Art!

L has been very busy with various pieces/media lately.   She spends, probably 4-6 hours a day working on her art.  I found these two sketches and took pics before they disappear into the pile to not be shared, and she gave me permission to post them.  (I generally check with her before I post any of her art or photos of her.)

L was quite sick for a few weeks.  She was very miserable and very brave.  She's mostly recovered now.  We got Dej & Russ a beautiful piece of art as a housewarming gift.  They selected a unique sculpture by Allegrea S.B. Rosenberg.  (I will post pics of that another time.)  The piece below "Cherry Melange" is now hanging on L's bedroom wall.  Her favorite flower is the cherry blossom.  She just loves those, and she loved this piece, which was among those D&R had to choose.  This piece is full of little surprises and lots of unique and varied textures.  The frame is gorgeous, too.  It is fun and makes us happy to look at it.

Allegrea shocked me last week when I saw her carrying this giant object up my driveway.  This piece is called "Music of our Mothers", and I have been in love with it since the first time I saw it.  I have visited it through the years, in various galleries and shows, and now it is hanging in my living room.  It is so much more beautiful than is possible to show in a photo.  There are 100's of tiny details in many layers and textures, and none of them are captured in these photos--the iridescence makes photographing difficult, but I'll keep trying.  It is a different picture every time you look at it.  It looks like it was made for that spot in that room, and we all love it!  I feel very lucky to have such a talented and generous friend.  :)

The Cats are Safe

Blogger has changed its interface since my last post, so I'll have to spend some time figuring it out.  So far I like the changes.

My wrist surgery went well, and I'm recovering better from this one than from the previous one.  Having the hardware out is a fantastic improvement that has really reduced the pain and problems I was having before--even before the pin started pushing itself out through my skin.  I really liked the surgeon (Wehrly), who was shockingly personable for a surgeon and quite enthusiastic about his field.

Yesterday I took a break from the work I'm behind on.  L & I went to the arrangatrum (a very important milestone in which they do their first solo performance) of one of L's classmates.  At 13, Snigdha performed beautifully for the 2+ hour performance.  It was very well attended, and I can't imagine having the courage at that age to dance alone, with a live orchestra and vocalist from India, and an audience of well over 100 people.  The music and dance were both fantastic, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

We had to rush back from Stoughton to get in town in time to pick M, Dej, & Russ up to go see the Vagina Monologues.  This performance was at UW Rock, and was also very enjoyable.  We all laughed a lot!  I cried a lot, as usual.  The ladies performing the Monologues did a tremendous job.  Mark had seen it with me before, but it was the first time (of many, I hope) my girls had seen it, and I'm glad we were together.  They perform it at my college every couple of years, so I would like to continue to go as a family tradition.  I meant to offer my students extra-credit points for attending, but it slipped my mind.  I wish I had.  It's something everyone should see--especially men!

The pictures are of the cats, who have been exceptionally naughty lately, checking out our biometric safe that I was trying to program.  They all found it enticing and wanted to crawl right into it.  It made programming  a little challenging, but I eventually got it done, despite the little fur balls.

Quick update

I am alive.  I've just been really struggling to keep up with everything, and my blogging time was about all I could free up for a while.  I have one class that is very intense, and it's taking so much more time than I anticipated.  I love the class, and the students are wonderful--which is part of the problem.  The class (Java object-oriented programming) is incredibly hard, especially if they have no programming  background.  Because we are such a small campus, I am the only computer science person there, and there are no Java tutors on campus either.  That leaves me to teach and tutor a very large class, and not nearly enough time for everyone.  I can't tell them no, though, when they are geniunely trying and need assistance.  So Java has consumed my life this semester.  I will have to really brainstorm before next spring, so I have a solution going into the semester.  It's something I enjoy doing, so though it's a bit stressful, it's certainly not miserable.
My baby girl has been very sick since Friday morning.  She's been vomitting and hasn't been able to keep even a drink in her, which has resulted in two trips to urgent care/ER.  She needed a total of 4.5 bags of IV fluids for her dehydration.  She hasn't thrown up since her most recent return from the hospital at 7:00 this morning, and seems much better today than at any time previous.  It is horrible, horrible! to have to watch her suffer miserably for three full days.  She spent 2.5 of the days doubled over in pain over her little bucket.  I'm so glad she seems to be on the mend!

I have to go in tomorrow morning for another surgery.  It's just ridiculous that I have to do this again so soon, but the hardware in my arm (put in this summer) has moved and is sticking out causing soft-tissue damage and pain.  I'm dreading the whole surgery and healing process but am really looking forward to some relief from the pain.  I thought I had better get a blog in tonight, because I will be without the use of my right arm again for a while.

Spring arrived here very early this year.  I didn't get a chance to blog, but I noted that our tulips were blooming by the third week in March.  Mark and I are both wondering what our garden will look like in May and June.  We have so many things blooming early, that I think we're going to end up with a gap between our spring bulbs and the annuals blooming.  I will have to order extra poppies this year--they will probably be a great gap filler. 

Healthy!

I spent $15 over my winter break, and it may have been the best money I ever spent (or at least in the top five). I bought this e-book by a science teacher/science curriculum developer: The Reality of Weightloss. I have used many of her materials through the years and respect her brain; (I do not know her personally). She has huge portions of the book available on her website to read for free. I was very impressed with the free material and had to order the full book immediately. I read it in one sitting and was blown away by how absolutely right and how perfectly logical everything in the book was.

The one thing I read in the free preview of the book that I didn't think would hold true was her assertion that your body would crave exercise. I laughed aloud thinking her body may work that way, but there's no way that mine will. I was then shocked to find that, after a few weeks of my regular workouts, I started to notice that I was actually tense and really craving some kind of physical movement on my one day off each week. There are many nights that I'm tired and don't feel like I can make it through the workout, but my body still seems to crave it enough that it propels me through it. She was totally right!!

I am so short on time these days, that I wasn't initially sure how I would manage to squeeze a 45-min. workout into my schedule. The more I contemplated, I realized that if many, many well-educated, knowledgeable people told me that if I took a high-powered 45 minute nap every day I would feel 15-20 years younger, I guarantee that I would find a way to wrangle that into my schedule. Funny then, that I couldn't seem to find the same amount of time if it was for a workout.

Everything fell into place. I decided to make some serious life changes, because I was so fed up with my body and my energy level. I have cut out all crap food. I eat mostly veggies and fruits, with some grains and (vegan) proteins thrown in. Probably more importantly, I exercise at least 45 minutes per day six days per week.

I feel absolutely fantastic! My body has changed completely.  My energy levels have increased a lot, I feel healthier all the way around, I feel strong, much younger, and I've lost 26 pounds with seven left to go.