Add these two to your Christmas Wish List!

First up, The Amazingly Talented and Oh So Wonderful Hanna Andersson's A Creative Year-This 242 page BOOK is a year in Hanna's life taken from her blog. It kept me up after midnight reading. Finally at about page 102, I had to put the book mark in and call it a night (see picture below). I didn't want to stop. The book is a pure delight. Hannna talks about the ups (mostly) and downs (not too many for this talented Swede) of creativity. I love her beautiful photos sprinkled throughout the text. She apologizes for her writing as English is not her first language, but I have no problems at all reading the text (some of the grammatical errors are very cute and had me giggling). I. Love. This. Book. At first I balked about spending $45 for a creativity and then it hit me "Dummy! This is a self published book. You love Hanna's blog. You need this book." Taylor confirmed that I needed the book and that was all I needed to hear...I was going to wait until my airplane trek later on in the month to read this but couldn't...Make sure to put it high on your Christmas (Holiday, or Every Day) Wish List! You'll be carrying it around like I am...



While I was ordering IHanna's book, I thought I'd scope out Lulu a bit and investigate other "art Journals". Lo and behold, Erin Partridge's Little Black (art) book popped up. Oooh. Her artwork on her Live Journal made me sit up and take notice. I also ordered two little zines from her etsy shop that I absolutely adore. When the book arrived last night I was eager to get my hands on it. (I won't go into how the box was soaking wet-and it wasn't raining yesterday-and that Erin's book was dripping with water and water stained and how much that pissed me off...BUT I will say that Lulu is sending me a replacement copy-they rock!!!) Oh. Freaking A. Wow. A whole book of art journals-snippets of pages, full pages. COLOR. TEXTURE. REAL effing LIFE. I LOVE this book. 50 pages of pure Journal Goodness. I really do hope to see more from Erin. I'd buy another book from Hanna and Erin in a heartbeat...(hint hint).


*****
5: No Jury Duty. Done. Finished. Bye Bye. So what do you do when Jury Duty is over? Well, first off, to make sure they don't call you for a year you instantly fill out the first form and send it back. What do you do with the RED LETTER? You rip that fucking thing up and make art with it. Here's my two page journal spread that barely touches on why I hate the whole damn thing. Note the word: barely. Hmmm...It could be my 1996 experience with an asshole judge in L.A. when David and I went in to get our deposit back from the slum we lived in near USC. My Mom, David and I scrubbed the little room on Portland street clean as a whistle (or as clean as it could be). Yet, the landlord refused to give us our deposit back. So, we took her to small claims court and got half of it back (*sigh*). The Judge screamed at me to "Shut up" when I went to explain everything. He was a nasty, grumpy old man who just kept screaming at ME every time I opened my mouth (and this was before I figured out that I'd be the one who would have to do most of the talking in this marriage when we were out and about in public ;) I was ultra quiet then.). First time in Court left a bad taste in my mouth.

Fast Forward: A couple of traffic incidents where we were rear ended while sitting AT RED LIGHTS (this happened twice) and both times Cops drove by and we tried to wave them down as their heads were turned-looking right at us-and I'm yelling and waving my arms and they drove right by...Yup.

Next up, my job at Bookstar. I worked there from Jan 1996 until October (I think it was or maybe November?) 1996. I was very pregnant walking into the store for work one morning and tripped and fell in liquid garbage that was on the floor falling on my stomach, knees and wrists. I still wonder to this day if that's the reason for Tristan's kidney problem. Any ways, that was my last day of work there again and lots of time spent with doctors and therapy, and then being followed & video taped by the "other side", depositioned by the lawyers and what not...left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. What part of "I fell in your garbage. I was hurt. I was pregnant." did they not understand? We didn't go to trial as the other side offered to settle the day we were supposed to go to trial, but the whole thing just makes me want to scream inside when I think about it...I still shake when I go by certain places we had to go to during that whole time period...

Then came 2000 when our former landlord (the landlord I refer to as Your Bowel Movement) tried to evict us (as they held onto our rent check that they claimed not to have received) so that they could get us out and raise the rent for the next tenant. (Documents later proved that they had our check and were holding onto it even though they said they did not have it). Many, many frustrating trips to the Beverly Hills Courthouse later, we won thanks to the hard work of David. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't still be living in a "rent controlled" apartment (hurray for rent control). I won't go into the lawyers and judges there. UGH frigging double UGH. David lost several days of work during that time and money was extremely tight.

Then came some time in 2000 or 2001, I forget now what year it was. Tristan was little. It may have even been earlier then 2000. Our floors (and walls) are paper thin. It's an old building and no one seems to care that our rugs need to be replaced (they never replaced them when the last tenant here moved out). So when Tristan was little and learning to walk, he made a lot of noise. Our neighbor down stairs at the time (an LAPD Cop with a SEVERE attitude problem) HATED when we made any noise. When Tristan would walk he'd bang on the ceiling. If I dropped stuff (and I have a tendency to do that some times), he'd bang on the ceiling. Well one night about 7 p.m., Tristan ran from his bedroom to the living room. Asshole banged on the ceiling. I didn't do anything (never did). So, then I went into the kitchen and opened up the pantry door and the vacuum cleaner fell out. Asshole banged again. I got pissed took my foot and went BANG BANG BANG. Next thing I hear 'SLAM!' his door bursts open and shithead is running up the stairs (we found out later that he put his gun in his "fanny pack" "just in case". IN CASE OF WHAT? A BABY AND A 20 something year old are walking around their apartment???) I go to the front door and am getting ready to open it when BOOM. He kicked the fucking door in. WTF? He gets in my face and starts screaming and threatening us. David runs over and tries to close the door to get him OUT. My neighbor (that we loved and who died a couple of years ago) got between the cop and me and told him to calm down and go back down stairs. It was horrible. My building manager at the time called the cops. We should have pressed charges but no one told us we could do that at the time. He moved out a couple of months after that.

I won't go into my other rants about how I feel about the court house and the system, so I'll leave it at this and let the journal page speak for me. Next time I might just use my "Returned: Recipient Insane" stamp and see what happens...


*****
Is anyone else trying to "click" on the pictures to make them BIGGER and getting a message to save it as a jpg?? Usually I click on it and the picture is huge instantly...WTH?