New Art! Whoot!

Friday afternoon I was pleased as punch to receive my package from Berkley Illustration. It was so difficult to pick out only three delightful characters to happy-up my wall! Seriously, check out their Etsy shop.

On to the art, I took a few pictures of the prints, but they didn't turn out right so here are the lovely arts from Etsy.

How awesome! Sometime this week Sam and I are off to thrift for ostentatious frames.

Mr. Hedgehog Says Hello!

I'm making a special gift for one of my many pregnant friends. I'm hoping to finish next week with this particular project and then work on the project I have going for pregnant friend #2 and then we will have to think about something for pregnant friend #3. The pattern is from Sublime Stitching and art is by The Black Apple.


I worked on this for a solid hour yesterday. I thought I would finish today but am ill with sinus issues. All I've done is drink tea and read the last 200 pages of Columbine by Dave Cullen. Now Sam and I are watching Monty Pythons Holy Grail.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: FAIL!

***There are spoilers, but trust me, you'll thank me later!

Did you ever see that episode of South Park where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg rape Indiana Jones? Well folks, Optimus Prime is nursing a chaffed butt after being rawdogged by Michael Bay.

Let me preface this by saying that I enjoyed the first movie. Yes, it wasn't "old-school" Transformers, but the spirit of the Transformers was there. Yes, there was far too much human crap, but I could get past that.

I heard that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was BETTER than the first. Eagerly I bought my ticket and wore my Transformers shirt. I knew that it probably would not be stellar, but I expected to see a movie marginally better than the last.

What I got was 2 and a half hours of American Pie meets GoBots. Oh how I loathe thee Michael Bay, let me count the ways:

1. This movie has been marketed to children -- cartoons, clothing, toys, etc. I expect in a movie of this nature there to be some degree of innuendo, but the blatant sexuality and gross humor has made it impossible for me to take Hope to see it. Normally, if I can salvage a "teachable moment" the movie is okay. How do I explain to Hope the difference between the bad guys and the good guys when Megan Fox's character is straddling everything? In addition to dogs humping there is a Decepticon humping Megan Fox's leg. There are pantie shots, cleavage, ass grabs, a reference to sucking ball sacs, and a huge gleaming pair of DECEPTICON BALLS. Yes, dangling testicles. This isn't to mention the random swear words.
2. RC makes an appearance in the movie as a set of triplets who manifest as slim motorcycles, but in actuality look like vibrators in fun colors like pink, lilac, and teal.
   
3. Apparently, Wall-E and Short Circuit had a set of bastard twins in the Projects. Folks, there are dumpy, humorous TWIN Autobots who have gold teeth and speak like hoodrats. Yes, this movie is riddled with endearing, clumsy Transformers. Oh those silly aliens! I suppose they were in there to lighten the mood with all that action.
4. Action! Explosions! More explosions! Throughout the movie -- which is well over 2 hours -- I saw so many explosions that I actually reached a point of becoming numb. By the time they reached the HUGE explosion at the end I was "meh."
5. Like a serial rapist with a victim pantie collection, Michael Bay has sampled from EVERY movie known to man including, but not limited to, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Rambo, Star Wars, old-school G.I. Joe, and any of the Lifetime original movies airing on Sunday afternoons.
   
6. At one part, Prime takes on the parts of another Transformer, which is canon, but he looks like the front of a redneck's trailer. Disgraceful.
   
7. As a side note, the library has a card catalog. ( I guarantee only the library bunch will get the humor in this!).
8. Apparently, Transformers are religious and have an afterlife. There is a collective body of deceased bots who can "send people back to complete their mission."
   

So was there anything about this movie that is worth seeing? Yes. Go see a matinee simply for the... wait for it... DECEPTICONS. Despite the few "quirky and endearing" cons, Michael Bay is spot on with the spirit of Decepticons. Soundwave and Ravage are in this movie along with Constructicons and Insecticons. Devestator, although being slightly different in stoop, wrecks havoc. Starscream and Megatron have their ongoing power struggle. The Decepticons are the more fully fleshed out of the characters and by the end of the movie I was rooting for the annihilation of humanity.

Perfectionism is Overrated

Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering. / There is a crack in everything, / That's how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen

Being a perfectionist means that I only do things that I'm comfortable with and can execute with ease. This means that I knit the same scarves, bake the same recipes, and plod on with my creativity in the most uncreative ways possible. Being overly concerned with messing up means that I never really finish projects -- I start and stop, hem and haw, and freeze from fear of "wasting materials". Blah. How boring.

There are many things I would like to do that I haven't done because first one must have proper materials, proper instruction, proper patterns, proper practice and after all of these things one has, thanks to an excess of propriety, a perfect product.

Frankly, I'm bored with being stuck in the proverbial rut.

So I'm going to quest and make myself do several things over the course of July that will force me to *gasp* flirt with mistakes, possibly ruin materials, and all in all make less than perfect things.

*swoons*

My goal is complete at least 5 of the following projects:

• Organize my photos. Understand that I will never like nor engage in scrapbooking. I'm okay with only having Hope's first 2 months in scrapbook glory. Get over it already and simply organize photos in books. I will not lose mommy points.


• Purchase 1-3 clothing items from a thrift store to repurpose. That's right, I'm going to add stuff: ribbon or applique or buttons or rip the whole thing up and sew something new.


• Finish a blasted embroidery project and not second guess myself. You wouldn't believe how I agonize over whether I used a split stitch when a back stitch would have been better. Ridiculous.


• Write 5 entries in my journal and not spend half the page apologizing for whining or not writing a moving Virginia Woolf-esque post or being mundane. Actually write without fear of it being read. You are not Sylvia Plath no one gives a damn about your dangling modifiers and trite complaints.


• Make my wedding guest list. Omigod. If anything were to challenge a perfectionist it is WEDDING PLANNING!


• Bake something I've never made before and serve it to other humans even if it isn't pretty. (i.e. don't repeat the cake scene in The Hours).


• Sew a dress. Damn the patterns. Just trace the cute black dress I love onto the funky vintage fabric and sew it already. Geez. Yes -- and I'm going to sew with KNITS without a PATTERN. Shocking!


• Knit something other than a scarf. Please. Georgia is only cold 2 weeks out of the year. Enough with the scarves.


• Make something. As in sit down at the craft desk, pull out supplies, and go crazy. No planning and supply lists... just... go...

This will either be a freeing experience that increases my self-awareness and allows me to grow as a person OR I will find myself in a hotel room wearing cute vintage wedges with a copy of Mrs. Dalloway and a bottle of pills. Either way, it makes for great blog fodder.

Father's Day

Sunday marked Sam's first Father's Day. We were talking the other day about how last year at the time the two of us were barely over a month into our relationship. He knew I had a daughter, that Hope was a cool kid with a spunky attitude who liked to draw him pictures. Now he thinks of her as his daughter and she calls him "Dad" with increasing frequency. Sam has done a wonderful job adapting from "heavy metal tattoo-artist bachelor" to "heavy metal tattoo-artist dad who initiates time-outs, talks to a large stuffed animal collection, and has been known to watch iCarly."

Here are some Father's Day highlights:

Bloggiesta!

Catching up on blog-reading the other day I wandered over to A High and Hidden Place and saw that Heather was participating in Bloggiesta! Essentially, it is a blog-sprucing challenge. Unfortunately, I got on the bandwagon a bit early and the challenge ended today. I did get a chance to do some blog sprucing -- my layout is cleaned-up a bit, I added some pictures to the side bar, and I came up with several drafts/outlines of posts and a bit of a schedule. Expect to see more of me on The Blog Jar. This week I'm planning on a post-Father's Day write-up and I'm going to show off some embroidery.

See you tomorrow!

Unbalanced

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/

When I watch shows like Intervention or Obsessed I can understand how those people ended up the way they are -- family problems, loneliness, death, alienation, etc. It is very easy to see the correlation between "something bad" and "mental illness". There was a time in my life when things were very bad and I went through some horrifying situations with long-term repercussions. Of course I got better through excellent therapy and medication. Something bad happened and I got sick. My family understood and I had a supportive network of friends.

Depression for no good reason just seems silly to me and therefore I feel ridiculous. Amazing friends, an awesome fiance and daughter, good coworkers, genuine friends, a snugly cat, and a horde of excellent books sounds like a perfect insulator from depression.

But it isn't. Do you understand how frustrating that is? Knowing life is wonderful but not being able to sleep, hating yourself, crying over nothing, and having your hair fall out in clumps while all the while knowing that you're acting stupid is beyond infuriating -- it makes one feel like an asshole. Yup, I feel like an asshole, an ungrateful brat, a nagging self-absorbed child.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon laughing with Hope until she went to Grandma's, enjoying a pedicure, browsing the library stacks and snatching up delicious reads, sitting for hours at Red Lobster talking with Sam and indulging in cheddar biscuits, enjoying the company of friends at the coffee shop and later on snuggling with Sam....

At 12:30 a.m. Sam went to sleep. The cat curled up in his bed and closed his eyes. The house was still and dark and quiet. I padded downstairs to the couch to wait for sleep that is so difficult to attain. And I started crying. For no reason at all. Just sitting on the couch crying in the dark like a cheesy Lifetime movie. All snot and tears and those pathetic half-chokes that get caught in the throat.

I'm tired of feeling shitty and since my life is good and there is nothing to change it means I have to do what I hate the most: go. on. medication.

*sigh*

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

This morning I made some delicious apple cinnamon muffins. I had 3, Sam had 4, and little Hope had 5.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Ingredients:
2 C. all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 C. white sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 C. vanilla yogurt
1 egg (beaten)
1/2 C. applesauce
1 C. chopped apple.

This recipe is easy! Simply mix the dry ingredients. Next, mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Then add the wet to the dry and stir until just mixed (you want the batter to be a bit lumpy). Fold in your apples and you're ready to bake! Bake at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes.

In other foodish news -- I went to Publix today and they are having some great sales. I bought 10 boxes of Cheerios -- all different flavors -- and it was a steal. Typically each box of Cheerios is about $3.99. If I had paid full price I would have spent $39.90 on all those cereals. They were on sale as buy one get one free. This puts the price of cereal per box at around $1.99 -- okay, now my total is $19.90. Bring on the coupons! I had 2 $1 off coupons and one 50 cent coupon that was doubled which brought my total cereal purchase down to $16.90. Plus I had a Publix coupon for $1 off bananas when you buy a box of Cheerios. So my total price -- per box -- on cereal was $1.69 per box.

It was such a good grocery shopping day. I paid $135.54 for groceries and saved over $95 with coupons and sales. Whoot!

W.I.P. it Good

Traci gave me a lovely Sublime Stitching gift card for my birthday and I was so excited! Earlier in the week these lovely patterns arrived.

This is the beginning of a two-part project that I'm really excited about.

Besides stitching I've been working, reading, and visiting with friends. Tonight I have plans to clean-up, bake, and then settle down with either a book or a movie.

Things in my Head or otherwise known as Romp Through Flickr

Yarn

Library Books

Hot Nerd Glasses

Piercings

Coffee

Thread

Au Revoir Simone

Banana Bread and Self-Loathing in Gainesvegas

Doesn't that look delicious.... Go ahead drool.

It is Catherine's deliciously moist and cakey banana bread recipe. Granted, mine didn't turn out nearly as pretty, but this is because it popped out of the oven just before 11 p.m. and Sam and I wanted a slice right away before bed. So we let it cool for two minutes and then we couldn't stand the bananay-fragrant goodness torturing us. If you look in the top left-hand corner of the pic you can see where a wayward piece of crust was devoured PRIOR to photography. That's some damn good bread.

You'd think bread this heavenly would make me cheerful, but I'm not. I'm in a mood and what a terrible mood it is. I was stomping around the kitchen last night whilst mixing furiously. No idea why I'm so blah. Partly I'm tired, partly all this socialization that's been going on has me depleted and craving solitude. I'm sure some of its financial worries and the fact that I've become increasingly self-loathing about my appearance. Nearly all of it probably has to do with Aunt Flow.

I want a lot of things right now that I can't have and it is frustrating. I want a car so I can go the farmer's market and the store at a whim. I'd like to buy some new pants because I only have 2 work-approved pairs of pants. I need a night at a movie with some Thai food like mad. Some pretty colors of yarn would also be nice. I have chronic and severe baby envy. Hope is at grandma's for most of the summer and I miss her cheerful face terribly. I'd like to look at my knees or thighs or arms or stomach and not feel disgusting. Geez, I'd settle for having the bills paid on time and not worrying that an eviction is around the corner.

And goddamn it now I feel like I'm acting like an emo.

grrrr....

Since carbs, coffee, kisses, and The Neverending Story haven't worked to get me out of my funk I'm hoping that a few hours of tattooing will help. If all goes well tonight I'll be getting Rutherford, the Owl, touched-up. I need an endorphin high like now please and maybe a bit more banana bread.

"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three"*

I only read 3 books in May. WTH? Granted, one was a classic and another was over 700 pages long. But still -- only 3? I had wanted to read at least five, but apparently five was "right out!".

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens last novel was incomplete, Dickens dies before the serialized novel could be completed. This drove me mad because this novel is a mystery and I became obsessed with the mystery. Edwin Drood goes missing one night and is never found again (although some of his personal items of dress are found in the river). Did he leave for Egypt? Was he murdered? AGH! We will never know. Dang.

Drood by Dan Simmons

Do you notice a theme here? This behemoth of a novel absolutely sucked me in. While reading I kept wanting to take a field trip to an opium den or a become mesmerized. It has insanity, hints of the supernatural, jealousy, murder, gobs of opium and is narrated by one of my favorite authors -- Wilkie Collins. I'm still a bit ambiguous about the ending, I wanted it to be a bit more "unreal". I can't really say more without spoiling the mystery of this book. Currently I'm dying for my coworker Melissa to finish the book so I can engage in some major book talk.

Y the Last Man: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan

I was so excited to start this graphic novel series about the last man on Earth -- Yorick -- and his monkey Ampersand. Basically, a disease elements all male beings on the face of the Earth excepting Yorick and Ampersand. Women with very different ideas on gender and feminist values try to figure out how to rule once the patriarchy has been, for the most part, eliminated. An interesting and quick read, I couldn't help but think I would have loved to discuss this series in one of my many Gender Studies classes in college. I can't wait to get the next installment.

So that's it. My paltry reads for May. They were few in number, but all excellent reads!

*pssst... name the movie!

Was Snot the Greatest Vacation... or was it....

Yes.... Snot... The close of my vacation has been filled with Kleenex, hacking coughs, and sleeping with my mouth open on a pile of pillows.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit can tell you that my idea of "vacation" or "down time" includes accomplishing things. I've never been one who is content with just hanging around. I had grand plans for reading and finishing some crafty projects and none of that really happened. OK, well some of it happened. In fact I think a top seven is in order to quell my pissy mood. The top moments in this vacation, (in random order, or course).

1. Hope: we splashed at the pool, we shopped at the mall, chilled at the coffee shop, had some great conversations, and she made me fruit salad to help me get better.
   
2. Sam: you know you are in the right relationship when you are both laying in bed with Vicks Vapor Rub smeared under your noses, noisily coughing, and have that gross sick clammy skin going on and you can have a conversation about how you would totally be all over that person if it wasn't for Benadryl induced lethargy. That's love.
   
3. Friends: We had two groups of friends over to our home on Thursday for dinner (not in a Hannibal Lector way). It was so much fun! Saturday night we hung out with coffee shop friends until well after one in the morning despite feeling crappy. That also rocked!
   
4. Coffee: Friday was my first night working at Inman Perk. I loved it. Except midway through the evening my sore throat and cough showed up. I liked it so much that now I'm obsessed with watching barista training videos on YouTube.
   
5. Baking: The only real baking/kitchen wizarding I did was on Thursday. I made gazpacho, cumin chicken, rice, and homemade shortbread. Silly me forgot to take pictures; plans are to remake the shortbread as soon as I'm better and supply some pictures and the recipe. Stay tuned!
   
6. Reading: Drood is finished and I read my new issue of BUST cover to cover yesterday. The Neverending Story is well underway.
   
7. Thread: I may not have finished any projects, but that didn't keep me from cashing in my Sublime Stitching gift card! Whoot! By the end of this week I will be in embroidery heaven.

All in all, I suppose this has been a great vacation. My glumness stems from the bright blue skies and terrific weather and being trapped by sickness. I expect by Wednesday I should be feeling better and ready to rejoin the world as my cheerful self.