What a crappy week this has been.

It all started when the picture went fuzzy on my TV on Sunday. Whatever, sometimes it just goes away. So I got some beads made on Monday and Tuesday. The picture was still fuzzy, so we called the cable TV people on Wednesday, they fixed it, or so we thought. Then our power went out the following morning. Then the electric company came, then the electrician came. Then the plastic melted right off of the outside cable TV line, and that’s how we discovered that it was never properly installed or grounded outside, which apparently caused the intermittent problems we’ve had with our picture since the summer of 2009 when we first got it. Now the electricity and cable are back on, and the picture on my TV is better than it’s ever been. Be that as it may, the electricity in this nearly 100 year old rent house needs some serious updating, and we may end up having to move elsewhere for our own safety. Sure, I could buy a house, if I had any credit whatsoever or a down payment. Everything I have saved will have to be spent on a car, because the one we have is old and turning into a money pit. Sometimes I wish I could feel perfectly okay about spending money I didn’t have. It seems like even with bad credit, you have a better shot than if you have no credit at all. I think I deserve some credit for paying my meager bills on time and in full, staying out of debt and not living above my means. I think that should count for something, don’t you?

Sometimes the can of worms just falls onto the floor and breaks. That’s life. I had a lot more to say, but it was a lot more whiny. I try not to whine. If you let life make you miserable, it will, with all its might. And I refuse. I do have one bright spot, and it’s mine!

with sapphires, even.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been dealing with all week. Things may have settled down long enough for me to get some work done… for SUPERSTARS NEXT THURSDAY! At least, that’s the tentative plan. I’ll know for sure next week.

My red glass is calling to me.

Thanks for reading.

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One Life To Live GONE In January 2012

image courtesy of soapnet.com - click here for the story

I am so irked right now. I was watching Good Morning America, and amidst the Dancing With The Stars and Kate and William regurgitation, they announced that All My Children and One Life To Live will be no more come September of this year and January of next year, respectively. (But they’re keeping General Hospital. What’s up with that? Does someone important have a close relative on the GH staff?) I’m just as disappointed about what this indicates for the future of American television. OLTL is one of the few shows I watch that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being programmed or talked down to. I enjoy the clever puns and references, and the intelligent vocabulary. But forget about me. What is to become of the writers, actors and staff members associated with these two shows once their time is up? I’m hoping another network will pick them up. Susan Lucci, who is in her early sixties, looks too good to retire just yet.

I’ve been watching One Life To Live since I was 11 years old. I’m 33, so that’s exactly 2/3 of my life. ABC is dropping these time-honored serials in favor of what? You’ve surely guessed it. “Reality” and talk about weight loss and makeovers – or, if we’re being honest, crappy programming on the cheap. All they’ll have to do is pay a quasi-celebrity host, a small staff and open the chute to America’s hungry, overweight, poorly dressed po’dunks, who will do the rest of the work in exchange for services provided. ABC apparently doesn’t realize that it would be far more cost effective to air a strobe light and a hypnosis spiral during these time slots once they’re freed up. Anyone who would actually want to watch Tim Gunn isn’t likely to be discriminating enough to tell the difference. But the optimist in me (yes, there is a teeny tiny little one in there somewhere) can’t fully accept that America has been dumbed down so much that talk and reality TV is what the majority wants to watch during the day – it’s just that it’s quickly becoming the only thing on the menu. And going by the comments in the articles I’ve read today, many viewers would stop watching ABC (or television) altogether rather than eat the cheap fluff.

As I work on my glass every night, I enjoy my pre-recorded daily gawk at fictional characters who live wacky, whirlwind lives. Sure, soaps are silly, but that’s the point. They’re highly entertaining to those of us who have been watching for years, and the soap genre is so unique, it’s unmistakable. You know when you’re watching a soap – the music, the film quality, the look on the actor’s face – even if you land for only a second when channel surfing.  And hey, soaps are about the only shows remaining on daytime TV that don’t provide America’s lowest common denominator a place to show its skidmarks. (Think Maury Povich – who even watches that!?) Brian Frons, ABC’s daytime department president, makes a reference to the long term success of MTV’s Real World in this article. Um, yeah, so… thanks, Real World, for giving way to today’s standard fare, and giving America’s lazy, desperate, narcissistic youth something to strive for. I’m sure it helps that anyone pathetic enough to want to be on reality TV isn’t above being hauled away in a hired ambulance when the ratings begin to slump.

Frons also commented that the viewers will be angry, possibly angry enough to want to do him physical harm. Well, duh, dude, what did you expect? That anyone would be jumping up and down at the prospect of yet another weight loss or makeover show? You don’t have to worry about ME getting up off of my flabby, soap opera watching, bon-bon eating haunches and coming after you. One, that’s not my style, and two, it won’t be these wonderful new shows that get me into ass kicking order (of some piddly corporate puppet, no less), because, surprise, I won’t be watching them. ABC is killing successful shows that have been on television for 40+ years, and their refusal to admit that this is pure and simple greed is an insult to my intelligence. ABC can be reasonably sure that most viewers of these soaps will watch every week day, and you can’t say that about too much of anything on free OR paid TV anymore. However, ABC can be absolutely sure that their soap viewers will NOT watch the thinly veiled indoctrination that these two soaps will be replaced with.

If you have any interest in keeping these shows on the air, please sign this petition – who knows, it may actually make a difference:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-all-my-children-one-life-to-live/

Off to mope some more, thanks for reading.

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Marshmallows in the mail

marshmallows from florence

Thanks for the homemade rose flavored marshmallows and the wonderful note, Flo! They’re as sweet as I imagine you to be! As heavy as they were, I couldn’t imagine what they could have been until I opened the box, and I’m still a bit alarmed by how heavy a small boxful of marshmallows actually is. And thank goodness they weren’t a day later. As hot as it will be today, I would be opening a boxful of tasty goo. Any which way they arrived, I undoubtedly would have proceeded to stuff my face with them.

And there’s toffee in the fridge. Mr. Sarah made toffee for the first time, and it was unbelievable. I guess the violent cursing at the candy thermometer was worth it. I’m dreading the next batch, because it will be even better – it will have roasted pecans in it rather than raw peanuts. I guess I’ll have size 14 hips forever. Sigh. It’s a good thing that the muggy rainy season is coming right up – NOT the kind of weather for making toffee or fudge.

bwack-bwack-bwack-bwack

For years, I couldn’t decide which I liked better – Valentines Day or Easter – but this year, I’ve decided that it’s always and forever Easter. The nice thing about Easter candy is that since nobody ever really knows exactly when Easter is, the candy is out for a long time prior, which allows me to pace myself and not go completely ape on candy in a short window of time. And it’s not just the ORANGE Creme Eggs. It’s the Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs, and the Reeses PIECES Peanut Butter Eggs, the Cadbury Mini Eggs, the Whoppers Robin Eggs… Eggs, eggs, eggs, laid by a magical rabbit with a confectionery colon and a candy coated sphincter. Oh, dear lord. Get out the epipen. I’ve overdosed just thinking about it. If you haven’t tried the Orange Creme Eggs, and you like orange flavor and you like Creme Eggs, you will not regret it.

The Spawn gave me an impromptu tarot card reading last night. I began by ruining the magic, aka demanding that the tall lit candle that was precariously balanced on a small tray atop our polyester patchwork bedspread be extinguished immediately. Goofy dads +  teenage girls = combined total of common sense in the negative values. They’d simultaneously drown and burn to death in a pile of flaming magic cards, dirty dishes and fast food trash if it weren’t for my martyrdom when it comes to, ahem, noticing stuff. Thank goodness she isn’t a boy. I digress. For one thing, it was a different deck than we normally use and some of the cards didn’t make sense in the context of the reading. It didn’t help that the font was all curlicue. In the dimly lit room, one of the cards, Queen Of Wands, was mistaken for Queer Of Wards, and the uncontrollable giggling followed. The joke Mr. Sarah immediately made about Montgomery Wards, and then Ward Cleaver, (both of which are probably too offensive to repeat here) had us laughing too hard to focus for the next several minutes.

Anyway. The question was “should I really be bothering with this metalsmithing business?” The gist of the reading was sort of like, “yeah, well, sure, explosion of success is in the cards, but also, be prepared to shrug and laugh if this grand journey implodes on itself and burns an enormous hole in your pocketbook.” In other words, I got The Fool card at the very end. The entire reading was ambiguous at best. It’s just a game, right? Well, perhaps. I just know that the few tarot card readings I’ve had throughout my life were eerily spot on, and some of the foretellings didn’t happen until years later. One other odd card, I can’t remember what it was, said that I secretly yearned for a man who emotionally supported my creative endeavors. Really? I don’t secretly yearn for that, or yearn, period. I have it. It’s a given. Perhaps I shouldn’t take it for granted. My man doesn’t give me any crap about anything. I have untold amounts of glass and insist on keeping a drawer in the kitchen so full of utensils of unknown purpose that it can barely open or close… so I guess I shouldn’t give him the stinkeye on the extremely rare occasions when he paints without a dropcloth on the floor.

Stuff makes you think sometimes, doesn’t it? But just stuff. And only sometimes.

Smell you later!

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ETSY!

Okay, I stayed up extra late to get these done. I have to go to Target later because I’m out of everything… Everything! And neither Etsy nor Target can be put off any longer, so I figured this was the best way to do it. And I’m babbling, so I’ll just get to it.

Click HERE to go to my shop, or on the thumbnails below for each listing.

deep sea botany - click me

burning bush - click me

oro verde lava lites - click me

Thanks once again for bearing with me… you guys are the best. Truly! I hope you enjoy the beads. Until next time, which hopefully won’t be too far off…

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All work and no play

makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work
and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy.

I’m not about to get out the axe, but I did laugh when the news guy announced that a stiff breeze blew a bouncy castle away with children still inside of it. Nobody was hurt, it’s a bouncy castle for crying out loud, but it still reeks of a frivolous lawsuit waiting to happen. And knowing some kids, they probably thought it was the raddest thing ever. If it were me, and I hadn’t been hurt badly, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it until some grown-up made a big fat hairy deal of it.

So I took Saturday off, the first day off in 3 weeks, and I get whalloped by that once a month thing.  I had fancy plans to at least clean behind the stove, drill some stuff with the corded drill Dad permanently loaned me, and answer all of my emails today. None of that happened. The thought of a drill with a cord had me pretty glad and looking forward to my day. I’ve never been big on mucking about with batteries, rechargeable or not. There’s nothing more convenient than plugging something to the wall and going.

I’ve spent all week wrapping my brain back around soda lime and orders, and it’s been comforting. I’ve put Etsy off all week because I wanted to have a good bunch of stuff for you. Now I do. So, later today, I’m shooting for Etsy. I know that it’s Sunday, and Sundays are weird because most people are all “blah, I have to go to work tomorrow”, so maybe some nifty new beads will cheer someone up. They’ve cheered me up. I hated all the boro beads I made this time, but everyone else I’ve showed them to has not agreed. What a relief.

And I’m thinking, after I get all the unfun life crap out of the way this month like taxes, car insurance and repairs, I’m going to get my jeweler’s torch and a few other little things I need to start soldering in May. May seems to be a lucky month for me when it comes to learning something new, something that I also happen to be nervous about learning. I already have the solder and a decent amount of silver to work with, and I’m finding interesting cabochons here and there at bead and gem shows.

So, anyway, enough chit chat – look for Etsy stuff later today.

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