My Kindergarten Grad

Is it really possible to have some meories for over 50 years ago? Cus I do. I remember dancing around with scarves at my greaduation ceremony at age 5. I also remember being happy. Things were so much simpler then.
Not that I'm not happy today. I am, I'm just too tired to enjoy it. Getting up early again tomorrow, although not as early as 4:30 AM. Good night.

It's late

and I must get to bed. Need to be up at 4:30 to pick up some staff and go out of town for drug court training. It will be worth it, but I can't promise anything uplifting about my mood. Heck, I'm driving, I don't need to be pleasant. They're young and perky, I may have to hurt them if they are too perky. I hate perky. Of course it's Friday, which is always a happy day, so I can do anything for 8 or 10 hours.
Good night, I shouldn't make it any worse than it could be through lack of sleep.

Jackrabbit

We found this early one morning somewhere in Arizona. I had read about the giant jackrabbit on some Route 66 website before we left on our Great Canadian road trip this summer, and we arrived very early in the morning, before it was open, or for that matter, before anyone was up. That allowed us to be silly. I won't post the picture of me up on that giant rodent, (I needed help getting down after a fairly feeble EEHAW!?! but as you can see, the girl had a blast. I used Virtual Studio on the print, because it makes me think of an old Poloroid photo in a kind of whacked-out-maybe-it-fell-in-a-vat-of-hot-steaming-toxic-chemicals-kind of way. Try to say that fast five times while patting your head and rubbing your tunmmy. If you can do it successfully, send me your email and I'll send you something very special and very valuable. But be honest, because I have cameras hidden everywhere. Everywhere.

Kara Haupt's class

I found this cool blog here
and took an online class from her. In spite of dropping my camera in the lake when I went out for the day to take picutres for this album, I enjoyed the whole class. I pretty much made the album without many pictures, kind of used other things. Well, ya makes do with whats ya gots. At any rate, check out her blog, she's young and very talented.

Fall in Love Album

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Dare 53: I wish

I quit my Bollywood clases. I am simply TOO clumsy and my already fragile self-esteem could handle it no longer. It got to the point where the instructor wouldn't even look me in the eye anymore and I was in the front row, directly in front of him!
To get to this point, I had to bash myself mercilessly for being too unncoordinated, too fat, tool old, blah, blah, blah. But then, I discovered Rebecca's Dare
here and was able, through the planning and execution of my LO, to purge my Bollywood demons. I feel better now. I can't dance, but I do some other things very well. And I'm OK with that. Bless you Rebecca.

Magic

So I checked in at Opus a little while ago and learned that they are looking for a magical submission. I had been thinking about making a card for a little girl and lo and behold, what an opportunity! Plus, it was make the card or clean the oven. duh. So the card is made!

Chinook!

After all my whining this week about the crummy weather (aka snow), we have a Chinook. This guarantees warmer weather on the way. This is a picture of part of it. Basically, it's a huge arc of clouds across the city, something to do with the mountains west of us. Whatever the reason, it makes me very happy.

Learning to Link

Sweet Gini from Opus has given me some info on how to post a link, so I am going to give it my best shot. God willing, this will take you to the Order (my favorite, the bestest blog I know): here
Enjoy!

Opus Blue

I just edited 800 photos. Too many. My brain is fried. I took some and had them printed at Costco. Wow, very impressive! I think I'll do some more. tee hee

Opus asked for "Blue" this week, and "Blue" it is (mostly). I did this for a Bliss challenge awhile back and never noticed that I had a typo on the words on the photograph. How embarrassing. So I reprinted the photo the other night and corrected it. I like it much better now.

"Blueeeeeeeooooo".....do I sound like Joni Mitchell?

Warming Up

There is a Chinook Arch in the sky, the snow should all be gone soon. Life is back to normal :-)

One more day in the work week left, that makes me happy. It seems I'm not keeping up these days, but I just need to acknowledge that and move on. Then it will be OK. There's a little healthy self-talk there. I should listen to me.

That's a wrap.

Traffic Chaos!

says the headline. My job is to find a way into work that does not involve a hill. The radio reports that paramedics and the police are busy, I see fire trucks blocking some lanes. There are two buses stuck at the top of the hill just north of work, luckily, I can turn off and go in another way.

I hear there is an 8-car pile-up on 14th, better not go that way. A car is facing backwards on the Calf Robe. Deerfoot is a parking lot. For hours. HOURS. I give thanks for my 4x4 and horn.

Cars are littered alongside the road, no one is going over 15 MPH.

Winter happens every year. Why is it that every year, the first snowfall breeds a nightmare on the streets of my city?

God, I wish I lived in Bermuda.

Thanksgiving

I've had turkey twice this weekend.  (URP!)

and didn't have to do dishes either time.  Could life be any better?  Having had a break for three days from the daily grind, I am now willing to go back to work and do it all again tomorrow.

It's been nice to have the girl in town for the long weekend, she goes home tomorrow morning.  I hope the snow stops and that she has a safe drive back home.

It's REALLY cold now, apparently at the Waterton gates it was minus 22 yesterday.  How rude is that????

It is however supposedly going to be 19 degrees ABOVE zero by the weekend. that's Celsius.  What is that in English?  65?  Oh, who knows, at least it's warmer.

Only in Canada do we make the kids' Halloween costumes big enough to go over parkas.  ;-)

Opus Scrapjacked

I shop at a store called Scrapbooker's Bliss and they have terrific LO's on display.  Everyone who works there is very talented.  I scraplifted this LO from one done by Teresa, when I first saw hers, I thought it was brilliant.  I made a couple of changes in that I used photos for the trees and photos across the bottom.  But Teresa takes all the credit for the design!

It's winter!!!!!

Jeez Louise, it was in the 90's two week's ago and it's minus 16 tonight. Has the world gone mad? I'm sorry, I can't listen to this global warming drivel ANY MORE!

I drove to Drum Wednesday and in a blinding white out, stopped to take some pictures. Later on, further down the highway, I pulled over cus I could not see to drive, and noticed that the entire right side of the truck was covered in hard ice. Thick hard ice.

It's just silly.

I am, however in a better frame of mind tonight. My girl came to visit and we went out to buy her some clothes for a birthday gift. We went to a new huge mall outside of the city and had a blast. Found some good deals (ie that I could afford) on some funky stuff and a couple of really nice tops for me. entire shops 40% off? I'll be back.

Then when we left there was another snowstorm and that's poopy cus we need to take the highway back. But we made it. Kaitlin said it's all arranged by the mall so that we panic and start to Christmas shop.

I had my overnight staff quit last night with no notice. Called in drunk. Well duh, at least he had the presence of mind to know that he couldn't supervise a bunch of violent offenders in that state.

So I had to do some fancy footwork and my awesome staff stepped up to the plate to keep the joint running for the week. It looks like I have someone to interview first thing Tuesday AM.

If you're American, this weekend is OUR Thanksgiving. The cook of course, is still sick. So I went in tonight and cooked the turket et al. I was a hit, I'm a fine cook.

Long day

NO cook today for the 3rd day in a row. She called me tonight while I was still at work after 12 hours and said she's not coming in again tomorrow. I about bit her head off.

We had a memorial service tonight for one of our peer support group members whose husband died in jail. Corrections took the money he made working inside to pay for his own funeral.

So sad.

That's about all I have for tonight.

Good grief.

Monday

Once, when my girl was little, we were wondering out loud what it would be like to be a cat. Specifically, to eat with one's face. without hands. the way cats do.

So, we invited our friends over (because of course you never want to do these sorts of things alone) and I made a big pot of spaghetti and we set the table for supper. Then we wrapped ourselves with big black garbage bags (in lieu of big black bibs) and with our hands behind our backs, dug in.

If there is anything to be learned from such an experiment, it's that you should never eat spaghetti like a cat in a kitchen with white walls.

And that, my friends, is today's lesson.

As always

my day is ending and it's time for me to say goodnight.

It's been a good day, first, lfelt-making class, then Kailtin showed up, then out for supper then I almost finished my I Love Fall book. There is only one more page to complete. That page is a piece of felt I made in class, and I've glimmer misted it and shall embroider it. I love surface embellishment.

These two ATC's were an afterthough for the day, I felt like doing something before I do go to bed and that's what I've come up with.

That's a wrap.

BLING!!!!

This will be a short post for tonight, only enough to post my Opus BLING submission. I did my first felt making class today (and loved it, I might add) and have been working on my Fall In Love book since I got home. Look at the time! Have to be up early for tomorrow's class, so I need to turn in.

Since I haven't had access to a camera, I've had to do a digital LO this week and it's far from as blingee

as I would have done otherwise. I guess the good thing about it is that I learned how to do a circle of embellishments. I enjoyed doing it nonetheless. We can pretend it's real bling.

Just lke we're pretending you can actually be a rock star with a tuba.

Right.

It's October!

and it seems like only yesterday we were trudging along the Vegas strip in 114 degree heat.

The sky is threatening to snow tonight, a couple of days ago it was 35 degrees (Celsius) hotter than it was today. It you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes, it'll change.

I've almost finished grieving the drowning of my camera. I have a new one and insurance is going to cover some of it, but it was an expense I was not ready for. (Stupid deductables)

However, it's 15.1 megapixels. There is a god.

I was able to print some of the pics from the memory card at the photo kiosk. Apparently memory cards are waterproof. Who knew? But I can't get them to my computer. My ex has agreed to upload them to his and then let me put them on a jump drive and bring them home. then I can Photoshop them, which is lots of fun.

Having said that, I've done no crafting this week, except for a digital LO for the Opus BLING challenge. I'm not all that happy with it, cus of course I'm a bling-girl, but it's better than nothing. Now that I have a camera again, I can soon get back to normal. I do need to install the software tho.

This all happened in the midst of the I LOVE FALL class I'm taking online from Old Lady Teaches. So I've done none of the photo prompts, I refuse to use last year's pics. I did start with some artwork tonight for it and feel good doing what I love again. It's been a long week.

Tomorrow and Sunday all day each day, I'm in a felt-making class at the Alberta College of Art and Design. How cool is that? I'm so excited about it, this is something I've wanted to learn for awhile now. So, I should get to bed. I don't want to fall asleep in the middle of it!

Mr Bill

Is anyone out there old enough to remember Mr Bill from the early Saturday Night Live shows? Well, I do. He was always getting in predicaments, being run over by a truck, falling off tall buildings. I'm not sure what the intent of Mr Bill was, but I found his difficulties in my mind-altered dumbed-down excuse for a brain absolutely hilarious!

Mr Bill travels with us and he has had some adventures!

Dreamgirls First Impressions

I'm home, done with travelling for the time being. I had a super weekend, visiting the girl, until the tripod tipped over and my SLR landed in the lake. I am broken-hearted. The only thing I love more than my camera is my daughter. It's toast. $700.00 toast. I don't know what I'm going to do. what I do know is that with no camera, I won't be doing any challenges for awhile. Crap. This LO I uploaded last week, it's for the Dreamgirls challenge.

Sewing

Back home safe and sound, and heading out again tomorrow. I'm going to the Creative Stitching show and doing a Tattered Angels class in the afternoon there, and then I'll drive down south to see my girl in Lethbridge. SHE is going to cook me supper, how cool is that? We'll go to Waterton Sunday morning, it will be gorgeous. We should take a picnic, maybe I'll take the fixings for that down there.

These are the ATC's I did for the Opus' sewing challenge. I had fun doing them, but such a hard time photographing them for some reason. The crackle accents on the middle one just would not cooperate.

It would have worked better in the sunlight, but by the time I finished them it's dark and I'm outta here first thing tomorrow morning. I used a tripod, but it still didn't work real well. It's the only art I got done this week, however, so no more whining!

I did manage to get to a scrapbook store in Saskatoon last night, but the owner sure wasn't very friendly. That's a surprise, they are usually are so nice. Oh well, her loss. I didn't spend a whole lot of money there.

It's good to be home, if only overnight.

Quick post before I turn in for the night...My hotel room overlooks the river and it's beautiful here. AND I have an adjustable bed. I thought that meant it would fold in half, WHAT-EVER! But then I sat on it and almost broke my butt it was so hard. So I decided to play with the remote and lo and behold, the bed kind of melted into softness. Wow. Nice. Very nice.
That's where I'm going to now. To bed. Good night.

Saskatoontown tomorrow

So we fly out in the morning. I'm pretty sure I'm ready, but need to go outside and water the plants before I go. Today is the first day of fall, I think and we've got record-breaking heat. It's supposed to be 33 tomorrow, yikes, I hope it's cooler where I'm going! Creator seems to have gotten his seasons mised up, we didn't have summer in summer, now we have summer in fall. Who am I to complain? (although we all do, don't we?)

See you in three days. Unless I get my laptop working in the hotel room. TTFN.

.

911 day

I went out to the dining room for lunch and our outreach worker said that one of our men was "on the nod" from his methadone. I stated that methadone doesn't have the ability to put one "on the nod". but he was convinced. So I went to find the guy and see for myself. he was on the nod, all right, darn near incoherent. He came upstairs to get his insulin and we deduced that he hadn't taken insulin since the day before, nor had he eaten. So alarm bells went off for me. I tried to talk to him, but he was incoherent, slurring his words, stumbling. I couldn't smell any ketones, but decided to call his Parole Officer. We made the decision to call an ambulance. I asked the staff to watch for the rig and went to talk with the man and try to get him ready for their arrival so he wouldn't flip out on them. He's a volatile, angry offender. He agreed they could take a look at him. Long story short, pretty major problem taking place, but he refused to go to the hospital. so I had the staff call his PO and bring the phone to him. After a few moments on the phone he agreed to go if he had to. (the PO had given him the choice of hospital or jail). We shipped him off. I'm not convinced he hadn't taken something he shouldn't have taken-he signed out to a well-know drug-dealing place downtown. What are the chances? Who knows. the important thing is he's in a place where they can keep an eye on him. It he HAS taken something illicit, we won't see him again, he'll go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.00

Having shared that little tidbit of information, I've posted a LO that makes me smile, maybe because I fell in love with this little girl, when I worked at the school She IS a sweetie.

I love my job.

Sunday night, the day before Monday

I went to Edmonton yesterday, left at 7:30 (AM), home at 10:30 (PM), went to 5, count 'em, 5!!! scrapbook stores. Lovely, simply lovely.
I've done a few things today, some pages, some backgrounds, some photography AND I made a real supper, Mom's world-famous Lazy Cabbage Rolls. Yummmm, that should feed me for the week!
I'm feeling kind of tired, it was too long a day yesterday. So, I'm going to bed early. I fly to Saskatoontown on Wednesday, can hardly wait for that (not). One of my employees is coming with me and she's never flown, so she's fairly nervous/excited. I'll piggy-back on her delight.
I was supposed to go to Drum tomorrow, but should spend SOME time in the office, so I cancelled. The people I was going to interview can wait, it's not like they're going anywhere. tee hee. Maybe I should mention Drumheller is the medium security prison is this neck of the woods.
Yup, they'll wait.

What do I want to learn?

I started my Bollywood Hip Hop class this week, it was a blast! the Opus Poobah's have asked us to consider what we would like to learn, well, that's mine-to dance Bollywood. I was grateful that there were some older women in the class, and that I wasn't the only one. there's also an older man and a couple of younger men. I have to say it was challenging and I wished we weren't doing it in a dance studio with an entire wall of mirrors, but....as pitiful as I looked and felt, there were others in the same boat as I. So why not just go for it and have fun? And that's how it went. I've been busy this week and have only done 3 ATC's for this challenge, my previous post and this one. I loved doing them though, so what could be better?

ATC about my Bollywood classes

This is all I have for you tonight, and if that's not acceptable, you may leave. tee hee.

Notice the groovin chicken on the double base-GET DOWN! "do they even say that anymore?", she asks sheepishly.

Hey, it could be worse, I could be Kanye West.

What a loser.

Good night friends.

The Murals-Part 2

Sorry they aren't in order. I'm learning..............I wonder if there is a blog university somewhere. (please note the name of my blog.)

The Murals-Part 1

It's been a VERY long work day, 12 hours, to be exact. so all I shall do tonight is upload the pics of my album I finished this weekend. It's about our Arizona adventure, when we drove into the desert, not sure where we were going, or if it was safe, or even if there WERE the murals I had read about online. Well, they DID exist and they were awesome, worth the worrisome drive. You never know unless you try.

Well, I just learned that I can only uplaod 5 pics at once, so this will be in two parts. I hope you enjoy my album!

Scrapjacked Candi Mandi

This will be my last post for the weekend, I've been so busy, got lots of LO's done and some ATC's. Couldn't be a much more perfect weekend, brunch with the girls, my kind of girls, as we had our Bennie Breakfasts and then shared a plate of berry and whipped cream-covered crepes for dessert. Anyone who agrees to dessert for breakfast is my kind of people. This is a jack of Candi Mandi's terrific LO on the Scrapjacked site. Their DT's work is always so awesome and this month is no exception.

#37-What's in a Name?

This is my LO for Got Mojo's challenge #37. We needed to do something about our name and I remember my trauma as a young girl/teenager, hating my name (and hating myself, for that matter). We also had to use a new technique which gave me the opportunity to try out Lisa's embossing technique from the Treasured Memories Projects and Techniques blog. She has the coolest ideas. The apples were done using one of those die cut papers that are so popular now and a very juicy versamark pad. Then white powder. I really like it. Other than feeling re-traumatized over my name and turbulent adolescence, I loved doing this challenge.

And I don't hate myself anymore.

HMITM #114

Bling! Makes me want to sing! It makes everything! (better). OK, I'm no poet. I think we've established that.

I like the How Much is Too Much challenges-they are perfect for me, with a studio FULL of supplies to use up. I TRY to avoid the scrapbook stores, but they get lonely without me. It would be wrong, just pure wrong to not go.

We found this lady on the top of a roof, in Kingsman, Arizona, this summer. It's on Route 66. I'm not real sure what this chick has to do with Route 66, but I wasn't there, of course.

Perhaps she dated James Dean.

Fabulocity. I just heard a woman on TV use that word in a prayer. Huh? I'm not sure how that fits into praying for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Once, many years ago, my car wouldn't start and a girlfriend and I had been hoping to go to a dance. So, just because we'd heard somewhere that "prayer works", we decided to try it. We held hands and said "Dear God, please get our car going. Thank you."

Well, not a moment later a couple of young man came up to us as we stood on the sidewalk, waiting for our miracle and asked us if we needed help. Oh yes! we cried, and explained to them our dilemma. And wonder of wonders, they got the car going! Praise the Lord!

Then they drove off with it.

Since that moment, I have never prayed for anything specific, least of all Fabulocity.

It's just TOO risky.

Remember when

Do you remember girdles? I sure do.

How unpleasant was that? I remember thinking how grown-up I had become as I shoved my not-so-svelte torso into that medieval instrument of torture. You know what?

They're back ladies. Oprah calls them "Spanx" but I'm no fool, I know what they are. I think we should rise up and revolt.

First it was visible panti-lines, then the "muffin-top" became the "sin du jour". What the heck?

I don't know about you, but the fact is, ladies, I ooze. I would love to be able to say that my rear view is one without any bulges or bumps, but it's not so. My receding form is more like the rolling hills of Ireland. Oh Danny boy. I give up.

Here are three digital LO's I did of the girl and her best friend. they've grown up together, through thick and thin and all of that. BFF, big-time.

Well, I made it through another week, without too much bloodshed. Glad that's done.

Tonight I've been working on an album for Bliss, it's done and I'm pretty proud of it. I didn't think it would come together, but it has. I'll post pics at some point.

I would like to scrapbook this weekend, but have plans tomorrow and Sunday as well. What's up with that? I'm way too busy, since the child left. I guess I'll have to schedule doing nothing. Who could have predicted this?

Challenge #23-Say it in Flowers

What a day it's been, going way to fast to be healthy and too slow to keep up. I was glad when the workday was over. I slipped and fell down the back steps last night. Once I was able to get up and back into the house, I concluded I was OK. but as today has progressed, so has the pain and tonight I am one hurtin' unit. I feel old. Maybe that's because I am old. duh. Even sitting at the computer hurts, so I shan't do much of that tonight.
I originally made this LO for a How Much Is Too Much "flowers" challenge. Their challenges ask you to use up your (ever-expanding, of course) stash, and are perfect for me and my scrapbook supply addiction. So I put as many flowers as I reasonably could and still call it something resembling art.
I post it here tonight in response to the Order of the Opus Gluei challenge: ADHEVIUM FUNNUM!