You're WEIRD

One thing that happened at the doctor's office is kind of rumbling around in my head.

I like to watch Bella playing and interacting with new children (or ANY children for that matter) to see how she handles herself. Kids who enter daycare at an early age seem to develop social survivor skills (or just take on the role of victim and let life steamroll them). I think it may give them a bit of an edge socially. But since Bella has never BEEN in daycare, each social situation is completely new territory for her. We spent, off an on, about an hour in a waiting room that was divided off into areas for kids and adults. The adults' area had grownup size chairs and the kids section was sort of a mosh-pit area with all sorts of hard plastic toys, trucks, books, etc.

Well, as I am sitting there watching over Bella and Mia as they crawl around, play, and interact with the other children, Bella tries to tell a little boy something. She is trying to convince him to share the truck he is playing with. She was being a bit bossy but mostly polite so I just sat back and watched things unfold.

Instead of acknowledging what Bella was saying, the boy held on to the truck with a deathgrip and looked at Bella. Then he said, "you're weird." She looked kind of confused and tried to again explain to him that he need to share. THEN HE SAID IT AGAIN, a little more boldly. I'm guessing that the first time he said it, he was repeating something he'd heard, sort of trying it on for size and wanting to see what would happen. Then he was emboldened because he decided it felt good to say and he liked the response he got. ( little creep!)

So then, as I am watching this little saga unfold, in addition to the look of apprehension on Bella's face and in her body language, this look of hurt passes over her face as what he'd said sunk in. She looked at him again, and that up at me and said in a small hurt voice, "Mama, he said I weird."

OKAY....for years I've worked out in my head just how I might respond to different situations and help my children build self esteem and respect for others.....all the time, trying to be ready and on my toes for JUST such a situation. Here is a bright three year old with an extensive vocabulary and fairly good social skills and self-confidence. And now she is filled with self doubt. So how did I respond?

Inwardly, With Panic.

I outwardly remained calm and told her with a shrug, "People just say that. It doesn't mean anything." Now, okay, if the boys mother hadn't been within earshot, I probably would have explained to her how stupid and mean he was being because he didn't want to share. But trying to maintain some decorum, I tried to only speak to the part that affected her. She looked at me for a minute, kind of unsure. Then she looked back at the boy. I suggested that he didn't want to share and that she should probably find another toy to play with. So she got up and looked around for another truck.

But I'm wondering....has the damage already been done? Are the seeds of self doubt already sown? What happens the next time someone tries to make her doubt or dislike herself to fufill their own agenda?

She is napping now. But I'm thinking that we will DEFINITELY have to revisit this sometime today. If you have suggestions, PLEASE COMMENT.

loooong day....

Well, it's not even noon yet and it has been a looooong day already. We woke up extra early to get ready and bring Mia in to Portland for an early morning eye exam. After getting myself turned around, taking the wrong exit TWICE and finally finding my way back to where I wanted to go, we finally made it there, albeit 20 minutes late. Since I called from the road, they were nice about it and let us keep our appt. slot. They put drops in Mia's eyes and then we waited in the waiting room for about 40 minutes to make sure that the drops had time to take effect and dialate her eyes. She was quite the little trouper during the eye exam. After the exam was complete, the dr. said that yes, she was going to have the same (out-patient) surgery that Bella had at that age to open her tear duct passageway.
They scheduled her surgery for THIS Friday at the ungodly hour of 6:30AM. Who knew doctors were even done on the golf course by then???

As for me, I went to see a new doctor yesterday for my fibromyalgia. She specializes in physical therapy for people suffering from it. Since she is out in Bridgton, Roanna watched the girls for me (she rocks!) and I drove out there .....SUCH a gorgeous drive. Especially this time of year! There are so many waterways and leaves turning in the trees the line the road along Rte. 26 and 117 that the hour went by very quickly. The beautiful drive through Oxford and Norway in itself made the trip out there worthwhile! I highly recommend taking a drive out that way if you have the chance!

Usually when I have my therapuetic massage, it is extremely painful (off and on right up there with childbirth- no lie). The therapy I had yesterday was similar in technique to the massages but without the pain.

As I drove home I thought that it had probably been a waste of time. But by the time I got home, I was intensely exhausted and SORE and my joints were started to swell and ache. By the evening, I had to admit that SOMETHING was going on because I felt like I had run a marathon and was verging on exhaustion. So.....whatever she did, it was powerful. Next time I had better pay more attention to being hydrated afterwards so I don't get so sick. I was seriously down for the count for the rest of the night. I could barely finish the drive home and was totally NOT a good driver towards the end. Yikes.

So that's what I've been up to the last couple of days.
What's up with you????

Give Your Creativity a SWIFT KICK in the butt!!!

tee's spree's

If you ever find yourself at a loss and need a creative KICK IN THE HEAD.....check out Teesha Moore's blog or general website. She rocks my socks!

Testing Testing Testing

Hmm....this blog thingee is having issues today. I could understand weekend issues....tons of people are online on the weekend and also on friday doing whatever. But come onnnn...its MONDAY PEOPLE. Maybe this is just residue from the stuff they were trying to fix during their scheduled outtage last night. Arrggh....

I've been trying to create a post with two small photos all day....to no avail!

Ha HA! Take THAT! It worked when I added the photos as an 'update' to my post. Weeeeee....love success!

First, I love this quote about middle age. 'Nuff said, there.

Second, I'm having some 'hate' issues and this is one quote that runs around and around in my head to squash it. ARrggghhh......

FLY!

Angel Girl,
originally uploaded by bmandity05.

yet another of my favorites that I ASPIRE to create like ......when I grow up, i think i want to create like THIS artist!

Pot O'Bourbon

Pot O'Bourbon,
originally uploaded by bmandity05.

just HAD to link to this ATC....I love the combination of retro magazine bits with wisecracking humor. Something for me to aim for in the future.

more Artist Trading Cards

Here are some of the ATC's I made in the last couple of weeks. I've been feeling too awful most days to do much but I managed a few. Now I have to create the cards I promised to do for a 'dots' swap and create some with "inspiring" messages for my bestest sister. I think today I'm going to scour my quote sites for some of my favorites to make cards out of.

ALSO --- STILLLLL waiting to see when/if my tessie is coming to visit me!!!!

After the Assembly weekend....

Well, as is to be expected, we alllllll got sick after the assembly. It was a GREAT assembly though. My favorite illustration was about the poor family in honduras who lived in a house with a dirt floor.

They were materialistic.

How can a family living in a home with a DIRT floor possibly be materialistic you might ask???
Well.....they were up to their ears in credit card debt which they had accumulated buying a color tv, stereo and expensive furniture (yes while still living with that dirt floor). They were all working tons of hours to pay for this debt. They were sacrificing spiritual things to work so many hours to pay for their debt. Now --- can you imagine them running for their lives in the time of the end.....with their tv strapped to the husband's back. The son dragging the stereo and the wife dragging along the furniture after them....talk about a millstone attached to your neck...shheeeshh....

Anyhoo....this assembly had sooo many points that I found to work on. It's really been knocking around inside of my sniffling sneezing coughing head this week.

I'm so ticked off!!!

I can't believe it!

I just changed the background on my blog and it wiped out ALL of my links!!!! ARRGGGGGGghhhhh....

Now I have to add them back in (using html, no less) one by one....arrggghhhhhhh

T I R E D

Okay, I don't REALLY look like this. But I certainly FEEEEEL like this....a little old lady, weathered by age and time and feeble. (this is from a costume party years ago)

I'm so incredibly tired today. We did errands yesterday and I got dehydrated along the way. Today I can barely lift myself up off the couch I'm so exhausted.

I was going to post a picture of my BED, where I would like to be right now, snuggled up under my warm cozy quilt but I didn't have any decent pictures and that would have required me getting out the camera (which is downstairs), taking some pics, connected up the wires, uploading them, editing them, etc and as you can see, that was WAYYY too much work.

Ugh.

Soooo tired. tired tired tired tired.

More Apple Picking

Here are pictures of Lisa, Me, Mia and Keith & Lisa (he didn't even hide, can you believe it??)

Apple Picking

We had the BEST time apple picking at Thompson's Orchard in New Gloucester this afternoon! The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the apples were crisp and sweet!

Bad Coffee-- No excuse!

Wife Training,
originally uploaded by brancusi7.

Okay, I really don't approve of domestic violence....but bad coffee....well, if there were EVER a reason, THAT would be it. LOL

Stupid Man

Dad Blast It!,
originally uploaded by IAAFOTS.

There's NEVER a good reason to spill good coffee. What a barbarian!

Wednesday

I've been busy working on my little miniature art cards over the past few days. The blue one is from Monday (Lisa and I got our creative on) and the Bella one is from yesterday. They tend to look better in person. Like, for instance, the gold butterfly on the bella card is actually a small shiny piece of brass, but you'd never be able to tell that from looking at it. The large heart on the blue card is 3D too. The colors are never really the same either. I want to look into getting a new photoshop type program cause mine is seriously outdated and is really bugging me lately.
Here is a link where you can see my latest work:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sondigirl2/my_photos
(Please email me if the link doesn't work, okay? Thanks!)

Not too much else going on.....gotta get a move on with the laundry and SERIOUSLY need to go downstairs and make some coffee cause it's almost noon and I'm gonna get my coffee-withdrawal-headache any minute now.....addictions can be a real pain in the butt....er....head.

Monday, Mondayyyyy, Can't trust that dayyyy

Well, I finally got some of my photos to load. I think that day was just a fluke. These are some of what I've been working on lately. The two top ones are part of the process I was describing in my previous post.

Teesha Moore

Here's another gal I go to for creative inspiration and paper/pen/ink/collage wizardry! LOVE HER STUFF!!!!


www.teeshamoore.com

FRIDAY IS HERE

Wow.....can you believe it is September already? The summer Flew *whoooosh!* by! The days are shorter and cooler. The bugs will be dying off more and more *YAY*.

I'm off to get my hair done in a few minutes and man does it need it. At least an inch of roots and my raggedy bangs are in my eyes. Help me!

I have an ATC Swap due at the end of the month that I have just about finished. I was really surprised that it was so much easier than I anticipated. I need to make two sets of cards. 25 in each set. The first set needed to contain the yahoogroup name Atc_Artists (www.yahoogroups.com) and the number '2' because it is celebrating their second year anniversary in existance. The second set of cards could be anything I wanted. But it needed to be another set of 25! Yikes. The numbers alone had me a bit frightened. And then I was concerned my muse would never kick in and I'd just sit there staring at the piles of paper, adhesives, stickers, and doo-dads and have no idea where to start.

However, as it turns out, it wasn't as hard as I'd worried it would be. I picked out two quotes that I really liked and printed them out a bunch of times in all different fonts on cardstock. Then I trimmed the page, fed it thru my xyron and they were ready to roll. Then I picked out six images I really liked and grouped them together on a page and printed that page out three times and trimmed up the images in front of the tv.

For my background, I found a few coordinating pieces of 12x12 paper I liked and ripped all but two of them into strips and random pieces. Then I glued all the random pieces on to the two remaining 12x12 pieces of paper in a totally random configuration. I added in some tissue paper that was a really pretty color from the packaging of a vintage pair of hose that I'd found on ebay years ago. (you just never know when that stuff will come in handy!) Then I cut up the 12x12 paper into 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 card sized pieces.

After that, it was just a matter of figuring out which background configuration (each one comes out completely different but in the same color scheme) went with which image. Glued on the images, the quotes and voila!, lickity split I was done! TADA!!!

Anyhoo....i'm off to the salon but figured I should add a little something to my blog since it's been a while since I'd written.

I've tried to upload pictures of my cards described above but stupid blogger is being jerky and won't let me do it *grumble grumble*