The Doldrums

I think that word best describes me today. I've been down in the doldrums, for no particular reason. The rock I pulled to leave on my morning walk was

But it was anything but because inspiration eluded me today. I tried to fake it for a while in the studio, hoping the fact of having a stretch of alone time would stir the juices but it didn't and it showed. So I got busy.

Loads of laundry on the line.

A whole bin of pulled dandelions. For the life of me, I'm not sure why I bothered since this vine is taking over and choking out everything in my garden, including the dandelions.

I didn't have the heart to pull this one, since it had found the wherewith all to come to full bloom in a block of cement.

Then because I still had a little time before the school bus rounded the corner, I finished off this jigsaw puzzle with a compulsiveness that kind of scared me.

While waiting for the school bus I found this little beauty.

I would love to know what kind of bird it birthed, if anyone (Snap?) recognizes the shell.

My Biggest Challenge

My biggest challenge by far as a mother is finishing one task without interruption. Without stopping to attend to at least three other more important things that are constantly cropping up. It leaves me with a feeling of never really accomplishing anything some days, like I never catch up, my wheels spin and spin and I feel further and further behind. I should have listened to what I had to say yesterday about my rock messages having meaning for me. There is today's rock:

And if that didn't get through to me, I should have seen the art in all these Bakugans strung up and across my desk chair instead of just being annoyed that I couldn't sit down when I wanted to.

I was encouraged to wish on a dandelion

and go jumping on the big rocks

but all I could thing about were the chores that weren't getting done back at the house.

These feelings were largely aggravated by having to find seventy-five times over this small "nut" from a Tech Deck mini skateboard toy which normally fastens onto the wheels but kept coming loose. Naturally without the nut on the wheel the toy is rendered useless. There's a picture of the nut, I threw in the dime just to give some proportion to the size of the nasty thing.

What is even more surprising is that I found the wretched thing seventy-five times over the last twenty-four hours. The last time I found the nut, the mini-skateboard went AWOL at which point I gave up and swore. At least seventy-five times.

And after three days of vigorous weeding in the garden, the therapy of tearing up and ripping out having had no positive effect on my mood, here is what is left of my blue geraniums after the unnamed vine strangled it in two short weeks.

And how was your weekend?

The Kind of Day It's Been

6:15 p.m. I discover a wad of dog poop on the bottom of my shoe. Usually I take my shoes off in the house but the last few weeks with the mud in the yard and the dogs coming in and out I decided to just live with somewhat mucky and dusty floors until the big dry out. At some point today I picked up that tender little nugget and then walked all over the house with it. Here I was checking the two dogs' behinds for the cause of the nasty smell in the house and all along it was me.

Oh and remember my squirrel-chewed composter from Envirocycle Systems? I found a replacement door for $20 plus $7 shipping and handling. Not a bad deal to save a $200 composter. It arrived by UPS today, with an additional $23.24 in duties and customs coming over the border. The damn thing is made in Canada, in my own neighborhood to be exact but has to be shipped from the USA.

I think I am going to have a quiet little cry and call it a day.

This Must be E D Awareness Month

Do you know how many messages there have been daily this month in my inbox for ED? Both my regular inbox and the spam folder is over run with this dysfunction that apparently must be and can be eradicated. Does everyone else on planet earth think about this more than I do because frankly it occupies very little of my waking time with the exception of the time it takes to delete these emails. And who does buy medications for this over the internet? Are there still masses of people that gullible? I understand the fundamental importance of continuing the race and I know what it takes to do so, I have one child and spent many decades trying to not procreate. I'm even thinking of changing my email address because it's starting to wear me down.

Over It

December 9 and I'm over it. Our first storm, which turned out to be less than predicted, but still of storm caliber. Despite all the excitement around me, I just can't muster up any pleasure for the white stuff. I deeply envy all those who either never have to see a flake or who have limited exposure to them. I was doing OK with the dark until this morning. At 7:00 a.m. the street lights were still on and with the incoming weather, the sky looked like it was filled with locusts. I do wish I could feel like this:


but I don't. I hate shovelling it. I hate driving in it. I hate scraping the car windows multiple times a day. I hate the cold feet and the hat hair. I hate the amount of time it takes to get dressed to get us out the door. I hate not seeing green, living things for months on end. Yeah, I'm over it.

Multiple Choice

It might be this one:



or this one:



but I think it's this one:



the virus that is making me feel like crap today. I was on my way to the bus stop, headed to work this morning when I got that familiar feeling of "uh oh, I think I'm getting a cold". And it snowballed pretty quickly. As soon as the pharmacy opened I ran downstairs and bought a bottle of Cold F-X as it has worked amazingly well in the past. But only if I start taking it within minutes of when the symptoms first appear. Waiting until I got home at the end of the day and then dosing myself would have been too late. I think I have it on the run, I'll know for sure tomorrow. But I'm going with shot number 3, it's the prickly strands with that weird looking nodule on them that feel dastardly familiar.

Pet Peeve

One of my pet peeves is writing in books. Not when it's my own books, lord knows I notate, comment and doodle in enough of my own. The peeve is when I find it in library books. I picked up "The Making of June," by Annie Ward at the library. I found it while browsing, hadn't heard of it before but it appealed to me and I am really enjoying it. But on page 91 I found this.

And I realized how much it bugs me when other people decide to edit books that aren't their own property. Oh, so smart, they find typos that the original editor missed and correct it IN PEN write right in the book. I don't know why it gets under my skin so much, it just does.

Sweet & Sour

I saw on my calendar that today is the Sweetest Day. I had heard it mentioned at other times but my curiosity led me to google it. Apparently it started in Cleveland in the 1920's by a man handing out candy to the less fortunate and now is celebrated by showing love and appreciation to your friends and family. It's kind of funny it even makes it onto a calendar if you ask me. Before I read that I was thinking it had something to do with the time of year, the harvest, the relativity of the angle of the sun to the equator. And really it is about a box of chocolates. Either way, a good reason to have a mini celebration.

I needed to read that because this week has been kind of rough. On the up side, none of us seem to have yet contracted the swine flu despite dire forecasts by the media. But it was just a bad energy week up here. I ended up working Thursday (to make up for not working on our holiday Monday) and working late. I went in with a bad attitude and I managed to hold my center until the end of the day and then it snowballed.

The previous day Riley came home from school WITHOUT his backpack, which all parents of school age children will realize is a disaster of epic proportions. A search of the school and the school bus turned up nothing. When my son sees his first therapist and that therapist asks him to remember back to the first traumatic experience he can remember, he will undoubtedly recall my reaction to him losing his backpack in first grade. Honestly, why do I so often forget that he is just six years old?

Then, yesterday was a weird little day. I had an early morning coffee with a good friend who I hadn't seen in a while. Important note here, I had a very strong coffee, something I guess I am no longer used to because I jitter bugged through the rest of the day. Right up to 6:00 p.m., I was out of my skin, irritated, unable to complete simple tasks or even a thought. I couldn't even pull supper together which didn't go over too well. I'm blaming it on the coffee. It was so unsettling though, I can't remember being so agitated.

I'd like to suggest that on this Sweetest Day you go out and do a little something to make someones life sweet. Make it a sugar treat, or a mental, emotional, spiritual sweet. One of my classmates in the Life is a Verb class I am taking talked this week about how when she does her groceries, she asks the checkout person what kind of candy bar is their favorite, then she adds one to her order and hands it to the person. I loved that. If we all reached out and touched someone with a small gesture, image how sweet this day would be.



P.S. I love Caramilk.

Blue

I have been feeling kind of blue these last few weeks. My own kind of hibernating, I guess. I've been silent, trying to figure out how to pull myself together. Really at a loss for words, which doesn't happen often to me. I've been blog hopping and not commenting much but I am continually encouraged and inspired by the art, the photos, the ideas and process (praw-cess?!) others are going through. I'll find my voice again soon, I'm hoping to pull a Friday Haiku out of myself somehow someway today.

October Calendar Page

I remember now why I chose this for my October page when I was putting it together at the end of last year. The look of "spent", forgotten, all webby and Halloweeny. It's been grim this last week - cold and dark and generally dispiriting. Therefore, my quotes: "Relax and let everything go to hell" (Sol Lewitt) and "Almost always the creative dedicated minority has made the world better" (Martin Luther King Jr.). It was a dark and stormy week, indeed.

Guilty

I was caught last night, guilty as charged, by Anonymous. I was trying to set up my post for Wordless Wednesday and while working out the posting date and time I accidentally published. Egads! Yes, I do sometimes work my photo up on Tuesday night. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my downtown working days and so there is little energy for much other than maybe a photo on those two days. But yesterday was a particularly crappy little day. I started a post I called "Crappy Little Day", then decided it had been enough just to write it, I didn't need to put up all that angst and frustration. But let me tell you, from the effects of the upcoming retrograde Mercury, to misplacing my bus card and missing my first two buses looking for it to arriving at work late, my stapler breaking, the photocopier on "bypass" mode, having documents I sent out in July come back and bite me in the bum big time, having thoughts of being unemployed and worries of going back home on the bus newly unemployed with my cardboard box of personal effects (photo of Riley and a week's supply of chocolate) tucked under my arm, it was quite a day. Even my armpits stank, for goodness sake. But all that made me realize that I need to make some changes, that some parts of my life are not only not good enough, but detrimental to my health on many levels. It's true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I only wish there were more gentle ways of learning those kinds of lessons.

H is for Hormones

My hormones have taken over my brain. WTF? Why does this have to be such a long, drawn-out process? You would think that after decades - nay, centuries - the remarkable female body would have found a more efficient way to ovulate or not ovulate, as the case may be. Not even pounds of chocolate, the sprouting of the traditional monthly twig-like chin hair or the tantrums of impatience can hurry this event along. Menopause? I'm going to embrace it with open arms, throw a huge and very elaborate party and burn my leftover tampons in a great ceremonial fire and dance on the ashes.

Phlox

My phlox has the pox and my mushrooms have mushrooms growing on them. The phlox is no great loss - it came with the house and other than it flowering late in the season when many others have petered out, it has a nasty smell to it. I've tolerated it. The mushroom kind of freaks me out, though. Something a little unnatural about it. We have had a small reprieve the last two days. Yesterday was supposed to be rainy with thunderstorms but it was hazy and we made it to both the park and the pool. Today it cleared by noon and was a nice kind of high cloud day. Have I bored you all to tears yet? In response to my quip about Australian winter in my Friday haiku, Brenda at The Crafty Chook informed me it was sunny and 17 degrees in her wintry neck of the woods. Good thing she wasn't closer geographically to me because I think that was our high temperature the same day - in S - U - M - M - E - R in Canada, I might have been forced to do her harm.

It Must Be All This Rain...

At times I feel like I lose my sense of humor. It might be nothing that triggers it, it might be hormonal. OK, there is something definitely related with hormones but I’m not talking about that kind of loss here. There are other times, cycles I might call them, when I also feel largely uninspired. I’m coming to understand that these cycles bring other things to me and I create differently during these cycles. But I don’t like it one bit. As part of a cycle it has to be a necessary part of when I do feel inspired, witty, and satisfied with my status quo. I tell myself to not be such a baby, put my best face forward, find the things I am grateful for. But there is no denying the feeling is there and so I go into a waiting pattern or a limbo. In my head I know that this too shall pass and I will once again feel that tug of excitement about everything, it's my heart that hasn't yet caught up with the notion.

Found Objects

The day is young but it started off rather poorly. It was little things, but just too many of them. Example: 8:05 a.m. I had just withdrawn some cash from the bank machine and one of the 20's that came out was only half a bill. I'm not kidding. At 8:05 the bank isn't open. Just one shining example of how my day was headed. And that wasn't even the beginning of the weirdness.

Yesterday was rather challenging and I'll admit that lately I've been asking for a lot of - for lack of a better word - guidance. In fact I believe I shouted it out in my meltdown around 8:35 p.m. last night, likely multiple times. Imagine my surprise when I got in the car this morning and found a little note. A little post-it yellow flag stuck on the INSIDE of where my car door meets the frame. Impossible to not notice. I don't own yellow post-it flags and this is definitely not my handwriting.A cryptic message, for sure. "Let My Prayer". In all the questions I've had lately, "WTF?" is probably the most frequently posed. So I'm just going to throw this out there, WTF?

And because this day is apparently going to be one of those astonishing ones, up there beside the post-it is what I found beside my car parked outside the vet's office. It's seen better days, the center piece has almost come out of the base and it has a unique curve to it. But it hardly makes up for the half-twenty I'm out from the ATM. I hate to sound ungrateful.

Q20

*E*'s 20th question is, "What is your latest obsession?" I was a little stuck with this one, thinking I haven't really obsessed in a while but since I'm late with it, I had two long weeks to cogitate. I realized I have bought a ridiculous number of shoes, sandals and slippers lately. You know how sometimes you find something you're not even looking for? Well it's kind of been that way with me and the shoes, except for the slippers - I was on the look-out for slippers for a couple of months after Riley told me my old ones smelled. They were about four years old and the insides were all torn so they really didn't owe me anything but I wasn't ready to let them go. I finally found some new ones online at Planet Shoes dot com, the very same pair I had tried on four years ago but opted for the other (now-smelly) ones instead. Nah, I'm not much obsessed with shoes. Acrylic, collage, ink, graphite, markers.


I'm glad I was able to get in my studio for a little time this afternoon. This week has found me a little irritable and meeting up with equally irritable people. I've been trying to put a more positive spin on things but I'll turn around and be met by someone else in turmoil. Is my energy attracting like energy? The good news is that Mercury goes direct tomorrow (but not Return until around June 18). That should tweak things a bit.

Surprised

I am sometimes surprised at the level of anger that surges out of me and the quickness with which it rises. Those days it seems that I have been holding, quelling, dissipating, reasoning away this emotion for so long and then the fuse just burns out. I am immediately able to check myself, rein it all in but it's always a shock to realize that all "that" was just under the surface, invisible to my soul's eye. Scary stuff.

Times Like These

It's times like these, when I'm feeling not so up to par that it's easy to be grateful. I'm grateful we're not seriously ill, just your run of the mill colds that will likely find us up and running again by next weekend. Grateful that we had this virus manifest this weekend and not next when we have a lot of traveling and visiting to do. It's strange - the last few days when I worsened Riley improved and vise-versa. He actually slept for 2 hours on the couch yesterday - unheard of - then begged to go to bed by 6:30. He had a low grade fever which had him moaning and whimpering every hour or so. We're moving today, feeling around 60%. And I'm grateful the weather has been kind of crappy because I haven't felt like we've really missed out on any fun and I don't feel guilty for not working the garden. See, it's easy to be grateful, times like these.

Unearthing Treasures

You know it's time to take down your Christmas lights when....your neighbors casually mention, "I was up in the middle of the night last night and oh, did you know, I think you still have some Christmas lights up?" I know, I know. If it wasn't for iMan stringing them up, I wouldn't have them at all. Not that I don't love lights at that dark time of year because I do. It makes all the difference in my day to see the color and the light shining. But I have a terrible fear of heights so I rarely go up ladders. And also, stringing up the lights (and getting them down) just isn't "my department". So here's the last of them. And just so you know I'm not a total idiot, they are solar powered so it's not like I was actually plugging them in every day.

Now, I do love this time of year. And at the same time I am a bit sad and have a little resentment stirring in my bones. This is when I pull out my summer season clothes and bring out the garden ornaments, the outdoor accouterments. There is always some ooh-ing and aah-ing, not unlike opening up the Christmas decoration boxes and remembering the little treasures we only see for about one month each year. Today I discovered a pair of H2O capris I found last year, the last pair at Sports Experts and on sale because it was an odd size. The same capris I wore whenever they were clean last summer. And this t-shirt I found on vacation in March, from the "Life is Good" line.


Here is a shot of the blue heron my sister gave me as a Christmas present last year, it's debut in my garden.


And these, from a friend who gave them to me; her sister had given them to her for her own daughter but the girl was really too old and was probably a little embarrassed by them. They have seen a little wear and the green one, well I think I'll call him the headless horseman since I can't bear to part with it.


And the frog prince, who I neglected to put away in the fall but weathered the winter without any obvious wear and tear. I like this shot - I didn't have a golden ball but the green one works.

There is the birdhouse that I adore.

The bobble heads we got at Loblaws last spring, one to represent each of us.


What's a garden without a couple of dragonflies?

And an odd mixed media bird I bought at a Christmas craft fair, a newbie along with the heron.


The resentment part is that I don't get to live with these pieces more than a handful of months each year. I know they are just "things" and that it is an indication I need to work on my attachment to the material. I am always sad to put them away, then when the garage door is closed I seem to forget about them, missing them without knowing exactly what I am missing.

Gone Phishing

About a week ago I received an email message in my yahoo inbox purporting to come from Yahoo. They said they were manually verifying each existing account in order to delete all unused accounts thereby creating more space. I was kind of suspicious since they asked for my user name, password, birth date and country of origin. The message threatened that if I didn't provide this information by return email within two weeks my email account would be permanently deleted. I did nothing for a week, my spider senses all a-tingle with fraud and then today I received two more identical messages but from a different sender. I spent about half an hour searching the yahoo site looking for information on this "manual update" or about some kind of scam. And to give yahoo a lot of credit, they responded within hours to my emails to them about this "scam", and not by an automated message but by a real person with a real name. In case you need to be reminded, never send your password to anyone. Anyone who needs it already has it. What annoys me even more than just being a potential victim of such a scam is that they used the fear factor of losing my entire email account. So today when I went back and re-read another time or two the messages that were sent to me I found grammatical errors. Not glaringly obvious ones, ones that were easy to overlook at a first read. The graphics provided were damn good too. Now if only they used this power for good instead of evil, imagine the world we could be living in?

And so this isn't strictly a bah-humbug post, here's a photo of Riley taken when we were putting up our Christmas decorations in December. We bought a new string of lights that were simple white snowflakes that light up by battery power and are really quite nice, even not on a tree.

And the full moon is almost upon us. I couldn't believe my eyes today when I saw someone turn left (LEFT!!!) on red. We aren't even trusted with the privilege of turning right on red in my city but as I sat at a (red) light, a truck (not even a car - a commercial truck!) pulled up beside me, looked both ways and made his turn. And it was no pokey little intersection, it was at the exit ramp off one of the busiest highways that cross the city. The next corner I reached, someone else ran a stop sign which, in itself, is not unusual here since stop signs seem to have become optional in the last two years. Sometimes I feel like I take my life in my hands when I go outside.