Saturday-9:30am

Good Morning!

We had such warm weather since we last spoke.  It was in the 40s for three days and then 57 degrees I saw on Thursday!  Friday we were back to the 30s and today is supposed to be high of 20 degrees--then supposed to linger around 30s for the highs for a while.  Of course that could all change rapidly.  ;)

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But look at how those melty days took care of all the surface snow! 

Wasn't all those men and machinery last year supposed to do something about all the standing water?  Maybe not?  LOL!  We still had a pretty decent parking lot puddle--and the sidewalk was under water.  

It did drain away fairly fast, though.

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The TV tray by the window has become Karma's favorite place to snooze during the day.  Not sure if it's because her new favorite cat bed was moved over there or that she loves spying out the window--LOL! 

By yesterday, the standing water in the yard had diminished and even the field across the way is brown again. 

 Hard to believe, but we are down to the snowbanks and snowpiles!   

Not that we won't have snow again before spring.  It's only mid-March, after all.  But being able to open the windows in the afternoon for a few days---ahhhh!!!  This could have been a very late February Thaw, since we never got one this winter.  Who knows?  I hadn't been able to crack a window since October, so I loved it!  Fresh air!!  Whoohoo!!

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I did a couple more of the Journal52 challenges.

The found poetry one. 

Mine reads like this:

Yes

Shed light where no light is cast

Believe

Reach

Live 

Love 

Act 

Words have impact

Healing

Open new doors to wondrous things

Bright, happy joy

Embrace your path 

And then the next challenge was to use something as a color palette.  I wanted to try this technique with the distress paints where you dab the colors on the non-stick mat, mist with water, and then place the paper or page right onto the craft mat. 

Bright! 

Obviously, my junk journal has buckly pages--LOL!  Didn't even get any paint in the center in places, but I left it. 

I had more paint on the craft mat so I misted some more water on, grabbed my old moleskine WC journal, and slopped up some more paint.  Cool! 

On the other side I really swished it all around in what was left and noticed that, instead of the plain brown mud you'd normally get mixing all those colors, it was kind of a multicolored mud.  Cool! 

Oh, and here is what I used for my color palette--a spool of thick multicolored thread in blue, green, red, orange, and yellow.

So that was fun!  Not sure what else I will do with the pages, but I sure do love the richness of the distress paint colors!  

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Meanwhile, I watched All Is Lost with Robert Redford.  Was so impressed with his performance in this movie--had to google and find out how old he is--77!  Amazing!  Except for a voice-over reading of his final note in the beginning, he says one (swear) word in the whole movie.  It is just one man trying to survive in the middle of the ocean.  I watched the specials and Robert said he wanted to get back to just being an actor...so he never watched the dailies or got involved in the film making end or did anything but take direction and act.  He definitely had my riveted attention until the last second!  You never know who this taciturn, elderly everyman is or anything about his background.  You are like a fly on the wall...just suddenly there with him from the time of the freak accident to his boat.  I'd love to hear what other people thought about this movie if they watched it because it was definitely not your typical movie.  

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Dagan was over for a little while Wednesday night, but Leah was home sick with a sore throat.  She's feeling better now, but annoyed that she has been catching everything recently.  She just got over a cold and cough, poor thing.  Maybe this will be the end of it.  :)

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      I've been gradually getting back to being on day hours, but had a rough week.  Tuesday night I didn't sleep at all--napped a couple hours during the day on Wednesday and collapsed that night.  But starting Thursday night I have doubled up on the melatonin and finally been sleeping better.  I have to chuckle.  After two years on melatonin my body is probably not bothering to make any at all anymore--and, in all likelihood with my sleep track record, it never knew how to make much to begin with--ROFL!  

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Next month I am going to make an order from Swansons and get a variety of doses so I can experiment and find what works the best for me.  I am anything but normal, folks--LOL!  Most people can take melatonin 20-30 minutes before they want to go to sleep.  I was taking it 5-6 hours before I was able to sleep.  No lie!  I had to take it at 7pm in order to get to bed by 12-1am.  With the double dose now, though--so far, I am in bed within about 2-2 1/2 hours!  And I'm only up a couple of times and sleeping like 8-9 hours.  Whoohoo!  But that's 20 mg.  Maybe 13 or 15mg would work just fine, you know?  But it comes in a capsule form, so I am stuck with only a 10mg dose right now.  But--whatever works, right?  Like I said--anything but normal over here.  ;)

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But--I slept and played at the art table the last two days, so it's looking quite promising!  After another night or two of catching up on my sleep I'll probably try to drop back to one capsule and see how that goes.  Meanwhile, I am doing the usual--writing letters, playing in junk journals, tending to Miss Karma and all the usual daily chores.  The taste of spring was wonderful!  We're back to nippy normal--more drab brown than glistening white out there right now, though.  But I do so love the change of seasons.  Can't imagine life without these extreme shifts.  ;)  

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Have a great weekend.  

Be good to yourself.  

Laugh!  

Hug somebody!  :):) 

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"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."

Oscar Wilde