Thoughts as the Season Starts

The Season is once again upon us. That time of the year when shops fill with an overabundance of disposable gifts. Trinkets and nick-knacks that will inevitably end up in a drawer, box or bin filled with the “gee, thank you” gifts of past celebrations. I am not saying that all gifts are bad or that the giving of objects is wasteful, but the last thing anyone needs is another automatic match lighter or a clean-o-matic or some such thing.

My Daughter has only recently mastered smiling, the giggle is a work in progress, and she can only sort-of to hold her bottle. Needless to say, holding a pencil and writing a wish list to Santa may be a bit difficult. But, this year will be my daughter's first Christmas and I’m sure that Santa has already added her to his Good list, which means that a stocking must be found and a wish list made.

I have spent quite some time listening to her and her wish list is as follows:

To be greeted with a smile when I wake
To be rocked when I’m sleepy
To be fed when I’m hungry
To get that last burp up
To have a clean bottom
To not spit up on Mommy and Daddy (or Grandma and Grandpa)
To be swaddled and kept warm
To have my tears wiped away
To be comforted when frightened
To get better at peek-a-boo
To have an endless supply of clean binkies
To play in the water (and pretend I’m not taking a bath)
To play with my toys
To hold my bottle with out help
To hold onto Mom's hair
To lick Dad's popsicle
To make bubbles with my spit
To gurgle my R's for as long as I want
To learn to crawl
To listen to beautiful music
To be kissed
To be hugged
To be tickled
To be read to
To be taken for long walks
To be shown the wonder of the world and the vastness of the universe
To be Loved unconditionally

Mother-In-Law Blues

Turkey go BOOOOOM

I’m trying to get ready for my mother-in-law’s visit in a week or so and not doing well. My house is a mess and under construction. My husband informs me that “she’ll want to clean” like it’s no big deal. He doesn’t understand that I’m now staring into the mouth of Hell. I don’t want her cleaning MY HOME. I don’t want her into MY THINGS. I can sense the judgmental comments crashing down on my like a tornado. Did I mention that rick has explained countless times that, “she has no tacked” LOVELY * sarcasm *

Not only will she be in my house, she’ll be staying in my personal space. The extra bed is in my art studio, which is the storage room for everything that’s mine – sewing, paperwork, music CDs, nick-knack collections, computer/printer, and all the various art supplies and projects I putter on. I feel like my privacy is about to be violated and I don’t know what to do.

I KNOW she’s Rick’s Mom, but I’ve only met her twice for like a few hours. To me she is a total stranger and I’m about to have her in my house with my daughter . . . alone. What’s to keep her from snooping in my personal drawers and such?

My Dad offered to totally gut and re-do my bathroom, which is pealing from the humidity, but I don’t see HOW we can get this done and finished before she gets here. I can feel my blood pressure shooting up. I’m tense and seeing stars. Any time now I’m going to loose it. I just know something will get said and I’ll react by taking my daughter to my mothers and not going home for a week. UGLY I’m trying to see if I can take time off, but I really REALLY can’t . . . I think *SIGH*

Oh, she also smokes . . .YA.

I’m not going to get through this well - I know it.

I HATE Thanksgiving . . . oh, how I hate it.

I'm Alive Still

Hello people who read my blog.

I am still alive after opening the shows this last week. They are the Woodbury Invitational featuring 5 artist and an exhibition of photographs about the Amazon. The Invitational runs through Feb. 2o and the Amazonia exhibit till Jan 16. After that it's the UVU student exhibit - which may or may not go over well. It's not supported by the Art department and frankly I don't care. That department is filled with poision people and life is better without them. The Arts at UVU are better with out them. I feel so bad for the students who are getting a crappy education because the faculty can't act like adults.

ANYWAY, after that we will rehang works in the Selections gallery - these are works from the permanent collection and long term loans. Then we will be down for a month while we get a new security system and new lighting grid *CHEER* after that is the Saltgrass prints exhibit for a month followed by Shaolin: Temple of Zen exhibit. It's about 100 photographs about the Monks at the Shaolin Temple in China. I'm please about this one because I did the ground work to bring it in. I do however think the title is a bit funny as Shaolin and Zen are different forms of Buddhist thought *shrug* ah well.

Other than that I'm getting ready for the holidays. I need to take down the Halloween decorations and put up Christmas. And clean my house before my mother in law comes for a week *sigh*. Oh well. Life is good though. Obama won, my daughter sleeps through the night, and i finished two paintings this last week. LIFE IS GOOD.

This Is Halloween

Here she is! Kathryn with her first haul of Halloween candy. She Trick-or-treated 3 blocks and fell asleep on the way home. Life is gooooooooooooooooooood!

Right to complain

Vote. I don't care who you are, but you should vote. I have been an Obama supporter since the beginning so Don't bother throwing Republican falsehoods at me about him. Perhaps the best article I've found that points out the truths about BOTH candidates is this THIS ONE

Got Hope? I do!

All the Thoughts of a Pumpkin

It is only 9 more days to Halloween the BEST day/night of the year. I have no idea what I'll be which is the opposite of my little bug. She has three costumes. Four if you count the onesy with the spider on it. This weekend will be pumpkin carving and such. I'm still trying to decide if she's old enough to trick-or-treat. I know she can't eat solid foods yet - let alone chocolate, but still who am I to deny her the delights of the night!?! Maybe I'll get Rick to come over to the mall and we'll trick-or-treat there and pick up a toy at the build a bear place. Though....... It may be a good excuse to just take a walk with her in the evening before handing out treats. OH oh oh I just thought of a great costume - a Democrat! we look like everyone else *giggle*

I got the most AMAZING package from Becky Weeks yesterday (Thanks Becky). Not only did she move to Texas, get breast cancer, come to Utah for treatment, have a double mastectomy, have various illnesses cuz her immune system is repressed, return to work (you know she's back logged) AND keep working on her novel, but she made me a beautiful scrapbook/photo album.

Incredible!!!

We also got pictures of the bug in frames from her aunt Kimi - who also had cancer and complications over the last few months. CRAZY.

Anyway, here is a new picture of Kathryn in an outfit given to her by Kathryn (my friend).

Kawaiiiiiiiiiiii

Humility means having canned goods and sleeping through the night.

It was fall break this last week. A number of lovely things happened. first is that my little bug slept through the night TWICE. *cheer* This also means that I got good sleep. course this didn't deture me from taking a four hour nap on sunday. The other lovely thing was that I now have a loveseat and a recliner rocker. This brings the 'Needs" to curtains in the front room. Of course there is a huge list that must happen before Thanksgiving when the relatives will be here.

Rick pulled up all my Halloween decorations this weekend from the basement. OH, we picked up pumpkins too. "Freeeeedom, Freemdomm, freedom". Decorating must happen this week and carving pumpkins. I love Halloween! Oh man I've got to pick up toys and candy and get the bags of fun made.

The only thing that was not good about this weekend was church. *makes a face* It was horrible. I've come to the conclusion that the spirit has left the building. Sacrument was loud and useless. I could plug my ears and STILL hear the speaker. Not that she was worth listening to. Her topic was humility, but she rambled on about anything but that and went over time! Apparently you must have food storage to be humble. My husband leaned over and said "so much about my students makes sense now." what he meant is that they don't stay on topic, ramble, and communicate poorly on top of having no sense of time. The ward choir was like listening to dogs in heat and the last speaker was a newly home missionary who went on and on about how great "numbers" are. *roll eyes* I told Rick that I give him less than a year or 2 before real life makes him bitter.

*sigh* I miss being spiritually feed at church. I really think I'm going to become more Buddhist than LDS. I get more out of it.