This is a photo of our sweet Beagle, Max.  Yesterday, fortunately my husband was off work when Max had his first seizure.  My husband rushed Max to the vet.  The vet examined him and told my husband that Max has idiopathic epilepsy.  The vet won't put him on medication unless he has several seizures in a week.  He also said that if he has a seizure lasting five minutes it will kill him. Fortunately his first seizure was only a few seconds, but I'm still worried about my sweet little friend.

This is a scan of a painting I made for my step-daughter.  I gave it to her last night for a Christmas gift.  I could not fit the whole canvas on the scanner, but you can see part of the black border.

Here's another Photoshop creation.

Angels We Have Heard on High

Angels we have heard on high
Sweetly singing o'er the plains,
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyous strains.

Refrain

Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 

Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why your joyous strains prolong?
What the gladsome tidings be
Which inspire your heavenly song?

Refrain

Come to Bethlehem and see
Christ Whose birth the angels sing;
Come, adore on bended knee,
Christ the Lord, the newborn King.

Refrain

See Him in a manger laid,
Whom the choirs of angels praise;
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid,
While our hearts in love we raise.

Refrain

This is an excerpt from the HHT Foundation website.  My mother is seriously afflicted with great amounts of blood loss.  This disease has nearly taken her life.  Her heart is currently being monitored and I suspect the problem she is experiencing with an irregular heartbeat is the cause of HHT.  I am also afflicted, but my symptoms are not as severe:

About HHT
Posted By Ann On September 30, 2007 (2:20 am) In About HHT

Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT) is a genetic disorder of the blood vessels, which affects approximately 1 in 5,000 people. It affects males and females from all racial and ethnic groups. The disorder is also sometimes referred to as Osler-Weber-Rendu (OWR) after several doctors who studied HHT about 100 years ago. In 1896 Dr. Rendu first described HHT as a hereditary disorder involving nosebleeds and characteristic red spots that was distinctly different from hemophilia.

Before Dr. Rendu’s work, doctors did not understand that individuals with what we now call HHT have abnormalities of their blood vessels, not a clotting problem in the blood itself. Drs. Weber and Osler reported on additional features of HHT in the early 1900s. More than one hundred years later, HHT is still often misdiagnosed in affected individuals and many doctors do not understand all of its manifestations.

What is HHT?

HHT is a genetic disorder that causes abnormalities of blood vessels. Most blood vessels in the body of someone with HHT are normal. However, a small percentage of the blood vessels in a person with HHT have a specific type of abnormality.

Blood vessels are the tubes that carry blood around our bodies. There are two types of blood vessels: arteries and veins. Arteries carry blood under high pressure out to all areas of the body after being pumped by the heart. Veins carry blood that should be under low pressure, back to the heart. An artery does not usually connect directly to a vein. Usually there are very small blood vessels called capillaries that connect an artery to a vein.

A person with HHT has a tendency to form blood vessels that lack the capillaries between an artery and vein. This means that arterial blood under high pressure flows directly into a vein without first having to squeeze through the very small capillaries. This place where an artery is connected directly to a vein tends to be a fragile site that can rupture and result in bleeding. We usually call a blood vessel that is abnormal in this way a telangiectasia (tel-AN-jee-eck-TAZE-ee-ya), if it involves small blood vessels. We tend to call it an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) if involves larger blood vessels. So, an AVM might be thought of as a big telangiectasia. The basic abnormality in the blood vessel is the same.

Telangiectases tend to occur at the surface of the body such as the skin and the mucous membrane that lines the nose. AVMs tend to occur in the internal organs of the body. The telangiectases (plural for telangiectasia) and AVMs of HHT occur primarily in the nose, skin of the face, hands, and mouth and the lining of the stomach and intestines (GI tract), lungs, liver and brain. It is not currently known why these abnormal blood vessels tend to occur in certain parts of the body and not others.

It's The Weekend, Time To Party!

This is my husband in Margaritaville in Las Vegas.  Yes, he was quite drunk.  We were walking the strip and checking out the casinos, and my husband had to be "wastin' away in Margaritaville."   

Anyway, it's finally the weekend, so enjoy it - but remember not to drink and drive!

Have fun!

Photoshop Creation

I was searching the internet this morning for some good images of eggs for a project I'm thinking about and I found this great photo of a Robin's nest and turned it into a brush in Photoshop.  I added some details, as you can see, and now I have a completed image.  This could be a good element to my creation, or in the very least, just some fun that I had with Photoshop.  If you're an artist and don't have this program, you just don't know what you're missing!  There are endless possibilities with Photoshop, and with all of the playing I've done, I'm sure I still haven't discovered all of the fun things about this program.  If you don't know how to create your own brushes, please leave me a message and I will tell you how to do it - don't worry, it's really simple!

How Do I Get My DH To Pick Up His Clothes?

Ok, so he strips right where he is, be it the living room or the bedroom and that's where the clothes stay.  I have asked him time and time again to put his clothes in the hamper and he can only manage to get them a few feet away.  He will even leave a trail starting with his jeans at the foot of the bed and ending with his socks next to the bed.  It's very annoying going from room to room picking up his clothes.  I work full time; I don't have time to be following him around with a laundry basket.  He doesn't even empty his pockets or remove his belt until he needs the stuff.  He thinks the back of a kitchen chair is where his coat belongs and his shoes belong on the kitchen floor next to a chair or next to the sofa in the living room.  I complained again this morning that he makes a joke out of my requests to keep the place semi-clean and he said "yup" and put his clothes in a laundry basket so that I could take them to the laundry room for him.  I have even tried going on strike but that only makes more work for me because he just doesn't get it.

One of the things I really enjoy collecting and creating with is vintage postcards.  I especially enjoy hand-tinted ones like this.  Isn't she beautiful?  I have hundreds of postcards and I cannot bear to cut them up, so I keep them stored in photo albums and scan the images into my computer to use in my artwork.  This also enables me to use Photoshop to retouch or alter the photos.  This one has not been retouched or altered, I think it is lovely just as it is and needs only a little bit of de-speckling, and a patch on the dog-eared corner.