Ok, I might be back now. I got a little sidetracked. Imagine that.
I just added a page counter. I love comments. I don’t have a lot of comments. I must get my love somewhere, people, and if I have to engage a hit counter to prove your love, that’s exactly what I will do. That was an unabashed plea for some comment love right then, folks. ;)
I went to Joyce Meyer’s Women’s Conference and I had an incredible time. Loved it. Loved. It. My phenomenal friend The Godsister paid for my part of the trip; the ticket, the gas, the hotel room and then bought me an Everyday Life Bible to boot! I wish there were words to convey how much I deeply appreciated her and her hubby doing that for me. What an incredible blessing.
I’m sick again. I think I might be in the homestretch because I’m not running a fever anymore. Let me tell you how bad it is… I haven’t smoked since Friday night. Yeah, that bad. I spent the whole weekend coughing and sweating. You know the kind of deep hacky cough that comes from your toes and you make sure to do a Kegel before the cough commences? Yeah, ladies, you know what I’m talking about. For you men out there — here’s the drill… 1- Kegel, 2- cough, and 3- thank God you didn’t piddle a little. Thank you for visiting The Temple of *TMI, please drive through. At least it wasn’t as bad as a feminine hygiene product commercial.
Friday night we went for dinner and music at The Fifth Gear Bar & Grill where we enjoyed fantastic greasy fried stuff bar food and listened/danced/partied to Strangely Familiar. What a blast! I got Nanner a lime green photo album, some stickers to decorate it with, and $25 gift card to get prints to put in it.
I not only got behind in my blogging, I also got behind in keeping up with blogs I check with Google Reader. GR says I still have 114 unread entries and I better get on it. I try to take it in chunks.
Why is it I always leave the laundry until we have 8 loads of clean, wrinkled, clothes on the floor next to the dryer and then it takes hours to get it all hung and folded and put away. I suck butt. If I would only spend 30 minutes a day on laundry, I think I could keep up with it and it wouldn’t be such a major chore/time hog.
I still don’t have a job. I’m trying to be patient. This isn’t working (trying to be patient I mean) quite as well as one would hope. But The Hunkster has secured part-time employment and that will help!
I finished my Dory doo-rag but it turned out too small, dammit. I was so soso excited when I finished it. I ran into the office and asked H to take a pic for me to upload. I put it on, and almost cried. Just a little too small. It fits Dino though. Back to the drawing board. I added another 1/4 inch all around to my pattern pieces and I’m sewing it now. Since I know you’ll be waiting with bated breath (yeah right) I will have pics up as soon as it’s finished.
I went to the Joyce Meyer 2007 Women’s Conference in St. Louis, MO. Here’s a video I took with my camera, but you’ll have to turn your head sideways because for some reason I thought I could take it portrait instead of landscape then rotate it later but alas, this is not the case. Duh. I sat in about the third row in the Deaf Ministry section. The interpreters were FANTASTIC.
Ugh, depressed. Went to the doctor on Thursday and told him the depression had been getting the better of me recently and also focus and concentration had been harder to maintain lately. He upped my Strattera which is not the depression med but rather the ADD med, but that’s why he’s the doctor. It sucks to experience a change in meds as you’re ramping up. Spent most of Friday and Saturday feeling loopy and tense at the same time. Seems to be evening out.
Saturday I got PAID! I can’t even tell you how much this helps my mood!
Saturday night RAWKED. Me and a bunch of friends went out and watched my friend’s band debut and it was awesome… good times, good times.
Sunday night HunkyDory watched seven episodes of West Wing season one. What a fantastic show! I think of myself as conservatively liberal, and even though this show has a decidedly leftist slant, I still find myself enjoying it immensely.
Finished this book, and I have some thoughts to share on it. Honestly, the book really pissed me off. It’s written by two deaf persons; one was born deaf, and the other was progressively deafened, like me. The authors pretty much attack all hearing people and make sweeping generalizations on how evil and insensitive hearing people are. I can understand a minority being bitter about its perceived oppression, but I feel the authors cross a line. Something to think about… if you and your spouse were two hearing people and had a child born deaf, what would you do? Would you have the cochlear implant procedure done as soon as possible, or would you learn sign, teach your child sign, and seek deaf role models for your child and leave the decision to implant or not to your child? I’ll answer that later and let you mull that over. Deaf culture and Deaf community… what an odd but true entity this is. I find myself wondering, is there Blind culture and Blind community? Quadriplegic culture and Quadriplegic community? If not, why? I’ll end up researching this more later.
Went to the last cruise night of the season tonight. Pretty chilly ride home. Plus, rode the Sporty and lemme just tell ya; the passenger seat isn’t really so much a passenger seat as it is a warped 2×4. Pieces of my butt and nether regions took turns falling asleep and going all pins-and-needle-y as I futilely rocked my pelvis and shifted my weight in a vain attempt to make everything stay awake all at once. Apparently, only various parts of me are afflicted with narcolepsy. I was as yet unaware of this unfortunate development. Do they have a prescription cream or drug for random muscular narcolepsy? Let me know. There’s got to be some multi-million dollar federally granted study being conducted somewhere in these great United States of America.
Speaking of… where were you 9/11/01? I was working at McLeod and the first email came out from corporate informing every employee that the first tower was hit, and managers turned on all the TVs to CNN. We watched the horror unfold and then a second email came out stating that yes, this was indeed a terrible thing to be happening, but let’s not let it affect our work. Yes, McLeodUSA is comprised of a bunch of incredibly sensitive geniuses… not. But, karma bit them right in the ass.
It’s July 13th, 1:00pm. The Bike is strapped into the back of the Ugly Truck as well as boys’ bikes, tents, camp stove, and other assorted torture camping paraphernalia. Our whole family is crammed into the cab, sitting four across the bench seat and the boys are sharing the middle seatbelt. The dog is also with us and is so excited she is alternately jumping from my lap to Hunk’s lap and back again and VIBRATING. I turn to Hunky and announce, “We ARE the Clampetts Go To Maui”. The truth hurts sometimes, folks.
The boys really enjoyed themselves. There was bike riding, and dirt, and new kids, and tents, and more dirt, and McDonald’s THREE TIMES. Ugh. My Great Idea of not packing any food and just buying it at the local grocery store, upon theory, was sound. But at 7:00am, after realizing at 12:30am that the cigarette lighter wasn’t working ERGO the mattress was rendered impotent, one doesn’t go grocery shopping. One hits the drive-through. Then, a few hours later, one doesn’t go grocery shopping, one takes a Much Needed Nap. McDonald’s. Three times. Ugh. My colon is still recuperating.
Elli digs camping. Of course it being a little chilly at night, she insisted upon sleeping IN the sleeping bag; and of course me being a huge pushover and confronted with her very best sad face complete with intermittent shivering, burrowing inside the sleeping was permitted. It helped her case that my feet were cold and she’s like a heater unto herself.
On the way home, what should have been a three hour tour turned into a five hour mobile sauna. Traffic was at a standstill for quite a while, and pressed for entertainment to divert our attention away from the absence of air conditioning, we started naming neighboring vehicles. Mr. Hunnert- Grand- Mobile RV cut off Mr. Motocross- Vacation and incited some road rage, and Ms. Eighties Hair, oblivious to the drama, carried out her entire makeup routine while she waited for traffic to pick back up. Ms. Hair- Twirler had a barking rat mini-chihuahua hopping from front to back to front to back to (well, in perpetuity) and Ms. RV- Bigger- Than- My- House let her huge black lab out of the camper to take a huge… well, I’ll spare you the details, but I had to cover the children’s eyes lest they be scarred for life.
Only Elli didn’t let the heat and boredom dampen her spirits. She greeted and charmed the pants off every person in vehicles in a 20 feet radius around us. Notice the harness? This is the best thing you can buy for an exuberant ADD-addled Jack Russell Terrier. Very often only my white knuckled hand looped through the harness kept Elli from tumbling out the window to certain death. In her estimation, if her head stuck out the window is enjoyable, then her entire body stuck out the window is exhilarant and not at all death-defying. She is a furry toddler, completely fearless, ten feet tall and bulletproof.
In other news, I’ve moved back into the office even though the curtains have not been started. I just couldn’t stand having my house throw-up anymore. I had company coming on Friday, and desperate measures had to be taken. I’ve moved everything back into the office, but have not yet organized and put away everything. My To Do or Die List has got to be prioritized. Today it is clean the litterbox (check), email requesting project estimates (check), sweep and mop kitchen floor, spend one hour folding laundry, and send out three resumes (have to burn a portfolio CD for each). I’ve also promised the children I’d put up the tent in the backyard for them to play camping. I was going to put up both tents, but they ruined that with an immediate heated verbal altercation concerning who was not going into whose tent, that which would rival the the Quayle-Benson vice-presidential debate. It was promptly squashed soundly by my mommyencial pronouncement that There Here and Forthwith Will Be One Tent Raised Not Two.
I’ve taken the freelance graphic design business idea beyond “yeah, right” into “maybe I could actually do this”. What the hell? What better time to try to make this fly than when I’m collecting unemployment and seeking a “real” job anyway? I got on Amazon and splurged $60 on pipe-dream-encouraging literature such as
1 of: Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines)
1 of: Self-Promotion for the Creative Person: Get the Word Out About Who You Are and What You Do
1 of: Starting Your Career as a Freelance Illustrator or Graphic Designer
1 of: Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers (3rd Edition)
I’m made it all the way through “Starting your Career…” and halfway through “Self Promotion…” and I still think I could totally pull this off if I don’t let me get me. I am my own worst critic and no one else than yours truly is better at psyching me out, trash-talkin’ me, and self-sabotaging. Goodness, I’m just two more psychobabble terms away from “Codependant No More”. Yikes. (The other two books aren’t reading material so much as tools to use when it’s time to cross that bridge when we come to it). I’m going to get out the Bryan Dodge DVDs that The Seester loaned me and set up the “You Go, Me!!!” cheerleaders only section in my living room. I have a meeting with a client tonight about some posters I’m doing for him. I met with him last Thursday night and had sketches and estimates from the printer emailed to him by Friday 5pm, and on Sunday he requested a meeting with me tonight. I don’t know whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. One of my school textbooks advised, “Graphic designers must have hard hats and thick skins”. This is all too true.
I have made a submission to icanhascheeseburger. It has not yet made it to the voting page, but I’ll let you know when it does so I can shamelessly bribe you for votes. :) On that note, I bid you a fond adieu.
Comments=Love.
And I needs the love. Oh, how I craves the looove. And I'm not shy; it's a spectacularly dysfunctional, codependent, "but I looooooove him, he din't mean to crack mah jaw! Noooo, don't take him awaaaaay!" type of love.
Enable me, won't you?
But. (There is always a but, and sometimes a butt.)
BUT.
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Don’t be a jackass, please.
Don’t be that guy.
Nobody likes that guy.
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