Happy New Year!

I hope you've had an awesome holiday season. Have a fantastic new year!

Art and Therapy

Just thought I'd post a painting I did a while back. It wouldn't all fit on my scanner so I scanned it half at a time and then stitched it together. Not the best stitch job in the world, I'm thinking about redoing it. The plan is to open a shop on Zazzle, I thought that might be a neat idea. Easier for me than Etsy, I think. I've got a few other paintings I've done plus I can use cropped parts of this one to make different designs.

We've been having a pretty hard time with my daughter (19) lately, she's had periods of what I call "hissy fits" (emotional outbursts, lashing out at the family, etc) that have been becoming more frequent and intense the last few months. It's gotten to the point that she has been in a therapeutic day program for the past week and will stay there for another week or so. The people who run the program have suggested putting her on medication, but I'm feeling like this is a very bad idea. My son is on a similar medication (atypical antipsychotics, prescribed for "mood disorders") and has had some very unpleasant and worrying side effects. He even said to her, "don't do it, do you want to end up like me?" The people running the program keep encouraging me to give it a try, but I feel like we tried it with my son and it didn't turn out well. It's like, I let him down I don't want to do the same with her, you know? She's a sweet lovely girl when she's not having a meltdown, and one of the things that happened with my son is his personality sort of "flattened", if that makes sense. I don't want to lose her to the drugs too.

UPDATE: Got my Zazzle store set up last night, I've put a link to it in the sidebar if anyone would like to check it out. DD seems to be doing better and is finishing her program today.

Save a family's garden

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/oak-park-hates-veggies/

Personally I think EVERYONE should be doing what this family is (or at least trying), it's shameful that their local authorities are persecuting them.

(Sorry I've been quiet so long. The kids are having some behavioral issues and sometimes I feel like the agencies we have coming in to help us just make things more stressful. I just haven't felt up to writing.)

Ruth

The Dream

It's scary out there! (And congratulations Dan and Vanessa)

First we'll start off with the obligatory "kids in costumes" pics...she's a vampire cheerleader and he's a football fan. :-)




Did everyone vote today? So many people are talking about how important this election is, a lot of the talking heads are saying there's voter apathy among the Democrats and assuming that Republicans will gain a lot of seats in congress. Let's prove them wrong, shall we?

Congratulations to my friend Dan Harris (nope, not the ABC News reporter, it's a different guy) and his new wife Vanessa, they got married on Saturday! :-) I tried to post the pic he emailed me but I can't copy it out of the PDF file it was in, if I figure out how I'll edit it in or post it separately. They're a really cute couple though, here's a link to an online interview Dan did a while back for the cruise group he runs.

Hey Ruth, did you fall off the face of the Earth??

No, not yet anyway! Family issues, we seem to be going from one crisis to the next the last couple months. Things have happened and possibilities exist that I don't even want to think about, much less post about. Enough of me being a downer, let's have some fun:

OMG isn't he just adorable in this?? I just love those ginormous electric blue eyes. Apparently the screen tests for many of the actors are on the Sorcerer's Stone “Ultimate Edition” DVD.

Hey Dan, forget the guitar. Get a drum kit! ;-)

I saw these recently too, talk about amazing. Apparently they're from a recent issue of a UK magazine called Dazed and Confused. Wow, just....wow. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at that photo shoot, it must have taken all day! More pics here.

There are pictures and an interview from his latest movie project, Woman in Black, here. There are more photos from that on www.DanRadcliffe.co.uk as well.

Dream Big by Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band (Sorry, embedding disabled)

Eric Dodge's YouTube Channel

I didn't used to be into country music but Eric and Ryan are really cool--inspiring, uplifting stuff.

Ithacappella came to visit my daughter's high school last year and did a concert, one of the guys in the group is from here originally and they all stayed with his family. 16 college guys in a single family house, I don't know how they managed!

I can't believe it's been six months since I've posted anything...got a couple new crocheted items to post about, I've also been doing some painting. My daughter borrowed my camera, I'll have to get it back from her and take some pictures to post. I feel like I've really derailed, have to get things back on track (oops sorry, getting morose again--I really should start a second blog for writing about that stuff and save this one for what it was originally intended).

Photo credit: DanRadcliffe.com

(Sorry, the videos and some of the pictures got cut off on the side--didn't happen when I previewed the post.)

Late Earth Day Post -- The Evil of GMOs

Here's a video I found recently, it's pretty long but I think what it says is important:

The Future of Food One comment that struck me was that Bt corn is itself classified as a pesticide. Would anyone want to knowingly ingest a pesticide? I DON'T THINK SO! And yet we do it all the time in the processed foods we eat, many of which contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Interesting article, but very scary IMO:

GM Soy linked to Sterility No more babies within three generations? Have you ever seen the movie Children of Men? If Monsanto gets their way that could be our future.

I don't have the link handy but I read another article recently that said there were tests done on fields in India that had grown GMO crops; the results showed that after three years of growing GMO crops the fields had lower than normal amounts of microorganims, the rate was 12-30% depending on what organisms were measured. The crops were killing the soil.

My take on this? GMOs are poison and should be banned. I found a printable guide online at http://nongmoshoppingguide.com that people can use to avoid companies that use these toxic products. There's also more info at www.centerforfoodsafety.org and www.healthiereating.org. Also if you garden you can get your seeds from sources that don't sell GMO seed, some good companies I've heard of are Johnny's Selected Seeds, Baker Creek, and Home Town Seeds.

Based on the first two links it looks to me like Monsanto and companies like them only want to beef up their profits and they don't care who they hurt. Let's show them that's the wrong way to go.

(Some of my recent posts have been downers, I know...I've got some creative stuff going on too, just have to get some pics done and I'll be posting them too. I'm turning 40 in a couple weeks, maybe that's where this "let's do something to save the world" impulse is coming from.)