Today I took the boys to the pediatrician

Little Man is going to turn 4 on August 13. He weighs 58 lbs and he is off the chart...and I mean WAY off the chart (the doctor showed me) and it looks like he will end up being much taller than either myself or my husband. The downside of his visit - he might need a little bit of speech therapy, but maybe not...just that he should be evaluated.
He had his finger pricked to check his iron levels (fine) and had 1 shot. Don't ask me what it was, I'd have to go look it up. It's hard to remember the names of all the inoculations. We have all the paperwork we need now for preschool and pre-kindergarten. Yay! My daughter (age 13) was a big help, she would take each child out into the hallway while one was getting shots, so that cut down on the psychological trauma at least!

Little Guy is 20 months old and weighs 28 lbs. He's not way off the chart, but he's right on it, right on track. He was honored with 3 shots. He is doing fine with it, he had a really long nap today which kind of concerned me, but he is happy and all over the place tonight. His latest hobby is grabbing any DVD case he can and removing the DVD out of it. This keeps me from getting bored and is good exercise to bend over, pick them up, put them in the right case and put them away again.

George Lucas Pencil Portrait

This is one I worked on last year for only about an hour or so, while waiting for my daughter when she was being tested at Sylvan Learning Center. I had a magazine photo of George Lucas of Star Wars fame, and I was just doing this for practice. When my daughter emerged from the testing area, that's when my drawing stopped.

Usually I completely do a portrait, and I fully expected to draw in each and every beard hair...but unfinished it has stayed, and the more I look at it in this unfinished stage, the more I like it.

http://www.pencil-portrait-drawing-artist.com

busy bizzy dizzy

I haven't been posting to el blog much lately, because I have been working...fiercely!

In the evenings, I work on black and white pencil portrait commissions, because all I need is light...not necessarily perfect light. I have two portraits to finish up that are in colored pencil, but I really can only work on those during the day, so I can have that wonderful natural light. It takes correct lighting and a lot of time to get the flesh tones correct for a colored pencil portrait. It is very slow going. I feel guilty that I can't punch it out really quickly, but I want it to be good.

I work on the two colored pencil artworks when I have my littlest one napping. You can imagine, that doesn't leave a lot of time. It can get frustrating. It seems like as soon as I set up to work it's time to quit...either those naptimes are really short...or maybe that just means I really enjoy what I'm doing and don't want to stop! I think it's a little of both.

But considering the demands that I have - 2 children under age four, two 13 year old girls (who should help more...I need to get militant on them!)...laundry, dishes, vacuuming, miscellaneous damage control cleaning, getting the bills paid, running errands, going grocery shopping...helping my daughter study for math Gateway test retest (summer school homeschooling basically)...whew...again...considering the demands I have, I actually get quite a bit done. It is like a challenge. I finished a portrait of a baby yesterday, a portrait of a little girl today, I have a stillborn baby portrait to still work on...I haven't gotten it quite the way I want and I'm looking at it over and over to decide what else to do - and a little boy's portrait that just needs a bit of tweaking and I will be done with that one.

I bought some One A Day vitamins that say they add 'energy.' I get sooo sleepy around 3 pm it's ridiculous so I thought this would be good. I looked at the label, and it has caffeine in it! Can you believe that?!? It has equivalent of about 1 cup of coffee. I'll let you know if it works.

plant roots of all evil

The leak detection guy came to the house today. He oddly reminded me of a better looking, younger Billy Crystal. Not as funny as Billy Crystal, but who is. The leak is under a boxwood bush by our front door. It cost $360 to confirm where the leak is located. The plumber charges $105 an hour for digging. I can save some money by digging it up myself. I went out with the lopping shears and cut off most of the branches as step one of the process.

I think the bush next to it will need to be removed too - better safe than sorry, since it's probably the roots of the plants that have wreaked this havoc unto me. It will be a slow job digging it out, because we'll need to be soooo careful not to cause worse damage. If the plant is just yanked out, it's going to rip the pipe out with it and we'd be without water until the plumber can fix it next week.

So it's going to be a painstaking excavation-type project. I'm not upset over losing the bush - it has gotten too big and blocks me from getting to the water faucet outside. But I didn't expect to do a bunch of gardening this weekend! I think it will be worth it though, because I can see taking the plant out could potentially take 2-3 hours x $105.

When I started cutting the plant, I kept hearing a squeal like sound that made me wonder if there was some kind of animal life lurking in the plant. I had to stop several times and look - thought maybe a bird nest, but didn't see anything. It was more than a little weird. Turns out it was just my sandals! That was my duh moment for the day.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by to read my blog!

what is an artist to do

I hate to say this, but I think I am outgrowing my website. I am having a lot of issues with it.

I used to be able to log in to it and make a change here or there, or add a link, but now it's difficult to do. Tripod doesn't work well in the Firefox browser - the easy sitebuilding features don't work in Firefox, and I have to do everything via HTML (my nightmare, although I have self taught myself a bit of it to semi-function.)

Here is the html for me working with html:

< html >
< Primal Scream src="Darla">Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
< /Primal Scream src=Darla >
< /html >

Because of Tripod's apparent problems with the Firefox browser, I kept Internet Explorer on my computer so I could still work on my website. But for the last fews times I've tried to login, Tripod acts as if I didn't input any login information. I see the username and password going in, but it does nothing except refresh the page.

Soooo, when I get time, which at this point may be 2008, I'm going to see what I can do about my website. I have some portraits on Artwanted.com that I haven't been able to add to my site.

You can see them at this link...
they were done quite some time ago but in between not having much time to work with the site even when it was working well, and now the site editing is definitely not doing well, I think you will really need to visit my artwanted portfolio to see anything done in the last 2 years or so.

I kind of want to totally start over with my site on a new server, but my domain name is stuck with Tripod. Overall though, I have been happy with Tripod, but there are some definite issues and that is very boring for a blog, if it hasn't put you to sleep already.

Well, goodnight.

Water you talking about?

God has been really good to us this week.

He wanted to teach all of us to be thankful for the wonderful things we take for granted - like running water. We have a leak...the water is not leaking into the house but it probably would be if I didn't turn the water off at the meter. I have had two full days now of having plumbers come to the house and give estimates. Some of them don't just give estimates, some charge $25 for their estimate. They also let you know this after they've given the estimate. They tend to forget to tell those things before they come out to the house. I understand why they need to do that, I just like being told beforehand, otherwise I feel that I have been tricked a bit. I paid it, but it did make me a little bit more negative-minded toward their work proposal/bid. I am a little overly sensitive, but so often the little things like that tip you off to a company or person's overall credibility. Like they say, little things mean a lot.

All in all, being without water isn't too bad, I can turn on the water for washing dishes, doing laundry, and for showers. It's a matter of planning ahead, and I'm really thankful that I wasn't behind at all on laundry when all this started. It's a big inconvenience to our teenage daughters of course, and when one of them brought up what a pain this is, I filled them in on what people in our family in the not-so-distant past had to do to get water. They'd have to pull it up from a well, and then carry it, among other chores. All we have to do is turn the water on again at the meter.
So I think we can cope with it! My main concern is getting it fixed so it won't harm the house.

The two plumbers that I have narrowed the job down to have vastly different quotes. One will replace pipes with Polyethylene (also called PEX) for $1,850, and the other plumbing company would do it with copper for $3,200. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but I think the PEX will do the job for us. At first I wasn't going to hire a leak detection service, (tack on there another $325 for 2 hours with a $35 trip fee) ...it seems excessive, but I think now that I might have that done, just to make sure we get to the root of the problem. One of the most disconcerting things is having so many different opinions on the same problem. I do care a lot about the amount of money, but I know that cost isn't the only factor to be considered. I have spent a lot of time today reading about PEX versus Copper pipes, the pros and cons of each, and finding the most unbiased opinions I could. I think I know entirely too much about it now. I will be available for dissertations at universities on this topic within a few days. My brain can't stand to deal with much more about it. I am thunk out.

"Dangit Jim, I'm an artist not a plumber!" (that was added for benefit of Star Trek fans)

Now...If the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol would show up on my porch the same day the plumbers are here to do the work, that would be great. Just a little hint there...just throwing that out into the world wide web....

dissed!

My soon to be 4 year old was watching TV this morning when a commercial for Life Alert came on.
That's the product that says "now you can be alone without feeling alone." Apparently my son was afraid that I would be lonely, so he said, "Mommy, you need to get dat." I told him that I don't need it now, but maybe later...when I'm old. He said, "You a-weddy old."

Well that was comforting!

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