I miss my old studio. Things like this happened there.

HaLP!! #chihuahua #cute #stuck #bra

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on Apr 8, 2014 at 9:35am PDT

MOAR.

A year ago yesterday. Chili and Escher hanging out

But first. ..let me take a selfie. #selfie #rescue #chihuahua #mutt

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on May 27, 2014 at 10:01pm PDT

Chili has so few friends, but I think thats ok. Hes an introvert

Tongue out.  #rescue #chihuahua #dogs

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on Apr 14, 2014 at 8:08am PDT

mOaR Escher





much yay.

Chihuahua for scale

So I found a giant monitor.

The spice was not pleased.

Parkinson's Law

 

 

"Expenditure rise to meet the income available."

 

 

 

When I was a kid, my bestest bestie friend in the world was Andrea. We spent most of childhood and young adulthood together before she decided I was too mature for her and I realized she was never going to grow up.

 

 

My parents gave us allowances, small ones. Mine was $7 a week for many years and it eventually bumped up to $12, briefly before I got my first job at 15. At which point it vanished.

 

 

Andrea grew up in a single parent household with lots of siblings. My family was considered middle class and hers was considered poor, but I never really saw any difference in our abilities to get through life and the day. The only thing that reminded us of her "poverty" were not the lack of things, but the lack of attention paid to things. After all, mom had to work, which meant she had little time for grocery shopping, yard work or cleaning.

 

The house always had stuff in it, lots of stuff, new furniture, new decorations. The kids had new clothing and toys. I remember Andrea always  had the coolest new clothes and interesting things for her room. Her mom regularly bought her and her siblings things or just gave them large amounts of cash (granted usually for xmas or a b-day).  My parents would screen the things I bought, esp clothing, and her mother did not.

 

 

Several red flags waved in my face during our friendship. The first was when we were kids. We both were obsessed, I mean absolutely obsessed with legos. She had a large collection when I met her, and I had one measly bin. This gap decreased and I overtook her collection dramatically in just a couple years. I saved all my pennies for legos, asked for them for xmas and birthdays. She did the same, except for the saving part.

 

 

We would walk to the mall and I'd but a small set at Kaybee toys. She would blow her entire wad of money at The Sweet Factory.

 

 

This would have been fine and dandy except she began to become upset that I had "more" things than her. I would point out that she was eating her money in candy and she didn't want to hear it. She just wanted to go on and on about how privileged I was and how she had nothing.

 

 

This taught me early on that happiness and wealth is a matter of perception rather than an actual dollar amount. Andrea always wanted more, more, more and was never happy with what she had. She also spent her money on silly things. As kids it was candy, as adults it was still candy and overpriced make up and clothes. She was never satisfied. She'd also blow her entire paycheck and then complain she didn't have money to eat and it was never her fault. Granted, as I learned to budget as an adult I occasionally overspent and had to scrape by for nessessities. But I never, unless I was unemployed, starved or spent so much money I had to beg and guilt others to feed me.

 

I often wonder if shes still stuck in the endless cycle of buy (stupid things) and be broke, buy and broke, buy and broke. I know I learned a lot from watching her over the years, and learned a lot about myself in the process.  I can only hope she came to an realization at some point that true happiness is from within and not the mall.

 





Things do not change. We change.

"To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often"

Winston Churchill

Blast from the past

I found this on google. Emma and Critter. One of my fav photos ever.

Four things Friday with random Photobuckets

I decided a random assortment of old photos from my photobucket account would be a good way to pop the cherry on my first FTF blog entry. There might be blood. 

Heck its me, there will be gross stuff.

First up is my first acrylic painting ever.

While I do consider myself an above average artist. Better than most, not as good as the people who do it professionally.  My art is certainly not "above average" in this category. I've tried to paint numerous times and I always get discouraged and never finish. Watercolours I fair a bit better, and ink and pencils being my medium of choice. (For my real, albiet old, shiz, click here)

 This painting of Adjour was the first I actually forced myself to finish. I hadn't created any art in almost a decade when I painted this to boot.  As is pretty obvious, I can grasp sky, water and creatures pretty well, but rocks have always baffled me.  I can remember being in elementary school and having to draw rocks for this or that and always knowing I sucked at it. Basically I can draw anything you want, but my rocks are the equivalent of stick figures. 

I will add that the entire thing was free handed and was not sketched out of planned in any way, including Adjour, who came out pretty dang proportionally correct considering theres no erasing paint. So maybe I'm not so hopeless after all. Damn rocks.

A nerd and her tree.

This tree in San Diego is a Ficus  (or fig for my non nerd readers) but I can't remember which one to save my life and the top is chopped off in the photo. I know I saw a huge Ficus Macrophylla that day, but don't have a photo of it. This tree is too tall to be Macrophylla in my opinion. 

The best part about this photo is when I uploaded it I named it "anerdandhertree.jpg" which, years later, reminds me that being funny is so ingrained I do it even when its not meant to be remembered.

Chili's DNA results from Wisdom Panel. I find it hilarious to look at because all the chihuahua images are identical and Chili doesn't resemble them at all. It contaminated my brain so whenever I try to think about what Chili's parents looked like, tiny limbed, brown and white long hair chihuahuas facing left always creep into my mind. I imagine them all barking in unison. Its adorable. Finding the thought of a bunch of chihuahuas barking adorable is a clear sign that you're a small dog lover.

Zipper Dog

 I chose this pic because I thought it had been lost and was pretty excited that it still existed. Critter went in for two mammary tumors and my wonderful vet ended up removing four total. If I remember correctly it was just over FIFTY staples.  This is what can happen if you don't spay your dog people. Spay your damn dogs.

Gross stuff. See I told you.