Smooth Sailing

Today was actually Mom's first day of chemo.

She did really well....her oxygen levels dropped a bit at first but they got her straightened out and she was fine.

Tonight her oxygen level fell again so she's laying low and vowing to call her doctor or the VNA if she feels worse.

So we have her dog Cricket here for tonight....maybe longer.

Cricket is a sweet tan and white 7 year old shi tzu. Henri calls her "little fluffer"

she was one of the most adorable puppies I have ever seen...I highly recommend a shi tzu.

Problem is, she can't jump high enough to get on our bed in the night so she bounces at the edge and makes pathetic doggy noises until you pick her up and put her on the bed....then she gets bored 20 minutes later, gets down and 5 minutes later decides she wants back up on the bed so once again...bounce....bounce.....bounce...good thing she's cute.

Rufus is insanely jealous of her by the way...and she barely tolerates his puppy vigor. Interesting to watch I must say.

I have a 3 day weekend this weekend hooray!...I am going to Pocasset in the morning to get some lilacs from a woman that offered them on freecycle www.freecycle.com and hopefully meet my friend Jen there.

I have to clean the house as my in laws are back from the big spring trip and will be here for a visit from Monday until Tuesday. Lastly and most important chore, I have to work on my illustrations for this childrens book!! I was supposed to have some drawings for him by the end of May... It's the end of May and I have done nothing. Hmmmm...wonder why artistic inspiration escapes me lately? I think I'll e-mail him and let him know I haven't forgotten him and let him know what's going on.

I have the pictures in my head, I just need to get them out on paper and perfect them. He needs examples in black and white, two, three and four colors because the more color in the illustration, the more it costs to print.

I also have another name to finish, this one is "Julia" and 8 year old into ballet, gymnastics and soccer. Getting those three to flow in a picture is NOT easy, lemme tell ya!!

Well, I think it might be bed time. Got lots to do tomorrow.

Goodnight:)

bounce.....bounce.......bounce.......bounce........bounce...................................................

Happy Hump Day

GOOD MORNING!!!!
I got up this morning, showered dressed and got Carlie to school in time to come back home and have another cup of coffee and make my lunch. Henri is at a second interview right now in Hyannis.... SENDING HIM WHITE LIGHT AND GOOD VIBES!!!
I hang around with the woo-woo crew alot at work as you can see.
Not much new, Mom has her first round of chemo today...we think....it's all sort of up in the air but she has to be there at noon.
We had a rough night with Carlie, she has allergies like her dad, poor thing has a cough and runny nose. about 2am that cough woke her up. Henri got up with her and got her settled on his lap with my new quilt made for me by hand by a friend at work, I traded her some artwork for it....anyway, Carlie coughed, gagged and threw up all over the quilt Henri and the floor....sigh...
So for anyone with kids out there reading this...you know whats next. Laundry...change clothes,all the lights on everyone up...eeegads.
Poor baby, she was a wreck. But we got everything cleaned up and put back and dried and off to sleep she went. I love being a Mom.

Ode to Maggie Magoo

Maggie Maggo...Born in Franklin Ma. on a cold December night in 1991. One of 8 mismatched puppies who didn't even look like they were related. Half lab,half Shar pei.
My Dad was bed ridden at the time, and we had an 8 year old beautiful sweet loving muffin of a German Shepard named Treau(pronounced Troy) but he was very sick and needed to be put down. He was going to the vet for just that the next day and we were all sick about it. Mom and I had been checking the want ad's magazine for dogs and came across this ad for lab/boxer mix puppies in Franklin ( what did they know?...it was a shar pei.) So we went to see the litter since we were having such a hard time finding a litter of puppies at that time of year locally.
We got to a big house at about 8pm and met the family who had the litter. It was a young family With a couple young kids. We went to the basement and found this most mixed up bunch of puppies all squirming around. My mother focused in on a little black runt off to one side, but I saw this little blond bouncing monster puppy with tiny ears and a squished up face and a curly little tail and had to have her!...Mom and I flipped a quarter and I won. Next problem, she was only 5 weeks old...But the mom to the litter had walked away from them right after birth. She herself was just 11 months old! After a lot of convincing, we talked the family into letting us bring that little blond squishy faced puppy home with us.
The next day was so hard, we had to say goodbye to our dear sweet boy Treau....But Maggie Magoo was there, and she was not letting us feel down....She was like a little clown and got us all through a really sad time.
Maggie and I were inseparable. She went to work with me every day when I was on the road as a Home Health aide. She'd help me in the garden by shaking out big clumps of weeds I'd pulled out... She rid our entire neighborhood of groundhogs. She'd chase a rock till she dropped. That was her absolute favorite!!
One of our ducks was named Ollie and the two of them would wrestle.
He'd fly just above her head and she'd jump up, knock him out of the sky, then he'd grab hold of her neck and she'd drag him all around the yard like he was skiing!!!.. I wish I had gotten it on film. Anyway,she was with me through some pretty rough times and some pretty cool times.
When I got married and got pregnant, she changed. She became this horrid destructive monster dog that I didn't even know. She destroyed everything she could get into.... She even clawed and chewed my bedroom door...she tore open a 50lb bag of sunflower seeds that we had just bought and left in the kitchen...what a mess!! I could have killed her....The night the baby was born, she literally chewed her way out of a wire kennel. Henri came home at 5am to find her bloody and half in/half out of the kennel. ..She knew. Things did get better with her after the baby was born and eventually she went back to her old self again.
She was 14 now, and showing signs of age....finally.
at 15 and a half, it broke my heart put her down. She had stopped eating and was showing signs of pain. I couldn't do that to her. She and I went to the vet and he put her out, then to sleep. It was the most peaceful end to her life I could have hoped for.The staff at Mashpee vet and Dr. Mark Oldham were beyond wondeful and understanding...I can't say enough about them. I brought her back home when it was over. We buried her in the backyard and planted a beautiful snowball hydrangea on her grave. I call it my "Maggie tree" and this spring it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!...of course.
I have never mourned a dog like I have mourned her. I feel like part of me is buried out there with her.... But it's comforting to know she's out there...home where she belongs.
My beautiful Maggie girl. I miss you.
Now there's Rufus......ugh.

I'm an artist

I'm an artist. You have no idea how funny that sounds to me. I just recently started calling myself that. I never thought of myself as an artist...I always thought being an artist was meant for "real artists" like famous painters and sculptors ...and weirdly dressed people who live in P-town and have fabulously famous friends and rich neighbors. and work in "media"....not markers and pencil like me. But, I have been introduced as an artist more than three time's so I think I'm going to try it out. Everything I draw has a cartoon sort of tone. I can draw more realistically, but it's not as much fun. I also sculpt. I'd love to do some bigger scale sculpting but I stick with 1lb blocks on sculpy clay and make my little clay creatures. Pretty much they are the creatures in my head, all cartoonish and in 3D. Pretty cool.
I have been drawing children's names with bits of their personality or family history drawn in.
I also have done pet caricatures. The children's names have been the most lucrative. I am also talking with a local author about illustrating his children's book. I really have so much to do with that by the end of May, it's ridiculous. When I draw or paint.... I go into my own little world. It's like meditation and hours just slip away. Oddly enough from the day I got pregnant, I lost complete interest in any kind of art. I didn't care about drawing.....anything! As soon as I wasn't pregnant, BOOM it all came back again! I always said it was because the baby was sucking the creativity out of me and absorbing it in itself. I believe that's true. My daughter is a musical little stinker...maybe she'll be a singer or a musician who knows? But one thing I do know.....it's my therapy,my escape.... I love it.