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Jul. 5th, 2009

Eye-Corn


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Poor Acorn the dog had cataract surgery more than a year ago, and her eye has just never gotten better. 

It's been weird and stressful the last couple weeks to have several doctors crowd into the room on three separate specialist visits to discuss all of her problems, ten different medications and several surgeries as though I had endless amounts of money. No, the original cataract surgery was so ridiculously expensive that these new surgeries were wandering into crazyland. Eyesight is priceless, of course, and I'm nuts about this dog, but I knew at some point I'd have to say, "no, just take out the eye."

It would have been an easy choice if her other eye was good, but it has a rapidly forming cataract as well. Eventually that eye will require surgery, and it could possibly decline like the first one. She's such a crazy active dog that I can't stand to think of her not being able to see one day.

But in the end I didn't have to choose because her eye quickly went downhill this week (partially thanks to some pretty stupid advice from a late-night pet hospital), and ultimately the retina detached. Since the eye was now blind and painful, there was nothing left to "save," so the doctor suggested removing the eye entirely.





One afternoon I picked up my pal with her new pirate face. She seems to be handling it just fine, better than me. Her biggest issue right now is wearing the evil e-collar for two weeks.

Aaron sings "My One-Eyed Girl" to her, and I've been calling her Eyecorn. Making jokes about it, along with seeing her wiggling her happy butt up and down the street for her first one-eyed walk, has made it all okay for now.


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Jul. 1st, 2009

(no subject)





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In an earlier post I was joking about vitamin and all other over-priced colored water, and at the end I said:

I think I could successfully sell a Beauty Water composed of 98% water, 2% chemical garbage. Drink this water and you will be beautiful because it's tinted pink, it's in a pretty bottle, and I'm charging you $5 for each serving. Really, I could sell a ton of them before anyone read the ingredients, especially if I could get the ever-important Jennifer Aniston to be spotted with one in her hand for a micro-second.



And within a few weeks I saw her whoring out water bottles in every magazine:




I'm glad I could help encourage the population of plastic bottles on the planet. You're welcome.




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Something new




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My new baby GREAT nephew (I think that's what you call it when a niece has a baby), Oren, arrived early this morning.





I believe he's an ounce shy of 10 pounds, which explains why my niece has looked like she was about to explode.

He's in Oklahoma, tho, so all I have is this blurry phone picture. I will get my hands on him soon.


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Jun. 27th, 2009

Goodbye to My Best Camera #2






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I'd owned my camera a really long time, so when it finally shut down a couple years ago, I was too in love with it to get an entirely different camera.  I replaced it with an identical used camera, eventually erasing from my head that it wasn't even the original camera.

Last weekend I stuck it in Aaron's shirt pocket to keep it dry while we were walking around ankle-deep in the ocean. He hopped over a tiny wave, and I saw the camera fly straight up in and into the water. That's that.

Don't know how to replace it. Seems like someone's camera is always breaking or mysteriously dying no matter the brand or cost, while my old one survived many many bumps and drops. I know I'm going to get a new one, and it will fall apart in two months. Everything seems to be disposable these days.

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Jun. 25th, 2009

Gloomy Day









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Very upsetting day for personal reasons.

And then I hear someone's lost a really long hard fight...
 



And someone I grew up listening to is suddenly and unexpectedly gone...




Michael Jackson no longer being around is very surreal, can't sink in. It's re-occurred to me a couple times today, and I have a moment of confusion, like I've just discovered my purse is missing or I've left home without pants... what, huh, howdidthishappen, didthisreallyhappen?



If ya have something bad to say about him, I don't really wanna hear it. Maybe since he's gone now you could give it a rest anyway.

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Jun. 24th, 2009

Alice Again






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I just heard that Tim Burton is remaking Alice In Wonderland. Ever since he wiped his butt with "Planet of the Apes" and "Willie Wonka" I haven't been all that excited about anything he's doing. I'm not really against him either. I'm just...eh.

But...

Just saw this picture of Depp (of course) playing the Mad Hatter:



And I want to say congratulations to Burton for creating the most disgusting and uninteresting Mad Hatter of all time. Makes me think of Elijah Wood as a zombie...or 1980's vomit...or Ronald Mcdonald.

And OF COURSE Helena Bonham Carter will be the Queen of Hearts. That'll be something new---her playing a crazy woman. I like her and Depp, but they don't have to play every eccentric character, do they? Are there no other actors in the world?




No make up required. Just slap a hat on him.



After all, there's Carrot Top. 

Yes, I might have been happier to hear Carrot Top would be the Mad Hatter. I would have said, "Man, I didn't see that coming. Tim Burton's got some crazy shit up his sleeve this time!"


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Jun. 21st, 2009

Happy Father's Day






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My dad looks like an Ewok, so I turned him into one for the front of the Father's Day card that I made for him:



And then, because I'm often too tired to be driving or making decisions or finding the way to the bathroom of my own house, I wrote "Happy Birthday" inside the card and stuck it in the mail.

Well, he got a good laugh out of that.



Aaron wrote "Happy Father Day" inside the card he made for his dad. He says he left off the apostrophe and "s" on purpose, because it's comedic genius. Right. Btw, Genius was wading knee-deep in the ocean today and got knocked completely underwater by a wave.


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Jun. 16th, 2009

Pretty beads




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It's cool to come across an image that takes you right back to a moment in time, and for a few seconds you're just as excited...hungry...whatever you were the first time.

Today I came across this purse, and someone in the family had a similar one when I was a kid:



I was young enough to think the beads looked delicious, and I remember being astounded that candy could be wasted on a purse---sewn there as a decoration, off limits.

When no one was looking I licked the beads. Ah, nothing. Must be a tasteless candy coating. So I knew I would have to break some beads off and actually bite into them, and I did. Red and yellow bead, crunch. Made a horrible sound in my mouth but did not give.

Once in my mouth I recognized that these beads were of the same substance as a checker, and if you've ever sucked on a checker (I had) you know they are extremely unsatisfying.


I was not too bright...or cute.


This was probably near the tail-end of learning that game pieces and decorations are not edible, but it hasn't stopped me from having just a little flutter of candy excitement when I see something beaded.


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Jun. 15th, 2009

Love Letter




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Sometimes ya just don't feel compelled to write until there's something that really must be unloaded from your chest. 

My sister thinks this is my nephew's very first written sentence, probably soon after playing with his baby cousin Rose, who sometimes cried and tattled. Well, and she was a girl:



This translates to:  I hate Rose


What a terrible and funny keepsake.


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Jun. 13th, 2009

Batman's Chicken








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I may have posted this picture quite a while back, but I've just come across it again, and it makes laugh.


This is my nephew when he was smaller. He used to like to put on costumes all year, and here he is as half-Batman, hugging one of his chickens with rabid enthusiasm.






We should all have days that we wake up and decide to be superheros, and we should all have a reason to make this face often...and hopefully not get our eyes pecked out afterward if we are a little overzealous.




No chickens or children were harmed in the making of this photo.


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Kinetic Energy







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It's full o' hills around here, and I'm not used to that at all.

I slid my car seat all the way back the other day while I searched for something, and I forgot to slide the seat forward again afterward.  Noticed while driving around that I could barely reach the gas. This has happened many times, and I just reach down, adjust it while I'm driving. There's not a big consequence on a level ground.  But not a good idea around here, reaching the bottom of a steep hill while applying brakes for the upcoming light.



I slid forward with such velocity that it seemed the seatbelt was about to cut me in half---felt just like when I've been hit from behind by another car. If I'd been leaning forward another inch I would have busted out my teeth on the steering wheel.

There's an awful lot of us too stupid to be driving.


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Jun. 11th, 2009

On Ebay today...





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I buy a lot of things on Ebay.  For one thing it's a form a recycling, as I'm getting perfectly good used things, but also I just love old things. I do more looking than buying, which can be like visiting a museum of oddities.



Occasionally I come across some really dumb descriptions or pictures. Or lack of pictures. Like someone's gonna buy a $17,000 car or a $2000 ring on Ebay with no pictures provided. Really.





Here is something I came across today:


HANDMADE LEATHER CHILD'S PURSE - LOVE THE LITTLE BEARS!

This child's purse for the girl who loves Bear's.
This all leather purse is a great gift.

One of a kind.
Made by an Arkansas prisoner.


That's right, if there's anything a prisoner should be making, it's products for children. Makes me start having stupid thoughts like, well, maybe it's a grandmotherly prisoner, and that's okay. Maybe it's a harmless fellow like my cousin who only stole a jar of cheese...

But I can't know the level of convict we're talking about here without asking some questions, and does anyone really want this purse badly enough to ask? You don't want it. I saw it.




And then I was looking at vintage curtains, which you would think could be hung up or spread across the table for a photo...



But not when it's so much cooler to find something lumpy in the yard to drape them across, creating a couple of curtain ghosts.  And by all means then take the picture from as far away as possible so that no one can really tell anything about the curtains at all, except that they can haunt your yard.


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Jun. 7th, 2009

Caught in a Loop








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The remakes of everything I grew up with are starting to make me feel kinda crazy.

I had fun watching the new Star Trek movie, but at the very same time it made me a little sad---don't know why. There are so many remakes or movie versions of old things coming up that I can pretty much look up anything I used to like, and I'll find that someone is planning to retell it. Coming soon are Greatest American Hero, Logan's Run, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Alias Smith and Jones to name a few.

I know, I know...I just shouldn't go see them.




But this is on top of teen and twenty-somethings wearing all the 70's and 80's stuff. 70's clothes/hair are fun to see again, but I never hoped to see 80's clothes again. Ah well.


Ok, I'm not going to be grumpy and say that I don't want anyone touching stuff from my childhood/teen years, but there's just too much of it at once lately. There isn't a lot to look back on fondly if it's reborn in my face all the time.





Probably the added insult is that I've heard younger people so many times lately express disgust with women my age (40's).  Eww, there were old ladies, moms,  jumping up and down about that actor. Eww, there were nothing but old ladies at the bar. Eww, there were gross forty-something ladies wearing tube tops and hoping to be sexy! 


I'd like to tell them, hey, good luck with not getting older.




Maybe that's why someone's hoping to remake Logan's Run, which had a premise of killing everyone as they reach the age of 30. In the original movie it was for overpopulation, but the remake will probably show culling used just to weed out the disgusting old people.




Time's almost up!  

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Jun. 5th, 2009

Reborn Meat








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The other day at the grocery store I saw a package of chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. Chicket nuggets are creepy enough without taking a specific shape, and then multiply creepy 10 more times when they become another animal.


Extinct one day, chicken another....


This reminds me. One day I was driving by a McDonald's and they had a sign out front that said:

Live it.
Love it.
Chicken McNuggets.

I think McDonald's is trying to tell us chicken McNuggets are a part of the meaning of life. And maybe they are. That a living creature becomes pureed, molded, battered and cooked into something unrecognizable, served in a cartoon-covered sack seems crazy, like most things in life.



One kid across the world would be happy for a bowl of rice to eat, and an American kid is eating a factory-created chicken substance stamped into the shape of a dinosaur. He's dipping in it ketchup. Or maybe he's not even eating it---he's refusing it and asking for something else to eat because he's bored with dinosaur nuggets.

Maybe when this begins to make sense, 50 other things begin to make sense, and life make sense. And then you can live it, love it, dip it in ketchup...etc.






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May. 26th, 2009

Sandbox Incident







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A drawing for my sweet friend Tania, who sometimes has more woes than she can count on her toes. Then again, if everything were easy for her, she wouldn't be so funny and appreciative of silly little things, which are reasons I like her.




The idea for the drawing was hers.


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May. 24th, 2009

Time Vampire







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I don't use my online journal much anymore. Or my drawing table. Or even my full brain capacity. Actually I'd like to hire a replacement for myself. Someone please take over my life and any potential I might have had, and see what can be done. I want to know what happens next.






Some people have little devils or angels or bluebirds of happiness on their shoulders, but I've always had the fat goose of depression. He's really heavy, and he has nothing nice to say. Sometimes I work around him, and sometimes I let him tell me exactly what to do.



I've wondered if you are supposed to one day learn how to get the goose off your shoulder, or do you learn to make friends with it?  I think I've always leaned more toward being friends and laughing about our misadventures together, even though he's causing all of them, and it's not really so funny.

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Sugar and This and That






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Raw sugar comes in packets that look like this:



I love this. EVERYTHING should come in packaging like this.

I know it sounds incredibly boring for the world of printers and packagers, but I don't think everything we buy needs a glossy full-color photo-covered box or bag. We're paying for the pretty box whether we realize it or not, and then we're throwing it away.

We're so spoiled. 


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May. 18th, 2009

Cloudy








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The phrase "sunny California" is apparently a lie. I don't know if it's a ploy to get more people to move here (which wouldn't make sense, as there's no shortage of people) or if it's something said to make people in other states feel like they are missing out on a bright, cheerful lifestyle.




At least in Dallas sometimes I saw the sun, whereas a cloudy muggy gray sky has been present 75% of the days since I got to California in March. Every picture I take is blue.


...altho I did not take this particular picture.


Every morning I wake up with swollen eyes and an itchy nose because my sinuses don't accept his overcast weather. My grandpa used to say if your nose itches someone is coming with a hole in their britches. If he was right, it's time that a great number of people mend their pants. Please.

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May. 11th, 2009

Visitor







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Today I was standing in the back yard, and I heard a buzzing. I thought, wow, that's got to be the biggest bee ever. I turned around to look, and a hummingbird came flying toward me. He stopped about three feet from my face and just hovered there, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.




I've only spotted a hummingbird maybe twice in my whole life, just glimpses, and here's one floating in plain sight, look at me look at me!   He was so cute and tiny and surreal.

He dropped a load of pee, somewhat ending the magical moment, and then zipped away. 


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May. 9th, 2009

Now and then








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Found a picture of my step-brother Davy and myself---I think we are maybe nine years old here. We were introduced in a weird way.


Nice day of Tic-tac-toss with trash burning in the background...

My parents were divorced, and some weekends and school breaks my dad would take my sisters and me for a bit. On one visit my dad introduced us to a woman and her two boys, and then one day (can't remember if it was a separate visit) he announced that he had married her.

By then we'd played with the boys a bit and thought, well, okay, we have brothers now. I remember thinking it was odd that there was nothing gearing up to this announcement, no wedding for us to see or anything. It was just suddenly a fact. 


Sisters with new brothers. I'm the sea monster on the left. I have a bubblegum cigar
in my front pocket for some special occassion.


It's funny to watch a movie now where kids fight with the parents and pout about them dating again or remarrying, as I remember my opinion on the matter not being a factor---actually just not much time for it to sink in, as BAM it was so. Not complaining, though.  It was really surprising, but somehow we pretty quickly accepted this new marriage and happened to enjoyed our new brothers.

However... Sometimes you don't realize how much something bothers you, of course, until much much later in life. When I watched the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire," and the dad gives a speech at the end about moms and dads sometimes not being able to work things out, I burst into ridiculous and unreasonable tears.

"You know some parents, when they're angry, they get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time, and they can become better people, and much better mummies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't, dear..."


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