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Yes, that is Constance J. Woodle  – but no, that’s not really me, LOL! Connie is in her full winter coat – I think next time she sees the groomer she’ll have a close shave – her hair starts to get knotty at this length.

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The bottom line that the scanner cut off says “I am really looking forward to bed!”

We see the doctor again in a fortnight and I’m determined that I will have lost at least a couple of kg by then.  I’m back to using the CalorieKing.com.au website to count calories and record  exercise: that really helped last time when I managed to lose weight.  I’m aiming for around 80kg as my final goal – heavier than Weight Watchers or CalorieKing recommend for my height and age, but more achievable than their estimate  – 60 kg? I don’t THINK SO!!Last time I was that weight I was 20 something years younger and caught any flu/cold/lurgy that was going. That’s when I got the glandular fever that is still effecting my life NOW.

And here’s a journal page I started at Social Cre8te at Tammy’s shop yesterday:

There’s some stamping in the background using one of the new ($4!) Kaisercraft texture stamps (the one called “Flourish”, CS759) – I’m looking forward to using the same stamp in wet gesso to give more texture to backgrounds – I forgot to take the gesso with me yesterday!  The buildings are made from a book I bought for $2 on British plants -  a very good buy because the paper is such beautiful quality, no foxing at all, and very sturdy, even though the book dates from the late 1930s (from memory). (No, it wasn’t worth anything as a book, but it’s lovely as art material.)

In other news: Mr Beloved hired a slasher (what a beastie!)

yesterday, and did the yard.  First time in about (mumblety… 5?) months, and the !@&*^!* kikuyu grass ( Pennisetum clandestinum – if you do a search on google images you’ll see just how invasive it is!) had grown into knee high, tangled mats that an ordinary mower  had no chance of defeating.  (And our mower still needs to go off to be repaired anyway…)  At least we can see the dog when she’s in the yard now!  We’re pulling up runners and trying to poison the rest of the kikuyu, it’s awful stuff.

And now it’s time to hang the washing  – such a beautiful almost Spring day here,  blue sky and the birds are turning over the drying “hay” left in the yard…

(frame from Kitschy Digitals Fabric Covered Buttons kit)

Little Rex is now the size of a big house sparrow – quite intimidating to his parents who are both small for their breed.

(And what a great shot of my stress rash, eh?  The only thing that makes it go away is  – duh – getting rid of the stress. Not a lotion in the world will fix it.)

Credits: Kitschy Digitals Vintage Camera Kit (background paper, Box Brownie, Polaroid frames); Lesley Grainger‘s Birdie ABC Alpha; Doodled Edge from Laurie Anderson – Heaven’s Gate Designs.

We’ve heard the little one saying “peep peep peep peep PEEEEEEP” for over a fortnight  now – but we didn’t want to do anything that might endanger him/her.  Well, S/he has open eyes and is finally big enough to start to stand.  I think you have to be a bird person to truly love the little ones when they’re this ugly/cute!  Bollinger and Dorian, the parent birds, are spending increasing amounts of time out of the nesting box, but both are still on feeding duty.

I’m trying not to get too attached, as it’s still early days, but young Rex is over the most vulnerable phase, we hope.

BTW – Mr Beloved called the chick “Rex” because it was able to make a fierce hissing noise when disturbed – sort of like what baby dinosaurs might have done. (And how much do I love the look of adoration on his face as Mr Beloved holds Rex?!)

We went to the Nice Psychiatrist today, and I feel like I have a little more control over what’s going on.  She listened to my whinging about side effects and gave me the option of changing meds or sticking things out  – she thinks that a lot of the symptoms I’m struggling with are signs that I’m actually getting better.  So – knowing that it really takes at least 6 weeks for new medications  to settle,  I now have an action plan,  possibly at half hour increments, of How To Cope with panic attacks, rage, hunger, etc.  It feels a bit silly filling in the day in such small wedges of time, but apparently I know this makes sense and stops any one problem becoming OVERWHELMING.

And tonight I baked.  It smells sooooo good – let’s hope THIS one makes it out of the tin without any disasters!  It’s the banana variation of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cordon Rose Cream Cheesecake.  Mr Beloved beta beater(!) tested the mix before it went into the tin and pronounced it Good.  It’s been at least 6 years since I made it last  – I had to buy a new springform tin to replace one that didn’t survive the move from Canberra.

I must get to bed: Social Cre8te tomorrow, and we’re celebrating my birthday, so I have to be there (with the cheesecake!)  I should point out that I didn’t HAVE to make my own cake, I just wanted an excuse to bake.  Especially since part of the new regime to cope with the side effects of the medication will be a CARB FREE HOUSE (or as close as we can reasonably manage) – so that I don’t end up the size of a house again.  Lots and lots of veges and vege soup in my future.

BED!

Photos of cake etc tomorrow.

Credits: Art Journal Caravan Parcel 8 (Scrapbookgraphics); K. Pertiet Basic Journal Spots (Designer Digitals); brushes from A Rockwell’s CU grunged pattern brushes (Scrapartist); font is Academy Engraved

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Background: Studio Alana “Before Dusk” paper turqmetal (from SBG Welcome Wagon)
Digital Scrapbook Place “The Haunted” creepy chequered floor element
Curtain from a freebie by Freubel (site may be considered  NSFW, be warned!)
Tangie Baxter’s “Journal Anthology” kit fish(“Pinkfishiefoo”, love that name!),banner and frog
font: Beyond Wonderland
Crown from Ztampf! ARTiStrokes Heart to Heart
Studio JenU door (from her “Doors” pack)

I’ll be printing this out at standard ATC size (2.5 x 3.5 inches) later this week.

No big plans for Australia Day – popping round to friends for a cider in the arvo, that’s about  it.  Don’t like yobby crowds so we’re avoiding any official “celebrations”.

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The verb of the week was “Accept” and one of the tasks was to make an illustrated calendar.

Background is my own watercolour paper scanned in; most of the elements are from Studio Tangie and/or the Art Journal Caravan packages at Scrapbook Graphics; grassy alpha from MissBehaving (link to come).

Kelly Rae (Very different style, very cool – you’ll need to scroll down
to get past all the Christmas stuff and see her art)
http://kellyraeroberts.blogspot.com/

Dina Wakley – QUEEN of stencils and masks (and very cool scrapbook
pages, too)
http://dinastamps.typepad.com/ponderings/

Marsha Jorgensen, Tumble Fish Studio (her stuff looks so complex you’d
think it’s digital but it’s ALL hand cut, coloured, and glues.  Freakin’
amazing.  I wanna be her when I grow up.)
http://tumblefishstudio.blogspot.com/

Nancy Baumiller (Crowabout)   – I did a class with her in November and
she’s a cool teacher!  She also gives away a free collage sheet every
week (via Flickr) – the link is in her sidebar.
http://crowabout.blogspot.com/

Different style again (and she’s been in a lot of scrapbooking mags:
Julie Fei Fan Balzer, very cool art journals
http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/

Samantha Kira was featured in the most recent issue of Art Journaling
mag and I love the way her stuff is messy
and honest!
http://www.journalgirl.com/

And the digital/hybrid year long “Art Journal Caravan” class I’m doing
via http://scrapbookgraphics.com has a gallery here:
http://www.scrapbookgraphics.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=3500
(I’m rather intimidated by everyone else’s work there, to be honest!)

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Credits:  Fonts: CK Ali’s Hand, ShangriLaNF Small Caps; Pink and grey plane “sticker” from the “Greetings from Paris” digital collage sheet by Itkupilli; Page Border from the KitschGarden Brushes set by Studio Berna; all other elements and papers from the Studio Tangie Steamer Trunk, part of the Art Journal Caravan.

I’m planning on printing this out at 8×8 (well, getting it printed on an 8×10 sheet at somewhere that does nice photo prints and cutting it to 8×8) and binding it with about 30-40 pages as the first month’s journal.  There’s no point trying to use the one book for the whole year – I know I get BORED, and I know that the book would get hopelessly fat and ratty over that time frame.

I really like the overlay on this page – that KitschGarden Brush set was something I Just Had To Have as soon as I saw it – luckily I was able to grab it on Christmas Day as my last bit of the quota free download.

I’m off to the respiratory specialist on Wednesday, just the two year checkup to see how I’m doing with my sleep apnoea and tolerating my CPAP machine. I’m about 25 kg lighter than the last time he saw me, so I’m hoping he won’t rouse on me too much!  I find it almost impossible to sleep without the mask (connected to the machine) on; although apparently I can still fall asleep enough to snore if I put the mask on and forget to restart the machine if I get up in the night.  No, it’s not particularly romantic, but neither is having Mr Beloved lying awake, tense, waiting for me to start breathing again!

Steamy here today, after the lovely rain (4 mm yesterday – we’re not getting the wonderful (flooding) rains they’re getting down South, but 4mm isn’t bad!) and I’m off to get bread, milk, and the post.  Oh, and of course the new Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness…

(ETA: D’OH! Boxing Day is Mondayised this year, TOOWOOMBA is SHUT!!)

We had a Very Geeky Christmas: our internet provider had a quota free day and I was able to snag an abso-bloody-lutely GINORMOUS set of digital scrapbooking stuff – well over a gig.  Took about 7 hours.

Not something I would have been able to do at all, usually – and what’s more, I had a coupon (from joining Tangie’s Art Journal Caravan) so it didn’t cost me financially, either!  WOOOT! 9 kits of different colours, some repeats, but – what a resource! Now I just need to find a way (that works with Linux) of organising/tagging my digital scrapbooking stuff - there’s too much to just try and remember what was in which kit.

Any suggestions?

Mr Beloved was very patient and late in the day he was able to download a rare Brain Eno and Robert Fripp live recording, so he was happy too.

[start whinge here] Our internet usage is a constant source of angst: every month, we run out of quota, but because we’re on a grandfathered plan we get Such A Deal. And given that our internet access is via ancient copper with dirty old corroded lead joins, which tends to be unreliable at best and non existent if we get enough rain, there’s not a lot of point in trying to buy more bandwidth.  Grrrr.  The exchange is “Scheduled to be enabled for ADSL2″ by our ISP but they’ve been saying that for a couple of years now. (And of course, that won’t fix our phone line…) I am so envious of US friends and other people who have unlimited access! [end whinge]

I’m seriously looking at investing in that Bind It All machine… it would be super cool to have journals the size I want with the papers I want and with a coil binding – I COULD make sewn journals, yes, but I really want to make loose pages of various papers into a book to use.  Many books, actually.   But I can’t buy it from the (possibly cheaper, local  megacraftstore place) S***Shite, because what if I need warranty service or help? They’d be bloody useless.

Anyone got one and have advice to offer?

And in sad news: The Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness perished.  Long Live the Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness.  *sigh* For now I am making do with a coke bottle filled with hot water, wrapped in a sock (!)  but it’s nowhere near as effective, of course.  On Monday we shall hold the coronation of the new Sacred Hot Water Bottle of  Happiness, with due pomp and ceremony. These things are important.

It’s so exciting to see stuff from bloggers I read all the time as well as  people who are completely new to me.  I didn’t get much past the first flick through before I had to dive into my art supplies… don’t you just love it when that happens?

Also VERY high on the hApPy DaNcInG list today: Mum and Dad bought me THIS (well, they gifted the money, which I chose to use for this, *mwah* thanks!)

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As soon as I can work out how to get the blinkie working, you” see a link over on my sidebar there. I’m super happy about this because it’s designed to combine digital and physical stuff, (or can just be one or the other) and Tangie is an AWESOME designer! Starts January 1, but you can join anytime, and it’s 52 weeks worth – oh bliss!

If I can sit up today I’m, hoping to start work on a cover for my expedition journal.

The “if” is because – dagnabbit – the PAIN IS BACK.  Yep, the exact same endometriosis type pain, lower abdominal, radiating down to my knees and through my lower back – in other words, the same sort of pain I had every bloody month until the relief of the TAHBSO (job lot clearance of all the girly internal bits) op.

Went to the doc yesterday, who agreed that yes, the eating fatty foods then doubling over in pain an hour or so later is very likely gall bladder related, but easily solved: don’t eat fatty foods. Duh. The possible return of the endo (coming soon to a theatre near you: Gutwars Part II: The Endo Strikes Back)  (ewww!) will have to wait for the Feb appt with the very nice gyno doc.

I haven’t yet decided what format the journal will take – at this stage I’m leaning towards a box full of separate, differently sized pages which will eventually (when I have *sob, please, I want one sooooooo much* one of these – and to continue this dreadfully parenthetic entry, I *could* theoretically go buy one in the  next fortnight, but I am trying to carefully carefully carefully shepherd the wonderful parental gift $ Just In Case … (Miss Constance needs to go to the vet again, or Something Else Dire happens.) where was I?  Oh yeah – loose pages, varying sizes, eventually bound together.  Yep.

Only problem I can see with that is the possibility probability that I will lose pages, or be tempted to chuck the ones I’m not 100% happy with. Both of which would be Bad and Not At All In The Spirit Of The Thing.

Right, I’m off to see if Mr Beloved will make me some lunch (whiiiiiine!) and refill the Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness. These things are important.