Missing Again

Wanted to share an update. I'm not disappearing again. I've just been sick. Seasonal weather changes plus allergies has turned into a nasty sinus thing, which has completely knocked me out for the last week or so. Anyways, I'm taking a short break from blog writing while I recover my health. I am still working on some stuff to share later. It's all about priorities. I'm focusing on getting better, but not stressing about keeping up with everything until then. Looking forward to being over this and having some good stuff coming after this short break. See you on the other side!

Lana

This cat was an early birthday gift for Luke, my 14-yo son. It's a little bit like a therapy pet for him. He's been volunteering at a local no-kill all cat shelter that specializes in older cats. The shelter is filled to the brim with cats. Each room contains at least a dozen cats. Most cats are not kept in cages, and those that are in cages are usually for reasons like sickness (quarantine) or new arrivals.  Lana is a 4.5 yo white and grayish brown tabby. She's super sweet, but very skittish. We don't know a lot about her background, but we think she may have been abused as a kitten based on her behavior. We have also wondered if perhaps she was left in a bag somewhere and found as a kitten because she exhibits some of the same claustrophobic behaviors our older cat Ferret did, and he had been found in a bag on the side of the road.

She's been with us for about 3 weeks, and she's been growing on me. If it had been me picking out a new cat, it would not have been this one. I've got my eye on a particularly scruffy black and white cat with gorgeous eyes. But, since this cat was for Luke, and not for me, we got Lana. She was named Ida at the shelter, and Luke would always be in her room when we'd go to pick him up. He would enjoy and spend time with all the cats in the room, but she was the one he'd always go back to. He talked about her at home (which is a huge thing because he hardly ever says anything at all unless it's to talk about a new LEGO set he wants). Shaun and I spent a lot of time talking about whether we'd do this since we'd be breaking our own long-standing rule of no pets for the kids--we would have family pets, but nothing that would be specifically for one particular kid. We eventually came to the decision we did want to get the cat for Luke for his birthday, which is coming up in December. Once we made the decision, we immediately went and signed the adoption papers for the cat even though it's only October, because, you know, it would have really sucked to have waited till December to get her on his birthday, but then have her be adopted by another family in, say, November.

Lana is already becoming part of the family. Badger and Kisa, our two family cats, are getting used to having Lana around. Lana isn't bothered by our cats; I think that can be credited to her time at the shelter where she shared a room with about a dozen other cats. I like that even though she is skittish around people, she doesn't take crap from other cats, especially Badger who can be a bit of a bully to other cats.

Month In Review - October 2017

October is drawing to a close. This is a sad thing as October is one of my favorite months. The weather has finally started to get cooler... as in it's finally under 90 degrees. >_< I admit I really can't wait to find an excuse to move away from this area, and that has been a big part of what we've done during this month. We are slowly solidifying plans to move away, preferably back to mountains. This plan will probably take at least a couple years to get us to a place where we can pull off the move. It's a work in progress, but it's a huge thing for me. Although I love the people we've met here and the fact that I live and now work with one of my best friends, it is not where I really want to be. So, Shaun and I are working on moving. We're taking our time and finishing up a few things we want to see done before making a move--like finishing school for midwifery and getting my Etsy shop back up and running. October also has Halloween, which has always been a favorite Holiday of mine. Because I always need excuses to put on a costume.

So how has October been? It's certainly had it's ups and downs, and right now I'm fighting a sinus infection that is threatening to strike and make a mess of my plans for Halloween weekend. We are looking forward to a fun weekend. Last night my kids and husband went to our church's Reformation Day celebration. I had to miss it because I was working. Tonight, we're going to a corn maze with some good friends, which will be followed by s'mores at a bonfire. Saturday afternoon and evening will be our annual Halloween Party. It's a kid-friendly even, so we don't allow alcohol, but it is always an evening of fun. We run a costume contest, and sometimes the prize we give out is something decent. We usually run a murder mystery or some other role-playing game. This year's theme is Disney, and if we can finish it, the mystery will be "Who Killed Elsa?" and the playable characters will be a selection of the more fun Disney villains. I have to work Halloween night, but we're allowed to dress up at work, so I'm thinking I might wear my Princess Buttercup costume because it's super comfy, which is good for a 12 hour shift. I'm loving how our Halloween-ish activities are spreading out over almost a week this year.

In other news, we have a new cat in our family. She's named Lana, and I will probably put up a post in November or December all about her, otherwise she might completely take over this post. =P We've been making slow progress on all of our art projects. A lot of this month has been spent re-focusing. We had made plans back in August for what we wanted to see done this fall. I think we over-estimated what we would be able to do, since Shaun is back in school as well now (he teaches) and that stuff always ends up taking more time than we think it will when the semester is just starting. So, we re-evaluated our plans. This may sound like a little thing, but it's a big thing for me because in the past, I would just continue to try and plow through everything, getting increasingly more stressed, going without sleep, and otherwise killing my immune system.

So, anyways... November is another month I like. I'm going to have to work on Thanksgiving, so I'll have to miss out on the family festivities there, but I'll live. We're working on coming up with some things to make work that night more fun. I'm going to continue working on our projects based on our re-focusing discussions. One of my big goals is to finish cleaning out the garage enough to get a space set up to store all my inventory and set up a space for shipping things. Ideally I'd like this ready by mid-November. That might be a bit optimistic, but I'd like it done enough to have my Etsy up with some new products before the end of the year. So we'll see how this goes.

Team Sidequest Shenanigans

Team Sidequest is the informal name applied to our gaming group. This group has been in existence since Summer 2000. It started with my husband, his good friend, and myself. When we started, we played 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. My husband ran the games. His friend played a Dragon Knight (original class we designed for the world my husband and I created) named Theorne--this is the same friend who got the awesome Legendary Play Mats I shared the other day. I played a Dwarf Cleric named Grushenka--bonus points if you catch the reference without using Google. =P

At some point we switched to 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It was a slow transitions. Being the old fogies that we are, we felt that system was very overpowered and ruined the role playing side of it. We played 3rd Edition for many years. We've also played 4th Edition and Pathfinder. We have played Star Wars D20. We are currently playing Pathfinder and Marvel -- the really old version from when I was in high school. We're also threatening to start a MLP campaign.

I've been through lots of characters over the years. I tend to figure out what my character looks like and then build it up from there. If I don't do that, I usually take a vague concept (like one of my archetypes) and then try and find a class that fits. I think, by far, one of my favorite characters to play was Magic, where I played my Magic Girl archetype named. I used the Pathfinder rules for the Magic Girl class published by my husband and another friend of ours. I totally played up the Intelligence score of 7 (out of 18 for those who don't play D&D). This did happen. DM: "You see a dragon." Magic: "I want to make friends with it. I'll bet it's just lonely and misunderstood." FYI, it worked.

My current Pathfinder character is a bit subdued compared to my usual character. She's an Elf Monk who owns only the clothes on back, doesn't bathe, and seeks Nirvana. I'm playing her as an ultra-conservative Buddhist crossed with the Prince of Persia with less sarcasm--gave people a break since my Halfling Druid who I played before Sangye had a mouth that got our party in way more trouble than was probably necessary. (My poor druid died. It was tragic.)

In our Marvel campaign, I'm playing a 3rd generation Greek immigrant living in New York. She lives with her grandmother, but spends most of her time at her guardian's house--her guardian is a Social Services worker (played by my husband) assigned specifically to her case because of the fact that she tends to set fire to thinks when she gets emotional--which is often. She is 17 (super young by my standards), is incredibly impulsive, has fire powers, and has spent most of her life in and out of trouble with law enforcement. She spent a lot of time in centers for juvenile delinquents. This makes her good with misunderstood kids, and she has an interest in child psychology and lots of contacts within NYPD. She's generally better behaved now--she's one of the good guys after all--but she does not think about consequences of her actions before she does them. This means lots of collateral damage. She also tends to destroy her guardian's toasters and has difficulty maintaining a job (since saving the world is more of a side gig).

I'm really big on character creation--looks, personality, back story... all of it. Love it. It's one of my favorite aspects of games--table top and video game (it legitimately took me 2 hours to design my first Guild Wars 2 character). Feel free to comment and tell me about your characters (yes, I opened that can of worms). I like this kind of thing though. Once I get caught up with some of my current art projects (mostly revamping and updating my inventory for any 2018 conventions I might get into, and really just the badges and ties), I plan on opening a special section of commissions just for OCs for games because this is one of my favorite things to draw.

That was rambling... I need to stop writing these things between 3am and 5am after staying up all night. XD

Being Intentional

So I posted a while ago about some of the health problems I've been dealing with, as well as some of the other things that have been going on over the last couple of years. I've been out of the art loop for several years now, and I probably haven't been really 100% on top of things with my art studio since before the crazy moves in 2011 and 2012 before Sophie was born. 2014 was a bad year. 2015 was spent recovering from 2014. 2016 sucked too, and I've been determined to not let 2017 be just recovering from 2016, although that has been a lot of it--more than I'd like.

But it hasn't been all of it. That pleases me. Things are also going to change. In good ways. I've been very focused on intention this year. I want everything I do to have a purpose. For example, consider this blog. I've been doing better about posting here consistently, but it hasn't been perfect. Instead of wasting energy stressing over what I've missed or haven't been able to get done when I wanted, I've moved on. For the blog that's meant, letting the missed post (or two or three posts) go. I'm not going to stress over posting something late. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I'll just pick up with the next planned post and move on. For other projects, it has meant re-evaluating my goals to keep them reasonable, not stressing when I don't meet deadlines I set for myself. It's also meant putting limits on what I say I can do.

In general though, things are improving. I've been posting here more consistently, and it gets better with each month. I'm getting to where I can work on projects more consistently too. Some weeks are definitely better than others--this is going to be one of those more stressful weeks. I'm writing this at 3 a.m. from work (I work nights as a 9-1-1 call taker). This isn't my normal shift, but I was on-call tonight, and got called in. I work normally this week Monday and Tuesday night, as well as Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. To offset that, I only work Wednesday and Thursday nights next week, but it does make for a tough week this week, especially since I'm on call again Thursday, and there's at least a 65% chance I will need to come in. So, it's going to be a rough week, mostly for sleep and remembering to do things--like post on this blog--in a timely manner. The hardest part about these crazy weeks is that I lose track of time and what day it is. I like my job though. And, it's a consistent paycheck that is helping to pay off all the medical bills from the last year. Although I'd love it if my art studio could pull off that kind of consistency, it's unrealistic to expect it to take off like that after being on hiatus for several years.

I do have plans to transition this to being my full time job, but it's going to take some time. We've got some great plans for what's going to be happening in the next couple of years. 2017 has been about getting back on my feet and getting things going again--it's been slower than I'd like, and there have been set backs, but I'm pleased to see things (especially good things) happening. I'm looking forward to 2018 being even better. This is intentional. I am doing things to make 2018 better and not just hoping that it will be that way.

WIP Wednesday - 2017 - Volume 9

This week, I'm sharing some of the other projects I'm working on. The stuff I've posted over the last couple of weeks are the main things I've been doing, but there are a few odd prints and projects that I'm working on because I'm not happy unless I have at least 10 different projects in progress at any given time.

One recent project I picked up was repainting our school room. We homeschool, so I have a dedicated space in our house where we keep our school stuff. We decided it needed to be repainted. It was the same yellowy creamy beige that everything in the house was when we moved in. Super neutral and super boring. The school room is in what is supposed to be a "breakfast room" but I don't understand the need for having 2 eating areas in our house. But it works well enough for my purposes. Anyways. The house came with the white molding around the bottom part of the walls in this room, and we decided to leave that. The top part of the room is painted a pale gray, and the bottom part is a pretty shade of green.

 These shelves are mostly for reference books and books not tied to any particular curriculum but might be considered educational. And also our D&D and Pathfinder role playing books. This includes a wide selection of classic literature for my high schoolers, dictionaries, and other fiction books that we deem less than fun (by our kids' standards). We value reading here. =P Anyways, this shelf used to be overflowing, but I purged half the books that had been on it. Most were not thrown away and will be going to a second hand store or used book store. One of my goals this year is to remove things from my home that I don't use and won't use. That makes less to clean up and more time for art! The bottom shelves used to be prettier too, but my 5 year old, Sophie, loves "reading" books and doesn't usually put them back correctly. *sigh* She is also responsible for the paper on the floor--all that came off her desk which you can see in the corner of the picture above. Encouraging her to keep her space semi-clean (I don't expect perfection, but stuff not on the floor would be nice) is a constant battle.

 This is the space dedicated to curriculum stuff. The top shelves have library books and stuff for Sophie's Kindergarten. The next row is for unit study material that we use for our younger kids--right now just Logan (my 10 year old), although we do encourage Sophie to participate where she can.
Below that are spaces for the 3 boys to keep their books: one for Logan and two each for Ty and Luke--my high schoolers. Below that is curriculum not currently in use but that I want available because I tend to use a fairly fluid system for moving through material. The bottom shelf has supplies mostly for science projects. Art supplies have moved to the garage because they were ending up all over the place. The kids can still access them, but it's harder for them to pull everything out, so it doesn't all end up all over the place.

 Our D&D dry erase board and the piano, for when someone feels musically inclined.... And a nice clear picture of the walls. =D

And finally this is their workspace... sort of. It's really just a flat surface that collects crap. =P There is a leaf like the open one above on the other side, and there's felt on the bottom of the table legs so I can move the table easily. I can move the table and open up both sides if I want, or fold both down, or keep one up like it is now. In theory, it's a good idea. In theory...

Anyways, that's a tour of our school space. This is a big part of my life right now, along with art and work and what not, so thought I'd share this for WIP this week. The painting is finished, but maintaining the rest of the room is a constant work in progress as is how we manage our school. I'm always looking for new ways to tweak our system. That makes me sound super organized and together doesn't it? I'm really not. We have no such thing as a routine, and we're definitely one of the more chaotic homeschooling families. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a nice orderly life. ... Sometimes.

Legendary Play Mats

Recently my husband and his old college roommate, who share a birthday, turned ... I won't say, but it was one of the fun ones that end in "0" or "5" and deserved something more fun than usual.

We got his roommate, who prefers to go by Theorne, a Last Unicorn print from Animazement, a couple of fun things off Etsy (which shall remain nameless, since we haven't given those yet, on the odd chance he finds his way to my blog--not likely, but would rather not chance it), and 2 custom-printed play mats for his Legendary game. 

Theorne is an huge Legendary fan, and that's putting it mildly. He has pretty much every card ever made for the game, minus two that I believe were promotional cards released by Upper Deck on some occasion or another (he told me probably more than once, but I can't remember). He has them sleeved in high quality sleeves and stored in two wooden cases.

We found a game store not too far from where we live that will print play mats, so we decided to try to put together a mat based off the Legendary board since Theorne had mentioned (several times) how much he loved the mat we had with our Legendary Encounters Firefly game. He conveniently forgot his game cases at our house after one of our game nights, and we took the opportunity to scan the board. The dimensions we needed for the mats did not match the original board, but we were able to pull a lot of the images and core elements from the board and arrange them so that they fit the mat dimensions while still maintaining the original sizing for the card spaces. That was a challenge, but my husband succeeded in putting that together.

Since we'd gone to the trouble to make the one mat, we decided to make a fan-based mat using images from things that Theorne liked. It was mostly a just-for-fun kind of thing. 

I believe he was well pleased with them. We broke them in at the start of their birthday game day by playing an epic game of Legendary featuring the Fantastic Four expansion. By epic I mean we won, but only had 3 turns left before losing.

This has been a fun project, and it has gotten my creative gears going. What kind of fun things could I do with this.

Finding a Groove

There have been a lot of changes around here. I've posted about some of them. Posting here and other places has been inconsistent, but I'm working on that. Part of it is I am trying to find my new groove with what's going on. Things are just very different, schedule-wise, to what I've done for the last 15 years or so. It's getting better. I'm starting to find a groove. I'm working on finding a place for everything.

Time for work--that's a set schedule, so this is really what I'm having to work around. Time for sleep. Time for my family. Time for my kids' school--we are still homeschooling because that is something that I feel is super important for our family. Time for art--this has been and remains to be my day-to-day stress relief.

What still needs to happen is to organize that time, so that I get things posted here in a consistent manner. It's about being mindful of what needs to be done, and it's also about regrounding myself temporally. The one thing I've had the most trouble with adjusting to with the shift to working nights is time--as in, what day is it? I find that I lose days at a time. I look back and realize that I never posted here on Wednesday or Friday and it is now Saturday. Oops. So, I'm having to work on my awareness of time.

But anyways, I'm working on finding my groove. I'm trying some new ways to organize the things I want to see finished and when I want them done. It's a lot of trial and error. We'll see how my plan for this week goes. We'll see what works and what doesn't. Then I'll adjust it for next week. It's slow, but there's progress. I may not be posting here consistently, but I'm posting. I may not be sharing a lot of WIP stuff, but I am getting things done. =D If this week goes well, maybe I'll get some WIP pics posted Wednesday, and I'd love to share our Animazement fun on Friday--I have a review of the convention I want to write up, and I have a post planned on the cosplays we put together for the con. If this week doesn't go how I think it will, then maybe those things will come next week. =P

I Went Away Again

So I disappeared again. Hopefully this will be the last time for a while.

So where'd I go this time?

Basically, I ended up back in the hospital. Which sucks. A lot.

Why? Well basically it turns out that my hemoglobin deficiency wasn't fixing itself like we thought it was because, apparently, I had no iron. Pretty much none. At all. So my hemoglobin had dropped back to where it was when last fall when this whole mess started.

And I passed out at work. Which also sucked. A lot.

So, I've spent the last 2 months resting and recovering and doing only what I absolutely needed to do to get by. I posted a brief note to this point on Facebook, but never made it here to post either. Oops. I blame lack of oxygen to my brain. Totally legitimate. Because, you know, even though I had lots of red blood cells, I didn't have iron, and iron's necessary for hemoglobin. Without hemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying part of our blood) I was not getting enough oxygen to function.

Anyways, I'm feeling better now, and hopefully it's going to stay that way.

My New Diet

Anyone, who has been around me for any length of time will know that I am not a health nut. Not even close.

Although I never really overate, my eating habits were pretty abysmal. It's only slight exaggeration to say that I happily lived off of bacon and chocolate, although not necessarily together. Just kidding. Needless to say though, what we ate didn't qualify as a well-balanced diet.

Early last fall, my youngest son was diagnosed with ADHD. After a ton of testing, they determined that his brain was either missing or not making enough of a chemical that is key to brain function. This chemical essentially slows down incoming impulses for processing so that it can be forwarded to the proper part of the brain to create an appropriate response. That means that impulses come in, and they go straight back out as a response, but without the processing that makes the response appropriate and effective.

Now during that time, I had started researching the gut. I was having problems with fatigue and brain fog, and I flat out didn't feel good--not sick, but off. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that nursing school was taking 60+ hours a week, I was still a homeschooling mom of 4, and I still had a husband that needed some attention. That had nothing to do with it at all. *rolls eyes* It probably didn't help, especially the high stress parts. Anyways, I was learning a lot about intestinal absorption and brain function, so when my son came back with ADHD diagnosis related to chemical imbalance I made a connection with the food we were eating.

So, just after I got out of the hospital, after Thanksgiving, we started a reset diet--the whole family participated. We removed all gluten, dairy, sugar, and processed foods from our diet. That didn't leave a whole lot, especially considering 90% of what we ate were carbs. That first week or so was challenging in that we had no idea what to fix. Plus, buying real foods on a budget is another challenge. After 3 weeks off of everything, we added back in gluten in the form of whole grains. We also added back in some dairy in limited quantities. We continue to strictly limit sugar. When we want to sweeten something we try to use raw honey or maple syrup instead of sugar. We have learned to read and understand labels. We have learned that some of our old favorite recipes still work with some adjustments.

My son is a lot like the stereotypical 9-year-old kid. All he wants to live off of is macaroni and cheese (and we're not talking good homemade stuff, but the boxed stuff that is only one step up from plastic). This change was really tough on him. He has been particularly stubborn about this, but we have noticed a profound difference in him. So, he may not be eating much (we're still working on that), but there is something he is not eating that is helping him to function so much better.

I also saw improvements in myself. I am less fatigued--I still get tired easily (and given the circumstances, that's to be expected), but it's different from that bone-weary dead-on-my-feet fatigued feeling. My brain is clearer. Now, if anything, I have the problem of too many thoughts and ideas flying through my brain. I'm having trouble processing everything; it's like my brain is trying to play catch-up from the last couple years of being MIA (I think it was replaced with a Gelatinous Cube). On the plus side, I have so many amazing ideas for my art studio and other things. On the down side, it can be a little overwhelming to sort through and try to focus, so that something actually gets finished, and this doesn't add to my 2 million started but unfinished projects that I have in my craft room. (2 million is only mild exaggeration.)

Anyways, December was tough. January was  better. February is about over, and I think we've made some positive lifestyle changes. I am also super appreciative of my husband, who is the primary cook in this family. This would not have been possible if he had not been on board. <3 No lie, I have the best husband in the world.

Where I've Been

This is going to be a bit of a tough post for me to write. I've been gone for what feels like forever. I've done some drawing, some posting, but I've overall been absent from the art world, social media, and all kinds of other things. So, where have I been?

Well, to start with, in 2014 I went through a early second trimester miscarriage with twins and traumatic treatment at the hands of an OB/GYN during one of the three emergency room visits during the 2 days it took to completely resolve the miscarriage and the complications from it. Emotionally, I was upset (and that's putting it lightly). Physically, I felt violated. I found out a year later that I could have taken the doctor to court for assault and battery, but I didn't know that at the time. I did call to complain, but was told that my story did not match what the doctor charted (big surprise), and they were going to go with what was in the chart. This is a very brief summary of those events. Women's health has always been something that is very important to me. There's a lot of talk about abortion rights and birth control and what not, but my focus is more on the other side of that coin. Women have few options and are often mistreated by the medical industry during the prenatal period and labor process. I'm not even going to talk about the general lack of postpartum support in our country because that could be a whole post in and of itself. My experience in 2014 pushed me to start training as a midwife. In my state (North Carolina), the only legal way to practice as a midwife is as a licensed Certified Nurse Midwife under the charge of a doctor. This meant going back to school becoming a licensed RN, getting a bachelors in Nursing, and a masters degree in Midwifery--seven years of school all told. Ok. I was fine with that.

Later that year, I started school working on prerequisites for nursing. The next year, I got into the ADN program at my local community college (this would have gotten the RN stage completed). That ate a ton of my time. I struggled to manage school, which took up easily 60 hours a week and I wasn't even full time, and my family. Needless to say, there was no time for art or any of the fun things I enjoyed doing. I was working for something that was very near and dear to my heart, so I felt it was worth it. This accounts for a huge chunk of where I've been.

You'll note the verb tense I used to describe my program--"would have gotten." In September I found out I was pregnant again. I was excited. I love my family, and I love my kids, and I was thrilled that we might have another child. That was not going to happen though. At an appointment the end of October, we found out there was no longer a heartbeat. She (yes, this would have been a sister for little Sophie) had seemed so healthy. We even had genetic testing done and everything came back fine, even though it wasn't. I was devastated. At the time, I went ahead and took a medical withdrawal from school because I needed time emotionally and there was a chance of repeat complications. Jump ahead to November. There were complications. I hemorrhaged. I lost 2/3 of my blood volume in about 3 hours. I am here now to write about this because I have an amazing OBGYN who is respectful and listens. We'd been in communication through her practice's website, so she knew what was going on. She was able to meet me at the hospital and start the surgery to fix the problem without the usual testing that has to be run. If I'd waited the 2-3 hours necessary for the testing, I probably would have died. My doctor is living proof that not all doctors in the birth industry are awful. Anyways. Once surgery was over, I went home within an hour. At the time we weren't aware of exactly how much blood I'd lost. I was able to get myself up and dressed, and was able to communicate coherently, so we knew my hemoglobin was low, but it didn't seem that bad.

So, yeah. We were wrong. Some of this was on  me, and I accept that. I told my doctor I did not want a transfusion or any other intervention unless I really needed it. Based on how I felt, she felt safe sending me home. Fast forward to about 36 hours later. I was back in the emergency room. I had experienced a couple of instances of severe chest pain during the day, and that night my OB's office told me to go back in to check on things. They checked hemoglobin and found out how low it was--turns out it was at a level where I shouldn't have been able to walk; they expected me to be barely conscious or not conscious. Except, I was conscious, talking, and walking around. Anyways, the chest pain was related to a mild-to-moderate level heart attack triggered by the extremely low blood volume and the strain that put on the heart. How bad was it? I don't think it was that bad now based on what information I've been able to glean from the cardiologist office, but they've been less than helpful with that. Anyways, this led to a period of hospitalization while they tried to figure out what exactly had happened and what needed to be done by it. Many thanks to those of you on Twitter who responded to my request for some fun, happy shows to watch while stuck there. Those days were miserable. I felt well enough after the transfusion (that was ordered as soon as the hemoglobin number came in) that it was really hard to sit there in bed.

Moving on, I went home with very little information and no clear idea of what had actually happened (I was not happy about that--there are a lot of things that I am unhappy about regarding that experience related to problems I have seen in the medical industry as both a patient and a nursing student). Things have been on the mend, minus a hiccup because of a severely nasty reaction to one of the medications they put me on. I am completely off the meds they put me on now, and things seem to be going okay. Blood volume is still low, but it is improving--it takes time to rebuild that volume. I think it should be back to normal in a few more months. Recovery is slow though because of the strain the incident caused on my heart. I have to be careful because it's super easy for my heart rate to get too high thanks to the low blood volume. When I say easy, I'm talking walking up one flight of stairs, switching laundry from the washer to the drier, doing dishes... all of those things will send my heart rate through the ceiling now. This is why I said in my post on Magfest I had to be really careful about my activity. Going outside was a thing because I'm not supposed to be out at all in anything under 40 because of how blood vessels respond to the cold, and it was in the teens. I may  have ignored that order one day, and I felt it later that day. Needless to say, I did not push that point again that weekend.

On the plus side, I'm back. I have more time for art now, since I'm still moderately restricted on activities, and I'm not in school anymore. Anyways, if there are days where I miss posting, or if things move a little more slowly (than I'd like)... it's related to all this medical stuff. Recovery is taking time. I have to be patient with it, and I hope my followers will be patient with me too. I'm looking forward to being "normal" by summer. I plan on applying for lots of conventions for the fall/winter 2017/2018. I've applied to Animazement this year, and I hope I get in. I'm going to be spending my recovery time preparing lots of new things for my table. I'm excited about what's coming. There have been a lot of crazy things in my life, but I'm not going to let them stop me.

Anniversary

Last weekend, my husband and I celebrated our 17th anniversary.

I feel blessed to have someone who has put up with my quirks for that long by choice.

So, we spent the weekend running around, being random, and spending time with each other and our two older kids.

We did lots of running around. I think we spent, all told, 13 hours in the car that weekend. Running around was practical (groceries at Costco), ferrying a kid (Ty volunteered Saturday for Scouting for Food), and fun (Barnes & Noble for some board games--Mysterium and Splendor, Jo-Anns for fabric, dollar theater--which is $3 not $1--for Dr. Strange).

We did random things. We went out Friday to see Dr. Strange, which I had not seen yet, completely on impulse (and because the AMC gift card we thought we had were devoid of funds and for some reason had not been thrown out). I liked Dr. Strange. A lot. Barnes & Noble was not planned, but was an impulse stop. We treated ourselves to 2 games we tried out at Magfest this year and really liked.

We spent time with our two older kids. Our two younger kids went to visit the in-laws for the weekend, so we got to spend some quality time with the older ones. They came with us to see Dr. Strange and out to dinner Saturday. They also played some board games with us. It was fun. My super sweet oldest son had offered to babysit so my husband and I could go out for our anniversary, but it was so much more fun being able to share some of the activities we did with them.

Most important, we spent time with each other. We are intentional about spending time with each other during the week normally--something I think is important to having a lasting relationship. It was fun though to spend pretty much the entire weekend doing fun things with each other and not even thinking about work.

Acceptance

So, this probably has nothing to do with what you might have first thought of when you looked at the title.

I just got my acceptance letter from my local community college for their nursing program. I get to start this fall!

I am learning to balance working on both of my businesses (Gothic Panda Studios and Holistic Birth Care) and keep up with my school work and the needs of my family. It helps that I have an amazingly supportive family. It helps that I am somewhat ADD--it's why I have a bazillion craft and art projects going on simultaneously and why I keep a lot of things going on in my life. I actually get twitchy if I don't have anything to work on. I'm also a big fan of life-long learning, so if I want to learn more about something, I will pursue it.

Anyways. I'm excited.

Back in School

You guys may have noticed the lack of new things recently. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost being that last year sucked--had several family losses that made for a miserable year. Yes, this is why there were only 2 posts all of last year. Enough on that. Another reason is that I have gone back to school. 

A little over a year ago, I posted that I was going through training to be a doula. I'm still doing that, and I love it. Well, last summer, I decided that I would like to take a leap and start working toward providing medical support during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum, not just non-medical. I am following the (long) path to becoming a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM). Although there are Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) and I greatly admire their model of care, it is a felony to practice as a CPM in my state (go NC--can you read the sarcasm?). So, I am taking the longer route to be a CNM. 

The first step in this process is getting my RN (registered nurse) certification and associates degree in nursing. Subsequent steps will involve transferring to a 4-year to convert my associates to a bachelors and then completing a masters of midwifery program. So, right now I am enrolled in my local community college taking pre-nursing classes (since, you know, the last science related course I took was high school chemistry almost 20 years ago now). If things go according to plan though, I will be starting part time nursing classes this fall and finish in two years from that.

In the mean time, I'm going to continue working as a doula, and I'm going to keep working on my art. It may seem like a lot, but I really enjoy doing this work. In many ways, it's now what I do to wind down. Well, maybe "wind down" isn't the right phrase. "A change of pace" might be a better way of putting it. I enjoy my classes, but they can be quite stressful. I could probably get by with doing less, but it's important to me to take the time necessary to actually learn the concepts, not just memorize what I need to know to pass the tests. Life long learning ftw! 

There will still be new art and new things posted here. There just won't be as much as there was when I started this blog, back when I was trying to make this into a full time thing. Full time art did not work well for me; I ended up getting burnt out after about a year of it. I'm happy making it a part time thing now. I'm also learning to be more purposeful in the time I have with my art... well at least some of the time. I am sure there will be plenty more of the impulsive projects and whatnot because that's just what I do. 

Anniversary Aftermath

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my upcoming anniversary. Our plan was to do something to celebrate every day of our anniversary week, or at least Monday through Friday.

I thought I'd share a little about how that week actually went.

We ended up starting Sunday instead of Monday. We went out to eat at IHOP. Although this isn't my husband's favorite place, it is one of mine. I love getting breakfast for dinner. This is one of my all time favorite things. This time I got some amazing french toast with bananas and caramelized brown sugar with butter pecan syrup, and of course bacon because you can't have breakfast for dinner without bacon. Just saying.

Monday. Although we ended up doing Monday night's date Sunday night, we still did a little something Monday evening. Monday we went grocery shopping at Costco. Super romantic right? No. Not really. We did leave the kids at home though, and after getting February's groceries, we went to Krispy Kreme for some dessert.

Tuesday. We spent Tuesday evening watching Sword Art Online 2. I am thoroughly enjoying that series, but more on that later. I love that we can get Crunchy Roll on the big TV in our living room.

Wednesday. Wednesday we went to bed early because I was sick. I curled up with my husband and he read to me from the Lord of the Rings while I dozed. This is one of the most awesome things my husband does, and has done since our first few months married. Whenever I get sick, he reads to me. When he's not available, I watch A&E's Pride and Prejudice.

Thursday. I was still not feeling good and spent the day while he was at work watching Pride and Prejudice. Big surprise there right? We still followed through with our plan to play games, although we didn't make it through as many because I crashed early. We did play Ticket to Ride (Europe and Africa maps), Dominion, and Castles of Burgundy. We barely made it through a fraction of our games. Spending the last half of the week ill was frustrating.

Friday. We went up on the Parkway in Asheville to our favorite overlook. We talked about how things had changed, both in Asheville and ourselves. A lot has happened in the last 15 years. It wasn't quite as fun as we'd hoped, mostly because I was still sick. It was Sunday-Monday after this before I finally started feeling better. That really sucked.

Overall, I think this was a great idea. I think it would have been better of course if I'd felt better, but there's not much I can do about that. This is something we might do again some time. I don't know if it'll become a yearly thing though. This week has been kicking my butt, since I took a lot of last week off as far as keeping up with some of my work went.

Anniversary!!

Next week, my husband and I will celebrate 15 years of being married.

Yes. Fifteen years!

To kick off getting this block back up and on its feet, I am going to share with you guys our plans to celebrate. Typically any anniversary ending in "5" or "0" could be considered milestones and worthy of extra celebration, although after year 5, the bigger milestones focus on the "0" years like 10, 20, etc. So, 15 isn't really that big a deal, although it is more impressive than 12 of 14. Of course, I'd love just about any excuse to go off on some super fun (and probably expensive adventure). However, as fun as that would be, we're going to save it for 20, 25, or 30, because... yeah... we're broke. Haha. Besides, I've got lots of anniversaries to plan in the future; our goal is to beat my great grandparents who celebrated 75 years together before they passed away.

So, what are we going to do? We aren't going to do anything super impressive, but since it is 15 years, we're going to do something to make it a little more special than a normal anniversary. We are planning to spend every day next week, Monday through Friday, doing something small to celebrate; it's kind of like a week of date nights. So, the itinerary:

Monday: We're going to go out for dinner--nothing fancy because then I'd feel obligated to dress up. Ok, so I'll probably do something to look nice. I hardly ever wear make-up or put my hair up in anything other than a messy bun. On evenings like this, I do go out of my way to look a little nicer, even if it's not super fancy, to show my husband that he's worth looking nice for. (Let's put this in perspective: since I work primarily from home, I don't bother getting out of my jammies most days--not that I'm lazy; my jammies are just super comfy.)

Tuesday: We're going to hang out at home, maybe order pizza, and curl up with Crunchyroll. We're going to pick something random to watch off our to-watch list, or maybe not. We might just watch something completely random. I'm leaning towards Sword Art Online 2, but we'll see.

Wednesday: Wednesday we're going to just hang out. Maybe turn on the fireplace (it's still weird to me having a gas fireplace; when I was growing up we had to do things the old-fashioned way... you know with wood, and paper, and the headache of trying to get the wood to catch). Maybe have a candlelit dessert (dinner will be at church that night, which means lots of good food, which means no room for anything but dessert or something equivalently small).

Thursday: We are going to empty our game closet. My husband gets home from work a little early on Thursdays so we can start earlier. We are going to attempt to play through every board game we own. I anticipate losing most of them.

Friday: This one's going to be extra fun. We are going to be up in Black Mountain visiting family for my grandmother's 80th birthday over the weekend, so we are going to drive into Asheville Friday evening and visit some of our old haunts from when we were dating.

I'm really looking forward to next week. We're getting a little bit of a lot of things that we enjoy. The best part: I get to spend the best part of next week with my awesome husband.

Just Another Week

It's been a while since I've gotten a chance to post here. I really do want to post here more often. Maybe this is going to be the start of consistent posting again, and maybe it's not. My life seems to be very variable, at least on a day-to-day basis. Anyways. I thought I'd share with you guys a bit of what a normal week looks like for me.

Monday
As you guys may (or may not) know, I homeschool (for a variety of reasons, but let's just simplify things and say I had significant differences of opinion with the local schools as to what qualified as a quality education). You may also know that I am not a morning person. This means my average day gets started around 9:00-10:00. We spend the rest of the morning and a large chunk of the afternoon doing schoolwork--I won't go into the details there; as excited as I get about different curriculum and school stuff like that, I'm sure that would bore most of my readers here to tears. XD By the time late afternoon roles around, I can usually manage to get a little bit of housework--mostly maintenance stuff like laundry and dishes--taken care of. Yeah, my house is pretty far from picture-perfect. There's usually lots of clutter and dustbunnies in all the corners--maybe I'll bother keeping those at bay once the kids are grown and gone, but now, it's just not a priority.

Now most Mondays, after dinner, we head off to scouts. My two oldest are in boy scouts (#2 just bridged out of cub scouts). My youngest boy is a Tiger cub, and in a year or so, Sophie will join the Frontier Girls group attached to our troop--not that I have anything against Girl Scouts, but I appreciate the convenience of having Sophie in a group that meets at the same time and at the same location as the scout troop my boys are part of. =P Besides, not having access to large quantities of Girl Scout cookies is a major plus in favor of my health and my wallet. I have a real weakness for both Samoas and Thin Mints. XD But anyways, back on topic. Scouts ends 9:30ish. We come home, and most Mondays, it's bedtime for everyone. You'll notice that most Mondays there also isn't much time to pick up any art projects or even post to the blog here. =(

Tuesday
Tuesdays start much like Mondays, and in fact, it's just like Monday (minus the generally grumpy attitude that comes with Monday because no one wants to get back to work after the weekend) until late afternoon. Tuesdays, in theory, should be a much better day for tackling projects since it's the day my husband works late (he teaches a nigh class Tuesday nights and doesn't get home till after 9:00). Some weeks Tuesday is a great day to get projects done; other days, for a variety of reasons--usually just standard distractions that come with living with 4 kids and 4 cats or just plain exhaustion--nothing creative happens. XD

Wednesday
Wednesdays are fun. I cut the school day short just after lunch, and I spend my afternoons volunteering at the local Pregnancy Resource Center. Right now, I am training to be a client advocate. I really love my work here. For me, this is just a natural extension of my work as a doula. With my doula work, I provide for support for women and help help make informed decisions regarding their pregnancy, labor & delivery, and postpartum periods. At the PRC, I'm doing the same thing for women in crisis pregnancy situations--I help them slow down, look at all their options so they can make an educated decision regarding what direction is best for them, and if they choose to carry, I get to stand by their side and provide the similar support I would as a doula--it's actually close to the same except with a crisis pregnancy situation I spend a lot more time working with the mom-to-be (and dad-to-be's too if they're there). FYI, part of my training is to make sure I'm not exhibiting any personal bias as to what decision I might think is best. Anyways... I could talk about this subject for a very long time, so I'm going to cut it short here. =P So, after my volunteer time, we go to Wednesday evening church, and after church, my husband and I have a "date night." We don't generally go anywhere, but the kids are given clear directions as to what they can do that evening and when they need to be in bed, and Shaun and I spend the evening by ourselves--sometimes watching a movie, sometimes just chatting. It's a fun time to just stay connected with him; I can attest to the importance of this after being married for more than 14 years now. Wednesdays disappear pretty quickly.

Thursdays and Fridays
Thursdays and Fridays are pretty similar. We have our usual school time, and generally we have nothing planned those days--or at least we're not supposed to have anything planned those days. Considering we haven't been home on a Thursday or Friday in weeks, it would be totally legitimate to question that. These are the two days during the week where I do get most of my art project progress done. That means, so far, that I have Thursdays, Fridays, and the occasional Tuesday to work on artsy craftsy things that I'm supposed to be blogging about here. =P

Saturdays
Saturdays should also be one of those great days to for getting stuff done, and by stuff, I mean art stuff since there's no school or anything like that. I do get stuff done; it's just not usually art stuff. Saturday is spent running errands and preparing school stuff for the next week. Saturdays are also days where we plan game days and visits with friends and other things like that, so it's our social day as well. Sometimes art happens, but usually no.

Sundays
Sunday mornings are spent at church. Sunday is also our grocery day for the week, and Sunday evenings we spend being social with our small group from church. The afternoon time in between is spent relaxing and attempting to rest up in preparation for another busy week. No art (or housework or school) ever happens on Sundays; it's something we decided to do very early in our marriage--Sunday would be the one day we allow each week to be spent reading, playing video games, watching movies, or whatever else we want to do to relax. Most weeks this is the only day we get to do these things because the rest of the week tends to be very busy with life stuff.

So anyways. That's what most of my weeks look like. Some weeks are better for art than others. I guarantee I have a lot of awesome projects in progress--some are pretty much done but I haven't had a chance to photograph or scan them, and others need more work. Stuff is happening and you should see some of it being finished over the next several months.

Where'd Friday Go?

So, I had this really awesome post planned for Friday, and by planned I don't mean written, I mean I had thought about the topic of the post prior to last Friday. Yeah, I know that there are tons of bloggers out there that say to write out your posts at least a couple of days before posting and to have a few back up posts for when writing just doesn't happen. Those are the bloggers that probably have all their posts up on time and never miss a post. That's clearly not me. I've tried. It just isn't something that works for me. So, you'll be getting last week's awesome Sailor Moon post this Friday--the chances of this happening are actually fairly high. I'd give it maybe 90% chance?

I guess that brings me to why Friday's post never happened. Well I had another doula training workshop last weekend. This one was focused on postpartum support (it was excellent by the way--if you plan on having kids I highly recommend a doula to help). Anyways. I knew it was coming, so I thought, hey, I'll just write my blog post on Thursday--I decided this on Wednesday after finishing up the WIP post. I even wrote it down in my planner. And then it was Friday morning and I woke up with less than 20 minutes to get out the door. What? How'd that happen? I'm still not sure what happened to last Thursday... Oh yeah, I remember what happened to Thursday, or at least Thursday evening. I was trying to get a portfolio together for Katsucon's AA application and a description and all that jazz. This time it was a little more complicated because I was submitting a group application for myself and one other artist (Sempaiko--she's an amazing artist you should check out her stuff). This was my first time trying to do something like this. That app was supposed to go in Friday morning before I left, but that clearly didn't happen. I didn't even get my lunch put together that day. By the time I got home Friday evening, all I wanted was food (a diet Dr. Pepper and a tootsie roll pop do not count for much after a 12 hour day) and sleep. I did get the application in, and hopefully we'll still get in--they supposedly don't do first come first serve and base the choices off of variety, although I still imagine that if they're going to take x # of print artists, they're going to take the first x artists they like? Dunno. Whatever. If we get in, awesome. If not, there's always next year. Anyways. The application happend. The blog post did not. XD

Then I thought about writing the post Saturday morning and putting it up late. It wouldn't be the first time I'd done that. But then, I failed to get up early enough to write before leaving for the workshop, and after another very long day which did not actually end with the workshop--it ended after a shift selling popcorn at a Harris Teeter--I was again tired and hungry and not up for much of anything. I did at least have a sandwich and some chips for lunch this time, but when lunch is at noon and dinner was not until almost 9 that evening... You get the idea. So Saturday didn't happen either. =P Yep this is pretty much how my life is. XD

Fail at Sales

This might be obvious to anyone who's met me in Artist Alley (or it might not), but I am a horrible sales person. I feel like Fluttershy:

Me: "Hi." =)
Person: "I'm just looking."
Me: "Oh that's okay, I really don't mind. You don't have to buy anything. In fact, you probably don't want to buy anything from here. I mean you could if you wanted to, but there's really no pressure. Nevermind. I'm just going to shut up now and hide behind my table. Bye."

Actually, I really don't mind people looking at my stuff, laughing at the humor, and not buying something. I really am just happy that they enjoyed what I created. There are still lots of awkward embarrassed moments (at least for me) where I feel like just by saying hi, I'm trying to obligate people to buy, when really I'm just trying to be friendly (cause I like talking to people, but I'm incredibly shy and socially awkward, and my table is my comfort zone, so really I just want to say hi and I'd really just love it if you smiled and said hi back.) I only want people to buy my stuff if they really really really like it, and they still have enough money for food and for gas to get home. This is probably why I will never ever "make a living" off my art, but I actually prefer it to be this way. Maybe I'll only ever be an "amateur" artist, but for me that means I don't have as much pressure on me, and I can keep drawing whatever I want to with little consideration of trends.

So, why am I talking about sales today? Because for the last 2 weeks we have been selling popcorn like mad for Boy Scouts (and Cub Scouts). I hated doing fund raisers when I was younger. I hate doing them now, and I feel very horrible that I'm not independently wealthy enough to just fork over the $ my kids are supposed to make selling popcorn (there are minimum sales requirements for each scout) and not subject them to this torture.

Instead, we've been setting up tables in front of local grocery stores (our pack made an arrangement with them to allow the scouts in our pack to sell popcorn during certain hours). We've been going door to door harassing all the poor people of our community. Really, the boys have handled it better than I probably have (except for Luke, but then he's like me and he hates stuff like this too for many of the same reasons). Also, if I step back and look at it, they are learning life skills--things that will help them as adults. They are learning how to interact with people politely even when the people they talk to are rude. They are learning that their demeanor makes a difference (when Luke's grumpy and growling at people, they don't buy popcorn). They are learning to set reasonable goals and how to work toward them. These are lessons I should probably have learned when I was younger too, but my mom was a lot like I am now--she hated fund raisers (do we see a theme here?). She never encouraged me to go out, and because none of my school or band fund raisers had minimums, I never really had to do it. We'd buy a little bit for our own family, and that'd be it.

I'm still happy to not be good at sales. I feel like this way, I can know that people who buy my art do so because they like it not because they felt any pressure to do so against their better judgment. At least, I hope that's how it is.

Lame Post is Lame

I could not think of something interesting to post about today. I try to make Monday's posts about me, so something personal.

Except, I'm not doing anything super exciting at the moment.

But then, why are my Wednesday WIP posts so...bleh--in other words, there hasn't been much new there.

Where is all that time going? I mean, there isn't anything super exciting, we're on break from school, and I'm caught up on commissions, and I'm almost caught up on blankets. Where is the time going?

The answer: right now, it's just tons and tons of little things. There are lots of random one-time events and activities, stuff I've volunteered to do, and so on. They are all things that by themselves aren't big time-sinks, but when you add them together in large quantities, then, yeah, they can make time disappear pretty quickly.

September was like that. My calendar was basically blacked out with stuff going on. October is quickly disappearing. We were even supposed to have a week-long break in the middle of October, but even that's disappeared--it's down to 3 days from 9.

None of the things I'm doing are bad in and of themselves. I could use a break though. So, you know, my November had better be a lot less full, or else... I don't know... I doubt a personal emotional/mental breakdown would be all that cataclysmic or world-shaking. XD

Anyways. Here's to having something more interesting to post about next week. =P