The magic of gazpacho is great. I lost an entire pound! Hit a weight I haven't seen in many moons. I shall heretofore proselytize at length on the greatness of the alkaline diet.

I'm not sure I've ever HAD gazpacho. Alicia served it last night at her Stampin' Up! cardmaking class. I had THREE small bowls. Pure veggies. When I went to leave, I had CRAVING. First it was coffee, because I've been doing only 1 cup a day for the past few days and I had just picked up a new box on my way over. I saw the box and wanted COFFEE. Then I got to Kroger to fill up the truck and started thinking GIANT LARD-FILLED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES ...I almost went in the store for cookies. My whole body was one giant craving, I just WANTED. I got home and laughed about it with Fransie, then went upstairs and made an iced mocha latte...at 9:00 pm. It was a risk, but I had to kill the craving. It worked. I even got to sleep. But before I slept, I was feeling the most amazing GOODNESS. (that kind of sounds like a Joshilyn Jackson sentence, doesn't it?) I was practically buzzing with positive energy. I really wanted to get up and paint, but had things to do the next day so that wasn't practical.

Do you know how long its been since I felt ANY positive energy? I feel like I can DO things again. I wish I could give all the credit to the coffee, but I have to say it's the power of the veggies. I didn't really believe it when I read it, but WOW. The proof is in the pudding....or the juice.

Right in the middle of the February Layout-a-Day challenge. Put Fransie on a plane to SA yesterday. Starting Wyanne's art class tomorrow. A little nervous, since I've done so little painting, but I guess I want to do a different type of painting, so maybe that's better. Then I have the Heidi Swapp/Jessica Sprague class that starts Feb. 21, and then Christy Tomlinson's art class Feb. 28. Guess I'll have a few art projects to show Fransie when he gets back!

Busy day yesterday, such ups and downs! Worked on satin flowers, ready to put them together. Went shopping and to lunch with Phyllis to find baskets for our Birthday Basket project. Ended up with plastic ones from the Dollars Store, Goodwill was too expensive! Phyllis showed me the back room of the Game House with a big roll-up door that will be perfect for the cookie delivery in February. Yay! Main cookie chair job done! Phyllis is so good and so generous. I'm trying to be more like her when I grow up.

The girls had so much fun putting the baskets together. We have about 45 made with lots of cake mix left over. Probably will put together a few simple ones for the older kids. Just enough time to come home and eat, then off to basketball practice. Helen is so clueless. I can't believe she's made it to 11 and never played. I guess my hip has kept me from things like that for so long it's almost ridiculous. Planning to get out tomorrow to practice dribbling- one handed. She was dribbling two handed, as high as her head last night. Cracked me up. They were practicing layups, and she made a few (out of about 50). Like I told Paula, at least she's tall.....

THEN, I went looking for the envelope with the checks for the Nut and Candy orders and couldn't find it. Still can't find it. I'm sure I took it down to the truck, but when Helen gets in, she just throws my stuff around without regard to its importance. I didn't see it in the truck, will look again this morning. It could have fallen out, she's so careless. I get so upset with myself when I do things like this. Feel like I have it all under control, getting 37 things done in a day, busy from sunup to sundown, and then I go and do something like this. It just makes me feel so incompetent and down about myself. It would be really nice to have support and encouragement from my family, but I'm figuring out that that's never going to happen. All I get from Fransie and my mother is criticism or indifference. What I wouldn't give for a kind word once in awhile.

Free day today. I want to finish up some flowers so that I can get them on etsy. Also want to spiff up a couple of Wendy's layouts and see if I can get them sold. Do people really need a photo mat to show them where to put their photos in order to buy a layout? Sure seems like it.

Day Two of the 21 Day Challenge - Get it Done. Another easy one today, since it's Helen's Birthday and we have to get the house cleaned up. Running low on time and energy, only two hours left. I guess I can leave them running around while I finish cleaning the upstairs bathroom, lol. Great time to start this challenge, since it will feel like getting a head start. Fransie is fixing up a bunch of things that have been sitting for months. Silly how we both put things off and then when you HAVE to do them, it takes all of five minutes. Hence this goal! If I just kick my own butt into gear and do things, they don't hang over my head like a lead balloon. Even though I realize these unfinished things are an invisible weight, I still don't get them done. No more! Now that I have two good legs again, I'm determined to keep my house and my head full of positive energy instead of procrastinating until the brown meanies take over. Back to work, art journal will have to wait until after skating tonight!

I have accepted Rhonna Farrer's 21 Day Challenge. The goal is to add or delete a behavior, habit, thought, etc. After thinking on it quite a bit, and naturally, down to the wire, I settled on my procrastination problem. But the actual challenge is "Get Things Done". Which is a little more positive than saying "stop procrastinating" because, of course, I would procrastinate about stopping procrastinating. SO. To that end, I have made a list of about 20 things I'd like to get done. Some involve cleaning, finishing projects, both house related and creative, and some purely creative. Paint the edges of the living room ceiling, clean out the pantry, paint a chicken, design a card (need those Christmas cards!). I also give myself permission to NOT do anything on the list on those days when I'm running around crazy, or at least I'll try a small one, like making a scrapbook page. With Helen's birthday tomorrow, today will be all about finishing up the cleaning that I've been putting off all week, and tomorrow will be about getting ready for her party. Sunday Haley will be here, so we'll try to do something fun that day.

I'm feeling pretty good about the challenge. Mostly, I think it gives me hope of changing something that really bothers me. Procrastination sounds innocuous enough, but it has been pretty debilitating for me. I blame my hip issues for the past couple years, but really, I could sit on my but and edit photos and type poems, but I didn't. My modus operandi is to think about a creative project I want to do, come into my house, see the messes (and we aren't talking Hoarders or anything, just clutter and undone things), feel guilty about the messes, look at the project, look at the mess, then sit down at the computer and do neither. Very unproductive! THEN, because I wasted a perfectly good day doing nothing, I get down on myself, feel lazy, stupid, incapable, yada, yada, yada. So you can see how this challenge could truly change my life and my way of thinking about myself. With all the items on my list, I'm really hoping to continue to challenge myself past the 21 days, but I'll deal with that AFTER I've completed the first 21 days.

Today: Clean 3 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 playroom. Seems like more than enough for one day! Oh yeah, and frost 40 cupcakes to take to school for lunch. I'm really looking forward to working in my art journal (which I've kept small to keep it from intimidating me), since it may be the most creative thing I do today.

Haven't written in a while because I haven't felt like I could do much more than complain. Or rant. Still feeling that way, but hopefully no one will read this anyway, so who cares? Quite frankly, I feel like things are spiraling down the toilet. The country, the economy, our personal finances flushed a long time ago. There is such an oppressive feeling of pessimism that I can't seem to shake off. While I feel for those who are currently unemployed, how about a husband who goes to work every day, but never gets a paycheck? Every week he tells me there should be money coming in and he will get a check. Every week. For the past 10 weeks now. Quite frankly, I don't know how some people sleep at night. He gets a job, he does the job, and is then told, sorry, we don't have the money to pay you for your work. Every. Single. Time. The poor guy is so depressed it's not funny. It is not a good feeling to see a strong man near tears. For the past six months we've lived off a loan and our retirement accounts. We're almost tapped out.

What is Obama doing for us? Destroying us. Stretching out this economic nightmare with his socialist games in order to destroy the very people he needs to fund his far-flung programs. Last year we paid 30,000 in taxes. This year we're getting money back. Which is really funny, since we did mostly disbursements last year and hardly paid any taxes. I wonder how it will work next year when we have no income at all? At this rate, IF things turn around we will be so far in debt and have so little in our retirement accounts, if anything, that we may never recover. I alternate between anger and despair. I'm so depressed that most of the time I'm just going through the motions. Not living, but not quite dead yet. Often wishing that I was.

Okay, so I've discovered that I'm not a very good blogger. I never feel like anything in my life is interesting enough to talk about, and for the most part that is true. My life has been overtaken by Helen's track club and Girl Scouts the past couple months. I finally started getting the hang of Photoshop (or at least a little tiny piece of it). I completed a photo composite, printed it out, then realized I wanted to change something. Of course, now my printer is out of ink. Can't afford to order ink right now, it's so bloody expensive and only worthwhile to order when you buy at least four cartridges and get free shipping....That's the problem with getting a more expensive photo printer, can't just go to Staples and buy it, has to be ordered. So the layout for Frans' 9th birthday is still sitting on the scrapping table, waiting for these photos. No wonder I'm only to 9 and he's 14 now! It does go much faster as they get older. Fewer photos.

Speaking of photos, Helen needed a photo of the two of us for a school (Mother's day) project. I realized I don't have any. Is that sad, or what? If I died tomorrow, my kids would only have the handful of photos of me, and precious few of us together. That's the problem with always being the photographer. I'll make it a point this summer to get more photos of me in there. It has become obvious I'm not going to magically get younger or thinner, so I may as well accept what is, no matter how much I hate it.

I signed up for Twitter a week or so ago and have decided you can't really twitter without an internet connection on your phone. Don't have much to say on Twitter either. I keep getting e-mails about people who are now following my tweets. It's nobody I know, so what do people do, go randomly selecting people to follow? Kind of weird. Don't think I'll do much tweeting.