yep, yep

I'm going to be turning 35 soon. Eeesh. I have just recently been using eye cream for those wonderful aging atributes. It has helped... I don't look so tired anymore and my eyes aren't so wrinkly. Or maybe it's that Cooper has gone to one feeding per night. The point is, I think at times, with horror, would insurance cover a tummy tuck and lipo? My husband constanly tells me I am the most beautiful thing in the world. Which I reply that he is biased. I see that this hurts him, that his opinion doesn't count. His opinion counts very much. He married me. And as much as I can deny it... he did marry me, somewhat, on my looks. I have other points on which he married me for, but face it. Men are visual animals. I look and act like I should to be with who I am with now. I have children because of who I married. I am beautiful to the ones who love me most and I am fine with that.

Nip/Tuck????

There was an artist who drew beautiful real-life portraits. People he thought of, dreamed of, created. They were all different showing various personalities. He labeled them with human names. He was very fond of all his portraits, thinking them as people he may have seen on the street that day. One night, the portraits came to life. They all exclaimed how wonderful it was to live, to talk, to breathe, to think. The next several nights they sat around discussing the joys in life and decided to leave a note for the artist telling him how wonderful his job was and how well he did it. The next morning, the artist saw the note and was pleased the portraits loved who they were. He continued making different people of different shapes and sizes. He continued naming them as their personality arose with every stroke of his brush. While he slept, he dreamed of the next portrait he would draw and name. Then that morning he would painstakingly paint the face getting every aspect of his dream right. It would always take a day but every portrait was finished with the utmost care, love and perfection. The artist loved his work and the portraits he created. One morning he saw a note. It said,

"Thank you for creating me.

However, could you redo my mouth?

I think it is a little too small. And since your

palette would be wet, would you mind

touching up my eyes, I would like them to

look like Sharline's.

Yours Truly,

Veronica

The artist was angry and very disappointed. Something he had created, he had dreamed about, he had thought had the perfect features for the perfect personality was telling him she wasn't good enough. He didn't do a good enough work. His dream, his creation, his complete work was flawed. He was crushed. If Veronica thought that, did Mark and the others think that too?

The artist was so angry, he took all the portraits who left notes of thanks to another studio. He went back to the old studio and burned it down.

perspectives

i saw this tree and wondered what i'd get out of it... three of many pictures taken at various positions.

symphony

When I go for a drive and watch the cars go past or while I'm shopping or whenever I'm in the midst of many people, I stop and think just how many lives are being lived. It's a pleasant buzz of thinking, talking, doing. The details are inconsequential; it's the living I'm amazed at. The spheres of life moving through, past, bumping into one another almost need it's own symphony. The music it would make would be a syncronized mess of sound... almost like the horns of a downtown bustling city with the quiet woodwind busy-ness of a small town and then the quiet strings of the rural countryside. Not to forget the undergrowing tympany of the earth.

baking soda recipes

I love a good smelling home...my dog doesn't care. I found out that dogs do have a smell if they roll in something, but the smell actually comes from their feet pads. Found out my dog is the champion of sweaty feet. By the time November came around and the doors and windows were shut for a good month and a half, my house started smelling like stale corn chips. So...I went online and found many things.. febreeze, different dog shampoos, and paying someone to shampoo my carpet.. none of them up my alley..... then I found a guy who said he put down baking soda overnight and put a heavy plastic over it. In the morning he vaccumed it up and BINGO! No more smell. So... I found different types of good smelling baking soda mixes, my favorite being a box of baking soda with a tablespoon of cinnamon and a teaspoon of cloves. It also said vanilla but that made the mix clumpy. Now, everytime I vaccum, the house smells so good. I use the mixture at the beginning of a fresh bag and it smells good throughout that bag. I used to use it every other time I vaccumed and found the baking soda didn't vaccum up very good and had to change the bag more often. Also, now my carpet shampooer is all gunked up. Part of that is also of my brilliant idea of putting baking soda on the carpet and adding vinegar to the clean water to get that "oxy" clean... I found not following directions cost me $200 dollars. This is why they tell you not to use anything other than the prescribed shampoo. I also found 1/4 c. of your laundry softener, 1t. of baking soda with a regular sized squirt bottle makes your own Febreeze. or if you run out of laundry softener, you can use full-strength vinegar in the place of the softener and the vinegar smell will come out in the dryer.

You Dummy.

What is it with me and sending out packages? I had a package all planned out for my best friend for a whole month.. Her birthday was today and I JUST sent it out. One of my really good friends moved to Texas in January... ON HIS BIRTHDAY.. Do you think I was able to pinpoint the day? Nope. I'm finalizing his package tomorrow. March 3rd. Dummy. The next thing I have to send out...my mother-in-law's get well package.... she has had really bad hip problems for 3 months. it's the thought... right? And if I add in an extra bag of ghiardelli's chocolates? And Antonio Banderas' picture? Nope. You're still a dummy.