Chronicles of Nani - Bits & Bytes

If there are disabled people who have nothing to do except sit around the house watch TV and if they're lucky someone will leave them bonbons to eat, I must be doing something wrong.

Okay, I was forced into early retirement because of MS and as a recovering workaholic, I'm not even sure I would have actually retired. I just spent a week with my dad, also someone who sucks at being retired. He limps badly, it hurts me to watch, but it's moving that keeps him feeling okay. Aside from being wonderful company and conversation for me he was also an incredible cook every day he was here, cleared the weeds out of my wheelchair ramp area, washed a huge backlog of dirty dishes, scrubbed the stove surface and repaired the broken trimwork that keeps the bathroom door closed. He also made a few trips to different hardware stores to get all of the pieces necessary to fix our broken mailbox. THAT'S how I wanted to retire someday. And probably still do a YouTube show about some thing because I really couldn't stop working.

But well my husband seem to have had a miserable week because he couldn't spend it all completely away as originally planned, I actually had a nice week of vacation. But then also left me with a HUGE list of things that I need to do including record and get the show ready to premier.

This week’s show is all about what you put together when you have about 10 minutes to figure out what you're going to do in two days to record and put together the entire thing. I think I'm still pretty good at what I did before I was forced to retire early.

(Of course thanks to MS, it took lots of caffeine to get it done and about a three hour nap when it was finished.)

The Chronicles of Nani - Creative Inspiration

Here's this weeks new vlog. It's a little artsier and a little more opinionated. Enjoy?

So much going on

credits: Wintergreen by Mags Graphics and Winter Magic 

by Aprilisa Designs, Challenge word art by 

Kristmess, snowman paintings Fair Use from the Internet

Too much going on too? I have two big problems that I'm working on. I am proud to say that I actually am working on both of them. More on that in a minute…

Don't you just love the scrapbook page that started off my blog? I say that with all kinds of pride and I'm not sorry for stroking my own ego. I made that (No I didn't draw the pictures, I can't draw, but I did put it out to gather into a scrapbook page) and I’m very happy with how it turned out. The line referring to children making snowmen as “outdoor Michelangelos making Davids” is one I came up with many years ago and my husband David said it was too much to use on Christmas card. So I knew that eventually I wanted to use it for a scrapbook page and put that single line on a word document and then switched it to a pages document when I changed back to Mac. That's how long I was holding onto that line until I had time to create a scrapbook page I thought was worthy of it. I am VERY proud of that page.


All of my gifts and gift wrap are here and ready for me to put together, or anyway, ask David and/or my aides to put together for me.

To add to my pre-holiday excitement, I just found out that my niece, Rina, will be at my dad’s on Christmas Day after all! Originally, a first year assistant manager, of course has the short straw when it came to getting a holiday off and although she isn't working on Christmas was originally scheduled for Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas leaving no way she was going to drive all the way up to Michigan for Christmas day to turn around four hours later and go back to Indianapolis. As it works out she was able to get the schedule manipulated so that she can be in Michigan for the Christmas Eve feast at my cousin’s and for Christmas morning at Pop’s. I'm sure she feels great about it for her, but I will admit wholeheartedly that I personally feel blessed. I'm not so mobile and therefore not able to see my nieces anymore than once or twice a year now. Good thing at over 50 I'm still well-versed in the way 20-somethings communicate.

All I really need now is to get my wool cape dry cleaned and either spend a night driving around looking at Christmas lights or finding a night that's not quite so cold to go to the zoo and see The Lights Before Christmas. If that can't happen I'll settle for making some space for my little 2 foot tree.

The Lights Before Christmas at the Toledo zoo, 2011

Now back to my two problems. First problem, as I'm going backwards in years, is my hands. First let me describe what MS hands are like. My description of what my untreated hands feel like is imagine that your hands are twice the size that they are, almost like there's a second skin that's blown up over top of your regular hands and inside that second skin it's packed full of tiny buzzing insects and day and night that's all you feel is swollen hands stiffened by the fact that they're packed with these buzzing insects. I've tried so many different kinds of prescribed drugs and dry skin lotions so that I could use my hands, grab more things without dropping them and even type. Frustratingly, nothing was working, one of the drugs even made me sleep so soundly that I’d wake up not knowing what time of day it was and sometimes not even knowing where I was. As a thinker and a control freak THAT was not acceptable!

But now, I've become part of the cannabis generation! I have not taken up smoking or seriously doing drugs. But I use CBD ointment, which is basically the healing part of marijuana without the THC that makes you high (and gives you the munchies which I really don't need right now.) I use a combination of serum and the lotion. And I've been experimenting now with a 3X lotion that I can really feel when I put it on and it starts clearing up my hands right away. The 3X unfortunately stands for triple strength and triple price. But if it works and I can actually feel things and use my fingers to type or at least fix errors that using speech to text makes, might make it worth swallowing the extra cost.

Then there's the other problem that I'm fixing. I'm actually talking with a therapist again to help me sort out the fact that I have a huge list of priorities that's so overwhelming I can't prioritize all the priorities. I've worked with a therapist and psychologist before and as I've said in the past they are the most wonderful people in the world. I think the number one thing is that you have to be open to allowing them to help you and you have to accept that helping you is not doing it for you but it's helping you find it in yourself to do it for yourself. I'm not gonna say that it's difficult or that it's easy, that it's quick or takes forever. That depends on what the problems are that you are brave enough to tackle and strong enough to realize that you can't do it alone. So far I'm already starting to feel somewhat at ease as the professional I'm talking with is already helping me break up my priority list so I can tackle things one thing at a time.

OK now is the time where I mention again that while Rina is the dedicated retail manager moving her way up, just like her great grandmother did, her twin sister, Tori, is a psychologist in Indianapolis. To say that I am incredibly proud of MY millennials is truly an understatement.

Christmas last year

So that's me checking in for now. With a little more control over my hands I should be able to blog a little more. But realistically, I don't think the next blog will be from me because after reading JDs fill ins Marco has been bugging me that it's his turn. But I think I've got some Christmas pictures and maybe even Christmas music to share this weekend.

Please keep me or add me to your reading list. The positive comments really do keep me going.

Now I need to take a break so I can do some reading and commenting myself!

Finding Holiday Spirit With Candy

This is my signature GingerScraps for this month:

A couple of nights ago, after not having been hungry for dinner finally feeling hungry at 2 o'clock in the morning I decided, to go through my jar of candy and see if there was anything that sounded good to replace dinner.

Now of course, I'm a Chocovore. Okay that's the term that was created by Krave cereal when it came out to promote that it has real chocolate inside of it. I decided to adopt that as the reality of my style of eating because chocoholic makes it sound like it's a problem. I'm a very proud Chocovore!

If you've read some of my recent blogs, you know that November was pretty much a crappy month for me. I mean seriously, MS makes things heal slower than normal. So I have to deal with the opioid paranoid government saying I can't have painkillers for more than a month because broken feet should be healed by then, regardless of what my doctor says when she knows that because of my disease it will take two or three months for my feet to truly heal. So there's the general me angry with the government because someone who's actually in pain isn't allowed to have painkillers. So getting around that my CNP (my doctor is a certified nurse practitioner) increased my tramadol at least for the next couple months from the five a month, which is actually that I take three and have 2 that I can use if needed, and increased it to the maximum dosage of eight a day to take 2 every six hours. Now that the pesky government is out-of-the-way , so the ever so brilliant health insurance steps in and says I can't have that many tramadol right now because I've already been given enough tramadol to have 8 day. That doesn't really work because I used PillPack pharmacy and the tramadol isn't in a bottle but it's in separate packs over the course of the day. So I've had to rip apart a week’s worth of pills to steal the tramadol to and the right amount to packets that already have it in it and when the insurance company is okay with them sending me a bottle of extra tramadol to last until the end of the month I'm going to have to figure out how to reassemble the packs I've had to tear apart.

So right now my bad mood can be attributed to the government that doesn't allow people in pain who really need painkillers to have them while there are emails that come in all the time letting addicts find it whenever they want it. The insurance company who has my brain that's already jumbled from all of the painkillers I took last month having to organize how to disassemble my perfectly assembled pills they come in every month. (at least PillPack was allowed to ship the extra tramadol on Friday so I might have it by Monday which should probably only screwup a weeks worth of prepackaged pills.) I'm also angry because MS has got my feet so screwed up that I can't even place them on the floor trying to adjust myself in the recliner without a great deal of pain. Also my feet are still swollen and bruised. I have aides who come in 4 or 5 hours while David is at work. But David does work at least a good 8 hours plus lunch and drive time and if he is at an early meeting he somehow never gets to come home early when he starts early.

Now the last couple nights he's been at the casino in a poker tournament. I'm not really complaining when he is it doing successfully playing poker, but the more successful he is at playing poker more time I'm sitting at home alone and in pain. When it comes right down to it December started with me still as miserable as I was since the sixth of November when I fell broke bones in both my feet. I also bruised and cramped one knee and knocked one of the bulging discs in my back the back so that I've been receiving sciatic nerve problems every time I move back. I'm still in pain from all of that stuff because MS listens to the government and the insurance company and laughs at them hysterically.

What the king brought his broken little princess

So now the piece of candy and how it changed my holiday mood for the better… I hope at least for the rest of the month. I pulled out of the candy jar a couple of nights ago because I wasn't hungry at dinner and got hungry ate about 2 AM. I pulled out a couple of Mr. Goodbar miniatures because Mr. Goodbar has been my favorite candy since I was a child and I figured my inner child could use the chocolate comfort food. I also pulled out of couple of Tootsie Rolls, because I just like Tootsie Rolls. But I found one of the two Pocket Coffees left that my dad brought when he stopped over on his way home from doing a construction project with my brother over the weekend. After a hug and a kiss that I desperately needed, he brought lunch that we shared and he brought me chocolate including Pocket Coffee, which is one of my favorite candies as an adult. I set the Pocket Coffee on the armrest of the recliner while I ate the two mini Mr. Goodbars and I began to cry. No matter what and no matter how bad things are, I can still say without a doubt, that I am loved. I think I needed reassurance of that lately. My dad made a point of stopping to comfort his little princess. I think the candy made me cry because it reminded me that I really am still his little princess I needed to remember that. No matter how lonely I may feels sometimes, there are still plenty of people who love me. I am not alone. I am loved.(Just a little bit of a pain in the foot right now)

I collected a bunch of pictures from Christmases in the past and used Aprilisa's Winter Magic kit and created trhe signature, that included one of the photographs I took of that precious Pocket Coffee. I created the signature that made be happy, that made me smile.

Nani At 50 (for a few more weeks)

I said I was going to expound on the Nani at 50 pages. When I turned 50 I decided to create a logo and during my 50th year, technically it's during my 51st year, but before I turn 51 I would do a few pages documenting what my world was like when I was 50 years old.

Here are few of the pages I've done.

The last page in this set, which I'll do later this month, we'll be “New things since turning 50.”

Mood Boards

This is my new project this year. I've seen them on Pinterest and I've seen them used for the inspiration challenge at Ginger Scraps. I think they are pretty cool to look at on their own too.

Mood Boards are used for many things. They can be digital, done by hand or even done on the corkboard. Grouping things by color can inspire decorating or clothing. A board showing rooms painted in shades on a paint sample with other items can be used to help clients make paint and trim choices in new construction and marketing departments create them to brainstorm

They can also be visual aids for teaching, or an interactive project.

Mood Boards can have a therapeutic use or they can just be an outlet for expression.

It can be a photography display or just pleasant wall decor in an office.

There really are no rules, which is why I'm attracted to them.

This year I plan to scrap at least 2 each month. I haven't decided if the mood boards will be part of my regular scrapbooks or if I'll add them as pages in my annual scrapped diary, aka project 365. Maybe I'll decide they aren't worth printing and I'll just put the images in my personal journal. If a great-grand niece or nephew reads them after I'm gone and sells it, they can use them when they decorate the sets for my homes or offices for the movie. I've been told I write colorful stories and I'm only 50, I still have a good 40+ years to do something movie-worthy!

One oh my Januarys

Credits: #2017 January mini kit by Connie Prince, photos from web; fair use

I did 2 in January. One was fun and encouraging, the other was depressing but a little therapeutic. I think the depressing issue may need to be another art journal. Perhaps for therapeutic use, a board is good for things that just bug me a little. The mood boards are kinda fun so far.

Projects and Goals

Yes, I'm getting off to a slow start this year. But a slow start is better than no start, right? I did some rethinking and re-organizing of my projects and goals this year. Some of them are very similar to the projects that have always been and somethings have been dropped or are new. Without further ado, here are my planned goals and projects for 2017.


Health and Wellness

I'm returning to counting food points. Planned full time on February 1. I have a food app on my phone and tablet that figures points like the old Weight Watchers system. When they changed to the new point system, I dropped my membership. Doing the Simply Healthy program for 2 weeks, then the regular points for 2 weeks worked well for me. However, I noticed the system they switched to increased the points for sugars and starches and other things that seemed like it was steering more toward weight loss/maintenance to ward off diabetes. That's fine, my mom was a Type 2 diabetic and weight, carbohydrate consumption and/or genetics contribute to that disease which has become more commonly diagnosed. With the many things wrong with me, my blood sugar is one of the things that has always been consistently spot-on. I'm sticking with the program that works for me, as long as I'm doing well, rather than changing how I nourish myself to treat something I don't have.


In the next couple of weeks parts will be here to repair the lift recliner that I spend most of my time in. That time includes using a board across the arm rests as a table to use the computer. Right now I can't sit straight up in it which makes working on the computer painful after a while. That makes scrapbooking and blogging difficult. I'm behind where I want to be with both this month. When the repair is done I'll be physically and mentally in much better shape to have my creative mojo. With my creative abilities working go I'll be able to blog more often and scrapbook more often


I'll be getting together with my doctor this week to get physical therapy started. The object is to concentrate on my legs to strengthen my hips. It's not going to mean I'll walk again, but it may mean some increased movement and I can exercise again. My big goal with exercises to strengthen my legs is really to just be able to hold the grab bar in the bathroom and just stand for a couple of minutes.


Scrapbooking

I'm sticking with the page-a-day goal. I haven't reached that goal the last two years, but I'm still on track to finish all of my scrapbooks by the end of the year! My idea of doing the current month for all the years I had to catch up worked well. I finished 2008 last year. I only have December for 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2016, 2010 has been done for a while and the rest of the years start in October or November.

I'm proud to say that by doing Project 365 as a diary-style scrapbook, focusing on brief journaling every day, has been a success! I've finished every year since 2014. As for the scrapped pages for 2017, I just finished week 3, so I'm still holding strong this year. Truthfully, I really enjoy the daily and weekly expression and it makes it easy to keep up.

I'm also planning to do a few mood boards each month. I'll post a blog about what mood boards are and what they do in a few days. They fill so many purposes and several areas that I think have potential to be very constructive for me. I'm not exactly sure how I'll organize this project yet, but I have done two of them so far.


Reading

Last year I had a personal goal of being more aware of current events and national and world news. I overdid it. The world outside of my backyard is ugly and it's getting worse. Personally the worst part is that I believe we are one of the bad guys. It makes me sad and afraid. This year I'm going to try to stay more uninformed. It's safer for me emotionally; I want to smile again.

I didn't read anywhere near enough books last year. Part of it was from reading too much news, but part of it was not getting out enough. I do a lot of reading while waiting. I read while waiting for the bus or waiting for the doctor. I also read a lot when I go out for lunch on my own. The new wheelchair doesn't fit under most restaurant tables so I tend to stay home. I may consider more out for coffee options once the weather is more conducive for me to be out more.

I access both my Nook and Kindle libraries with my iPad. I have 16 books downloaded on the Kindle app and 11 on the Nook for a total of 27 books. I want to read at least half of them this year. That and at least trying to read less news is my reading goal.


Finances

I really hope to find a customer service job to earn enough to pay for those aides. Insurance doesn't cover home help and it's not really an option because there are just too many essential things, getting cleaned, dressed, housekeeping that I can't do without help. Right now I'm okay, but in a year my retirement savings will be gone. If I can pay my aides, regular monthly bills and medical copays so I can leave what's left of my investments alone, that would be great. I don't know if there's an honest work from home job that pays that much or if my MS compromised nervous system has the energy to do it, but I really do have to try. Vocational rehabilitation says they can help because MS is a recognized disability. I just need a letter from my doctor saying what kind of work I can do and how many hours a week I can work. Maybe I still have some Type-A magic left in my tank!

With a heavy and anxious optimism fighting hard to keep me afloat, as always

this, or something better.

The Creative Process

I've been doing my Project 365 as a scrapbooked diary for a few years now. I do the layouts with the daily journal entries and an assortment of photos, clip art, memes, cartoons and scrapbook elements. NFL playoff scores in early 2015 was the first appearance of the character I knew in my mind as "the Foxborough Fox." The fox was included three times in 2015 by the Pats' post season scores finishing sitting on a football near a “We’re #1” banner and the Super Bowl score.

As the Patriots started into the playoffs last January the Fox was back with the Patriots scores. I decided to have some fun with New England promotional items from the web. In one of those 2016 playoff results pics he's holding a Tom Brady doll and his name changed and his identity formed. He became Brady the Patriots fan and the image of a boy under ten years old. Giving him a personality gave me direction for molding him to be more than just a logo element. The Foxborough Fox was the same expression holding a Patriots sign. Brady is a superfan with all of his football fan stuff and the exuberance and team loyalty of a child.

I'll make a note of a couple things at this point. First off I'm creative and artistic but a different kind of creative and artistic than someone who sets pencil to paper and draws cute animals. My dad would always draw horses when I was a kid. It was just something he doodled. Every time I tried to draw a horse it looked like a dinosaur. I've been doing creative things for a half a century now and if I i try to draw a horse it still looks like a dinosaur… like a five-year-old trying to draw a horse, dinosaur. But I do well manipulating images. The Foxborough Fox is an element from a kit called Falling 4 U by Keystone Scraps.

The other thing is that I absolutely adore is watching young kids at sporting events and the unconditional love and loyalty they have for their favorite teams and players. So it's not a surprise that I would find an element that I really like and start manipulating that to turn it into it the character of an eight-year-old boy.

As this your started, I made the conscious decision to follow my #2 sport more closely and was therefore, even as the baseball season was ending, making a point of paying attention to MY favorite two teams. Brady was going to present both the Patriots and Lions scores every week. I started thinking, or may be overthinking but that's what I do, that Brady needed a buddy to watch football with and maybe it would be a good idea if his buddy was a Lions fan. So the search for Brady's best friend began. I found Brady’s BFF in At The Zoo by Mags Graphics.

As the season went on the characters developed, their friendship developed and the entire story of Brady and Ford formed and is still forming. For me it's just fun. “Knowing” the story of the week adds to creating the scrapbook vignette.

Brady and Ford are eight-year-olds in Toledo. They are 3rd graders in the Toledo Public School system. They live in the same neighborhood, just a few houses apart and are best friends.

Brady is an only child. His parents were originally from New England and they moved to Toledo when Brady's mom had a great job offer. Brady's whole family are Patriots fans and they get the NFL Sunday Ticket so they can see the Patriots games every week. Ford and Brady watch football games together at one of their houses. They often go to Ford’s house for the Lions games and Brady's house for the Patriots games.

Ford's dad works in Michigan and his mom works part time but she’s home in the afternoon when Ford gets home from school. The boys spend weekday afternoons at Ford's house. Ford has a big brother in college and a high school senior sister but, "she doesn't like football so she doesn't matter anyway."

That's pretty much the whole story right now. It grows as it needs to for the single frame cartoons with the football scores. David helped me develop Ford's family with Ford being his parents pleasant surprise baby. This came from a discussion that we had because he was surprised that my characters went to Toledo Public Schools. But they had to go to TPS because it was snowing on the Sunday that the network decided they weren't going to show the Lions game. I needed a reason for a snow sculpture. LOL

Week 16 was great fun for Brady who watched the game with his cousins when they were back East for the holidays.

It was a little rougher for Ford. No school meant he got to stay up to watch Monday Night Football but the Lions lost.

The creative process can be a never ending source of imagination and fun!

Flowers, Flowers, Freebies

Aren't they beautiful? David stopped to pick up a few grocery items, including a special holiday traditional treat for me, on the way home Friday. When he came in he presented me with a bouquet of bright Christmas-colored flowers! He hasn't brought me flowers in the long time. I hadn't been feeling like a Neil Diamond song or anything, but they sure make me smile every time I look at them!

Getting flowers is a nice introduction to me giving flowers to all of my digital scrapbooking friends! I might have mentioned when I released Christmas Cocoa for Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies on December 1 that I thought it needed flowers and maybe something else.

Here are the flowers and a few leaves to add to this month's freebie kit!

Christmas Cocoa Flowers

Click on preview to download at MediaFire

The Christmas Cocoa kit is here,

 I hope you enjoy Christmas Cocoa. Stay tuned! I may yet have something else to add to this kit.

Christmas Cocoa

Welcome to the 2016 Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies!

If you are a visitor from the Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies blog, welcome! If you are a regular reader here who will enjoy some fabulous Christmas scrapbooking freebies, by all means click that logo to check out the great holiday gifts! Regardless of how you got here, if you download my mini kit, enjoy!

Here is the palette I used for this year's kit.

Without further ado, here is Christmas Cocoa!

Click image to download at Mediafire


This kit is customizable. If you saw the sample layout yesterday, the hot Chocolate mugs work as coffee mugs too. The mugs, steam, marshmallows and whipped cream topping are separate elements, so you can dress up your warm beverage the way that best accents your photos and journaling. It is a mini kit, so visit back! I do think it could use a couple flowers, maybe an alpha or something too. :)

For many of us, we NEED the holiday season to save 2016. I hope all the great scrapbooking freebies are a good inspiration to send the year out with a loving surge.


But wait, there's more! Make sure you pick up the add-on flowers here!

Kicking Off The Holidays

The holiday season has officially kicked off. We went to Michigan the Sunday before Thanksgiving to have our Thanksgiving dinner would Pop and Aunt Judy. Thursday was a Play football day at home with David. Thursday night I started my Christmas holiday shopping. Even for a homebody who does most of my shopping online, Black Friday sales were abundant.

Today I watched Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer while David was at work, making the Christmas season official for my inner child. David is not a Rudolf fan at all, so Rudolph, however necessary, is a solo event for me.

The other thing that I did today was this scrapbook page:

Credits: Christmas Cocoa buy Digitalegacies Designs

He1he… my fellow scrappers can sleep on that. Christmas Cocoa Will be released tomorrow morning as my contribution to Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies this year!

More in the morning…

Checking In

There has been so, so, so much going on! Don't worry, I am NOT “hanging in the balance" or anything like that, but I can say that I much prefer going to the local hospital during the day when the good coffee bar is open. There're a few things coming up in my too many doctors world that should make the future much more bright. In the meantime I'll be using the last month of the year to really plan for getting my act together next year. I just have to remember “baby steps."

I will, or won’t, share more details about hospitals later. The only thing I'll say now about hospitals is ladies, make sure you get your mammograms! Do it for yourself. Do it for the people who love you. And for those of us older ladies, yeah, every year. This is why the quality of the coffee at the hospital you choose is so important. After a mammogram I've EARNED a real latte and one of the BEST banana muffins in the world!

I'm getting ready to start work on my Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies gift for this year. I'm not totally sure what it will be yet but it will be available here on December 1.

In the meantime, I stumbled upon a set of templates in my hard drive. These were in my Scrap Bird Store in 2009. It took me a minute to remember to them! It's a simple set of templates that is now on my MediaFire Account to share!

click on image to go to MediaFire

I hope you enjoy the templates. I'll be back soon!

Hello Blogland!!!!!

My signature for July at GingerScraps

Long time no see, right? I got my new wheelchair just a little after Memorial Day. If anyone wants to grouch along with me, that’s just over a year after I was originally measured and an order put together for a new chair. But I have the new chair. Now I’m about the task of relearning how to have an actual life. That’s kept me busy and tired every day.

My phrase for the beginning of my 50th year is “baby steps.” My friend and former coworker, Mary, put that gentle and valuable bit of coaching in my head when we worked together. You don’t reach goals if you can’t appreciate the little victories. At that time it was just her telling us to take it easy if we felt frustration at work, but now when I sarcastically cheer myself because I made my own salad, I hear her voice in my mind and, with a smile, I do recognize the little victories. I might not walk, but I’m gonna rock that chair and what are the little victories now will be everyday no big deals.

Hey, yeah, 50th year. Nanifest L starts next Friday! My fiftieth birthday is on a Friday, so the festival is on weekend rules; if my birthday is on a Friday,Saturday or Sunday, the festival runs from 5:00pm the Friday before until midnight the Sunday after, two weeks and three weekends. I think I probably would have extended 50 for the extra week anyway. More about the festival coming very soon!

Before I sign off, I’ll share the scrap-page I did for last year when the van we call “The Blue Meanie” came home. Right now it means David and I can go places to photograph trains, see baseball games or even visit my dad in the Motherland!

Credits: Off Roadin’ by Little Rad Trio, template by Digitalegacies Designs

Of course “template by Digitalegacies Designs” means a freebie! Call it my reopening of my cyber coffee shop gift. Click on the preview to download the template at Mediafire.

Thanks for visiting again!!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/a5fbz0i5z8h1f7v/digitalegacies_July16Template.zip

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!

A Few Spring Things

Happy Opening Day! Like the parties on Christmas Eve have increased over the years, there were 3 Opening Day Eve parties. I watched bits of the first one, because my aide was in and yesterday was salon-day (hair-wash and pamper,) and all of the last two. Opening Day is today, not because I’m a Reds fan, but because the oldest professional team in baseball has always played at home on Opening Day. Baseball resuming in Cincinnati has always marked the beginning of the new season.

I still want to one day get to Cincinnati for Opening Day, parade and everything. I’ve been to OD for the Tigers as both a paying fan, intern and paid staff. No matter in what capacity, there is nothing that compares to the electric feeling in the air on Opening Day. As huge as it is in Tiger-town, you can feel the city-wide buzz is even more powerful in Cincinnati watching it on TV. I’d hope that the Joey Votto jersey and wheelchair could get me to the front of the parade line, or at least a free drink. **smiles**

When Melinda, my aide a few days a week, was here on Saturday it was snowing. It was enough snow that at times it looked pretty heavy and it did stick to the ground. It was April 2, so where did that prank come from? Its been a rough spring for me with no actual usable wheelchair, I’ve been a house-body, so I pretty much missed the crocuses this year except for one photo David took when they first came up and a glimpse of the end of them and beginning of the daffodil buds when I went to the doctor’s office a couple weeks ago. Melinda came right back in after she left and brought me one of the narcissus blooms. It didn’t get knocked off, she picked it. “So you get to enjoy at least one of them.” It made my day.

The snow we got on Saturday was melted away pretty quickly yesterday morning. Even though it was still a cold day, it started out sunny. We have nothing to complain about. I read on Edna's blog  that they woke up to a lot more snow from overnight in New England yesterday. She had some nice snow pictures and in spite of the snow, she offered a very bright and warm quick page freebie. By golly, it’s spring! I followed her lead and rebelled against the chill with this:

Credits: 2016 quick page 15 by Miss Edna, Open Windows by Mandy King and Connie Prince

I added a bit of my slightly sarcastic sense of humor, I remembered the ads from my childhood that “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” It seems she pranks us enough. I don’t need no stinkin’ real butter…

Funny memories… Marco was being nosey about my toothbrushing stuff and it brought to mind an old lesson about why they don’t sell cat-toothbrushes.

Nani and Ritchie ages 17 & 1

When I was 17, I had a cat, Ritchie. Ritchie was all black except for a few white hairs on his chest and he was incredibly affectionate, although dumb as a box of rocks. On one given day, 17-year-old Nani was dumber than that box of rocks. I was playing with Ritchie, nuzzling his face, and he had incredible fish-breath! I figured it was a good idea to brush his teeth. I got an old toothbrush and put a little toothpaste on it. I never got to brush his teeth. As soon as the toothpaste hit his tongue he freaked. He ran through the house with the foam that the tooth paste instantly created trailing behind him leaving a frothy white map to exactly where he was. Where he it eventually ended up was his water bowl and I don't think I’ve ever seen a cat drink so much water!

Leave cat dental procedures to the professionals!

Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies 2015

Welcome to this year’s Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies blog train! This year’s freebie from Digitalegacies Designs is a mini kit called Christmas Confetti. I used a classic Christmas palette and a few elements that include a couple of my favorites, I love journal cards and coffee cups, with tress and confetti spill to coordinate with the printed papers. I hope you can use it for a layout of as part of your scrapping stash!

Click the preview to download at MediaFire

Be sure to visit the Christmas Around The World home page to see all the free gifts previewed and links to those designers’ pages to download.

Thanks for stopping by. Merry Christmas!