Thing-a-day.com

So as usual instead of taking pictures and posting things as I do them, I am just posting in one big grouping all the daily things I’ve been doing.

I decided it would be cool to make some things on photoshop with positive messages on them, my idea being to eventually print them out and frame them or something and post them around my apartment to encourage positivitiy or whatever.

So here are 3 of them, there was one more but my fucking computer appparently hates me and decicded to just lose the jpeg version of it -_-
And it already took me for fucking ever to upload those onto here because my computer is being so fucking slow and annoying.

These are some quotes I found online on some website.

Made banana bread And some earrings I made, not a good picture of them, but yeah…..

And my spelling is probablyu completely horrible right now because as usual my computer won’t recognize typing any quicker than 1 wpm and I type at an average speed of 60 wpm and if I slow down for the computer right now I am going to lose what little patients I have for this peive of shit and break it….. and that would not be good because I NEED a computer for school even if it is fucking shitty.

 I thought I posted this one on Friday just seconds before midnight, but just as I hit “Publish,” the site went down. So here’s my Friday post….

Creativity.

 Stimulating the mind to think–

Imagination.

Halfway to February 29–amazing! I’ve really enjoyed seeing what everyone is posting each day. Some posts are thought-provoking, some awe-inspiring, some mouthwatering, and some are smilemakers. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a site like this for everyone to share ideas for making the world a better place?!

I was in the card shop recently perusing the Valentines, wondering, “who designs this stuff.” Cards wiggle and make noise and play music and are mushy and tear-jerky and silly and even off-color and offensive. I still think there is no better Valentine than one that is hand-made by little fingers with innocence and unabashed emotion. These are the keepers…

Construction paper,

Red, pink—and paper doilies,

White glue and glitter.

Cut out a heart shape

Write a message in crayon.

Capture mama’s heart.

 HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY ALL!!!!

Today’s creativity was finishing up the projects I had gotten started earlier this week.

Grandma and Grandpa flew into town today. I made soup for supper (I had completed some of the prep work last night) and there were tiny Valentine’s treats for everyone at the table.

Then, we got out the sprinkles and the chocolate icing. The cupcakes are now ready for JT to share with his classmates.

south park. this is where i work in san francisco. a little park south of market, in between a freeway and warehouse lofts. it’s a piece of green in an industrial zone. i often wondered how it got here. i heard that in the 80s, south park was where the garment factories were. a hundred years ago, it was supposed to have been a rich real estate until the wealthy moved north to the hills near pacific heights. when they left, the park was abandoned. during the dot-com boom, internet starts ups worked here. when it busted, they moved out. now it’s full of architects.

at center, to the left of the playground, all the way down there is a yellow coffee shop - butler and the chef - that makes a vanilla latte that i’m addicted to. i work across the park, in one of those buildings to the right in the distance. ground floor, all the way in the back. there’s a guy who walks a dozen big dogs every afternoon while carrying a baby. i smile when i see him. there’s also a garage full of old treasures - a sports car (the kind that james dead drove), fake palm trees, old movie cameras, regal furniture - that is strictly not for sale. i grab my bagels by the green building to the right. at night, it’s all dark and foggy, and the street lamps look like hazy lazy stars.

Nothing much to say.

No pearls of wisdom tonight.

Lost–can’t find my way.

Snow!  Flurries at first,

Then more, billowy pillows–

Landscape of whipped cream.

It’s been snowing all day, starting off with gentle flurries, becoming more intense, almost a whiteout at times, softening the edges of everything, rendering the earth in silence. Now comes the ticky-ticking of the ice crystals against the windows. And we are huddled, warm inside, enjoying a respite from the busy-ness of life.

I made pancakes for supper tonight. That might not seem creative to most people, but it’s creative for me.
Ever since I became a single mama, my sister has been steadily advising me to lower my standards. In the (obviously imaginary) ideal world of Sassafras Mama, a tasty homemade supper is put on the table each and every night. As the Sassafras Sister and any number of reasonable people have often suggested, it’s perfectly acceptable to fall short of this bar.

There was a faculty meeting after school today and it ran a bit late. Then JT’s homework sucked up more time than usual (geometry is kicking my bootie). It is true that I could have skipped my workout and made the planned supper (homemade pizza) but that would cause the earth to spin off it’s axis and so…….pancakes it was.

They were tasty and the boy was most delighted by this turn of events.

So I guess that everybody won.

wow, so apparently I’m an idiot.

I was just looking at my posts on here and wondering where these three things went. Instead of hitting publish- I guess I hit save. So this was saved as a draft and not published for others to see.

 I did do things for these 3 days which appeared to be missing! I just messed up on the attempt at posting them, lol.

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I’ve been having some internet connection problems (for some reason my comcast internet isn’t working- I think I am going to need to call them and ask them WTF is up.)

So these are my thing a day things for the last 3 days- Wednesdays will be coming up during the day or night, or thursday early morning (early morning hours are still the previous day to me) unless I can’t get on the internet, in which case it will be whenever I do.

A good friend of mine, who I’ve known my whole life was recently diagnosed with staqe 4 hodgkin’s lymphoma, and is going through chemo, so this is a chemo cap I made for her for her birthday at the end of febraury. It’s from lion brand micro-spun yarn- which I find to be VERY soft, which is what I’ve been told is very important because of the way chemo and radiation make the skin soo sensative. And I know she said her wigs are really hot to wear to often, yet I know she likes having something to wear on her head that covers it, so I was trying to do something that had somewhat loose stitching, so it wouldn’t be too hot, but was not so open that it didn’t offer coverage. I hope she likes it.

This is a pair of earings I made- well you can see one, there is a matching other one.

Another pair of earings.

Both my earings still need me to bend the part the hooks through the ear so that they fall better, instead of sort of sticking out.

So I know everyone across the internet has been so anxious to hear what creative stuff I have been doing while I’ve been having these annoying internet problems. Well, the answer is, doodling.
lol, I think that is the best word for these. ^This was drawn with crayons. We did a project in art in high school with crayons where after you covered the drawing in black ink, then washed it off, and the ink only stuck to the parts of the paper where there was no crayon wax. Unfortunatly my art teacher kept telling me mine needed more crayon, including balck (which I did not understand the need for) and by the time she decided it was good enough to put the ink on, there was no paper left that had no crayon on it. Funny enough, the one that I think came out best, was by one girl who didn’t really listen to the teacher’s advice…..

^Back to high school art class stories, the same teacher used to complain whenever wle worked in color that apparently we just got to caught up in the color and there was no difference in shade in the pictures (to demonstrate this she decided to use a computer to show them in black and white, the painting of mine she made this complaint about looked the same except without color in black and white, it still had shading- was hard not to laugh out loud when she did it on the computer. And then she mumbled some reason why she was still right…) So in honor of her, I did this, no black or white or anything used except in the background, just blue, pink and purple.

Sometimes I did feel bad for my teacher because none of the students liked her…. but every time I started to feel bad, she just had to go and remind me WHY no one liked her. (this teacher also used to lock- yes LOCK- my puse/bag in her office during open houses that I went in for, because it had pentacles on it, and it was a catholic school. Putting it in my “locker” was not enough. It had to be LOCKED in a separate room. … The doors look kept the evil aura away from the junior highers and their families I guess)

[I took out one photo from the post here because it may be triggering to this who have engaged in self-injury, it’s on my blog if one wants to see it, but I decided not to post it here since people may be less prepared for triggering images. ]

^ Apparently this is what I look like. lol. I’m not good at drawing the tilted heads. And yes, the head is floating in darkness with no body. That is how much I hate drawing any sort of background, lol.

Now I feel the need to remind people that these are NOT representative of my best artwork or anything, these are very quick (a few minutes)- doodles basically. I didn’t do any measuring and making sure my proportions were right, I didn’t do any pre-sketches, I grabbed some crayons and pastels and started drawing for a few minutes.
It was very fun for me though, even if the outcomes aren’t terribly awesome to look at, because I usually do try to measure proportions and get it just right, and it was fun to just pick up a pastel and whatever shape hit the paper stayed. No pencil, and erasing and fixing. Whatever went on stayed.

Well, I messed up–missed Days 7, 8, and 9. Was out of town on 7 and 8, with no computer access, but I had a WONDERFUL experience. Had the opportunity to take a private dance lesson and a workshop with Maksim from Dancing with the Stars!!! Looking back I realize I would have loved to dance professionally, but it wasn’t an option at the time. However, I have always felt happiest moving to the music. Maks was gracious and charming, and it would be the realization of a fantasy to be able to work with him daily as they do on the show. Wow! And then last evening, I had the opportunity to participate in a local theatre production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. I had a miniscule role, but the proceeds from the evening benefit our local shelter for victims of abuse. It was fun and beneficial to a worthwhile cause. So, that’s where I’ve been. Glad to be back among all you creative folks, sharing and learning from each other! Here’s my Haiku for today:

Dancing with Maksim,

Waiting for midnight to strike…

Like Cinderella!

Between the upcoming Valentine’s Day and JT’s 8th birthday, there is a great demand for homemade cards around my house. So I got started on some this afternoon and I expect to be in heavy production mode all weekend long.

Today’s post is a little creative writing.

A few weeks ago, I heard an NPR story that has stuck in my mind. It was a story about people who have a neurological disorder such that they hear music in their brains all of the time. I occasionally get a song or tune stuck in my head (I call it being tortured by tunes) but I cannot imagine hearing music all of the time. It would be your own hellish soundtrack.

I thought of that story this morning as I attended a teacher’s workshop held in a large lecture hall at a local university. The speakers were using a microphone that was picking up a radio station. The music was faint but persistent. The first song I could make out was Guns and Roses singing “Sweet Child of Mine.” But here was the weird part: no one else at my table acknowledged the music. We just sat there listening to the Dean of Something ramble on while Axl Rose quietly crooned.

This late in the day, I really have no idea what the speakers said. All I can hear is Guns and Roses.

I took my daughter to the park where I photographed her baking a birthday cake with sand and sticks.

I sewed this fabric together…I like it. It will be a baby dress, soon.

It’s beaded abstract art!

…. or a bracelet for someone with tiny hands.

I was trying to figure out what to do with the really long eyepins I have, that I don’t use for earings, and I thought of trying a bracelet. But then I made it way to small to possibly fit me, so….

There it is.

It’s been a long day, 10 hours at work, then dinner, then bellydancing class. I’m having a lot of trouble coordinating the finger cymbals with the body movements, very frustrating. I can do either very well by itself, but my synapses can’t seem to handle both at the same time. Therefore, this is my lame haiku for today:

 I am exhausted.

I am going to bed now.

Good night, Thing-A-Day!

My second grader has just started a math unit on shapes and fractions. To get the children thinking spatially about shapes, they were asked to cut out some paper patterns and put the shapes together. Since the instructions specifically told us the children would need our help completing the assignment, I knew the task would be a challenge.

The assignment came home yesterday, the day that JT sees his other mom, and so I sent it off with the two of them hopeful that she would get the project started. Not surprisingly, that was a futile act of hope.

So tonight, we got started. Honestly, though I feared that it would be unpleasant it turned out to be fun. First we looked at the pattern.
Then we put our little cone shape together. We’ve got four more shapes to make before the project is due on Monday. Expect final pictures later this week.

This evening my daughter popped in on her way home from yoga class. She and I were comparing notes on our latest posts, and she asked if I had done my “Thing” yet today. I had just gotten home from work, and I said I hadn’t yet gotten around to it. Not missing a beat, she took a 5 x 7 notebook out of her new green plaid messenger bag, selected a page, chose a pen, and in the middle of the sheet of lined notebook paper she drew a circle, slighter larger than silver dollar size, with “to it” printed in the center of the circle. She then tore the page from her notebook and handed it to me. So thanks to Kiki, this evening I got “a round to it.” Oh man, can’t you just HEAR the groans!!!!!

I procrastinate.
“When I get around to it”
is my fav’rite line.

Morning begins as a sleepless night, morphing into dreams/tortured worries about specifics and the world in general. Eyes burn, bloodshot, scratchy. Gotta go to work. Dusting of snow on sidewalk, turns to rain, soaking gray day, downer, downer, downer…Heavy on my shoulders and on my soul.               

                          Monday…ugh….Monday…                        

                          Winter Mondays are the worst.

                          Pleeezee…just let me sleep!