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!

Thankful Thursday

Feel Good- Do Good

worktable-wordless Wednesday

I am busy in the studio creating new work...but thought I'd share:



in the works

My slowly bubbling brain is currently working on a few ideas,

hence the MIA status of me on my own blog...

I found this old pic of me and compared it to a current image and thought it was funny that I still am the same person, just in a bigger body.

I know I can harness that zeal, I just need to tap into it far more often....there is a cookie involved, maybe that is the key.

One of the many things I am working on, is figuring out how to un-stretch myself so thin...

I need to be of a more substantial thickness.

I am finding that being creative and also analytical is a very hard swing to ride.

 All the grown up responsibilities are currently weighing me down and although I am well aware that they are necessary yuckies, I still need to do them. So I have stopped fighting that fight and simply laid out a plan to tackle them all and free myself slowly from the taffy.

I think I have an entire arm free now...so it is only a matter of time before I get the other one free and saw off my legs!

Soon or so very soon, I will be posting new work and new events!

I just know it

Wordless Wednesday/Leap Day

I bought myself flowers last week and they are slowly fading...

I thought I would capture their last moments

I love- love