dinner. yum.

He came back...

Sal has a new buddy

We have a little population of bunnies in our neighborhood. We always wondered if Sal saw them while looking out the sun porch windows. Well today I heard him talking for awhile, I knew he saw something. It was this baby bunny. The picture quality isn't great, it was from indoors---who cares, it's a bunny!!!

Simon's Cat, a new one!!

Sorry so big, can't seem to make smaller. Changed HTML, embedded smallest player.

Update on fingers, 3 1/2 wks. in

I went to the hand surgeon yesterday, and it seems the fingers are starting to heal--slowly. I was concerned about the constant pain still and she said with all of the tendon damage and fractures, it's understandable. I need to rest. No walks, no activities, when in doubt--chill. I don't see her for another 3 1/2 weeks, and she wants me to stay in the splints. I can take them off for showers which was a scary- relief. I took my first one tonight, and a the dead skin was pooling up, it was kinda gross! I washed the hand gently and rubbed with witch hazel afterward. It feel good to have air to it and clean it. It's weird cause the area is really white and my nails haven't grown at all. Good news, at this point, no surgery!!

The picture is what it looks like today. The red spots are where the fractures are.

Please send good waves my way that these start to heal quickly!!

Flowers from the garden

I was excited to make a little arrangement of the flowers from our garden! The hydrangea looks almost antiqued with the greens, pinks and purples.

Back to the drawing board

I need to get back into making some art again. I find myself fascinated with body language and how we communicate. So I am going to carry this theme into the 2009-2010 classroom and get my student's take on it. But here is a little cartoon I hand-drew and then colored in photoshop. I am feeling really rusty, so more practice needed. I threw them over this soccer background--I think subconsciously because I miss soccer!

Oh, and I just noticed they are demonstrating a hand-full of body language themselves!

New favorite thing!

Temp and I never really had dinner guests in the past due to a lack of space. 2 person table, tight in the kitchen, not conducive to entertaining.

Now that we have the new house, new kitchen and dining room. We have enjoyed having friends come over, bring a dish and we cook up some stuff too. Like a potluck. It's good in this economy, fun to taste your friend's foods, and great conversation.

We hope to continue this, are you in?

Update on hand

So I just took off the splints to air out my fingers and clean them with Witch Hazel. Just taking off the splints took about 30 minutes of physical and emotional pain. For a week and a half, I have realized what we all probably take for granted in having two functional hands:

• washing your hair
• styling your hair
• driving
• cooking
• cleaning
• sleeping (where do u put your hurting hand?)
• picking up your cat
• opening bottles and things
• typing
• bathroom routines
• actually walking--blood flows to injury...lift arm in air, and arm hurts from holding up
• sitting in car--vibration of car kills
and the list could go on...take a second to appreciate these things. I'm kinda bummed...
next appt. 7/22

Disney meets Dali

The magic of 2 of my favorite artists merge! For more info, click here

Broken =o(

I broke my pinky and ring finger at my last kickball game...not remembering exactly how it happened but a dude came running into me as I was catching the ball on first...I think my fingers were sticking out from the ball and he swiped or jammed them.
Where the arrows are is where the breakage is. Compare those fingers to the others and you can see the damage. Almost 50% breakage going on. Possible tendon tearing...
I cannot turn my forearm. We don't know why and my wrist keeps collapsing. I have this support in the meantime. Surgery is an option but I said I'd rather try to heal naturally first. She said recovery is usually better w/o surgery. I go back to her Thursday for check-up and see what the deal is with the forearm. From what I gathered, may be long recovery and may have permanent bumps where the fractures are. Rest is my best medicine. No driving or really much of anything--too painful and need to heal.

So if anyone wants to call or hang out at my place...don't hesitate to contact me.

anniversary dinner

had a great meal at "isle of capri"

Tree removal...what a day

So today I was home to get a large dead tree removed from our backyard. We had been wanting to do this for over a year. Trucks and crew came, nice guys. Long hair, tattoos, the works. In order to get perfect access to the tree, the ideal situation would be to go into our backyard neighbor's yard. We have never really talked to them, but I never really got the impression they are friendly.
They have barking dogs all day, messy backyard, and even our neighbors asked if they could tidy up a bit since they are selling their place, and they basically got denied.
So the tree guys asked the woman in the back house if they could access our tree from there.
The tree poses a threat of falling on either of our houses, so it does benefit them. (As I watched from my porch) the woman says sure, no problem. The guys said they'd have to move their boat and cut a branch off their tree to get their trucks in "sure, no problem" she says.
They cut a small branch of their tree and this guys comes out of nowhere screaming, cursing, yelling at the tree guys.
"What are you doing, who gave you permission?"etc.
The tree guys said "that woman".
"She's my daughter (30 years old easily), she doesn't own this house!"
The guys are in a yelling battle, then they get super close. Neighbor dude pushes tree guy into fence-SERIOUSLY! I am watching this from my porch window. All tree guys get involved, daughter is calling police. Tree guys come find me to see if I witnessed any of it, I said all of it! Police come, interview both parties, but never talk to me. I go back outside about 45 min. later and truck is trying to pull in neighbors yard.
I asked the guys "did you guys make up or something?" They said "as soon as the cops came, their whole attitude changed."
Screaming, fighting, yelling, tree came down. Here is video of the trunk coming down "Timber!!!"

Frac-tured

Some of my art

So a little while back I mentioned I was working on a book of experiments. I have really enjoyed this book. It goes everywhere with me in my pocketbook and have had made numerous drawings in it. I had fun making this cover. I was inspired by some wallpaper I found laying around in a classroom. It was beige with a pear. I cut the pear out. I glued the paper down on a pear colored background. Then glued the pear on top. It's basically about 3 layers of a paper on my cover!


I'll do a quick sketch during class of some flamingos I saw at the zoo.
Sometimes when I feel creative but don't know what to draw, I decorate the calendar pages with paper so I am ready to draw when I am inspired!
Today I made an Artist Trading Card. This is what I am going to have my kids make as the year winds down. It's the size of a baseball card. They either create original artwork on it, or put take some artwork they made earlier in the year that they don't like and make new art out of it! On the back they write their name, the medium, the title and the date. And they can exchange them with classmates, other schools, other countries (thinking of that for next year!!!) This is from a photo of a penguin I took recently.

Photograms, Scratchboard Art and Printmaking!

My photo kids are basically done with their big projects, so I decided to do fun, experimental projects with them. A while back Temp sent me a link to this site that did photograms of the alphabet, so I did it with my kids and they LOVED IT! Each assigned a letter and to grab any materials to form it. The expose it under the enlarger on photo paper and the shadow creates an image. They develop the picture like normal and out creates an image! The one below is theirs!This next work is scratchboard art. You probably did it in school when you were younger. You scrape away a black surface and a silver surface reveals. This particular piece went in an art show it had rave reviews! I had them cut out a person from a magazine and they had to create clothing and a background with patterns to fill the negative space. This project inspired by Gustav Klimt.
The last ones are linoleum block printing. Students had to pick Charley Harper's artistic style or Pacific Northwest Indian Art to make an animal that includes pattern. They could use up to three colors, and I think they turned out pretty good!

We have a house!

So yesterday we closed on our house! The closing was a little stressful. When we got there, our lender messed up the numbers, so we had to call them, get them to fix ALL of the paperwork and send us all new papers while waiting patiently at the lawyer's office.
We got the papers, and they messed it up--AGAIN! 2 1/2 hours later, we finally got the right paperwork and the keys.
We don't actually move in for about 3 weeks, so they are renting from us.
We are officially landlords now, have a week off, then landlords for our condo when our renters move in.
Packing, shopping and decorating is in my near future!!! We're really excited!

Rainbow

Richmond Zoo trip

Update on blood poisoning

So for the past 2 days I have been doing what I can to keep my mind occupied, because as soon as I think about it, I get sad and scared.
The redness grew a little Saturday and it was scaring me. I started to get that burning feeling on the redness and have been mentally ready to go into the hospital. I told Temp that I will know instinctively when and if I should go.
This morning I woke up with a massive headache due to the weather. But I think some of the redness is starting to fade. The center of the infection hasn't changed, but I think the line faded a little.
Fingers crossed this thing is on it's way out...