March 6, 2002
Hi Everyone,
As you may have noticed, I bore very easily and love to change the look of my journal each time I post. I try to find web sets and arrangements that reflect a part of myself and meet the mood I'm in at the time.
The thing of it is, I have absolutely no talent for putting colors, textures or shapes together in a way that is pleasing. For some reason, that chip just doesn't exist in me. My ex-husband used to hang clothes together in my closet that went together.
That handicap makes creating a website a real challenge because it's hard to tell what graphics, colors, etc to put together. Fortunately, my son, Joe, has a real eye for such things and was the one to put together Eye on Soaps in its former incarnation and its makeover. The original site looked like this:
http://www.eyeonsoaps.com/indexorig.htm
and this
http://www.eyeonsoaps.com/GH/indexorig.htm
Actually, FIRST the grey part was tan and then we changed over to the grey.
A little over a year ago, I was ready for a change and he came up with the scheme you see when you log onto Eye on Soaps now.
He really did a great job. See, I can tell what looks great when it's done, I just can't do it.
With the Nonsoapy, I never used to change it, but then I felt like I wanted to be more expressive, so I started looking around for web sets. I really hit the jackpot because there are some wonderful web artists out there who know how to put together art, colors, backgrounds and graphics in some beautiful arrangements. I have no fear of running out of cool stuff to show you when I post (usually) every week day.
This week, when I was looking for web sets, I came across a really special site that I want to share with you. It's called Madison Designs and I am just so impressed with the quality of art and web page arrangements that are there. The lines are wonderfully clean. The content is marvelously varied and just absolute quality stuff. I've e-mailed with the web-genius who put it altogether and she is just absolutely lovely.
So be sure and go check it out:
Her name is Susan and she is just the total java and web design Queen of the Net. I can't say enough good stuff about the pretty things you'll find there. All she asks is that you give credit (which I always want to do because hey, these folks are doing something I sure can't do!) to her and to the artist and a link back. I fully and highly recommend her work. The components for this page came from her as well.
One of the things that really, really moved me is that she named her company and site after her little daughter that she lost. If you click here, you can see some of the beautiful artwork and poetry she uses to honor her little girl.
I am so grateful that there are people like Susan who can create and have the vision to see what looks wonderful together for people like myself who just don't have that ability. They can make me look good and free up my energy to work on the writing part. So to Susan and the other folks who put their talent right out there for others to use, I send out a big thanks!
It was a fairly quiet day. Eric was home sick with the same feverish yuck the boys had last week. He was in bed the whole day and I was in Delena's room cleaning. I packed away a lot of her things since I had been asking her for 4 days to clean her room and told her last night at about 4pm that if she didn't make a significant change in the junk level, I was taking over the job and she'd lose her choices about what went where. My theory is that if she is unable to manage her room, I start decluttering it until she can manage it, then after she's handled that for a while, we can begin to integrate her things back in again until it gets out of her control again. Right now, it looks really good, so we'll see where it goes from there.
Delena's room was really the last frontier in the house to master. Since I was busy in there all day, I didn't get everything done in the rest of the house, so once I get that handled tomorrow, I should actually have a clean house for the first time in years. I have a couch and a loveseat rounded over with clothes (about 10 loads or so) and that will need to be folded and put away. Scaling the old Tide Mountain. I'll wait until the kids come home tomorrow and then we'll do them all together. That makes the job go a lot faster and even though Delena will fuss (that girl is lazy as a rock, I tell ya), we'll get to laugh and talk and spend time together. Dylan LOVES to sort and fold clothes.
My pal, Georgia, sent me this link:
http://www.flowgo.com/greetings/splish_splash2/splish_splash2.swf
and I had to call her up so she could hear Nathan cracking up over it. He LOVES babies and a baby farting was more than he could stand. I thought he was going to cough up a lung from laughing so hard. He does the same thing over the Huggies commercials where the babies stop the leaks with their diapers. I really have to get him a babydoll.
Yesterday was my first day to integrate some carbs into my diet again. I made some fat free potato soup for dinner (since Eric was sick) and it was so yummy (and easy). I had two cups of that for dinner and felt satisfied. I was worried about how my body would handle the carb integration, but so far, so good. Had eggs for breakfast as usual and lunch was 2 more cups of the soup. Dinner was a half cup of mashed potatoes and a boneless, skinless chicken breast. I was really happy that I didn't have cravings today and really felt that I was eating to fuel my body and not to feed emotions or entertain myself. Another successful day down and soon I'll be to two weeks of eating differently. Next week is when I scheduled to up the exercise ante. :-)
Ahhh. Ten PM and time for Katrina to pack it in for the day and go to sleep. This week, I go into the weekend with the house already nice and clean and maybe, just maybe, I can actually have a weekend to relax and kick back for a while.
For now, good night and I'll see you tomorrow.
Love,
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Good God, She's Verbose! There's More!
