And now for something completely different.

Send 'em something!

It's 10:30 a.m. in the morning...do you know where your cat is?

Picture this...Monday morning, 10:30 a.m. sitting in your cube at work. Your co-worker answers the phone, tells the caller you are on your break, pauses, then tells you, "There is an emergency at your house, your neighbor is on the phone!"

Your heart races, your creative mind flashes with visions of natural disasters, fire, robbery...you answer the phone not knowing what to expect and your neighbor tells you that two dogs went into your back yard and attacked your cat. They are not able to get to your cat who is growling and hiding under your above ground oil tank. You are at work without a car, a 45 minute bus ride from home.

Welcome to my Monday morning.

When I got home I found my 15 year old cat Max hiding in the back corner of my front porch shaking terribly and in a complete state of shock. He didn't seem to have any open wounds (no blood) but I took him to the vet to be checked anyhow. They held him in the hospital for the day and gave him IV fluids, sending him home that night thinking all was well.

Welcome to my Tuesday morning...wake to Max straining to urinate and only passing blood...back to the vet where the vet thinks he may have an infection. He stays the day at the vet getting fluids and a steroid injection to hopefully reduce what appears to be swelling in his brain creating vision problems and concussion symptoms. Three or so in the afternoon the vet calls me and says he doesn't have an infection. Now she suspects that his bladder has been ruptured.

During my commute to the vet I sit with sunglasses on trying to hide my tears...the vet calls my cell phone and tells me that she x-rayed his abdomen and his bladder is in tact...apparently just very bruised. She also found several puncture marks on his back leg that she fears will get infected. She sends him home with antibiotics.

Welcome Wednesday morning...I awake to an alert Max acting much more like himself. His eyes are no longer completely dilated and he eats breakfast, pees in the litter box so I go to work optimistic he will be okay.

Fast forward to ten o'clock Wednesday night and Max, who has withdrawn since the morning and not really interacting with me, simultaneously vomits and urinates on the pillow where he is laying. I call the vet and he says that he suspects it is a pain reaction since he was better and then got worse again. The steroid injection had worn off and now he is sick from the pain. The vet says that the worse is probably yet to come as "tussles" with dogs often creates severe pain.

I go to the vet and get pain medication only to return home and force the tablets down Max's throat with a chaser of liquid antibiotic. He froths at the mouth from the bad taste and scrambles to get away from me.

Now I am sitting crossed legged on the floor typing because I'm afraid if I get on the bed he'll hide under the bed in order to avoid me.

So yeah, that's the details up to the minute. THANKFULLY my neighbors were home when it happened. They ran into the yard and chased the dogs away (who were soon caught by animal services). Without their interruption it seems evident that the dogs would have killed Max.

I worked at vet clinics years ago and know the dangers cats that go outside face (and my two younger cats are not allowed out) but Max had spent his life in and out before I really knew better and my justification was that he never left the yard, mostly just watched the world go by from the back deck.

I never suspected that dogs would run into my yard and attack him...making sure that he was in bed with me by ten p.m. at night wasn't sufficient.

Going, going, gone!

Oregon City Auction holds a sale every Friday night that my mom and I have gone to on and off for many years. Several items in my house have been purchased from there. This auction is a lot like a garage sale, only in an auction format. You have to wait through a lot of junk in order to find a gem and sometmes you might not find anything you like.

I went to the auction this last Friday for the first time in awhile (I had a steady Friday night date with my friend Darren for the past year and then some). I had pretty good karma this week, maybe not as good as a friend of my mom's and I (who we know from Goodwill's as-is) who bought a doll for $12 at an estate sale and sold it for $2,000 on eBay, but good karma nonetheless.

For a total of $43 I bought a box of "stuff", a wicker chair, an old oak coat rack and a brand new rolling storage unit.

The boxes of stuff sold at the auction are often randomly packed with miscellaneous odds and ends and many times you don't know exactly what you are buying.



This $10 box provided me with a bunch of old unfinished craft frames (they are made in the U.S. if that gives you an idea of the age, ha ha) that I will use for an upcoming project to sell at the Handmade Holiday Bazaar in December (more about that project in a few months), a bag full of little plastic charms and toys, a ton of metal filagree pieces to do who knows what with, several dollhouse miniature magazines and food items that will be perfect for collage (including a miniature 54 page illustrated Sear's & Roebuck catalog) and random ceramic dolls/parts.




The rolling storage unit has turned into a portable organizer for all of my rubber stamps, inks and embossing powders. I paid $7.50 and when I looked at Fred Meyer yesterday I noticed the retail price is $17.99.




The $8 wicker chair is the new throne in the craft room.



The $17.50 coat tree is still on my front porch as I have yet to decide exactly where it is going to live but I'm very excited to have found it. Coat trees are often crappy in construction, almost always partly broken or unstable but this one is in fantastic shape and really high quality (and old which of course makes it even better).

Animal Testing

Several of you have mentioned that you enjoyed the photos I used to post of my organic veggie deliveries. While I'm still getting my weekly delivery I will admit that the novelty has worn off and now I look at it more like, "Ugh, now I gotta clear out all the veggies I didn't eat last week." I try to make soup or veggie pot pie to clear out all the previous weeks veggies and sometimes I'm successful. Once the weather cools down (Summer is not my season) perhaps I'll be more motivated to cook and actually make a meal rather than eating a bowl of cereal.

I did want to inform you however, that I have implemented a new inspection process.

Now what do I do?

Tonight was one of those nights where you go up and down in a matter of minutes (although in this case it was down then up).

I came home to a package from UPS containing a pair of shoes that I found for less than half retail on overstock.com. Turns out they weren't the color I thought they were gonna be though (and the color I really want isn't available). Sad, very sad.

But then my luck changed. Remember the feral cat, Barry White, I have been befriending for months? Well, each day I've been reaching out trying to pet him every time I give him food. Tonight he actually let me kind of do it then he turned around and looked at me. Seconds later he walked over to me and rubbed on my leg. Within minutes I was petting him from ears to tail, rubbing his bony sides and giving little scratches to his head. He began to purr and then marched up and down. I nearly had a heart attack. I was in so much shock I couldn't hardly believe it was happening. Something just clicked in him apparently and he recognized me for the cat sap that I am.

So, be careful what you ask for because now I have a filthy dirty unneutered male cat with an abscessed mouth, mite ridden ears and puss filled eyes that wants to come into my house.

Two months outta my life.

Today is exactly two months after the deadline for art card orders. To jog your memory I had this brainiac idea to sell 40 art cards in celebration of my fortieth birthday and then to turn around and order a commissioned piece from one of my favorite collage artists. Well apparently I have not acquired wisdom with my age. I ended up getting orders for 51 cards and have spent A LOT of time over the past two months completing them. This weekend I put the finishing touches on the last ones...they are post card style so that pretty much means I did 102 collages although I did make some of them only one sided. For those of you who ordered I am sorry it took so long but I wanted to complete all of them before sending them out and frankly it took me giving up a ton of my free time to get them done this soon as it is.

As you can tell from the picture it was a messy project but I did receive help (luckily cat hair just provides "depth" in a collage). Throughout the project I fluctuated from being inspired to being absolutely so sick of the project that I was gonna send everyone their $2 bucks back but now that it is over I'm happy with the results. These cards were ordered all the way from Portland, Oregon to Maine and are being shipped to New York, Connecticut, Arizona, California, etc.

What struck me at the end of the project is how diverse they all are. Part of that is thanks to the diversity of the requests...pink/sparkles/Hello Kitty for a 4 year old to "art" for someone I didn't know and "busy woman doctor" to "robot." Surprisingly the subject matters that were the furthest away from my comfort zone ended up being my favorite.

I will be mailing the cards out tonight after work. For folks getting more than one to the same address I am mailing one a day to stretch out the pleasure, ha ha. My intention had been to scan each one and post it to my flickr site to show off my work but many of them are 3D so I couldn't get good enough pics to bother with and photographing over fifty cards just wasn't appealing to me. For those of you in town I do have an album that I made with color photocopies of most so you'll be able to get a rough idea of what I did.

Disclaimer: My approach to mail art is to push the envelope. What this means is I often mail things through the mail that gets comments such as "I didn't know you could mail that." Most of the time the items go through but occasionally the machines at the post office eat them or the computers can't read the addresses so they have to be processed by hand which takes longer, etc. Several of the items have 3D effects which might get damaged or fall off in transit. Some might avoid such techniques given the possibility that they don't work but that isn't my style. All I can say is that if you don't get a card you ordered for yourself or a friend/family member doesn't get theirs or is broken just please let me know and I'll send out a replacement.

Thanks to all of you who supported my $2 birthday card project, I hope you enjoy them!