Shiny!!

For the first time in about 6 years, I washed my minivan. I happen to
think it's pretty crazy what some places charge to use a hose and some
soap, plus, I just don't think about washing it when I barely drive it
out here. I have enough to deal with just trying to keep the inside of
it in order let alone worry about what's going on with the outside.

While at my moms, I decided to take advantage of the driveway and the
hose and give it a good scrubbing. I bought a bucket, some degreaser
for the wheels, some plain dishsoap, and a couple of carwash mits and
and set to work. I decided to let the little boy that lives at my moms
(he's 5) "help" me. Thus, the reason I bought 2 mits. He had a good
tim being out in the sunshine and playing with water, and I ended up
with a clean car. I had almost forgotten that the rims were actually
silver and not gold.... Ha!! I also used our front lawn to pull
everything out ofyhe car, get rid of trash, and reorganize it in the
car.

Amazing.

Later that evening, I stopped to say hello to my aunt Trudy, uncle
Tom, and grammy where I noticed that my car did look particularly
shiny. So I snapped a picture of her. On the way home I also stopped
at golden nozzel and decided to take advantage of the vacuums. I also
can't remember the last time I did that. It's nice to have a squeeky
clean car.

I have no earthly clue what type of emotional wreck I'm going to be
when this car finally kicks the bucket.

The real kicker.. When I got back to Boston, it was raining.

washie washie..

today is one of my favorite days.... the day i wash my sheets. i found an amazing scent by tide (i think?) .. it's lemon verbena and chamomile, and its absolute heaven. it also comes in liquid downy and fabric sheets.. i have them all. when i finish my laundry, i usually just want to go right home and dutch oven myself in the scent (much better than other types of dutch ovens).

life is really this boring this week if i'm blogging about my laundry habits.

this weekend was great and quiet at the same time. amber came down to visit ben and i... we ended up going to ikea. this would be my second trip in a week. i have an ikea substance abuse problem. i ended up getting more things that went towards my whole home improvement work... a new little lamp for my kitchen (the one thats there makes me nervous about possibly burning the house down), a micorwave food cover (so i don't have to worry about cleaning it as much), more throw pillows for my studio, and a bunch of other odds and ends.

amber also spent some time photo-loving on my bunny hassen.. here are some shots of her. she's now fully grown.. and she has some chins. she is hovering right around the 20lbs mark.
she's THE ABSOLUTE MOST sweetest rabbit i've ever known. her personality is giant... just like she is. she loves to cuddle and will nudge you pretty hard if you're not rubbing her face while you're cuddling with her. as you can see, she likes to hide under pillows... she loves watermelon and of course carrots. and i still just really can't get over just how enormous and gentle she really is. i don't think i will ever try a different breed of rabbit again because the flemish giants are just so amazing and funny.

this week looks to be kind of quiet. i was supposed to be working with a family all week... but due to some unsettling circumstances for them... i won't be. i will most likely spend my time hanging out with nicole (bubbles), and continuing my storage purge. it may seem like a long time to have this project going on, but believe it or not in addition to all the crap i have, i am STILL sorting through alot of the stuff diane left behind. it's unbelieveable. i just keep thinking that sometime in the next couple of years, we will be buying a home of our own and then we're going to be in hell having to sort through all of it then. my goal is to save us that hassle by just absolutely being cut throat about getting rid of it all.

for me... it's a rough process.

more this week... and maybe even pictures of my organizational progress.

baby cirrus

so, i had originally planned to post this picture AND a blog earlier in the week... but somehow that didn't happen because life got very busy.

this week my chinchilla, cumulus, had a baby. she is white and very fluffy... and so is her baby. so i named it cirrus. to avoid calling cirrus an "it" i typically refer to all fluffy baby creatures as "she" until i discover otherwise. she.. is cute as the dickens. i think the thing that really gets me is that baby chins are born with fur.. so they look like itty bitty versions of adult chinchillas... right down to their curly little tails. mom is super cool about letting me pick her up too. my chinchillas are friggin awesome.

besides all of the chinchilla hullabaloo.. i've just been incredibly busy. i assume come september, people that come out to the berkshires from other places in the country may want to take a day trip to boston... which means there might be houseguests when we aren't here. i'm basically trying to organize, purge, and complete house projects that i've been working on for a year+. so far, i'm getting close to having enough stuff to have a yard sale (anything left over will NOT be schlepped back into the house.. but donated to a charity)... not to mention the fact that my kitchen is finally completely painted, and there are new curtains in the kitchen, front hall, and the reading room.. i've also completed 10 throw pillows for the reading room, and 4 for my studio. speaking of my studio, i've also done a complete overhaul on that as well.. i got rid of the bed and replaced it with a futon, and i adopted a shelf set from ash that has completely solved all of my issues with storage. now it's more like a functional space where i can putter around and space out in while taking breaks from painting instead of just a space with a bed and a desk. i'm hoping to have my twin sized bed (my childhood bed) built and put together in steve's mancave.. so that is also a functional space.. instead of a room that looks like a tornado of man stuff went through it.

like i said.. it's been a busy week.

this next week will be spent nannying with annie and traver in cambridge.

more to come soon.

garden re-organization

so, my landlord can sometimes be fabulous, and somtimes she can be a complete witch. i had previously set planters with lots of delicious smelling herbs on the ledge and stairs of our porch.. last friday, we received a note asking us to move them to the back porch. this was kind of a problem because the back porch is too small to sit out there and enjoy them, not to mention in the summer it becomes a hot house. so i wrote her a note back, asking if we could just put the plants on a table instead. turns out... this was fine. i ended up picking up some patio tables from target, and decided to throw in a chair so it was actually "sit" convienient.

i had an extremely wonderful sunday... and will blog about it later.

my view

Currently I have my feet up (in my completelt hideous but comfortable
crocs) and am relaxing in the back of big house at CBB. The dad
weekend is over and almost everyone is gone.... Now we're just waiting
for the open house to start.

After all of this, we have a stop in Chicopee :) and then back home to
Boston.

A rough day

While walking around central square this afternoon, I decided to stop
in to pearl art and say helloooo to bobby. Just as I got to the door
krissy called saying she had good news and bad news. I kind of already
knew what the news was, but totally didn't want to hear it. She is
leaving for the army in late July and will not be there in September.
I am beyond ridiculously thrilled that I will have nichele, amber and
rain by my side, but crushed that she can't be. It's hard to think
about not having my very first best friend there to hand me stephen's
ring. Yet, at the same time I am so happy for her that she knows what
she wants and is going after it with gusto. I might even use the word
"proud" if it weren't so silly for a BFF to say something like that. I
guess I just didn't expect her news to have the impact on me that it
did.

So, she told me this as I as walking into an art store, not only did i
start crying right in front of bobby, but I ended up spending $50 in
unplanned cash on art supplies. (I'm an emotional buyer, I was in the
wrong place at the wrong time) thank goodness bobby is a good hugger
and an understanding guy. I was a mess.

I ended up going back to work and I couldn't think strait for the rest
of the day, and I was crying and blubbering on an off for hours. Even
now, just thinking about it to blog about it is making me all teary-
eyed.

After work ms. Bubs showed up at my house, we ordered dinner and
watched whale wars with Steve and then promptly (meaning 11pm or so)
got on the road to bonnie brae where it's now about 2am and I'm
snuggled up in a bed in the woods. It's completely quiet, except for
the faint keyboard tapping sound in my headphones. It's also
completely quiet and dark and peaceful. The air is crisp and fresh and
I've decided it's going to be a good weekend with the dad and daughter
group that's coming this weekend.

This picture was taken in the art store as I was walking in the door.
It completely fit my mood.

Urban BBQ

Steve and I love to BBQ. Urban living, a small back yard, and
landlords with large gardens don't always help make that easy to
enjoy. However, Kingston does. While Steve and I were roaming around
home depot looking for screwdrivers and a watering can, we found that
Kingston makes a tiny tabletop charcoal grill that we speculated would
work perfectly on our front stoop.

Turns out, we were right. Tonight we enjoyed hamburgers, hotdogs,
shrimp, and corn (lots of leftovers LOL). Steve decided to surprise me
with our equivalent of beer... mikes hard lemonade. We sat on the
steps enjoying dinner, sipping lemonade, and chatting about the day.

In addition to the charcoal, we also picked up some mesquite woodchips
to see if we could add some flavor... the hamburgers and shrimp had
this AMAZING woody flavor.

All in all, it was the perfect dinner.

Corn on the grill.

suddenly i see....

i have new glasses... again. this is the first time since i think, age 13 or so, that i've had a pair of glasses that have nose pads on them. all of my other glasses have always been the hard plastic artsy ones. these are artsy too, except they are metal. i absolutely love the fushia/eggplant purple, but i think my favorite part of them is the odd shapes and cutouts in them. it's also odd, but i see differently out of them. my prescription hasn't really changed, but having them up off my nose makes them a little different vision wise. it's going to take some used to especially since i switch back and forth so frequently.

this week i've also been going through the healing process. last sunday, i had the tattoos on my shoulders completely re-colored. through the years, they've always been kind of a work in progress, and since they were done in pieces all along the way, some of the colors had faded. this was mostly a concern because every time i mentioned getting married, someone would ask "are you going to cover up your tattoos?". the answer was always "yeah, i just need to find a cardigan, shrug, or shawl of some sort." THEN i would get various opinions almost all of them had the phrase "but they're a part of you... why cover them up". so, i decided i'm not going to cover em up. it's true afterall, they are a part of me (a very colorful part) and they do mean alot to me.. so.. i decided that if i'm going to be all fancified.. then i should make sure they match, and that hey were as vibrant and fresh as possible.

since i've had so much work done on them over the years.. it was painful. painful, yet strangely relaxing.

then end result:

it's usually the healing process i dread the most.. it's also the same process that sends me back to the chair. every. friggin. time. this is mostly because i am what the tattoo world calls "a poor healer". good for normal cuts and scrapes, but terrible for tattoos. if your body creates alot of plasma and whatnot, then you form more scab material.. if that gets knocked off (when you're sleeping and rolling around, by clothing, or the shower) then your body creates alot more and pigment gets drawn out every time this happens.

the old idea was that you were supposed to just let this happen then go back for touchups or you may create scar material and then your tattoo looks like it's been embossed onto your skin instead of being a tattoo. according to bob (one of my many arteests) darkwave is now recomending the "wet heal" if you're a poor healer. instead of letting all that buildup form. you hop in the shower or use a warm washcloth 4 or 5 times a day to soak everything off and keep it as smooth as possible and use an insanely strong moisturizer. (aquaphor) i did this. i went to bed that night, expecting to find copies of myself in plasma all over my sheets. i found nothing. it was shocking. a week later i'm usually super sore and itchy. i'm a little itchy, but i've already gone through the weird flaky looking leper stage and now i'm just a little itchy.. but as soon as i apply the aveeno, it's perfection.

the healing process was accelerated and much less uncomfortable. i do believe that from here on out, the wet heal will be the way i go.