Coffee Crankiness

I’m finally starting to hear some good news! Yesterday when I called in to see what the status is of my new power chair I was told it's done and in shipping. That means it maybe at Reflection Medical today or the beginning of next week! When I told Rick, my rep there, that I really wanted the chair in time to go to my niece's graduation next weekend, he told me if there was anything left to be assembled when it got there, he'd make sure it was done so I have it in time. SQUEE!!!

I’m really ready to have the new chair to move around the house and get out of the house. I'm starting to get cabin fever and I do notice that is really starting to tax my personality. I mean that I'm crabby. Things seem to bug me and set me off much quicker than they have in the past. For instance…


I scrap project life a little differently than everybody else. I journal a few lines about the day every day and when I scrap it I add photos if I take them or other random things that add to the character of the days. For the past two years I done my pages in quadrants with each day getting a quarter page. This year I’ve changed up a little bit and I'm doing a 2-page spread for each week, putting the journaling bits on one page and assorted supporting visuals in block form on the other page. Here's an example of what the 2-pager looks like:

I don't post my project 365/52 layouts in the forums or anything so I don't keep track of exactly what elements from what kits I'm using. BTW, I also use images from the Internet, which is completely legal under fair use since I'm not profiting from the use of publicly distributed material. But that explains why I don't have credits listed under my week 11 layout. If you scrap and you see anything about that layout that you just HAVE to know where they came from, drop me an email and I'll see if I can get that info for you.


I showed week at 11 as an example but I am caught up all the way to the present. That is, I’m working on scrapping week 19 today. Part of weak 19 was Mothers Day, My comments for Sunday included that the kids asked me to text daddy at work and ask him to bring me home a fat free latte from Starbucks for Cat-Moms Day. It was a wonderful latte that the kids gave me but I didn't take picture of it. So to include an image representation of that wonderful latte on the page for week 19, I did an image search for Starbucks latte. I found myself irritated by, in my crabby brain," idiots who are irritated for the sake of being irritated." No, I don't miss the irony of that statement. But this is my blog and therefore I'm irritated buy things that are REAL.

Starbucks is very good coffee to those who consider it very good coffee. If you don't consider it very good coffee don't buy it and shut up and let people who consider it good coffee enjoy it as good coffee. It is not necessary to create or forward, because you don't have the mind or talent required to form and promote your own opinion, cute little anonymous memes to place yourself in some place of authority to belittle people who have a different opinion than yours. Free trade agreements and corporate decisions to obtain materials and labor from outside of the US make pretty much everything some percentage of not an American product. Nobody is a bad person for choosing a product that they like because the cup is manufactured with materials from outside the country. You are not a good person because you choose to invest your money in other products with portions made in another country.

Also anyone who is so terrified that there might be something in their coffee or anything else that they get at a restaurant has no business ordering anything already made. In America restaurants are required to supply nutritional information and ingredients for food that they serve. You have a choice of asking for it, not giving your business to establishments that don't produce it without asking or not caring about the content of items that you consume. If you choose to consume products with high sodium or lots of sugar, fat or artificial flavoring that is your choice and you are NOT a bad person for making that choice. The only person that you potentially harm with that choice is yourself and that is only a potential harm because every person is different and every body reacts to different things is differently. In moderation or even in excess, you may very well be harming no one at all. If you personally have made the choice to not consume all product you are NOT a better person for attempting to insist that anyone else should be just like you.

Finally, Starbucks is a product sold for profit. If it was overpriced, it would fail. From the consistent lines I've seen when I've been in a Starbucks, it’s not failing. There are many people who like Starbucks coffee who consider it to be very good coffee and not overpriced. Many can afford to drink Starbucks coffee every day and they do. There are people, like me, who consider Starbucks coffee to be very good coffee and something I choose to have as a treat, even a couple of times a week. There is NOTHING wrong with that. If the coffee you prefer is less expensive there's nothing wrong with your taste either. But to criticize Starbucks and belittle their customers for their choice is wrong. It makes you sound either jealous because you'd like to be drinking Starbucks coffee or just a judgmental idiot.

Again I do realize the irony of judgmentally calling out judgmental idiots.


See what I mean about grumpy? I think maybe next weekend on Saturday I should see if I can get Tori and Rina for an hour, carjack the van from David and the three of us can go to Starbucks. hehehe


I know this has a lot to do with being stuck in the house. As we head into all of the major political crap it brings out the absolute ugliest of people. I try to stay away from Facebook, which is rich and political poison, and I try to avoid TV news. I like reading the paper because then I can ignore the political stuff. We're not a country that's politically polarized. We've become a country of selfish individuals, at least the loudest people are selfish individuals. But that includes everybody that forwards “Information” without verification or context. That's also known as gossip and that's been dangerous since the playground. Personally my opinions and my political opinions are not necessarily the same. Oftentimes they are, but when I think of casting a vote or encouraging someone else to I can't think about just me. I'm voting on issues or candidates to represent an entire constituency that I'm part of. What might be perfect for me may have devastating consequences in general if it becomes a law. The political process might be smoother and less violent if people could step out of their own egos long enough to realize that they aren't alone. None of us are.


I’d better stop now before my cyber coffee shop becomes as empty as the Folgers crowd wishes Starbucks was. Have a great day and be kind to everyone - you never know how long they’ve been cooped up!

Happy These and Thats

I need to write a nice blog post, really I do. I’ve actually written a few…papers, we’ll call them papers, they might end up being blog posts at a date in the not far future, but right now they are just papers. I’m dealing with some things right now. I’m not dipping back into depression, I keep a close eye on that, but I’m troubled by a few things and that shows up in my writing. I write to relieve stress until what's at the root of my problem comes out and it seems to have not come out yet, so when I "just write" it hasn't been as "up" as I usually am. I have to be really careful about my journaling for scrapbook pages too!

Today will be one of my snippets and potpourri posts. There have been good and bad things that have inspired a paragraph or a thought that’s worth sharing. Today I’m going to refrain from things that bug me. Let’s see what I have…


In the scrapbooking Nani-world, last night I finished the last folder in November of 2008 and all that’s left is the December folder. That will be my focus for next month because finishing that only folder left with complete 2008! My main area of concentration for the rest of this month will be in 2011, which also starts with November right now. It has only 4 folders, so I may start December with 2 years of the 6 I’m working on with just a few layouts to complete. I might actually be only working on layouts for 2015 by this time next year! David and I were talking about getting some proofreading time set up soon. The greatest challenge for me there is he has to do the proofreading on my computer because I have a ton of fonts he doesn’t have so he can’t open the files on his computer to make changes…and I know there will be corrections to make!


I read an article yesterday called When copy-and-paste ruled America at Smithsonian.com. It’s a 2-page article about the history of scrapbooking. Very cool read. It talks about how print media and the start of scrapbooking was a natural combination, how men and women scrapbooked and why. Mark Twain made the verb scrapbooking popular and marketed his self-adhesive scrapbooks. It was fascinating and it really does show that the very roots of scrapbooks were so much the Smash book idea of today and that digital scrapbooking in the digital age is as natural as those smash-style books were at the dawn of print media for the same reasons. It’s a fun read and it really makes my daily diary-scrapbooks pretty timeless too.

Speaking of those diary scrapbook pages, here is week 44:

I didn’t record the credits as I go on this one, but if there is a paper or element you see that you’d like to know more about, leave a comment or drop me an email and I’ll look it up! I have them all done through last week, week 45, but last week had some not-bloggy stuff.


I've discovered that I'm becoming enamored of the deco owls I've seen so much lately. An Instagram friend keeps showing dishes she's prepared with deco owl salt and pepper shakers in the photos. I've also found so many owl coffee mugs! It started as simple owls like that in scrapbook kits and it just grew on me LOL

I grumble about Christmas marketing completely overshadowing Thanksgiving, but I found this photo that I love!

It was called a vegan turkey when it was shared on Facebook, but if I was having a big enough party I’d definitely make this fruit tray regardless of the meat-eating status of my guests. It is, however, a great way to have the tradition of a Thanksgiving turkey for non-meat eating guests!


David found a bottle of Pumpkin Spice Coffeemate for me yesterday. I know, it’s late in the pumpkin spice season to be getting my first bottle, but every time I’ve been in the grocery store they’ve been out of it! I actually would’ve preferred the smaller bottle but all David saw was the bigger one. I don’t use it in coffee, I use it in oatmeal! That’s what breakfast was this morning. A quarter cup of flavored creamer is just rich enough and just sweet enough to make incredible oatmeal! It’s 8 weight watcher points for the whole bowl of oatmeal but matched with a single point powdered coffee creamer and a free fruit, it’s within my preferred 10 points for breakfast and on a day I awoke to a couple inches of snow outside it was WELL worth it!

I said I was going to try to be positive today so as far as the weather goes let me just say “Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal!!!!”

Holiday Time!

I hope everyone had a great Canada Day yesterday! As a border-baby, born just 5 minutes away from Canada, Canada Day has always been the start of a month of celebration for me ending with my Birthday Festival. When I was a kid the Freedom Festival was a festival in Detroit and Windsor celebrating both Canada Day and Independence Day with carnivals and a huge fireworks display from a boat in the Detroit River. Of course it was an open border and no one ever needed a passport to cross from one side of the festival to the other. It’s not so difficult to get to Canada now, but needing a passport to cross the border is sad. It’s kinda like having to get someone’s permission to see your sister.


Yesterday was also my brother-in-law, Ben’s, birthday. David’s baby brother turned the same age my baby brother will be in September. It’s mean how they keep getting older and force us to stay ahead. ;)

We’re enjoying a holiday weekend starting today since people who work in media don’t get regular holidays. David will be working Saturday. We toyed with thoughts of going out of town for three days but ended up opting for sleeping in this morning. Sleeping in here means we woke up when my third snooze on the alarm went off at 7:20. If you’d have told me that would ever be “sleeping in” when I was 17, I’d have called you crazy!

I sent David out to photograph some local trains while I continue to recover from physical therapy yesterday. I was just stiff yesterday. The therapist I was working with noted that and asked if I was affected by the weather. Well, duh! I always remember that AFTER I say “what is wrong with me today?” I usually ask that question on the cloudy, rainy days or when the humidity is still up after a heavy rain. So today I’m just a little sore and slow, but when I’m sitting I don’t really feel pain, but the mild stretching at home reminds me of the pain. The steroid shot didn’t make the pain go away but it does seem that it helped and it may be time to think about doing it again. I didn’t really notice that the second one was a huge difference at the beginning of the year, although the first one was noticeable, so maybe 2 a year 6 months apart is what I need. I’ll have to give the pain doc a call next week.

Today is the first day of the 27th week of 2014, or the half-way point. I know this well because in my Random 2014 project I keep my notes in weekly files and then sort those files into quarters so I can access them if I need to. I’m a little OCD like that. But one of the plusses of condensing and organizing all of my files is that it takes less time and less scrolling to find things which takes it easier on my hands.

Now, in a 365 day year today is the top of the hill and there have been 182 days of 2014 before today and 182 to go. I’ve been thinking about doing a full 2-page spread for today and starting the rest of the weeks with Thursdays. That OCD sides doesn’t like that at all because it makes the first and second halves of the same year different. But then what do I do with the extra day? Put it in the extra box in Week 52? But what if I want to do a special section for goals for 2015 or a wrap-up of 2014 in that section?

Wednesday is still the first day of the weeks of 2014. I’d confuse myself if I changed it.

Don't Eat That!!

Happy Hump Day! Okay, really it’s gray and dreary hump day in Toledo today, but the key to making it through gray and dreary days is the inner sunshine, right? We had a nice challenge to start the day today, courtesy of our sweet Marco.

Marco turned 11 months old on May 1. It is our sincere hope that he’ll be a year old on June 1. This morning David took out his ONE pill he takes in the morning; yes I’m a little jealous of the “only one” part. He opened the bottle, took out a pill and set it on the couch arm while he closed the bottle. Even I can take a pill out and put the cap back on the bottle in less than a minute. In that brief period of time Marco jumped up on the couch and ate the pill! I was on the phone to the vet in pretty quick order.

The medication, Prilosec, is sometimes prescribed for cats and dogs but not in the amount for an adult human. The vet said we needed to ether give him a capful of hydrogen peroxide right down his throat to induce vomiting or bring him in to the hospital so they could induce vomiting. The medication wasn’t dangerous in a dosage right for his weight, but the pill he ate was about 4 or 5 times more than he’d be prescribed by his vet and we needed to get the medication out of him. (I do kinda wonder what a cat eats that gives them heartburn, but Marco will eat anything that he thinks might be edible.)

David fed him the peroxide and put him on the enclosed porch so we could monitor him and when he did throw up it would be someplace easier to clean and we’d be able to inspect to see if indeed he threw up the pill. It didn’t take long for him to throw up after swallowing the peroxide and he threw up his breakfast and green goo that was the partially dissolved pill.

I wish there was some way to get him to relate unpleasant experiences with eating things that aren’t food. He spent some time at the vet a while back and had to be given medicine and a laxative he didn’t like because he found, and ate, a piece of Styrofoam.


In the word of more pleasant news, last weekend was SEMMantics, the regional Mensa gathering that was responsible for David and me getting together in the first place! This year David was the Carnelli, a word association game, champion and I won the first place award for the cribbage tournament. I play cribbage once a year and always have to relearn the game, but having learned it before I guess I relearn well! On Sunday after nine years of meaning to but never doing it we made it for Mimosas this year. David hadn’t had a mimosa before but I recalled the first time I’d had one. It was in Toronto and I was at Sunday brunch with my parents at the CN Tower’s revolving restaurant. The waitress asked if I’d like a Mimosa when drink orders were being taken. I was 20 years old and we were in Canada; heck yeah I wanted champagne with my orange juice! Alcohol to drink with breakfast is not a common thing for me, but it’s a neat once in a while pretentious start to the day.

Since we were back in my ”old stomping grounds” we met Scotty for lunch and David indulged me with a stop at the Dunkin Donuts where I met all 3 of my closest friends to get a cup of coffee for the road and a couple donuts for us Monday morning.

Monday we had a late lunch/early dinner at Pop’s. I hadn’t seen my dad since Christmas so I was really looking forward to seeing him and Aunt Judy. Pop grilled marinated chicken and pork with zucchini, tomatoes and peppers, some with and some without Italian breadcrumb stuffing. David and I stopped at Sofo on the way out of Toledo to bring Pop a couple of his favorite baguettes and he roasted garlic on the grill to spread on it; SO GOOD!

After dinner we drove to Lansing, because Pop lives so close, and caught our first baseball game of the season. The Lansing Lugnuts beat the Fort Wayne Tin Caps 4-2 in a fairly quick game for David, me and 5 other people. There were more than 7 people in attendance, but on a chilly Monday night in the beginning of the second month of the season it was far from a packed house.

Yesterday was rest and recuperate time for me. The good news about that is as achy as I was by the time Monday night came around after spending three days in my less comfortable and less support manual chair I was less tired and achy than usual! I guess the stretching exercises and once a week therapy is doing more good than it seems like it should. Add to that back on the diet wagon and eating better again and I recover better.

Nani’s Avatar & Siggie at Gotta Pixel

Credits: Defining Me by Aprilisa Designs, coffee mugs from I Love You A Latte by 

Double Dutch Designs, signature challenge template by Aprilisa Designs

I scrapped for the first time since May1. I did my avatar and signature for May at Gotta Pixel, which is where I do most of my challenges during the month and put the squares in place for last week’s Random 2014. The folder on my desktop says “2014: That’s So Random.” It’s essentially a scrapbook diary.

Week 16

Credits: What Happened Today- 2014 by Kitten Scraps, A Work In Progress by Inspired Designs, Cat’s Love by Friendly Scrap, Beautiful On The Inside by Aprilisa Designs, I Love Donuts by Aprilisa Designs, Afternoon Tea by Booklady Designs, Everybody Talks by Wendy Tunison Designs, My Tunes by Simple Girl, word art by TLC Creations, Jelly Beans by Harper Finch, Easter Freebie by cajoline-Scrap designs,

When the year is done and I’m ready to make a cover, I’ll decide what the random title will be!

Now I need to catch up my book reviews with the book I finished while Joey was visiting the Geek Squad and get my cheer-voice ready for the game tonight. Sorry to my Red Sox fan readers, but you know there are two teams you can’t depend on me to give support on your side when Boston faces them; GO REDS!

Interlude

See? I told you before that if I disappear for a few days check out the book listed as “currently reading” in the Good Reads app on the sidebar. I SO owe my cousins who recommended David Baldacci to me. The Innocent was just a fabulous book!

A good book is important when you have to try not to move a lot because you can’t shower and you don’t want to sweat. Okay, okay, the good news is that Monday night at 9:30 PM after 12 days we had running water again! I posted a few weeks of this year’s “So Random 2014” and you’ve seen that I do two pages for the week in quarters which always leaves an extra square for “something;” extra bits relevant to the week. Here is the extra square for this week posted right after the eighth day without water:

Taken For Granted

You don’t realize how dependent you are on water, specifically running water in the house, until you are without it for a week. Dirty dishes piling up, no clean underwear, having to get water brought in for the cats and for coffee or instant soup, toileting needs making the house septic for not being able to flush and hand washing, showering and teeth brushing only getting done when we spend the night at a hotel. Yes, that’s a first world problem, but living in a first world your situation declines faster as the rest of the population outside of your troubled bubble sees you not living up to that society’s expectations of cleanliness and your own psychological expectations, not met, drive you into an insecure place of discomfort.

I had WAY too much time to think about how wonderful running water is.

So now for the rest of this week I’m looking forward to washing dishes, showering when I feel like I want to shower (and not having to go to hotel for that) and folding all the laundry my wonderful husband is going to do. I also have a physical therapy appointment, groceries that I’m going to pick up and a trip to Dunkin Donuts to…to have coffee and a donut. There are many places that are closer to get donuts and coffee but Dunkin’ Donuts is comfort food and after 12 days without water in the house I think I deserve some comfort food.

Now, and I know you’re probably reading this in the morning on Wednesday, but for me writing this it’s very late Tuesday and I am going to enjoy one of those wonderful showers, ahhhhhh, and then head off to dreamland.

Helloooo Saturday!

The coolest thing about all this snow and the bone chilling temperatures is this:

Crocuses, April 2011

This was the first spring for my stripey crocuses and their friends and it was the spring after Snowmageddon, that nasty Ground Hog Day Massacre that ravaged these parts and almost introduced us to language we’ve never heard Jim Cantore use with thunder snow in Chicago. But after Snowmageddon and all the snow that seemed to only quit for a few days and bring more, the spring perennials Kelly and I’d planted in October 2010 were beyond gorgeous! After the incredibly mild winter of 2012, they were just awful but after cooler temperatures and a cold snap at the end, the flowers were strong and pretty again last year. Some were lost in 2012 or eaten by burrowing critters still, their splendor didn’t die and I really hope it means that dealing with all this frozen slop will mean another wonderful spring on the side of our house.

Edna gave me the idea of combatting winter by showing spring on my blog. She had some nice spring nature pics yesterday that just made me feel warm inside. I said I’d post a spring piece of my art. Edna is a great photographer and does wonderful photo art. My art, of course, is my scrapbooking. I did this page in 2011 of my crocuses and daffodils.

I don’t have credits for this one, sorry, but it was finished a few years ago. I thought I might have posted it in one of the scrapbook galleries so I could get the credits, but I didn’t. I think it may have just been random freebie papers from longer ago than that in my stash. I really let the photos and journaling do the talking. I do that often. I tend to not use so many elements on my pages. I like to make a small cluster or two, but the pictures and story are the focus of my pages. That’s not to say that I always journal or never use a lot of elements, just that looking at my work all together, I use fewer elements and journal a lot more than the average digital scrapper.

When I started exclusively digi-scrapping in mid-2007, I actually did my first layouts in 2006 when I did a scrapped photo book for David’s 40th birthday; my hands were already going downhill. I didn’t know it was MS at the time, but my handwriting had been getting worse. I was printing typed captions and cutting them out for my paper books. When I started digital, I typed the whole story of why I scrapped the photos on my page in the gallery descriptions. Someone who’d been digi-scrapping longer than novice me suggested using my stories as part of the layout. And so, the mad journaling scrapper was born! I guess, although I use flower elements sometimes too, I have an attitude of “I got words; I don’t need no stinking flowers.”

While I’m talking about journaling and scrapping, I thought I’d share my week one layout for this year’s “Random 365.”

Page 1

Page 2

Project 365 papers by Kitten Scraps, elements from: Notice Board Mini
by Danish Design; Ice, Ice, Baby by Connie Prince; Project 2013: January
by Connie Prince; Winter Rhapsody Word Art by Jennifer Labre;

I like it. It’s a nice combination of the Journal 366 I did in 2012; the only daily project year I’ve finished, and other things that spark my interest on any given day be they a photo I’ve taken, news, or just a tweet or Facebook status. It’s a nice old-school scrapbook or Smash Book look and I think they’re fun to look at and read. So far they’re a lot of fun to scrap too. If you like the dated papers that I use for some of the days, they were freebies!! I think they are stunning papers for the project and you can get the current day at Kitten Scraps’ blog as a freebie! I’ve only missed one day so far, but that’s what gave me the idea to use the dated pages for some squares and kit pages for others.

Okay, there’s my “spring and scrap” for today! Let me know what you think of the first two Random 365 pages; it’s a FUN project this year! I also hope you enjoyed that bit of floral spring and if you are in the snowed under part of the world, the promise this cold and white stuff gives us for the coming months!