Mam'zelle Hepzibah

Theme Thursday: Winter Snow

The theme for Theme Thursday this week was Winter Snow in Non-traditional Colors. I think pink qualifies as a non-traditional snow color.

It's almost December, and we haven't had any snow to speak of yet here in northwest Ohio. Oh, there was one day when around 10 flakes fell in the space of 7 minutes, but you can't count that as Snow.  I want a real snow!

At work (the Labor and Delivery unit), we are feeling the effects of the extremely heavy snow that we had last February, the one that immobilized the area for 3 or 4 days, because our delivery rate is up 50%. All those people who were snowed in evidently found something to do with their time home from work!

Gothic Arch: Chocolate

This is kind of a weird interpretation of the "chocolate" challenge. Nothing really chocolate about this other than a brown background. And what chocolate has to do with death, I have no clue. But, this is what came to me. One can't question the muse when she visits, now can we?

Labor & Delivery Stories

As I was checking my patient's cervix, her husband--- a clean cut, very respectable looking gentleman--- grabbed his cell phone and said, "Dude! I am so taking a picture of this! How often will I get to see my wife with another woman's hand in her vagina?!"

It's moments like those that make me love my job.

Dishing the Dirt

Look what I found today hidden in my studio in a big book called "Soil Survey of {my} County, Ohio"!

No, I don't read up on Linwood muck and Montgomery silty clay loam gravelly substrate in all my spare time! It's from a class I took to become a Master Gardener, and it has pages and pages of beautifully graphic soil surveys. Today I played coloring book and just filled in the contours with markers, then made this quickie journal page:

Who knows what I will do tomorrow with all this paper deliciousness?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jesus, the Traveling Salesman

I think I'm basically a nice person. I believe that we're all on this planet trying to do the best we can with what we've got, and that if we all tried to mentally walk in the shoes of our fellow humans, we might be more understanding and empathetic of why they act the way they do. Like, at work, when a doctor is rude to us nurses, while everyone else is asking, "what's up with that jerk?", I'm wondering if he had a bad day in the office, or if his wife yelled at him for not taking out the trash, or if the Nasdaq dropped 3 points today, losing him $5,000..... of his multi-million dollar stock portfolio.

I also figure that Jesus walks the earth disguised as the lowliest among us, just to see how we will treat Him. As in, "I was naked and you clothed me. I was hungry and you fed me. I was annoying and you didn't tell me to go perform unnatural sexual acts upon myself."  Today, Jesus visited my neighborhood in the form of a door-to-door magazine salesman, and I'm pretty sure that the renewal for my subscription to "Heaven Bound" has been cancelled.

I was just picking up my car keys to go get my kids at the bus stop when a rather shabby-looking man came to the door. He starts in with that usual  opening-jocular-banter-to-gain-rapport-with-potential-victim. ("Nice weather we're having! And what a cute little dog that is!")  I cut him off mid-banter to say "I'm sorry, I really have to go and I'm not interested." So he cuts right to the chase. "Ma'am. I'm selling magazines door to door, and...." Again I interrupt to say, no, I'm not interested, we just don't have a lot of extra money at the moment. Without missing a beat, he said, flatly, "yeah, you look like you're really strapped for cash."

Perhaps it was because I was standing there fresh from my bed, glasses on, no make-up, bed-head hair, in my pajama top with ratty jeans hastily pulled on--- SO not glamor mom. Or maybe it was because I was thinking of all the recent sleep I've lost worrying about our finances. Whatever the reason, the inside of my head exploded and a little of my brain leaked out one ear. I snapped, "WOW. That's great. You're going to sell a LOT of magazines being rude to people!" Then, apparently thinking it a good idea to further goad this no doubt desperate man into killing me instantly with his bare hands or merely robbing my house the minute I've left in my car, because, let's face it---I practically handed him an engraved invitation that said "I'm getting ready to leave my house so why don't you come on in while I'm gone and help yourself to my TV... and take the Wii that my 12-year-old bought with his own money mowing lawns all summer for your own kids' Christmas while you're at it!" Yes, as if my initial rude comment wasn't enough, then I shouted after him in a voice dripping with sarcasm.... no, shooting sarcasm out in rapid-fire, say-hello-to-my-little-friend machine gun salvos... I said "GOOD LUCK!" with "asshole" following in parentheses.... unspoken, but most certainly understood by both of us.

Then I spent the 4-minute drive to my kids' bus stop A). obsessing about the NERVE of this guy to pass judgement on my financial situation merely by looking at the outside of my house; B). obsessing about how ashamed I was of myself for being rude when I'm sure he was much less fortunate than I am, because that was probably his car parked there at the corner, the one with the rusted-out back end and a piece of cardboard duct-taped over the missing window, that he parked there because who would want to buy magazines from a dude driving a beater car like that; C). obsessing about what he was going to do to my house while I was gone and therefore rehearsing over and over again in my mind what he looked like in case I had to help make a police sketch later, even though our sherriff's department consists of Barney Fife and his deputy, either of which would struggle to pull off a passable stick figure; and D). obsessing over all the really clever and snide things I should have said to really show him who's boss. 

Like, "your mom sells magazines door-to-door!"   Because Jesus is probably thinking I need to walk a mile in those shoes.

 

Love muted greens!

Aack! As I've previously mentioned, I'm participating in NaBloPoMo this month, which is where you post every day for the month of November. So far, I've already missed 4 days, dang it, and I have to leave for work in a few minutes, so I'm posting this mosaic of my blog name, made from Flickr letter tiles that I don't have time to find a link for.

                               
                                        

 

      Is that cheating?

               
               

               

Theme Thursday: Boys

I've been lurking over on Theme Thursdays for some time now, so I decided to try it out this week. Of course, after I finished this, I realized that the poem is "snips and snails, and puppy dog tails", not snakes.  Which makes absolutely no sense. What self-respecting boy plays with snips?!? Certainly not mine and I have three of them.

I love this photo, because this little dude is dressed all Chauncey, just like I used to dress my oldest son as a toddler. I put him in Little Lord Fauntleroy puffy blouses with Peter Pan collars and dapper checkered knickers. His sister says that's why he turned out gay.

Because we all know that it's always the mother's fault when their kids turn out ABNORMAL.

GPP 14: What's Your Muse?

I love checking out Michelle Ward's monthly Crusades. This month's challenge was to think about our muse, that which inspires us and fuels our creativity. This was a toughie for me. It took me 16 days of pondering before I realized that, at its very basic core, my muse is the internet! It's where I go first thing every morning, with my cup of coffee, to read over my favorite blogs. It's where I go when my creative well has run dry, or when I just need to escape from a hectic day.

For art journaling and collage, there's Michelle, Belinda Schneider, D'Blogala, and others too numerous to mention. (see my looong list at the left margin of my blog!)  For witty memoir-type writing, there's Dooce and Whoopee. For crafty stuff and home decor, there's Hidden in France and Wise Craft. To make my spirit sing while getting my fill of eye candy, there's my Napster playlist. There are all the places one can go to find clip art, ephemera, and vintage photos. And last but not least, there is Flickr, with its 100's of amazing photos.

So I put together a little pastiche of internet inspiration:

snippets of art from "the Masters", clip art, stuff I'd printed off and stuck on the wall of my studio to ogle and drool over, my own painted & stamped papers....

Other things on this page that inspire me:

• *the circle shape, as polka dots or in patterns of many circles of varying size and color.
• *pink and green. Hands down, the best color combination EVER.
• *doodling.

Great challenge, Michelle! (BTW, did you recognize two of your elements in this page?)

That time of the month....

I'm a little emotionally fragile today. Lack of sleep last night, haven't taken my happy pills in a few days, still feeling sickly, endorphin-starved because I haven't exercised for several weeks....  Not a good recipe for being Mrs. Happy. Plus, my husband just called from work and droned on and on about our financial insufficiencies, ending the conversation with one of his usual overly-optimistic-projections-about-imminent-financial-windfalls-that-NEVER-materialize-because-they're-
figments-of-his-wishful-imaginary-thinking-but-they-get-my-hopes-up-anyway-only-to-dash-them-to-
the-ground-in-smithereens-when-my-brain-returns-to-rational-and-logical-thought. 

What did he say, you ask? He said, "Maybe I'll get a $20,000 bonus for Christmas, because I was looking at the spreadsheets today, and it's possible." Okay. First of all. he's never gotten a cash bonus from this job, just a f*cking Kroger gift certificate. So why would his boss suddenly give him one now....in any amount, let alone $20,000? I HATE that kind of magical thinking. Like, yeah, my boobs could be double-D cups because I think they should be.... so that will make it so, right? Just...because....... because I said so.... yeah. That makes me crazy! Let's be f*cking logical!! Why even say you think something will happen when there's NO F*CKING WAY IN HELL IT WOULD EVER HAPPEN? Unless your goal is to TOTALLY F*CK UP YOUR WIFE'S ALREADY UNSTABLE MOOD, in which case CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'VE SUCCEEDED! Your wife's mood is F*CKED! And you will not get sex from her until her mood returns to a more normal level. Which will no doubt be a VERY VERY LONG TIME!!!

>ahem<   Okay. I'm better now. We've gotten all that out of our system and we can now move on.

Note: No husbands were harmed in the posting of this entry.

Mucus

Today in my art journal, mucus was my muse. And so, I waxed poetic on that dubious topic. Read it, if you dare.