Friday, January 30, 2009

Learning All The Time!

Figured out how to get my PNG's to show up properly and to get my Animated GIF's to show up as well.
WooHoo!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

OMG - Wretched, Horrible Little Monsters!

So it's been one of those drudgery days. Fighting those little battles everybody faces every day. Trying to keep the house tidy, all those rotten niggling little chores we never really want to do and only do because we need to.

I'm finally calming down after having my daughter tell me that Z needs my phone number because I'm watching her tomorrow. I call Z's dad an find out that I am indeed watching her tomorrow. I asked, AGAIN, if he could give me more notice in future. This really torque's my chain because the last time I watched her I found out about it when she knocked on my door, barged in my house and TOLD me "My dad said for me to come here, he's going to be late tonight." (Hmmm, should her dad have told ME? Poor girl is a latch key kid. So what am I to do? I can't punish her because her dad hasn't got any sense. So anyway I'm just getting my feathers unruffled from that and decide that I need some ME time at the computer.

At some point DH says he's heading out to the grocery store and I try to call Pixie to see if she wants anything not on the list. Phone call drops straight into voice mail. GRRRR! Her battery is dead. Hobble out there track her down and get her to come back to the house so we can plug in her phone. AND do the hand off between her phone to going back to the walkie talkies for now.

So the girl is playing, the hubby is out getting groceries, IncrediMail just flipped out on me so I was waiting for a download to finish so I could restart and then prepare to tilt at windmills (aka: try to get my computer to play nice with me)...

The walkie talkie crackles to life, I hear static, wind, what sounds like crying, screaming and I'm on my feet trying to make out the words as I'm heading for the back door. I think I hear "hurting" "friend" and "Help". I'm trotting the length of the house now asking her "say again, you're breaking up". I'm at the gate when she speaks again. crackle, snap, static "they're hurting" swoosh, static "my" crackle, feedback, crackle "HELP" as I'm opening the back gate looking out to see which way to run. I spy Pixie at the base of a tree with another playmate as I'm heading for the road I continue my scan further afield in the field and see a clutch of boys bent over something on the ground. I boom "HEY!!!" in my megaphone voice in their direction. A bunch of heads pop up to see where the voice of God is coming from "KNOCK IT OFF!!!" I bellow as I cross the road (not trotting now as I see my girl is safe, as are all the other children I can see). Suddenly boys jump up and start running fast an furious scattering to the winds, one or two have not yet made it to their feet. I see the girl on the ground. "LET GO OF HER, GET AWAY FROM HER!" Now I AM running, dodging around the bike cop as I'm barreling into the field [bike cop continues going the other way). "YOU GET AWAY FROM THAT GIRL!" I roared. The rest of the boys scatter. I see little girl sobbing, stagger to her feet, clutching the back of her head, and coughing. I reached her (it seemed to take forever) and ask if she's okay and what happened. That tear stained little face looked up and me and said "They pushed me down, they were choking me." I scoop her up in my arms, Pixie and the other girls are coming up now. Pixie run and get my phone. I've never seen my baby run that fast in her life. I've got swarms of kids now telling me "I didn't do nuthing", and all trying to tell me what happened all at once. Pixie is back with the phone as I'm trying to get the girl away from the crowd, shield her from the wind which was bitter cold. I'm holding and rocking her and dialing the phone to call Security Forces.

After giving as much information as I can to the dispatch I ask the girl to show me where she lives, because now the police / security forces are on the way and they need to talk to her, but I gave them my address so she needs to go back with me. We collect up the mom and and now have a huge parade of kids, sobbing girls trying to say what happened, boys trying to tell who did what and which way they went.... What a Mess!

The cops show up, the ambulance shows up (stabbing? the driver calls out..No, no blood here I called back as Security Forces tell them where they need to go. He comes back and tells me there is a domestic incident up the street with a stabbing victim - OMG Is there something in the air today????? Another ambulance shows up as we're determining which additional children have been hurt. Another girl was hit with a stick by one of the boys who had fled, and a very young boy (5 or 6?) had been punched by these little thugs. The 6 year old was trying to help his cousin, the girl being choked. My daughter and two other girls had also been menaced by two boys wielding chair legs as weapons one of which contained nails poking out of it. I hear one of the other boys telling the officer that one of the boys involved in the assault was just seen leaving the area in a vehicle driven by his mother! The boys who did this are 10 or 11ish.

Get everybody into my house so the victims can be assessed by the Paramedics and the police can start getting statements and giving instructions.

DANG! TOO MUCH CHAOS.

So finally all of the victims are loaded into the ambulance and taken to the ER, and all of the witnesses load into their vehicles and head off to the Cop Shop to make their "official" statements.

Pixie and I got home 8ish. Had a quick dinner, cleaned up Pixies room enough to get an air mattress in there for Z and then get her bed made up. Get back out to the Living Room see that it's 10 and tell the girls to get ready for bed and then GO to bed.

Then I turn my attention to the kitchen which hubby destroyed preparing dinner...Got that cleaned up. Realized I had never rebooted my computer...come over here, run my clean up and a defrag and then reboot.

Tell this story and now I'm ready to fall out. I've discovered that adrenalin is an amazing chemical. I sprinted up and down uneven ground and inclines. Walked (in my PJ's how embarrassing) completely to the other side of the housing area and back with this little girl. And I didn't even notice my ankle until about half way through the police report at the station.

I'm noticing it now though!

The irony of this story is that I had just yesterday told DH we needed to take some sort of action on this group of thug-lets as they've been harassing our daughter and several other kids in the neighborhood. Threatening them with "gonna get you", "something bad is gonna happen", etc, etc... all vague enough to be the kind of thing the Security Forces would just blow off.

Tuns out they had actually threatened death. Found that out after we had gotten home from the Cop Shop.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Deck the Gorjuss Halls © Suzanne Woolcott / gorjuss


And the side border only version



Yay! I think I'm getting the hang of this!

Smileycons!

Huggles,

Faerie

Bunny Betty Bows © Olivia / Bettie Paige


Okay, here's this one!

And the Side Border Version

I promise that I will do both versions of a stat at the same time in future.
Sorry if you got double posts for each one...

My poor devoted fans!
ROFL!
Smileycons!



IMFs for my letters

Yay! I will be getting my IMFs up a little at a time.
And maybe one day I can do as well as Kimmi and get both the tag and the letter in there!
Both Visable!
Smileycons!

Angelic Eloquence © Abranda Sisson imf



Need to make the previews bigger?
But hey, it's a start!

Thanks Again Kimmi!!!

YAY! I figured out the IMF Link Thing!

In the immortal words of London Tipton YAY ME!
I got the imf link figured out!
Thank You Kimmi for all your patience and assistance!

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Testing - Preview & Link

This is my "gorguss winter" set.
The letters are animated just like the tag.
I'm hoping this will work....maybe, kinda...sorta?
It's a start. LOL
And here is the side border version:


Smileycons!

Friday, January 2, 2009

On the edge...

Last night my Pixie decided she needed to climb into bed with Mom & Dad, this is always an option and we are glad to be security for her.
However, for many hours last night I was perched on the very edge of the bed, even my arm dangling on the floor for lack of room in the bed...I had my pillow (and my head) on the nightstand. I'm sure it was comical to look at, but no fun for me. At least Pixie and Daddy had a good night's sleep.
*giggle*
Just wanted to share.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

A Gorjuss Winter


I had a lot of fun with this one! Though figuring out how to do the sparkles on the different levels took me a little while...

I've once again used the enchanting art of
Suzanne Woolcott, this little darling is titled "Dropped" which I purchased from AMI, however, Mz. Woolcott's licenses are now available at http://www.gorjussart.com/.

The scrap elements are by Clarey (
Clarey's Designz) from her "Iced Berry" Kit, which I purchased at Designer Scraps Livin Large.

Last, but certainly not least, is the wonderful
tutorial by Babe.

I got very, very brave and actually submitted the tag to gorjuss' Winter Wonderland Tag Contest! I don't know where that instant of bravery / insanity came from....but I did it none-the-less.