Three weeks from today I go under the knife for a myomectomy (removal of a uterine fibroid) and I should be out of commission for a few weeks.  Mom flies in on the 28th of May and the following day we are headed to L.A. for a rocking art retreat before surgery.

I am so excited!  I have heard such amazing things about Kim’s events and now I get to be a part of one.  Mom and I will be staying at the Bissell House in Pasadena and we are going to have such a girly, decadent weekend!  It should be a nice prequel to my recovery.

Our room is finally painted and I’ve been working on some new tableaus.

For as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed rearranging my stuff into various pictures.

This was my first venture into distressing a piece of furniture.  I was pretty anxious about the whole process, but between coaching from my mother and reassurance from Chuck, I was pretty pleased with the final product.  I love the shabbiness of it.

Happy Hump Day!  Go vote for all of Chucklebutt’s endeavors.  He’s admitted to using me as his media outlet — sheesh!

I came home today to a pretty gruesome site — a disemboweled bunny.  Yuck!  Apparently a hawk had been snacking on it and had some leftovers.  Chuck came to the rescue and tossed it out  for the rest of the scavengers.  Don’t worry, we didn’t take a picture.

Here are some wildlife pics from Easter.  (I know I’m late in posting them.)

Isn’t that a gorgeous bird?  He’s been hanging out in our dead tree.  Don’t get me started on the dead tree.  I’m so sick about it.  Hopefully in the coming weeks we can get a new one.

I love this little budgie.  She’s so chubby and cute!

This is our Easter Bunny.  Don’t worry, the hawk didn’t eat him.  He’s a lot bigger than the one this afternoon.

Check out the gorgeous card that Mom sent to us!  It’s so pretty.  I think she should open her own Etsy shop.

So not too much has been going on in the Gibson-Rice Household.  After six months of procrastinating, we finally finished painting our room.  Once everything is back in its proper place, I’ll be sure to take some photos.

I got the latest Somerset Memories and was sad to learn that it is going to a bi-annually publication.  I guess the economy has hurt everyone.

As I was reading the Letters to the Editor, I stumbled across some familiar sounding words:

It didn’t register with me until I came to the line about a “teary-eyed husband.”  I thought, “Holy Cow!  This woman has an emotional husband just like me!  And Oh My Gosh, she works with seniors and — hey wait a minute!”  Boy did I feel foolish.  Foolish, but honored to have my letter in the publication.

Another magazine that I adore is Victoria:

Mom got me a subscription for Christmas and I love receiving it in the mail every other month.  This month they had a very interesting article about Wedgwood.

One of my residents gave me a piece last month (my first) and I enjoyed reading about the history.  I think it’s an ashtray, but I’ll probably use it for buttons or some other small crafty trinkets.  Thanks Mom for the magazine and thanks Evelyn for the gorgeous dish!

I finally finished a submission for Somerset Holiday.  I have no idea whether or not it will be published, but I am very pleased with the outcome.  I’ll just give everyone a teaser:

If you can’t tell already, it’s a Valentine’s Day project.  Originally, I wanted to do a Halloween piece, but it transformed into this.  I’ve discovered that art has a mind of it’s own.  It’s going to be whatever it wants regardless of my intentions.

Hope everyone is well and happy!

“It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Good-bye to clocks ticking….and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths….and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute?”

As a seventeen year old, I couldn’t fully appreciate the meaning behind the words.  As I’ve grown older (and experienced the loss of my father), I try my darndest to enjoy the day to day.  Sometimes it’s super boring and I feel like a rat running the race, but other days I simply enjoy the routine.  I told Chucklebutt yesterday that while I love our adventures, I love our ordinary moments even more.  The waking up next to each other, the goofy goodbyes each morning, the mid-afternoon phone calls, the lazy nights watching trash tv.  Good times.

With that said, not too much has been going on at our household.  We’ve just been living the day to day and enjoying it.  We’ve seen some good movies (Ghost Town) and some not-so-good movies (Special).   We ate smothered fries at Denny’s this afternoon and we took a 45 minute nap which turned into three hours.  He had a production meeting for a show that opens next weekend and I went antiquing and didn’t buy a thing (shocking yes?!).  Oh, and last night we tormented our girls with crafty bits.  Witness:

Will we be able to do this with human babies?  FYI- Chuck and I are both only children and our animals have always been our playmates.  Mom says that we didn’t have brothers and sisters to aggravate so we take it out on the kitties. 

We wore them out.  Awwww…

Today was the first Saturday I have had off in three weeks.  I had plans to weed our yard and spray paint some pieces that I want to submit to Somerset.  We live in Arizona, and 99% of the time we have beautiful sunny weather.  The day that I wanted to work outdoors, I awoke to this:

The entrance to the Mines of Moria has got to be around here somewhere.

You can’t tell from the pic, but it was pouring rain!  So no weeding or painting was accomplished.

I love our flowers right now!  The yard is out of control, but the wildlife are loving it.

Yesterday was my first venture into the world of ribbon embroidery.  One of my residents is teaching me and I am loving it!  The ribbon is silk and a bit of a pain to work with.  Next week we’ll do the leaves and add some centers to the flowers.

Finally, I wanted to show everyone what I found at Goodwill yesterday.  Isn’t she amazing?!!?!?!?!?!  It’s a perfume bottle.  Guess how much I paid for it?  Oh yeah, a buck 99.  The thrift store gods were shining down on me that day.  Squeal!!  I’m still on cloud nine for the find.

Oh one more thing — Chuck has been getting quite a few texts lately.  Who are they from?  Work?  Friends?  Girlfriends?  Apparently he has discovered Twitter and has a bromance going on with quite a few fellows.  Dr. Drew, Kevin Smith, Brent Spiner and Weird Al Yankovich.  Everytime they update their account, he gets notification.  Chucklebutt is such a goof — but I love him!

Anyway, the check-in is a chance for the kids to let each of us know where they are at the moment. (Life is great.  I broke up with my boyfriend.  I failed my math test.  She loves me.  Etc.)  With my younger students, I do something called “Rose & Thorn.”  They can tell us one good thing — a rose– and one bad thing — a thorn.  Today,  my rose was life is going great.  I really have no complaints and at the moment am drama free.  We dyed Easter Eggs at work and I had a kick-ass sandwich from Crazy Subs.  A good hoagie can make everything okay. 

As far as my thorn is concerned, I discovered a most disturbing article on Jezebel at the beginning of the week.  Incidentally, Jezebel is my all time favorite blog that I love to decompress to.  Their byline is “Celebrity, Sex and Fashion for Women.  Without Airbrushing.”  It’s a riot, and for the most part is fodder for the brain.  However, occasionally, they have some pretty interesting articles.  Take for intstance, the fact that Joann’s Fabric Store is refusing to carry the latest issue of Quilter’s Home.  Now to be honest, I have never even heard of Quilter’s Home — I’m a Quilting Arts gal — but I couldn’t believe why they were censoring this magazine.

Just like the cover says, there was “controversial patchwork.”  According to the article, Quilter’s Home offered to wrap the issue in a brown bag — just like a girlie magazine– in order to protect all those naive crafters.  Hah!

So what did the quilts look like?  See for yourself:

This one is titled “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

In my opinion, this was the most intense piece.  It is a response to the state flag of  Mississippi.  It definitely evokes some strong emotions.

Yeah, those little blue pills are Viagra.  If you look closer, you can see floating peni.  I think this one is hilarious!  What’s wrong with Joann’s?  If you want to check out the article, click here.

Finally, who’s to say crafting can’t be something more than eye candy?  These quilters have definitely given me something to think about.