When we last left our hero...

She was dealing with a broken ankle.

The ankle healed and I was walking by mid to late March.

March also marked the first meeting with a counselor at NACA (naca.com) Naca helps people with good payment histories get a home without a down payment or closing fees. I got approved for a mortgage, and by May had found my condo. B was the one who spurred me on to get a place of my own. We went to the first workshop in January.

After a lot of delays, re-inspections, and general nail biting, I closed on the condo on June 29th. I love it! It's in a town home style, 3 bedrooms, 2 and half bath, with a garage and the kitchen of my dreams.


In early July Rose was over at M's with Emma (M's dog) when she got bit by a venomous snake. The bite was on her muzzle. M cleaned it right away, and call me and we met at the vet. She was in a TON of pain that night, and she swelled up something awful. I'm very lucky she lived.


Late July my youngest brother and his wife came to see my new place. We also went to the GA Aquarium. I'd never been there before. We got to see the Titanic exhibit as well.

Me and M at the aquarium.


Painting in progress for my wall

In August I had my housewarming / blessing. M cooked and was a great co-host.

Over Labor Day Weekend we went to DragonCon, as per our usual. What fun :) My uber loot was a photo of me and Felicia Day, which she autographed the next day!


In October I got to see my best friend from high school, Shannon. It was the first time in 20 years we'd seen each other, and we picked back up where we left off. She and her family took me to Wakulla Springs in Florida. We saw manatees, gators, birds, turtles and so on.

Shannon on left, me in middle- my High School graduation

For Halloween M and I went to two parties. He went as Billy Mays, and I went as the Fairy Goth Mother.



In November my father passed away. He'd been ill for a long time. Suffice to say that the cancer didn't kill him, but the cure sure didn't make him healthy. I'm a daddy's girl, and took the loss harder than I thought I would. I went to Mom's in Florida for the funeral, and then over Thanksgiving stayed in Atlanta. Christmas was different of course, but the hardest thing for me was seeing my mom mourn.

I was actually glad to get back to Atlanta, to my home, and to the familiar things I know. My high school town was great to grow up in - 5 minutes from the beach, 45 from Disney! But as an adult, the highlight of my days there was taking Rose to the dog park to play. Once back in town, M and I went out for sushi.. probably our favorite type of meal out.

December 29th I had foot surgery. Since the summer I'd had a sore swollen place on the bottom of my left big toe. Podiatrist said it was a "bone accessory". Kind of like a spur, but not attached. It was just sitting there in a tendon. Every time the tendon stretched, it rubbed against the bone. Six months later it was getting worse. A small white circle showed up. Doc lanced it, it was pus filled. We decided then to take it out.

Surgery- I've never had surgery before. I was very very nervous about it. Turns out it was easy. All I did was sleep, and I don't remember being told that it was going to happen. One minute I'm in the O.R., getting prepped, the next minute I'm waking up, feeling my toes tingling as they dress the area.

Well, that's enough for tonight. Will update with more another day.

Haiti

The devastation is so awful, so all encompassing. :(

Makes me realize just exactly how lucky I, and most of us, truly are.

Where Is The Creativity?

It's been almost a year since I wrote on this blog regularly. A lot has happened since then, and I will do a big "catch you up to date" post, but this isn't it.

This is about the changes in education coming down the pike. Changes that are happening now, that fill me with stress and dread.

The way teachers in GA are being evaluated is changing. Rather than be observed on what and how we teach, we are now also being measured by how well our students can respond to questions by administrators as to what they are learning.

I teach kindergarten. Over the past 5 years there has been a shift from theme-based creative, exploratory, social interacting, dramatic play type kindergarten, to 2 hours of English Language Arts, 1 Hour of Math, as well as blocks of science and social studies.

What I view as WRONG with this approach, is that children at this age learn many things all at once. For instance, in thematic teaching, we might be learning about Winter. The letter might be "S" for snow, writing about winter, creating art that shows what happens to trees, measuring and graphing the temperature each day, learning about why the Earth gets colder in Winter, in addition to learning what holidays people celebrate during the dark months.

The current approach has us teaching Language Arts for two hours with no Math, no science, no social studies topics. Rather than learn about their world, they "need" to learn that print has 3 functions- it can inform, entertain, or persuade. Children must be able to tell you that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark. That there are spaces between words. EVERY thing we teach must be identifiably measurable in its results, as the "only" worthy instructional goal is that which is measurable.

The sad thing is, I see all this change as a result to improve standardized state test scores in 3rd and 5th grades. In order for a third grade student to know the correct information about how to write a sentence, and what a complete sentence is, the state thinking is that they need to start learning this in kindergarten.

The other day the Art teacher was lamenting the fact that third grade students could not tear pieces of paper to create pieces of a body. IE- a head, arms, trunk, legs, feet, hands, etc. He said they looked at him like he'd asked them to cure cancer.

WHERE is the creativity, people?? If this country is to reach long term success in terms of becoming an economy where we create items for other countries to buy, an economy that hires people to MAKE things again, we have to not squash our children's creativity in the first place.

I have more on my mind than just this, like the fact our county superintendent was just voted a $15,000 raise by the school board because A) he wasn't being paid what other heads in our area are, and B) they didn't want him to leave. HELLO!!?? TEACHERS have not recieved step increases or cost of living increases. BUS DRIVERS have taken pay cuts... and he gets a raise? UGH.

Oh The Times, They are a Channnngin'

So is this blog, which looks like it'll be used again. Stay tuned for more.

Happy Birthday to ME

Yesterday was my birthday. With a party still to look forward to on Friday, this feels like my birthday week :D

Yesterday was fabulous. I have entered the fun forties. I say fun because that's how it feels. It's in contrast to when I turned 30, which seemed more ominous, a mark of no longer being twenty something. I even had the thought yesterday... I'm just 10 years away from being half a century old. How cool is that?? To think that in 10 years I will have been alive for half a century. Seems amazing.

Yesterday at work one of the teachers brought me balloons early in the morning. Black and turquoise and purple. I LOVED the colors, and the large one had all three colors with 40 in sparkly mylar. I dressed up, and wore my gold tiara. Kids all day wished my happy birthday. My class sang to me. Coworkers presented me with a card and collected money like we do for everyone in our grade level. My old kindergarten mentor came for the day, and taught my kids the story of the little red hen. It was just a great great day.

Last night B took me out Fogo de Chao, a brazilian meat / cowboy place. There is something highly decadent about the endless parade of men bringing fire-cooked meat to your table on huge skewers. Add to this 2 glasses of Macallan's 18 year old scotch, and I didn't think the evening could get any better. But it did.

When they brought the dessert menu, B looked through it and commented on how much the Louis Tres had gone up (Louis XIII cognac) in price. Apparently last year it was $109 an ounce, and now it was almost double that. This is a cognac that is over 100 years old, and the ultimate of all cognacs. Smooth and fragrant, light and heady. B said it was too bad it was so expensive, that he'd tried some 8 years earlier and it was amazing. He said he'd been planning on getting me some for my birthday, but now seeing the price he felt like a cheapskate.

This man is one of the most generous, smart, capable friends in my life. I in NO WAY would ever have put the label cheapskate with him, and told him so- noting all the things he was doing for my birthday (which I won't go into here). He's definitely not the frugal Scot that M is.

Then he said, "What the hell" and ordered an ounce. We shared it, and I could not get over how incredibly lucky I was. He said I deserved it, because not only could I appreciate it, I was a good person, spent my time helping others, and other great stuff that made me blush. I truly think he's the only person in my life that would say I deserved to try a cognac that cost $190 an ounce. Of course, I am probably spoiled now for all other cognacs.

The happy benefit of all that wonderful food and drink- I slept like a babe.

Goddess Series

I'm painting a series based on the goddess figure. I have two more "color backgrounds" done, one purple and one in red/black. These are on wood and measure about 15 inches by 13.

heArt Card

My heArt cards for Mother Henna's exchange are in the mail! I thought I'd post a peek at what they look like, and how they were created. The actual size is about 2 inches by 5 inches. My name is on the above for internet purposes only. The card set has my business card, signature, and numbering on back side.

I'd been experimenting with stamping. I couldn't find a "make your own stamp" kit at Michaels, so I started working with foam trays... the kind that meat comes on from the grocery store. I couldn't get the hang of writing letters backwards... they always came out looking awkward. Also, the best colorant used was watercolor markers.

At Michael's I did find craft foam sheets that come in all sizes and colors. I bought one, and decided I could make "stamps" from shapes cut out of the foam.

For the backing I used heavy watercolor type paper, and did a layer of gesso over it to better take the media I'd be using. Then I used Golden gel medium to glue dark blue papers to the backing.

Painting both a foam heart shape I made, and a goddess figure, I painted the papers with the "stamps" in gesso.
I got out my india ink brush pen and colored in the hearts.


Then I got out my acrylics, and colored in the goddess figure, adding white accents.

When everything was dry, I started to experiment with the words and how to decorate the figures.

I decided the best look was to "keep it simple". I glued the text on, then did a line of adhesive below the text. When that was dry, I "poofed" gold glitter onto the line.

Painting Golden Gel medium on the dark blue paper, I poofed purple and turquoise glitters onto it. When that was dry, I used adhesive to "paint" over the heart. Then I poofed red and pink glitters over that. After letting the design "sit" for a couple days, I knew I wanted another red heart in the lower right corner. That was Golden and poof glitter. A day later I used a spray fixative over all of them. A day after that I began cutting them out.

The interesting thing was my thought processes while making these. In one way, it was very soothing, like an artistic mantra done over and over. In another way, it was disconcerting when I heard the gremlins in my head disparaging the work in all sorts of ways.

Regardless of what they said, I like the final outcome.