According to bluberd’s opinion on Mr. Owl:
“I’m pretty sure he was on anti-depressants”
Doubting the legitimacy of her claim, I decided to do a little research. It turns out there may be some truth to her statement.
With my state of the art “CSI-esque” image enhancing software, I analyzed the old commercial and found this very suspicious cell in the animation.
It definitely has me wondering…
perhaps there’s a new product merger on the horizon.
Have you ever had the legitimate feeling that a couple months in a mental hospital would really do you some good?
Does it ever seem like you’re trying to dig a whole in sand right at the edge of the ocean?
How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?
Due to Thanksgiving, houseguests and a couple unexpected floods, I assumed I wasn’t going to be able to have a self-portrait for this week’s challenge. As a matter of fact there are a bunch of guys in the basement right now ripping off baseboards and cutting out drywall to assess the water damage and possible mold growth. It’s a real party over here.
But alas, my compulsive behaviour outweighed my lack of time and led me to spend a couple hours last night on my final self-portrait challenge for this month.
It was late, probably around midnight, and I didn’t feel like finding any fancy props or outfits so I kept it simple with a giant pair of red Serengeti sunglasses from what little memorabilia I kept from the mid-80’s. Why I saved these of all things is beyond me.
I’m a sucker for dramatic overdone lighting as you may have gathered already from the previous SPC posts. I didn’t use a giant flood light this time, just a single track light pointed down at my head and I didn’t alter my face with Photoshop either, I guess the shadows fell in just the right places.
Well, I suppose I should see what’s left of my basement now, I’m hearing a lot of crowbars being dropped on the floor. Sigh, I don’t think I want to know.
What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? Two things, the first is that it is over and the second is that we were here instead of Florida for a week like we usually are.
Why is that you ask, well I’ll tell you. Thanksgiving day started out as planned, my sister and Heather were cooking and I was cleaning the house and getting it ready for company. And then it happened, someone went to the basement and noticed that it was flooding. Then they went to the other side of the basement and noticed that there was a separate and unrelated flood going on over there too. I was upstairs cleaning the bathroom when I heard someone yell “Lisa.” I knew from the tone that whatever I went downstairs to see was going to be horrible, and it was.
This happened around 2:30 or 3:00 and the rest of the guests were coming at 4:30. I was in charge of the clean-up since everyone else was still making the food. I began mopping and mopping and mopping, but the water wasn’t really going away. Then someone turned on the kitchen sink and I heard what sounded like a rushing waterfall, it was then I realized the wall was full of water as I saw it oozing out of the floorboards.
I finally got it mopped up to a manageable degree and packed towels around the wall to soak up the continuing ooze. You know this of course meant that on one of the days of the year where you dirty the most dishes, pots, pans, silverware and more, we couldn’t use the sink or the dishwasher—OH JOY! To cut down on some of the cleaning mess, we used paper plates and cups, which makes for a really classy dinner by the way.
I then went to the other side of the basement to start on that flood.
It took me awhile to find the source of this deluge but eventually I found that the water pipe in the furnace had corroded and there was a nice thin stream of water coming out of it. Because of the pipe’s location, I had to MacGyver a water chute into a giant bucket and this seemed to work fine for the time being.
I was a little late getting ready for our guests but I finally made it down and the evening actually went fairly well. Another thing I was thankful for that day were our guests Andy and Michele. They kept Pop entertained and that’s worth it’s weight in gold!
Cleaning up after dinner was a hateful torture. (If I were rich I would have suggested just throwing everything away and buying all new stuff.) Just imagine the smell of washing Thanksgiving dinner in a tiny bathroom basement. Or, how about cleaning the tub that you just washed Thanksgiving dinner in, (I’m dry heaving just thinking about it).
The next day the emergency plumbers came out and told us the 80+ year old drain pipe from the kitchen was cracked from top to bottom and would have to be cut out. They removed half the wall were the pipes are, cut it out and then told us there was a major clog that may require removing a large section of the floor. BUT, thank God they were able to finally clear the pipes and no floor was damaged. However, our wallet was severely injured in the incident.
So now we have a beautiful new pipe, a gaping hole in a filthy wall and a big new project for me to tackle in the upcoming weeks. Will the fun never end!!!
Here’s a section of the old cracked pipe:
The new pipe:
There’s a lot more I could write about the last few days, but I think the flood story is enough for now.
Again, I’m very thankful we were home, I can’t imagine what the basement would look like if we were gone for a week. The cat sitter would have had no reason to go into the furnace side of the basement—that would have been ugly.
I hope everyone else had a nice, flood-free Thanksgiving.
Continuing on with this month’s self-portrait challenge theme of “glam,” I’m noticing that it is really much more difficult than taking photos of imperfection (last month’s theme). I find that I have to take at least 60 to 80 photos and 99% of them suck.
No matter how much makeup I trowel on it doesn’t seem to really show up in the photos. Perhaps this is due to my mediocre photography skills, old digital camera and unprofessional lighting equipment, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I could tell that this week’s entry was going to need a powerful lot of Photoshopping.
I’ve been trying to stay away from “glamorous” and stick to the theme of “glam” and as I mentioned the photos I’ve been producing are total crap. At one point I was starting not to care what theme it was, I just wanted to take a photo that was decent. So as I was having a small fit in my studio, I spontaneously yanked the backdrop off the wall, dumped it on my head and sat two feet from the camera just before the auto-timer took the photo. I looked at it and was shocked that it had potential. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I decided that one was good enough and stopped taking photos.
Here’s the one photo that wasn’t a loser. It has nothing to do with what I was trying to accomplish that day and I don’t care. It also bears little resemblance to what I actually look like, again, I don’t care. It is pure fiction. I just wanted to produce a successful image that was interesting to look at.
Fic·tion :
An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.
As I previously mentioned, my father is something of a jazz aficionado. He favors swing, cool jazz, west coast jazz and the great ladies of jazz. I spent many an hour with my father, his music collection and his monster stereo getting schooled in the glorious history of jazz (as he saw it).
I loved every minute I spent with him and the music. When he thought I needed to know the finer points of a song, he’d get out a giant set of earphones (about the same size as my head) so I could hear the nuances and understand just what he was talking about. For example, he’d want me to hear the silky swish sounds on a drum and the delicate “ting” of a cymbal that brushes made versus sticks or he’d point out how if you listen carefully you could hear Erroll Garner grunting in the background of a particular track.
My father would get swept up in the music at times and he’d grab my mother and start dancing in the kitchen, seeing this made me happier than anything in the world (and still does). One of my parent’s fortes was their semi-professional dancing ability. Cha Cha, Mambo, Jitterbug, Foxtrot, Samba, you name it, they were fabulous. Whenever we’d be at an event where there was dancing (like a wedding or a night at the country club), my parents would start up and shortly thereafter the floor would part and they’d be in the center with everyone gathered around to watch. People would come to our table and lavish them with praise, I found it very exciting and romantic. (Watching ballroom dance competitions chokes me up to this day.)
He would teach me to dance as well and I had a great time. I hooked up an elastic cord to the doorknob of my bedroom so I could practice alone and then impress him with my progress when we next danced. I would often put an album on my record player when he came home from work knowing he’d be unable to resist the music and we could dance.
Whenever I hear the first two notes of the song featured below I instantly think of my father, I picture him getting out his drum brushes and drumming the table and using my head as the cymbal. If I’m feeling particularly homesick it can make me cry.
From Erroll Garner’s Body and Soul
So I not only love this music because it is great, clearly, it is also for sentimental reasons. It lifts me up and transports me to a place I cherished as a child and continue to cherish now.
Sadly, I only have one terrible photo of my father dancing with me when I was probably 16 or so, bummer.
Here’s another one by Keely Smith for you Gary. Get out there and dance with Zuzu, I bet she loves it.
The Song is You from Spotlight on Keely Smith (Great Ladies of Song)
I think you secretly want to love this music as much as I do, so this one’s for you:
A little Keely Smith to brighten a gloomy day.
Another ugly, gloomy day in Philadelphia—oh joy.
If these days aren’t bad enough, I’ve got to try and get the dogs to go outside and do a lil’ bidness. That’s a laugh. Piglet won’t get out of bed and Josie is afraid of stormy weather.
On the off chance I can get them to cooperate with the bathroom break, I get them all suited up several times a day and The Pig stands there shivering even though we’re still in the house while Josie crawls behind me and curls up like a ball. I finally get their chicken asses outside and Josie sits down refusing to move. I insist that she go for the walk, well it’s more like a “drag” and she reluctantly gives in. I press on and they look at me like I’m some evil mule-skinner driving them to their death.
If it’s raining more than a drizzle I have to carry Piglet in my jacket until we get to some shrubbery or a thick patch of trees where I can set him down and he won’t be pelted by raindrops. If I weren’t being pelted by raindrops and miserable, I’d find him adorably cute out there.
I beg and plead with them to pee, sometimes I get a squirt or two from The Pig, sometimes nothing. I usually have more success with Josie. Soggy and angry I head home—oh what’s this, suddenly they remember how to walk, run as a matter of fact—why I oughta….
The wind is wicked today and Piglet is terrified of the sounds, blowing trees, leaves, garbage and whatnot. I can understand this since he’s about 9lbs and stands less than a foot off the ground. I can’t really get mad, even when we return to the house and he promptly goes over to a pee-pad and lets go. I can’t really get mad, but I can get powerfully frustrated.
Well, it’s about time for another walk right now, say it isn’t so.
From what we are told, the process is moving along very well and we seem to have lucked out with the timing of some sort of month-long government vacation:
The DNA testing and the family court date happened on November 3rd as scheduled. Normally it takes at least a few weeks for the report from family court to be issued, but it has already been done for you! They did it quickly because family court will be closed from now until mid-December.
The DNA results have been sent to the US Embassy:
It is then the Embassy’s job to issue a pre-approval. The Embassy can take 30 days-6 weeks to issue the approval.
This means we are now at step 8 in the adoption process checklist.
This week’s self-portrait was indeed a challenge for me. I’ve been sick for days so trying to cover up my big, red, puffy eyes and the corpse-like pallor of my skin required a hefty application of makeup, a very big bright light to burn out the detail on my face and finally converting the photo to black and white to eliminate any trace of illness.
And what have I created…I think it’s a mannequin.
Actually now that I’m looking at it, I think it owes a nod to the ever-so-popular “Pat Benatar album cover” genre:
