UNPLUGGED

I APOLOGIZE FOR THE LONG RUN ON POST, BLOGGER IS NOT LETTING ME MAKE NEW PARAGRAPHS FOR SOME REASON THIS MORNING! Has it really been 2 weeks since I last posted here? Time has been slipping away. My caseload has increased to full time again, that has eaten up a lot of my time. Life has been busy, I've not spent as much time online. I am well. :-) I've been doing a lot of reading to unwind after long work days. Last weekend I did a mad dash to clean the house of clutter as a man was supposed to come to get up into the attic of our house to give a bid on insulation. I worked like crazy Friday night and Saturday morning getting the house decluttered, and rearranging things in my office for him to go in there to get up in the attic through the small opening in the ceiling of my upstairs office. He didn't show up, and never called to say he wasn't coming. Grrr. I was exhausted and slept most of the afternoon on Saturday. Sunday was busy with church til after lunch, and then that afternoon we had a birthday party to attend for my young friend Becca and two of her siblings also with September birthdays that ate up the rest of the day. Sunday night I did the week's laundry and packed for our annual trip to Fair Hills Resort M-W, to attend the NWMN ELCA Synod's Theology for Ministry Conference. I didn't attend any of the theology presentations or the prayer services and worships, I hung out in our lovely lakeside cabin catching up on some of the assignments from the class I'm taking with Katie Kendrick, "Layered Impressions". I'm loving the class! Katie put so much into preparing the videos and posts to the classroom blog, is really active in the feed back and answering questions in a group set up for the class on Yahoo Groups and Face Book. I really had to scrape to come up with the money for the course and supplies I needed, but what a bargain it truely is! I've taken online classes before but never one this rich! Our cabin was too far from the lodge to connect to wifi more than once or twice so I was mainly unplugged most of the week. The break was actually kind of nice. I took only a phone book, a few tubes of acrylics, water soluable pastels, my watercolor crayons, gesso, gel medium, gel pens, stabilo pencil, some deli paper, 3 sheets of watercolor paper. While my DH was getting all theologized I hung out in our lakeside cabin playing with the art supplies, listening to music, getting caught up on the first week's lessons and videos, and enjoying the water, the loons, and even the rain! LOL This started out with painting a simple face on a phone book page, with my nondominant hand, my left. Although I'm not entirely happy with how "pastel" this is, I was surprised at how it turned out working intuitively, watching her evolve from the rough outline painted with non dominant hand...such fun! I wish I'd taken a pic of the rough outline that was transferred with gel medium to the watercolor page. I just loved using leaves picked up on the walks to and from the dining hall to make the pastel rubbings that I transferred to the watercolor paper. WHY have I never used water soluble pastels before? I for see using them often in the future! Thursday was back to work. Friday was lunch consult/staffing with Dr. D and my colleague Anna in Roseau. John called before I left and we made plans to go to Wisconsin to see my mom next month. She has not met our granddaughter, 2yr old Ashlyn Rose yet. The evil X never was never willing to make the trip with him. Today I took some time to tidy the house this morning. I am sooooo not a domestic goddess! I did some cooking, and the week's laundry (Thank Goddess for large capacity machines!) I'm just figuring out the new Face Book layout. I"m not really understanding what people are so upset about, I'm finding lots of the changes to be really great now that I've figured out the settings. It's a timesaver for me now that I've figured it out. For a free product I have absolutely no complaints. Change is always a pain the butt, but we get in ruts without it. I called my 83 year old mom this afternoon and we chatted for an hour. I think she was happy to hear that we will visit. God I love that woman! She is so smart and funny and wise. How blessed I am to still have her in my life! John is in Minneapolis this weekend for the NDSU Bison vs the MN Gopher's big game last night. "Ralph" and "the X" are down for the weekend, staying at the same hotel he is next to the stadium. He has some of his Fargo cohorts and his brother there to make sure that he doesn't lose it when/if he sees them together. He can deal with Angie as she's Ashlyn's mother and he knows he has to, but the jerk she left him for, his best friend? Well that's a bit harder to take. All I can do is pray for him this weekend! It's bound to happen sometime, him running into them together publicly, The "X" did to Nancy, Ashlyn's godmother, what she did to me earlier in the month. She didn't want Ashlyn to stay with Nancy for the weekend after John made arrangements for her to stay with Nancy who is one of the most loving caring women ever, and who adores Ashlyn, so she told John her mother would be watching Ashlyn. Nancy was hurt. I just hope that my DIL Kay doesn't run into Angie this weekend. Kay is fiercely protective and loyal and she's royally pissed! I have to make the 4hr drive to Fargo/Moorhead early tomorrow morning to be there for a 10:00 staff meeting. I don't think that I'll see John or Ashlyn since I'll have to leave to come home before he gets off work. :-( But I'm happy to know that I'll see them soon :-) Today I'm going to mix up marble dust and gel medium to apply to surfaces for texture, one of the lessons in Katie's class. Hopefully it will be dry, and I'll have the energy to put some color down on it when I get back from Moorhead tomorrow night. This working thing is vastly over rated when it interferes with my affair with the love of my life, ART! :-) But then money to buy art supplies is as necessary as breathing! I've got to do case notes today as there will be file review by peers tomorrow at the staff meeting. Thankfully my files shouldn't be in too bad of a shape. I'm not stressed about it. I'll be able to go to Michaels across the river in Fargo after I'm done to pick up some more watercolor paper, and a couple of other things on the class list I hadn't been able to find or forgot to order.