My New Ride . . .

Imagine this vehicle being dark blue . . . now you know what my new ride looks like . . . it's awesome :*) :*) Man, vehicles have changed a little in the last 9 years! Imagine that . . .

My new ride even has washer fluid squirt out onto the BACK window! Holy Glock! And by pushing a button I can adjust the gas and break pedal . . . and no more having to stop to turn on the 4x4!!! Yeah ha!

My Calendar Girl . . .

I love, I love, I love my calendar girlYeah, sweet calendar girlI love, I love, I love my calendar girlEach and every day of the year . . . sing it Neil! . . . This is my calendar page for a project through Paper Whimsy Yahoo Group. www.paperwhimsy.com is a very awesome site for the lover of collage sheet images!

My Explorer Took A Dump . . .

yes it did. The poor thing. I've had that baby for 9 years. Sigh. I haven't had a car payment in like . . . 5 years I believe. Bought the SUV when Hazel was 3 months old. It's a 1993. Now also, it pukes and of course Dale is out of town for the week!

Hazel and I got home Monday night, pulled into the garage, turned off the vehicle, got out, was going to go in the house and thought, man, what stinks . . . turned around looked . . . heart leapt into my throat, adrenaline starts pumping through my veins . . . thought my engine was on fire!!!! Oh my gosh! Hesitantly opened the hood, no flames, thank God, but man . . .. wwwaaahhhhh. Now I have very limited knowledge of vehicles . . . and I mean limited. I know how to put gas in one, and that I do. In a pinch I will put air in the tires. I do know where the oil goes, the radiator fluid goes, and the wiper fluid goes. But I leave the filling of those to the paid professionals, or whatever person may want to do that for me. So really, other than to make sure the engine isn’t truly on fire, to open the hood is just wasted movement for me.

Called BIL one, had to leave message, called BIL two . . . he came over. I think if you asked both of them I sounded rather panicky. Well hell boys, I thought my car was on fire . . . Helllllooooo!!! But they can tease me all they want about that . . . . They’re sweethearts to help a damsel in distress.

BIL two, takes a look around in the engine. Radiator fluid looks dry (well yeah, I’d seen that too, first thought I had was why to engine heating light coming on) and he looks in the actual radiator . . . I know where that is too, but no way in hell I was opening that little pressure cooker cap, I’ve seen the damage a pressure cooker can do!! He looks some more, and there it is. A hose blown right off. On a coupling? Something like that, remember I just put gas in. He is pretty grim about the prognosis of the Explorer. The poor thing.

So, he is willing to give me a ride into borrow my mom’s van. Okay, mom isn’t home, but I will just leave a note. Wouldn’t matter if I called and talked to her first anyway, she probably wouldn’t remember the conversation when I get there. But her van makes sense, because she can’t drive it! So off we go into town, which is about 15 miles away. Halfway there I note I don’t have my keys. I said well, there is a possible place that I could find a key. We took a gamble didn’t turn around. Get to mom’s, she isn’t home. Okay, my hand at breaking in . . . nope, no key, nope no unlocked door. Back into the car and back we go to my house.

Now were back to mom’s. house key in hand. Get up to her door and there she is to meet us. EEEyyyyyyiiii. Okay, by BIL, thank you so much, what a sweetie to put up with me!

I get mom’s vehicle, write several notes around her house that I have the van. I write notes on her blackboard, put one on her kitchen table, one in her calendar that is looked at daily, put one in Jane’s note book . . . all over . . . Judy has van . . . and off we go back to my house.

I get there, and there is BIL one. Oh man, I forgot to call him back and let him know the Calvary had arrived! Yikes! But BIL doesn’t mind, he looks things over a little more. Nope, the radiator was not completely dry, fluid steamed out when the hose broke. Probably a pressure had built up that blew the hose when I turned off the car. . . he checked the radiator fluid for oil or the oil for radiator fluid, however that may go . . . he’s prognosis for the Explorer is better.

Whelp, I have been putting it off for over a year. I’ve known I would need to buy a vehicle. I just don’t want the car payment. . .sazlefrazzz . . . so off car shopping this weekend we go . ..

Now, here are the good things about it all . . . it puked in my garage, not on the side of the road . . . it was only steaming, not flaming, in which case my house would have burnt down also . . . which reminds me . . . fire extinguisher needs to be put on my shopping list too. I don’t believe we don’t have one!

So, hopefully soon I will be telling you about my new-to-me-vehicle, because I doubt if it will be a NEW vehicle!

Oh yeah, and by the way, I did call City Hall and tell my friend Cindy that if my mom called because her van was missing . . . I had it! She understood completely . . . I could just invision that phone call happening, even though there is a note every two feet in the house. . .. smiles . . .


Type at ya later . . .
Ja-who-dee

The Mouse House

This is a long story, but one to be told as it actually provides some comic relief in the daily struggles of dementia. I laugh out loud everytime I think about this story. I hope you get a chuckle or two also!

As most of you know, my mother has dementia. She is doing as well as one could possibly expect, and we are fortunate to have lots of loving and caring friends and relatives to help us through all this. One person who is especially a blessing is mom’s daily caregiver, whom I shall refer to as Jane to give her some anonymity. My mom also has this huge, lazy, fattest cat I ever saw in my life. I always refer to this cat as “Psycho Rosie”. It looks like a Siamese cat, but has the same body shape as that famous cartoon cat Garfield. I think Psycho Rosie maybe the first cat to ever be buried in a piano case when it dies . . . it's one big fat cat. Going back to the Garfield comparison . . . Psycho is as lazy as Garfield is too! A very pamper cat to say the least.

One morning Jane was finishing up a chore from the morning routine before mom and she left for the post office and to drop mom off at McDonald’s for coffee with her many friends. Jane hears mom calling from the kitchen, “Jane, Jane, my cat, my cat, come and get my cat”. Jane enters the kitchen to find mom standing with the door to the basement open and mom pointing down the rickety steps leading into a very dark and dank basement at the bottom. Now Jane has never seen this basement before, and probably at that point didn’t even realize it existed. Mom doesn’t turn on a light for Jane, and she doesn’t know where it is, so using the light from the open door, she sits on the steps and proceeds to go down one step at a time on her bottom end.

When she gets about half way down, the cat, Psycho Rosie, bounds up over Jane, runs into the open kitchen door, and boom, mom slams the door shut leaving Jane sitting in this dank, dark basement. Oh my. Could you imagine, remember Jane is using the light from the open kitchen door to make her way down into this scary basement! Well, Jane being the resourceful gal that she is opens up her cell phone (do you suppose if you make a living as a caregiver you always keep a cell phone on your person?) and uses the light from that to make her way up to the top of the stairs. When she makes it to the top, not wanting to just open it up and scare mom, she knocks on the door and calls “Sally, Sally, would you open the door”?

Well, Sally opens the door. Looks at Jane with a puzzled face and says. . . “Well what are you doing down there”?

The girls then proceed out on their trip to the post office. When they get to the parking lot of the post office, Sally looks at Jane and asked “Did I just lock you in the basement?” and they had a good chuckle over the whole event. Chuckle, heck I about peed my pants when I was told the story! And the great thing is yes, Jane came back to work the next day.

Now, the story continues a few days later. Jane arrives to find Sally trying to find a mouse. Eek, a mouse in the house you say, for real? Well, yes, there is a mouse on the house, because it chooses to run right over Jane’s foot in their search of the kitchen. Poor Jane. Did I mention that she truly is a blessing to us to come and help Sally? Now, I called at that time, and they were telling me about the great mouse hunt. I asked of course about Psycho, isn’t the cat helping chase the mouse? Nope. The fat thing is laying there watching the two of them scamper around for this mouse. Mom says it’s because she doesn’t have claws. Yeah, right. It’s because this is the world most spoilt cat, it get's about 40 square meals a day, why in the world would it bother with a mouse? But okay, it’s her cat. Anyway, Sally and Jane decide they need traps. So off they go to the store, get traps and set them. One at the top of the basement steps, and one trap is set just outside the attic door.

Jane arrives early the next day, as is the routine. Jane and Sally go about their normal routine, and then later check the traps. Well, the one at the top of the basement steps is gone. Sally decides that a mouse has set off the trap which causes it to fall to the bottom of the steps. Of course, you can’t see the bottom of the steps because, remember it’s so dark, and Jane doesn’t know where the light switch is. Anyway, Sally says to Jane, “your going to have to go down there and get that trap. The mouse will start to decay and it will get stinky”.

Jane looks at Sally and says “Well, put on your nose plug, because there is no way in hell your getting me to go into that basement again”!

Can't blame Jane . . . I haven't gone down to look for the trap, and I even know where the light switch is!

Cards For Sale!

I've decided to sell some of my Greeting Cards. You can see them in the folder "ART FOR SALE" at my picture trail http://www.picturetrail.com/my_peace_of_art

All the prices for the cards include shipping and handling too! For those that live outside of USA, please add $1.00

Somerset Studio Gallery - Summer Edition

I have been fortunate to be published again! WoooHoo! This time I have a piece in the Gallery Issue for Summer '07.

http://www.somersetstudio.com/html/gal_summer07.html

The piece I had published in a collage that I sent in for the call of art for "Blue".

This is a 6x6 " collage that was first painte with teal paint, then a layer of red-oxide paint with most of it being rubbed off before it dried. I then altered up German scrap and sequin waste with the same paints I used on the canvas.

The image is a transparency from ARTchix studio. And I got the kewl beads from Top Hat Design Works.

Dale's First Field Trip!

Dale is on his first field trip with Hazel and her class. Today the class is going to Heritage Village and then . . . . the highlight of the trip . . . McDonald's!!! LOL! Heritage Village is a kewl little artsy place by the community collage in Sidney, Michigan. Sigh. I know, I should be there, but it is the first of the month, so that means a few extra jobs need to be done at work, plus it gives Hazel a chance to spend some time with daddy!

The picture today is also another of my Relay For Life cards . . . . This is for Alice.

Relay For Life

Carson City Hospital here in Carson City, Michigan is hosting a Relay For Life (see

http://tinyurl.com/bvubk for more information on Relay For Life). They also will be having a silent auction with the proceeds to benefit the Relay for Life organization. I made a series of greeting cards for the auction. This is one of them. This is my Kelly card. I started to make one card for each person I know that has been diagnosed with cancer. I ended up stopping at 11 cards . . . there are still more names on my list . . . wow. But the good news is that then number of survivors of the disease on my list out number the number of loved ones that passed due to cancer. This is a good thing!

All of the cards made can be viewed at my picture trail http://www.picturetrail.com/my_peace_of_art