[glingle glingle]

What a pain in the ass it was to put these bells on!
Of course, this is because I know nothing about how to use jump rings and pliers.
Forty fatbook pages for a post-Artfest swap. Kristie organized it among the folks in dorm 202 (which must've seemed completely insane to her once she recovered from all the Artfest sleep deprivation). Since we were at art school, so to speak, I used a picture of a Port Townsend building...and painted my mother's baby picture using what I could remember from my first class. You remember, the class that gave me such a headache. But the fatbook theme was "Artfest," so why not try something you learned, nu?

The pages had to be 4" x 4". I decided to do something on a 4" x 6" canvas, so I'd for sure have part of the proportions right. Then I'd copy the main part and mount them on cardstock, with an embellishment.
I got the bell idea because of the school bell the baby is ringing... trying to use what I have, and I remembered I had these mini-bells from a bridal shower. Brilliant! And then came the struggle with the damn jump rings. Oy. But they're sent out, and Kristie was very patient waiting for my pages, bless her heart.

Should be interesting to see what everyone else has done. Julie is definitely in (looks like we had the same idea about the canvases, and the class technique) and I think Celeste is participating too. If she's been able to keep her eyes open, poor sleep-deprived new mother that she is.

I need better TV

Yeah, I can't believe it either, Carter: I'm watching "I Survived a Japanese Gameshow." It's all your fault that "Eureka" doesn't start its new season until Tuesday.

I'm about to run out of "Dr. Who" next week. Besides the storylines, I'm going to miss David Tennant's hair and smile. (No smile in this photo, but the hair looks good and look -- Martha Jones! She's my alter ego.)
All that hair makes me forget he's got a Nutcracker nose/chin combo. Sometimes I even wonder what it'd be like to kiss an alien with two hearts. (It's not cheating if he's a Time Lord.) But at least Captain Jack and the Torchwood team will appear in the finale. Ah, Captain Jack: very hot, very prone to flirting with you and your brother.

At least "Stargate Atlantis" has started up again. The evil producers got rid of Sam and replaced her with... WOOLSEY. The asskickin' brainiac gets the boot, and the paper-pusher takes her place. Come on! He wasn't even a doctor on Star Trek: Voyager -- he was a hologram of a doctor! He can't lead a team off-world!

"Pushing Daisies" survived the writer's strike, but it doesn't come back until October first. (Good thing we don't watch much network TV anymore. It's mostly BBC America, SciFi, HBO On Demand and a few exceptions such as "My Name is Earl" and "ER.")

This should tell you something about my status as pregnant mother of a small boy who's rationing babysitter services: The closest we come to club-hopping is Saturday nights with "The Graham Norton Show." We watch other people drink and have clever conversation.

Wisdom for the ages

"Never, ever shoot a gun full of spite."
-- The Boy, after The Husband explained that one should never do things out of spite because the attempt often backfires.

The Boy learned that lesson the hard way today. He thought telling Daddy he didn't want to go to a birthday party would punish Daddy for disciplining The Boy.

Wow. The Boy really doesn't know who he's dealing with.

Say my name

I've decided to go with The Husband's suggestion of "TwoBoo."

When I was pregnant with The Boy, I referred to him as "BoobooFishie", which popped into my head after seeing him swimming around during an ultrasound. (Pregnancy hormones occasionally addle my acid wit.) We shortened it to Booboo after he was born. So, TwoBoo. Although it's possible I should change that to "Stomp" because all this fetal kicking means he's auditioning for "America's Best Dance Crew."

It's been tough coming up with a real name too. Part of the problem is that names we might've considered are all taken by The Boy's day care friends. Not that they'd be in the same room, of course. But I grew up with a name so common that at one point, I was "Number 6" in a particular group. And I can't tell you how much I loved it when I was single, and guys would tell me "oh yeah -- I had an ex-girlfriend named Lisa." No kidding.

Of course, there will be times when we just call the baby "Dude."

A new game

Laurel brought up an excellent question that will become a pressing matter soon:

"... will the baby be known as The Other Boy? It doesn't seem very nice. Oh, what about the New Boy?"

She's right. I hadn't yet thought of a new nickname, so I'm gonna need help here. At the moment, El Bébé isn't really doing anything for me. For one thing, it'll have to be changed in a year or so. And I really don't feel like going to the character map to get the accents every time I mention him. (Ricë gets an exception to that rule.)

Oh, no actual names, please; we're going to keep that process closed even to the grandparents and siblings until his name is on the birth certificate. (Although I'm threatening The Husband that the kid will be named Aodh, a lovely Old Irish name that's pronounced "eh.")

Thoughts?

52 degrees, with thunderstorms

Typical rain heading into the 4th of July weekend, but what's not-so-typical are the thunderstorms. They woke us -- and the dog -- up at 2:45am this morning. Right now the dog is in the garage, doing her noisy best to scare away the thunder. The Boy, of course, slept through it. Today we're allegedly going to hit a high of 69 degrees, possibly with more thunderstorms.

Good thing I didn't buy every last tank top in the maternity re-sale boutique last week, when it was in the 80s. (Don't mock me! That's hot up here!)

On the street where you live

I just finished altering the second postcard I'm swapping with Tally. I'd been pressing it flat, what with all the matte medium and attachments and stuff on it, under some art books. And with This Thing Called Life taking some priority in the past couple o' weeks, I dang near forgot where I'd put it.

But then her latest postcard came in the mail, and that woke me up. Note the butterfly under wax below:
And the first one she sent (with a butterfly charm peeping through the window):She's been working on some personal changes, hence the butterflies. Which will happen, believe me. God bless her, she's got her own issues and doubts, but her drive to achieve her goals is awe-inspiring. We were talking the other day, and I reminded her it's been only about three years since I showed her the True Colors book of art journals. She'd always had an artistic side, but that really got her going.

So in the interim, she's started her own business of selling hand-made cards, then turned that into hand-designed (printed) cards that are now sold in certain Whole Foods stores. She teaches in some local art venues. Occasionally, she hosts a collaborative project. Oh, and she's had a baby during those past three years too. She's a bad mama-jama.

So this is the one Tally will get in the mail in a few days:
The "street" is a piece of this cool wax-coated, slightly translucent paper. I glued it down with matte medium, but I also had the brilliant idea to heat the wax on one side, so that it was more likely to stick. Ooh, that was fun! Pinned a transparency scrap to the cigarette card girl, then pinned them down to the card. Cut up some "houses" and connected them with fiber. I added a wash of greenish acrylic on the edges, to link it visually with the back.
This is how the back looked until this morning: mostly green paper swatches, overlaid with circular-patterned rice paper on one side and the acrylic wash. Today I added the text, starting with an excerpt from "My Fair Lady":
The maritime route lines on the map paper provided a natural space for the "My Fair Lady" lyrics:

Let the time go by
I won't care if I
Can be on the street where you live

I'd mentioned in a previous post that I wished everyone I cared about could live on the same street with me. One big honkin' street. No more flights, no drives across town, no elaborate scheduling just to see each other. Of course, it all gets complicated when I think of what that would actually be like, but the fantasy makes me very happy.

I can breathe now

Aaaaaahhh... it's finally less than 88 degrees Fahrenheigt. (Don't mock me. I've gotten used to not having a normal summer.) Still wiped out and tore up, but here are some pix to hold you until I have more coherent thoughts.

The Boy and me at the strawberry farm two weekends ago-- when it was maybe 71 degrees:
Still thanking my local farmworkers. I do not want to crouch and kneel like that for a living.

No pictures from this weekend. Too hot to focus, plus The Boy was showing us the range of his three-year-old orneriness. I spent most of my time trying to control my temper when I wasn't wiping away under-boob sweat.

Speaking of being unreasonably hot, more news from PreggerLand: we found out we're going to have a boy! He "waved" to us during the ultrasound (his hand was next to his head, and he flexed his fingers a couple of times).

And because I run a side specialty in weirdness: see this cuddly little Cerberus I found at the book store:More soon.