A stroke is a good thing?

Who would have thought? Mother went in for an MRI Tuesday because she's been having a constant headache for the last couple of weeks and started yarking Tuesday morning. Her oncologist immediately ordered an MRI as she's very concerned the cancer will spread to Mother's brain. Turns out, she's had a stroke. This is 'good' because it's still not cancer. And here I thought she was just stoned from her pain pills. As soon as I can bust out of my office (hopefully in the next hour), I'm heading back up to the hospital to be Mother's memory.

We've been tentatively planning a trip to Australia as a last hoorah, but that's looking less likely every day. Maybe we can do a bit of a fling in the big city of Ada OK. Hey, it starts with an A?

And it's finally over!

DeYarmett's Unite!
Not that anyone at the reunion actually has that last name anymore, that's how we're all related. My mother's cousin Dee's daughter Debbie came down with her son Dylan. My Mother's cousin Linda was there with her husband, three sons, daughter and daughter-in-law. My cousin Dena's son and daughter were there, Joe with his two sons and girlfriend and Amy with her husband, three daughters and son. My cousin Sharon's three daughters were there, Kim with her three daughters and one of her sons, Kristen with her husband and daughter and Jenny with her husband and one of her sons. Below, are my nephew Billy, my brother Dannie, my mother Betty, me and my daughter Sabrina. I like the way my mother is trying to be shocked by Sabrina's attire.

A few more skeins are knotted

Camilla's mom told me I'm crocheting all wrong. wtf ever. I may not crochet the way everyone else does, but the stuff I finish looks good, so there. As I was working on this, Brina was telling me how very much she doesn't like the colors. As I was about to finish over the weekend, she warned me that it better keep her warm because it's hers :)

Something from nothing

Okay, so crocheting is not metal. I finally got tired of the huge (HUGE) bin of yarn in my closet. This is the first of my attempts to get it all out of there. This was actually pretty fun as it consists of 35 different "granny" squares. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying the best of attention when making said "grannies" because they didn't go together as seamlessly as they should have. I've got a fuckload more yarn, so I may just make another. But I'll pay attention to what I'm doing :D

Dhoom Again, Baby!

omg, check out the way he moves! Another music (dancing!) video for Michelle Ward's Crusade No 11.

I like it loud, please

My Dead X

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Response to Michelle Ward's latest, Make Some Noise, Crusade No. 11. And with that, I'd like to climb on my soapbox. This video is from an unsigned, local band, My Dead X. These are all great guys, they have a very professional sound and they work and play for love of the music. ORIGINAL MUSIC. It's certainly not for the big bucks. Without support from the community, these guys (and the local bands in YOUR area) end up paying to play. Cover bands have it made because most venue owners "know" that no one wants to hear (or god-forbid, dance) to something they haven't heard 8,562 times on the radio. So with that, I encourage anyone who reads this to check around and see who's playing this weekend, you may be pleasantly surprised \m/

Road Trip

This pretty much sums up our navigational talents :D We drove down to Fort Worth TX for a company picnic.. I know, nutty, but I haven't been out of town in forever. We met at Burger's Lake, which I have to say is my kind of man-made lake. After burning ourselves to crispy goodness, we went off in search of our hotel. My navigator slept the whole way, and it only took me an hour to complete what should have been a 15 minute drive. Check in, shower, change and it's off to find a local Mexican restaurant. Hey, it's Texas, we should be tripping over them. After another hour of driving, during which I visited a number of locales visited whilst searching for the hotel, we ended up at Zeke's fish and chips. OMG, I'm so happy the only "Mexican" place we found was On The Border. I LOVE fish but think tartar sauce is something created by an individual with defective taste buds. But the stuff at Zeke's makes me want to sell all my stamps and move to Fort Worth for the rest of my life. It's just that good. They're in the Ridgelea area if you ever get over that way.
The next day, we debated on how we wanted to spend the day. The zoo, shopping, or possibly the Kimball Art Museum. But no, we decided to go here:
Louis Tussaud's Palace of Wax/Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Grand Prairie TX. I noticed some interesting things in the wax museum. Martin Luther King, Jr bears a striking resemblance to Eddie Murphy, James Madison had incredibly tiny feet and Rapunzel was apparently double-jointed, to name just a few.
This guy was a fave as I'm obsessed with the imminent zombie epidemic ;)

Ripley's Believe It or Not did not win quite as much, but these were kinda cool, as were a couple of the miniature paintings. The last supper created with postage stamps.
A painting on a Pringle's chip.
All around, nice little weekend getaway.

Commitment Issues

Continuing on my quest to complete all of Michelle Ward's previous crusades, here is my tattoo story for Crusade No. 3, Tattoo You. To add to the story, when I got off the bed to fetch the phone book and find a suitable tattoo shop, I fell flat on my face and didn't get off the floor til the next morning. God bless Jose Quervo.

It's on RANDOM

It's just too damn hot to go outside, so I've been sucking up the AC, playing around with stuff I've meant to do forever. This is from Michelle Ward's Crusade No. 2 - Playlist. Since I don't really have a playlist, I just set my mp3 player on shuffle and wrote down what played. Okay, so skipped a bunch of Clapton... but this is about how it played out :)Jeez, you can't read the scan. Ah-Ha - Take on Me, Violent Femmes - Good Feeling, Pearl Jam - Why Go, The Blackwatch - Solo Sword Dance, Eric Clapton - Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out, 1st Battalion Scots Guards - Argyll Broadswords, The Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancing, Zero 7 - Destiny, The Church - Under the Milky Way, Red Hot Chili Peppers - Around the World, Gnarls Barkley - Crazy, Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, NIN - Every Day is Exactly the Same, AC/DC - Thunderstruck, Dexy's Midnight Riders - Come On Eileen, Richard Cheese - Rape Me, Pink Floyd - Hey You, The Sex Pistols - Holidays in the Sun
In other news, we went to a wedding. The photographer wants to do a "photo shoot" with my 18 year old daughter. Right.

Little bit of catchin' up

This is my spooky tag from Michelle Ward's Crusade No. 1, Spooky Art. So I'm a bit late with it :p I used stamps from Michelle's Graven and Crow About plates. The funny thing about me and the Crow About plate, birds scare me half to death. The way they are always fluttering just gives me the screaming mimis, but I totally fell in love with these stamps. Go figure.

Sabrina and I went shopping today with our lovely 40% off coupons from Hobby Lobby and I bought a nifty set of pens while she bought more silk screening ink. Now she has a cool book bag while I have a lovely apron with
SID-F*CKING-VICIOUS :D I'll take an actual picture after I figure out where the camera is hiding.

Mail Art

Michelle Ward's Crusade No. 10 is for mail art. And I like to throw my landlord a curveball from time to time. Not that fish have anything whatsoever to do with rent, but I LOVE the big fish stamp and thought he'd be great with this ink combo.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY MYERS!

Sabrina, Linda, Mother and I are meeting for lunch today, to celebrate Mother's birthday. Here is her present, finished at 7 this morning, right before I dashed into the shower. In true Laura fashion, I printed the picture on the wrong side of the photo paper, and you can't see it in this scan, but I think the "JetPrintPhoto" repeated through the image is a bonus. I can't wait to give it to her .

FAIRIES!

omg, I finished something. It's one of eight pages for a not-so-fat book swap. Since I ran out of chipboard, I made my pages from polymer clay. And as I was getting jiggy with the clay, I decided I could stamp my image on a polymer clay medallion and color it with Pearl-Ex. Well I've always said I'd try anything once. And this brings me to MY cheap trick (better late than never) for Michelle Ward's 8th Crusade. USE THE STUFF YOU'VE BEEN HOARDING FOR YEARS. It's cheap in the respect that you've had the stuff tucked away, saving it for something 'special' and it remains there til you forget you have it (read: depreciation). When it comes to polymer clay, it's best to remember you have it sooner, rather than later. This stuff has been in a carton above my fridge for the last three years and it was a BITCH to condition.

Huh?

Michelle Ward's latest Crusade, Say What? is to journal about different things/sayings/words you use with family or friends.
Dyeoctor - When my brother Kendall started having problems with his vision my mother took him to see the eye doctor. When Kendall would say it, it came out "dyeoctor". This one has been around damn near 40 years, and my daughter and I still use it. Kendall has been gone almost 30 years and I still miss him every day.
Who shot John - This is from my ex-MIL, Wanda. This is what she says when she wants to say someone or something looks less than favorable. wtf? It's a complete mystery to all of us who John is and who shot him, but I find myself using the expression. A lot.
You must be proud - When my friends started having babies and I wasn't even remotely interested in them, I had to figure out what to say when they showed me these squalling, red-faced little poo factories. I laughed out loud when I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral and Kristen Scott Thomas' character used the same expression at a wedding.
It's.....interesting - My mother came home with a ceramic piece on which she had tried a new technique. Quite frankly, it looked like who shot John. But since I'd yet to meet Wanda, I went with, "It's....interesting". Mother now uses it on me constantly. I should have gone with, "you must be proud".
And the front door is open AGAIN - This is from Pete, a character in Shaun of the Dead, and we use it all the time with my daughter's boyfriend, Bob. He never pulls the door to when he comes in.
Poh-ping-oh - There was a video store chain, PopInGo, but my mother didn't quite see it that way. Poh-ping-oh is now used whenever my daughter or I need cheering up.
There's no light up there - My daughter Sabrina was three and she and I had been living with my second husband for five months before she noticed there was no light fixture in the dining room. When someone states the obvious, the response is, "there's no light up there".
I am not a toy! - When Sabrina's step-brothers, Kevin and Stephan, would get a bit rough, she would inform them, rather furiously, that she was not a toy.

Seeing Double

This is my grandmother, Mae DeYarmett. I've been wanting a colorized version of this picture for the longest time, and my friend, Samantha Franklin, made it possible. So, not only do I have a very colorful version of my grandmother to use in a project I'm working on, I have a most awesome present for my mother :D

I <3 wax paper

I've always loved wax paper, there's something about it that's always fascinated me. When I was little, my mother and I would take my crayon scraps and melt them between two sheets. I imagine everyone else has, too, but the pretty suncatchers we'd have at the end always impressed the hell out of me. Anyway, I always have it around, even if I'm not using it.

Tonight, I started wondering why I don't stamp on it. So I tried. I came up with a ton of crap and one good image. So what I've found is you can stamp on wax paper with Adirondack ink and a very fine stamp. Now I'll have to figure out just what I want to do with this knowledge.

But I have to say, I'm almost as impressed with these arches (Above the Mark) as I was with my most awesome suncatchers.

This (100 Proof Press) isn't quite as nice as the arches, but not as bad as the photo stamp try that is now in the trash.

Definitely a challenge

I am not much of one for journaling.. I'd rather make a book than actually let anyone who's not in my tiny circle know anything about me. But I'm going to give it a shot for a bit, because I've been inspired to make a space on the hell that is my art table by Michelle Ward's Crusades. So here are a few of my faves. People, book, movies, quote and, of course, zombie. Learning how to do this blogging stuff will be a challenge, too.
*Edit: Now that I've a bit more time (I'm at work) I can write a bit more. Although this scanned like shit, the pink shows up really well against the green when you're holding it in your hand. Unfortunately, few can actually read my scrawl so it's still illegible. The beautiful person on top is my daughter Sabrina, and the person below is one of our favorite people, Adrian. I was working on this spread while Sabrina and her boyfriend were putting their knight costumes together, hence the Holy Grail quote on the facing page. Pan's Labyrinth is the greatest new movie I've seen this year, so it's mentioned, as is my newest favorite book, World War Z. I also like the way Bub looks against the GPP stamp of the headstones.

This made me happy.