And the award goes to… ME

I could lie and say I got two awards this week, but in reality I got one this week and one a really long time ago. So long ago that I lost the image file I had saved and had to search the blog of the person who gave it to me in order to track down the image. Hopefully I’ve already established that my lack of outward gratitude doesn’t mean that deep in my heart I’m not seriously honored to have received them.

So- from Momma’s Tantrum (my favorite potty mouth) I go the award on the right for Creativity. The person who started this blog is Arte y Pico which sounds delicious, doesn’t it. Shame on me for growing up in LA County and not understanding enough Spanish to read her blog.

For this award, I have to
• Choose 5 blogs deserving of this for their creativity, design & material.
• Each award should link to the giver of the award
• Link to the Arte Y Pico blog (I already did that)

So here are the 5 most creative bloggers I can think of;

1-Karla at Looking towards Heaven is wonderfully creative, she’s actually a designer and her work is simple, yet beautiful. She has a very distinctive style, I feel like I could identify her work in a lineup, yeah she’s THAT good. And her blog is good, too.

2-Vintage Chica- not only is she super creative but she just got back from a trip to Nicaragua and tells fantastic stories of her time there, with pictures.

3-Michelle at My Heart’s Design, who makes such beautiful scrapbooking cards and photo layouts- BUT get this, when she takes the pictures, she gets down at an angle so you cna see the dimension and the textures of the embellishments. That’s the best part; that’s what sets REAL scrapbooking (which I’ve never done) apart from digital scrapbooking (which is fun) Anyhow- she sells her cards in an etsy store, and she’s a really neat person. You should go and buy them all up.

4-An Altered Journal Journey, who also has an Etsy shop. I totally stalk book alterers. I am fascinated by altered books. I want to do it one day. I just have this stupid thing about, um, not writing in books. Definitely not folding pages. Cutting pages? Painting on them? stapling them together? It’s more than I can handle, and how do you know when you’re done? I’ll do it one day, but for now I just stalk those that do. It’s got to be my favorite art form. Like scrapbooking, only naughty.

5-Heidi from The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness and my due date club, She’s amazing, and her girls are beautiful.

Oops- I’m doing 6 here because I also like A local girl’s day in pictures (but who doesn’t?)
———————-whew——————-

And on the left, from the beautiful and intelligent Tina at Send Chocolate, I got the magic lamp of luck. The rules for this one are quite complicated, you can view them here at Mariuca: The Genies Return!I promise, I followed most of the rules, OK.

So- the magic genie is going to my amazing friend Mrs Pevensie, who has crashed a borrowed bicycle and dealt with a chewing puppy, but she’s awesome and she runs marathons. I get tired just thinking about it.

And also to Emily, whose life is filled with house guests, hospital visits and organic food when it should be filled with just house guests and organic food.

———————————-
That concludes my acceptance speech. Back to regular programming, whereby I attempt to explain the dog situation in my house via pictures.

Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,

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Postcards from My Kids

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge failure at mailing things. I have thank-you cards and presents that sit at my house for years that never get mailed. Whatever- everyone has their faults. Mailing things is mine. Not that I don’t have others, but mailing things is the one I’m admitting to today.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while because once I actually did good. Once, I made it my new year’s resolution to mail everyone birthday cards. I think I made it until like August or September. Maybe it was June. It was a long time ago.

Thank-you cards. When I was a kid, we were taught to call and say thank-you. I married into a family that mailed thank-you cards for everything. They also mailbirthday cards, congratulations cards, graduation cards, mothers day cards (to people who aren’t THEIR mother, father’s day cards (ditto) and anniversary cards, this was foreign territory. Anniversaries are private celebrations, aren’t they?

I didn’t get it, at first, I thought it was like a conspired effort to drive me nuts. Maybe these people own stock in Hallmark. I get it now, it’s nice celebrating family that way. I still fail at it, though. I think it’s really nice, really sweet. We think of our faraway family all the time, we talk about them every day. We have pictures of nieces, nephews, cousins, Aunts and Uncles all over our walls. The kids call them frequently, they love to talk on the phone. And, they often make cards to send them. but they never get mailed.

Years go by and my husband and his brother don’t speak to each other, but his wife still sends my kids presents over the holidays. I wish I had my act together enough to send them but it seems like each time the holidays roll around I’m trying just to scrape up enough so that all my kids are amazed a little. Postage last year for our holiday cards was over $50. Or was that the year before?

My brothers married mailers, too. At least one of them. She sent my kids a big huge package of designer hand-me-downs. Including such precious accessories as shoes, hats and purses. What a fantastic aunt. You’d think something as amazing as that would force me to actually mail the thank-you card, but alas. It’s been months. The card is in a little “mail” pocket by my front door. Like it’s waiting.

I think I need a personal assistant, but would that take away the “personal” about it? Maybe that’s what virtual assistants do. I wonder if they do piecework. It’s not that we’re ungrateful- we’re totally grateful. I just forget to mail things. And it’s not just personal things, it’s the bills, too. My gas man is Rick and my Electric man is Adam and the Cable guys rotate between the bald guy and the greasy guy. They’re very friendly. I’m glad they don’t charge extra for door service, because they could totally get away with it.

So why- you might wonder- did I just buy custom made
postcards from Vista Printing? Because they’re cool. I got 50 of them, they let you upload a graphic of your own design. I’m thinking we’ll use them as holiday cards, since this is August and it will probably take me until December to mail them. Anyways, I made a collage with pictures of my kids and “2008″ on the side. I even put a picture of my husband and myself.

If you don’t get one, don’t feel bad. There’s one by my front door with your name on it, I’m sure. If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to use the Vista Print mailing service next time, you upload your address book and type in your personal messages and they mail them for you. I hope it doesn’t get that far.

Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,

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I forgot the french bread

Yeah- I admit it. I left the house three times tonight and each time I failed to get the french bread. I must be a terrible wife because I KNOW he has this whole carb-addiction thing and yet I keep forgetting to get the bread. Is it really necessary to have bread & pasta in the same meal? Really?

It’s not like we don’t have ANY BREAD. OK, we have an entire loaf of whole wheat bread with little pockets of honey and no high fructose corn syrup. So it’s not french. Maybe it’s a statement. How are those Olympics coming along? Maybe I didn’t WANT to get you french bread. Alas, that is not the case. I really just forgot. But I did get the mighty putty, can you fix the washing machine now? Ooh ooh can I mix it up, please? I saw it on TV and it looks like so much fun. I might even sculpt a coffee cup handle. In fact, I could sculpt so many things with Mighty Putty.

I finished all of those writing jobs, now I need to put together a proposal for a web design. I wish I were better at the artwork end of it. Here’s my personal site that I use to reference my work http://www.lisarussell.org in case you wondered. It has the feeds from almost half of my jobs. Some of the ones I write are ghost-written, so I’m not allowed to call out the real non-writers. I don’t care, the pay for those is great.

The kids are doing well, E1 and M1 (I can’t wait until we move to a bigger city, I will start using their real names) have been going swing dancing a lot, they are really good, and they have a great time. I wish I had done cool stuff like that when I was a kid, I never did anything ever.

People bought the house behind and across the canal from our house. The kids got official permission to cut across their yard to go to the park in exchange for allowing their kids to play in our tree house. Rob and Jamie are the parents. He seems like a nice guy. I couldn’t talk long because of the stupid washing machine situation, I don’t have a lot of clothes and what I was wearing was a tank top with major boob exposure. So I put all my hair in front of me and kind of tucked it in, I hope it didn’t look too stupid/obvious/ whatever.

I’m so tempted to tell that Safeway lady to Google “The devil went down to safeway” every time I see her. What is it about blogging that’s like a secret identity? Rhetorical question, sorry. Every public interaction I have I’m thinking “I could totally blog about you & you’d never know it.” Or whenever someone looks at me sideways I’m like “OMG she recognized me from my blog” and whenever I wave at Thomas at the corner I’m thinking “I blogged about you SUCKA”

Anyways- busy day tomorrow, kid has a dentist appointment, taking the trash out, finishing a website, working on an ebook. And laundry. A lot of laundry. Thank you, mighty putty.

And finally, I leave you with this hilarious email someone forwarded me. Hey- at least I didn’t start with that. And it’s funny. Go ahead, sing it.

I Will Survive

I Will Survive (the first year of homeschooling)
Originally written and produced by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris
Originally performed by Gloria Gaynor
Mercilessly altered with apologies by Natalie Criss

First I was afraid
I was petrified.
Kept thinking I could never teach
‘Cause I’m not certified.
But we spent so many nights
Reteaching homework that was wrong.
I grew strong,
so now I teach my kids at home!
We study math
and outer space.
I just kept on despite the fear
with a big smile across my face.
I bought a set of Base Ten blocks.
I bought books with answer keys.
My parents think we’re nuts,
but they don’t even bother me
Come on, let’s go walk out the door.
We’re on the road now,
’cause we’re not home much anymore
My friends would laugh and say we’d be unsocialized.
I heard one mumble
that I’d give up by July.
Oh no, not I!
I will survive!
As long as I know how to read
I know we’ll be alright.
I’ve got all my life to learn.
I’ve got energy to burn.
and I’ll survive.
I will survive.
It took all the strength I had
not to fall apart.
Decided to attend
a play date at the local park,
and I met oh so many moms
who offered eagerly to help.
They used to cry.
Now they hold their heads up high,
and so do we!
My kids are cool!
They’re not those chained up little people
stuck inside at school.
So if you feel like dropping by
and just expect us to be free
you’d better call ahead first
’cause we’re probably busy!

Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,

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I’m still alive

I’m sure you were all freaked out, thinking I bled to death or something after the whole E.R. thing. Sorry, Maria.

I’m alive. The stitches are almost ready to come out. My muscles are really sore. On the right arm, from being sliced in half and on the left arm for taking up all the slack.

On a good note, that Mary Kay cellulite cream rocks- I’m sure you wanted to know that OH MY GOSH. It’s amazing. It’s been 3 weeks since I started using it. That’s all I have to say about that.

On another good note, the reason I haven’t updated my blog is because I have had FOUR new writing jobs come up. Two I had applied for a long time ago, One I bid for on rentacoder, a site I just found a week or so ago and another one who found me through Suite101.

I won an editor’s choice award, too for an article about cooking in the curriculum which makes me want to point out that sometimes I write strict homeschool stuff for Suite but the fact is, it’s really a relaxing way to learn. I don’t know why I am all stiff over there. The diversity of my writing topics this week are just exhausting. Sexy Costumes, Morality for Toddlers, Christmas Decorations and Freelance writing (Yes, writing about writing.)

So here are the blog-thoughts that I have failed to write this week

1- Hydrangeas. My kids bring them to me a lot lately, My Grandma’s house (the one that was ripped down to be a highway) had Hydrangeas. She’s really sick lately and it freaks me out. She lives in Maryland. I wish she could live forever.

2- I bought some frozen “Maryland Style crabcakes” for dinner. They were OK. They came with Aoli sauce. That made me laugh. My Grandma would never have made sauce for the crabcakes.

3- big spider in my bathroom. You know you wish you could have read that one.

4- My washing machine is leaking again.

5- I keep wanting to talk smack about a lady I see around town sometimes, She does all of her Granddaughter’s art projects. At Girl Scout camp a few years ago she told the girl “Let me do it, so it’s perfect.” I’ve been seeing her at the ArtsVan on Thursdays at Franklin park. I set the camera on the table and filmed her doing the girl’s project. It’s pathetic. If I had been blogging this week, I would have shared that with you

6- and finally, some video of my baby climbing into the dishwasher to throw all the silverware on the floor. And more pictures of her eating things she shouldn’t be eating like a 9 volt battery, a hammer, and a flip flop.

That’s about it. Not much life-living going on with a bunch of new assignments in the same week. Whatever, I still have that trip to Dallas to pay for and I am not too cool to ask for donations, so here ya go.

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And that’s just about all the news from here. I still have 5 articles that need to be finished by Monday, 1 that’s due tomorrow morning and another 6 that have to be done by Friday in addition to Suite, Bella and TypeA that are supposed to be done weekly.

It’s kind of hard to research grocery coupons with this much work to do. It sure is easy to justify buying electronics, though.

Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,

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How to get red carpet treatment at the E.R.

Slice a 6 inch long gash into your bicep, deep, almost to the bone and walk in the door pale and stuttering.

It works every time.

I mean, I’ve only tried it once, but it worked for me.

M1 dropped a 20×24 inch framed picture in her room. The frame broke and I proceeded to clean up the glass so no one would get hurt.

Instead of bringing in the garbage, I stacked the pieces up on the main biggest part and carried it out the front door like a tray.

I bumped into the door frame and didn’t feel anything. Blood was spraying, so I ran into the bathroom (spraying blood all over my living room) and held my arm over the tub shouting “BRING ME A TOWEL” because, I’m thinking, I should tie off my arm like Leo did in Charmed when his memory was erased and he came across the car accident victim and had to stop the bleeding.

Except the cold water didn’t make the blood slow down and I looked at it, like a bloody supersoaker, and I resisted the urge to grab the camera, because the kids were freaking out, I had to be calm. Bubba, take my purse to the car- use the downstairs door. E1, put the baby in the carseat in the car, slipped on my shoes, I’m going to be OK, girls. Heading for the car, honey you have your keys? Skip the stop sign.

I walk into the ER with my bloody towel. I’m stumbling, feeling faint, sure I slashed an artery or something. Oh look, there’s Maria and the new baby. “HI Maria, Can’t talk right now…”

I didn’t know what to say to the lady at the desk. “I need to sit down.” so she walky talkies for a wheelchair and rolls me toward the door inside, triage nurse peeks out her window. I flash her the laceration, no need for conversation. She walky talkies for a someone, they wheel me into the room and some lady named Lisa is asking me if she can throw my towel away while I fade in and out of consciousness.

They only asked me two questions “Did someone do this to you?” and “What were you cut with?” Wound is rewrapped, cold towel on my head, stitches are ordered, blood pressure is 55/79 I get blankets, a barf bag, an audience of interns and I lay trying to focus on thoughts of wellness, healing and breathing deeply to try not to puke.

I took some pride in that every person who saw it kind of gasped, took a deep breath and said something stupid.

They stitch me up. Husband took the baby home and happened to arrive back in while they were stitching, he turned kind of green.

Afterward, they Xrayed. Drew blood to count I don’t know what. Blood pressure came back up to normalish. Sent me home with a vicodin prescription.

I don’t know how many stitches there are. M1 took bloody house pictures, it looks like a crime scene. Blood sprayed all across the living room and all over the bathroom.

They cleaned it up while I was gone.

Now that I have lived through it, I wish I had taken 10 seconds to photograph the cut.

I hope it doesn’t hurt later.

Forgive my spelling and grammar and made up words and lack of punctuation, OK.

Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,

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