Wow! I am SO glad I participated in Thing-A-Day this year. It was a whole new way of challenging myself, and I feel like I have gained a lot out of it!

One thing I’ve definitely learned is that I don’t want to waste another year until I decide to be creative again, so what I’m doing right now, for my final T-A-D is setting up my very own WordPress blog, in which I will document work projects (I’m a website designer), personal projects, or, heck, just use to talk about my day and how I’m feeling.

But I’m gonna keep this one much less personal than what I do on MySpace. I’ve gotten way too personal with MySpace since I started that horrid habit in January of 2006. So personal that I really have no choice but to keep my profile private, either that or go back through each of the hundreds of blogs I’ve posted and set private ones to Friends Only. And I seriously do not have the time to devote to that.

So I’m starting fresh on WordPress. I may not necessarily quit posting MySpace blogs, but I really want to shift my blogging habit to a more mature, more customizable, more blog-focused, less profile-focused format. And I’ve heard many people in my industry sing WordPress’s praises for a while now, and since Thing-A-Day, I’ve gotten to know and love the inner workings.

So here I am, to stay! On WordPress.

Now, the only problem is…. my entire blog audience resides on MySpace. Which means, I’m going to have to finagle some readers over to this direction somehow. And, while I’m at it, I’d love to make some new friends who are already on the WordPress train. So if you blog via WordPress, will you connect with me in whatever way WordPress does that? (So far, I only know how to post blogs.)

Now, I absolutely HATE to complete my Thing-A-Day journey with a post that doesn’t even have a picture!!!! So here’s a screenshot of my blog:

Yes, I know I’m a web designer using a default WordPress theme. I just started, K? I’ll design my own theme soon as I figure out where to go to insert custom CSS. (And soon as I have a few free hours to spend in Photoshop & Dreamweaver.)

So won’t you go read my first post? It’s about a website I’ll be working on this weekend. *Sigh.*

amandathomas.wordpress.com

Tonight, I wrote a series of haikus in honor of my Acer Aspire laptop.

Thing-a-day #27 (belated by about 12 hours)…

- I did yoga. That’s always fun and sort of feels creative, even though you’re just doing what the instructor says. But, hey, doesn’t that fall under “Follow instructions”?

- The other day, when my husband got the car I mentioned in previous post, we had to get the check for the loan cashed. So of course, we ran to the house to shoot some rap video stills.

Today’s creative thing is inspired by my husband finding a really good deal on a car he liked.

It’s a performance piece called “American Woman Begrudgingly Ventures into the Next Highest Bracket of Debt by Purchase of Very Red Very Fast Car That Runs out of Gas during the Test Drive then Small Part Slips Off a Pedal Rendering Car Brakeless Several Hours After Purchase.”

And now I am exhausted. Who knew purchasing a used car was an all-day task? So this, alas, is my Thing today.

Yes, my husband fixed whatever slipped off the brake pedal. (Or whatever happened. I’m a girl, so I don’t know.) And he says it’s OK, it’s not going to be a big deal, the car is still worth what we’re paying for it.

Here’s to the next five years! No more fast food diet, Fox Hollow Coffee, Hobby Lobby excursions, Ocean Springs road trips, new outfits, bottled wine (hello, Franzia)… unless we get raises. COME ON BOSS!

The things you do to make the one you love smile.

Next big purchase with money we don’t have is MIIIIIIINE.

I made this “Thanks for the add” MySpace graphic for my bestest friend. She’s a school counselor and sponsors a high school chapter of PeaceJam. I’m not totally sure what PeaceJam is (too ADHD to read whole website), but I sure do wish they’d had a chapter at the shitty redneck high school I went to. I’m sure if she’s in charge of it, it’s freaking awesome.

She has recently created a MySpace profile for her chapter here.

So, Thing-A-Dayers, if you’re on MySpace, go add them, and you’ll get one of these posted on your very own MySpace profile:

You know you want one!

Now, more about that friend. She signed up for Thing-A-Day, and hasn’t posted a thing since, like, day 3. So everyone click here and go bug her and tell her she needs to post because T-A-D isn’t as fun without her!

Yeah, I’m posting this a day late. Oops!

Anyway, yesterday my creative thing was issuing myself a personal challenge for March, since this particular challenge I’m doing right now will be over Saturday.

I wrote a blog about it on MySpace, so I’m just gonna copy and paste. It’s long, so you don’t have to read it, but it basically boils down to me giving up all alcohol and drugs for the month of March. And, no, I’m not an alcoholic or a drug addict. But this is still a big deal to me. And I am going to actually TALK to people more, not type to people, which is all my normal social interaction consists of. Very sad, I know.

Here is the blog, if for some reason you’d like to know more details on this experiment:

Thing-A-Day was a great way to challenge myself, and put back a piece of me into my life that’d been missing since I transitioned from college to the “real world”: art. I highly recommend participating in TAD ‘09, if you missed this go round.

In a week, T.A.D. will officially be over, but I don’t want the personal challenges to stop there. I want something pushing me forward at all times.

Before September, it was escaping my crappy hometown. Practically everything I did was so I wouldn’t have to fester into the rotting pile of redneck corpses. Now that I’ve avoided that, I can’t help but sometimes feel stagnant. Like, what am I supposed to overcome next?

*Gulp* Here goes…. For the month of March, I am swearing off alcohol and any other substance that is mind-altering.  (This doesn’t include caffeine. I can’t afford to not WORK.)

Exceptions: My birthday (3/25) and anniversary (3/31) - not necessarily those dates, but whatever date I choose to observe & celebrate those days.

Maybe I’m huge loser to consider going without drinking & stuff for a month a big deal, but it is to me. Kudos to all of you who think it IS stupid that I’m so worried about not being able to drink or pop a pill for a month, because you obviously have such an awesome life that you have better ways to have fun and/or relax, and for that I applaud (and seriously envy) you.

I don’t consider myself alcoholic or addict (anymore), but for me, ever since pretty much high school, a good time has been synonymous with alcohol (or less legal stuff).

In all my experiences post-childhood, if you went and had a good time with friends, you were getting your mind altered in one way or another, or you were the D.D. I cannot remember the last really fun thing I ever did that did not in some way involve alcohol and/or drugs.  Even a walk to the beach isn’t the same without a cooler full of beer or a mixed drink hidden in a giant sippy mug.

Now, on the other side, for those of you who like to drink and/or use, and never intend to quit, I’m not putting you down. I’m right there with you. I don’t think drinking or even playing with drugs is morally wrong. It’s certainly risky and unhealthy, but so is eating fast food and going skydiving. But both of those are legal.

But, anyway, I’m not here to discuss my political beliefs. If you want those, I’ll do it for you later. (See below, “another part of March Challenge”) I just want to take several weeks to clear toxic things out of my body and KNOW that I can have a fun time without something intoxicating me. I’m kind of ashamed that I’ve always relied on that to enhance my good times and to add sparkle and polish to my often wallflower personality.

So now, I’m setting out to no longer need personality enhancement.

And I definitely need moral support on this. I mean, hell, you can tell I’m weak, because I’ve already set aside my birthday and anniversary as exceptions. If I really “meant it” I wouldn’t have had to. I would plan to find another way to celebrate. And maybe, if everything goes right with this challenge, I will. Both of those events are at the end of the month. So I have plenty of time to learn to have fun without “stuff”.

Pray, hope, cross your fingers, give me a pat on the back, do a rain dance for me. Because I am very fucking determined to find a way to end these stupid phases I go through where I can’t stand myself. And I think the things I put into my body sometimes have something to do with those phases.

Oh, and another part of March Challenge:

I want to actually TALK to people. I am growing tired of this fucking MySpace Facebook computer bullshit social interaction. Even if that means using a phone for something besides texting. So seriously, if you’re bored one night and want someone to chat with, please consider me one of those people. My number is (removed from public view) if you don’t got it. Don’t even send me a “warning text”, like I often used to make people do. If I’ve never talked to you much before (or at all), let me warn you, I’m very often shy away from the written word, and suck at starting conversations. (Especially if I don’t know you well. But that doesn’t mean you’re excluded from my experiment.) I get nervous as hell on the phone sometimes and you may think I’m a person of special needs if you catch me at a bad time. But at this point, I am willing to try. And fail, if it’s necessary to get me really, really talking.

And I’m assuming anyone who read this far into this very long-winded blog does feel at least some sort of a connection with me, and if you read this far, you’re welcome to be a caller. Even if you’re a guy friend, whatever. My husband is very trusting and supportive of me trying to get rid of my social anxieties, so just don’t try any funny stuff, mister.

If I don’t answer, leave me a voice mail. I really do wanna talk to people, but the truth is, I have a two-story apartment and sometimes my phone is somewhere else and I just don’t hear it. And I do work, often at odd hours, so sometimes I’m just simply preoccupied. But I really wanna do this.

So in March, instead of getting high on drugs and alcohol, I will attempt to get high on conversations.

There you have it. Let the games begin.

Tonight I made penne pasta with “Sockarooni” sauce, into which I poured some of my Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon. And I made Bisquick cheese & garlic biscuits.

I didn’t take pictures of it, but I promise I did.

And it was yummy.

Now I am drinking the previously mentioned Cab. Sav. and watching Dirt reruns.

Goodnight.

It kind of reminds me of this bedspread, which I intend to purchase eventually.
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Retro-Radar-Camel-Red-7-piece-Bedding-Ensemble/2581347/product.html

Tired. Don’t feel like typing much more today. So here is:

The colors are a little less boring in real life… promise.

Yesterday’s Thing-A-Day: A descriptive list of my random quirks, which I shall copy & paste below. Read if you’d like, and let me know what you think about me. Personally, I like me, most of the time.

Today’s Thing-A-Day: I went to yoga. Choosing to partake in a yoga class is totally a creative thing, right? I feel creative doing it, so therefore it counts. If it doesn’t, I’m making supper tonight. So there you go.

Here is my list:

1. I startle very easily. At least once a week, my husband walks into a room and says something, and I scream bloody murder.
2. I go through phases where I am extremely lethargic, somewhat depressed, and can’t force myself to do anything that needs to be done. I’m in one of those right now. If these symptoms sound familiar to any of you, please help. I hate feeling like this. It’s about once a month. PMDD?
3. I have a tiny piercing-like hole on the top part of EACH of my ears, right where my the top corner of my ear starts and my face begins. They’re in the same place on each side. I was born with them.
4. I always, in some way, narrate my life inside my head. Usually this means thoughts that occur in a format very much like a social networking status update, but they also occur in “About Me” lists such as these.
5. I secretly crave stress and chaotic situations, and a part of me is thankful when they occur. When everything’s going well, I’m secretly bored and awaiting a disaster.
6. I like kids, but don’t want to have them, because I fear I would ABSOLUTELY LOATHE being a mother.
7. When driving alone, I have full, complete conversations with myself, out loud, and that’s when I feel the most like myself. That’s when I’m most comfortable. I’m my own best friend. But this only occurs when I’m driving.
8. I sometimes visualize my own death or the death of loved ones, just to see how they (or I) would deal with it. But I disagree with my former counselor who considered this a “suicidal gesture”. I do this with not just death, but also divorce, job loss, pregnancy, etc. It’s like mentally preparing myself for tragedies. And, yes, at this point in my life and level of maturity, I would consider becoming pregnant a tragedy. No offense to anyone who is a parent, it’s just not something I want.
9. I am very strongly for free birth control, and abortion if that doesn’t work, because it’s the poorest, most uneducated people that have the most unwanted pregnancies. I DAMN near think that abortion of pregnancies in poverty should be mandatory, if the mother is under 18 or already has X number of kids.  The stigma & difficulty of getting an abortion is creating more and more poor and stupid people. Sorry, but it’s true. I feel lack of sex education, birth control, and abortion on demand will eventually lead to the human race de-evolving to level of dumb beasts.
10. I feel guilty for buying bottled water for various reasons, but I like drinking out of bottles more than cups, so I make each bottle last as long as possible. Whenever I drink all the water out of a bottle, I draw one “X” on the label with a marker, then refill & refrigerate it. I do this until it has 4 X’s, then I throw it away.
    • I would wash the bottles, but the labels come off, and they get shaped funny, so it’s not the same. Plus, that’d mean me running my dishwasher more, so either way I’m using up some precious resource.
11. I think all drugs should be legal. Addicts or recreational users should not be considered criminals. I don’t think it’s any more wrong to smoke crack than it is to get drunk. They both have their risks. Smoking pot actually has less of them than using alcohol. So why is just one of them OK legally?
12. I love my job except for: I feel like my life is boring. I envy people who come home from work exhausted, sore and starving, because they busted their asses and didn’t have time to eat much that day. I want to not have time to sit still. Unfortunately, my job requires sitting still. I want to come home from work sore and SO FUCKING RELIEVED to be home.
13. Working from home makes you feel like you’re always at work. If you envy my job, please stop. It’s not that great. Even though it is funny sometimes to teleconference in the buff.
14. I am fascinated by medical anomalies….. The plights of people with two-hundred-pound tumors, disgusting facial deformities, primordial dwarfs, and the profoundly obese could keep me glued to DHC for hours. One of my favorite shows is “Mystery Diagnosis”.
15. I wish I didn’t own a TV. But I am married and my husband likes it. And I’m not a bitch wife who rules the house with an iron fist. I do like a lot of shows, but could live without it. My true addiction, of course, is Intarnets. I hate TV background noise.
16. Unless I am sleeping, I HATE being in a dimly lit room. Like seriously MOTHER FUCKING HATE. Ironically, my husband hates bright lights. This is one of those things we compromise on. So we sometimes have bright time for me, and dim time for him.
17. I love to paint. My favorite subject to paint is absolutely nothing. I just like to dip in my brush and mush paint around on the canvas. I hardly care what the end result looks like. My apologies to all my MUW art professors.
18. I’m a nosy neighbor. Yesterday’s highlight was sitting on the gazebo while the people in apartment 3 had their window open and were conversing loudly (and from the sounds of it, drunkenly, there was lots of use of the word “motherfucker”). I was hoping they’d see me sitting there, all lonesome, and invite me over, but they didn’t. They went into another room where I couldn’t hear them. :(
19. I live in fairly densely populated little area. There’s my two-building apartment complex, surrounded by a few houses, and a grouping of mobile homes (Ok, ok, TRAILER PARK. SHUT UP. It’s a safe neighborhood. I think.).  However, this does not stop me from changing clothes with the window curtains quite askew. Most people know me as very shy, and I certainly am at times, however, for some reason, I don’t really care if anybody sees me naked. It’s not that I think I have a smokin’ hot body (I high dislike it most of the time), I just simply DON’T CARE.
20. I would like to lose weight, but would not like to put forth the effort.
    • They say it’s easier if you don’t “go on a diet”, but instead make a “lifestyle change”… but to me, THAT’S even scarier than a diet! Diets are temporary, but a “lifestyle change” is just what it sounds like. Those are my connotations of the words, anyway.

I swear, I haven’t been slacking! I made belated Valentine’s cookies. They’re heart-shaped strawberry cookies, made with strawberry Nesquick.  I frosted them with chocolate frosting and used my $10 professional* cake decorating kit to write random things (mostly inside jokes between my husband and me) in cream cheese frosting. They’re super delicious. The recipe made  a million of them, so decorating a few cookies each day will probably be my “Daily Thing” until they run out.

* (I call it a professional cake decorating kit, because it uses frosting bags and random tips. That makes it professional. I could use parchment paper, but don’t wanna be precocious, now do I?)

This may have been a terrible idea. Frosting is my best friend and worst enemy. I have been eating that shit out of the can and sucking cream cheese frosting out of the application tips. I’m such a sweets junkie.

I’ve been doing other stuff, too. Lots of home decor.

We have a half-bath downstairs that also servers as the laundry room. Our washer and dryer are old and lack visual appeal, plus, who wants to pee beside a laundry area? So we got a fairly attractive tension rod (like for a shower) and two floor-length curtains. So NOW, when visitors need to relieve themselves in our home, they’ll just THINK they’re in a full bathroom. Haha, fooled YOU!

Before - entering a seemingly normal bathroom.

After - top-secret laundry area REVEALED!

Tonight I created this painting, with which I am very pleased…

And now (this is work, so I’m not sure it counts, but it does require creativity) I’m trying to improve my web design company’s logo.

Current logo:

Sketches:

Illustrator play:

And now that I’ve photographed my sketch, I can actually trace it in Illustrator and get that damn fox tail shape right. (Yeah, I don’t have a scanner. I’ve been begging my boss to get me one for a while now!)

Oh, and for the record, I didn’t slack off yesterday. I did some sketches (they just didn’t turn out post-worthy), one of my cat, one of a high heel - my absolute favorite shape in the world is the silhouette of a stiletto heel, I’m fascinated by the shape, it’s beautiful! Wearing those kinds of shoes make me fabulous, also.

Tonight I started out doodling with no direction whatsoever….

Then I got to thinking about my Thing-A-Day partner Joonbugg (who IS participating and participating well, she just doesn’t post as often as me) and did this for her…

“Never was a cornflake girl, I hung out with the raisin girls…”
It’s a reference to the Tori Amos song “Cornflake Girl”. I may not have got the last part of the lyric right (she pronounces things funny) but you get my drift.

I decided illustrating song lyrics might be fun, so I went to the next one that popped in mind…

This next one is posted in thumbnail format because it has a tiny amount of female nudity, and I am a little unsure of the TAD terms & rules. I don’t wanna get kicked off the blog.

“She liked to keep her body clean, clean… She thought the world to be quite obscene”
From “Oedipus” by Regina Spektor.

And the last one, also in thumbnail format because it features a little male anatomy lesson that everyone who’s ever watched Shin Chan on Adult Swim knows… Please be forewarned before you click, lest you be offended by Mister Happy…

“To be a man you must have honor, honor and a penis.”

Well you can pretty much see every object in the drawing’s thumbnail anyway. Oops! Oh well, if you’re offended by the tiny THUMBNAIL weewee, you may just need to lighten up some.  SRSLY.

(You can tell I was a little shy about drawing the penis, I didn’t bear down with the Ebony pencil near as much as the rest of the sketch. I’m such a shy little girl sometimes. Nevermind that I’m almost 25 and married. LOL.)

I slacked on POSTING this weekend, but I think everything I actually DID makes up for it (and tonight, if this headache doesn’t go away!)

Table we made. After adding more reinforcement. It’s sturdy now.

I painted a pic of my cat Cheesecake. (Affectionately known as Cheesekitteh, Cheesey, or Cheesebutt) FAIL!

Well, hey it’s not bad considering I wasn’t looking at her face at all. I forgot the exact shape of cat mouths. SUE me!

Oh yeah, and we painted this wall at the top of the stairs (and also two closet doors) in our apartment. A small wall, but hey, it was enough to get me high on paint (and a terrible headache).

That painting is a pastel self-portrait I did in college. That’s Cheesebutt’s tail in the way.

First off, here’s the watercolor painting I started yesterday and continued some work on tonight. As I mentioned in previous post, it’s my cousin and I on Easter Sunday when we were little (well duh-uh). I think one more night of work on it and it’ll be done in my eyes.

Second off, my husband’s obsession with HGTV has taken control of every aspect of our lives. Which means me playing his lovely assistant every time he gets a wild project idea. Tonight, he decided to build a kitchen table.

Husband assembling table legs. He works at a counter-top factory so we got a bar really cheap that’s gonna be the top. We bought 2×2’s at Home Depot to make the legs out of.

HIDE ME! This is how I feel when Husband gets a wild idea! Just kidding, honey, I don’t mind helping. A LITTLE.

Table. Not finished, but as far as we’ll get tonight. It’s wobbly, so we’re going to have to head back to Home Depot for more 2×2’s and brackets.

Today I started a small watercolor painting of a picture frame I’ve always loved since I was a teenager. It’s abnormal for my personal style, but for some reason I’ve always liked it. It’s country-looking, heart-shaped, with pansies on it. In it, is a picture of my cousin and I when we were about six-ish in our Easter Sunday best. These two dresses that look exactly alike, except mine’s blue and hers is yellow. It fits the frame perfectly.

I have had a very tiring day (I’ve driven 300+ miles today) so no pictures yet. I am resting.

No, not a hybrid of famous country singers. A pun on “Mardi Gras”.

Ok, ok, before you groan and kick me out of the TAD club, let me just tell you that I STILL don’t feel well, and this did actually take me over a half hour to complete. And, no that’s not ALL the beads (or panties!) I got thrown at me. This amount of beads is actually the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of them are STILL in my car. And, NO, joonbugg, I didn’t show any of my naughty bits to get this stuff.

And although it is Ash Wednesday, I’m not Catholic (or any form of Christian for that matter), so I don’t have to care (or discontinue any of my excess)… I can still be in the Mardi Gras spirit if I want!

Oh yeah and I found the baby!!! YEAH.

Today I didn’t feel very well. So today I will post something I made last night after I’d already TAD’ed, but still had a little creative energy.

It’s one of my pics from the Mardi Gras parade I attended, plus some Photoshop adjustments & layer masks. I think it’ll be a fun MySpace default pic for a little while if nothing else!

Not feeling super inspired or energetic today (See my previous post for reason why!) so I just did this quick doodle in Adobe Illustrator… Oh well, I think it’s semi-cute. The colors were semi-inspired by a scheme on Adobe Labs’ “Kuler” application… (Look it up, it’s fun!)

My TAD today was to photographically document one of the Mississippi gulf coast’s biggest Mardi Gras parades, in Pass Christian, MS. We had mimosas, king cake, and monterey-jack salsa then wandered into the Pass to take in the sights and sounds (and beads and Red Stripe).

These are only a few pictures…. there’s no way I have enough patience to upload each great pic one at a time, so it’s not happenin’. For more pics please view My Picasa Web Album.