I survived the rapture.

I heard NPR take a poll asking people What's the last song they want to hear tonight before they die, inspiring me to make my own rapture playlist for my ipod. And repent. Not.

A few of my personal favorites are:
It's the End of the World As We Know It by R.E.M. (easy one)
Hello Goodbye by The Beatles ("You say goodbye. I say hello.")
Long Day in the Universe by The Darling Buds
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John
Bitter End by Dixie Chicks ("Farewell my old friends. Let's raise a glass to the bitter end!")
Time to Pretend by MGMT
(the climax) Highway to Hell by ACDC
Salvation Song by The Avett Brothers
What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

P.S. BreadPod is by Edith Zimmerman (but I think it would have been funny if she called it RYEPod! I crack myself up.)

The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson

April was Autism Awareness Month so I decided to read The Horse Boy. I had first heard this story when I watched their documentary on Independent Lens on PBS. I didn't know it was also a book, but stumbled upon it in the horse section at Bookmans and felt I had to pick it up.

The Horse Boy is the story of Rupert, his wife Kristin, and their son Rowan, who was diagnosed with autism when he was 2 1/2 years old. They struggle with different suggested methods to help his autism, which were not only costly but seemed to make no difference with his speech delay, his inability to connect with others, and his habit of pooping his pants. In fact, his therapy seemed to be making his uncontrollable tantrums even worse.

Rupert is a journalist who, if I remember correctly when Rowan was about 4, was working on a story about Bushmen from the Kalahari Desert who were struggling with their government over land rights. Some Bushmen healers performed a healing on Rowan and he showed marked improvement for a few days after.

Rupert also noticed that his son had a strange connection to animals. Rupert was raised around horses and noticed that whenever Rowan approached a horse it immediately dropped its head in submission. Between the Bushmen healers and the horses he gets it in his head to take Rowan to Mongolia on a healing journey, because Mongolia is the birthplace of the horse and known for its powerful shamans. He even consults Temple Grandin when he comes up with the idea to see what she thinks. She basically tells him he should do it because so little is known about autism and at the very least it can be eliminated as something that doesn't help.

The bulk of the book is the family's journey (when Rowan is 7) through Mongolia on horseback and in a van as they visit various healers. The shaman are so thankful for Rupert's faith in them because when China occupied Mongolia the Mongolians could have been jailed just for having a drum. After the communist era, shamanism had died off somewhat and has only recently made a stronger comeback.

I won't tell you what happens during their quest to help Rowan but the story really struck a chord with me. It was heartbreaking to see what parents of an autistic child go through, and amazing to learn what the Shaman say and do for Rowan.

I didn't finish the book until May, but I think it's ok to be aware of autism in May also.

just for fun

I was organizing paper in my scrapbook room and came across some really cute shopping paper by love, elsie. That inspired me to scrapbook my spring break shopping trip to Jerome. Once I put the pictures and paper together they did not have the same vibe so I changed my plan. But the "cool culture" and "go see discover" stickers are by love, elsie.

A closer look (see my crushed penny on the top left?):

I included a cute business card from one of the shops (bottom right):

Just a note, the crow picture is a print I bought that day. I went to the artist's website and printed out a small version of the print on photo paper to include in my layout. It feels like that would be frowned upon, but I thought it would be a nice way to remember when I got it. To reverse my karma you can visit Raina Gentry's website here.

Endeavour's final launch was today.

And only 1 more NASA shuttle flight scheduled. I remember when I wanted to be an astronaut.

P.S. blastoff is by bundle1.

wedding by Disney

My friend showed me this photo collage on Thursday and I was shocked by the uncanny similarities! I did not watch the royal wedding but made sure to tune into Fashion Police to see what everyone wore. The funniest thing to me was how upset the Fashion Police were that the Prime Minister's wife showed up without a hat. Joan Rivers said, "It's a slap in the face!" Wow. Good reminder to get your friends' opinions on your wedding outfit.


And while I'm on the topic of weddings I just wanted to say congratulations to my friends Amy and Patrick who got married yesterday, and Elsie and Jeremy who are getting married today!

The Fascinator

Long live Jambi.

While watching America's Next Top Model last night I busted up laughing when I saw Jay Manual sporting a turban. I thought I saw a resemblance to Jambi!


Did anyone see The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway on HBO? That brought back some memories.

And while searching for that photo of Jambi I found these rad tattoos from Fuck Yeah, Tattoos!:

Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho.

There's a duck in my pool!

Tonight as I was cleaning up dog poop in the backyard I heard a duck quacking. Two ducks have been using the airspace above our backyard for the last few months so I started looking for them. Suddenly a black duck, not from the pair I know, came flapping down and landed in our pool!!! It swam around enjoying the new water we recently put in. Captain just sat there looking at it while Caprica trotted around the pool trying to figure out how to get to it without getting in the water. I started laughing and it flew off as quickly as it landed.

It made me think of To Market, To Market by Anne Miranda, illustrated by Janet Stevens. As part of our reading program I've been reading it to my class twice a week for the past month or two. I love the illustrations, part photograph, part drawing.

My favorite illustration is when the lamb is in the dishwasher, but the duck in my pool made me think of the part where the woman shouts, "There's a duck on my head!" I often tell my class that you know you're having a bad day when there's a duck on your head.

They like when we get to the end and she makes soup instead of slaughtering the animals she bought from the market. I have a big pot and beany-baby-esque vegetables so we can make the soup with the lady.

Regular Couponing

I started watching Extreme Couponing last month and now I can't stop myself. This show combines many of my favorite t.v. elements: reality, addiction, hoarding, and shopping!

For those of you who have never seen the show, basically it follows Extreme Couponers as they clip thousands of coupons, go to the grocery store, fill up tons of grocery carts, ring up hundreds of dollars worth of groceries, freeze up the cash register with their coupons, and pay a few bucks in the end. It's impressive and crazy at the same time!

Although you will never find me dumpster diving for coupons or stealing people's newspapers, the show has inspired me nonetheless. We already get the paper twice a week, so I decided to clip coupons for one month and see how much I could save too. I only clipped coupons for things we already buy and we only bought things we were going to anyway, and I saved $75.93!!! T.V. is not only for evil!

first Saturday of May

The first Saturday of May is National Scrapbook Day and the Kentucky Derby. I decided to combine the two so I brought the card table into the living room.

That's the winner, Animal Kingdom. Too bad his original jockey got hurt before the race -- he could have been a part of history!

Remember when we went to see the Pauson House? We also got to go on a tour of Taliesin West and I picked up a Frank Lloyd Wright glass design stencil to use on my scrapbook pages. During the tour I learned that the architects in training there only sharpen their pencils with pen knives. So I used a pencil to trace the stencil onto my layout. I also learned that Mr. Wright liked expansion and compression, so throughout the Taliesin West house we were bending down and straightening up. I tried to line up my photos on top in a bending down and standing up pattern.


I used letter stickers that looked like burnt wood for the title. Morbid, I know.

The first Saturday of May is also Free Comic Book Day, but I didn't have time to fit in a trip to the comic book store with everything else going on!

The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

I started reading The Year of Pleasures on April 10th which was Do Nothing But Read Day on LibraryThing, and the theme of the group I was reading with was First Birthday. I chose The Year of Pleasures because it went with the theme and is a book from my To Be Read Challenge list (it's been on my shelf since 2/10/08).

I did more than read on April 10th (don't tell!) so it took me longer than a day to read it. I've been putting off reading this book because I thought the author was the same woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love which I didn't like, but that's Elizabeth GILBERT. My bad. Also it's about a woman whose husband has died and I have been trying not to read books with dead husbands. This book wasn't overly sad though. The widow gets in her car and drives until she gets to a town she feels she should live in. The citizens and her long-lost college roommates help her put her life back together as she tries to make sense of the little notes her husband left her to find after he died. I liked this story because it reminded me of The Mitford Series by Jan Karon, where one person's problem is another person's solution.

My favorite quote:
There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, "Two wolves live inside me. One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret. The other is the good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love for the world. All the time, these wolves are fighting inside me." "But grandfather," the boy said. "which wolf will win?" The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."

May the fourth be with you.

Always.

P.S. Shotgun-riding Chewbacca dog is from blastr.

this length of antler is very "in" right now

my favorite car

This month at These Are a Few of My Favorite Things the challenge is to choose any of their past themes to scrap. I chose my favorite car (Carmione like Hermione) because in my school scrapbook I had a page saved to scrapbook the story of when I bought it.

The paper scrap that says Earth Love is a strip I cut off of the bottom of another piece of patterned paper. I was so excited when I found a Prius acrylic stamp and now I got to use it! I also used my library date stamp for the dates. Here's my journaling which I got off of my Myspace blog. Remember Myspace?

6/5/06 Wonder of wonders, my Toyota Prius arrived today!!!

Ooh, it's so pretty and it's like a car from the future.

When I told my class that I was leaving right after school to get my new car they started clapping. It's nice to have my own little group of cheerleaders.

6/6/06 I took my class on a field trip today to the parking lot so they could see my new car! They thought it was very cool (because it is) and there was a general air of excitement.

After going out to my car this evening I noticed it has about 200 little fingerprints all over it now. Pretty cute!

Good Days

The challenge at Scrapping the Music this week is to use "Good Days" by Alain Clark as inspiration. I had never heard the song before and I'm not a super fan, but it inspired me to scrap this 2 year old photo from Chuck E. Cheese's that I've been using as a page holder in my scrapbook. My friend Angi accidentally bought 2 Chuck E. Cheese scrapbook kits (I hate it when that happens!) so she gave me some paper and die cuts to use. Sweet! I was also so happy I got to use my triangle punch to make a banner!

I still have some of the kit left which I can use for the pictures of my nephews which still need to be printed out. Here's a sneak peek because I know you can't wait: