Lady Gaga

The woman I find fascinating and repellant all at the same time. On the one hand I have a serious case of hype aversion  with anything Lady Gaga related because well... its kinda "if I hear her name or see her picture ONE MORE TIME I may in fact vomit".

And yet on the other hand she occasionally does something that makes me smirk.

For example the whole "meat dress" thing... If you live under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about you may google. I'll wait. ... So apparently at some point last year she wears fake fur. And of course the next day PETA is all "oh we love her! She's clearly speaking out about blah blah blah blah blah".

Right..... So a month later she comes out sporting a MEAT BIKINI. Thats right raw meat... bikini. And just in case that wasn't enough of an anti-PETA statement she wore a full on meat DRESS to a big awards show. *snigger* I believe one of her comments on the subject was something to the effect of "I'm not a piece of meat" or "I'm nobody's piece of meat". Something like that (if you want REAL quotes go read a journalist who gets PAID - aka NOT me).

So that made me like her kinda almost a little bit in spite of the obnoxious hype. Then I noted something else - she's really NOT that pretty. No offense. I'm not saying it to be mean but that means she's smarter than I initially gave her credit. She's got a rockin' body but her face leaves a lot to be desired - at least according to the societal norms.

So whats a girl who wants to be a rock star to do. She's got a good voice, great body and a ho-hum face? Cuz believe me in todays market they've got girls w/ voices, looks and bodies lined up around the block. How does she compensate: Fashion. All those FREAKY outfits that seem to be maddeningly designed to prevent  you from getting a look at the woman's face! I mean until recently it like NEVER happened.

So she's smart, recognizes and compensates for her weaknesses and she's not afraid to piss people off. This person may actually be almost acceptable except for the hype aversion issue.

So apparently she's become the new gay god. Not my words - hell I didn't know anything about it until I saw a headline in my news feed that she was like petitioning congress about the whole "Don't ask don't tell" business.

So now she's being idolized by a whole different group whose all "she loves us and she gets us and she stands up for our thing". And now she's come out with a new song "Born this way" that is apparently, nearly universally pissing them all the hell off.

Are you noting a trend yet? I even saw one where the fashionista people were griping about Lady Gaga's latest outfits and how horribly boring they are.

This woman likes to wow you and then tell you to suck it once you start applauding her and telling her you're "one of ours".

I think she probably has some issues she might need to deal with but I find her fascinating. And so I think I might keep tabs on the situation. Just because its got me morbidly fascinated in that "I'm not really watching b/c I suffer from hype aversion" kinda way...

My Latest Sparkly Objects

These earrings I made last week. The leaves are handmade Venetian glass to which I filigree wrapped the pair of Vintaj Natural Brass bead caps. Simple but very, very pretty. 

You might recognize the centerpiece of this necklace as the focal I made in the 2 Day Intensive Workshop at Vintaj last fall. I decided to finish what I started. I used venetian glass beads, Swarovski crystal and Vintaj components.

 And here is a close up of the focal. I love how the faux enameling looks!

And here's another piece I made last week. I love this necklace. Its made with venetian glass beads, Swarovski crystal and Vintaj Natural Brass components. 

This sterling silver wire ring pattern I learned from Dale Armstrong. She calls it the "All Wire Rosette" ring. I think I prefer to call this design the slightly more poetic title of "Wind". Each of these rings will have its own unique look to the center swirls due to the nature of the design. 

This classic wire jewelry design is the Pharaoh's ring. Mine is constructed of sterling silver wire with a Malachite cabochon. 

This ring is my version of Dale Armstrong's "Anything Cocktail Ring". Mine features Pale Pink Cubic Zirconia stones (they appear almost lavender in this picture), pink Swarovski Crystals and sterling silver beads and wire. I absolutely love this design. Every ring is unique and the colors are completely customizable. 

 My Twisted Wire Solitaire you first saw several months ago and since then I've worn it nearly full time. But I felt it deserved some pictures of a higher quality than the ones I took in my bathroom at 3 am so here she is again: 

Oooh its a MIRACLE!!

So a miracle happened today. My husband completed and turned in an application for graduate school! Its on time and hand delivered to the correct people.

I'll give you just a moment to process that.

For those of you unaware my husband has some not insignificant issues with test anxiety. Applying to graduate school is essentially a test and is therefore to be avoided at all costs. For several years now.... And so I am surprised and delighted that this year the application has actually been completed and submitted. This is big progress. Granted he's only applying to one school and not the one I thought he was going for but its a good program and its local so we wouldn't have to move so hopefully that won't matter.

I'm in this weird place right now. Experimentation with sleeping medication is not for the feint of heart. The problem I'm having at the moment is that while a whole Ambien will certainly knock me out for the night, it also has the nagging effect of making me want to sleep the whole next day too and since I have a life and a toddler thats less than acceptable. So I've tried cutting the pill in half. I have to say that given I'd only been taking the Ambien for less than 2 weeks I was unpleasantly surprised to find that my body was less than thrilled w/ the reduction in dosage and conspired to make me feel remarkably crappy for 2 days. However I was delighted that I could still get to sleep and actually be awake the next day.

The problem is that its not always enough to knock me out. My anxiety can still keep me up at night. So I'm debating if we should just move on to a different medication or if this is as good as it gets. I think I'm gonna give it another week and then decide....

The Thumb of DOOM

So its kind of amazing to me just how disabled dissing your THUMB can make you. You really wouldn't think so but holy crap.

1. I can't get it wet for any longer than say a quickie shower (please hold it out of the water most of the time) once a day. Therefore doing the dishes, taking a long hot bath, cleaning the bathrooms, etc are all a no go. I suppose I could surgical tape a glove to my hand but really? The adhesive I HAVE TO HAVE to keep the stitches under wraps is already making my skin crazy. Do I really wanna spread the joy??

2. I can't bend it or grasp anything with my left hand with out REMARKABLE amounts of pain. You ever tried to live your life (esp that of a mother of the worlds largest 19 month old) with out being able to pick up much of anything with your left hand. True, it could be worse. It could be my right hand. But see I usually carry the kid with the left arm so I have my dominate hand free to do stuff. Also attempting to use the left arm but NOT the hand results in your shoulder, elbow and wrists being TICKED at you for weeks afterwards.

Also since I popped a stitch in the first 24 hours I had to be EXTRA careful so I didn't pop the others and split my wound open.

So basically no deep cleaning, all lifting must be done with the other arm (which is just THRILLED at me for the extra work) and try to keep it dry, m'kay?

Needless to say by the time I got those friggin stitches out I was ready to kill something and I think there were grimlins living in the filth in my kitchen. Also it took me a week to fix my sleep schedule between the all night trip to the ER and the nice pain pills that really screwed with my head.

So its taken me for frigging ever to unearth my kitchen, decontaminate my fridge and basically start to reverse the downward trend in my houses sanitation level.

Thankfully now my thumb is mostly healed up. The stitches are out. I still put a bandaid and polysporin on it every night when I go to bed just to help it finish healing just b/c the suture where I lost one of the stitches didn't heal nearly as well as the one where the stitches stayed in tact (can't imagine why) and so I'm trying to help it finish healing with the bandaids. The owie still hurts if you apply any pressure to the area but for the most part I can move it and use it with out too much pain. I'm hopeful that someday I'll have a normal thumb again.

So my house cleaning efforts kinda went BOOM for a couple weeks because of the thumb issue but the good news is that we're largely reversing this trend and even making some progress. I have high hopes that maybe by the end of the month we might just have conquered the paper work mountain and slain the dragon that is my living room (baby toys! EVERYWHERE!).

But otherwise things seem to be showing some improvement. We're just sort of holding our breath and waiting to see if they continue on this trend or not.

Also if you want to entertain a toddler for an hour - tie a balloon to his shoe and make the string just long enough so the bottom of the balloon is level with his forehead. He'll have a blast. :)

Update on Life

Well, I decided Thurs nite that I was jealous of all the attention other people were receiving and just the other day I'd realized it had been a whole several years since my last trip to the ER (hey for me thats GOOD) and I must not have knocked on wood enough when I had that thought because I was attempting to cut the worlds thickest zip ties holding Caleb's last Christmas present in its box (I've been spacing them out to keep him happier longer since he's 19 months old and doesn't know any better) and it was really stiff and FINALLY it popped and the knife slipped and went right thru my thumb of my other hand that was holding the box....

Thankfully it was the outer lower section of my left thumb so I missed all the really important bits and I'm very grateful I was using the SMALLER of the two blades on the pocket knife so it only took 2 stitches to sew up the In side and 1 stitch to close the Out side. And they did put me on antibiotics for a few days because its so close to the joint and joint infections are a BAD thing.

So that was just a lovely visit to the emergency room at midnight. Nothing quite like a trip to the ER in the wee hours. What made things really interesting is Caleb was already asleep, Adam and I had both already taken our sleeping pills for the night (Adam was about to go to bed b/c his were already working) so while I could drive myself to the ER if I say grabbed some masking tape and used that to pressure wrap some paper towel to my hand, there was no way I was going to be able to drive myself home unless the entire ER visit took less than an hour (HAHAHAHAHHAhahahahahahHA). So we started calling around and a VERY sweet sister from my church was able to come and take me and she sat with me and talked to me the whole time and even stopped by the pharmacy to get me drugs and let me go through a drive thru to grab some food on the way home. That woman is truly a saint and I am so very thankful for her and her kind service.

So the thumb hurts but its healing. I've been kicking butt and taking names in the cleaning of the office/house/giant paper work mountain. I can hardly believe how much progress I've made. Starting at the back and working forward is DEFINITELY the way to go. I've had to slow down a bit because of the thumb and we also got a new dresser this week that took me a bit to assemble and then organize everything. But its SO nice and BIG and pretty!! I like it. Ikea rocks.

And we got the first toy organizer thing this week and it has made SUCH a big difference in the livability and cleanability of my living room. I do want to get one more organizer thing for the bigger toys but otherwise this thing rocks my socks. And then the room should look and feel and function SO much better.

Had a good day out with the hubby. We saw Tangled which was HYSTERICAL. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

All in all. Life's looking pretty good. Even with the gimp thumb and the teething child. :)

Giving myself a gift

So I got a comment on my last post and its haunted my thoughts as I cleaned (I so kicked butt in the office btw). Judy doesn't make resolutions. She choses to give herself a gift. I want to give myself the gift of a house of order. I feel so, so much better about life the universe and everything when my house is in order. I cannot control other people. I cannot control anything except my own actions. I can decide to give myself this gift. I can have a beautiful, peaceful, clean and organized home. I can give that to myself. Its in my power to do so. And that gift would mean so much to me.

And yes this is not a small task. But instead of this horrible thing that haunts me and makes me feel like a bad mother/wife/person I can chose to one small piece at a time give myself this gift. And it can be beautiful and if I just do one thing at a time its not too big or over whelming and I can feel better, more peaceful and have pride in my home.

There is nothing to be lost, no matter how things in my life turn out, by putting things in order and making things more beautiful. I think this is the gift I want to give myself.

I want to give myself the gift of health by focusing on improving my eating and exercising but I don't think I can handle that yet. I don't feel ready for that. Capable of that. But I do feel fully capable of giving myself the gift of a house of order.

So thats my focus. I chose to give myself the gift of a house of order and I will do it one small step at a time until I manage it.

Also - I think the start at the back and work my way forward thru the paper mountain is exactly the right thing to do. I'm so excited. I think I can actually conquer this this time. :)

Happy New Year

So last month was a blogging fail. It wasn't that I didn't have things to say it was that I couldn't figure out how to say the things I was thinking and so I'd stare at the blogger window and poke at it and give up in frustration and a lack of words.

Somethings are doing better. Last month was pretty much insane with the holidays and various family groups coming to town. Some of the behavior that was making me insane has significantly improved for the most part and we're holding our breath waiting to see if the changes are permanent or just temporary. Its hard to sit in a holding pattern.

In my experience my house is an excellent indicator of my mental/emotional state. Its looked like hell for the past month. And would have continued to do so if not for my folks coming to stay with us for 10 days for Christmas. If I'm doing well, my house does well. If I'm not doing so hot and there isn't an external motivation to MAKE myself clean then it doesn't happen.

I've decided I'm depressed. I don't think I'd call it "depression" tho. I don't think we're discussing a serious anything (which would take some talent since I've been on antidepressants for years) but I'm definitely on the apathetic, lethargic, sleep disturbed, brain foggy, listless, glum side. I get out of bed because the child needs me to. I'm not like all weepy and I'm not suicidal by any stretch so its not major. I think my Dad would phrase it something like "I'm depressed because right now this that and the other suck and its depressing. I do not have depression."

But right this moment we've got a little uptick in the mojo thanks I think to the Momma being here (even if she was sick - more on that later) and we're gonna go ahead and run with that.

I think I'm going to try to tackle the filth in the office again. Its the paperwork mess. More like the giant man eating paper mountain of satan but we can just call it the paper mess for now. I've tried to conquer it several times. I always start with the most recent and work back. That hasn't worked. We've decided that since the definition of insanity is to repeat the same behavior over and over expecting different results we're gonna try a different approach. I'm going to start at the back and work forward. I'm going to go through my filing cabinet and weed it out and organize it. And then get all the crap thats already IN the office dealt with and THEN try and tackle the more recent mail mess thats in my dining room. The house hasn't blown up with my ignoring the majority of the mail for the last few months so I doubt it will suffer much now if I continue to ignore it and am productive in other areas.

Who knows maybe this plan will actually work? It could happen.

I keep debating if I'm going to make new years resolutions or not. Because on the one hand I almost ALWAYS break them. And I really don't need ANY more fail in my life. On the other I've had some recent conversations that have reminded me how important positive affirmations and visualizations are to success. And so I debate.

I think I'll sit and have a think about what I would like to make resolutions on and then I'll decide if calling them "resolutions" is the best way to achieve them or not.... Maybe. Hmmmm. I'll think while I clean.... *wanders off to conquer the office*