Weekend wanderings

The husband and I went to the free bok place again. I wanted more magazines to tear up and the price is always right. I got the mags and a pile of books that I plan on returning there once I'm finished with them. I did remember to take the empty toner cartridges from the office so that theBook Thing sells to whomever and uses the money for rent and utilities. Again I was amazed at how so many people can wander quietly among the books, selecting carefully when really they could walk out with every thing. Didn't find any spectacular treasures there but on our way in we passed an artist and craftsman store and I just had to stop. It was in a run downish warehouse sort of place but the minute I walked through the doors I was in love. I'm not an artist but I love pretending that I am and so I got a couple of sketchbooks, great bargains, A couple prismacolor pencils, one sharpie and my bargain of the day,fine brushes for detail painting AND with a chunky handle that's great for my sore fingers for.... hold onto your seats... a quarter each. I bought * and could have splurged on the fifty cent ones but the fine ones are what I always need. I've promised myself another visit.
Silly me never realised that we were in the neighborhood of the art institute and we passed another two art stores, that I did not explore. I needed to leave something for another time.
After book thing and the brushes we went for pizza back near home. We love this place and are content to wait while they make our pizza fresh. It was quiet in there and fairly empty but gradually I became aware of a big corner booth behind us. There were 5 young men in this booth, each with a baby or young child. Babies young enough for only baby food and bottles and the young child was just about old enough for a piece of pizza. Just 5 guys, early 20s I thought, hanging out with their kids. And the little ones were so well behaved you didn't know they were there and when one of the daddies (I'm assuming here) went up to get their food another daddy took over, talking to the little one, making them giggle. I have never seen anything like it. It made me want to go up and give each and every one of them a hug. I may be old fashioned,m but I could see a group of young mothers doing something like that but have nev er dreamed that young fathers would step in so readily. And the little ones were eating it up, excuse the pun.
So all in all it was a good weekend that made up for the crappy friday we had. But it's back to work tomorrow. Oh dread.

I gotta get a life.

Yet another journal page, but can I really call it a journal if I don't leave any room to write? I am a stickler for things being a certain way which is why collage always was so hard for me. I kept expecting things to have a meaning rather than just for decorative purposes.
Which brings me to the internet again and why I have go to get a life. Other than our clients, my husband and the sons I have little or no contact with the outside world and so my view has become internet narrowed and I get all of my interaction from there.
And being as anal as I am, the internet very often bugs me.
Not the internet itself, I know it's not some entity, it it was, it'd probably have a terribly bad breath and a snotty nose and would wear its shorts pulled up to its armpits and black socks with sandals.
There is a memorial site that I visit nightly. Don't know why other than I believe that as long as people remember your name you will live on and so I'd like to think that my
visiting will help someone 'live' on. It's a site that is mostly British and I wonder what the heck they are teaching in British scholls because it certainly isn't spelling, English or Grammar.

Now I know I am a terrible speller and that I should use spell check but if I can't even come close to the correct spelling, spell check is of no use. I know I transpose letters in a word but that's because I'm usually in a hurry.
HOWEVER and it is a big HOWEVER if I were writing up a memorial site I would make certain everything is just so. I wouldn't spell nephew as nefew, your as ur, theirs as theres, think for thing. That's bad enough but I ran across one memorial to a child that was so badly written that it looked almost as if it were a farce. The guy who wrote the memorial using the word nefew also said that when the child died, the post MORTON could give them no reason for his death. The PRESHUSH boy would always be in THEYRE FORTS. The last bit made me think of some game of cowboys and indians along with one of those log forts.

Last night someone wrote that their sister PASTED away. Again my head leads me to somone sitting on the floor with one of those once upon a time jars of paste, the kind with the brush fastened to the inside of the lid. The kind of paste I'm sure most, if not all of us, ate at one time. I wonder if they still make that stuff. Or maybe the sister that pasted away is now a wallpaper hanger on the other side, jazzing up heaven's waiting room with the latest in angelic wallpaper.

I wish I could grab those areful memproials and neaten them up a bit . It's like, when I worked in the library and went to Blockbuster with the kids and it drove me mad that things were not jus in Loose alphabetical order but they hadn't even FLIRTED with the alphabet. I so wanted to alphabetize them but I didn't.

So this is why I need a life. Why I need to get out and among humans, only I don't quite know how to go about it. I used to be funny but that was because I dealt with the public daily. Now it's only the husband, sons and dogs who fill my life and how often can I get away with poking fun at them.

Geez this turned into a pity poor me and I hadn't planned on that at all. Sorry.

So far this one is my favorite page. You can't see it but the heads have glittered eyes and the spider has a glittered red hourglass on her back to make her a black widow. The die cut spider as well as the die cut creepy house and skull in the other page comes from the die cut Queen, Barbara.

Even better I got in a new Elle magazine yesterday and many of these fashion models will make excellent zombies even WITHOUT me retouching the picture.

I didn't draw the heads, those are from a rubberstamp that I scanned so I could enlarge it.

I do so love halloween, if things turn out ugly it can look as if I meant it that way. No stress collaging.

Internet life

I am so done with e-bay. Not e-bay itself, mind you. I love e-bay and have a weakness for dollar deals. I carefully bid no more than a buck AND am very careful to click the free shipping button but twice now, once I've won suddenly there is INSURANCE that is required. I won a bracelet for 50 cents AND the insurance was more than the bracelet. I figured maybe I missed it and paid the insurance. So again, when I bid on something else I was very careful about reading the fine print. It was free shipping and handling and the insurance is included IN the shipping and handling only when it came down to it suddenly there is $4 for insurance for a bracelet I paid 9 cents for and since I had plans of taking it apart and doing something else with it I 'won' 2 and yep, the second one has that same $4 insurance. I've already emailed the seller and could kick myself in the butt for not being more vigilant. I'm swearing off my $1 goodies for now and if the seller still wants their insurance money, they can eat it.

I've been a regular reader of Dooce's blog for some time. She now has a hate blog, where she posts her hate mail AND she has monetised it so that other people's hate make her money. So of course I had to go and read it. If the idiot, waving hi!, who thinks I'm stalking her... right, waving high and making that air circle around my temple to indicate crazy... she should read the crap Dooce gets. Gees, if you don't like someone's blog don't read it. And even tho I think that it really isn't all that safe to have her girls pictures on her blog, I wouldn't dream of telling her not to. It is her blog after all

I wonder if I can get my don't like you much e-mailer (I'm far too unimportant to get actual hate mail, mines more dislike e-mailer) to write more often so I can make money on her. Think I have a chance.

I also read the Daily Coyote. Love watching that coyote grow along with his girl dog friend Chloe.

I like face book, only have no idea why my sister added me as her friend. i think it was just a one fell swoop of the address book kind of thing.

Classmates.com says thA TWO whole people signed my guest book in the past month and click here to see who it was and so, Sucker that I am, I click and yes two people DID sign but since I have let my dues lapse, the names are all blurry but if I sign up for the diamond whoopsie doodle package for more than I car to spend, I can SEE who is signing my guest book. Time for the real world to intrude. When I was in highschool I had a polish last name. My classmates as well as most of my teachers couldn't even pronounce Kwiatkowski, let alone spell it and so decades later someone who knows how to spell my name is signing myh guestbook??? Since I was mostly invisible in high school, why would anyone want me visible now. And yes, I sucumbed to the first time I got the look who's lookinf for you email and I recognised only one name and had no clue who the hell the others were.

And I have won the UK Lottery. It said so right in my email. That must be the UK lottery ticket I bought when I was NEVER in the UK. I can't even spell UK I won't need the lottery winnings though because the vice president of Gambia wants me to help him get his money out of Gambia and I will be richly rewarded once I do. Then maybe I could answer the ads for a larger penis or see what hot sexy singles are waiting for me right now. I wonder if Hot Sexy Singles do housework.

I'm not posting a journal page tonight cause I'm on my laptop and the journal pages were scanned at work on the work computer so it'll have to wait till tomorrow. Not that it's art or anything but it livens up the page a bit and since I got my latest Elle magazine with models who only look dead I can really start making halloween pages. Yes, I subscribed to Elle for a ridiculout $6 a year and paid the same for Marie Claire simply to tear up the magazines and pretend to make art.

So that's it for me tonight. I need to google someone's name (waving hi! Quick run and tell) before I go to bed. No, only kidding. I'kk just wait till complacency sets in and them WHAM!!! I came I saw I GOOGLED!

I'm working on a Halloween art journal and since my blog is so blah looking, I thought I'd post the pages here. And Ta DAH! This is number one.

If you can't beat them...

DIVERT THEM! I have ants. No not in my pants but in the craft room. To be more specific on the desk in the craft room. The arrive every spring and depart every fall and I'll be damned if I know where they come from. If I saw a trial leading off someplace I could follow it and block it off but no... no trail... no clue... except these teensy weeny pizzy ants as we called them when I was a child. These pizzies crawl all over the desk and all over me and if youo squish one, phew. THEY STINK!

I've boric acided powdered them, I used spray ant kill (phew), Lemon scented linen spray and my old standby spray deodorant. It slows them down, kills some but not enough. It has gotten so bad that I have left the spider who has woven her web In and among storage on my desk alone, even tho I am VERy allergic to spider bites. Anmd still the pizzies keep coming.

BUT U gave come up with a solution of sorts... I spill a bit of soda on a small plate and shove it to the very left of the desk/ The pizzies come along, drink their fill run off with whatever's in their mouth and the never go beyond that plate. I'd rather have them gone but instead of driving myself even more crazy than I am, I now divert them..... and pray for the first frost.

Blue

Hate Sunday evenings. Always get depressed as if tomorrow it's off to school. Blah.
I swear I'm trying to think of something upbeat but am coming up blank.

I feel as if I've been bullied and misused and wonder why the hell my sister added me as her friend on facebook. She doesn't even like me.

As always.... amazed

Oldest son and I had a discussion the other day as to whether Rocco the Wonder Dog really IS a wonder dog or are older son and I just more perceptive when it comes to Rocco's 'lamguage'. Older son did the family's grocery shopping the other day and got the dog a variety pack of bones and chews. Since both dogs are picky with their chews, I dumpbed the bag out on the floor and told them to help themselves. Little dog Ollie found what he wanted immediately but Rocco was reluctant. So I'd pick up a ches and offer it to him and with his nose he would push my hand away in a clear, thanks but no thanks. Eventually we found something he wanted but with each and every one that wasn't his choice it was the same thanks but no thanks nudge. If that isn't language I don't know what is.
Now when Older son was just a baby, the Husband often asked me how I knew what it was that Older son wanted when, the Husband had no clue. (I will refrain from any clueless man remarks here). I looked at him as if he had lost his mind and told him that Older son told me. Then when visiting a neighbor across the street with a son three months younger than mine, I was stunned to hear her son speaking. And that's when it hit me. The reason I knew what Oldest son wanted was because he TOLD me only not in english. Through a series of gestures and sounds, he made his own language and taught it to me. Once I got serious tho and made Older son actually tell me in English, did he forget his language and speak so that everyone could understand.
So here's what we're wondering. Do all dogs have a language? Perhaps they are all speaking to us but we don't quite 'get' their language and, as far as I know, there is no Rosetta Stone Language course for canine. Are older son and I unusually perceptive or is Rocco just more verbal than most. Rocco has sounds as well. To the point where Older son knows whent he dog wants the fan on and there's a new game that Rocco asks to play as soon as I come home from work. Ollie isn't nearly as vocal though he has his own language BUT I suspect he gives Rocco the idea of asking for a snack and then Ollie sits back and reaps the rewards.

Oh and that pile of chews that the dogs had to choose from. I never could put them back in their bag because they all disappeared. So far I've found them under the blankets on the bed, under the dog pillow, in one of my shoes, in a half empty Dr Pepper carton and a half a dozen places in older son's room. What especially tickles me is when Ollie hides them in places where Rocco can never go, like under the desk because Rocco is too big and Ollie fits just right. Sometimes it pays to be a little dog.