You Read It Here First!

I never thought I'd see the day!

I (and everyone I know)

grew up on them.

But by now, everyone knows 

that the Hostess corporation is history.

  
WHAT? No more TWINKIES?
DING DONGS  gone?
No HOHOs for Santa this year?
WHAT will people DO?

I probably won't do anything.

Hoarding is already over by now.

Store shelves are bare.

I don't like the sugary confections

Anyway, so this is a non-event for me.

There are bigger, maybe better, things

just around the corner.

Give us this day our daily treats.
We're gonna find them anyway ---
Don't you dare hide them.
And don't you be raising prices 
on everything else 
to make up this shortfall 
in profits either.

This is the day before Thanksgiving,

and I'm so big-time thankful 

it's at somebody else's house.

I only need to put together

a collosal batch of green bean casserole,

in the morning and we're good to go.

Oh, and a secret batch of Lil Turtle Yummies, 

for the hosts, if I can stay out of the Rollos.

I bought two bags of the special pretzels I need, 

and two bags of Rollos, one of which

I've already clawed into.

So, not to change the subject, but do you like pop-tarts?  I don't, especially. They're OK.
My husband often eats them for a quick break -fast, so there are usually some around.

I toasted me an unfrosted brown sugar variety, 
and put it face down on a plate.
Then I laid 4 unwrapped Rollos on those toasty -hot backs and let the candy melt. This is Finger-Fun Food, fans!
With a clean fingertip, push those Rollos around, painting melted chocolate with them,
sculpting stringy blobs of caramel,
and making a yummy hot frosting 
on an other-wise bland snack-treat.

I can see this going viral.

In my opinion 

(the final authority on the matter),

the combination of melted Rollos 

on toasted pop-tarts

beats S'mores hands down.

But then again,

I never did care for marshmallows.

No Day Without a Line

My Sketchbook from a college drawing class - 2006

This is the front cover of my college sketchbook during one of my drawing classes. Besides drawing from life in class, we were required to keep a separate sketchbook on our own, to turn in at the end of the course. There had to be at least 50 sketches in it, or the person's overall grade would suffer.

I had to laugh at all the students around me scrambling to fill their sketchbooks with any kind of scribble during the final week of class. Model mature student that I was, I had kept mine up-to-date, not with just random doodles, but finished pencil, ink, charcoal, colored pencil, collage and even acrylic paint drawings.

I wrote on the front cover a favorite quotation about art which has meant a great deal to me, long before I knew about Apelles of Cos, back when I was a budding artist of 5 years old. As a little child, I wanted to grow up to be an artist.  I had a grown cousin who was a professional artist, and his advice to his little cousin was "to be an artist, you have to practice drawing every day".  So writing the Latin inscription on the cover of my sketchbook was a reminder to sketch or work on finished drawings each and every day (at least while I was in this particular class).  The Latin quote from Apelles is: "Nulle dies sine linea" and it translates, "No day without a line."

"Tenacity" ink/brush (5.5x8.5 inches)

Apelles was a great Hellenistic Greek painter, said by some to be the "greatest painter of antiquity". He was court painter to Phillip ll and his son Alexander lll of Macedon during the 4th century BC. Legend says that no matter how busy his business day had been, he never let a day go by without drawing at least a line, usually an outline of some object.

Sketches and drawings are not meant to be finished works of art, although they certainly can be. They are private places to experiment with new techniques, brush up skills, and to record what we see at the moment, to take back to the studio to inspire more finished works of art. Daily use of a sketchbook soon becomes an unconscious habit, and the artist will feel naked without it.

Reddy2Wrk!

If tools could talk,  that's how they'd say it.

Ladders stand at the ready! Let's knock this deck together!
A long hose drapes the fence, prepared to flood the hot tub on command!
A flimsy, cheap, faded green, plastic lawn chair beckons the slacker to dare sit down!
And at far left, my wrought iron outdoor painter's easel stands neglected, as always...

Adoption is Amazing

Today is NATIONAL ADOPTION DAY --- whose motto is "Celebrating a Family for Every Child." The purpose is to remind people that there are 100,000 children in the foster care system awaiting permanent homes with loving families.

I'll be the first to admit that when we found out we'd never celebrate the birth of our own baby, we wanted to adopt an infant. We considered an older child, but there's just something about the whole parenting process that would feel missing without the experience of a baby. We didn't rule out an older child, though, as we filled out the endless forms and endured the licensing procedures. We kept our options open, believing the Good Lord would send us just the right child.

To make a long story short, the journey to parenthood was filled with some pretty big pot-holes. At one point, after five years of waiting, we even dropped off the waiting list at the adoption agency. 

We located a teen-age drug addict who wanted to put her baby up for adoption. It was an uneasy feeling, wondering how badly the baby may have been damaged by the mother's addiction, but we felt we'd finally found our baby. If the pre-delivery excitement was euphoric, the let-down was devastating. She decided to keep her baby. Enough said.

We made an announcement to the family that we were suspending our search for a baby and putting our family-building plans on indefinite hold. One needs time to mourn a disappointment so deep. We told everyone that unless God left a baby on our doorstep, we were going to consider that maybe we weren't meant to be parents.

No sooner than the words were out of our mouth (and the tears dried from sad eyes), then another expectant mother came along. She was in college and even though the baby's father would have married her, she was torn and unsure. She wasn't ready to be a mother or a wife yet. She also lived in another part of the country and was considering two other couples as prospective parents for her baby. We exchanged letters with the baby's biological mother, were interviewed in person by a family member who lived in our area, and prayed with all our hearts.

I could never thank the young lady enough, who chose us to be her baby's mommy and daddy.  It's 24 years later. She went on to finish college, marry a different man, and they've had a large family together. But her sacrifice of her first-born fills my heart with great admiration and thanks. Blessings all around.







These are pictures of our wonderful son through the years. The greatest day of my life was when that baby was placed in my arms at 2 days old. He made a family where once there was just a couple in love.

A Carousel of Time

Don't have much to rap about today, 

so I'll leave you with a pretty song:

Photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/  Thanks, Jon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXyoeKOcx4&feature=BFa&list=FLSg-xvyNWB2Of7wbYVQEZRg

To My Little Sister

Today is my "little" sister's birthday.

Today is also National American Teddy Bear Day.

 

CINDY-BOB & TERI-BEAR, 1983

Teri-Bear
If you see this...
if you ever google my name
and find my blog,
PLEASE
give me a call!
Life's too short
for the distance
between us.

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY

TERI-BEAR!

Peace Pilgrim

South Shore of Lake Superior, Washburn, Wisconsin

"There is a well-worn road which is pleasing to the senses and gratifies worldly desires, but leads to nowhere. And there is the less traveled path, which requires purifications and relinquishments, but results in untold spiritual blessings."
~Peace Pilgrim

http://www.peacepilgrim.org/pphome.htm 

I Ache...

I ache
sometimes
to be 
somewhere else.








I wonder
sometimes
who
I could be.

~C.C. Godar

A Salute to the Troops

detail, Civil War statue, downtown Central Park, Jacksonville, IL

Besides being Veterans Day, the official U.S. holiday that honors all its armed services  veterans, today is also Death/Duty Day. It marks the end of World War 1, and remembers all who were lost in that war, regardless of nationality or what side they fought on.

Why have I never heard of this? Why would the sum total of all I know about WW1 fit into a sewing thimble? Why wasn’t I taught about this part of history in school? Was it not considered history back in the 1960s? Or is it that teachers enjoy teaching about the American Revolution and the Civil War so much that they lose track of time and don’t get around to 20^th century?

Death/Duty Day? 

A sort of strange name, don’t you think?

But then again, war is kind of incomprehensible too!

Dem Bones

I tried to publish this yesterday, on Halloween, but kept running into problems.  This is an ink drawing I made for a friend who collects Day of the Dead stuff.