Some People...

I really really want to just vent, but knowing the internet, I don't need anymore drama. So instead, I will share good things. I scrapped! Only one page, but I did it. Gotta start somewhere eh? It's trent's turtle shell. And some glimmer mist, and new webster's pages, primas, a bingo card from my friend Jamie, and graphic 45 ruler strip. It came together fairly well, I had fun doing it, but I am uninspired again.

After that, there hasn't been much in my world. Looking for a job, avoiding the reality of our new situation. Dealing with drama from people who profess NOT to be that kind, but in reality are the epitome of "that kind." I am realizing that I surround myself with people who never grew up, never want to grow up. Maybe it's because I don't want to grow up. I DO, however, expect a certain level of maturity in someone of my age. One day I hope to find people who can match wits with me AND stand by their word. Until then, more dissapointment is on my horizon I am afraid. So I will plug along with one less friend, adding that person to the "acquaintance" column. And I will shed a tear in my beer, wait I won't. Job interview tomorrow for a temp job. here's hoping.

Bad, Bad, Bad, blogger.

I know. I have been busy, but not. Mostly I have been uninspired or inspired at the wrong time to post it. I have done NO scrapping. I bought a bunch of stuff from Blue Moon, then mom and dad came for a visit. So it is still in the box, although thoroughly rifled through. I did, however, make this page for the True xoxo girls blog. You should go. do the challenge. win a prize if you're lucky!

I have, however, been posting photos on facebook. So if you are not my friend already and you are reading this blog, you should become my friend so you can see what I am working on. And I promise to try to get back int he habit of blogging. It's so easy when you do it all the time to keep doing it. But once you stop, you are screwed! this photo I took and LOVED. It's my duck shoes in the permanent swamp that is my front yard. I messed with the saturations a little to get the color I wanted, but I just love the way my flash shimmers and sparkles off the water. Yep, I'm a photo geek.

And one more photo. this is from a few months ago but I don't know if I shared it. It is now framed 8x10 in my living room, along with the boots, the shot of my neck, some new flowers, the coke series posted on facebook under midgets and random shiz, and a few others. Maybe I will take a picture and show that some day. But a tiny frog somehow got on my kitchen window and hopped along and left these SUPER cool prints on the outside. I love it. LOVE it. All time top 10 photos.

Other things of significance in my life... Luke blew out his knee once and for all. We already knew he would need surgery, but it looks as if the time has come. He has been off work several days now and his boss said don't come back till it's fixed. That has left me scrambling for a job. I have appointments with temp agencies monday. Pray for our marriage. With Luke at home, things will be rough for a spell. We've been through rough patches before, but this will rival them. Luke with no income and at home all day is more than he can handle. Guess we will see how the cards fall. I will have to just get some pretty thick skin.

Well, that's it for tonight. See everyone later! Sooner than later I hope!

Happy Monday!

Yep, It is. I got almost no sleep last night, and yet, here I am blogging away! I made this card this morning for the tuesday trigger over at Moxie Fab World. If you are reading MY blog and NOT Moxie Fab, you need to be! So here my take on this past tuesday's trigger...

I used a bunch of Sassafras (my FAVORITE!) Hog Heaven stuff I had left over, Prima flowers and E-line gems/pearls, a Maya Road branch, and a piece of Jenni Bowlin music paper, and some glimmer mist, of course! From the Trigger, I just really loved the candy pink and that's what really stuck with me!

I also decided why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone. So Becky Fleck is having a Sassafrass Nerdy Bird (which I MUST have and have already ordered some of it) contest over at the Page Maps Blog. I liked the sketch, so I molested it and here ya go!



And these are just some random junk jewlery pieces I found at the flea market yesterday! That broach is missing the center, so I figured I would doctor it up! And I found a meat picket! Luke had no idea what it was! So funny! And that heart has a mermaid riding a seahorse! SO COOL!

BONUS post!

It's been a GORGEOUS day. 70 degrees, perfect humidity, not a cloud in the sky. Julia had a friend over last night and I decided after she went home, we needed to take a couple photos. Of course nothing really struck my fancy. But the COOELST things happened today!

1. We found balloons in the woods! Remember when we were kids and our classes would release piles and piles of balloons into the air with our names and addresses on them hoping SOMEONE would find them in like Egypt and send us a letter? Well, we got to be those people today! A kindergarten class in Big Sandy, Texas (about 75 miles away) released these on their 100th day of school! I think I was more excited about it than the kids because they don't do that much anymore. it's TERRIBLE for the environment. Basically it's school sanctioned littering and animals get tangled in the mess or eat the balloons. But it is really cool in theory! So we brought the whole stash of balloons, strings, and tags home. We took this photo of Julia and will send a copy along wih a map of our road and where the balloons were found to the school on monday.

2. The kids found a turtle shell in the woods! We have seen ONE turtle across the street a while back, Luke messed with it a bit. Bit the kids were making "forts" in the woods and ran across this shell. Julia's friend took the green shell off the boney part (grrrrrrr.) but they kept it, so right now it's being held on by Glue Dots! SO cool. OK, score one small one for the south.

3. Julie FINALLY learned to ride her bike consistently! She has been so afraid of falling that she never would even try without Luke holding on. Not only is she now riding, but steering on gravel! She decided she needed to ride up and down our road, which I didn't agree with. Not that it's busy by ANY stretch of the imagination, but the traffic that does make it down here is often oil field equipment. Not a match for a girl on a bike.

4. While I don't have flowers or green grass or anything spring like, we do have these TINY little purple flowers. They are so tiny and delicate and the bees were all over them. So I stopped the car at the end of the driveway when we came home, broke out my camera, and caught this bee. I HATE bees. The end of the driveway is a good place for them.

Well, that's it for this evening. Hopefully something worth blogging about will happen tomorrow! See you then! I think I will try the flea market!

Are there really more than one way to skin a cat?

Crafty I have not been. I pulled out my new CC Earth Love kit I just got in the mail from PC magazine (I won it from their blog!) and cut all the strips and journaling cards apart with the intention of using them. Yeah, that's as far as I got. It's not even 7:30 am on Saturday and the kids have been up for an hour already! Why is it that on week days when they have to go to school, 6:30 seems like the beginning of time. They have such a horrible time getting up. we made bed time earlier (7:30) to help them get more sleep, but the morning still eludes us. So when they have a friend over, they stay up past 11 and are up 5 minutes earlier than the regular school day alarm?

So I am laying in bed and my cats decide its time for Kitty Smackdown. This is a regular occurrence in our house and occassionally includes Napoleon as well. I like watching smackdown, it's entertaining. I do not, however, like smackdown ON ME AT 6:30 AM ON A SATURDAY! Then, one of them calls time out to go take a giant crap in the litter box, which is in my bathroom. YUMMO! End result is scratches all down my arms and a room that smells like pumpkin spice.

Complaints over. I got a ton of photos scanned yesterday from a million years ago. That was fun. I have about 50 more to scan but am going to do many of them collage style because they are all cut up so small. Why did I do that? I ruined pictures by cutting people out of them, cutting them in stupid shapes, cutting them to fit in my magnetic album, which is now in the rubbish. Had a very enlightening chat with Vicki. She is such a kick. Love that girl. I also got to talk to Scott for a bit, which was wonderful. I miss him. I was sooooooo in high school love with him! And he's every bit as awesome now as I thought he was then, probably more. Shana is a lucky woman, hope she knows that.

This weekend is debate national qualifying for the Wind River district of Wyoming. I have my fingers crossed. I have so many kids there that I am still very much attached too (Not not mention my very best friend in the whole wide world) that I am queitly rooting for. I don't know how the standings are after last night. This tourney is different than regular meets. Instead of going to semis (after 4 rounds) and finals based on your record and power of op, you get an "UP" or a "DOWN" every round. Two downs and you are out. So you can be down and out by round 3, making your tourney VERY VERY VERY long while you sit for another day and a half waiting for the rest of the team. It's a very inspiring tourney, very emotional, very intense as both a kid and a coach. I miss debate with every cell in my body. Maybe when the kids hit high school I can coach again. Maybe if I am lucky, I will find a junior team for Julia and she can start in middle school!

Kitty smackdown has relocated to my legs, and now includes only Black and Napoleon. Tan is asleep on the other side of the bed. I have no plans for the day except to wash the supper dishes from last night. Dishwasher is running right now, just need to wash the pans. I made chicken enchilada soup. If you are one of the lucky few to have had it, you know how happy of a night it was last night! If not, just know that right now you should be drooling. Yep, it's that good. Good enough to brave an ulcer for. I was pretty uncomfortable last night, but man was it worth it!

Here is a photo from the WAY back machine. This is from Triangle Lake. Not the camp, the community. It's hard sometimes for people who only know one side of my life to distinguish! My grandparents LIVED there, so I have friends and family FROM there, as well as all my years as a camper. So this is from vacation bible school, I am going to guess in 1987 or 1988. From left to right- Chrissy Mac Farland, Jenny Applegate, Karey Larsen, me, Sarah Goetsch. Then there is a picture of Scott Donaldson and I. Sigh... Aren't we a cute couple? "low" and "kneehigh", those were our camp names. And lastly, this was part of our loyal group. Me, kate Schori, Jason Asher(not always with us), Kyle Phillips, Jennifer Souka, and David Otterman. We ended up together more often than not, insert about 30 others. This photo was intentional mouths full... crazy how we all ended up together all the time! Miss those kids so much! Thank God for Facebook. Moving so much, I lost touch with many of them.

{Insert bitchy rant here}

You know when you have one of those days where NOTHING goes the way you want? Yep, that's today. It's rainy and crappy, which I normally like. I woke up sweating my butt off. Like my sheets were WET, my clothes were WET and sticking to my body. GREAT! I get up, take the kids to the bus (I had to take Brandon's dog to the bus stop with us because he wouldn't go in the house and started chasing the car down the road.) Get home and go back to bed because I am so woosey I cannot stay upright.

Wake up at like noon. Power is out. Awesome. Our power goes out at least 2 or 3 times a month out here. I have never lived somewhere with such unreliable service. Power comes back on. I lay in bed for another half an hour, trying to get up the energy to get up. I let the dogs out to pee. Next, I go into the bathroom to take a shower. Turn the water on to warm up and start brushing my teeth. Power goes back off. Water shuts off. Awesome. cause when you live in the country and have a well, no power means no water and you are thrust back into 1880. Awesome.

I go back and sit on the bed and pet the cats. Power comes back on. I turn the water on and jump in as fast as I can. Carefully washing as fast as I can ONLY one part at a time. I have a gallon of water on the counter just in case. I get through my entire body and get done. I stay in and try to warm up, when the phone rings. Awesome. I am always afraid that if I don't answer the phone, it is going to be the school telling me I need to come get one of the kids or Luke saying he has been in a wreck. So I jump out with my towel and answer the phone. It's a telemarketer. Yep.

I get dressed and decide that I am NOT going to sit down, I am going to shampoo the rug. I have a puppy who still has accidents. His favorite place is in the hallway. So I decide to take care of it today. As I am shampooing, I feel very very weak and end up leaning against the wall to finish. I also clean a 6' section of the living room before I run out of clean water. I stop, drink a big glass of chocolate milk, and sit down. That's the end of my productivity for the day.

Luke is by this time almost home, when he lets me know he is chosing NOT to come hom. Instead, he is going to go to WORK! Yep, he's been gone for 7 weeks for school. I have seen him during 5 weekends during that time. So it's not as bad as it could have been. But still. Really? Beyond that, there is a SLOUGH of bad wrecks all over the parrish. So he already knows he would have a hard time gettign home.

Brandon shows up to get his dog, who has been a terrible pain in my ass all weekend. We sit and visit for almost 2 hours. At this point, my kids should have been home. They normally get home around 3:30. The finally show up at 4:30. They spent an hour and a half on the bus. Awesome. By that time, I had tried calling the transportation department and the school twice with no answer. So happy about that. Brandon leaves with his dog, my carpet shampooer, and my vacuum. he is moving out of his apartment this weekend and has to clean it.

Now Luke is telling me crap about work that isn't really good news. The phone won't stop ringing. Brandon is calling me to whine about the traffic he is stuck in. Luke is texting me complaints about work and his intended route home, which I know from the info I have been given, will not work any better than any other. It's 5:45 and I have nothing taken out for supper, no extra money for supper out, and no patience to cook anything anyway.

The kids are fighting and wrestling and screaming and whining and tattling and throwing toys. I don't have the attitude left to deal with them. This is my blog and I can bitch if I want to. I don't have anyone else to complain to! I have had nothing to eat today. I need to go grocery shopping. My gut hurts all the time with waves of overwhelming nausea in between. I need a break. i need a break from these kids, from being broke all the time, from the stupid crap that seems to happen all the time, from selfish people who swirl all around me. Seriously? I know I am not the most selfless person in the world. But sometimes it just gets to be too much. I am over it. I am shutting down the emotional bank of rachael. So if you want/need something from me in the near future, TOUGH CRAP!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled cheerful crafty rachael.

Royalty coming through...

Ok, so it's wishful thinking. Moxie Fab World is having their stamping royalty contest going on now through March 8th. So I figured what the heck, it's not like I am doing anything else, may as well use of some stuff I have laying around to justify my recent scrappy purchases. I also did the Tuesday Trigger for this week. I will probably be adding more cards later this week, so keep watching!
CTMH stamps and ink, AC green alphas and ribbon, MLS sticker alphas, GCD pp, CI black die cut paper, BG pink paper, green smooch paint.

Cosmo Cricket boyfriend paper, CI die cut black paper, Maya road chip girl (cut out of paper and the negative image used as a mask)and acrylic wings, Glimmer Mist, MLS alpha stickers, MM rubon alphas, prima flowers and pearl, AC black ribbon, MME skull, white ribbon from packaging!

Oh Oh Oh. I also did my DT layout for XOXO girls for next month and I am in LOVE. I used some of the new CI wood veneer. SO excited about that stuff. There may be a tutorial coming soon on it. I found some fun stuff to do already! Wishing I would have bought some more! Plus it has a self portrait which i LOVE! I manipulated it a bit and am SO happy with the results. I can't wait to share it.

More cards soon!