Sad doesn't say it well enough...

I have a lovely daughter, who is a mommy to my lovely granddaughter, she is going through a very hard time and I cannot seem to help her. I am at a loss as to what I can do. She tends to push me away, lie to me, deny things, be disrespectful to me and her brothers during this time, during these times,(yes, she has gone thru this before) when she is in the worst way. We all try to help, but we know she has to want us to help. I sit here crying wishing I could just whisk her away and make everything good for her.

Also, my sweet old father-in-law, he is passing away. The doctors say maybe a week. My husband is being tough (as his usual "solid as a rock" type that he is) but I know he wishes he could be there for him during this time.

I want to be able to talk to someone about this, but I also do not want to be a burden to another with these helpless feelings I have.

I hate life right now!!!

just hate it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Woes Me...

It is never a question of “what should I do?” It is “what can I put off till another day so I can do the things I really need to do?”

Am I sitting here doing the thing I really need to do,,, nope! But I am enjoying myself and that is a good thing, at this moment, until I am mad that I am not being very productive in my home, oh well… he will still love me anyway.

A few pieces of great art work from fellow Deviant Artists that have made me ponder

you really need to click here to see full view

"Chocolate by Juli-Snowwhite "

Mmm chocolate, I have had the urge for chocolate way too much lately, certainly does nothing good for the diet I am suppose to be on! (I promise tomorrow I will be better!!!!!)

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you really need to click here to see full view

" Through The Mist by kattnboys "

Oh to have pixie dust to sprinkle about and make all who taste of it be forever forgiving of a hard cruel world they must live in.

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you really need to click here to see full view

" My Desktop Screenshot by EvenDeathLies "

What a perfect desktop. To be so damned organized…!

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And here I am… a bit flighty LOL

you really need to click here to see full view

" My Desktop by Me "

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and here is my To-Do list (a very short version)

you really need to click here to see full view

" To Do List by Me "

Of course, the first thing is always something to do with the horses.

And if you look down on the list I write “put on new bedding” like if I just wrote “new bedding” I would not know what to do with it…. LOL Well, as the hubby always reminds me… I am blonde!

I seem to run out of time so often… Can you share some of yours?

Take care all!

Warmth... please!

Finally, the last few days have been warm, or I should say NOT COLD. Makes me long for the summer. We have had snow and rain so much that the horses stalls are solid muddy manure and trying to get through them is oh so much fun! LOL

I am one that would rather be working outside than in the house. So warm days make me want to do something outside, but inside work is what is on the books. We worked a lot more on our remodel yesterday texturing the walls, what a pain that was. The texture/hopper we rented is a piece of crap. The trigger is so hard to pull that I cannot even do it, so hubby has to do that part and.... to make it work best he must shake it as he goes along. I make the texture mix, which is not all that easy, but at least I can contribute somewhere. LOL! We were able to paint one wall and today we will do some touch ups and we should be able to paint a few more walls. I am so tired of the furniture all pushed into the middle of the room, I am tired of everything having a fine white powder coat to it from the sanding we have had to do. But this hard work will pay off. We will have a larger bedroom, woot woot! A bigger laundry room and a mud room, thank goodness!

Well, as I sit here on the computer listening to my hubby and puppy do their morning moans, I need to get in gear.

take care all!

Home again...

I cannot stand this cough, but since I have to be home, I get to play in my favorite spot on the web, DeviantArt of course!! I must confess, I spent way too long trying to make an avatar for myself to use there in my identity. Seems that everything I came up with, the finished kb size was too large. They only allow 15kb max. I am just learning to use PhotoShop CS4 and I am trying to figure out the tools. I used PaintShop Pro for many years and this is so different, but I do see that it will be fun once I use it more.It is suppose to be the best for manipulation pictures. I even saw a tutorial on YouTube that showed how to give a girl bigger boobs.. that was a crack up!But I am happy to start using it. I hope to use it for all the pictures I take of my grandbaby and of course my horses and other animals.

I am starting a new art piece. It is going to be called Tenuous. It will be my first piece made in PS CS4, other than these little itty bitty icon I did.

They are cute, but too much work when I don't know what I am doing!..... LOL

y'all take care!

So, I am off today because I am sick. I have a super bad cough. The kind that makes you puke cause you are counghing so hard.
I did go to the doc yesterday, she gave me cough syrup with codeine in it so I can sleep at night. And Albutirol to help catch my breath when it gets hard to breath.
But it is not stopping me from spending a little time here in my blog and a whole lot of time catching up on some old shows I have recorded.

I have become an addict of a place called deviantART.com

I go there every chance I get to see the wonderful art work that people produce in all medias. These are from the everyday, you and me type person.
Here is my lastest submission I put there.

I made this graphic to go to the song "Makin' Plans" by Miranda Lambert

I am getting so much inspiration to learn more in PS CS4, which I
got a few weeks back. Big change from PaintShopProX2.
There are some things I just do not like, or I should say
there are things in PaintShop that I wished PhotoShop CS4 had.
Just going to take some getting used to.

Excuse me while I having a coughing fit... take care all!
Take care all

I knew it would happen...

I found something to go hog wild with.

I have mentioned before that I am into doing graphics for my webpages... well, now there is a site that I am so addicted to called deviantArt where I can share all my graphics and get so many other ideas for new graphics. I am just dabbling in it, but there are so many there that are truly wonderful artists, I am in awe of them all.

TrainWreck... this would be a fantastic place to show your photos/prints. Many people there have their photos and artwork for sale.

I actually would rather be browsing or creating than anything else right now, but I have to do my taxes. They are screamin at me to get them done.

So, off I go

byeeee for now ya'll

Where or Where Has The Time Gone?...

I just was over at a fellow blogging gal's blog, Pony Girl Rides Again, and was reading her Blogger Hacker post. I am just not that organized. I used to sit here in my free time (oh yea, there was a such thing as that at one time) and fiddle with my blog layout. I used to, on my drive to work think about what can I write for my blog. I used to look for something worthy of a picture and then think about what wonderful witty thing I could say about it. I used to ... my famous words right now.

I give myself excuses, but the truth is, I go through phases. I learn new things and go hog wild toward that thing.

We moved to AZ and got horses! I absolutely love my horses and I went hog wild with them and made myself a cowgirl. (I am really just a wanna-be cowgirl)... But a cowgirl at heart all the time!

I got into this blogging thing and thought about it all the time when I first got started. I went hog wild and would read tons of other's blogs and have almost no other time for anything because I wanted to keep up with so many wonderful blogs. I envied those that could write so often, but I had fun and even got the hubby going with it too. (And he can write some good stuff).

Then we had foster kids and our time was geared toward that wonderful choice in our lives. Of course I went hog wild, how could you not when you were caring for these children that all they needed was love and family.

Then I got into scrapbooking, computer scrapbooking that is. I went... yep .. you know it.. hog wild. I would go to so many scrapbooking blogs and collect as much stuff as I could to work with my photos (I still have all that stuff). But did I actually put all that stuff to layouts with my photos.. NO. Not for lack of wanting to.. just because I got into something else.

I got into making music webpages. I went hog wild again! You can check them out HERE. I love making graphics in my paint program, so I would do graphics to music. I would listen to a song and take a bunch of stock photos of many things and come up with a picture of what I felt goes with the song. Some would take hours before I felt the picture was what I wanted, some I would trash after hours and start again. I am still doing these and work on them when I can.

Then my hubby got us working on the remodel. And because of this, I wanted to be able to let the kids in California see our progress, I have come back to blogging.

I never really left, but it is good to be back. And I hope to keep up with it more. But I won't make any promises... who knows what I will go hog wild about next. LOL

Remodeling Fun... and What a Mess...

So, here we are a into this remodel we are doing. 
We did bits here and there each weekend after the start of this remodel on Dec 5th.

The pictures below are from December 31st, through January 17th...

Dec 31st: This is from the formal living room toward what will be the bedroom, this is an archway that the hubby is getting ready to fill.  This is a mess!!

Here is another view of this archway but looking toward the living room.

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January 1st.  What a good way to start the new year...

This is the current bedroom wall, we are leaving this up because of all the electric to our bedroom is in these wires.

Here is the old bedroom door frame...

We were able to reuse this door frame, but ...the top of the frame (below) was a bit more difficult to get out because of the way it was hooked to the ceiling... we did it though!

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January 10th.... It took us  some installing and reinstalling to get the door into the moved doorframe, but we got it hung and level.. (this was FUN!!!! not!!!)

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January 16th.... We cut the bottom of the sheetrock away to get ready to run the electric.

And we punched through one section of the old wall into the bedroom.

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Today, January 17th.....  This is taken from where our bed sits looking into the family room. Seems so close, but after we get the furniture in the living room rearranged I am sure we will get used to it. If you look at this new bedroom door, the family room is to the left, the living room to the right and straight ahead is the other end of hall into the other 3 bedrooms.

Ok, we moved the wires and now we can punch out the rest of the old bedroom wall... WOOHOO!

I was standing where you see the TV stand in the picture below before my hubby punched out all of the wall in the above photo and apparently it was not far enough away, because a piece of sheetrock came out and killed my leg! Yep, it killed it! Put a big gash in my shin, even made it bleed. Well, look at it this way, I will carry this scar with me remembering what a fun time we had remodeling our home!.

As you can see, the bed has become a catch-all as we do laundry and try and keep up with the work on the house.

Did I mention was a big ass MESS this sheetrock is? Everything in the house has a fine white dust covering it. My poor little puppy coughs from the stuff and I am sneezing more than ever. It tastes like powder every time we breath and get some in our mouths!  pfffffttt!

I can't do too much of the heavy grunt work (it's best I just stay out of his way). So, I take to pulling the nails out of the wall framing we just knocked down.

These boards have 2 nails every 5 to 6 inches that have to be taken out... thank goodness for the little nail remover hubby has me use.

WOW... no more wall! This was a big break through!

I am now a bit sore and relaxing in my large bedroom, that kind of sounds hollow, to be able to get this little snippet written of what it has been like here in the Rock household lately.

Stay tuned.... there will be more to come soon.

A remodel, Snow & a Rainbow...

So, a few weeks ago, my hubby decides we are going to do a remodel. He wants to enlarge our master bedroom. So this was the start point...

December 5th!

Our first goal was to agree on a floor plan. Which we did right away (a miracle).

So we are going to take out the wall between the master bedroom and the dining room, which we were using as an office anyway. We will move the office into bedroom 2. Then we are going to move the washer and dryer out of the mud room and into where the master retreat is (which will then be the laundry room). Then we are going to add a wall between the bedroom and where the laundry will be.

Here we are starting demolition... this is the fun part!

Here goes the one dining wall in the hall area.

Of course... with the knocking down walls comes the great big mess...

Now.... the bedroom wall. .

We only knock out one side so we can keep the bedroom whole until we get the wiring moved and placed where it needs to go.

More clean up. This is the current master bedroom wall and door that will be coming down and

 moved about 10 feet.

Below is from what used to be the office/dining room wall, which is now part of the master bedroom and into the kitchen dining area. As you can

see, there are these open areas above the arch entries between kitchen and hall.

I am thinking I want to make something there to be able to have light between bedroom wall and kitchen wall.

I don't have a clue what to do here to preserve the light filtering in and to be able to keep the noise down from

bedroom to kitchen dining area.

Have any ideas???

This is the finished floor plan.

Along with the floor plan change, we of course are putting in new carpeting in the

bedroom and painting the long wall of the bedroom.

AND... putting tile in the kitchen.

We hope to have a bunch of the kids out from California

to help with this project some time in February.

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Monday, December 7th we have a storm come through.

 It was very windy, we could hear the wind all night long.

It brought snow!

The drive into work was treacherous. It was still dark.

The highway was covered in black ice and snow. We did not have the plows out here.

I eased my way onto the highway. The second I felt the truck fishtailing, I would let off

the gas and just keep myself in the middle of the road.

This guy in a small SUV behind me was on my butt, so I pulled over enough to let 'em by.

I noticed a lot of fishtailing going on with him, so I slowed down to keep a good distance. Then

I saw a bunch more fishtailing from him and then noticed he swerved from our lane over to the opposite side of the road and into the little snow bank.

I just slowly drove past and saw he was fine other than being stuck, so I did not stop.

I kinda gave him a wave and silently called him a jerk.

I made it to work just fine. A coworker that came in about 45 minutes later said he and several more cars were there stuck on the side of the road when she went by.

I did not get pictures that day.

BUT

Thursday, December 10th I took a few.

We still had snow on the ground.

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Today is December 13th... it is raining.

and look at the beautiful rainbow we saw from our front window!

It was a complete rainbow, but my camera lens was not wide

enough to get the whole thing.

I hope everyone is enjoying the shopping days before Christmas!

Take care, y'all!

momma/cowgirl

Update to the battle of the bulge!!

So, I had dental work on Monday. I have lost 14 lbs since then. I have stitches in my gums, so I have not eatin, I am sure that helps. I just don't want anything at all to bother the healing. But, you know darn well once I can eat again all the weight will find its way back onto my hips!

I have decided that now that we actually HAVE to clock out for 1/2 hour at work that I am going to take walks. The area is nice and I will go by several places that have horses so I can visit. Ten hour days at the computer can hinder this diet for me, but I am going to try my best.

My son, TRuck, he said a few weeks back, "Hey Mom, Dad, how would you guys like to walk with me when I am home in the evenings?" WOW, I asked him why he said this, I think he was being kind to say that he just wanted to spend time and felt that it would be good for all of us. But I am going to take him up on this.

I am also going to be able to ride with a friend at least once a week, which I absolutely love to do.

I'll check in with you again soon.