeins of wool yarn. i think socks, don't you?

a wonderful handmade knitting needle holder, fashioned from hot pink shades and filled with a set of bamboo needles (i hear they're the best!)

a small box of knitting accessories...hand beaded stitch markers and a tape measure and all manner of small items i hope to one day learn the use of :>

a daily meditation book for knitters...hey, i'm not stressed! okay, i'm stressed and maybe some daily meditaions will bring calm to the inner crazy crafter i've been lately.

guava tea!

chocolate and toffee covered macadamia nuts (there will never be a picture of these...they got eaten two seconds after i opened the box).

thank you, thank you, thank you, debbie. you are generous of spirit too! i love each of my gifts...can't wait to use them to knit up something very soon, but definitely after december 3.

good news and a promise...

good news...my ct scan was clear!

but...

i am making a promise to myself to write no more about my health issues here. i want to thank all of the folks who have offered support and love to me because of what they've read here. but i don't want this space to be filled up with my mental hand-wringing and fretting. whether i write here about this stuff or not, the outcome will be the same. i have one year cancer-free under my belt and cannot imagine that 4 more years of worry could be beneficial for anyone. this is what it is...my life--a day-to-day adventure filled with the same challenges and rewards lots of other people are experiencing. what i do want to write about here are the things that i think are different or WOW or artistic or earth shattering.

of course, i reserve the right to change my mind on a whim (and i probably will!)

and on a happier note:

hung about 100 flyers up around town for the saturday monday sale...let me know if you see one!

i'm a starving artist...go figure...

thanks to denise for the link to this personality test...a mental distraction is just what i needed today.

Starving Artist

You are 14% Rational, 14% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.
You are the Starving Artist! You are more intuitive than logical, and are primarily guided by your heart and emotions. You are also very introverted and gentle. Of course, this does not mean that you do not have an ego. In fact, you are surprisingly arrogant for someone so emotional and gentle. This is why you are best described as a starving artist. You are very introspective and quite sure of yourself, as any accomplished artist is, yet your views are impractical, guided by feelings, and overly gentle. You probably find math, logic, and similar intellectual pursuits offensive to your artistic sensibilities, and you prefer the open-endedness of artistry because then you know you can never truly have a wrong answer. So really you have no reason to be arrogant, you big doofus, because the skills you value (emotion, spirit, art, etc.) in yourself are valuable only on a subjective level, meaning your arrogance is purely masturbatory. In short, your personality is defective because you are arrogant, introverted, introspective, gentle, and thoroughly irrational...posessing most of the traits needed to be a starving--and useless--artist. So get out there, write a few short stories that are allegories for the spirit, and starve!
To put it less negatively:
1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.
Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Capitalist Pig.
Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Haughty Intellectual, the Televangelist, and the Emo Kid.
*
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If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.
The other personality types:
The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

3000...

yes, that's right--3000 unique visitors have come to this blog and read my innermost thoughts (okay, not innermost, because those are probably just boring, but my thoughts) and that is a tad scary.

in other news...the ct scan was uneventful, just as i suspected. the technician was very friendly and only mildly bruised my arm getting the iv in. the dye drink i had to consume was voluminous, medically grape flavored and bright blue. both the injectable and drinkable dyes made me nauseous. thankfully, neither actually made me sick, as was my fear.

i called the oncologist's office from the car on the ride home to see when i could get the results and she said at the earliest monday morning but most likely late in the afternoon. i am seeing my gastro on monday and maybe he can wrangle up some results. thanks to all of you have wished me well both in the comments and in personal e-mails. i believe in the adage that everything will work out--sometimes not the way you planned, but everything will work out. i can feel your good thoughts and prayers all around me and they are making the waiting less painful.

we ate our thanksgiving feast at the cheshire inn. the buffet was not as sumptuous as the ones at the lake, but had all of the essentials. the highlight of the meal was the piano player who serenaded us with all manner of 40s & 50s standards. then, just as we were lulled into a false sense of security, he played "stairway to heaven" and followed it up with side one of pink floyd's "dark side of the moon." nathaniel tipped him twice! and told him he was the best pianist he had ever heard (i think he just likes saying "pianist").

we followed up dinner with a movie outing to see "walk the line." joaquin phoenix and reese witherspoon were fantastic and their voices were quite moving. we went directly home and listened to both sides of johnny cash's greatest hits (on vinyl, of course). my favorite song is "jackson."

the countdown continues...a week and one day until the saturday monday sale. please stop by! i had a nightmare on thursday morning that i forgot to tell people and was running through the streets of webster groves shouting about the show. if i'd been naked and later there was a math test i hadn't studied for, it truly would have been the scariest dream of my life! anyway...hope to see you there!

the holidaze...

our annual thanksgiving day ritual is in a state of flux this year. usually we go to the lake and eat a sumptuous buffet meal, swim in the hotel pool, go to the movies, and of course, shop at the outlet mall. this year our plans remain, two days before the holiday, up in the air. the lack of plans this close to turkey-day has my bowels in an uproar--literally.

part of the reason we are undecided as to where to go and what to do is that i have been under the weather for the better part of three weeks. i saw my oncologist on friday and she has me scheduled for a CT of my abdomen and pelvis for wednesday morning. my oncologist is not concerned, just cautious...but still...as anyone who's ever had any medical tests performed, the waiting for the results is the very hardest part. since my test is on the wednesday before the holiday, i will, most likely, not know anything until after the weekend.

i have so much to be thankful for this year (as i do EVERY year) but i sincerely feel the need to eat an abundance of turkey, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie to celebrate, this, the first thanksgiving since my surgery. i just wish there was a way to get instant results from my test...to put my mind at ease...to settle my stomach in preparation for the feast of thanks.

people are people...

i got a fortune in my dark dove chocolate. it said "don't think about it so much." honestly, how does the universe know me so well?

a different lifetime...

on the third tuesday of every month, i record the minutes of a meeting that begins at 7:00 a.m. because of the ungodly start time, i must arrive at my office by 6:45 a.m. to ensure that coffee is brewed for the attendees. making the coffee this morning sent my mind reeling back 20 years to a brief period when i worked two jobs. i was desperate to move out of my grandparents' home. they were kind and enormously generous, but i was no longer capable of living with "elders" and felt an itch in my lungs each time they asked me when i'd be home or with whom i'd be.

one of the jobs i worked was for the now defunct (at least, i think it's defunct) ye olde potato chip factory. there was a small store front in the then newly remodeled union station and i had to wear a bright yellow pinafore and yell, "hot homemade chips" for 5 hours every afternoon. it was a fine job and at the end of the evening i got to take home leftover potato chips. believe me, the allure of that bonus system quickly wore off.

the other job i worked was on the early morning shift at mcdonald's. i arrived at 5:00 a.m. after the biscuit lady, but before the pancake maker. i was the counter girl. i took your order for egg mcmuffins and hash browns. i also had to make sure there was hot coffee at all times. the lane behind the counter was narrow. you really only had to take a half a step to reach the sandwich shoot where the biscuits and muffins waited for the next guest. periodically throughout the morning the drive-through guy would run a wet mop up over the tile floor behind the counter. that meant that the grease on the floor, mixed with the soapy water from the bucket mixed to create a recipe for slip and fall disaster. in my short tenure at the mcdonald's on south kingshighway i fell more times than i can remember and i fell holding a coffee pot on at least five occasions. i think it was after the 4th coffee pot explosion that the management decided i was not counter help material. the next morning i was placed on griddle duty.

my new responsibility was to make rounds of bacon and sausage patties. i wielded 3 foot long griddle presses under which cooked the flattened breakfast meats. the presses were heavy...imagine 3 foot long cast iron skillets and you will have a pretty good idea of how heavy the presses were. sometimes i couldn't lift them up to move them to another location on the grill, so i would slide them. one morning i slid one press toward another and a puddle of 400 degree pork grease erupted old faithful style onto my forearm. immediately, blisters began to form. i knew i was going to have to tell my manager.

he took me to the employee bathroom. above the toilet tank hung a medicine chest. from one of the shelves he took down a can of burn spray. he sprayed the now angry red raised blisters with a quick swipe of spray. his duties as nursemaid satisfied, he barked at me, "get back to your station!" i could feel the tears burning in my eyes. i knew that i was not cut out for this job. i knew i was not mcdonald's management material. i knew that i would not be back the next morning.

so this morning, wielding a coffee pot in the employee kitchen, i wondered how far in the future i would have to be to look back on this job and chuckle. how long before my manager figures out i am not legal assistant material?

put it in the books...

completed this weekend:

1. attended fun bachelor/bachelorette party...drank untold number of bloody marys. suffice it to say, "what happens at the phoenix, stays at the phoenix," but do the words "bar dancer" mean anything to you?

2. took my mom to pizzeria uno for her birthday celebration. tried desperately to order the apple crisp a la mode, but was denied by our unfortunately inept waiter, jordan. dude, do you not understand the needs of a woman willing to forsake the south beach diet for a forbidden dessert?

3. made flowy, pearly, sparkly wedding veil for my good friend, michelle (whose bachelorette party i attended).

4. completed 10, yes TEN felted bags for the saturday monday sale. admittedly, i'm in a wooly daze.

5. drank one very delicious, very splenda-d decaf non-fat cappucino at border's last night. that drink and reading expensive magazines while sitting across from my honey brought the weekend to a sweet conclusion.

armistice day...

this evening's activity is a combined bachelor/bachelorette party. as kelly and i have never attended a co-ed celebration of this type, we are wondering what could possibly be in store for us.

we are bringing:

* a bouquet made up of blow pop suckers

* a yellow lunch sack full of slo poke candies

* a hot pink veil embellished with raging purple gerbera daisies (silk)

* a gift bag containing peanut butter crackers

* another gift bag containing a novelty pen featuring a punching fist smiley face

* an underwater camera (???)

* and of course, a twister game

yesterday, i bought a pair of slender jeans and a tiny fit t-shirt. i'll wear the outfit with some of my highest strappiest stillettos. if nothing else, i will look the part of a bachelorette party attendee. when i asked kelly what he was going to wear, he said, "same thing i wear to work--khaki pants, button down shirt and my brown shoes."

men...they have it so easy.

7 things...

tagged by denise

7 things to do before i die:

1. get my bachelor's degree in english
2. write a book
3. spoil my grandchild(ren) (but i can definitely wait on this one)
4. take ballet lessons
5. travel to the orient
6. finish all of my partially finished scrapbooks
7. be a fashion model on the catwalk

7 things i cannot do:

1. whistle
2. eat a brain sandwich (and believe me, i've tried)
3. make a tender pot roast
4. say "no" to a friend in need of a favor
5. stop eating sweets once i've begun
6. drive the speed limit
7. not check my e-mail 10x a day

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. prominent wrist bone
2. crinkles at the corner of the eyes
3. straight teeth
4. rock solid thighs
5. slender, but firm, biceps
6. deep voice/sexy whisper
7. has to be able to make me laugh

7 things i say most often:

1. drive carefully
2. i love you
3. awesome
4. alrighty
5. just peachy
6. know what i mean?
7. does that make sense?

7 celebrity crushes:

1. johnny depp
2. george clooney
3. hugh grant
4. john travolta (ever since welcome back kotter, i've been his girl!)
5. viggo mortensen
6. matthew fox
7. jude law

inner sanctum OR insanity. you decide....

here's a peek at one of the two overcrowded bookcases that live in my basement studio. like so many other multi-media artists, i am a certified pack rat. i never throw anything away because some day that tiny piece of fluff may be the perfect embellishment for a card or an assemblage or maybe just having it in my hand makes me grin.

right now, the items i'm using the most are selections from my vintage button collection. the black flowered tin, the buttery yellow tin and the earthtone paper bowl all hold buttons. once i paid my son to sort all of the buttons into like color families. the results of that employment opportunity are in the yellow tin. since that time, i've collected all of the buttons in the bowl and black tin. when is enough, enough?



and yet, there's more...books, maps, puzzle pieces, a jar of buttons from my late mother-in-law's home, boxes, and bags; these all live on the other book case.

by the numbers...

the top one pictured is my pride and joy...the bottom one is a bit too 70's van, but i still adore it.

these are a pair hung above the bathroom door. got them at a vintage shop on south grand.

how sad can one clown be? these beauties hang above the hallway arch.

the obligatory nautical/beach theme paintings...

the quintessential paint-by-numbers...a horse.

i borrowed a friend's digital camera for a few days. still haven't mastered the camera's settings so these are a bit washed out. the colors are vibrant and pack a wallop in person. i love how they fit the style of my house...built in the 1920s and full of family in the 1950s. i like to think some previous resident of this home might have painted one of these.

thanks, boyz...

to the college-age boys in the dodge p.o.s. traveling northbound on 170 friday afternoon:

thanks for making this 40 year old mother of a teenage son feel 19 again.

i guess it might also have had something to do with the awesome pink car i was driving, but instead, i'll chalk up the honking, winking and waving to my devastating beauty and charm.

that way of thinking does wonders for my self-esteem!

end of the week...

friday is such a glorious word. i'm always hopeful on friday. i spend a lot of time each friday making lists and planning out the weekend. friday is an ambitious day for me. in my head, i picture myself on sunday evening with laundry done, grocery shopping complete, five delicious dinner meals pre-prepared and labeled in the fridge, house sparkling clean, checkbook balanced and all looming art projects tidily complete, supplies tucked back into their cubbyholes.



when the reality of sunday evening does arrive, my heart hangs heavily in my chest. how could the hours between 4 p.m. on friday evening and 10 p.m. on sunday night have passed with so little to show for it?

in indiana, where i grew up, the school year always started on the tuesday after labor day. on the evening of labor day, i would sit with my school box, filled with freshly sharpened pencils and a baby pink eraser and i would vow that this year would be different. i would not bite the eraser off my pencils. i would not mark my newest crushes name on my nubby eraser. i would not pick at the stray threads of my denimn covered three-ring binder.

but by the beginning of june, all my promises had been broken and my tattered school box held two halves of the snubbed eraser and short pencils i had sharpened at both ends. my three-ring binder was covered with blue pen scribblings and classmates phone numbers.

sunday night is my june, but it happens every weekend. it's not fun to be disappointed. especially when the one you're disappointed in is yourself.

it doesn't keep me from promising every friday, though, that this weekend will be different.

clean...

do you remember last week when i posted about what a mess my crafting space (aka, the basement) was? and how it probably wouldn't be cleaned until 2006? well, yesterday while i was talking to my friend, chris, she wondered out loud about how to balance the need and time it takes to clean our creative space as opposed to spending that same amount of time actually creating. so i thought about that and realized that i would be much more productive if my space were straightened up a bit.

last night, from the minute i got home until i was eating my delicious south beach grilled chicken pizza (no, it REALLY is delicious) i cleaned all my craft-y messes up. it felt so good! and it looks so much better. AND if i'd had the time or the energy, i would have actually made something in the newly sparkly space, but alas, all i wanted to do was watch amazing race and eat popcorn.

the bookcases, however, will have to wait for another day...