Cybersurfing at Sea

Here I am, on the Rhapsody of the Seas, sailing between Galveston and Key West and burning 10 minutes online because I have a 'net coupon. :-) Yesterday was a good start to the trip except for the part where I came >>this<< close to passing out during the life boat drill. Still not sure what the hell that was all about! I feel fine today. I just came back from a wine tasting, (another coupon freebie!) which I almost didn't go to because I didn't think I'd like any of them. I'm pretty much the opposite of a wine snob...a wine moron or something. But surprisingly, I liked them all and am feeling pretty mellow right about now. Ahem. I've finished one book so far -- "Bet Me" by Jennifer Crusie. Loved it...perfect fun vacation read! How did I not know she lives in the Cincy area? Damn...that's practically my back yard! No wonder I like her books! Tomorrow my sister and I have some girly time scheduled...a massage and facial, then in the afternoon we'll dock in Key West and several of us are going on a pub crawl. So that's pretty much it so far....I'm eating too much food, drinking too much booze, doing nothing useful, and having a blast. I have another free 10 minutes I'll use later in the week. Until then.... Excuse me, can I have another pina colada?

Off and Runnin' (Flying? Cruising? Whatever!)

Gonna make this quick, as I head to bed and TRY to sleep. Not gonna hold my breath, but I'll try. In the morning J and I will be dragging our asses out of bed pre-dawn and heading for the airport. I'm sure I'll have lots and LOTS to tell you in a week or so, and hopefully some good pics too. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this link, courtesy of my friend Bev: Longmire Does Romance Novels A couple of them made me go "eeeuuuwww" but several of them were hilarious. Be sure to read the fine print. :-)

Girly Nails

Only two more sleeps until I head for blue skies, blue water, and people catering to my every whim. Yeah, baby! Seeing as it's after midnight here in the land of 'tucky, I should prolly be asleep already, but since I a) never sleep well before a trip and b) never sleep well for a few days surrounding the full moon, I'm pretty much c) screwed on the sleeping thing. So I just spent this evening watching shows on TLC and doing my nails. By "doing my nails" I mean I glued on pre-painted fake ones. :-) It's really interesting typing now. Maybe I should've done this a few days ago and given myself a little more time to get used to them. Usually my nails are short and unpolished because I USE my hands and keeping them looking manicured is just too damn much trouble. Although my girly heart loves having girly polished nails, so I usually DO keep my toe nails polished. I don't sew or type with my toe nails. At least not often. But when I'm going on a trip --- in particular when I'm going on a CRUISE, where I'm not expected to do strenuous things like pick up dirty towels or open my own napkin at dinner --- I like to have girly finger nails. The last time J and I went on a cruise I went to one of the local nail salons and had mine done by a pro. Acrylic tips, shaping, coats of polish, the works. It was fun and relaxing and they looked great. They held up great during the trip too. In fact, I liked them so much I decided I might try to keep them that way in Real Life. Believe it or not, that actually worked for a while! (I was shocked.) Those acrylic things are pretty tough. But in the end, I beat them. When I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone the full time between appointments without breaking one or more nails, I decided it was time to stop living the fantasy and go back to naked nails. It turns out that when they take off the fake-o ones, your real ones are a mess under there! The poor things looked like they'd been run over a cheese grater, and it took many, MANY weeks before they were healthy-looking again. So this time I'm trying the easy-peasy DIY jobbies. So far, so good....they look very nice and seem to be pretty secure. But I'm tucking some spares in my luggage, just in case. I've been hurt before.

"Shoes for Julie" on Artful Gift

Another of the Things I Do every morning when I'm drinking my coffee is to solve a couple of online jigsaw puzzles. One is the daily Jigzone puzzle. The other is the daily puzzle at Artful Gift. As you might guess from the name, Janice Williams post puzzles featuring artwork on her site. And something she's started recently is to feature fiber artists on the weekend. Thank you, Janice! The puzzle for February 26, is my quilt "Shoes for Julie". Yay! It's a quilt I made in a "bag of scraps" challenge, where I was sent an anonymous bag of fabric and other Stuff and was supposed to make a quilt from it. I will admit that I suspected the bag I received might have come from Julie, but I wasn't sure until it was done. She assures me she likes having green and purple shoes hanging on her wall. :-) I completed the puzzle in 2 minutes, 50 seconds, which is a pretty typical time for me for the Artful Gift puzzle, so knowing what the quilt looked like turned out to NOT be any great advantage. Go figure. Because the image on Artful Gift is small (or because some people might not want to work the puzzle to see it!), here's a pic of the quilt (linking to a larger pic if you click on it). My bag of scraps went to Laume Zekas, who made me a quilt called Octopus' Garden. It is so ME that you'd think she did a Vulcan Mind Meld on me prior to making it! I love it immensely! Here, take a look: I just realized that's a pic before she added the binding and some beads so I guess I need to switch the pic at some point, but still...you get the idea. I think it's wonderful.

The Philosophy of Packing

I can't be the only person in the world who has noticed the difference in both contents and method when men and women pack for a trip. Do you suppose it's because of the differences in male and female fashions or is because of the differences in personality? Or both? I suppose to avoid very un-PC sweeping generalizations I should confine this to "Johnny and me" instead of "men and women", eh? Well, ok then. I have noticed a VAST difference between what my dearest-darling considers normal packing for a trip and what I consider normal packing. Case in point: shoes. (Like that's going to surprise you!) Here's a question for you. What is a reasonable number of shoes for an adult human being to take on a seven-day trip that involves many different activities, ranging from days at the beach to formal dinners? My husband's answer: 2. My answer: 7. Actually that's not quite accurate. My husband would LIKE his answer to be "1", but since I'm picky about the "dressing for dinner" thing, he will acknowledge needing 2 pairs of shoes...one for casual daytime wear and one for dressing up. I would LIKE my answer to be 21. I would like to change my clothes and shoes 3 times a day and never repeat a single item. I would like to have an entire suitcase (a small one!) devoted to shoes. But since both the airline and the cruise line have a baggage limit, AND since I have to carry -- or at least roll -- the damn things myself, I will acknowledge that a shoe-filled bag isn't practical and will plan to wear shoes more than once per trip. But really...the least I can manage to whittle it down to is 7 and it's taking a LOT of willpower not to throw in "just one more pair". We were also discussing exactly which suitcases to take. My d-d travels a lot for work, so we have quite a collection of sizes and shapes. He said, "Can't we just use the big suitcase and pack all our stuff in together?" After I picked myself up off the floor and stopped gasping and wheezing from laughter, I responded "Um...no. The big suitcase should work fine for my daytime stuff. We'll put our formalwear in the garment bag. But we still need a suitcase for YOUR daytime stuff." [pause while husband gives DebR The Look] I think he thought I was kidding until he peeked into the guest room to see my things spread out on the bed. I've been pre-packing for a week now, you see. Pre-packing, for the uninitiated, involves choosing a place where your Stuff can be undisturbed (in my case, the guest room bed) and laying all the stuff on the bed so you can get a sense of what goes with what, and what might need to be eliminated or added, and what size luggage you really need. I think it's a very practical and efficient thing to do. My dearest-darling's view of practical and efficient packing involves pulling out a suitcase the evening before a trip, tossing it on the bed and saying "I need four pairs of jeans" and then going to the closet and pulling 4 pairs of jeans out, more or less at random, and tossing them into the suitcase. Ok, to be fair, he doesn't toss. He DOES lay them flat. But still. Repeat with shirts, repeat with socks, repeat with underwear, etc. I ask you, how on earth does the man end up with OUTFITS on the trip after packing that way?? I've lived with him for 16 years and have yet to figure it out, but he seems to manage. That brings us to another item: books. I read *something* every day. I can't NOT read. I don't want to think what would happen if I tried. Johnny likes to read too, although he isn't quite as fanatical about it as I am. So this morning, I was going through my stack(s!!!) of unread books, which is getting a bit out of hand, BTW, trying to decide how many books to take with me and which ones they would be. J wandered into the library in the middle of this process and asked what I was doing. I told him. He said "you mean you're picking out A book to take on the trip?". "No" I replied, "I'm choosing SOME books to take on the trip. I figure 5 or 6 should do it." [pause while DebR gets The Look again] He's taking A book. He showed it to me. It's a thick book. But still...a single book. What if he doesn't like it? What if it's boring? What if it turns out he's in the mood for an entirely different genre? I have a dozen semi-finalists laid out on the bed: short stories, mysteries, comedies, trashy romances. I figure I'll narrow it down to 5 or 6 finalists the night before we leave. And if I still end up not having quite what I need, it's not the end of the world I suppose. The room we booked is right around the corner from the ship's library. :-) Now I wonder if there's a shoe store onboard...

Warning: Art-Related Post Below

Just didn't want anyone to stop by expecting to read about shoes or purses and be shocked into a fainting spell at the sight of an actual art-related post. Today I accomplished something besides packing and wasting time. Yay! Believe me, no one is more surprised by this than I am. Cruise Brain doesn't leave a lot of working brain cells for other accomplishments. But you see, the other day I had A Non-Cruise Thought. (ouch!) A few months ago I committed to make a card for a collaborative Tarot art deck called the "Characters in Literature Tarot". My card and text are due on March 15th. I knew this. I even tried to plan ahead for this, by submitting an entry idea quite some time ago. But due to some miscommunication, I didn't get the go-ahead for my idea until I'd moved onto other things. Ok, no problem, I thought. I'll do it right after I get back from our trip. I have plenty of time. That's where the Non-Cruise Thought comes in. A few days ago I really LOOKED at the calendar and realized that if I waited until after out trip I would have 7 days to design and construct a card, write the text, have all my copies printed, rough cut them, and mail them to the project coordinator in California. And when I say 7 days, I mean I have 7 days if I start the very first day after returning and the hell with buying groceries, doing laundry, paying bills, and other such post-trip chores. Um....maybe I don't have plenty of time after all. So the past couple of days I've been scrambling to do all the above create-a-card things and today I finished. Yay again! The package is neatly wrapped and sitting by the front door and will go in the mail tomorrow and that means I don't have to let the thought of the project cross my mind next week OR the week after. Aaahhhh...bliss. Here's a pic of my card, the Two of Wands, and I've included my artist's statement below. The card is a combination of old-fashioned scissors-and-glue collage work and Photoshop tweaking. Based on the character named Barney in the story “Troubling of the Water”, by Zenna Henderson, in the book “Ingathering: The Complete People Stories” At the time of the story, Barney is a teenager, living in rural Arizona in the late 19th century. He’s telling the story a few years later and says he identified with Robinson Crusoe, except he felt like a castaway in time rather than place, anticipating the coming of the 20th century and all the changes he was sure it would bring. He says, “I used to stand on a rock and measure the world full circle, thinking ‘Turn of the Century! Turn of the Century!’, and seeking as though Time were a tide that would come racing through the land at midnight 1899 and that I could see the front edge of the tide beginning already.” (edited for brevity) In this card, we see Barney standing on his rock in the desert, looking for the tide of the 20th century to begin on the horizon. If we look closely we can see a shape forming in the clouds that could be an airplane. What else is hidden in the tide? Only time will tell. The 2 of Wands indicates a kind of “restless waiting” – we can see changes coming, but they aren’t quite here yet. Right now Barney may feel impatient with his life, but it’s a big world out there, with limitless horizons, and soon the tide of change will be within his reach and he’ll be ready to meet it.

Another One Bites the Dust

I bought a purse yesterday. Yay! Right? Um, no. I'm returning it today or tomorrow, depending on when I next get my ass to town. It's very pretty. It's Apple Green, very stylish. The problem? Too damn SMALL!! AGAIN!! And this time I don't have the excuse of having ordered it online and not visualizing the size correctly. I bought it in person. I HAD my current bag, filled with all my STUFF right there with me and I thought the lovely green bag would hold it all just fine. I was sadly mistaken. This morning, as I was stuffing the paper wads back into the bag (at least I had sense enough to save them until I'd tried loading my Stuff in there), my dearest-darling asked "Do you really need all that stuff? Couldn't you stop carrying some of it?" Oh sure. Ask questions with profound implications about my psyche before I've even finished my first cup of coffee. Now that I've had two cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal, I'm thinking about it. And no, I probably don't *need* all that Stuff. I could probably stop carrying the cute teensy flashlight without the world grinding to a halt. And the pocket knife with screwdriver attachments is probably not strictly necessary to a happy existence. Now that I carry a cell phone with lots of numbers programmed in, maybe I don't need to carry my address book too, although I find it oddly comforting to do so. And of course I don't need the beautiful lime green mini-umbrella every day, but if I don't leave it in there I won't remember to put in in the purse on the days I DO need it, because, well...I'm just like that. I'm sure there are other things that can go too if I put my mind to it. So I guess maybe I can stop carrying some of the Stuff I lug around with me every day. Maybe it's time to try. But the Apple Green purse is still going back to the store. I realized after I got it home that it's too small to hold a book. That's a deal breaker.

My Utopia: The DTTM

Since my friend Dara is one of the main people who sucked me into this whole blogging thing, it seems only right that something she did should inspire an entry, no? Yes! Dara has been working on some small quilts for a challenge with the theme "What's Your Utopia?". As I was lying in bed this morning, contemplating the move from horizontal to vertical, my mind turned to this topic and I had An Idea. I have a vision in my head of what I would do for this challenge if I were making an entry. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen because a) Cruise Brain!!!!!!! and b) post-Cruise Brain, the time available for making a quilt, photographing it, having slides made, doing the entry paperwork, and getting the entry form and slides turned in by the deadline make my chances of accomplishing the task very Not Good. My thought is that I don't think there is any one place that ever could be Utopia for me. I've thought of a possible solution to that, but more on that later. First, why can't I choose any one place? Well, I'll tell you... Cities? For me they fit perfectly with the phrase "nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there". I love all the stuff there is to see and do in a large city....book stores, shoe stores, other stores, great restaurants, museums, theaters, wonderful people-watching opportunities. But the one time I actually lived right in a city, it nearly killed me. I still think of that time as The Year Of The Migraines. Those horrid "lie very still in a dark room and try not to move so I won't puke" headaches were a weekly occurrence that year. And when I'd go away for the weekend, as I'd leave the city and start heading into places with grass and trees and clear sky, I could feel something very hard and tight inside start to relax. Aaaahhhhhh.....birds instead of honking horns, the wind in the trees instead of neighbors arguing...relief! Now I live in the country. Waaaaaay out in the country, in Middle-of-Nowheresville. It's a nice place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit here. I'm calmer and healthier and more relaxed here, but I must admit I miss the variety of experience in a city. The days are all a lot alike here. Most of the people are a lot alike too, but not very much like me. I have friendly acquaintances here rather than true friends. Most people would then say, well why not the suburbs? Isn't that a compromise? But to me that seems like the worst of both worlds instead of the best. You still have to drive to get to the real City Stuff (although admittedly not as far as *I* have to drive), yet you don't have the kind of peace and privacy you get in the country. Then there are the places I travel to....tropical beaches, mountain retreats...and a part of me thinks they might be wonderful places to live. But realistically, I'm sure they have their problems too. If I DID live there, I have no doubt there'd be things I'd love about it and things I wouldn't like at all. So that brings me (finally!!) to my Utopia idea....teleportation. You know, like the transporter machines on Star Trek. I think someone needs to invent a safe, affordable teleportation device, one we could all have in our own homes. Come on...that's not too much to ask, is it? It's the perfect solution. It would change lives! I can see it in my mind. It would look like a phone booth. Not a wimpy, open, modern phone booth, but a REAL phone booth, the kind where Clark Kent could duck in and shed his gray suit and horn-rimmed glasses and become Superman without anyone around him noticing. You'd step in, close the door, dial up your destination, hit a button and *poof*...there would be a hum and some shimmering lights and seconds later your molecules would reassemble hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. Or hell....five or six miles away for that matter! No reason you couldn't use the teleporter chamber instead of the car to pop over the library and back! It would all but make cars and planes obsolete. The air would be cleaner in no time. And it wouldn't matter where you lived because you could be anywhere as fast as anywhere else! Want to live on a tropical island in the Pacific, work in Silicon Valley, have dinner in Tokyo, and see a show in New York? No problem! Obviously there would need to be public booths in public buildings and on street corners, so you'd have a way to get home again from wherever you went. And there'd have to be some privacy settings so that people would have to get permission to beam into someplace private. But all those things could be worked out, don't you think? So that would be my Utopia quilt....a patchwork of places I'd love to be...a city, a peaceful countryside, a tropical beach, a mountain top...and right in the center of it all would be the Deluxe Teleporting Travel Module, (the DTTM), with racing stripes, and you'd see just a sparkle and twinkle right in the center of it that would be me, popping out to a Caribbean beach and then popping back home in time to sleep in my own bed tonight. Aaaahhhh...Utopia.

Just For Janis (but everyone else can read it too)

When I posted a note to the QuiltMavericks saying I'd started a blog, FellowMav Janis said, and I quote (but I guess the quotation marks would have told you that even if I hadn't said so, eh?), "Ok, Deb....lets see something in your blog about what you're working on these days. I just LOVE your work and I KNOW you just HAVE to have SOMETHING going on, even if you do have a bit of cruise brain!" Well, the fact is that for the past week or so I really haven't done anything more artistic than doodling a Vague Possible Future Idea for Something on a piece of scrap paper. And that's about where I expect my productivity level to remain until I'm past the Cruise Brain stage. But before CB kicked in with a vengeance I DID finish a couple of projects. So, just because Janis asked (and because she said she loves my work! :::beam:::), here's a little ramble about the last quilty thing I did. (You can click on the pic if you want to see a larger version.) The last thing I finished, about a week ago, was for an Ugly Fabric Challenge that Frank issued on the kerrismatics email list. Frank sent those who signed up a fat quarter of fabric he considered to be hideous beyond redemption. It was bright pink, verging on magenta, with various width stripes in shades of white, yellow, orange, and blue. Other than being pink (a color I touched on in the Handbag Ramble), I didn't think the fabric was all that bad. Ok, yeah...it looked a little like a cabana stripe on acid. But in DebWorld that isn't necessarily considered a Bad Thing. I'm trying to reconstruct my thought processes on how I came up with what I did....really I am. But the paths my mind follows are often too twisty for even me to follow. I need some sort of Brain Breadcrumbs to scatter as I work. If I may digress for a moment....this is why I hate writing artist's statements for exhibits. Oh, I can do it if I must, and make it sound Professional and Appropriate and all that crappola, but really...when I'm done with a piece, I'm done. I don't want to THINK about it enough to write something about it at that point. Maybe I should start writing artist's statements FIRST and then make stuff to match? Hhmmm.... But anyway, back to the Ugly Challenge. I decided I wanted to feature the fabric in all its pink stripy-ness and not try to tame or disguise it. And I started wondering how many different ways I could feature it. And that got me thinking of doing a series of "snapshots" from the life of this ugly fabric...all the different places it could be and things it could do. And then I thought "Hey!...I could do a different scene for each month, like a calendar!" At first I just pictured doing these blocks and arranging them traditionally with sashing. But then one day I huffed some Pledge or something and thought "No! That's too easy! Wouldn't it be much more FUN and INTERESTING to make 12 itty-bitty (6" x 6") individually bound quilts and then attach them to a grid of black ribbon?! Yeah, let's do THAT! 'Cause I'm not nearly insane enough already!" So that's what I did. Here's the evidence. And as I informed Marion and Dijanne, August is a clearance tank top on a headless, armless, green mannequin. It is not (unfortunately) a green hamster in a swimsuit, as they suspected. Warning: Abrupt Change of Subject! Today was my wedding anniversary. Johnny and I have been married 16 years. The cruise I keep thinking about and talking about CONSTANTLY is our gift to us, from us. Aren't we good to us? Yay Us! :-) For the day itself, we slept late. We went out for Mexican food and we bought books (at a store, not at the restaurant, although wouldn't that be a fun way to pass the time while you wait on your food to arrive?). We went for a walk in the sunshine. It was a good day.

Farting Footwear Fiasco?

One of the Things I Do in the morning as I'm having my first cup of coffee is check out the "Strange News" headlines at Yahoo. The top headline today was "Wrong Chemical Makes Shoes 'Flatulent'". Well, I couldn't very well NOT check that out, now could I? It turns out that a Florida shoe manufacturer was receiving complaints from customers who had purchased shoes with gel insoles. The customers said that with every step, their shoes gave off a sound like passing gas. The shoe manufacturer agreed that this was a Bad Thing and has responded by filing a lawsuit against a supplier, saying they supplied the wrong chemical for the insoles and that the Farting Footwear is therefore all their fault. Ok, I can understand them being upset, but I have to say I think they are going about this all wrong. The last thing the US court system needs is one more lawsuit. Whatever happened to looking on the bright side? Turning lemons into lemonade? Smashing a window with your farting shoe when God closes a door? I think instead of suing their supplier, the shoe company should just change their target market for the shoes. I mean, come on....how many little boys between the ages of 5 and oh, say...50 do you know who wouldn't like to own a pair of Farting Shoes?? Granted once the boys reach dating age any of them with any sense (or at least any of them who ever want to stand a fighting chance of having sex), will want to own at least one pair of NON-farting shoes for occasions like dates, business meetings, funerals, weddings (their own or others...although I can think of a few men I've met who would think it was pretty darn funny to wear Farting Shoes to a wedding....but I digress). But most of them would still LOVE to have a pair of Farting Shoes too. Can you imagine a whole court full of basketball players wearing Farting Shoes? That might be funny enough to entice even me, one of the most non-sports-oriented girly-girls you'd ever hope to meet, to go to a game! Schools would be bound to ban them, but the boys could sure have fun in class until they did. (Abject apologies to all my teaching friends and relatives for that thought!) So I would suggest to the folks at Farting Shoe Land that they stop making the lawyers richer and instead hire a good kids' shoe designer and a great ad agency and turn this problem into a golden opportunity! And by the way...in the tradition of the much-missed Dave Barry...wouldn't The Farting Shoes be a good name for a rock band?

Mama wants a brand new bag

The question of the day is this: If I like the color and style trends this spring (and I do! for the first time in years! yay!), why is it so hard to find The Perfect Purse? My current bag was a gift from my friend Bev and I love it. It's a Laurel Burch tote with a red background and handles and bright multicolored fish all over it. It's bright! It's fun! It's gaudy! It's ME!! But my bright, fun fishy bag has been well-loved and is looking sadly faded these days, so I'm reluctantly shopping for a replacement. I thought I had found THE bag on eBay a few weeks ago. It was another Laurel Burch offering, this time with screaming lime green handles and background and multi-colored fish that are just as bright as the first bag, but differently shaped. Different species, I suppose. I ordered it and I love it, but alas...it is just too small. I've tried and tried to make myself believe we can work things out, but what can I say? Sometimes size DOES matter. I can't fit all my necessities in there...the "Risky Lime" wallet, the adorable lime green mini-umbrella, the gorgeous multi-colored beaded-pull ditty bag (a gift from my friend, NorthPoleSue....I have GREAT friends!) which contains my emergency survival kit (compact, lipstick, comb, tissues, wet wipes, dental floss, reading glasses, drugs....legal ones! sheesh!...mints, nail file, etc.), my address book, cell phone, the list of "older DVDs I want to add to my collection" (so that I hopefully don't buy the SAME ONES over and over and over...), the list of OOP books I'm looking for (ditto on saving myself from brain farts), sunglasses (both regular and the magnetic ones for when I'm wearing my glasses). It's a lot of STUFF, but it's what I carry. (And hey, it's down from what I carried a few years ago. I'm working on it, ok?) So now that I've reluctantly concluded that the wonderful green fish bag is going to have to go back up on the auction block (sob!), I'm back on the Handbag Scene, trolling for my next partner and hoping for a love match instead of having to settle. I *almost* found one a couple of days ago at Goody's. It was the right size. It had the kind of handles I like. It had the right assortment of compartments...not too few, not too many. But it was Pink. Specifically it was MAGENTA, which is toward the right end of Pink for me, but it's still Pink. I know Pink has been the big IN color the last year or so, but I'm just not a Pink Person. It's too JLo....too Paris Hilton....too BARBIE. If they'd had this bag in lime green, or orange, or red, or electric blue I'd have bought it in a heartbeat. They had OTHER bags in all those colors and more. But did they have THE bag in any of those colors? No. Of course not. There was one...count 'em....one... (wasn't that quick?)...bag I liked and it was pink. (sigh) So the quest continues. Maybe I should just give up and look for something easy instead, like the Holy Grail.

Ovarian Cancer Awareness Stamp

I found out yesterday that there's a petition circulating to urge the U.S. Postal Service to create an Ovarian Cancer Awareness Stamp (along the lines of the breast cancer stamp) to promote awareness and education about this "silent killer". The hope is to encourage an increase in early detection and to expand research into treatment options. This is a topic close to my heart, since one of my favorite people in the world, my mom, Anita Louise Keeton, died of this disease in 2001, after a five-year battle. If you'd be interested in signing the online version of this petition, you can do so here: Ovarian Cancer Awareness Stamp Petition. Thanks!

Cruise Brain

It's raining, it's pouring, I'd rather be snoring... I have Cruise Brain. My dearest-darling and I have a Caribbean cruise booked soon and I have reached the point where I have NOTHING else on my brain but this trip. I'm making lists for everything in the hope that I a) don't forget to pack anything important I will need on the trip and b) don't forget anything important to take care of before we leave. If this trend continues, soon I'll have a daily list that says:

1. Breathe
2. Shower
3. Breathe
4. Dress
5. Breathe
6. etc., etc.....

A combination of Menopause Brain and Cruise Brain is a scary thing. It would be kinder on everyone around me if I could just be unconcious for the next couple of weeks and have someone wake me up just in time to pack. But since that isn't a practical option, I'll make more lists.

1. Eat
2. Breathe
3. Wash dishes
4. Breathe....

I SHOULD be making art to pass the time. That would be the smart thing to do. But who said a person with Cruise Brain was smart?

The Shoe Addiction

Hello, my name is Deb and I'm a Shoe Addict. My latest passion? Embellished shoes. If it has beads or sequins or (gulp) both, it inspires covetous impulses in my obsessed little heart. What started the embellishment obsession? It all started with a glimpse of a pair of seed-bead-covered mules on eBay. The pattern and colors reminded me of a Kaffe Fassett log cabin. They called my name...loudly...a siren song. I had to have them. From there I found the Report black satin mules with the kitten heels. (The person who came up with the idea of kitten heels is a freakin' genius.) Then the Hype mules....one with yellow and turquoise seed beads, the other a ruby satin with beads and sequins. Then there was the champagne-gold silk mules, also with beads. They were adopted all the way from Hong Kong. It hasn't all been about beads though. I found a way cute pair of Judy Jetson-ish Keds sneakers at Zappos.com. (shoe mecca!) Here's a pic of the shoes that have come to live in DebRville in the past month or so. The shoes of winter 2005 One of these days soon I'll write about something more or less art-related. Really. :-)