Painting in progress.

Something I'm working on. I'm going to try to work on this within the next few days and post the progress.


I'm using a Wacom tablet, and Corel Painter IX. It's has a digi watermark on it and on top of that my own stamp. The original size of this pic is 1500pixels X 1500 pixels. So I sized it down to 600x600 so it would load quicker. (end nerd moment)

I'm on a school break for the holidays and extremely desperate for my brain to quiet down and take a break too, so I gave it a project. (see picture above)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I wish you all the best. Merry Christmas.

Geek alert. Musical Language

I sat down to do some work, and decided to turn on some music as I always do. I noticed that my itunes was downloading some podcast. So in my curiosity I checked to see what was new. And look what I found

WNYC Radio Lab
Musical Language
Show #202
Friday, April 21, 2006

It's so interesting. If you're bored. Listen to it.

lights, Camera, UUUUHHH that's gotta hurt.

So it's been confirmed, checked and double checked. Not only is my doctor sure I should be taking the little purple pill, he thinks I should be doing it twice a day.

I'm not going into detail about the whole horrible morning I had the day of the endoscopy. In a nutshell I was in terrible pain, and could not eat or drink or do anything about it but pace and breathe.

Finally the moment came when the doc shows up and clearly sees I'm in severe discomfort. He was awesome. I really liked him a lot. I like is PA a lot too. very good listeners and very sympathetic. One of the first questions he asked me was "How is your stress levels these days?" I started to answer but they were already giving me the drugs to put me to sleep so I didn't say much else, but "very HIGH. I have a baby, a seven year old and a 15 years old that is acting a fool right nzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzz"
He said some other things to me but I can't 'member. :P

That question has made me think. I am a nervous, anxious, stressed out person by nature. I try really hard not to let stuff bother me, but my body reacts other wise. The reaction is so involuntary it's almost like breathing. How do you unlearn such volatile and involuntary reaction. Should I runaway from home and become a Zen Buddhist.

Honestly my life is not bad at all. I have some big stressors but others have it worse. The big picture of my life is not so bad, it's my physical reaction to these stupid things that are hurting me.

Do you pay attention to what your body does when you have small life altering moments?
And by small I mean, delays in traffic, stupid things that throw off your schedule, the child is slow at brushing his teeth or refuses to do it. You get my point.

lights camera, ewww.

And finally the day has come and I had my appointment with the Gastrointerologist.
She's super nice. But basically it all comes down to, we really don't know what's wrong with you sound like it could be an ulcer. But I want you to come back and get an endoscopy done. Oh and by the way give your medical family history you are due for a colonoscopy by the age of 40. So I have something to look forward to in 4 more years or is it 3. I don't know.

In the mean time she gave me some Nexium samples and a script for more Nexium. I take it to my local Wallyfart pharmacy. And they later inform me that my insurance doesn't want to pay. They want to see if the doctor won't prescribe something else.

Oh yeah they know more than the doctor's now. So I spent my whole day at the doctor's right? Inconvenience some of my family member's so that they can watch thekids for me while I go see this doctor. Spend time with her, talk to her, she uses all her resources and the 8 years of medical study to give me the right something for the I don't know what you have but this will definitely take care of it in the mean time. ONLY to be second guessed by some piss-ant pencil pusher behind a desk somewhere that magically knows more than my physician. I'm sorry if I sound bitchy about this but this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. My husband works his butt off everyday, so that we can have what we need the basics, you know. And thankfully we can afford very decent health care. I can go to whoever I want to see, but I would get an even better discount if they were in the group. AnYway. What I'm getting at is we pay a pretty penny to get this kind of benefit. It AIN't cheap and you know what neither is the basic basic stuff. We all know that. So we're paying these A**holes to tell us "umm are YOU sure?? you need that medication? I think you could take something else, umm yeah. you're in pain and all but we think you can do without this stuff and take something else. In the mean time, yeah, you can just wait. mmmmkay."

A-nNOY-ING!!!

Now I understand why I got the samples. Because my doc is probably used to dealing with these thieving insurance companies.

Wednesday morning I'll be get my insides photographed and videotaped so that I may be studied more in depth. LOL. I feel like such a freakshow.

Other updates: Munchkin one and Munchkin two are both sick today.

I'm feeling it too. I have a cold as well now. That really sucks. I feel so uncomfortable, to be in my own skin right now. I got to get out of this funk. The stomach, the cold or allergies, the mental stress. YUCK!!

Night.

Day by day

All I can do is take one step in front of the other. Live minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day. Last week was hell week for me taking a class which in my opinion a not very good instructor. I feel like the types of courses I'm taking now should be more hands on, more exercises more projects, I dont' feel like I should be writting 1000 - 3000 word essays. I feel like thats a complete waste of my time. Any how I'm not going to go on about that.

A few weeks ago I had my gall bladder removed, as some of you may know. But now I have developed another problem. The pain is intense, back to square one. By intense I mean I break out into a cold sweat when it comes on strong. The pain only seems to pass after I have a glass of milk or food. My guess is I have an ulcer now. Did I have it before the gallbladder surgery. I don't know. I did have gallstones so that was an issue. I just don't know what came first, or was this developed after my surgery. I have an appointment on Monday but these days I don't know that I can wait that long, the other day I was just begging to go to the ER, but then it passed.

There is no activity at the house in the country, Realtors have visited the site and have given nothing by great reviews. But it's the holidays and of course no one is out looking for a house while they are out buying Christmas gifts.

Mortgages, Rents, bills and gifts OH MY!!

So all these little things are just compounding and compounding the anxiety I feel. The anxiety I feel does not help but cause more pain to my already sore stomach.

I don't know what else to say but thanks for reading.

The little devil

lil devil
Originally uploaded by mousepotatozone

I don't normally post picture of my children. And if I do they are obscure shots not full on face pics. I don't know why really. I have a few reasons and a few theories, but I won't bore you with them. It's just what I do.

Any how, but today I decided against all that.

My model is sporting a little devil hat that I initially intended it to be a Halloween accessory. :D And being the last minute person that I am could not finish it in time.

So here it is. I finished a while back I just didn't posted till now.

I can't believe how big he's gotten. Well he's still small compared to my first child. We're 10 months now. He climbs the stairs all the way to the second floor. It's a cool thing to watch.
A lot could be learned from a baby climbing stairs. Let's think about it for a second. I'm in a philosophizing (word?) mood.
He takes those steps one at a time with out thinking about the risk or the big obstacle ahead.
He doesn't think "I have to climb all those steps just to get upstairs."
He just goes "one more, okay and one more, one more and hey I'm upstairs look it's the office and books I can rip. whooohoo. Hey mama just scooped me up....Hey I'm in my crib. oh okay I'll take a nap now. dang it.!"

The pattern is Chileconyarne Viking hat. I used some
Lion Brand Wool-Ease Solid that I bought on sale at Hancock Fabrics.

C'est Fini! They feel so goooood!

firstpairFO
Originally uploaded by mousepotatozone

I finished the last night. I really should have been catching up on some much needed sleep. But I couldn't help myself. Once you start that toe decrease there is no way I was putting those needles down. ;)

I wore them all day today. HEEHEE. I couldn't resist. they feel soooooo goood!

Laters. I'm on the last week of this class and I can't say enough how F***ing sick of this class I am. MORE than any other class. Seriously.

More music, more love.

I know another post about music, but when I have to spend oodles of time infront of this screen. I have to occupy my ears with beautiful things. I took these test in one of the first courses at the University I'm attending, to learn what kind of learning skills I had. What was my learning style? At . In those quizzes I learned I was a visual-spatial learner. Along with being a visual spatial I had some strong pointers towards musical learning style. All of us have multiple learning pathways, and I think it would be great if more schools took the time to figure these things out. So that they can help the students understand themselves and improve their learning ability. I think that might be the key to learning success. Looking back at the way I learned in school or didn't learn for that matter, I understand now why that is. If I could go back in time and talk to myself, I would tell her the secret to her own learning strategy. Shoot I could have been an awesome student. Don't get me wrong I wasn't a terrible student, I just had to work at it a little harder and often beat myself up for not understanding things and sometimes called myself "stupid". Crazy how things are. I wonder how many kids out there are feeling the same way.

To maximize my learning abilities, there are some techniques.

Visual/Spatial should

• Develop graphic organizers for new material
• Draw mind maps
• Develop Charts and graphs
• Use color in notes to organize
• Visualize material (method of loci)

Musical/Rhythmic learners

• Create rhythms out of words
• Beat out rhythms with hand or stick
  
• Play instrumental music/write raps
• Put new material to songs you already know
• Take a music break

Some of these things I did naturally. I thought they were just part of my quirky personality, but they are valid techniques. WHO knew?

All that gabbing just talk about these two new songs. Sometimes I find a song and just fall in love with it. There is just something about it that I can't explain, it's just a feeling. It's the rhythm, it's the lyrics, it's the melody it's the emotion behind the singers voice. All I know is that for a while that song becomes my musical crack. LOL.

I like all kinds of music, even songs in other languages. So here is a perfect example.

E isso ai performed by Seu Jorge and Ana Carolina both excellent Brazilian artist. I loved this song so much but desperately wanted to know what the lyrics meant. I speak fluent Spanish so I understand a little bit of what they were saying. And finally I found in my search that E isso ai is a cover of a Damien Rice song "The Blower's Daughter"



This is the Portuguese version



I prefer the latter of the two. I think it's such a sexy language. I even had my husband learn a few words in Portuguese. mmmm-mmmmm!!