Deb's Minis

A win for the good guys

2011-12-07T00:30:00.002-07:00

The outrage today reached some seriously epic proportions as Paypal scrambled to release a statement that they were working with Regretsy to fix things even before April Winchell got the call from them. They threw their phone rep under the bus for the whole thing and are doing as little as possible but the main thing is that they've released the funds and the Santa drive can go on as intended. If you helped spread the word, thank you. Not even eBay/Paypal can ignore it when the spotlight is turned on and thousands of people point their fingers at them. The fact that local, national, and even international news services picked up the story didn't hurt. :-)

As I said earlier, whether you love or hate April doesn't matter. A big corporation did something to hurt people in need and April and her followers stood up and said that we aren't going to stand for it......and it worked. Will it stop paypal from screwing over other people? Of course not. No one is going to believe that their hearts have grown three sizes bigger today. But there are 200 families who are going to have a bit of Christmas cheer because enough people had the back bone to stand up and point their finger when they saw an injustice taking place.

Help save Regretsy's Secret Santa from Paypal

2011-12-06T08:45:00.001-07:00

Whether you love or hate Regretsy, there's no denying that April Winchell and her followers do some seriously wonderful things when they set their mind to helping someone in need. This year they adopted 200 children in a Secret Santa gift giving drive that not only reached the goal of $3000 in just a few hours, but actually generated enough donations to provide a little extra to their parents so they could put a Christmas dinner on the table. I mean, we're talking about kids who are so sick that their parents can't afford gifts because every penny goes to doctor bills.....parents who are unemployed.......even one child whose father is dying of cancer and might not even be around on Christmas morning. April may be snarky, but that woman has a heart of pure gold when she sees someone in need.

This is a genuine "I see something I can do to help so I'm going to do it" kind of caring about fellow human beings. I get so sick of seeing huge charity organizations spending 90% of the donations they receive on fancy luncheons and motivational weekends for big contributors, that the kind of love Regretsy dishes up is refreshingly sweet, direct, honest, and above all, genuine.

And then Paypal had to go and screw it all up by saying that April was wrong to use the donate button because she's not a non-profit. Said the PP rep, "You can raise money for a sick cat but not for poor people". Really? I think that's a new low for a big corporation. April tried to fix it and they made her undo it again. So far Paypal has taken their share of transaction fees *FOUR* times but Regretsy is no closer to getting the toys to the kids. In addition to all that, they've frozen April's account which includes the bank account anchored to it and all the proceeds from her recent book and will not remove the freeze for 6 months. So yeah, she's paying a pretty high price for trying to make sure 200 needy kids got something nice for Christmas and their parents didn't have to figure out how to sculpt a turkey out of Spam and split a package of Ramen six ways.

You can read about it here http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/#comments (strong language warning) or you can just google "regretsy, paypal" and read all the news stories that are popping up this morning after the outrage started last night. It's also trending on Twitter (#paypalhatesxmas).

Right now the goal is to get Paypal to fix this mess so the toys and dinner funds can get to the 200 families in time. As it is, shipping time is going to be cutting it pretty short. You can do some things to help if you'd like to.......there are email addresses listed for Paypal executives in the link above so drop them a note and tell them how you feel about it. Most of you reading this have business accounts with Paypal and we're the ones who put the caviar on their toast points at those motivational weekends so they might listen to us if enough of us speak up. You can sign a petition at petition.org that will be going to the CEOhttp://www.change.org/petitions/president-paypal-unfreeze-regretsys-account-to-help-children-in-need . If you have a blog you can give them a shout-out to raise awareness or you can share this post on your Facebook page or write one of your own. Whatever you can do will make a difference.

Y'all know that for me to write this much right now is an effort but I can't sit back and watch another huge corporation cheat 200 little kids out of what may be their only Christmas gift and dinner. Most of all, we can't stand by and let another cold corporation dictate how and where we give our charity.

Another dead end

2011-10-15T09:57:00.000-06:00

I saw the new oncologist yesterday and as soon as she walked into the room she took off in a machine-gun speaking style, educating me about why I shouldn't be there. She shoved me back to the neurologist saying that it's up to him to fix the strokes. I pointed out the fact that my blood is turning into syrup and went over the related problems like the decreased oxygen saturation in my blood that has led to nasty things like pulmonary hypertension and potential organ failure. Nope. Not her problem. She told me to go back and see the neuro for help with the strokes and find whoever else to fix the other problems but apparently nothing about my blood is her problem. Silly me. How did I not know that oncologists are Gods and we're not to trouble them by reminding them that they're also hemotologists?

The good news is that I don't have cancer. Yet. What I have is MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance). It's a precursor to cancer so yeah, I have that to look forward to. It's a half-ass celebration because while I don't have cancer now, I need to keep being tested for it because it's pretty much a matter of time. But to be honest, I don't really give a rat's ass if I have cancer or not---at least if I did they'd finally *treat* something! What I really care about is the fact that there is something every bit as deadly and every bit as horrible as cancer happening to me and I can't get one single doctor out of 27 to figure out what it is and do something about it. Where in ANY medical journey does it say that it's okay to have 95 strokes without being treated for strokes? Or an oxygen saturation of 77% without knowing the cause and treating it BEFORE my lungs, heart and kidneys give up? And even tho I can be relatively certain that most doctors don't care about me or my problems, I care considerably about the fact that my brain is turning into a turnip.

I'm confused because I went in there with a test result showing a spike in IgM. I had the paper in my hand and while my brain isn't running on all six cylinders anymore, I do still know the difference between the M on the paper and the G that she says I have instead. She says that her tests are more accurate. And as for that bone survey, she said I can just get around to it whenever. Okay, how about never? Does never work for you because never works best for me. I'm going to be too busy trying to find a doctor who can actually figure out what's going on with my blood and besides that, I can't afford another however-many-hundred-dollar copay that this bone survey scan is going to cost.

The neuro didn't want me to come back for six months and had absolutely no intention of treating the strokes. The oncologist said that neurologists are always the ones who treat strokes so I have to talk to him about that. (I'd disagree with that because when my dad had two strokes, they called a hematologist, not an electrician) And who treats the hypoxia (low blood oxygen saturation) when two pulmonologists and a cardiologist have given up if it's not the hematologist? She didn't know but she's sure it's not her or anyone else in her specialty, as was verified by the first hematologist I saw. So this was a very expensive trip down yet another dead end and now I'm back to where I was, except more tired, more sick, and more screwed up than before.

I'm sorry to sound so negative. It seems to have become impossible for me to remain positive these days. I found out one reason for that is because the EEG showed there's some damage to my brain in the area that controls emotion, and positive-thinking may be one of the casualties of the strokes...but as much as anything, I'm just tired and ready to give up. There's no where else to go and I've run out of doctors and options, especially since none of those 27 doctors are willing to treat anything. The oncologist wanted to know why my rheumatologist isn't treating me with immuno-suppressant drugs. Um, because my rheumatologist thinks I'm too young to get tuberculosis????? She and I talked about the a-i suppressive drugs a long time ago and the risks are way too high for the small benefits I'd get from them. Yes my auto-immune system is a psychotic over achiever and no, killing it is not the answer. The list of "did you?" and "Yes I did" is seemingly endless and there's no door marked Exit to get me out of this mess.

So that's where things stand now. Days of being too sick to get out of bed, a brain that looks like swiss cheese, too many medical issues to even think about, and there isn't a single doctor who wants to see me again for at least six months.

Doctor, My Eyes

Losing a parent, losing ground, losing brain cells

2011-10-13T02:25:00.000-06:00

About an hour after my last post I got a call telling me that my father had passed away. There is so much that I want to say about him but I'm not quite ready yet. Mainly I'm just happy that he can be at peace now but I miss him so much. He had Alzheimer's so I've been missing him for a long time already but it's still hard to say the last goodbye.

The test results from the EEG came back today. The dr said that there aren't any signs of seizures (yay!) but there is definitely a pattern of disorganized activity, more on one side than the other. That's all indicative of the damage from the strokes. Right now there's nothing being done about the strokes until we find what's causing my blood to turn to syrup and that will be up to the oncologist.

The rheumatologist called with her test results too. The tests for RA were negative (just like we knew they would be) but the tests she did for monoclonal gammopathy weren't. There was also another test that popped up showing signs of an active infection--except I don't have any infections; not even a sniffle or a hangnail. So that's not necessarily a good sign but I told her to send the results to my new oncologist and we'll see what she makes of it. At least she'll have the results of that IgM test from three different doctors all showing the same results (plus the one showing a pop in white cells which is so not good) so there won't be any doubt that yes, I do have a spike in immunoglobulin m. Whether it's precancerous or cancer is still unknown but I see the oncologist on Friday and hopefully she'll get the process started to find out.

I'm open to any treatment right now. I haven't been able to get out of bed for two days again because I've been so sick. Every time I move a wave of nausea washes over me. Seems like I lose a little more ground every day but then this has been a really rough and emotional week.

Good night Daddy.

As long as I'm up

2011-10-08T07:40:00.000-06:00

I'm having an EEG today because they want to make sure that I'm not having seizures in addition to strokes. Suuuuuuuuuuuuure. Why not. So I'm up before the sun because there are some rules you have to follow before you have an EEG.

One is no caffeine. *whimpering quietly* I've weaned myself down to just one Mt Dew a day but I still get nasty-wicked headaches if I don't get my caffeine. *checking the clock* And it's going to be another 6 hours before I can have one. That's a very long time to have one of these headaches.

The second is that for some reason they need you to be sleep deprived for the test. That one mystifies me just a little bit but it's their party so I'll play along. They said to go to bed two hours earlier than usual and get up two hours earlier than usual. I did the math and that means that I only get 20 minutes of sleep, and that's only if it's a good night. And to top it all off, I can't take pain meds because it could screw up the results.

This test was originally scheduled for last week but someone forgot to tell the tech so I went thru all this, got there and waited for an hour, and the tech never showed up. Needless to say I wasn't a happy camper about it. People who don't have insomnia have no clue what it means to ask an insomniac to give up sleep. When you have insomnia, sleep is the most important thing in the world. Hell, I don't even mind getting 60 shots in my back all at the same time because they knock me out for it and I get a good one hour nap! Yes, I completely understand why Michael Jackson used anesthesia as a sleep aid. To paraphrase a portion Stephen King's book "Insomnia", "Thousands of people die of insomnia every year they just put "heart attack" or "suicide" on the death certificate."

If you've never had *chronic* insomnia you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every precious second of sleep you can get is golden and every additional second that you lose is agony. I'm not exaggerating about that either. Insomnia is painful, especially if you have other issues too. For me, sleep is the only way my body can escape from pain and, more importantly, it's the only way my body can have any time to relax and heal at all. It takes days, if not weeks, for me to completely recover from the effects of a night without sleep or even reduced sleep. Since this is the second time in two weeks, it's twice as hard as it was last week.

There is the additional factor that the first major cold front of the year pushed thru this morning and there's freezing rain pelting the windows. Neither Arthritis or Fibromyalgia are impressed with dramatic weather changes so my joints and my muscles all feel like we've gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

With any luck they'll get some useful information with this test. I don't think I'm having seizures but who knows. Even if they can capture some info about which parts of my brain aren't working correctly it would be helpful. I just want to know that going thru this twice and paying a giant co-pay is worth it. At this particular moment in time, I'm having some serious doubts but then again, I'd do just about anything for a Mt Dew and a two hour nap.

The longer I type, the sleepier I get so it's time to attempt moving around before the narcolepsy hits and I pitch face down onto the keyboard. Perhaps I'll get in an hour or two of playing Neverwinter Nights before it's time to go.

It's not supposed to work that way

2011-10-07T16:36:00.000-06:00

I though that it was bad enough that the bad oncologist didn't call me with the results of my tests, but this morning he had the scheduling department deliver the bad news to me! Isn't that a helluva thing to do?

Seriously, I got a call this morning from the hospital scheduling department and the nice lady said that Dr F had ordered a "bone survey" study for me. I asked her what that is and she said it's a test they run on cancer patients that scans the entire skeletal system so see if there are any abnormalities---to put it bluntly, it checks to see if the cancer has metastasized.

Except I didn't know that I was a cancer patient. I'm still not sure but it's obvious that whatever the oncologist is testing me for isn't a good thing. He had told me in the office that if the test results were bad the next step would be this bone survey test so it appears his way of informing patients that their test results are bad is to have the scheduling department tell them they need to have something else done. Or maybe he just doesn't care at all and expects his patients to be oblivious to what's happening to them and blindly follow everything he says with no explanation as to why.

Anyway, I told the scheduler that I fired Dr F and have a new oncologist in a different practice that is still in the hospital network. She said that it would be best to wait and let the new doctor order the bone survey to make sure the results go to the right doctor and take Dr F out of the loop.

It's amazing. So far the doctor, two different people in the scheduling department, and at least a couple people at the insurance company know the results of my tests but I don't. Plans are being made for my future without my knowledge. I'm telling you, if I felt halfway like myself someone would be getting bitch slapped into next week for this shit. It's absolutely, positively NOT going to happen this way. It's still my life and *I* make the decisions for myself just like I have since I started walking and talking.

So the bone survey is on hold until I talk to the new oncologist next Friday. From what I've heard about her, she believes in strong communication with her patients. That's good because it means that she and I can work as a team.

|As for the asshole oncologist, his name is David Faragher. If I ever see him again I'm going to kick him in the balls and then refuse to tell him why.

Finding My Way Back

2011-10-05T13:29:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's been a year since I posted anything here. The last post was about my surgery and lest anyone think I had complications from that, it all worked out okay. In fact, my throat has never been better. It's the rest of my body that went to hell in a handbasket. To make a long story short it's just easier to give you a list of all the things I'm currently been diagnosed with and/or being treated for. If you follow my blog, hypoxemia is where we left off when last we talked. But here's the whole list:

Arthritis

Degenerative Disc Disease

Carpal Tunnel (both hands)

Reynaud’s Syndrome

Fibromyalgia

Chronic Myofascia Pain Syndrome

Hyperthyroidism following thyroidectomy (still working on getting the meds right)

High Blood Pressure

Hypoxemia (low oxygen saturation and they still don't know why)

Pulmonary hypertension

Mild emphysema

Hardening of the coronary arteries

Central Apnea (both sleeping and awake which means that my brain forgets to tell my lungs to breathe)

Recurring Vitamin D deficiency

Xanthomas

Hearing loss due to nerve damage, both ears. (In addition to not hearing, I can't feel the sides of my face).

Type 2 Diabetes

Hyperviscosity (my blood has the consistency of honey)

Peripheral Neuropathy

Silent strokes (total of 95)

All that sort of explains why I haven't been around for awhile. The biggest concern has become the blood problem which obviously could be responsible for a lot of the other issues. It's so bad that when they do blood tests, they have to repeat about half of them because my blood is too thick for them to run their tests on it.

I have a good neurologist who figured out that doing an MRI on my brain would be helpful. When he showed me the films afterwards, there were all these white spots in my brain. Some of them were pinpoint in size, some where as big as my fingertip. He explained that these are silent strokes (strokes that don't cause a visible, physical effect like being paralized) and they're primarily centered in the parts of my brain that control my memory, language skills, math skills, and emotional control. He started counting them so we'd know how many there were to compare it to another MRI in six months and when he got done, the total was 95.

95.

I've never fainted from bad news but I think I came close to it then. I remember babbling some silly shit about "five more and I'd have a perfect score" which was just my tongue killing time while my brain tried to assimilate what he just said.

It was a shock and still is. They don't know why I'm having strokes yet..........the neurologist said it's not his field and sent me off to an oncologist after he found a weird antibody in one of my blood tests trying to figure out what's causing all the numbness/lack of nerve response in my hands, arms, legs, feet, and face.

Now if finding out that you've had 95 strokes and seeing your brain looking like swiss cheese isn't enough to screw up your day, being told you need to see an oncologist for it takes you to a whole new level, especially when they don't tell you WHY.

Why is such a small word but it is has such an important role in life. If we don't ask why, we're doomed to oblivion and the only thing worse than oblivion is ignorance. I refuse to live in ignorance, therefore I ask "why" if I don't know the answer to something, especially if that question is "why do I have to see a cancer doctor?". The neuro said that he'd found an abnormal antibody spike in one of my blood tests but I'd need to ask the oncologist what it meant so after spending two weeks waiting to get in to see him and worrying about all the possibilities, I asked the oncologist "Why?"

He told me that it was a really long list and too much to go into. I asked him what he was testing me for and he refused to answer that either. And since he's a hematologist (blood specialist), I tried to talk to him about my little problem with the syrup running thru my veins; the strokes; the way my blood won't carry oxygen---all things that fall under the heading of "blood doctor". He told me that he didn't care about any of those things and refused to discuss them with me. He said that all he was going to do was run the same test my neuro ran to see if it was a fluke or not. He suggested that I talk to my GP about these other issues, told me to make a follow up appointment in 30 days to get the results and then he walked out of the room.

OMFG. I've never come so close to hitting another human being in all my life. I've had two pulmonologists and one of the nation's highest ranked cardiologists run thousands of dollars of tests to try and figure out these problems and he's referring me to a general practitioner whose capabilities pretty much end with flu shots and throat cultures????? I managed to get out into the parking lot before I broke down sobbing, more from frustration than anything else. I've talked to two other doctors about his behavior since then and they both said that it was just plain abusive.

Fortunately one of the other docs was able to refer me to a good oncologist who is able to see me next week. I found it of interest that when I made the appointment that the new doctor is in the same network as the asshole and the recep told me that she could see my test results were done and in the system so the new doctor would be able to see them.

Wait. The results are already back after less than a week and that asshole told me to wait a MONTH! And he obviously isn't going to call me with the results. I've never thought of suing a doctor before (and I've had a few really bad ones) but the emotional torment that this jerk has put me thru almost has me considering it. If I had any energy at all, I would.

So that's where we're at right now with the blood/stroke issues and hopefully the new oncologist will be better. For one thing, she's a woman. I've come to the conclusion that the only doctors who are going to help me are women. With one exception, the only doctors who have actually done anything except give up and refer me to someone else are women. I have the world's best rheumatologist, a lovely woman who is understanding of the fact that even tho I'm upright and not bleeding, I'm still very sick. I also have a new endo, a wonderful woman who has the mind of a scientist and the curiosity of a diagnostician. She's the one who got me off the bad thyroid med and onto one that works..........plus she discovered that I have diabetes. You know, I've had five endocrinologists in the past three years and not a one of them even tested my blood sugar. Turns out I have type 2 and she started me on meds right away. One is a new medication called Victoza that I inject into my abdomen every day (that's not nearly as bad as it sounds) that is designed to help with the absorption issues and keep the diabetes from getting worse. The great thing about it is that one of the side effects is weight loss and I've dropped 11 pounds in six weeks. My glucose is getting down into the 120 range now so all of her treatments are working. In addition to that she discovered my cholesterol is all out of whack and she's treating me for that AND helping with my blood pressure too. You can just imagine how thrilled I am to have found her! Seriously, I am more grateful to this woman than I can possibly say. She's also the one who referred me to the new oncologist and if she says that doctor is good, I'll trust her.

I saw my rheumatologist yesterday; three months earlier than I should have but that antibody they found in my blood can sometimes be present with rheumatoid arthritis. My rheumatologist ruled that out a long time ago but with the neuro and the bad oncologist both asking me if I have RA, I figured I'd better get in to see her. I'm glad that I did because she talked straight to me about what the oncologist might find and those are the first straight answers I've gotten since the blood test came back. Yes, it could be something like a non-Hodkins lymphoma such as Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia, but it could also be a "monocular gammopathy of undetermined significance" or "MGUS". That's more of a pre-cancerous condition that requires monitoring instead of a full blown terminal lymphoma like WM. There's no way of knowing anything for sure until the oncologist sees me and does her thing, but at least Dr H gave me some hope and some solid information so I'm not just wandering around scared to death and freaking out. And the endo gave me additional hope because she said she knows the new oncologist will behave like a proper hematologist and even if I don't have cancer, she'll be able to help me with my blood problems which will in turn make me feel a lot better in a lot of ways. Of course that's in theory only right now, but I'll take any kind of hope that I can get.

My biggest goal right now is to stop the strokes before I lose what I have left of my brain. The doctor asked me simple math questions and I discovered that I can't even assign a value to a number anymore. Numbers are beyond my comprehension as are directions and spacial relationships. I don't know right from left, or up from down, or greater than/lesser than. My short term memory is so shot that if I close my eyes for 30 seconds, when I open them I'm surprised at where I am! My memory won't even hold that information till I open my eyes again. That's disconcerting to say the least. There are a lot of other effects that are scary. It's also scary that these silent strokes are often found in Alzheimer's patients and my dad has Alzheimer's. The thought of losing my mind literally terrifies me. I can handle being sick and even dealing with cancer, but I don't think I can handle losing my ability to think.

There have been a lot of changes in my life over the past six months. I had a commissions waiting list that was over a year long that I've had to clear and am no longer able to accept custom orders right now. In fact, I really haven't done anything except finish up some mostly done pieces like the modern living room and the steampunk ice box. I did finally finish the custom Rosedale but I fear that unless things change it may be the last large house I ever build. My Tennyson is still in dry fit on the studio work table and it's fully furnished even tho it's only taped together and not even started. My goal is to finish it and build a Willowcrest for my BFF before I give up on 1:12 scale houses altogether. If they can get me back on my feet again, I'm going to be working in half scale houses and dressed furniture in both scales for my Etsy store inventory with the occasional quarter scale fairy house. It's a hugely reduced version of Deb's Minis but that's my goal and I'm doing everything I possibly can to reach it. Right now I can't even have the door to the studio open because it breaks my heart that I can't be in there, doing what I love to do best. However, for the past few months my days are pretty much the same: I go from bed to the couch and back again. There have been days when I couldn't even get out of bed.

I've lost touch with a lot of friends and am not online as much as I used to be. I'm still doing the Greenleaf Gazette newsletter because if I have to choose only one thing to do, the newsletter is it. Greenleaf is transitioning some servers so it hasn't been sent out for a couple of months but we've still got issues ready to go when GL is ready to send them. I've missed my friends but it's difficult for me to communicate even in the written form these days. I also forget that I haven't replied to emails....or I think that I have because I formulated the answer in my head but never typed it. Mostly I think I've withdrawn into myself because it's the safest place I can be. I've had some personal issues as well, including a betrayal that ripped my heart out and left me in pieces emotionally. So far 2011 has been a cruel and unforgiving year and since we're drawing close to its end, I don't have much confidence that it will get better. However, I do have hope that in the next three months I'll get some answers and maybe, just maybe, some treatment for the things that ail me so that I can start 2012 on a much better note.

It's taken me several days to type this all out and I'm still not sure if I've corrected all the aphasia type mistakes in it but if you read for content it should make sense. LOL! I'm not using Facebook as much as I had been because of their new "drink the kool-aid" invasion of privacy policies but you can find me on Google+ under Deb Meadows Roberts. There are quite a few of my friends who aren't on Google+ yet so it occurred to me that I could use my blog to keep folks updated and just post on FB and G+ when I've added to the blog. I'm going to try and keep things lighter than this post in the future--today is just to catch everyone up to real time and it's pretty depressing. I think the only joke that I've been able to come up with lately is telling my rheumatologist that if the oncologist expects to do a bone marrow biopsy on my super-dense bones, she's going to need a Black and Decker drill. But instead of only using my blog to post major events (like finishing a dolllhouse), I'll use it to replace Facebook and keep in touch.

It's good to be back on blogspot with you all. I've missed you.

Where's Godzilla When You Need Him?

2010-09-05T23:06:00.000-06:00

I'm back and look! {proudly pointing to my throat} I have a neck again!!! That big ole mess is finally out of there and I'm doing soooooo much better already. The incision is healing up nicely and from the looks of it, there's not going to be much of a scar either. There's still some swelling but even with that, it's so much thinner than it was when the thyroid was making me look like Mike Tyson.

My surgeon was great even tho it sounds like he had a tough time wrestling this monster out of my throat. The damned thing was 14 x 6.5 x 4.5 cm. That's almost 5 1/2 inches! Gawd, no wonder I was strangling myself every time I moved my head or arms. That was not a butterfly gland..........that was Mothra!!! It was under the sternum so I was right about my collarbone poking into it like a spear. Anyway, to get it out they had to strap my arms together behind my back and bend me like a backwards taco to push my chest up high enough to get in there. I was sore and bruised from my jaw all the way down to my boobs but I don't care. It was out and that's all that mattered!

There was a little problem with a floor nurse who thought she was a combination of HawthoRNe and House. {sigh} Spare me the attitude bitch. She blew out the vein in my hand by using a port left from the arterial line they used in surgery instead of using the IV line for my first round of pain killers. She didn't flush the line first and then she jabbed one syringe after another into it, shoving the plunger down so fast and hard that it was a blur. In case you don't know, morphine is really thick and even in an IV line it has to be administered very slowly to give it a chance to move thru the vein. Otherwise it sits there like peanut butter. It was bad enough that someone blew out the veins in my left wrist when they took out the arterial line there, but then the Marquis De Sade nurse really blew up the ones in my right hand. OMG, it hurt worse than my throat which is not exactly what pain meds are supposed to do. When the night nurse came on she took out the arterial port and took much better care of me. By the time the day nurse came back with her attitude and her threats of "if you don't do what I say I'll make sure they don't let you go home today", I was awake enough to be pissed. She actually got into an argument with my husband and stood over my bed to yell at him. If I'd had the strength I would have reached up and punched her in the throat. She finally sent a doctor in to settle the argument about whether or not I was under the care of a pulmonologist (just look on my chart.....he's down on the 7th floor if you want to talk to him) and I complained to the doctor about her, showed her my hand, and said I wanted out. NOW. Fortunately I was doing well enough that they let me go less than 24 hours after I got out of surgery.

{grinning} I can be such a bitch but I wasn't sleeping at all and I needed to be home where I could get some rest and I certainly didn't need the stress of a nurse from hell. I had a little fever later on that night, but with Prince Vicodin at my side, I was able to sleep and start recovering a lot faster. Bruce stayed home for a week to take care of me and made sure that I had lots of sherbet and ice water to help with the swelling.

It was the third day when I looked in the mirror and saw something that I hadn't seen in a very long time..........there was a sparkle and clarity in my eyes! And my skin tone looks better too! Even tho it's only been a few days on synthroid I'm doing really well with it. Now if I can just convince my endo to keep me on the high side of normal, I'll be great.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the pathology report. Surprisingly the nodules all came back clear. I wa so not expecting that since the nodules were all full of microcalcifications and that's what they had told me held about an 80% chance of cancer. But they were clear and and the lymph node they removed was also benign. But deep down in the tissue, they found a little lesion of papillary cancer. I knew it was in there somewhere! It was small enough that they couldn't do a conclusive test but with the benign lymph node, they pronounced me cancer free and I don't have to have radiation. Yay!!!!! You know that I want to go find every doctor who tried to blow me off and kick them in the er, um, knees. If I hadn't kept fighting every inch of the way about this, they never would have found it before things turned really bad. Yep, I'm a fighter and that makes me a survivor too!

It's been such a long, hard fight with this damned thyroid that I feel like a warrior at the end of a war......sitting in the battlefield and catching my breath before I get up and head back to the business of daily life. But I can look down and still breathe, and I can lift my arms over my head and not strangle myself anymore. The part Bruce likes best is that I don't snore anymore. LOL! There are still a lot of things that I need to deal with but at least the thyroid isn't one of them. It's the biggest hurdle I've had to take medically and I know that things will get better now. Being able to breathe is awesome!

Of course I can't just sit around doing nothing for three weeks while I wait for my incision to heal up enough to go play with sawdust and glue, so I've been doing some puttering. I need lots of flower arrangements and potted plants for my Tennyson and that's something that I can do on a lap tray with some bits of flowers, leaves, pots and a hot glue gun. I may have gotten a little carried away but here's what I did........a little bit of everything from tiny potted plants to hanging baskets, to an oriental carriage for a lawn ornament.

Then when I got bored with plants, I made a red checked table cloth, some potholders, a folded dish towel and a "tossed on the counter" dish towel for my best friend's Laurel. She's doing the kitchen with that fabulous set of retro table, chairs and step stool all in red so these are perfect. I made her leave me the table so I could get the table cloth positioned the way she wanted it to show off the chrome edges of the table under it. I think I'll make her some cafe curtains to go with it tomorrow.

I'm still not up to writing much and I should be laying on the couch playing Bookworm on Game Lounge right now but I remembered that I hadn't updated my blog after the surgery. So I'm going back to the couch now that y'all have the latest news. Thank you all for the prayers, positive thoughts and whispered spells for me. I know that made a huge difference in how this all came out.

50 Ways to Leave Your Liver

2010-08-22T04:01:00.000-06:00

Oh wait, wrong body part. That should be "50 Ways to Tell Your Thyroid to Get the Hell Out". Or "Hit the Road You Jacked Up Gland". Or even "Breaking Up Isn't So Hard To Do".

You get the idea. As the surgery date approaches (Monday!!), I'm sooooo eager to get it done. I'm not nervous about the surgery but then surgery has never bothered me. This is my third big one and I have the same attitude about it as I have the others.................................I get to take a nap!!!! Woooooooohoooooo!! They say it will take about 3 hours and I told them to take their time. The longer I'm knocked out, the better nap I'm gonna get.

Insomniacs have a different way of looking at things and we consider sleep to be a commodity more precious than gold. So knowing for sure that I'm going to be genuinely, deeply sleeping for at least three hours is a dream come true. (no pun intended) Even the pain immediately after surgery doesn't really bother me much since I know I'll have the morphine button and that'll put me right back into blissful slumber. Aaaaaahhhhh..........to sleep but not to dream. Or roll over.

I can deal with the pain because it will be the pain of recovery and not the ongoing chronic pain that I thought I'd have to live with for the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to being able to look down and not strangle myself, or turn my head and not feel the world start to spin. I'll be able to lay on my right side without my collarbone shoving further into that tender gland. And maybe, just maybe, the red triangle under my skin at the base of my throat will go away. That one is still a mystery to every doctor I've asked about it but it showed up the same time the nodules started to grow deeper and it's gotten bigger and redder with time. I've been worried because in the past few weeks it's turned purple on the edges of the right side but we're almost to the finish line so I'm not going to stress it. I'm just hopeful that it will go away with the thyroid. Most of all I can stop worrying about how busy that cancer is inside me.

I'm ready. Oh dear gawd am I ever ready! People that I've talked to in the medical profession over the past couple of weeks seem surprised that I'm so eager to have surgery, but if they knew what I'd been living with and the long and torturous journey to get to this point, I think my attitude would make more sense to them. But I tell them that I've always believed that if something causes me pain and doesn't work then it should be removed from my life. Like my first husband. {cackle} Seriously tho, I felt the same way about my hysterectomy. I had been in constant pain and nothing worked right anymore. I started thru menopause when I was 27 and by the time I was 33, I was a wreck. I was having hard periods 21 days out of 27. Talk about terminal PMS! OMG, it was a nightmare on wheels. One funny doctor decided to put me on a cocktail of Premarin and Prozac. Oh yeah, that worked. I still wanted to kill people but I was okay with it. As you might have guessed this thyroid issue is not the first time I've had to fight with a long series of doctors before finding one who believed in actually fixing things.

But the point of that story is that I'm going into this surgery with the same attitude I had then. Something inside me is broken and is not fulfilling its purpose. It's painful and debilitating and my body would be better off without it. I can live with taking a pill a day and be delighted to have another hormone perfectly regulated after a lifetime of more ups and downs than a roller coaster at Six Flags. When I had my hysterectomy, I spent the first day sleeping as much as I could and using the morphine to control the pain so it didn't tax my strength anymore than necessary. On the second day I got up, got dressed and went outside for a smoke. By the time the doctor came in, I was perched on the edge of my bed, swinging my feet and demanding that the IV be taken out of my arm so I could go home. And I did because I really, truly felt better that day than I had in years. When you've been rock-bottom sick, the pain of recovering from surgery is a walk in the park.

I'll do the same thing this time because I know that as soon as they take this time bomb out of my throat, I'm going to feel better immediately. If the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes I'll deal with that too but I'm feeling confident that it's confined to the nodules in the thyroid and once that's out, I'll move on completely cancer free. I may have a sore throat and a drainage tube in my neck but I love sherbet and yogurt as a diet and my hubby will be the one taking care of my incision for me. A week of that and I'll be back on top of my game.

I have some fabulous incentive to get back on my feet quickly with the dual build of the 1:12 Rosedale and the 1:24 Rosedale. I'm so excited about those houses that I can't stop working on them! I can't wait to see how they look when they're finished. After those are done, I'm building my own 1:12 Tennyson (which is in dry fit and completely furnished already) and the 1:24 Tennyson just for fun. I'm also going to be dressing 1:24 furniture for a new line at Deb's Minis and I'm excited about that too. Oh, and then there's the Willowcrest that I'm going to build for my best friend and a possible Glencroft for a client, plus as many of the new Greenleaf half scale houses as I can. I've fallen in love with half scale and it's like discovering miniatures all over again. I feel fresh and renewed when I work in this scale which is enough to make me want to move mountains to get back to my studio as soon as I can.

So I'll take it easy and rest and do all the things the doctors tell me to do so I can recover but I'll kick ass on this. There may be complications with the fibromyalgia and the hormonal issues of the thyroid removal (kind of like all thyroid disease symptoms crammed into one for about six weeks) but I'll deal with that as it comes and I'm sure that I'll get thru those days as well. The main thing is that this horrid, toxic, cyst-filled, negative, screwed up gland is on its way out!

In the words of Dr. Suess, "The time has come, the time is now. Just go, go, go! I don't care how." But for the sake of any sentiment for a body part that has been with me all my life, I'll include a little break up song to walk it out the door.

Take it away Muppets!!

Butterflies Are Free

2010-08-01T17:41:00.000-06:00

Join in on the celebration dear friends! The often longed-for event is about to happen..............the thyroid surgeon at University hospital said that my thyroid needs to come out and the surgery is scheduled for the 23rd! {happy dancing} Yay! I'm soooooooo happy and soooooo relieved. After almost three years and 13 doctors, someone has seen the light and said, "What's a place like this doing in a nice girl like you?"

It was relatively simple too. First his intern and his resident came in to do an initial eval (I swear that resident looked just like Doogie Howser and was just as smart), and then the big man came in. He grasped my thyroid from behind, pressed his fingers against the middle of my throat and told me to swallow. My response was "Urrgk" just like it always is when doctors do that and he said, "Well, that's good enough for me. Let's get that thing out of there". I almost swooned. He even laughed at me when he asked when I wanted to do the surgery and I said, "Tomorrow is good for me. Is that good for you?". LOL! I swear, there has never been anyone so eager to get their throat cut than I am!

Dr R. said that he didn't understand why it wasn't removed a long time ago. And that's what the pulmonologist said when I saw him on Tuesday. It's the same thing that my rheumatologist and back doctor have also said. Unfortunately, none of them were in a position to do anything about it and the ones who were (like the two previous endos and the quack internist and his PA) kept saying "It's fine. Quit whining." And let's not forget the other "surgeon" that the quack sent me to (who turned out to be a plastic surgeon!) who said that he was going to classify it as elective surgery. Um, I don't think that being able to breathe and swallow should be considered elective. Ah well, karma is a bitch and it will eventually catch up to all of them.

There's more positive news about surgery and this is the part that helps me to make sense of the whole thing. Maybe it's my Virgo tendency to rationalize things, but I believe that there is a purpose for everything. I believe that in each turn of the Wheel, there are tasks to be done and lessons to be learned. It's that belief that keeps me from giving up because I know that when my time comes to go to the Summerlands again, I'll be able to tell the Ancient Ones what I've learned from this turn of the Wheel.

After the surgeon agreed to take my thyroid out, he asked me if I would be willing to donate my thyroid to a cancer research study currently underway at University. I knew immediately what he was talking about because I had originally tried to get into see the doctor who is heading up the study but he wasn't taking patients because of his research work. I've read a lot about this research Dr H is doing and he's focusing on the molecular and cellular construction of thyroid nodules and tumors that lead to thyroid cancer. As soon as Dr R mentioned the study, I could see the gleam in his eye and knew how interesting my thyroid could be to them with all its nodules in so many stages of cancer evolution. I lost count of how many nodules I have after 15 so this is like giving a kid a sack of marbles to play with. Some of them are more than 20 years old and some of them are brand new. Some are fibrous and some are fluid and some are a mixture of both. There are some with just a few microcalcifications and others that have a "snowstorm" of them and some without any at all. It's like a researcher's amusement park in there! And since my thyroid disease started when I was 8 years old and was passed down from my grandmother and my mother, it gives them a chance to work with genetics as well as cellular structure.

Needless to say, I told them "Yes!" and gave them about half a pint of blood and some other samples to go to the research lab. After the surgery, my thyroid will go to the pathology department first so they can verify how far the cancerous cells have spread and then the whole gland will go off to the research lab to be studied.

I'm really happy that I'm going to be able to contribute something that might help the study of thyroid cancer and could even be helpful in predicting what type of nodules have the potential to turn malignant. That's the kind of information that could result in early detection and new, proactive processes to remove thyroid nodules before they turn rogue. Maybe I'm grasping at straws here to make sense of it all, but in my mind I feel like perhaps this is why I've had to deal with this rotten little gland for so long..........it wasn't the right time or the right place yet. My journey has been long and frustrating to say the least, but if I hadn't gone thru all that I never would have finally ended up at a teaching hospital looking for help. And now that I have, my rotten little butterfly gland can be a teaching tool to help other people. If that's what it's all about, then every step of the journey has been worthwhile.

They'll be putting me on thyroid replacement immediately which is excellent news! Most thyroid surgeons have the patient wait 6 weeks until they're completely euthyroid before starting that and the last thing I need is to be more of a slug than I am now. Getting the hormone level regulated right away will help the recovery go faster and make for a more balanced me. Also in the "great news" category is the fact that I won't need radiation unless they see something out of the ordinary with my lymph nodes.

{huge sigh of relief} I know that this isn't going to fix all my problems, but it's going to go a long way toward making me feel better. It'll get the pressure off of my collarbone and the fibromyalgia trigger point there which will hopefully help get my fibro out of constant flare. Depending on how big it's grown under my sternum, it might open up some more space for my lungs in there. It will definitely get rid of the pain in my throat and collarbone and I'll be able to turn my head, sleep on my side, raise my arms and swallow easily! I've been getting really tired of strangling myself every time I raise my right arm! LOL! So even with the other issues, this is still going to be one of the best things that could happen to me. I get the feeling that the doctors are going to be pretty surprised at how much better I feel right away.

In other news, I had the first spinal shots on Monday. They didn't use the "twilight" anesthesia.....they just plain knocked my happy ass out for it. I'm okay with that coz I didn't really want to be awake while they stuck needles in my spine. They didn't do the 60 lumbar facet shots as originally planned. Instead they opted to go for the big bundle of nerves at the S1 joint and my right hip. They also did my hands while I was there. Unfortunately, the back shots didn't do any good at all. I woke up in pain from laying on my stomach and then on my back, and after standing up for a few minutes, all the old pain hit just as sharp as it was before. The shots in my hands were helpful, but not nearly as much as they have been in the past. (this was my third round of cortisone shots in my hands) So that's a little disappointing but it was just the start. The doctor said we'll follow up in a couple of weeks and talk about doing a second and third round of shots. They're not real optimistic because they think it's my kidney and not my back, but we'll see what happens. Ya know, as long as they knock me out, I don't mind if they want to do more shots. It was only for an hour, but damn, that was the best nap I've had in a long, long time!!

On Tuesday I saw the pulmonologist for the first time. I went in with a chip on my shoulder and told him that if he says I'm fat, he's gonna get hit. That got his attention! LOL! But he *listened* to me and paid attention to what I told him. He did a chest xray which came back nice and clean. He said that there's still a chance of emphysema but nothing that shows in the xray. (and that's the second one I've had come back clean) He said that the xray does show decreased lung capacity which accounts for my low oxygen saturation and it could be due to muscle weakness caused by a long history of thyroid disease and the fibromyalgia. I'll have a ct scan and a VQ scan done soon so they can check for sure about emphysema. The CT scan will also see how far into my chest the thyroid has grown so that's doubly helpful. I think the only thing that worries me about the surgery is that "worst case scenario" where they'd have to crack my sternum to get it all. But the CT scan should give them a good idea of how much is in there and that will put my mind at ease before the surgery. The pulmonologist also gave me the green light for surgery as far as my breathing is concerned so that's good too. My pre-op screening is tomorrow and they'll give the final approval that my body is up for it.

So there are still a lot of things going on, but my biggest concern has always been the thyroid. I don't care what the doctors say, I know it can't be healthy to have this thing inside me, squatting like a malignant toad in the middle of my throat and sending it's toxic hormones throughout my body. I've been putting up with it's horrid personality since I was a child and I'm really just tired of that shit. It's also gotten very, very crowded in here and I think that serving an eviction notice on it is the best thing ever. So let's all do a little happy dance together and come the 23rd, we'll have a huge virtual party to celebrate getting my throat cut!

Steampunk Day Bed

2010-07-19T13:48:00.000-06:00

Dr Thaddeus Robertson has overcome the biggest obstacle for daytime napping.........he's figured out a way to stop time as long as the napper is snoozing in his Amazing Solar Energized Time Preservation Napping Bed. I'm not sure how it works, but if he could make it in life size, he and I would both retire!

I so want to sleep in this bed! There are 20 pillows and snuggling down into that much silk would be a dream come true.

More pics are on my website here: http://www.debsminis.com/steampunk_daybed_dollhouse_miniature.htm

A Lesson in Pain

2010-07-11T15:31:00.000-06:00

Last Wednesday was my first appointment with the spine doc. I went in clutching my MRI films (getting copies of those was a new experience in incompetence!) and not really knowing what to expect. It had taken over an hour just to fill out the new patient paperwork because there was soooo much of it and I had to initial and sign and swear in blood that if they gave me any medication I wouldn't even tell my husband where I kept it and agreed to random drug tests twice a year to be sure that I was taking the correct amount and not selling it in dark alleys. Not that I've been in any dark alleys (lately) or that they think a middle aged woman would be considering a new career as a drug pusher. It appeared to be all legal stuff but you can see why I was wondering what to expect! I've been trying to avoid taking the pain killer route in all this so I was a little apprehensive about them just handing me a prescription and shoving me out the door. Turns out that I didn't need to worry about that at all. They're more about eliminating the pain than simply masking it with narcotics. Yay!!

The first person I saw was Dr. B's physician's assistant. My first impression was "I have shoes that are older than this kid". Then I took a closer look and thought, "Wow! If he has an Australian accent, he'll be a perfect double for Dr Chase on "House". He's pretty!" It didn't take long to figure out that there was more to the PA than a pretty face. He's intelligent and was very meticulous in his exam. He asked a lot of questions and listened to my answers. The listening part alone got him a gold star in my book. That doesn't happen very often! Even more impressive was that he took notes. After he was finished, he went outside and discussed his findings with Dr. B and they looked at my MRI pics before he came in.

The first thing Dr. B asked was, "How long have you had this pain?" I opened my mouth to answer and then realized that I really don't know. I tried to answer again and my brain still wouldn't engage. So I sat there looking like a fish while I tried to figure it out. Finally I told him that the pain started about 20 years ago but has become debilitating in the past five years. He looked at the forms I'd filled out and said, "Tell me about the old injuries to your back that you mentioned here".

Oh dear. I was afraid that was going to come up. I'd thought about not mentioning them at all when I filled out the paperwork but if I want doctors to be honest with me, I can't not tell them things that might be important. So I took a deep breath and explained about Domestic Violence: The Gift That Keeps on Giving.

The upper back injury happened one night in the late '80s when I was sound asleep and my ex came into the bedroom, took an assault rifle off the wall, and slammed it down across my shoulders. It took about three or four years for me to recover from that one. When it would flare up I wouldn't be able to even turn my head for months at a time. Now it's just a dull ache that I don't notice unless I stop and think about it or the weather is really wet and cold.

The lower back injury wasn't nearly as dramatic but apparently it caused more damage. My ex shoved me into a kitchen counter and the corner of the countertop made a direct hit into my right kidney. That one never really stopped hurting, especially if I touch that spot on my back, but after awhile I got used to it. My way of dealing with pain isn't to ignore it or try to convince myself that it doesn't hurt..........I just convince my brain that it's normal to feel that way. The human body is a lot tougher than most people imagine. With time, we can learn how to assimilate almost anything.

Fortunately Dr B didn't make a big deal about the reasons, he simply asked, "Why haven't you looked for pain relief before now?" I explained that I didn't have the option for medical assistance at the time and then later on, I'd lived with it for so long that I didn't really even think about it anymore. When it started to get worse there were other medical issues that took a priority and the only reason I was seeing him now is because my rheumatologist had finally seen the MRI report that the quack internist had dismissed as "just fine" and said she wanted me to see a back specialist. Fortunately I had a lull in doctor appointments until the end of the month so I could fit him in. I think his lip twitched and he almost smiled at that.

After that he started his exam and pushed and prodded at various parts of my back, especially where the degenerative disc disease and facet arthropathy is the worst. He showed me one of the spine sculptures that doctors always have and explained how the bones were grinding against each other in those places and how steroid shots would provide the cushion to relieve the pain. He said surgery may be something to consider down the line but for now we can try the shots and see how I do with them. Yay!!

The discussion turned to which part of my spine to do first since they need to divide the amount of steroids up into two sessions for it to be effective. Dr B told me to turn around with my back to him and he started tapping against my spine with the flat side of his fist. I yelped a little here and there but it wasn't any worse than any other exam until he got to the S1 joint. He waited until I exhaled and then drew back and gave it a rap just to the right of my spine.

OMFG. I screamed and my knees buckled. My hubby caught me before I could hit the floor and shoved my cane under my hand. I pulled myself back upright, gasping for air but not really finding any. Tears were running down my face and I realized that the sobbing noises I heard were coming from me. It felt like a piece of bone had come off and pierced the bundle of nerves at the base of my spine. It took several minutes before I could catch my breath and stop crying.

That was a real awakening for me. Dr B had just demonstrated the amount of pain that exists when I'm not controlling it thru breathing and diversionary tactics. It shocked the hell out of me to think that this is the pain that I've been living with for so long. Granted I don't often encounter raps to my lower back like that, but the pain is the same that I feel whenever I'm standing or walking.........just not as sudden or unexpected so I can control it. I didn't see Dr B's rap coming and he caught me on the exhale so it was a sucker punch for sure. I understand why he had to do it to evaluate the pain levels accurately, but if he ever does it again I'm gonna go upside his head with my cane. Not even a doctor gets more than one chance at a sucker punch with me. LOL!

Dr B helped me back up on the exam table and said that we'd start the injections with the sacrum region and do the lumbar later. There will be around 60 injections the first time, but they're going to put me under the "amnesia anesthesia" so it doesn't matter. The really good thing is that he said they can do the cortisone shots in my hands at the same time. Double Yay!! I'm waaaaaay overdue for a refill in my wrists so right now I'm happier about that then I am about the back. I'm glad we can get that all over in the same day. Given the option, I'd rather have twice the pain on one day than to have half the pain on two days. Might as well get it over with at once. Hopefully the injections will work on my back. I'm optimistic about that since I already know that cortisone works for my hands. It stands to reason that it might work on my back too. I haven't really thought much about what it would be like to not have the pain in my back. It's been so long that I can't really wrap my brain around that concept, but it did cross my mind that it would be nice to be able to mop the kitchen floor without having to stop and sit down every three minutes.

The last thing Dr B talked to me about is the cyst on my right kidney which had him pretty concerned. He's sure it's from the old injury (which didn't surprise me at all) and strongly recommended that I find a good internist to take a look at it. He said that the shots aren't going to impact any pain coming from the kidney at all so the worst of the pain may still be there afterwards and if it is, then at least it arms me with information that I can use to push an internist into doing the tests needed to determine the damage to the kidney and possibly get the cyst removed. I'm putting that on my medical to-do list right after "getting oxygen to my muscles" and "removing the elephant in my throat".

I'm having the shots done on the 26th which is going to be a busy week because I see the pulmonologist on the 27th and the thyroid surgeon on the 29th. Oh, and as long as I was there, I asked the doc about the pain in my collarbone that the thyroid specialists say can't possibly be caused by my collarbone being shoved into my thyroid gland. He said there's nothing skeletal causing it. Therefore, if the thyroid surgeon tries to pull that same bullshit line on me of "It's just arthritis or referred pain from your spine", I can tell him that I have a rheumatologist and a spine specialist who are both willing to 'splain anatomy to him and prove that it's his job to fix it.

I may be on the right track, depending on what happens with the pulmonologist and the surgeon. At least I have one more doctor on my side who's willing to tell other doctors what needs to be done. I'll be going into see doctors 12 and 13 with a real chip on my shoulder and I'll start yelling if I need to. At this point I really don't give a shit if they have to call security to come drag me out of their offices. I'm not going to leave until someone does something to fix me. My awakening moment in Dr B's office has been a bit of an eye opener that things are probably a lot worse than I think they are. If I can hide *that* kind of pain from myself, what else have I become accustomed to just because it's felt that way for so long? I shouldn't have to live with a thyroid gland that is constant agony because there's a bone jammed into it. I shouldn't have to live on 80% of the oxygen my body needs simply because some template says that I'm too fat to be considered worth fixing--especially since it's the lack of proper medical attention that has caused my weight gain in the first place. Most of all I shouldn't have to live with the possibility of cancer growing unchecked in my throat. I've been pissed for a long time, but now I think that I'm just plain outraged about it all. I guess it's time for my southern upbringing to be set aside (much easier said than done!) and become aggressive and rude to get these lazy ass doctors to do their job. I'm done searching for good doctors because I don't think I'm going to find any around here. I don't like to be a bitch, especially to someone that I'm asking to help me but it seems that being a bitch may be the only way that I'm going to get any help at all.

You know, when I started this blog it was supposed to be all about miniatures but sometimes I forget that other people read what I write and I go drifting off into these rants about my ongoing saga with the medical profession. For the most part, I end up talking to myself and then remember that other people are reading it. I seldom go back and read my blog but I looked at the archives today and thought, "Oh lordy, this is starting to sound like General Hospital without Luke and Laura". I've thought about deleting some of the things I've written and then decided to leave it all as it is because there are other people out there who go thru the same kind of fights that I do in an ongoing struggle to get proper medical attention. So I'll leave everything as it is just in case someone comes across it and realizes that they aren't alone and it's important to keep fighting even when it feels like you can't go on one more step.

In the mini side of life where things are much happier, I'm thrilled about getting the cortisone refill in my hands because the design plan for the Rosedale is finished and I'll be starting to order wallpaper and supplies and all those other fun things this week. My hands will be functional again about the time it all gets here. Woooooooohooooooooo! While I'm waiting for them to arrive I'll be working on the furniture and window treatment designs to pull it all together. It's been exciting to plan this house and it's going to be sooooooo pretty! There's a special architectural feature that I'm going to add to the bedroom that I think will take the house over the top. I haven't been this psyched up about a house since I built my own Willowcrest.........and this Rosedale is going to be every bit as spectacular.

I almost forgot that I was going to share a picture of one of my recent challenges. One of my favorite clients sent me some vintage white wicker furniture with a request that I dress it in oriental fabrics, preferably a dragon. I thought, "I can do that!" and set aside some gorgeous chinese red brocade for it. When I showed him the fabric he said, "That's really pretty but this is going to be outdoor furniture and I need it to be yellow and blue to match the exterior of the house". {moment of silence} Yellow and blue oriental fabric with dragons. Now that's not something that you see every day.

{giggling} Well, it's not something you see every day unless you have my eclectic fabric stash. LOL! Would you believe that I actually had a piece of yellow and blue oriental fabric with a dragon print? What are the odds of that happening??? It was one lonely little fat quarter of a print from one of Hoffman's challenges way back when. It's at least 10 years old and waaaaaaaaay out of production. But a fat quarter is all I needed, even with some fussy cutting to get the dragons just right.

The client send me one of the actual windows from the house so I could match up the colors. The first thing I did was weave a matching ribbon into the sides of the chairs to perk up the elderly wicker just a teeny bit. I used the same dark blue for the pillows so it would pick up the darker blue in the print. Here's what the set looks like with the window behind it. From this angle, the dressing has a bright and cheery, and somewhat tropical, look with the focus on the colors and not the design.

But if you look straight down at them, the cushions show the dragon's talons holding crystal balls.

The throw is another fussy cut piece that has a tropical and bamboo look

until you turn it to the side and then you can see the dragon's face.

I like playing with little optical illusions like that and my client was thrilled with a set of wicker furniture that holds a secret.

The last bit of mini news today is that Dr Robertson is almost finished with a new steampunk mini that he's been working on for the past two weeks. He says that it's sure to be a big sensation because he's figured out a way to fit more naps into the day. Now that's technology we can all put to good use!!

A few steps back but moving forward again

2010-06-27T15:32:00.000-06:00

I haven't talked about my ongoing search for medical resolutions for awhile because the latest events haven't been real positive. The new endo didn't turn out to be very helpful. She lost my test results and took almost three weeks to get them to me (after I called repeatedly) and I had to argue with her just to get her to send me forward to two other doctors who might be of help. The biggest argument that I had with her was when she told me that my thyroid hadn't changed at all for two years. Uh, look again lady! I told her I had the same two ultrasound reports sitting in front of me that she was looking at and actually had to guide her to "Look here.......and here.........and there........" so she could see how drastically it has changed in the two years between ultrasounds. Yeah, she's fired too.

The real setback for me was the "official" diagnosis from the pulmonary tests. The diagnosis is that I'm fat. {stunned silence} I can't believe she said that or that they actually put that as the main diagnosis on the tests. It sounds like they looked at my weight on the chart and stopped right there because obviously no one who weighs that much could have any other reason for pulmonary problems. To say that I was devastated is an understatement. I mean, I'm a recovered anorexic and this was like a shotgun blast to my psyche. Yes, I am overweight but there are a few things that need to go on record here with these doctors who are determined to dismiss me as fat and lazy.

I wasn't fat when all this started. Two and a half years ago I was a size 14 and that's when the breathing pressure started. That was back when I was still walking every day. The problem isn't so much that I can't breathe.......the problem is that the oxygen I take in doesn't get to my muscles.

The reason that I've gained weight is because I can't exercise. I'd like to see those doctors do aerobic exercise when their oxygen saturation rate is at 80%! Or even take a walk for that matter. Personally, I don't think they could even keep up with my daily routine if they had to deal with that O2 sat. The other reason I can't exercise is because if I do push those oxygen starved muscles the myfascia starts to tighten up on them and that sends my fibro into panic mode. If I do three minutes on the treadmill I'll be laid up in bed for a week. And because of the fibro issues, I have to take the maximum dosage of Lyrica which has some of the same side effects as steroids...........weight gain.

So you can imagine what it did to me to hear "You're overweight and that's why you need to be on oxygen". I think I cried nonstop for a week. But before I started to cry, I pushed back at the doctor about the results and told her that there had to be more to it because the breathing problem existed before I gained weight. She read a little further and said, "Well, there is a slight possibility that it could be a problem with the air diffusion from your lungs to your heart. There's a marker for DLCO that popped up in the test but they don't think that's the issue. They're pretty sure it's your weight".

{banging head on keyboard} Let's review for a minute. The reason I'm on oxygen isn't because I can't catch my breath. I walk around all day and I'm not gasping, panting or wheezing. The only time I have trouble breathing is when I turn my head or look down and my thyroid blocks my throat. The problem is that the oxygen doesn't go where it's supposed to go after I get it into my lungs. So after I went off on her about that, she finally agreed to get me into see a pulmonologist. Then I asked her which surgeon she was going to refer me to and she said, "What for? There's no upper airway obstruction caused by the thyroid......it's just your weight. Why do you need to see a thyroid surgeon?" {snarling} Oh, let's call it a whim of mine. I still think that having my collarbone jammed into my thyroid gland might have something to do with all that intense pain in my shoulder and throat, and hey, while we're at it I'd really like to know just how far down into my chest this thing has grown since no one has even bothered to look any lower than the base of my throat. If this is a sub-sternum thyroid, there could be some real problems in there. It would also be nice to be able to breathe when I look at my feet. Other people are allowed to continue breathing when they look down and I think I'd like to be able to do that too. She said she'd get me set up with the thyroid surgeon because "Well, the size alone qualifies you for a thyroidectomy".

{stunned silence} If that's true, why do I still have a thyroid? Why the hell do all these doctors keep resisting me about this???

So she agreed to get me set up with the surgeon............and promptly forgot because I had to call back three weeks later (making it a total of six weeks since I'd seen her) and beg the recep in her office to just transfer me to the endo surgical department and set it up myself. So I see the pulmonologist on July 27th and the thyroid surgeon on July 29th.

On of the things that pisses me off the most about the pulmonology report wanting to blame all this on my weight is that reduced air diffusion can be caused by fibroid tissue in the lungs which is associated with rheumatoid arthritis.............something my hand surgeon says I have even tho the blood tests are all negative. That's why the hand surgeon is going to do an open incision when he does my CRS so he can get a deep tissue biopsy that is more conclusive than the blood tests. (and we have to keep putting off the hand surgeries because resolving the thyroid and breathing issues take priority so I'm limping by on cortisone shots in my hands until that wondrous day arrives) So you can see why I'm so concerned that the pulmonologist might just take the "you're fat" excuse and not pursue the other potential problems. There's a lot at stake here.

I haven't felt much like talking about this but since my blog has become something of a medical diary for me so I can track dates and the sequence of events, I thought I better not leave anything out. For those of you who follow my blog and actually read this, I'm sorry to be a downer sometimes. This part of my life really sucks and while I try to keep a positive spin on it, sometimes there's just nothing good to say.

However, it does get a little better from here because I had a good appointment with my rheumatologist on Friday but I have to backtrack a little bit to explain the good part.

A problem that has taken a back seat to my thyroid and breathing issues has been my lower back and my right hip. I've been telling doctors for a couple of years that I can't walk or stand for more than three or four minutes before my back is in excruciating pain. We're talking about the kind of pain that takes people to their knees and would do the same to me if I wasn't blessed with an extremely high tolerance for pain. I rate the back pain at a 14 on a scale of 1-10 and keep telling them that it feels like bone on bone coz it's definitely not muscle. When I'm not standing or walking, the pain is normally around an 8 or 9 but never lower. The xrays have shown degenerative disk disease and arthritis in my spine so that's what everyone has written it off as and even when I demanded xrays of my hip, they said they didn't see anything but "mild ddd". Last November I talked the internist's PA into ordering an MRI of my lumbar region just to see if that showed something that might be missed on the xrays. She did and when she gave me the results she said, "It's just mild degenerative disk disease. Keep taking your arthritis meds".

I figured that if the MRI didn't show anything then the diagnosis was right and tried to just suck it up and live with it. It's gotten worse and I started using a cane to get around a few months ago but I figured that's what the "degenerative" part means. Anyway, when I gathered up all my medical records a couple of months ago it included the MRI report. Most of that is greek to me but I did see that they found a cyst on my right kidney. {shrugging} My body is so full of fibroids that it would only be surprising if I had an internal organ that didn't have a cyst. I did some research and the cyst is within acceptable size limits for a kidney cyst so that's not a problem unless it starts acting up. The rest of the report is all in medical-ese so I tucked it into my file to take to my next appointment with my rheumatologist.

That was on Friday and when I handed it to her, she looked it over and said, "Wow! There's a LOT going on here!". HUH??? I was told there was nothing at all! She said that in addition to the DDD, there are bulging disks all the way from L3 to S1 and moderate facet arthropathy which is worse on the right side. That last part means that the actual bones of my spine are rubbing against each other and the erosion is more on the right than the left which sorta sets me off balance. It shouldn't be causing the radiating pain down my leg but we'll find out if the kidney cyst has something to do with that since the epicenter of the radiating pain is over that kidney. The main thing is that she immediately faxed the MRI report over to a spinal pain management doc and I'll be setting up an appointment with him on Monday. This is the kind of doc that does the ultrasound guided cortisone and spinal epidural shots. I'm hopeful that if the kidney cyst is a problem he can diagnose it and get me to someone who can remove it. At this point I'm totally unconcerned about the risks of the spinal shots and am content to be thrilled that I might get some actual pain relief.

This is something positive so I'm happy about that. My rheumatologist also made me feel a lot better emotionally when she was genuinely angry about the pulmonary diagnosis that I'm just fat. She ranted for several minutes about how they might as well have slapped me in the face instead of telling me something like that. Dr. H knows that I used to be an avid walker so she knows that I'm not just fat and lazy. She took the time to talk to me about why I've gained weight and why nothing can be done about it until some of these other issues get fixed. She also told me to make sure that both the pulmonologist and the surgeon call her for a consult because she's going to make damned sure they know how severe both problems are to my overall health.

She also had a few strong things to say about the endo not pursuing the thyroid surgery. She said, "You've had two fine needle aspirations but they biopsied the same nodule both times. Everyone knows how notoriously inaccurate those FNA biopsies are and with so many nodules with microcalcifications in your thyroid, they're playing games with your life. We *have* to get that thyroid out of you because the risk of cancer is very real".

{sniffling} And then she hugged me and told me not to give up. She said she understands how frustrating it is to be on doctor #11 and still have to keep fighting. It really did help a lot to hear her tell me to never give up hope and know that I have at least one doctor on my side. I'll have a little more confidence going into see the pulmonologist and the surgeon later this month knowing that I'll be handing them her card and telling them that I'll be checking to make sure they talk to her.

As always, I'm hopeful that doctors #11, 12 and 13 will finally be the ones who can make things better. After all, 13 has always been my lucky number.

A little ragtime to start the day

2010-06-22T12:08:00.000-06:00

Anyone who knows me IRL knows that I've always had a thing for the music of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. {cackle} Yeah, I know. If you know who they are you're thinking the same thing I am right now---and it's not about their stuff that got played on the radio either. hehehehehehehehe I got a kick out of Ray and the guys when I was a teenager and they still make me laugh.

I'm not sure but I think my subconscious convinced me to start a steampunk line of minis just so I could use one of Dr. Hook's songs in a video.

Dr Thaddeus Meets Dr Hook

Enjoy!

It's getting crowded in here

2010-06-20T15:46:00.000-06:00

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I've been told it's a strange thing to do, but I've always given names to various aspects of my personality. I don't have a split personality and I don't have clinically diagnosed multiple personalities.......I simply understand that my personality is very diverse and eclectic and I embrace every part of it as a unique individual.

Even as a child I knew that it wasn't a good idea to tell other people about this little habit of mine so I didn't mention things like Herbie (who likes to give human characteristics to inanimate objects). It's not like I had imaginary friends either. I suffer from excessive contact with reality which makes it impossible to have imaginary friends. However, I do have a rather bizarre sense of humor and it amuses me to isolate different personality traits and give them names.

Herbie was around a lot when I was a kid and even tho he makes fewer public appearances, he's still very much a part of me. I think the funniest thing that Herbie ever did was when I was in high school and he took to carrying around a rubber worm in our pocket. He swore that the worm was alive and had a passion for lettuce and mayo sandwiches. {pausing to think back} The rubber worm was stolen by a guy I was dating and I've never figured out if he did it because he wanted a souvenir or if the whole thing was just creeping him out. {shrug} Doesn't matter because he didn't last much longer than a lettuce sandwich at a July picnic. I've never had much tolerance for people who are critical of my whimsy.

But anyway, Herbie is still a vital part of my personality even if he's not as public about it these days. I still talk to inanimate objects and still bestow human traits on some of them. It's a handy way to feel for someone who builds builds dollhouses for a living. Yep, it could even be considered as part of my job description.

{grinning} My favorite was always Trixie. Ah, Trixie and I had some really good times together. Trixie is part of my fashion-personality and, well, to put it bluntly, Trixie is *such* a slut. Going shopping with Trixie was always a hoot! I can look back at pictures of myself and think, "Yep, that was a Trixie outfit for sure". She bought things like hoop earrings the size of bracelets, and hip hugger jeans with body shirts that unbuttoned down to there. She was the one who would unbutton our shirt and tie it up under our boobs as soon as we left the house in high school. She picked out stiletto heels with open toes and wore them with flirty red dresses whose skirts whirled around our thighs when we walked. As we got older, Trixie matured with me but her style was still unmistakable. She wore Donna Karan suits without a blouse, glorying in the black velvet push up bra underneath. If I walked into the office wearing my notorious black leather skirt (pencil thin with a slit up the back) and a black silk blouse, my coworkers would greet me by cheerfully calling, "Good Morning Trixie!". {cackle} Oh yes, Trixie was well known and had quite a following. People knew that if I came into the office wearing a Trixie-outfit, it meant that I was in a mood to either do battle or have some fun. (and that wasn't all bad because anyone who has played in the corporate world knows that sometimes a little cleavage or leg is fair when a woman needs an edge on a male-dominated battlefield......and Trixie was confident enough to pull it off)

Sadly, Trixie has been around less and less as my health issues have changed my body structure but she's still a part of me. All I have to do to get her back in the spotlight is play Bob Seger's "Her Strut" and Trixie comes running. We have a good time reminiscing about the good old days when we weren't good, we weren't old, and it was the nights that mattered most.

There are others of course. Emma is the one who is very proper and has lovely manners. She's most often seen at award's banquets and Women's Club luncheons, weddings and funerals. There are two mothers..........One is just plain "Mother" and she's the earthy type. She's very bohemian in style and attitude. The other is "Mother M" and she's the one who gives people flashbacks to Catholic school. She'll whack your knuckles with a ruler in a heartbeat if you step out of line and she has a very sharp edge to her tongue.

Most recently has been the arrival of Dr. Thaddeus Robertson. {beaming} We're all so proud to finally have a doctor in the family. I'd never given a name to the geeky side of me before so it was high time that I formally recognized that part of my personality. Dr. Robertson is the one who does steampunk minis because he so loves things that have flashy lights and buttons to push and make gurgling sounds when they work. He's also a bit of a cynic and a smart ass. I like having him around and in his own way, he fits right in with the rest of the gang.

The list goes on and on but you get the idea. It's a quirk of mine to name them all and to acknowledge when they take the driver's seat. Oh, and the one with the weird sense of humor who likes to talk a lot..............that's just Deb.

On the mini side of things this week, I have two things to share. One is an admirable speaking-out against art thieves by Grimdeva of Cauldron Craft Miniatures. Drop in on her blog and see what she has to say. I think all artisans can identify with what she's going thru and respect her taking a stand about it.

The other is my new toy, the Dremel Trio Tool! It slices, it dices, it makes french fries in less than 30 seconds! Ooops. Wait a minute, that's the wrong tool. LOL! Actually, I think the Trio could probably do all of that too but its main functions are sawing, sanding and routing all in one tool. I rushed to Home Depot as soon as I saw it because this is the tool of my dreams. It does plunge cuts!! That's the first and best thing, but it's also a scrolling saw which means that there's no more tearing at the wood with a reciprocating saw blade. Bye-bye splinters!! I can do straight edges, circles, and free hand designs with equal ease. It also replaces my plunge router because it has an adjustable base and it sands too. The handle is articulated with two positions and it's about one third the size of a regular jigsaw. That means that it's heavy enough to be a serious tool (my mini jigsaw didn't have enough muscle) but it's small enough to fit perfectly into my hands and be easy to control. Yes, I'm in love with a power tool and I don't care who knows it!! Between the Trio and my Stylus, I've got just about everything covered all in two tools. The only other power tool I really need is my bench sander. I'm a happy girl.

House hunting with the hippy quilter

2010-06-16T13:40:00.000-06:00

I've been really bouncy lately because of some awesome news. My friend Kathy (aka: The Hippy Quilter) has been living in the Armpit of Hell for the past couple of years and has been reeeeally uncomfortable there. Her husband just got a new job which was fabulous news to begin with but the best part is that the new job is in Greeley! Woooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! {doing the snoopy-happy-dance} Greeley is only an hour away from me! That's close enough that we can do lunch and spur of the moment fabric shopping and see each other more than once a year! I'm really happy that she's getting out of Armpit and even happier that she and I are going to live close to each other again. We haven't lived close to each other since 1981.

Kathy and I met when I was 17........I was a newly-wed and she was a newly-widow and we lived next door to each other in some tiny little run down duplex apartments next to the railroad tracks. We were always together and up to something. Not only were we both artisans even back then, but we knew how to make our own fun. One of our favorite past times was to go to "town" and visit the trailer house lots. Neither of us could afford a home of our own, not even a trailer house, but if we told them we were just browsing, they'd let us go thru the trailer houses and we'd talk about how we'd redecorate them and laugh at how they were already decorated. I'm pretty sure that if there were any toxins in shag carpeting, Kathy and I would have died a long time ago. LOL! We definitely saw more than our share of harvest gold and avocado green kitchen appliances too! But it was our way of getting away from some of the harsher realties of our lives and we had a good time wandering thru hundreds of mobile homes and mentally hanging curtains and ripping out walls. We spent a lot of time sitting on floors in empty rooms and being impressed with garden tubs.

So anyway, house hunting isn't a real foreign concept to us but this week we discovered a whole new way to go about it. Kathy and her husband were in Greeley looking for a house. Since they're moving before their house in Armpit sells, they'll be renting and finding a house for rent in Greeley isn't all that easy to do. The online listings are usually for apartments and the few Realtor-listed houses that she'd found weren't what they needed and no one advertises in the newspapers anymore. Finally Kathy just set out in her car with her cell phone and started driving around looking for "for rent" signs with phone numbers. When she called to tell me what she was doing I was in front of the computer with my headset and "Operation Find-a-House 2010" began. I started digging thru the more obscure online listings and classifieds and when I'd find something I'd call her with the address and with the help of Google satellite maps, the driving directions. She'd take off for that one while I looked for more listings. When she got to the house, she'd call me to let me know what she found and we'd start again.

Kathy and I have always been in sync with each other like that. Over the years we've developed some excellent systems for everything from how to paint fence rails in a feedlot to how to get rid of psychotic ex-husbands. And as with all of our other systems, the remote house hunting worked out well! I think we were on the 4th or 5th house when she found "the one". It's a really nice ranch in a lovely neighborhood with five bedrooms and a fully finished basement. Now she'll have space to lay out quilt blocks again! She'll also have decent shopping and pizza delivery which she's been living without for way too long. (I told you she lives in the Armpit of Hell!) I'm soooooooooo happy that she's getting back to civilization. I'd be happy for her about that even if she wasn't living in the same state as me again but having her an hour away makes it even better. I can't wait till she gets moved and we can go have chinese for lunch!

A big yellow clock with a picture of Carrot Top in the middle

2010-06-11T23:24:00.000-06:00

Dr Thaddeus Robertson proudly announces the

Incredible Steam Powered Food Preparation Device and Instant Hot Water Receptacle

Ladies and gentlemen, come closer and prepare to be amazed! Are you tired of always fussing with damp kindling to start a fire? Do you waste away from hunger while you wait for the stove to heat up? Tired of your bread burning on one side because of uneven fire? Do you hate hauling wood? Wouldn't you love to turn a lever and instantly have hot water for your tea or your bath? Dr. Robertson's new device will make all those problems a thing of the past! Step into the future with the new and amazing steam powered stove! You'll be amazed at how easy and fast it is to prepare the finest of meals with scientifically precise heating. Control your cooking temperatures with a turn of a dial. Hot water is always at your fingertips with a simple twist of your wrist. Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are living the dream of the future!

When Dr. Robertson unveiled this one, it really blew me away. There are so many things that I like about it! The tap and kettle on the reservoir is really awesome because it makes it so easy to fill a tea kettle or a bathtub. (and it set my mind at ease about the whole tea and bath combination) The use of zodiac symbols on the dial fascinates me. I asked Dr. Roberts why he used the zodiac and he only smiled mysteriously and refused to answer. Oh well. With the good doctor who knows why he does what he does. As long as the dial works, that's all that matters. The fact that he also makes it beautiful just adds to the charm.

Dr Thaddeus gave me a brief description of the mechanism on the oven doors but honestly, it made no sense to me. It has something to do with creating a rotisserie effect inside the ovens by turning the air instead of the food. The brass and copper gauge on the front of the oven door shows in which direction the air is revolving.

I was really fascinated by the burners on the stove top. The Dr tells me that the burners are designed to hold a pot up high enough for steam to move freely from the bottom to the sides and evenly cook the contents. It sounds to me like there's a dragon under it blowing steam on the pan! It's supposed to cook food even faster than a microwave because the reflectors on the back of the stove push the heat back to the cooking surface.

Dr. Thaddeus went on and on about all the details and most of it went over my head. The arrogant little bastard laughed and said he thought that it would. I reminded him that he's small enough for me to stow away inside a shoe box if he keeps it up with the attitude. LOL! He mumbled something about a switch under his breath and walked off. At least I think he was talking about a switch. That's what it sounded like anyway......

An interesting aspect of living with the Dr is going shopping with him. Obviously he needs supplies and just as obviously, I can't let him be seen. I mean, I live in a fairly tolerant area but a six inch tall mad scientist on my shoulder is going to raise a few eyebrows! So I stuck him in my purse and off we went to the thrift stores. I stuck my Bluetooth in my ear so people would think I was talking on the phone and that allowed me to talk to the Dr without drawing attention to us. Hell, three quarters of the world is wandering around talking to themselves like crazy people but thanks to technology no one gives it a second thought. Score one more for technology.

Anyway, the good Dr and I started thru the thrift store and began with the jewelry. He didn't find anything he liked there altho I saw a pair of earrings that were really cool. He jabbed me in the ribs and told me to stay focused. Little tyrant. Finally we found the shelves with the clocks and the Dr got excited. He yelled, "The yellow one! Grab the yellow one!". I groaned. Oh gawd, not the yellow one. Another sharp jab in the ribs got the point across and I reluctantly picked it up. I said, "You mean this yellow clock with the picture of Carrot Top in the middle?". "Yes, yes! That's it!!" cried the doctor. I didn't even hesitate and told him, "There is no way in hell that I'm going to walk thru this store carrying a huge yellow clock with a picture of Carrot Top in the middle. And if you think I'm actually going to go thru a check out counter and tell the clerk that I want to buy it, you have another thing coming".

I made a mental note to myself that from now on I'm going to tie the little twerp's hands behind his back before I stick him in my purse so he can't poke me anymore. I'm going to have bruises on my ribs for a week! Needless to say, I gave in and actually went thru the store *and* the checkout with the gawd-awful yellow clock with a picture of Carrot Top in the middle. On the ride home the Dr tried to console me by saying, "Look at it this way. I'm going to destroy the clock and the world will have one less big yellow clock with a picture of Carrot Top in the middle". Okay, so he makes a good point but it was still humiliating. However, we had a good shopping day and picked up a couple of mysterious items that the Dr will use in his experiments. He asked if we could stop at the pet store but I drew the line there. He acted all innocent and said that he just liked to see the puppies. {snort} Yeah, right. Not gonna happen.

As I write this, the Dr is back in the studio and I haven't had the nerve to go in there yet. I heard a loud "sproing!" and a crash and then "Ooops, my bad" but I really don't want to know. I'll check on him tomorrow. Right now I'm going to go make dinner and have a relaxing evening with my hubby and the cat. I think the Dr will be so busy that he won't notice that I've locked the studio door behind him.

This should be interesting

2010-06-11T03:05:00.002-06:00

Dr. Thaddeus Robertson has done it again! This time he has created the Incredible Steam Powered Food Preparation Unit. He says that's it's also a remarkable innovation in the brewing of tea and taking of baths. Honestly, I'm not quite sure I want to know how he combines brewing tea and taking baths. He said he'll unveil his newest creation tomorrow so I guess we'll find out then.

.

The Good Doctor is proud to announce.....

2010-06-09T13:58:00.000-06:00

............The Amazing Steam Powered Rocking Chair! {cue trumpets to made traditional "ta-da" blare} Yes, here we have it. The good doctor feels that not having to rock the chair will save people a great deal of energy and make the time spend in the chair more relaxing, which is the goal of sitting in a chair in the first place.

The Steampunk Rocking Chair features a steam engine under the back of the seat. A side effect of that location is that the seat stays nice and warm, even in the winter. Always putting safety first, Dr. Robertson placed brass weights on the front of the chair to balance the weight of the engine on the back and added a nice footrest so the occupant won't fall out. There are brass rings on the arms to grip if the rocking becomes too energetic. All the mechanisms are on the back of the chair and the steam powers the hydraulic steel rockers on the sides. The exhaust is located on the top of the chair. Be careful not to put your hand close to the steam.

To be honest, I'm fairly impressed with what the Doctor has come up with. I hear that he has plans for steampunk miniatures for every room of the house and has already started on his newest creation. He's being very secretive about it. I thought it was going to be a bed but he's dropping hints that it might be something that would go in a kitchen.

The Amazing Steam Powered Rocking Chair is listed in my Etsy store now so go have a look. It might be just the perfect new mini for you!

My studio has been hijacked!

2010-06-09T02:07:00.000-06:00

Something strange has been happening in my studio. I've noticed that things have been out of place and it appears that someone has been using my tools. Both my husband and the cat denied any part of it, so it became a mystery that I was determined to solve.
I snuck downstairs in the middle of the night and could see a small light coming thru the door of the studio. As I tip-toed quietly down the hall I could hear a voice mumbling and the clipping sound of wire cutters. Closer and closer I crept toward the door, silently hugging the wall. I jumped around the corner of the door and in my loudest voice I yelled, "A-ha!!! I caught you!!"

There was a scream and I ducked just in time as a pair of pliers flew from the little fellow's hand into the air. "Good gawd woman, you scared the bejeebers out of me! Don't you know how to knock? Maybe you should just wear a bell around your neck so folks can hear you coming. Now pick up those pliers and hand them back to me. Go on now. Leave me alone and let me get back to my work."

Needless to say I stood in the doorway dumbstruck at the sight of a little man wearing a white coat and large brass goggles. He had the strangest contraption on his head that appeared to be some sort of magnifying glass. His hair looked like it hadn't been combed in a week and one suspender was coming undone. I noticed that his shoes were on the wrong feet but I didn't think it would be nice to point that out.

I asked, "Who are you?" and was given a stony glare. "If you must know, I'm Dr. Thaddeus Robertson . Before you ask me how to cure a headache, I'll clarify that the PhD is in physics, not medicine. I'm an inventor. In this grand age of the steam engine, I work day and night to find different ways to put this wonderful resource to work".

Not wanting to disorient the good doctor more than he was already, I didn't mention that the year is 2010. Instead I looked over his shoulder to see what he was making. Following my gaze he said, "This is a steam powered rocking chair. It will save enormous amounts of effort by rocking itself. Would you like to give it a try?" I thanked him for the offer but pointed out that the rocking chair is only 4 inches tall and I'm 5' 6". Dr Robertson observed, "As a matter of fact it had occurred to me that you are rather tall. In fact, you're at least five feet taller than I. Oh well, no matter. Hand me that copper wire please".

It appeared that Dr. Robertson had lost all interest in me and was once again absorbed in his work. He's happily oblivious to the year and the fact that he's living in a world where he's only 1:12 scale. I can only assume that it's the result of an experiment gone wrong that left him one twelfth his normal size and threw him into the future. Normally I would worry about that, but he makes such fabulous steampunk miniatures that I don't want him to leave! So we've reached a comfortable existence together. He's allowed to use my studio whenever he likes and occasionally leaves gifts of his newest inventions for me to find. On the other hand, I keep a supply of peanut butter crackers in the studio for him and I've convinced the cat not to eat him.

I'll be showing some of Dr. Robertson's work soon and some of it will be on sale in my Etsy store. Check back very soon to see what he's come up with. Honestly, for a little mad scientist, he makes some really fabulous minis!

I think I'm giddy

2010-06-07T03:41:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure about that because I don't recall ever having felt giddy before I'm pretty sure I'm feeling giddy now. I got an email earlier today from the Dollhouse Hall of Fame with a picture of the display case that holds my work in the gift shop. I tried to be cool. I really did. Being cool lasted for about three seconds before I was bouncing off the walls like Daffy Duck on crank! Woooohoooo! Woohoo! Wooooooohhooooooooooooooooo!! Yippeee! Wow! Wooooooooohooooooooooo!!!

Wanna see? The whole display case is filled with my minis. All of it. How cool is that?

This was excellent timing because it helped to pull me out of a blue funk where I've been stuck for a few days. Seeing my work in a brick and mortar store for the first time and in such a nice display put the smile back on my face. I was so happy that I headed back to the studio and finished this retro living room set.

{grinning} Quite a different style from what you usually see from me, isn't it? This was FUN! The colors are so bright and cheery and the fabric is such a flashback that I couldn't help but have a good time. The fabric will be familiar to anyone who ever embroidered their jeans or painted a VW bus. Those big yellow and orange flowers were everywhere!

Of course a living room like this has to have floor pillows. {wink} If you remember the flowers, you know why. Sooner or later we were going to end up laying on the floor, listening to the music because it sounded better in the middle of the floor where you got the full effect of the speakers.

Here's a close up so you can see the fabric better. The flowers are so cool and I even found a purple fabric for the pillows that makes them look as if they might have been made from faded purple denim. Okay, a show of hands here........how many of you just had a flashback???? Does anyone else have the urge to go make a batch of brownies?

So that's been my day and I have to say that a happy day like this was desperately needed. It lifted my spirits and brought me back to life again. What would I do without minis?

Ooooooooh, pretty!

2010-06-02T21:11:00.000-06:00

I had to pop in and share some eye candy! I'm not a big fan of blue, but when I found this fabric and thought "Wow, that looks like Wedgewood!", I knew that something special would happen with it. I was right. {grinning} Sometimes I surprise myself but Muse knew what she wanted with this set and this is what we got.

Isn't that blue really pretty! I love the little pearl buttons with it too. They have a very nice luster to them. I listed this set on Etsy today along with the Sweet Daisy Mae bed, but I had to stop and think twice about giving up the Wedgewood.

Ooops, I need to run. I hear Napoleon singing a duet with the stray cat outside. I'm pretty sure they're singing something from the White Album but it's really hard to tell since neither one of them can carry a tune in a bucket. At any rate, even with a baby gate in front of the screen door, I always supervise their play dates so I gotta go. {skipping off singing "Ob la di, ob la da"}

Contrasts Are So Cool

2010-05-28T15:59:00.000-06:00

The Greenleaf Spring Fling 2010 contest is drawing to an end this weekend and this is the part that I love the best. The eye candy is always awesome but my favorite part is seeing how one kit can be interpreted in so many ways. I'm fascinated by the way creative minds work and seeing these types of contrasts is truly exciting for me. I get all twitterpated when I see the very same kit representing complete polar opposites.

This is the kit as released by Greenleaf:

The entries are still coming in but some of the participants have already posted pictures for us to see and this morning I was just blown away about two of them in particular because of my love of contrasts. Check these out:

This first one is a super modern beach house done by Chris (what2craftnow).

Isn't that just the coolest modern house ever! There is absolutely nothing rustic about this house at all. It's smooth and sleek and divinely chic. I love all the glass detailing that Chris used to give it so much sparkle. Click on this link to see the other pictures and you'll be thrilled with all the details that bring it to life. The architectural features like the sliding glass doors, the cantilevered stairs leading down into the sunken living room and the skylights are so elegant. The vision that Chris had of this house is so different from the original kit and it's that kind of creative thinking that fascinates me so much.

Grab hold of your chair because this next one is as different as north from south but it's every bit as amazing. This ghost town ranch house was done by Brae (Otterine) and has had me in a state of ecstasy ever since I saw it.

Go check out the rest of the pictures of this hauntingly beautiful work in Brae's gallery here. I have a passion for aged minis and for ghost towns, so looking at these pictures has had me literally saying "oooooooooh" and "aaaaaaaaaaaah" and "omg, that's perfect!". The aging and distressing of the wood and other features of the house are done so wonderfully well that it's hard to believe this is a mini. Every tiny detail is perfectly realistic.

But the most intriguing aspect is the dramatic difference between Brae's interpretation of the kit and that of Chris. Doesn't it just make your brain dance around in joy to see the wonderful workings of the creative mind? This is the kind of thing that simply delights me as an artisan and it's why I love these contests so much.

The contest doesn't close until Monday so there will be tons more pictures and entries yet to come. The winner won't be announced until mid-June but most of the entrants will be posting pictures of their creations in their Greenleaf galleries. You'll want to pop into the main gallery from time to time and see who has updated their albums with their Spring Fling 2010 pictures.

I'm looking forward to the announcement of the winners and really don't envy the judges their job at all. Greenleaf will send out an official email announcement as well as it being announced on the Greenleaf forum when the winners are chosen. In the meantime, I'm going to go back to the galleries and contemplate the wonder of creative contrasts.

The Dollhouse Hall of Fame

2010-05-27T15:04:00.000-06:00

I'm so excited! I keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming, (which really hurts but no one said reality checks weren't painful).

The first fabulous bit of news is that the Dollhouse Hall of Fame is opening in Cooperstown, NY soon. The second fabulous bit of news is that I'm in it! How's that for exciting news! You can see why I have to keep pinching myself because it just doesn't seem like it can be happening to me. I was all happy when I heard about it and about two weeks later I called up one a dear friend of mine who is also going to be in the DHOF and said, "OMG, I just realized that I'm an inductee! I am an inductee, aren't I? Holy cow, I am! OMG, I think I'm gonna faint". I've never been real quick on the uptake but this really took awhile to sink in.

Wow!! I'm in a hall of fame which is beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of, but to be in the Dollhouse Hall of Fame is enough to make me cry with happiness. Dollhouses are my whole world. They've brought me more joy and happiness than anything else I've ever known and to be included in something as wonderful as the DHOF is, well, it's pretty awesome.

There will be a big screen TV running a video display of my dollhouses in the museum and the gift shop will carry some of my dressed furniture and beds and hidden fairy houses. I've been working on getting some new stuff made for them and I'll add the pictures in just a few minutes. I think that I'm going to send my C'est Si Bon french cafe to go on display in the museum after I get it re-landscaped to travel.

The DHOF is located in Cooperstown, NY which I think is a stroke of sheer genius because that's where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located. Stop and consider that for a minute and you'll see what I mean. {pausing} {listening to the sound of evil chuckling from across the country} Yep, you figured it out. How easy would it be to say, "Honey, I know how much you've always wanted to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. Let's just do it! Let's go to Cooperstown for our vacation this summer." {cackle} Hell, you'll be halfway home from New York before the light of dawning comprehension will come across his face as he gives you a suspicious look and says, "Heeeeeeyyyyyyy............" hehehehehehehehe The main thing is that you'll both have had a terrific vacation. Hubs will go home happy at having visited the baseball mecca and you'll go home thrilled with having been to the Dollhouse Hall of Fame. Here's the link for their website (just getting set up) so you can start planning your vacation now. http://www.dollhousehalloffame.com/

Oh, I was going to show you some of the new things I made for the gift shop. Hang on and let me get the pictures.

This is the Golden Leopard bed. The fabrics are all silks and it positively glows with energy.

Then there's "Roses at Midnight", black silks and satins with jet beads and gold tassels. I love it!

This "Spring Garden Bedroom" is one is my favorites because I love doing silk ribbon embroidery. The embroidery is an original design and it's surrounded by delicate seed pearls. The layers of lace are hand appliqued. I decided to go with a full bedroom set of furniture for this one because it's too pretty not to have matching furniture.

I'd been holding this fabric back for something special. This is the Blue Delft Floral Victorian Parlor. The pillows are made of a navy blue textured silk that's out of this world. Wouldn't this set be gorgeous in a room with a blue delft fireplace? I bought up enough of this fabric to do several projects because finding coordinating furniture for a blue delft room isn't easy. I lovingly set the rest of it back for custom orders.

These other two are new but not going to the DHOF. One is a red and gold modern living room set that has already found a home in an awesomely cool Tennyson and the "Sweet Daisy Mae" bed will be going up on Etsy real soon.

I've been really into furniture lately! I'm finishing an order this week and then I'm going to have a little fun with some Wedgewood blue fabric and an oak parlor set and then see what else I can do with some beds. In fact, I think I'll head to the studio now. I just had to pop in and share some good news with y'all! Grab a map and start planning your trip to Cooperstown!

Doin' the half scale happy dance (and a quilt show report)

2010-05-04T23:15:00.000-06:00

By this time next week, I should be in half scale heaven. I couldn't resist those sweet little houses. Every single one of them is calling my name so I don't know which one I'll build first. The Chantilly is being chatty already and I think she's going to want something very special but I'm not sure what it will be yet. I'll wait till they arrive and we'll have some quality time together before I decide. All I know is that I must build one of those sweethearts immediately!

As some of you know, my best friend of 31 years came up from Oklahoma this weekend and we went to the annual quilt show here in Denver. It's sort of a tradition for us and we always have a great time. This year was no exception. There was a beautiful display of all sorts of quilts. One of the most interesting was a panoramic wall quilt of a quilt show. Yep, it was exactly how it sounds. The artist had created several mini quilts and put them together in one panoramic piece, then added people in front of them. The detailing was incredible. The display curtains were left free on the bottom and sides so you could see the poles holding them up. Some of the people in the quilt were taking pictures and the artist had put micro quilts on the back of the cameras so you could see what they were taking a picture of. When we walked up to that display, there was a line of people standing in front of it and it truly created the most incredible visual effect of people looking at a quilt of people looking at quilts. It took my eyes a minute to adjust! As a miniaturist, this was definitely my favorite piece in the show because it was such a cool mini scene. Even more fun is that we happened to come up when the artist was there and got to talk to her a little bit. She shared some of the motivation behind bits and pieces of the quilt which was fascinating.

After we'd gone thru the show and had a bite of lunch, we headed for the vendors. We were prepared with tote bags and boy, did we need them!! Kathy found some beautiful fabrics that were perfect for a couple of projects she has coming up. She also bought a state-of-the-art iron that does everything but wash windows. We both did some stash enhancing. When I saw a vendor selling Caryl Bryer Fallert fabric in 6"x44" rolls, I made a beeline for them! These are ombre solids in the most mouthwatering and vibrant colors. If you've never seen her work, drop in here http://www.bryerpatch.com/ and take a look. You can see why I was so delighted to find her distinctive fabrics in just the right size cuts for what I need and I came away with 14 different rolls in all colors of the rainbow. There will be some beautiful minis made from these fabrics!! The hardest part is cutting into it for the first time. It's such pretty fabric that I almost want to leave it whole so I can just sit and look at it.

We had planned on going to the mall on Sunday but the quilt show was a little more tiring than expected so we settled for going to the Great American Quilt Factory so Kathy could look for the one fabric she hadn't been able to find at the show. It was a lucky decision because she found something even better that is going to be gorgeous in her wall hangings. While she was matching swatches, I pillaged the remnants and fat quarter racks and came home with a dozen more teeny prints. I think my biggest treasure of the whole weekend was finding a piece of fabric in an almost perfect Wedgewood blue with a delicate white floral spray design. I've already matched it up with a pristine white fairy frost and it will be a beautiful parlor set soon.

Oh, I almost forgot! One of the vendors was selling glass nail files. We had to go check them out and you should have seen the look on her face when I asked her if they worked on wood. *cackle* She gave me the strangest look!! I explained what I do and she understood a little bit better but still seemed to think it was an odd question. However after looking at them closely, I decided to give it a try and bought a set of three. I tried one out on a bit of scrap wood when I got home and it works wonderfully well! The vendor had said that the glass seals the edges of what it's filing which is what made me think it would work on wood and it does! I had nice smooth edges with minimal work. Now that's a great find!

The weekend wouldn't be complete without good food and we definitely had that! On Friday night Kathy and I went to our favorite chinese place where we can sit in a back corner and they'll feed us the best chinese food while we talk. On Saturday we went to Olive Garden after the show and had a nice italian dinner and on Sunday I took Kathy to Rosie's Diner which is like a trip back in time. It's an old railroad car diner complete with neon lights, a counter with stools, a bubbler jukebox and little juke boxes in the booths. The food is just as retro and it's some of the best home cooking in the whole city. All in all, it was a perfect weekend!

The newest update on the medical front is that I saw the endocrinologist at the University hospital this morning and she had a few surprises for me. I told her about my endocrine history with some hesitation since every single doctor I've seen has told me that I must be full of shit because those things could never happen. This doctor listened and said that it's definitely not normal, but situations like mine have been documented. She also gave me a good explanation about why things had gone so bad when they took me off the meds I'd been on for 14 years. I found myself nodding when she talked because she was giving me logical and informative reasons for some of the mysteries I've been facing...........things that other doctors have blown off as all in my head.

The biggest surprise was when she told me that my thyroid is actually two inches lower in my throat than where it should be! This explains a whole lot!!! It's lodged under my collarbone on the right side. Now I've been telling doctors for the past two years that I have excruciating pain in my right collarbone, especially when I sleep on my right side or raise my right arm. It makes sense that it would hurt like hell since it crushes my thyroid into the bone when I do. *begin rant* For two years doctors have been telling me that the pain couldn't possibly be related to the thyroid at all. I'd like to go tell each and every one of them that we're going to shove one of their testicles up under their hip bone and see how they feel. *end rant* I'm sorry for being so graphic but that's pretty much the equivalent of what I've been living with because they didn't notice that my thyroid might not be in the same place where they saw thyroids in pictures when they took Anatomy 101.

It occurred to me on the way home that this could be a lot of the problem with why my fibromyalgia is always in flare since there's a fibro pressure point in the same location. I'll talk to my rheumatologist about that the next time I see her, but this could definitely be that "underlying cause" that has contributed to so much fibro pain. And since the symptoms of fibromyalgia and Graves Disease are so much alike, it could definitely be why it's seemed like my thyroid has been the culprit. In a way it is, but it's because of the size and location, not the hormone levels.

Anyway, the new endo, Dr S., said that my thyroid is twice the normal size which by textbook definitions wouldn't cause the breathing and pain problems *except* for the fact that it's not where it's supposed to be! In its current location, it can definitely cause the breathing and circulation issues and the pain. She's going to arrange for me to have some pulmonary tests done first to determine exactly what's causing my oxygen saturation problems and she said that after she gets those tests she'll probably consult with a surgeon about getting rid of this mess. (if there are any pulmonary issues, those will have to be stabilized first) She said we need to consider the future as well as the present because there's nothing that can be done to stop the growth of the nodules. The good news is that she's pretty sure they were wrong about the microcalcifications being cancer. She wants to get actual copies of the pictures from my ultrasounds to be sure but she said it seems like it's probably crystallizations of thyroid hormones instead. That sets my mind at ease a little bit, but she said that it's still like having a time bomb in my throat. When I asked how long I have to live like this before something is done, she said that she'd do everything she could to make sure it wasn't much longer.

I've been thru too many bitter disappointments to allow myself to be too optimistic, but as always, I'm hopeful. And this doctor has given me a little more confidence that she knows what she's doing and will try to make things right.

So, a new doctor, a great weekend with my best friend, new fabric to play with and half scale dollhouse kits on the way! Life is good!!

Heaven in Half Scale! New Greenleaf laser cut dollhouse kits in 1:24

2010-04-29T16:36:00.000-06:00

Have you seen? Have you heard? Greenleaf just released *7*........yes, count them.............SEVEN brand new laser cut kits in half scale. Yep, you heard that right, they're 1:24 and they are simply to die for!

I'm not sure which one I want to do first. The Chantilly jumps right out at me coz she's a chatty girl and I haven't had a chance to build her in full scale yet. But I'm also working on a full scale Tennyson right now and how cool would it be to do one in half scale at the same time??? The full size is going to be a light and airy sea side house and it would be sooooooo much fun to do the half scale in opposite and make it dark and gothic. Then there's my massive and long time urge to build an old west ghost town which would have the Brimbles and the Taft as anchor houses. The only thing that has held me back is not having enough space for a ghost town but with half scale, there's nothing to hold me back anymore!

Of course there's the half scale Rosedale which would be really cool since I'll be starting on a full scale Rosedale within the next few weeks and it would be fun to do them together like the Tennyson. I've always wanted to do a Buttercup as a church and the half scale is perfect for that. The Jefferson isn't being chatty yet, but you know how those Colonials can be a little on the quiet side. When it's ready, it'll talk.

There's the half scale lighthouse too which was released awhile back. I have it assembled and ready to paint so I can already tell you how truly fabulous these half scale kits are in laser cut! You simply cannot believe how finely detailed they are! There's virtually no sanding at all and the wood is beautiful. Greenleaf announced today that they're using a high quality maple plywood for the half scale kits that is thinner and more in proportion with the half scale. Be still my heart! This just keeps getting better and better and better!

Okay, so now that I've rambled about them, you have to go see them! They're a Greenleaf exclusive right now so this is the only place you're going to find them. http://shop.greenleafdollhouses.com/Web-Store-Exclusives.html?startpage=0 Those prices are awesomely affordable too!

This is perfect timing for Mother's Day! What a great gift it would be! Since I'm not a mom I have to be creative about getting a gift on Mother's Day and it's usually from my cat.

Here you go baby. Put your little paw on that mouse and click here for Mom........http://shop.greenleafdollhouses.com/Web-Store-Exclusives.html?startpage=0 Hey, whatever works!

You NEED at least one of these kits. Trust me, even if you've never built a dollhouse before and even if you've always been scared by smaller scales...............you can build these houses! They're easier than full scale! I always thought smaller scales were harder but they're not so don't let any apprehension hold you back. Get a half scale kit and give it a try. I promise you that you'll be soooooo happy that you did!

Oh, and just as an FYI, I'm already planning on moving into half scale dressed furniture in the very near future. I've already decided on some beautiful bedroom and living room sets and will be spending this weekend at the quilt show getting fabrics that work in half scale. I'm planning on selling full sets of furniture when I launch my half scale line----------so instead of just a dressed bed, it will be a dressed bed along with matching nightstands and dressers and armoires...........or parlor furniture with tables to match. So if you were worried that you won't be able to find artisan furniture for your half scale dollhouse, you can count on me to make sure there are some beautiful choices out there (including custom orders) and it will all be affordable. I know that sounds like I'm promoting myself but if you know me, you know that my main goal is to make sure that miniaturists get what they need and love.

Let's celebrate! It's a wonderful mini day!!

And then again, maybe not

2010-04-29T15:19:00.000-06:00

So the surgery didn't work out quite like I planned. Actually, it didn't work out at all because the oncology surgeon turned out to be a huge asshole. When I got the the report from the oncologist and it was totally different from what he told me in the office. The report says that he doesn't think there's any reason to take out my thyroid except to "ease the patient's perception of discomfort, breathing problems, and fear of cancer". It continues to say that he thinks the several suspicious nodules are all benign and he considers my history of thyroid problems to be unlikely because radical changes in thyroid levels simply don't happen. He finished up with "I'm demanding that she consult with an endocrinologist even tho she says she's had issues with them in the past and will only perform the surgery based on the opinion of the endocrinologist. I will be happy to cancel this surgery."

That is SO not what he told us in the office! I have no idea what made him change his mind. Why would he schedule the surgery if he doesn't think that I need it? And why is he completely overlooking that I have at least 8 nodules that are around 3cm and somewhere around *12* that are under 2cm. How much room does he think there is in there anyway and why the hell else does he think it's difficult for me to breathe? I really think that the simple test of "When I look down at my feet I can't breathe anymore" is fairly conclusive. There is also the fact that there are more nodules than there were 2 years ago and I'm no longer on any medication to control the growth or multiplication of them thanks that that first endo who took me off the tapazole I'd been on for 14 years and started all this. The oncologist also mentioned that there are SEVERAL nodules with microcalcifications, not just the one nodule that the internist told me about. There sure weren't any microcalcifications in there two years ago and the development of those alone is scary enough.

So, WTF? I threw my hands up in disgust and cancelled the surgery, fired the oncologist and the quack internist, and I'm starting all over. Again. I can't even begin to describe how devastating this is to be so close to a resolution only to have it snatched away like that. I don't often wish bad things on people, but I think that both of those doctors need to spend some time being as sick as I have been and go thru the same bullshit about not getting treatment.

I'm not going to dwell on that. Right now I need to focus on starting all over again and trying to find someone who can help. This time I'm going to the local university hospital in the hopes that they'll have a more open mind than the oncologist who said "Deborah doesn't fit the template of thyroid issues that I've seen before". I hate that whole attitude that something can't exist just because it's different from the textbook. I heard all that song and dance when I started going thru menopause at age 27. The doctor I was seeing then flat out said I was just too young and put me on Prozac. That's the same thing the quack internist wanted to do because he doesn't believe I could possibly have any endocrine issues that he hasn't heard of before. I got news for these doctors, the problem is NOT depression and it's NOT in my head! My mother had the same bizarre endocrine system I do and so did my grandmother. We're not normal but it doesn't mean we don't deserve to receive proper medical care. What I do need is for someone in the medical world to get up off their ass and work at a diagnosis!

I'm sorry y'all. I'm really emotional about all this and for a change I'm sort of losing my cool about it. I mean, I already had my bag packed for the hospital because I was so thrilled about the chance to get better. Every time I've thought about that surgeon's letter for the past two weeks I've burst into tears.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about the University. There is a qualification process before being accepted by one of the doctors and after a lot of tense waiting I found out this week that I qualify and was accepted. Yay! I won't be seeing the head of the department but I don't really care. I'll see their janitor if he knows how to fix me! The doctor I'm seeing is a woman and at the risk of sounding sexist, I'm glad about that. Maybe a woman will have more compassion in addition to being more accepting of the fact that hormones--whether estrogen or thyroid--can be completely unpredictable. She specializes in the balance of thyroid hormones which gives me hope that she won't just look at a set of numbers and say "well, those are all in normal ranges" and send me away. Personally I think that the numbers are all a moot point compared to the physical size of the thyroid and nodules and the health complications they cause but we've got to start somewhere. And maybe she'll be able to see the overall picture and put together the puzzle pieces of all my endocrine problems to find a cause. And sometimes when I dream, I have a pony. LOL But maybe, just maybe, she'll understand what's going on.

I'm hopeful.........ever hopeful. There's probably going to be another fight later on if surgery is ever confirmed since the insurance company will probably refuse if they got a copy of the oncologist's report. As much of an asshole as he is, I'm sure he sent them a copy too since he made sure to send a copy to every doctor he knows I see as well as four endos that he thought I might possibly see. But if the new doctor is good at what she does, she'll have people who can fight the insurance company for me too. And my pony.

I'm not giving up yet. I see the new endo on the 4th so keep your fingers crossed for me. Maybe she'll finally be the one who can help.

I never like to end on a negative note and there's always something positive about miniatures. This time the positive is that a new mini shop in New York is going to be carrying my work soon. Yay! How cool is that!! No matter what else happens, minis make life good.

Good news!

2010-04-08T17:01:00.000-06:00

I realized this morning that I hadn't shown some new pieces of furniture yet! Shame on me for being stingy with the eye candy! This pretty green silk set is called "Gloucester in Green" and is custom dressed for a gorgeous Gloucester mansion. The buttons on the upholstery are chrome delica beads in the exact same shade of green as the upholstery and the accent pillows and throw are a soft ecru with a teeny ivy print.

This swan chaise and matching chairs are also custom dressed and will be living in the same house as the elegant library set that I recently dressed. These pieces will be in the games room with chess tables and pool tables and dart boards. I love the combination of buttery yellow stripes with the black and red pillows. There will be drapes to match soon, so stay tuned for updates!

I want to thank everyone for all the support you've given me about my health issues. There's good news too! I saw the oncologist yesterday and he immediately said that he wants to do a full thyroidectomy! Yay! I'm gonna get my throat cut after all! LOL He said the danger of cancer is too great to do a partial even tho they won't know that it's cancer for sure until they get it out and get the pathology report. Right now I don't much care if it is or if it isn't. The main thing is that it's coming out and I won't have to worry about it anymore! (I'd been seriously considering doing it myself with my dremel and some duct tape!) I'll only be in the hospital for two days and then there will be that energy drop while I go euthyroid. (I'm already so tired that I don't think I'll notice an energy drop at all!) After that, I'll get stabilized with thyroid suppliments and have a nice, consistent hormone level for the first time since I was 8 years old. The surgery is set for May 17th.

There's only one little potential complication and that's my heart. There's always a risk of a thyroid storm on the operating table and since I already have an accelerated and irregular heart beat that's a concern, but the oncologist said the risk of cancer outweighs it so unless I have a bad ekg or something in my pre-op checkup the week before the surgery, we're good to go.

I did get one surprise this week at my appointment with the internist. I mentioned my concern about my oxygen saturation levels and how it might effect the fibromyalgia so he said we'd test it right there. I started out at 92% so he told the nurse to take me for a walk around the nurse's station. It dropped to 88%. He told her to take me on one more lap and halfway thru she looked at the meter, looked at me and yelled, "Oh my god!" I wish they wouldn't do that! I thought I was fine till she yelled and then she scared the shit out of me! LOL! My sat level had dropped to 81% and I guess I looked like I was going to faint so she grabbed one arm and the doctor came running down the hall and grabbed the other arm and they half carried me back to the exam room. I wasn't sure what the fuss was about since I'm sort of used to hanging onto walls. But as soon as I got home, someone showed up with an oxygen concentrator and some portable tanks and here I am hooked up to an air hose. It's not so bad since I think that the oxygen smells a little like rain but it's a bit disconcerting to have to have help doing something that I've done all my life.

They did a chest xray to see if the breathing problem is something in my lungs and I had a copy of the results sent to the oncologist. He said the xray looked good with no sign of emphysema or other lung issues so it's probably got something to do with my heart. Personally, I'm pretty confident that when the thyroid comes out, the heart issues will resolve themselves. Even tho my thyroid lab tests are all "normal", it doesn't mean that everything is okay. When they first found the nodules back in '97 I tested hypo (low) so they put me on a thyroid supplement and three weeks later I was in the emergency room in a full blown storm and my labs all showed me to be way too high. According to the doctors, that's impossible and could never happen. So when they tell me that my "normal" thyroid couldn't possibly be causing cardiac symptoms that are stereotypical of Grave's Disease I just smile and nod. There's no point in arguing with them about something they swear could never happen. I already know that I don't fit into their medical mold (and I don't think that many other people do either!) The main thing..........the best thing......is that they'll get this horrid, lumpy, toxic thing out of my throat. I know that I'll feel better right away just by getting that mass of negative junk off of my throat chakra and the rest will all fall in place as I recover.

Oh, I have to share one more thing. Last week I finally gave in and bought a walking cane. I've been in denial about needing one but my best friend is coming up from Oklahoma at the end of the month so we can go to the quilt show and that was the final motivator I needed. I want to be able to enjoy the quilt show as much as possible and having something to lean on will make it easier for me to get around the whole show. I admit that my vanity was taking a hit about it till I realized that there are some really cool canes out there! These are not my mother's canes! They've got some awesomely nifty designs to choose from and that made it much easier. I finally settled on a emerald green "cyclone" design with a cherry wood handle. It almost looks like tiger stripes if there were such a thing as a chrome tiger in emerald green. So for the quilt show, I'll use my wicked-cool cane and carry my oxygen tank in a leopard print shoulder bag that's big enough to also hold my shopping treasures. Yep, I might look like an old lady, but I'll be a stylish old lady!

Back to miniatures now! I have a lull in orders which is good timing because I need to do something for myself now. Some of y'all know how much I've been looking forward to building my Sea Side Resort Tennyson and I put it into dry fit earlier this week. Ooooooooooh, it's sooooooo pretty! This house has a small footprint, but there's a lot of house there! The rooms are really nice sized and I love the huge attic. I have all the furniture for it already and every single piece is white wire wicker. That sounds a bit monochromatic and it is but I'll be adding color with upholstery and accessories that will create a very unique decor. This is a laser cut kit too so it will go together pretty fast. I have my wallpaper all selected as well as the flooring. I just need to order the lights and we're all set. I wonder if I can get it built before the middle of May? I think I'll give it a try!

Never give up hope

2010-03-26T03:11:00.000-06:00

I know I started this blog as a way of keeping in touch with my mini friends and fully intended to devote all my topics to miniatures. Between the squirrels and the surgeons (who are sometimes interchangeable) it hasn't always worked out that way.

At first I thought that I was being a downer if I talked about my medical problems but I quickly discovered that I have some truly wonderful mini friends who have been so very, very supportive of me and don't seem to mind if I sometimes wander off topic and talk about some medical issues. And that led to another surprising discovery. I wasn't surprised that my mini friends are supportive because I know how wonderfully kind and caring you guys are. What surprised me was the discovery that I *need* the support.

Yep, big brave me who has looked down the barrel of a gun, lived with two homicidal people who have tried to kill me in the name of love, and survived the sinking of the ship of fools. Twice. Honestly, I didn't think that I needed support. It just never really crossed my mind that it would be of any help. I thought that it was sweet and wonderful when people are supportive but because I never had that support in my life I had no way of knowing what it *really* means. Then you guys came along and I learned---really learned---what it means to have people who care and will listen and try to understand. People who say, "You're doing the right thing" and "Don't give up!" I can't tell you how much that means to me and what a difference it's made.

Lately I've been surrounded by some doubt and was deeply hurt when someone I care about told me, "Maybe you need to just accept things as they are and quit pushing so hard to find something else that may not even exist." Gawd, that just cut me to the quick. I've spent the past two years being my own medical advocate because no one else would do it for me. The doctors sure aren't willing to accept that role and I've had to fight my way thru all the bullshit and keep after them at every turn to keep looking for something deeper. I've never given up and said, "Oh, this is just fibro and there's nothing else that would cause it to stay in a constant state of flare". Nor have I let go of the fact that there's something seriously wrong with my thyroid even tho the doctors say it's "normal" and that they're okay with the biopsy results. So I've researched and I've gone into the doctor's offices with my list of questions and requests only to be told that they don't know. Apparently I'm supposed to just quietly walk away with my head down and accept their diagnosis that this quality of life is all I'll ever have without even exploring the possibility that something else is wrong. I've never put my head down for anything and I'm too old to start that now. I refuse to accept that this is all I'll ever have and idly sit by as each day gets a little bit worse. I didn't live thru two homicidal maniacs just to give up on my own body. There *is* a better way to live and I'll get back there but I can't do it alone.

So after being devastated by that comment (not to mention what it did to my ability to trust the person in whom I've relied on so much), my next appointment with my rheumatologist was something that I had mixed emotions about since I wanted to talk to her about the possible thyroid surgery. I explained about how much this thing is obstructing my airway and circulation, and how my oxygen sat level was really low when they did the biopsy which got me to wondering if the lack of oxygen in my blood would perpetuate the fibro flare ups. Dr H sat up and said that yes, that could certainly explain a lot if it was below 80% on a regular basis. More importantly she feels that it's probably interfering with my sleep. She's always felt that the biggest problem with getting the fibro under control is my insomnia and the poor quality of sleep when I do sleep. She took a good look at my thyroid for the first time and couldn't believe that it hadn't been removed before now with all the nodules, especially when I told her about the one with the microcalcifications in it. She agreed that's like a ticking time bomb. When I told here there is a new nodule on the isthmus, she said, "Good god woman, it's no wonder you have problems! That's the last place you need a nodule. There's only so much space in there to begin with!" And then she said that if the surgeon has any reservations about removing my thyroid to let her know and she'll call him and push for it based on it's impact on my fibromyalgia. I was SO thrilled when she said that! Finally, finally, finally, there is a doctor on my side and ready to help be an advocate if I need it. I can't even find words to say how much better I felt.

I told her what the person I trusted had said about just accepting things as they are and she gave me a pep talk and finished with, "Don't you ever give up hope." and then she hugged me on the way out. I really needed that, especially from a doctor.

With my oncology appointment coming up on the 7th, I'm feeling more and more confident that maybe I'll find a solution here. I don't think I'll find any answers no matter how much I'd like to hear them say that my Grave's symptoms really do have something to do with that "normal" thyroid. I really can't believe that the thyroid hormone going thru my body is anything near normal.......if not in quantity than certainly in quality. Any hormone that comes from a tiny gland that consists of more fibrous and fluid waste-filled nodules than healthy tissue just can't be good for me. However, I don't expect to hear any doctor agree with that and in the grand scheme of things it won't really matter as long as they take it out of me. If I feel better after it's removed, I'll have my answers.

It's like a roller coaster ride these days and to be honest, I'm getting more and more tired all the time so it's harder than ever to deal with it. But maybe, just maybe, the light at the end of the tunnel won't be a train this time and something will be done to get my health back under control. Therefore I'll stand in the middle of the tracks, holding my pathetic little bundle of hope close to my chest and continue to chant, "Never give up. Never give up. Never give up." under my breath.

On the lighter side of things, it's been a busy mini week. The Dixie Manor custom Pierce was picked up by the shipper on Tuesday and she should be snuggled into her custom box and on her way to her new home tomorrow. I can't wait for the two of them to meet face to face! Right now I'm working on a design plan for a kick ass Beaumont that I'll be building at the end of the year. That's a lot of research and experimenting on paper right now but for me that's almost as much fun as the actual building. I needed to do some physical moving around this week in the middle of a snowstorm that had my body stiffening up so I did my ritual cleaning of the studio after a big build and it looks fabulous. I cleaned out the closet and moved the plastic storage bins filled with non-minis to the crawlspace under the stairs so I'd have room for my kits. The entire closet is filled with kits from floor to ceiling but they fit and now I have more workspace in the studio which is always good.

I've also been working on a couple of furniture orders, going back and forth between one masculine, slightly modern house and one very gothic Victorian. I've had to wait for furniture to arrive so I'm actually alternating between two orders which is unusual for me but it's been fun to bounce between the two. I'll show you the latest in the more modern house furniture next week when I do the drapes to match the furniture I just finished for it. Today I have something else to show you. This bed is named "Spellbound" and I think it suits it well. The resident of the gothic Victorian is a very sexy witch dressed in black lace so when I designed her bed I wanted to make sure that it reflected not only her power and seductive nature, but also her romantic side as well. I think this bed might be just right for her.

It's done in black satin and crinkle silk with one blood red silk ribbon rose embroidered on the pillow. I had to do the vanity bench and the settee to match so that the whole room pulls together.

One thing that has me all excited about this furniture is that it's going into a Tracy Topps house! Not only is Tracy a dear friend/little sister but I admire her work so much that it's a real honor for me to be able to dress a house that she's made. I can't wait to see it in the house!

A Completed Dollhouse and a Good Surgeon

2010-03-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

Not that the two of them go together, but in my world maybe they do. Both are good news!! Let the happy dancing begin (if you can't find a partner use a wooden chair). The Dixie Manor Bed and Breakfast Pierce is all done clear down to teeny hyacinth growing under the lilac bush. Oh, and she's such a beauty too! She's as delicate and feminine as can be and the colors are soft as a spring night in the south.

Isn't she gorgeous? I can say that because the owner of this house has worked with me thru every little step and she's the one who selected the delightful wallpapers. I think we made a helluva team!

There are LOTS more pictures of Dixie Manor on my website on this page. I took so many pictures that I had to use thumbnails to get them all in one place! Please drop in so you can see all the details of this sweetheart. I mean, we're talking about eye candy that is almost as good as chocolate. It's pretty any time of year but I think that finishing this one right on the cusp of spring is perfect timing.

I mentioned that there is good news about a surgeon too. I need to backtrack so you get the full story. It started with a real asshole of an internist a couple of weeks ago. Jerk. He's the one I was referred to because the other internist couldn't figure out what else to do. Anyway, Dr Jerk copped an attitude right off the bat and acted like he thought I was just a pain in the butt and nothing was wrong with me. I'm not going to go into all the details but he literally made me feel as if I'd been beaten up. He wouldn't even consider looking at what's wrong with me because he got stuck on the new medical mantra: "You're just depressed".

I sort of lost it coz I've heard this one too many times from doctors and pointed out that I have situational depression, not clinical. I'm depressed because I'm in chronic pain and exhaustion. I suggested that we focus on fixing whatever is wrong with me coz if I feel better I won't have any reason to be depressed.

Gawd, you'd think I'd called his mother a streetwalker or something! He got all pissy about that and snapped that he isn't ruling out clinical depression. Whatever. I told him that's all a moot point since I can't take anti-depressants. I have some reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally adverse reactions to both tricyclics and SNRI's. It's much worse with the SNRI's. In fact, I'd even typed up a list of the sleep medications that they've tried me on and the reactions I've had to each one. (for some reason antidepressants are the new sleep meds, especially for fibromyalgia patients) Anyway, he looked at it and I quote, "I don't understand some of these reactions to the SNRIs. Let me give you the name of a neurologist to see about that". But, even tho he admitted that he didn't understand it and even after our debate of about 15 minutes where I came *very* close to raising my voice about why I will NOT take any more anti-depressants, he suddenly switched tactics and said that there is a new medication for fibromyalgia that I might want to try. I'd heard about Savella and he said I could take it with my Lyrica and Tramadol so I said I'd give it a try. He gave me an office sample for two weeks and I stuck it in my purse.

I started taking it that night and almost immediately I was nauseous and having strong stomach pains. By the second dose both were worse, my mouth tasted like I'd been sucking on a tin can and all the muscles in the back of my neck were rock hard. On the morning of the third day, my stomach and esophagus felt like they were petrified, I had a raging headache and had been bedridden for two days. My hands were shaking and my nervous system felt like it was shorting out. I figured I'd given it my best try (Dr Jerk told me to suck it up and try to get thru the initial side effects because they would get better) but enough was enough and I tossed them in the bucket of used kitty litter.

Out of curiosity, I went to drugs.com and checked the drug interaction with the meds that I'm already on. Yep, sure enough, not only is Savella an SNRI but there was a HUGE red exclamation mark saying that it has serious interactions with Tramadol and can lead to siezures and coma. When I go back for my follow up with Dr Jerk I'm going to take along a baseball bat and whack him in the kneecaps. From now on when I say "No anti-depressants", there will be no room for argument. And I think he's an incompetent twit on top of being a jerk for prescribing something without checking for interactions with my existing meds.

I brought up my thyroid symptoms and he immediately shut me down saying that all my thyroid blood tests are normal, therefore I cannot possibly have any symptoms of Grave's Disease. Wanna bet??? Ask any Grave's patient and they'll tell you that those numbers don't mean doodlysquat. The symptoms not only continue but are even more horrible when the numbers are "normal" because we aren't getting any treatment at all. I had already pointed out that my blood pressure was 165/90 when the nurse took it and that my pulse never drops below 90bpm. He ignored me twice and was going to continue to ignore me until my husband pushed about it. (Dr Jerk said my heart monitor test results were all "normal" and couldn't explain how 90+ bpm is normal). But after hubby pushed, Dr Jerk took my BP again and saw for himself how high it was. I guess maybe he thought I was bribing the nurse to falsify it on my records before he came into the room or something. Anyway, he finally acknowledged that there might be a slight problem with my heart rate and BP. I asked what would be causing it and he said, "That would by your thyroid proble...........Oh wait. No, your thyroid numbers are normal so it's not that". Damn, almost caught him on that one. He cleared his throat and condescendingly said that he would prescribe a med to lower both. I said, "Beta blockers, right?". His head snapped around and he asked, "How do you know that? Have you been on them before?". I sweetly replied, "No, but my first endocrinologist discussed them with me as a possibility if the Tapazole didn't work after I had my thyroid storm". He had that one coming.

Then I brought up the nodules in my thyroid and said that I wasn't comfortable with the benign diagnosis from the biopsy since the microcalcifications are almost always found in cancerous thyroid nodules. He said and I quote, "Well, if the biopsy was benign, I'm okay with that." I think I literally snarled at him. He might be okay with it, but I'm the one with a time bomb in my throat! However, he was already getting out his directory and writing down the name and number of a throat surgeon he wanted me to call.

I'm just now getting back to normal after the savella/tramadol interaction so I haven't called the surgeon's office till today. I got an appointment for April 7th (the earliest they have). I got a bit of a surprise when I asked the recep for directions to his office. She said that if we use the valet parking all I have to do is turn to my left and I'll see the sign on the building for "Cancer Care Center". Um...........okay. She caught the surprise in my voice and asked if I had been told I was seeing an oncologist. Not exactly but it's something of a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

And that's where we are now. It's good news that even tho Dr Jerk is okay with my thyroid, he's still getting me in to see an oncologist specializing in cancers of the throat. That's where I ultimately need to be. And the beta blockers are working so my blood pressure and pulse are back out of the red and close to normal again. I'm willing to bet that once they take out my thyroid, I'm going to feel a lot better. I know it won't help some of the other issues I have but at the very least I'll get rid of the airway obstruction and get more oxygen into my muscles which will help the fibro. No matter what the doctors say, I also know that it's going to make all those symptoms of Graves go away. I can live with being euthyroid a lot better than I can with untreated Graves. Most of all it will get this nasty, toxic mess off my throat chakra and out of my body where I'm certain it has been slowly poisoning me.

I'm making a list. If the oncologist and pathologist say the nodule is malignant I'm going to go to every single doctor who said that I couldn't possibly have thyroid issues and whack them in the kneecaps with that ball bat. I thought I'd invite all my friends to go along and we'll make a party out of it. Casual dress is fine for a knee-whackin' party. I'll bake the cookies and brownies if y'all will pass the hat to throw my bail.

Cleaning up after the construction crew

2010-02-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

You know how it is when you finish up a house. All that sawdust on the floor and windows. Everything needs a good cleaning before the new residents can move in.

Did you know that the Pierce has 25 windows and a pair of french doors? I cringe at the very thought of washing all those windows and practically faint when I think about sweeping and mopping the floors in 10 rooms! So I hired a maid to do the cleaning in the new Dixie Manor.

Personally, I think she's doing a pretty good job of it, but Mini Napoleon has to follow along to make sure she gets it all done right.

Just one last polish of the fireplace mantel in the kitchen and she's all done!

My maid is accustomed to cleaning a house this large since she works in my own Pierce.

She mentioned that it was much easier to clean Dixie Manor than it is to clean my Pierce with all its furnishings. I pointed out that she doesn't want to move across the country with the new Pierce and that it will be filled with furnishings too once it reaches its new owner. Well, that made her stop and think! She decided that she's quite happy right where she's at.

Now if I can just find a mini gardener to do the landscaping for Dixie Manor for me. Hopefully he won't have as much attitude as the maid does!

The best friends are the ones who know little things mean a lot

2010-02-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

Some days it really overwhelms me when I consider how blessed I am to have so many wonderful people in my life. I've never been what you'd call a social creature. Let's just say that I have a lot in common with hermits and cats. But all that changed when I discovered miniatures a few years ago. Much to my surprise, not only did I discover a fabulous new way of life, but I discovered that I was making friends too!

That sort of shook me up for awhile since I'd never been good at making new friends, but there they were! A whole bunch of new people who liked me and I liked them right back. Unless you had watched my life story (fortunately not a Lifetime movie of the week), you'd never fully appreciate just how incredible this is, but from my perspective it's nothing less than a miracle.

I truly love these people too. Even tho most of us have never met face to face the bond is genuine. They are caring and loving people with strong hearts and sweet spirits. They're *good* people. I would go to the mat for any of them and I know that they've got my back too. Most importantly tho, I know that they love me. Truly and completely and without condition............I can relax in their friendship because it's honest and I have no fear that any of them would hurt me.

This is something that I think about a lot but this week I received some special gifts of love that really touched my heart and made me realize even more just how wonderful my friends are.

Last week one of my friends sent me the cutest little washtub she'd made, filled with rocks and cattails and frogs. I LOVE frogs! When I told my friend that I collected frogs (something she didn't know about me) she turned around and made the sweetest little frog carrier you ever did see. Sarah Ann immediately laid claim to it because, well, she likes to take her frogs out and about with her. She's frog-sitting the washtub until I build my seaside Tennyson.

I was so delighted with my new little frogs that I happy danced around the house every time I thought of them. But what made me the happiest of all was knowing that I have a friend who wanted to make me smile with gifts of frogs. Yep, those little things do mean a lot and every time I look at them, I'll think of my friend and how wonderful it is to be loved.

I received another special gift in the mail this week. Y'all know how traumatized I was when I had to cut my hair, right? Well, one of my friends had an idea of how she could ease my heart a little bit. She told me to send her a lock of my hair so she could create a special mini keepsake for me. Would you like to see it?

The mane, forelock and tail of this sweet rocking horse are made of my hair. I can't tell you how touched I was when I saw it. I sat here with my heart overflowing because of the love that went into this special mini, designed to ease my sorrow. It has a place of honor in my Pierce where I can see it from the loveseat where I lay when I can't be up and around. When I feel especially bad, I'll have something to remind me how sweet it is to have such loving friends.

My greatest mini treasures are the ones that have been made for me by my friends and I have so many that I could decorate an entire house with them alone. And I also send gifts to my friends whenever I think of someone who is sad or I create/find a special mini that would be "just right" for someone. If you're reading this, you're probably nodding your head in agreement. Somewhere in your house is a closet that holds small boxes that you save because they're the right size to ship minis to your friends and most of them are boxes that have brought minis to you.

We all know that feeling of loving and being loved that comes from giving or receiving these special miniatures. And above all else, we know that it's not the physical gift that counts. Most of us have more minis than we know what to do with................what we know to be *most* important is the reason we exchange gifts the way we do. We do it because we love each other. It's true. The little things mean a lot, especially when they are symbols of 100% unconditional love for a friend.

I'm going to declare today "Love Your Mini Friend Day". I want everyone who reads this to call or email at least one of your mini friends today and tell them that you love them.

An award!

2010-02-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

Casey over at caseyminis sent me this beautiful and cheery award! Isn't it pretty! I think that brought sunshine into my room even tho it's dark and snowy outside.

This award asks me to list six blogs that I follow. I'm trying to figure out if I can cheat and add a 0 to the end of the six. LOL! But here's my list of six and if they pass it on to six more, pretty soon everyone will have this bright promise of summer on their blog.

The Hippy Quilter http://hippyquilter.blogspot.com/   Kathy's a rebel quilter, an earth mother, a bit of a hippy, and the best friend anyone ever had.

KathieB at http://kathiebminis.blogspot.com/

Tracy Topps at http://minisontheedge.blogspot.com/

Teresa at http://minimadwoman.blogspot.com/

Gina at http://moreminis.blogspot.com/

and

Susan at http://prairiepieces.blogspot.com/  She's another one of those rebel quilters I hang out with. If you've never hung out with quilters, you have to try it some time. They'll keep you in stitches.

Thanks Casey! You really brightened up my day!

A Bit of a Tease

2010-02-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

I finished the roof of the Dixie Manor (the custom Pierce) yesterday and am so pleased with it that I had to post a pic. Isn't that pretty! The tower roof isn't glued on yet, but it's all ready to do so. As I was finishing the roof yesterday it occurred to me that I was becoming very familiar with each shingle. I mean, I was moving along with my paint brush, already knowing which shingle I would be coming to next. When that happens, it tells you that you've spent a LOT of time with those shingles! I used octagon shingles so each butt had to be trimmed individually so they were nice and smooth. This is a delicate house so there couldn't be any rough edges on it. We can't have a Southern Belle with a five o'clock shadow! Anyway, after they'd been trimmed they were all glued on the roof and that took about a week.

Did I mention that the Pierce has the largest roof of any Greenleaf house except for the Garfield? And the Pierce roof is one of the focal points of the house so it's important that it makes a statement. My client chose the "iced lilac" scheme that I used on my French Cafe which delighted me because that scheme is *so* perfect for the Pierce.

But I digress (again, or as usual). I'm not sure exactly how many shingles are on the Pierce but I know that the number is up in the thousands. It's not the quantity that caused it to take so long to shingle, it's my obsessive Virgo personality. Sometimes that goes a bit too far. Among my tools on the table were my regular ruler with the distance between rows taped off so I'd get each row perfectly spaced.........my quilter's ruler so I'd be sure to get each row straight............my carpenter's level so I could double check that they were straight........my seamstress ruler with the little slide thingy so I could double check the distance between rows...............well, you get the idea. Yes, I'm OCD but I'm okay with it. LOL!

After the shingles were all on, I started the painting. I used a greenish-grey was for the base coat to pop the grain in the birch. Greenleaf birch shingles kick ass when it comes to beautiful grain and I make the most of that. After the greenish-grey came another wash of blue-grey. The blue-grey is in the same tonal family as the iced lilac on the body of the house but quite a bit darker. I hand mix all my colors to be sure that they're just right and the combination of these two was a marriage made in heaven. So the blue-grey went on as the foundation color for the roof and then I let the washes dry overnight. The shingles lift and curl just a teeny bit which gives them a gorgeous realistic appearance. It's kind of like the way Rik Pierce does shingles in paperclay, using the little lifts here and there to give a roof texture and depth. That's why I use washes instead of stain or dye on this type of roof.

The next step was to add in the primary color on the roof which is the same lavender as the trim. I dry brushed that over each shingle, sometimes using a rag to rub it in and sometimes leaving it a bit streaked to give it a bit of texture. The final step was to go back around the roof one more time with a dry brush of dark grey to add in the shadowing.

Four layers of paint on every shingle, but omg, it's so worth it! This is a technique that Tracy Topps uses on many of her houses with wood shingles and I love the look. One of my "artistic things" is to always blend paints so they look soft and natural so this technique is definitely one of my favorites. I sometimes do a variation using stain for the undercoat and dry brushing one or two colors over it (like my Brimbles, my Houseboat and my Adams) It just works for me, ya know.

I'm very happy with the way this looks on Dixie Manor. The interior is all in pastels so this delicate blending of soft colors pulls the whole house together. And it's almost finished! All that's left to do on the house is add the gingerbread and then go around it with a magnifying glass to see where I need to do any touch ups to the paint. After that will be the landscaping. My favorite part!

There's another storm system moving in and my body isn't taking kindly to it. My hands (and the rest of my body) are telling me to go curl up in the recliner with the cat and a warm blanket and move as little as possible. I think I'll turn on some quiet music and go do that now. See y'all in a couple of days!

A lazy day

2010-02-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to slow down a little bit and take a lazy day. It's not a day off, just a day when I'm going to move a little slower than usual. Translated that means that instead of moving at turtle-speed, I'm going to slow down to a snail's pace.

I've been pushing hard to finish the shingles on the Pierce mainly because I'm too OCD to have blank spaces on that roof staring at me accusingly. LOL! But with the shingles done except for the top row and the ridge cap, I feel comfortable enough to step the pace down a notch. It's rather enforced since my body is rebelling today but whatever the reason, it's nice to slow things down a bit.

My hubby has a pot luck at work tomorrow and the theme is my very favorite.........southern! Obviously I only have two choices, either homemade biscuits or pulled pork. Since I don't want to get up early in the morning to make a double batch of biscuits, I opted for the pulled pork instead. There's a 12 lb pork shoulder butt simmering in bbq even as we speak. Later tonight I'll go pull it all and send it to work with Bruce tomorrow. The last time I did that he came back with an empty bowl that looked like it had teeth marks on the edges. LOL! Apparently southern style pulled pork sandwiches are an unknown delicacy here in Denver which is why I make my own. The only bbq you can get in this city is doused in ketchup-based sauce. Not that I don't like a good bbq sauce, but pulled pork is all about the flavor of the meat. I can imitate it fairly well here in the city, but we do have the red sauce imported from Paducah Kentucky. I'll send along a bottle of it with the pork tomorrow.

I have a set of drapes in the pleaters that will be dry later on. I'm not sure if I'll do much more with them today or not, but at least they'll be pleated and ready to work with. The fabric is a deep red Moda marble that I adore. In miniature it looks like velvet. These drapes are going over the outside of a bay window and will have gold trim with tasseled tie backs. Very old victorian and elegant.

That's pretty much my goal for the day. I've been catching up with friends via phone, email and social networking which is always a good day. Later on I plan on snuggling in the recliner with a bowl of popcorn and playing Mah Jong on TV. We have DirecTV which I love because they carry the Game Lounge. Lots of games to choose from and all of them can be played on my big screen tv using the remote control. To be honest, it's the only thing I've found that will make me sit still and rest. It's just enough distraction to take my mind off the pain and that's usually the biggest challenge for me when I try to just sit down and rest. I get so restless that I'm bouncing back up and off to do something else. Keeping busy is my pain management but that can sometimes backfire and cause more pain in the end. So I'm really thankful that DirecTV has the Game Lounge on the days when rest is necessary.

With Dixie Manor B&B almost finished, I'm starting to get that itchy feeling to see how it all completed. It's kind of like reading a book and getting to the last few chapters. You just can't put it down! All that's left to do is painting the roof, touching up a few little things here and there and the landscaping. Well, there will be the packing part. That's going to take at least three or four days to get it ready to travel! But I do so want to see it finished soon! The shingles have added a lot of character to it and once I get them painted, it's going to really come alive. The landscaping is my favorite part. It's like the cherry on the sundae that I always saved for the last bite because I liked it best. LOL! I'm already visualizing the flowers and greenery in my mind and it's going to be beautiful.

Oh, the picture at the top is a sneak peek at Dixie Manor. That's the dining room. I love that light fixture, especially with the wallpaper my client selected for that room. Combined with the "clover honey" shade of woodwork, it's a beautiful room!

I believe I'll go pop the corn now and snuggle in the recliner. Napoleon loves it when I do that because he thinks I'm behaving as a decent cat should. He curls up in my lap and purrs approvingly while I play games.

A fairy tale come true!

2010-02-08T22:53:00.001-07:00

I have a new favorite dollhouse! I watched this house go together and talked to my friend Tracy Topps while she was building it so the love started quite awhile ago. When Tracy first told me about her idea for the tower and the other details of this house, it literally made me swoon. Just look at it! It's amazing! There are more pictures of this gorgeous house here and believe me, when you see the details, you'll fall in love too. I'm always amazed with Tracy's stonework and this house raises the bar even for Tracy! But the landscaping is what fascinates me. Every time I look at it, I see something new. The little brook is so delightful with all the plants and things. It looks so realistic that I feel like I'm being transported into a new world. The interior is just as cool and it's even wired with lights. Can you tell that I'm in love? Tracy put so much of herself into this house and she created a new masterpiece!

I'm not sure how she is able to part with it and for awhile she kept this house a big secret, only letting a few people see it. She just put it up on the market for sale here. I was stunned when she said she was going to sell it, but Tracy is like me and feels that every creation she does is made for someone in particular. It's like the houses know that there is someone out there for them. I believe that every person has a soul mate, but I'm starting to think that these houses do too because they sure are insistent about who they live with. Anyway, Tracy knows that there is someone out there who is destined to own this house so it's up for sale.

I know it probably seems weird for one artisan to promote another artisan's work instead of their own, but I can't stand the thought of the owner of this house missing any more time with it. It's kind of like a lost puppy.

So, the word is out now and I hope that I get to hear the details of the joyous meeting when the new owner and the fairy tale cottage are finally together. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that happened on Valentine's day? That would be a real fairy tale come true!

Tracy Topps' Store

Things I think about when I'm shingling

2010-02-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Shingling houses is sort of a zen experience. That's a nice way of saying it's a repetitive task and frees the mind to think of other things (except around gables which requires all of my attention if I want to keep them straight) I find that my mind wanders when I'm doing things like shingling, sanding or painting.

Lately I've been paying more attention to where my mind goes and it's been rather interesting. Sometimes I mentally read books. Entire chapters will go thru my head and it's almost the same as listening to an audio book with ear buds. Other times it will be whole album sides and sometimes it will be movies without the pictures. And then there are the occasional random thoughts that make me go "huh?".

What are those little divots in the shingles? They look like dimples in the middle of them. I think they're probably from the die machines as they catch the birch and move it but I could be wrong. If I don't pay attention, I sometimes put the shingle on with the divot side out and that annoys me.

Why is it more fun to paint over spackle than bare wood on the edges of window frames? The paint goes on so much smoother but there's more to it than that. It's like completing a circle.

What am I going to make for dinner tonight? Oh, that one is pretty much a daily question and I peer into the paint pot like it's a magic 8 ball that will give me the answer.

Wouldn't it be interesting to watch them make sandpaper?

But sometimes my thoughts go a little bit deeper than the silly stuff. I think about my family and my friends. I think about my life goals, past and present. I consider where I've been and how the events of that journey brought me to where I am now. It's small wonder that I feel like there is so much of myself in my creations when I can look at a specific piece and think, "I resolved my feelings about something while I was making that".

There's something about using my hands to create that frees my mind and I consider that to be a gift. Not only do I have this fabulous gift of a creative spirit, but that creativity allows me to explore my emotions and my thoughts all at the same time! How wonderful is that!

I'm going back to my shingling now and we'll see where it takes me this time. Who knew that the key to moments of inner peace could be shaped like a birch shingle?

Luuuuuuuuucy, I'm hooooooooome

2010-02-06T03:06:00.000-07:00

Oh my, it's been awhile and I didn't mean to keep anyone hanging. Real life has been a series of ups and downs. The biopsy on my thyroid came back negative which is not necessarily good news. The ultrasound is 80% accurate and the biopsy is also 80% accurate. Um, what the hell? I'm not sure how they do the math on this one but they opted for going with the biopsy results. I don't quite see how we can ignore a picture of the whole nodule full of microcalcifications in favor of a tiny tissue sample taken by a microscopic needle. However, my doctor looked me straight in the eye and said she strongly recommended that I go see a throat surgeon and tell him how uncomfortable the thyroid nodules are and how they inhibit my breathing, swallowing and circulation. There's a chance they might be able to justify the surgery based on that. One of my friends said that it's like living with a ticking time bomb in my throat and that describes it pretty well. I'm seriously pissed at the way insurance companies dictate medical treatments. So at this point I'm babying my hands and trying to get by on cortisone shots as long as possible and hoping I can find a surgeon who'll take out the thyroid.

However, all that's been put on hold because of my hubby's unexpected medical emergencies. That's a rather redundant sentence. Emergencies are never expected. We certainly didn't expect that he'd take an ambulance ride and end up in the hospital overnight with what appeared to be symptoms of a heart attack. A ton of tests later and they said that it definitely wasn't his heart. They saw a rather large gall stone in his bile duct on an ultrasound but since he was feeling better they discharged him and sent him home after two days. We were home long enough to get one night's sleep and within about 24 hours of being released from the hospital he was back in the ER almost passing out from the pain. This time they looked a little closer at the gall bladder and the next thing we knew there was a surgeon in the room telling us that they'd have him in surgery within 20 minutes. They called in a cardiologist to be there just in case because of Bruce's heart history. I was relieved about that because after three heart attacks we don't want to take any chances. The biggest danger was bleeding since Bruce takes so many blood thinners. They gave him a transfusion of blood platelets and away he went. We were in the hospital another day until they said the bleeding was under control and let him go home. Since he was on the cardiac ward both times they let me stay and "sleep" all night in a geri chair in his room. We had one more trip to the ER a week after the surgery because the day after they took out the stitches one of his incisions started to bleed. They patched it back up and sent him home.

Bruce is doing great and feels better than he has in a long time. The gall bladder was probably part of why he hasn't felt good for about a year. They kept saying it was his ulcers but he had all the classic signs of a bad gall bladder. The surgeon said that if it had stayed in him much longer it would have gone septic so we're grateful that they got it out when they did. I had a major fibro flare up two weeks ago and was actually bedridden for a couple of days. It was the worst I've ever had and something I hope I don't go thru again. I'm still not back to my version of normal but at least I can make it down the stairs now. I think it was a combination of a fibro flare and a surge in thyroid. The two escalate one another. But with all the unexpected medical bills from an ambulance ride, two trips to the ER, four days in the hospital and one emergency surgery, my surgery is going to have to wait for awhile. Even with the insurance paying their share, it's still a big ole pile of bills! Bruce is fussing at me about not going to the surgeon but it's really not that big a deal. I've lived with this for years and I can live with it a little while longer.

Bah! Enough of that negative shit! I feel like I've been trapped under a dark cloud for so long that I can't find the sunshine. I know it's there and I'm going to keep digging my way out till I find it.

My sanity has been this beautiful, wonderful Pierce that I'm building. Despite all the interruptions I'm almost done with her. I'd show pictures but I'm at the point where I want to wait till she's all done and "unveil" her. I'm working on the shingles now and as soon as that's done, she'll be ready for the landscaping. I'm dying to do that! It's my favorite part. What can be more wonderful in the dead of winter than creating this fabulous green garden full of trees and flowers? I've picked out some of the prettiest mini lilac bushes and a gorgeous little tree with purple flowers to go in the yard and there's a sweet rose trellis for the side of the house too. I have a surprise for the owner that's going in the yard. Shhhh......don't say anything. Oh wait. She reads my blog. Darn it, now I let the cat out of the bag. LOL! But I didn't say what the surprise is going to be so we'll just leave it at that and you all can find out when she does. I can surprise everyone!

I've been doing a little work on furniture and draperies for my favorite mega-Garfield. Its owner has been very patient with me but I've finally reached the point where I can work on both the furniture and the Pierce at once. The picture I posted at the top of the blog is the library furniture that I just finished for him. It's a very masculine room and I liked the contrast of working on the delicately feminine Pierce one minute and switching to the cigars-and-leather look of the library the next minute. The Garfield owner sent me the desk and chairs for the room to be recovered. I stripped the leather off the desk top and replaced it first, then I re-upholstered the chairs with a buttery soft textured leather and gave the cane chairs a dash of color with the striped pillows and bolsters. Isn't that fabric perfect? I found that in a remnant bin at Hobby Lobby over a year ago and snatched it up with no idea of why I had to have it. It's just kind of funky-cool and yet elegant all at the same time. When I started planning this library I realized why I had to have that fabric. This room needed it! It's really the perfect fabric for the drapes and pillows. It adds a strong and vibrant dash of color to the room without being stuffy. This room says that the owner likes the finer things in life but he likes to have fun too.

I'll be starting on some dark red drapes for the music room next while I'm still shingling the Pierce. There's a whole LOT of roof to that house!!! I'm dying to see get the shingles finished so I can start the painting on them. The Pierce owner chose a beautiful technique that I used on my french cafe of applying a grey wash to the shingles and then dry brushing some lavender into it. It's going to match the stone foundation beautifully and give the house so much character. Right now it looks rather stark but those shingles are going to bring it to life!

So, that's what I've been up to lately. I'm kind of proud of myself that I'm still creating even thru all the chaos. I consider my miniatures to be the lighthouse that keeps me on track when the seas get stormy.

Oh, I finally set myself up on Facebook (thanks to Tracy and Heidi pulling me along and insisting that I needed to be there) As usual, they were right. LOL! I'm glad I did because it's another wonderful way to connect with other miniaturists and make some new mini friends. If you want to drop in there, I'm Deb's Minis there just like I am everywhere else. Come be my friend!

I have a new respect for pin cushions

2009-12-07T03:34:00.000-07:00

I like to think of last Friday as the day I gained the perspective of one of my favorite tools............the pin cushion. I couldn't work without mine, but then again, that's a sentiment that most textile artists hold near and dear. We love our little bits of fluffy stuff that hold our pins so gracefully and so effeciently. They never complain if we replace pins a bit too forcefully when we're frustrated with a project. If they get smooshed under a wall when we're wrestling with a dollhouse on the work table, they don't whine about it. After giving this some thought I've come to the conclusion that pin cushions might be the unsung heroes of the creative world.

We do celebrate them. We find fun and fanciful shapes for our pin cushions and collect them in all shapes and sizes. We have different pin cushions for different jobs. There's the wrist wrapper that's a must-have if you're doing a job that requires you move around or away from the table. There are the sand filled cushions that keep our needles nice and sharp. I even have a ring pin cushion that I wear on my finger when I'm doing silk ribbon embroidery and working with several loaded needles at the same time. (and after the first time you jam one of those huge needles into your finger instead of the pin cushion, you learn how to pay attention to your depth perception!)

My very favorite pin cushion is a little black cat wearing a purple witch's hat. He's in a crouched position like he's ready to pounce on something! I use the hat more than any other part of him because I tend to feel really bad when I stick pins in his butt. Every time I do that, I have a mental image of a black cat somewhere in China screeching in pain. It's kinda creepy actually.

My other favorite is a little stuffed tea cup that my MIL gave to me. It's so bright and cheerful because the cup is made with a fabric patterned with cherries. Since it's a tea cup, it has a handle on it which is a very handy thing for a pin cushion to have.

I don't have a tomato pin cushion. Those remind me of my mother and, well, let's just say that I'd rather not think of her when I'm doing something fun. But I do know that the traditional tomato pin cushion with the attached sand filled strawberry needle cushion is a staple at one time or another for anyone who sews. Show of hands here...........who started out with a tomato as their first pin cushion? Yep, almost everyone.

I've seen some really spectacular pin cushion collections owned by seamstresses and quilters. It's amazing how many different designs there can be for pin cushions! Oh, and needle cases. Now those can be truly awe inspiring! If you ever want to see some gorgeous examples of textile art, google "embroidered needle cases" and see what you come up with. Be prepared to drool.

The reason I developed this new respect for pin cushions was because they did the biopsy on my thyroid on Friday. I was surprised that they got me in that quickly! I've had a biopsy on my thyroid before, in fact it was on this same nodule, so I knew what to expect but they were a bit more thorough this time and I got a lot more holes punched in me.

I was a bit disturbed when two doctors and one pathologist all asked me the same thing at different times once they had the ultrasound up and going. The question was, "They biopsied this nodule before? What were the results?". When I told them it was benign, every one of them replied, "Really???????"

I don't like it when medical professionals express incredulous surprise like that. It makes me think they've just seen something I'd like to know about but they won't tell me. Oh well, I'll find out when I get the results back later this week.

The other thing that was a bit disconcerting was the doctor first telling me that she was going to biopsy four of the nodules. Then she got to looking at the ultrasound, had a whispered conversation with the us tech and the pathologist and then said she was going to just do one nodule but she wanted to get four different sticks from it. Oooooooooooookay. I was looking at the ultrasound too and decided that they must have taken a real liking to that nodule because with all those crystals in it, it looks like it's wearing sequins. Maybe doctors like sparkly things too.

That nodule must have heard what she said because the little bastard kept ducking and rolling. Personally, I didn't blame it for ducking....I'd like to have done the same thing but she had a grip on my throat like she was ready to wring a chicken's neck and was thinking about dumplings for dinner! Finally she wedged her fingers under the nodule and held it in a death grip while she got the biopsies. I would have liked to tell her I couldn't breathe when she was doing that, but when someone is jamming needles in your throat it doesn't seem like a good time to question their technique.

Needless to say I have some elaborate bruises on my throat. It was pretty painful the first couple of days but today it only hurts when I yawn or cough. I really shouldn't complain since a thorough biopsy is going to be helpful in the long run.

But that's why I have a new respect for pin cushions. Lemme think..........there was the IV needle, then the novacaine shots, and then four sticks with the aspiration needles. As soon as I got home, I went back to the studio and took all the pins out of the kitty cat's butt. I don't know about the cat but it made me feel better.

I want to thank everyone for the comments to my previous post. You guys are wonderful friends and I can't tell you how much your support and encouragement means to me. It really, truly helps to know that I have so many friends to lean on. Big hugs to you all!

Thyroid Cancer

2009-11-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

I think cancer is like the spanish inquisition.........no one expects it. I sure wasn't expecting to hear it when I had an ultrasound done on my thyroid this week. As some of you know, I have several nodules in my thyroid (well, if you can refer to 14 as "several") so I asked the tech if there were any new ones and the size of the older ones so I'd know if any of them had grown. She showed me a couple of new ones and then she tabbed back to the scan of the largest of the nodules. It's up to 3cm now but the thing that concerned her was the "snowstorm" of microcalcifications in the nodule. She said she'd get the results over to my doctor as quickly as possible.

Microcalcifications in a thyroid nodule mean that the nodule is malignant. Its increase in size is also symptomatic. Ultrasounds are one way of diagnosing thyroid cancer and are 80% accurate. They'll be doing a biopsy on that nodule sometime soon (they haven't called me to schedule it yet) just to back it up but regardless of what the biopsy shows, the thyroid has got to go. It should have been removed two years ago when about 8 of those nodules hit the 2cm mark. The doctor said that the microcalcifications do indicate cancer and that she'd get me to a good surgeon as soon as they get the biopsy done.

I'm really not worried about this. Honestly, I'm not. So I have cancer.......I have a lot of other things too and this is the first diagnosis I've had in a long time that actually has a chance of being cured! LOL! Every other diagnosis I've gotten in the past two years has resulted in a doctor telling me, "I'm sorry, but this is something that you'll have to learn to live with". Thyroid cancer has a pretty good cure rate so all in all, it could be a whole lot worse.

The doctor hasn't discussed it with me yet but from what I've researched the course of treatment will be to completely remove the whole thyroid gland. Yay!! This thing is annoying and bulky and it's cutting off the blood flow to my brain. (and those things alone justify surgery to remove it as it should have been two years ago) I've had to deal with all that for a long time so getting this bulky thing out of me so I can breathe easier and feel better is something to look forward to.

After the surgery there is a six week period with no thyroid suppliments to try to get as much of the hormone out of my system as possible and then a mega dose of radioactive iodine. Since only thyroid cells absorb iodine that's the best way to get the radiation to the source. And that's it. No chemo or anything else. I'll be tested frequently and if it comes back, they'll do another round of the radioactive iodine.

Pretty cut and dried as I see it. That's best case scenario of course, but "best case" is what I'm counting on. The good news is that the microcalcifications only showed up in the one nodule and that means that it should be pretty well contained. I'm thinking positive that this is the way it's going to go and that I'll be cancer free so fast that I won't even remember that I had cancer in the first place.

I have to admit that all this on top of everything else is a little overwhelming, but I'll deal with it. I still don't know about the rheumatoid arthritis for sure. My rhuematologist and my hand surgeon are arguing about it. I wish they'd leave me out of their issues with each other. The hand surgeon says yes, the rheumatologist says no and my internist says she can't really help. She agrees that my hands look like I do but if the blood work says not, then the tissue biopsy is the only other way to know for sure because the blood tests don't always show it. Hmmmmmmm. I wonder if they can get a tissue biopsy when they're doing the thyroid surgery? Multi-tasking is a good thing! LOL! I'll have to ask them and see. But in the meantime, I'm going to go on doing what I do. I might slow down a little bit but then again, maybe not. I'm not going to worry about it tho..........every day is a mini-day and I'll keep doing what I always do.

Anyway, that's where we are right now. I probably gave y'all more information than you wanted but I'm trying to be very open with everyone about it. I'm not going to candy coat anything and I'll probably be telling a lot of bad jokes because even a dark sense of humor is good medicine.

It's gonna be alright.

Final Score: Humans 9; Squirrels 0

2009-11-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

After an exciting week, the SRS took down the traps yesterday and wished us a happy, squirrel-free life. I was almost sorry to see them go. The SRSs, not the squirrels! I've talked to either Mike or Perry every day for a week and I'm gonna miss them. They were always so polite.

The last few squirrels were obviously sent in by the squirrel union to strong-arm us a little bit. These were some seriously tough squirrels! They shook the cages so hard that I could hear the rattling and banging all the way downstairs in my studio! Since none of them got out, I'm sure the squirrels would have been moving onto more drastic measures before long. It's probably good that the traps came down when they did before we found the head of a horsefly on our pillow.

Oh, that "catch and release" program that the SRS told us about? Uh huh, I knew it was a job security thing! We talked to Bruce's best friend last night and guess what moved into his attic this week? Yep, he's got squirrels. Hmmmm..........he only lives about a mile away from us. I'm willing to bet I know where our SRS released those squirrels. The real kicker was when he told us the name of the SRS he's using to get rid of them. Yep, he's made friends with Mike and Perry too.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to send Skipper over to Joe's house for backup.

Jailhouse Rock

2009-11-25T20:09:00.001-07:00

Rocky threw a party in the county jail,
The Squirrelly band was there and they began to wail,
The cages were a-jumpin' and the joint began to swing,
You should have heard them locked up squirrellies sing!

Let's rock! Everybody, let's rock!
Everybody in the whole tree top,
Was dancin' to the jailhouse rock!

Fluffy Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
Little Foot was blowing on the slide trombone.
The drummer squirrel from Aspen Tree went crash, boom, bang,
The whole rhythm section was the Acorn Gang!

Let's rock! Everybody, let's rock!
Everybody in the whole tree top,
Was dancin' to the jailhouse rock!

Did you know that if you sing that to squirrels sitting in cages on the side of your house, they get reeeeeeeeeeeally annoyed? Apparently squirrels have no sense of humor unless they're in on the joke.

We're up to 4 now! The last one to get in the trap must have been my little Mr Anger Management Issues squirrel. He hit that cage swingin' his little fists and when the SRS arrived to get him about two hours later, he was still banging on the bars!

I heard a thunk on that side of the house about five minutes ago which means that we've got another one in the trap. That makes it 5 now.

Five squirrels in 24 hours!! What the hell was going on in my attic anyway? Did they open a nightclub up there? If they were charging a cover, I want a piece of that. Oh wait. What am I going to do with a bunch of nuts and seeds? Never mind.

The SRS said that one trap had two squirrels in it. Hmmm. Some kind of buddy system? Was there a Chip-n-Dale type of argument about who was going to go inside to investigate first and they finally decided they'd just go in together?

The SRS will leave the traps up until we've gone three days without any squirrels. I'm beginning to think that I'm going to be busy monitoring traps for quite awhile! I thought about asking him to check the company records and see if my neighborhood has been on their "relocation" list in the past. LOL!

Oh well, back to singing..........

Let's rock! Everybody, let's rock!

Everybody in the whole tree top,

Was dancin' to the jailhouse rock!

Humans 1; Squirrels 0

2009-11-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

That's the score so far. The really nice Squirrel Removal Specialist (let's just call him SRS from now on) came out this afternoon and mounted two squirrel traps on the side of the wall. He gave me his number to call and explained how to check the traps twice a day.

It wasn't long after he left that I went outside to look at the traps and discovered one of them was full with a very pissed off squirrel. He's shaking the bars of the cage and yelling things in squirrel that are best left untranslated. When he saw me he shook his little fist and said bad things about my mother.

The dogs next door (a Rottie and a Doberman) are having a great time with this. Those squirrels sit on the fence and tease the dogs constantly. I hear the dogs barking all the time and when I see a squirrel run by the window with a smirk on his face, I know why. So the dogs seem to be rather delighted to see the squirrel all locked up. They're sitting on the other side of the fence pointing and giggling.

The SRS will be here soon to unload this one and reset the trap. The traps are very humane.......they look like little jail cells from the Andy Griffith show without the cots.

The traps will be out for three days or until they quit catching squirrels. It's kind of entertaining for me to watch it (yes, I'm still bitter about the patio cushions).

I wonder how long it will take for another fuzzy vandal to find his way into the Squirrel Relocation Program?

The War of the Squirrels, Part 2

2009-11-22T03:04:00.002-07:00

Some of you who follow my blog may remember me talking about urban critters and my ongoing Squirrel War. Just when I thought that all was quiet on the western front, it started up again.

It began about two weeks ago when I kept hearing a gnawing sound on the side of the house. It was always around 8am and I’m not awake at that hour of the day (Bruce works nights and we sleep during the day) so the sound didn’t really register at first. By the third day of being awakened by it, I was seriously annoyed, threw on some clothes and went out to the backyard to see. When I got to the corner of the house, I looked up and a furry little head popped over the side of the gutter. Yep, it was my old nemesis, The Squirrel.
Okay, so I don’t know if it was the same squirrel or not. It’s doubtful but so far I haven’t found a way of determining the difference between them. But I’m pretty sure it was one of the same family and he’d heard about me.

He pointed a little finger at me and started barking and chattering. Oh my gawd, the things he said! I asked him if he eats with that mouth and it only made him madder. He stomped his feet and twirled his tail and cussed up a blue streak! Really, it was an act that could bring back Vaudeville. He finally stopped and just sat there glaring at me, his little sides heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

I told him, “Look, you need to go find something else to chew on. Houses are not chew toys and you’re waking me up.” He chattered a little more, ran down to the other end of the house, hopped on the patio roof and into the tree (that’s like Route 66 to the local squirrels) and sat there cussing at me some more. Then he blazed off down the fence to the neighbor’s yard.
We heard the gnawing sounds a couple more times but Bruce went out and checked and the attic vents were all covered with steel mesh so we figured the squirrel was exercising his futility. The next morning I heard scurrying sounds going up the side of the house and then a “thump-thump-thump-thud-thump” sound. He’d been climbing up the downspout on the side of he house, lost his grip and slid down like a klutz. I softly chuckled and went back to sleep.

I should have known that wasn’t going to be the end of it. A couple days later we woke up to the sound of thumping on the ceiling. The furry little bastard had made it into the attic. We checked the mesh over the attic vents and sure enough, he’d managed to peel back a corner of it, gnawed at the hole a little bit to make it bigger, and came right on in like he owned the place.

Of course you know this means war.

I ranted and raved about it for quite awhile. It’s not like they don’t have a soft and comfy home to go to coz that huge nest in the tree is fully lined with the stuffing from my patio cushions! What’s next? Do I wake up to find him on my pillow complaining about how loud I snore? Will I get up in the morning and find him in the kitchen with his head stuffed in the coffee canister? Nope, there is no way I’m going to share my house with a squirrel. One of us has got to go.

Being of sound mind, I know that it’s better to let the professionals deal with squirrels. And there are lots to choose from in the Denver area! The yellow pages are full of Wildlife Removal Services. Of course I already knew this because of the raccoon who gave birth in my chimney, but it still amazes me.

The Squirrel Specialist showed up today and I had the strange and eerie feeling that we were re-enacting a scene from Ghost Busters. It got more and more surreal as he asked questions. He had his notebook out and was scribbling down my answers. To his credit he did not say “Just the facts ma’am”. I showed him the place in the bedroom ceiling where we heard the most noise and he took more notes. Then he went outside and we got an education in squirrels.

The nest up in the tree is the “summer home”. That’s where they have their babies and hang out in spring and summer. When it gets cold they try to find a way to get inside houses and from what he said, they can be rather militant about it! Remember, these are urbans squirrels. They’re street smart and stealthy. After looking around our backyard with all the trees, the Squirrel Specialist said that our yard is the perfect sanctuary for them. All our neighbors have dogs or children and our backyard is the only one on the block where there’s not a lot of human or pet traffic. Combined with the trees (especially all the pines that provide them with food when they’re not calling for Chinese takeout or raiding trash cans) this makes our backyard squirrel heaven.

Great. I’m running a resort for the freaking squirrels! The Squirrel Specialist said that urban squirrels are too smart for things like predator piss, owl decoys and taped predator calls to work so there’s not much I can do to get rid of them unless I hire a Great Dane with a bad attitude. Seems like the best we can do is make sure that they don’t have any easy point of entry into the house.

The plan is to put a trap with a one way door over his little entry hole. The Squirrel Specialist will come back every day to check the trap and when the squirrel is in it, he’ll take it away and release it somewhere else. I’m a little doubtful about whether or not this will work since I saw the squirrel up in a tree, carefully watching and listening to everything that was said. I think that the Squirrel Specialist wasn’t the only one taking notes. If UPS delivers a box from ACME addressed to Wyle E. Squirrel, I’m outta here! I really hope that Squirrel Specialists wear helmets, goggles and full body armor.

Wait. Back up a little bit to that part about catch and release. Release where? Oh, he said, “We’ll take him several miles from here so he can’t find his way back and release him in a different neighborhood”. Ooooooookay. Is that something like job security?

We’ll have to wait and see what happens next with the “one way trap” and the catch and release program. The Squirrel Specialist is confident that they’ll catch him. Since I know these squirrels well I’m not so sure about that. All I can say is that I’m glad my walking cane has a sword in it.

Or perhaps I should simply call in a different type of professional.

White Rabbit

2009-11-14T04:23:00.002-07:00

Some days I feel like the White Rabbit running around saying, "I'm late! I'm late!". Other days, I run around saying, "I'm early! I'm early!" Most of the time I just run around thinking, "Where the hell was I going anyway?". It really doesn't matter if you're early or late when you don't even know what it is you're early or late for.   I figure that sooner or later I'll run into it and recognize it when I see it. The world is round ya know.

But this time I actually know what it is and I'm early! I'm not sure how it happened, but I've actually begun getting ready for Yule! I know! It shocked my socks off too! I'm usually running around at the last minute trying to do it all at once. Well, truth be told, I'll probably end up that way this year too but at least I'm making a start on it now.

It's sort of a complacent feeling to know that even if I don't do anything else I'll at least have done two things to get ready for the holidays this year.

The first thing was to give Bruce my Yule wish list. He gets all stressed out and paranoid about selecting gifts so I do most of it myself. he does the shopping but I give him the list of "you can't go wrong with these". I know, it's not very romantic but it's easier to give him a list to choose from than to deal with him stressing himself sick over it.   And since my post-surgery-anti-insanity plan includes catching up on reading, that means that I want books, books and more books under the tree! I had to give him a list of the books I haven't read yet. I might actually catch up on both Rita Mae Brown's series! I also want to read the last three books in the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay. Obviously I have some seriously eclectic tastes in literature and since I'll be frustrated about not mini-ing, light reading is best. Anne McCaffrey is also on the list. I was hoping that Jane Lindskold would have a new Firekeeper book out but alas, nothing new. I also need to go check Stephen King's website and see when he has a new book due out.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the list. Topping the list is a mini sewing machine. Not a mini-mini, but just a mini. As in a real sewing machine that weighs less than five pounds. I don't have space in the studio to leave my full size machine out and I just can't lug it around from the shelf to table and back again anymore so a mini machine is the answer. Small, portable, easy to use......yep, that's the ticket. I've been out of the textile loop for awhile and even before that I was quite happy with my old Brother so I didn't even know which brand name is topping the quality list anymore. As always, my best friend came thru with the info and I'm getting a Janome mini.

So that's one thing checked off my Yule to-do list.  Yay. The next was to get some Christmas-y stuff put up on Etsy. I had some fabric that I'd been saving for a parlor set and a bed and it's just goooooooooooooooorgeous!  It's not a holiday print so it could go either way..........holiday decor or just plain Victorian. Either way it's to die for.   The parlor set is probably one of the best I've ever done but the bed is pretty elegant too.

I wanted to do one more bed, but something informal and fun. I dug out a white wire wicker bed and a couple of really cute fabrics with tiny holly leaves........one red with white lattice and green leaves and the other white with green leaves and itty, bitty red berries.  I thought it would be light and airy and bright and it is. But somewhere in the middle of making it my Muse took over and said it needed a teddy bear holding a stocking. My sense of humor got the best of me and, well, this is what happened:

T'was the night before Christmas and something more than a mouse was stirring under the tree. Mama quickly rose and threw on her slippers to tip toe down the stairs. Her wondering eyes beheld such a sight! A package was missing from under the tree and one stocking no longer hung by the chimney with care. Mama knew that it probably wasn't the Grinch so she quietly crept upstairs and opened the door to her wee one's bedroom.

The light from the hallway shone on the bed but no one was nestled there dreaming of dancing sugarplums. However, Mama quickly determined where the missing package and stocking had gone! As she turned to look for the guilty one, from behind the door and out of sight came a voice that exclaimed.................

"TEDDY DID IT!!!!"

There are more pictures of it on my website here. I love it when my Muse lets her sense of humor show.

I got one other thing done. I have a new video for Christmas on You Tube.

Now if I can keep the momentum going thru the holiday season, I'll be doing well! I'm planning on making fudge this year too! When I make fudge, I go on a marathon and make around 35 pounds in five different flavors. My favorite is butterscotch pecan. Yum! I won't be doing 35 pounds of it this year, but I'm going to try to make a few batches at least. I need to start on my shopping list first. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

Oh, before I forget, if you haven't done so already, stop by Julie Campbell's blog ( http://bellabelledolls.blogspot.com/ ) and congratulate her on her new title of IGMA Artisan. Julie's dolls are amazing and I'm delighted to see her receiving the recognition she deserves.

One more thing...............pop over to MiniMadWoman's blog today and wish her a Happy Birthday! It's always fun to visit Marigold Manor but she's got a party going on over there today and you don't want to miss it!

Doo, doo, doo lookin' out my backdoor...

2009-10-31T03:18:00.001-06:00

There are no giants doing cartwheels or statuary high heels and I'm not looking at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn. What I am looking at is this:

That really is the view from my backdoor. On the whole, I'd rather have a dinosaur listening to Buck Owens. We got somewhere around 2 feet of snow and a lot of wind to push it around to create some interesting drifts. It started melting today and for some reason we had power failures on and off throughout the whole day. Ever try to paint mini door frames by candelight? I'll wait till the light of day tomorrow and see if I painted trim or created a road map!

The humerous side of hair

2009-10-27T04:41:00.000-06:00

Wanna see my hair?

Actually, that's not all of my hair. There's about another foot of it that didn't fit into the picture. A total of a little over 4 feet in all. I'm not sure the last time I cut my hair (besides trimming the ends) but I think it was around 18 years ago. I wore it short for about 5 years in my late 20s but other than that, I've had long hair all my life.

Mother Nature made me a natural blonde but I like playing with colors. After my divorce, I was a redhead for awhile. That was a lot of fun since I discovered Loreal's 7 day temporary colors. I changed my hair color about every other week.

When I tried Nutmeg, I knew that I'd found my happy color. To be specific, it was Clairol #43. It took two boxes to do all that hair but it was worth it. It was such a pretty color..........dark brown with red highlights. I loved it and happily put being a blonde behind me. Bruce made jokes about artificial intelligence.

I did notice one thing when I went brunette. At that time I was playing in the corporate world and discovered that people took me more seriously when I was brunette then when I was a blonde. Hmmm. There's a whole different subject there about how appearance effects perception but I won't get into that now.

Where was I? Oh, 4 feet of hair. It was really thick and heavy and soft. I took good care of it and there wasn't a split end on it anywhere.

About a year ago I had to give up dying it because it got to be too hard to do. Fortunately the dye I use is semi permanent so it faded instead of having a line where the dye ended. So that wasn't a problem. I figured I'd just let it go white and be proud of my long salt and pepper hair.

But it's been getting harder and harder to take care of and even brushing and braiding it were really painful and so was the weight on my neck and head. With the upcoming surgeries, I was really wondering how I could take care of all that hair for several months with only one hand.

After a great deal of thought I did what I had to do. I cut it all off.

Sitting in the salon chair crying like a baby was not one of my finer moments so we'll just skip on past that part. I had the stylist braid it nicely for me and I'm sending it to Locks of Love. That helps ease the separation.

So now I'm adjusting to having short hair again and it's been kinda funny.

Bruce has never seen me as a blonde so he's had to make some adjustments. We were in the grocery store and he went off to find something and lost me when he came back. He wasn't looking for a blonde.

A clerk at the store called me "miss" instead of "ma'am". That was nice!

Running my fingers thru my hair doesn't take nearly as long. I'll be saving a lot of time doing that now. It's just sort of "ssspp" and it's done. It's such a novel experience that I've been doing it a lot. Just running my fingers thru my hair and thinking about what I can do with the extra 45 seconds that I'm saving on that.

I don't have to locate my braid and shift it over the front of my shoulder when I go to the bathroom anymore.

Bruce isn't getting hit in the face with the end of my braid in the middle of the night when I roll over and flip it out of the way in my sleep. He hasn't said but I'm sure he's a lot happier about not feeling like he's sleeping next to a horse with a hyperactive tail.

The first couple of mornings I woke up and wandered into the bathroom, turned on the light, glanced in the mirror and went, "ACK!!!" It wasn't the shock of not seeing my hair, it was the short hair standing up in spikes all over my head like it was trying to contact the mother ship! It may take a little time to get used to that.

I braced myself to remember that it was gone the first time I shampooed it so I wouldn't freak out when I reached back to pull it up on top of my head in the shower. That worked. What I forgot was that all I needed was a teaspoon of shampoo instead of a quarter cup. I almost drowned myself in all that lather! I don't think that two inches of hair has ever been cleaned that well before!

There's a certain way of dealing with long hair when you get out of the shower and if you've had hair past your shoulders, you know what it is. If you've never had long hair, I'll explain it.

Bending over at the waist, you towel dry the hair first. That can take awhile and you have to stretch to reach it all, but a good towel rubbing gets most of the water out. Dropping the towel, you bend a little further forward at the waist and your upper body compresses in on itself just a little bit like a coiled spring. Your body shifts its center of balance down and you rise up just a little bit onto the balls of your feet. With a bit of a dip and a slight flip, you fling your upper body up and backwards, jerking your head in a backward arch. This sends all the hair flying in a smooth movement upward and over your head, then completing the circle by landing against your back. The weight of all that wet hair keeps your body in balance. The whole point of this is to get your hair straight down your back without tangling and it works really well.

Okay, it works for long hair.

If your hair is only two inches long, it becomes something completely different.

If the bathroom door hadn't been closed, I'd have flung myself clean out into the hallway.

I think I can be pretty sure I won't be doing that one again. The funniest thing is that I could see the expression on my face in the mirror and it was hilarious.

I miss my hair and probably will for a long time. Long hair is like rings in a tree. I can chart various parts of my life..........actually hold them in my hands..........by portions of my hair. This segment was my divorce years, that segment was the happy time with a certain lover, another section is the years of re-discovery of myself and yet another is the time my life began anew with Bruce. All those memories are part of me and always will be no matter how long my hair is, but in my hair I could hold it in my hands and feel as if I were there again. More meaningful is having to admit that I can't do something that I've done all my life. It feels like giving up a part of my independence and that's been a hard choice to make.

But all that aside, my new short hair look is lighter, feels good and looks good. I'll play with being a blonde for awhile and then I might go back to being a redhead for awhile or I might do something with streaks. Oh, and the other good thing is that short hair looks better with hats. I'm a hat freak and have a HUGE collection of hats. Everything from funky cowboy hats to velvet and lace 1920 flapper styles to a genuine 1910 velvet lady's riding hat from Paris. I have bold hats and demure hats and elegant hats and chic berets and hats just for fun. I haven't worn any of them in a long time because they just didn't look quite right with long hair so I'll be breaking out my hat boxes and rediscovering the fun of having people stare at me on the street.

Maybe that's a good way to celebrate the life change of cutting my hair. I think I'll head to one of the antique malls and find a new hat!

Hard Wiring a Greenleaf Brimbles Mercantile

2009-10-25T15:33:00.001-06:00

When I started the Brimbles, I promised that I would show how to hard wire it as it was being built. I'm a big fan of hard wiring altho I know others who are just as passionate about tape wire or hybrid wiring. It's all a matter of what you're most comfortable with and what works best for the house you're building. I've taped wired a couple of houses and then settled on hard wiring because it works best with my building style of painting/wallpapering/etc before I assemble the house. I also like the fact that it's easier to change my mind and add, change or remove lights later on if the mood strikes me.

So, here we go! It may look a little strange for the shelves to already have the contents staged on them, but for me it's easier to stage small items with a pair of tweezers before the shelves are put in place. Wise Ways is a themed house so I don't intend on moving things around in it as I would with a regular dollhouse, therefore the shelf contents are all glued down. I dust with a can of air and a make-up brush so having the contents permanently set in place isn't a problem.

I made lamps for the shelves using grain of wheat bulbs and real sea shells. Give that a try sometime! My fairy house has a sea shell lamp too and they're just really cool because the light picks up the colors and designs in the shell from both inside and out. The shadowing is killer.

I also found some really cool GOW bulbs in the model train section at Hobby Lobby that are mounted into a little black base. How perfect is that for a lamp!

There are two lighted crystal balls on the shelves too. My tutorial for the lighted crystal balls is here. For Wise Ways I used jewelry findings to hide the bulb but either one works nicely.

Anyway, back to wiring! Brimbles shell was mostly assembled except for the roof and the two side panels that are on either side of the opening. I mapped out my wiring diagram using a white dressmaker's pencil so I knew where everything was going to be. Many of the lights are either on the shelves or inside display cases so it was important to know exactly where they would be located.

I started with the shelves downstairs and put the lamps in place, running the wires down the back of the shelves, taping them in place with black electrical tape.

I positioned the shelves and used my white pencil to mark where the wires would be going thru the first floor.

I removed the plugs, ran the wires thru the floor and taped them in place with black tape, then reattached the plugs.

I did that with both shelving units and then started work on the downstairs ceiling lights.

Using my earlier marks, I drilled holes in the ceiling for each light. The holes don't have to be big, just large enough for the wire to go thru. Then I used my dremel to score trenches into the floor from each hole to the closest corner or wall to each wire. The trenches don't have to be perfect, just deep enough for the wire to sit down into just under floor level. There are four lights coming thru the ceiling, two in the center and two just slightly left of the front wall. There is also a porch lantern, so I drilled a hole thru the porch roof and then another in the front wall just above floor level. The porch roof has a cap so the wires for the lantern will be hidden under it, I simply needed to make sure that the hole in the wall was below the level of the cap.

In each outer corner of the second floor, I drilled a small U shape large enough for a bundle of six wires to pass thru.

I removed the plug from each light (it's a good idea to keep a small container on your workspace to hold the plugs and contact poles because those little brass poles will run away in a heart beat if you don't fence them in) Then I ran each wire up thru the hole, applying gentle pull until the light fixture was firmly seated on the ceiling. The key word is "gentle". After fumbling around and cussing a lot trying to get the wires thru the holes, I learned that if I shine a flashlight down thru the hole, I can almost always get the wire thru on the first try. I'm not sure that yelling "Go to the light! Go to the light!" at the wires helps, but it amuses me so I do that too. Laying the wires inside the trenches, I ran my finger over them to make sure they were flush with the floor and then covered them completely with black tape.

I ran the wire for the porch lantern thru the hole in the wall and reattached the plug, then plugged it into a single receptacle extension wire. I'll show you how to hide the plug in a few minutes.

It's easier to continue working with more wires if the ones that are already in place aren't running amuck. I've noticed that wires are actually wild things that will run all over the place, ranging with other wires in gangs and then rumbling with rival gangs. At least that's been my experience with stereo wires, computer wires, kitchen appliances and dollhouses. One of these days I'll so further research into the nocturnal lifestyles of wires to find out what they're doing when we're sleeping, write a documentary on it and have it put on the Discovery Channel. Or maybe not.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was subduing the wild wires. Since I'm done with the ceiling lights, I moved all the wires to the corner where my U shape is cut and ran them down thru the opening. I'll put them into a hiding space in a little bit, but for now I just taped them to the side of the house to keep them in one place and prevent them from tangling up. I did that on both sides.

Cover the wiring with your flooring, bringing the edges of the flooring up to the wires running along side the wall but not covering them. We'll do that with the faux shelves in a little while.

Speaking of flooring, one of the best choices for flooring that will cover your wiring neatly and looks *fabulous* is the Greenleaf vinyl hardwood floor strips. If you've never used it, you're missing out on the best flooring ever. It looks exactly like hardwood flooring with a gorgeous laminated wood grain. The strips are die cut and self adhesive so you pull one strip at a time off the backing and lay it on your floor just as you would a real house. The result? OMG, it's just like real life hardwood flooring! I mean, it's perfect! The fact that it's 1/8" thick means that you don't have any ridges or bumps showing from the wiring or trenches too. You can also add a coat of poly varnish to the top and have a shine that makes miniature people tremble in fear at the idea of walking on it in their stocking feet. I've used it on several houses and absolutely love it. If you haven't tried it, grab a pack and give it a go. You'll be sooooo happy that you did because it looks rich, elegant and totally real. Since it's only sold at the Greenleaf webstore, it's one of the little known treasures in the mini world. You can see it here. (btw, the vinyl tiles are just as awesome and the birch tiles rock my world. They're what I used for the downstairs floors in Wise Ways but I've also used them for parquet floors in my Willowcrest ballroom, my Beacon Hill bedroom and tower room and several others)

But back to wiring! With the ceiling wires out of the way, I moved on to the shelf and display lights on the second floor. Again, I have the lights already attached to the shelves. There are two pea lights in the bottom of the crystal ball display case and those wires exit the case thru a hole drilled in the back.

My favorite way of hiding wires in baseboards is to use flat channel strips that are normally used for the bottom of porch and staircase railings. The channel groove is just the right size for hiding several wires and they're flat enough and wide enough to make perfect baseboards.

In this corner, I have a shelf with one light, so I attached the wire to the back of the the shelf, then ran it to the corner and covered it with my channel baseboard. The baseboard extends to the point where I'm going to be adding a cover for the plugs. I also put a desk with a lamp under that window and ran the wire for the lamp to the same spot where it will hide with the others.

The crystal ball display goes in the middle of the back wall and I already have my baseboard installed from the right corner behind the shelf to the line I marked for the right side of the display case. I measured the distance from the left side of the display cabinet to the left wall and cut a piece of channel baseboard to fit. It's easier for me to attach the baseboard to the display case in a single unit so I don't have to fuss with pushing the wires into place later. The wires are taped down to the back of the case and securely into the channel.

I put the display case into position. You can see that the baseboard doesn't go all the way to the wall, but there's a reason for that. The lab table will go into that space and I have some wiring to take into consideration for it.

The wires from the display case are too short to reach the corner of the wall, so I plugged them into extension cords and attached the plugs to the side of the unit facing the back wall so it wouldn't push the back of the unit too far away from the side wall, hence the reason for the baseboard attached to the display case not reaching all the way to the corner.

I put the lab table in place, making sure that the wires for it and for the display case all extend out from the edge of the table. I used a three plug extension here.

Planning ahead, I knew that my 2nd floor ceiling lights that will be installed in the roof are going to need an extension cord, so I went ahead and added the cord here (not seen in the picture), running the wire down to the foundation with the other wires. The outlet is left up here with the others so I can simply plug in my ceiling lights when they're installed.

To hide the plugs on both sides of the room, I built very simple, yet servicable, shelves using two pieces of bass wood creating half a box. This unit is just tack glued to hold it in place in the event I need to troubleshoot a light, replace one or add another. For now, I left it loose until after I've plugged in my ceiling lights. (sorry the picture seems out of sequence......I forgot to take a picture of that step and had to use one of the rough drafts taken when I was dry fitting everything)

it doesn't look like much in this picture, but the end result is a low shelf that I filled with books. I forgot to order drawer pulls when I was building but as soon as they get here, I'll make faux drawer fronts to be added to the front of the shelf so it appears that there is extra storage there. You can see the corners of the shelves in the next two pictures to give you an idea of placement and of the space created underneath for the plugs and outlets.

Now that I have all my wires on the second floor in place, I bundled them all together neatly with strips of black electrical tape and snugged them down into the U shapes in each corner of the floor. It's important to make sure they all sit down proper into the U because the side panel walls will be installed flush with the edges of the floors here.

To hide the wires, I used a deeper channel trim cut to fit floor to ceiling and tucked the wires inside it. From the inside of the shop, this appears to be a nice corner moulding. I glued it to the side wall to hold it in place.

Finally all the wires are located under the floor where they should be! I taped them all up to avoid rumbles while I installed the dormer windows and put on the roof (which is done simultaneously with the Brimbles!) The side panels of wall on the the opening are also added to the assembly at this time so your wiring is completely covered.

The second floor ceiling lights are installed the same way as the first floor. Drill your holes and trenches into the roof, install the lights and lay your wires into the trenches to be covered with black tape, ends of the wires running down thru a U shaped hole in the corner of the roof. Then there's the challenge of how to cover the wiring on the roof. I thought about that for a little while and decided that there's no need to overcomplicate things. I measured a piece of poster board to fit the roof, painted it brown and glued it down. Brimbles has a really cool double roof trim so you don't see the edges of the posterboard and it came out nicely.

The wires from the 2nd floor ceiling fixtures come down thru the inside corner of the second floor. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to see this area even looking thru the windows (unless you stand on your head and how often do you find yourself in that position when you're admiring a finished dollhouse?) so you can tack glue the wires to the sloped corner of the roof down to the point where it meets with the straight walls. I used another piece of channel moulding to hide the wires from this point to the floor. My ceiling lights were plugged into extension wires and the plugs were hidden under the faux shelves.

I made one last check to be sure that everything worked, and then taped all the wires down into place under the house foundation and plugged them all into the power strip. I drilled a very small inverted U shape in the foundation for the cord from the power strip to run thru so the foundation remains flush with the base.

And that's it! Brimbles is all hard wired and ready to go!

I know Kate and a couple of other people have told me that they'll be wiring a Brimbles soon so I hope that this helps. If I missed anything or wasn't clear, leave me a comment and I'll try to clarify.

The Grand Re-Opening of Wise Ways Emporium!

2009-10-22T15:22:00.000-06:00

When I built the first Wise Ways Emporium the Brimbles Mercantile kit by Greenleaf wasn't in production. Oh, occasionally one might be found on eBay but overall they were scarce as hen's teeth and if one did pop up on eBay, it carried a price tag the size of Wyoming or was in deplorable condition. Therefore I didn't have much hopes of ever getting my hands on one. Sarah Ann was terribly disappointed but we made do with an RGT Front Opening Shoppe picked up at one of Ernie's 50% off sales. I liked the interior but the exterior left a lot to be desired. It just didn't have the personality and character of the rest of my back opening houses.

And then came the glorious day when trumpets sounded and a light shone down from the sky, bathing the Greenleaf webstore in a white glow........the Brimbles had been re-released in laser cut! Be still my heart! I danced around a little while, sang a few choruses of "Happy, happy, joy, joy" and danced around a little more. Napoleon thought I'd flipped but he often thinks that so after looking up from his nap with one eye still closed, he sighed and went back to sleep. Sometimes that cat exhibits a serious lack of enthusiasm.

On the other hand, I got a Brimbles into my hot little hands faster than a cheap dress comes off on prom night! I opened the box and did the "junkie-inhale" of the wood smell and spent a great deal of time petting the wood and murmuring softly to myself. Yes, it was a dream come true.

Sarah Ann observed all this quietly until her patience reached it's end and then commented, "Lovely. Now do you want to stop acting the fool and build the damned thing?" Sarah Ann is my Great Grandmother so she can talk to me that way. For those of you who haven't heard the story of Wise Ways, it is a tribute to my Great Grandmother, a true wise woman. You can read a little about her life here. In fact, I kinda recommend that you do, otherwise you won't understand the joke about why my Great Grandfather looks like Kermit and lives in a cage.

I sent pictures of my Great Grandmother to Gina Gagnon of Lone Wolf Miniatures and had her create a custom doll for me. Gina did a fabulous job and my mini Sarah Ann is the spitting image of my Great Grandmother. But you can see why it was so important to me that Wise Ways Emporium be absolutely perfect. The RGT just wasn't cutting it, but the Brimbles.........ah, the Brimbles is everything I wanted and more. It's a fitting home for a tribute to my heritage.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, since the Brimbles is laser cut, it didn't take long to build it. That was fortunate because Sarah Ann started packing up the store as soon as I picked up the first piece of wood and she'd moved half the inventory into the store before I even had the roof on! And I wonder where I inherit my lack of patience! LOL! Since Brimbles has more space, we were able to expand the research room upstairs and add a garden outside. I think that Great Grandma would have liked that a lot. We also added lights and even made some glowing crystal balls and some lovely sea shell lamps. All in all, I think it's the perfect emporium for witches and wizards with a large inventory, a nice space to research or just hang out, and a little bit of humor thrown in for good measure.

So without any further ado, welcome to the Grand Re-Opening of Wise Ways Emporium!

Sarah Ann is thrilled with the exterior of the shop.

Finally a place for a rocking chair and her geraniums!

The Rose of Sharon cutting that she put in is taking hold nicely.

The garden is her pride and joy! You can even see the famous Balm of Gilead tree growing next to the porch.

I'm not sure if she bought the bullfrog bird bath or if it's someone we used to know. It's probably better not to ask.

Napoleon swears that he's not going to eat the fish. He's just counting them to make sure they're all there. Nope, wouldn't even think of eating those little bitty fish. He just wishes I'd get the hell out of there with the camera so he can get on with "counting" them.

I really love the Goddess statue in the garden.

Come on inside and look around!

Upstairs is the research room.

There's a really nice converstation area where customers can sit down and relax a little bit with a cup of tea (or something stronger), listen to some music and read or chat with friends.

Here's the lab table that Sarah Ann added to the research room. It's turning into a very popular feature with customers who like to have space and resources to experiment with new spells. I'm not sure if the mice are ingredients for a spell or the results of one, but it's quite likely that when the kitty on the top shelf finishes his fish appetizer, there will be a three course mouse dinner on the menu.

Phil O'Dendron popped in to say hi and do a little research. We never ask the customers what they're working on, but Phil has mentioned something about a "jack and the beanstalk" theory.

Downstairs, the morning sun pours thru the windows just before opening time.

This is Sarah Ann's favorite time of day as she prepares for her customers. On the wall behind her, you can see the picture taken of her on the day she received the deed to her land.

There has been lots of new inventory added to the store. This month's special is on apples. Sarah Ann keeps a basket of them on the counter. If you want to put a spell on them, that's entirely up to you. Even without the spell, they're delicious!

Somehow a litter of ginger kittens has gotten into the store and the little fellows are everywhere. One of them is falling off the counter by the candles and another one is batting parchment scrolls around on the table. One has taken up residence in the chairs upstairs and there's another chasing a mouse at Sarah Ann's feet behind the counter. Good thing she likes cats!

Maharet and Percutio have stopped in to do some shopping and visit with Sarah Ann. Maharet has been considering a new scrying mirror and I think that today she's made her final choice. Napoleon has been insisting on the one with the cat frame and I think that's the one she's finally decided on.

Percutio seems a little puzzled about why this plant keeps calling him "Seymour". (Just a word of caution, please don't feed the plants at Wise Ways)

If you'd like to see more pics of the new Wise Ways, drop into my website, http://www.debsminis.com/

**happy dancing** I'm really excited about the new Wise Ways. It's everything that I had hoped it would be. I moved it upstairs to the living room last night where it has pride of place in the center of the room. Later on next spring (when I have time and the use of both hands) I'll be moving all three houses on Magick Street into one display and re-landscaping them as an actual street. Until then, I'm quite content to sit in the middle of my living room and happily gaze at my little fantasy world come to life.

Finding my way back

2009-10-13T01:02:00.005-06:00

Poor little neglected blog. It's been so long since I've been here that I almost got lost on my way. There have been a lot of things going on lately and unfortunately I've had to limit my time at the keyboard.

I saw the "hand specialist" last week. My rheumatologist called him that but his real title is "surgeon". I'd held off as long as I could but will power can only do so much. I had hoped that he would have some other tricks up his sleeve but that was unrealistic wishful thinking on my part. Surgery is the only option and it's required for both hands. He'll do the left one first and then the right one after the left has recovered. I was hopeful that it would be an endoscopy but he killed that dream too. (Nice guy but he was hell on my high hopes) He's going to have to do an open incision on the palm which means a longer recovery time. He said with the myofascia problems I have with my muscles the recovery might be longer than 6 weeks per hand. Hmmpf. He don't know me very well, do he?

I can deal with the surgery. If it's needed, it's needed and that's all there is to it. We'll get it over and done and I can get on with life. He said I'm not in the best category for it to be successful since the nerve damage may be permanent already, but if it doesn't get any worse than it is now, I can learn to live with it. "All better" would be the best situation but I'd settle for "no worse". I asked him why he didn't do both hands at the same time and he replied, "Because if I did, you wouldn't be able to wipe your butt". Ooooooooooooooooooookay. That's logic that I won't argue with.

Then there was the hard part. I've suspected it for awhile but it still felt like a kick in the stomach to hear that I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. The blood tests show negative but he said that happens around 15-20% of the time. When he does the surgery he'll get a tissue biopsy that will be a little more conclusive. Even without the test results, my hands tell the tale. My fingers have all three of the stereotypical RA deformities already as well as rheumatoid nodules. It's the nodules that are most concerning since they will grow in internal organs such as the heart, liver and lungs. With my auto-immune issues, I'm prone to nodules and cysts anyway (14 in my thyroid alone) so I'm willing to bet that the heart and lung nodules are already there.

I see my rheumatologist later this month and we'll start being a lot more aggressive. Actually, I'm considering finding a different rheumatologist because she *hasn't* been more agressive already. I'm going to insist on an MRI on my hips as well as one to find out where the nodules are. There's no cure for RA so my only hope is to slow down the progression and that means early and aggressive treatment. I wear hand splints now but there are finger splints that can slow down the changing shapes and I should have been in those a long time ago. We'll be discussing DMARDs too but I know we can't start those till after the surgeries are over. I think there's a lot more that she could be doing and we're definitely going to start doing them now. If she isn't willing, then she'll be replaced. I'm also seeing a new internist with hopes that maybe she can see the whole A-I picture and maybe treat me as an entire person instead of a specific body part or disease.

It could be worse. It's not a fatal disease even tho it does effect mortality. I understand that on the average it can shorten a life span by 10 years, more if the rheumatoid nodules are present. Yet it's still difficult to come to terms with knowing my expiration date has been moved up and the quality of life I'll have up to that point probably won't be the greatest.

Been crying a lot but I think that's normal. I grieve for the silly shit............like how I used to be so proud of my hands. They were my one vanity and so perfect that I could have modeled them all the way into my late 30's. I wore rings on every finger and had more bottles of nail polish than a Revlon factory. My nails were shaped perfectly and grew long without even trying. Now I look down at my hands and see aliens. I'm also upset about deciding to cut my hair. There's no way I can take care of 4 feet of hair with one hand while the surgeries/recoveries are going on and even tho my hubby would willingly help it would only prolong the inevitable. I'm having a hard time handling a brush and braiding it now. There are days that the weight of it hurts my scalp. So I'm going to look for a short style that's wash-n-wear and take comfort in knowing that Locks of Love will have enough hair to make wigs for several kids. I already feel sorry for whichever poor beautician gets me in the chair because I know I'll be sobbing the whole way thru it.

See? That's all silly stuff. But it's easier to think about that then to think about losing my ability to create. Mother Goddess, please don't let that happen. Creating isn't what I do, it's who I am. It's my heart and soul. If I ever lose the ability to create it would be the loss of my spirit.

*deep breath* Not gonna happen. I'll find a way...............ANY way...........to keep the creative process going. There are work-arounds and I'll find them. I don't like this and I don't want this, but I've got it and there's no changing that. I can either deal with it or I can sit here and cry. I don't like to cry, it makes me tired. So I'll deal with it and adjust and always, always, always keep looking toward the next project.

There are lots of those too! I'm waiting for supplies to arrive for a custom Pierce that is going to be simply heavenly. It's going to be southern and as a misplaced southerner, that makes me sooooooooooo happy. Building this house will be like taking a trip back home. I think I can get the building part done and be down to the detailing before the surgeries start. I'm pretty sure I can shingle with just one hand! And then I have three big furniture orders............one for an elegantly gothic witch, one for the world's biggest Garfield and one for a bed and breakfast........and I'm going to fit those in too. I'll have one hand at a time and I'll learn how to be left handed if I need to! After those are done, I'm building a Tennyson for myself and then a Victorian Rosedale for another customer in the summer.

Those are the things I'm hanging on to. As long as I can look even one month ahead, or even one day ahead, and see myself building a dollhouse or dressing a bed, I'll be okay.

I've definitely gone past my limit on the keyboard tonight and ended up saying a lot of things I hadn't intended to say. What is it about a blog that makes you feel like you're talking to yourself even when you know the whole world could be listening? I thought about deleting it, but decided to just let it go. It's not a cheerful post but maybe in a few months I'll be able to look back and say "See? Things turned out better than I thought!".

I have a couple of awards to pick up and will do that soon. Thank you to Corwin and Casey! Oh, and I'll try to sneak back on here tomorrow and tell you about a really cool contest being held on the Greenleaf forum. It's all very light hearted and fun!

Everything you wanted to know about wiring but were afraid to ask

2009-09-09T15:57:00.002-06:00

If that title sounds familiar, you're over 40. LOL!

All jokes aside, I do have some awesome information about wiring a dollhouse to share with everyone. I think I've mentioned that I'm the editor in chief of the Greenleaf Gazette. The Gazette is the monthly newsletter/e-zine from Greenleaf Dollhouses. If you're not a subscriber yet, sign up! I'm not just promoting it because I'm the editor either. We put helpful information about building dollhouses and miniatures, tons of tutorials, and sometimes just excellent eye candy in your inbox every month. There's no advertising or spam either. I include updates and featured kits from Greenleaf but that's dollhouse news, not advertising! LOL! When kits like the Beaumont are re-released in laser cut, that's news that any dollhouse builder or collector wants to hear about! But that's just in the "hot news" section, the main content of the newsletter is tutorials and articles about dollhouses and miniatures.

The issue with all the wiring information is the February 2009 issue. You'll find all the articles on this page. Here are the links to the individual articles as well:

"Why Put Lights in a Dollhouse?" To Light or not to Light" by Deb Roberts

Dollhouse Wiring 101 - The basics of electrifying and troubleshooting wiring for your dollhouse" by Deb Roberts

Plug and Play— Using the round wire method (and hiding wires) by Deb Roberts

Hybrid Wiring—Combining Round Wire with Tape Wire
By Christine Errico

Hard Wiring a Front Opening Dollhouse
By Christine Errico

Darrell’s Electrification Guide: Tape Wiring and More
By Darrell Payne

Regardless of what kind of lighting you want to do or even if you've wired a dollhouse before, I recommend reading the article on Wiring 101. It's a nice little glossery of terms and a breakdown of things like what hardware and tools you'll need, the different methods of wiring you can use, how to tell how many bulbs your transformer can handle, and lots of pictures of what wiring components look like. There's also a section on troubleshooting wiring problems. That article has been picked up by Dolls House Magazine and will be running sometime this winter but you can beat the rush and read it directly on the Greenleaf newsletter.

If you've never wired before and are considering where to start and what kind of lighting you want to use (light fixtures, baby spots, ambient lighting) or how to decide where to place lights in a dollhouse, read the first article on "To Light or Not to Light".

When I started wiring dollhouses, I would have given my left arm for pictures of the hardware and descriptions of what I'd need! I felt like an idiot because I didn't even know what the plug on a dollhouse lamp looked like! The retailer websites and catalogs show pictures of lamps, but never the business end of one. The biggest mystery to me was how to connect tape wire to the transmformer! I knew there must be some kind of hardware involved, but I couldn't find anything that simply showed the whole connection process. When I found out about junction splices and transformer lead in wires I felt like I'd discovered the secret to the meaning of life and it wasn't 42!! LOL!

So when I did the wiring issue, I remembered all those newbie questions I'd had and tried to include the answers to all of them and take the mystery out of wiring a dollhouse. I know that there's a lot of information about wiring dollhouses in various locations on the web if you have the time to dig for it and know what to look for in the first place but when we did the wiring issue of the Gazette, we wanted to create a one-stop location with almost everything anyone could want to know about wiring, including the very basics and introductions to wiring concepts.

I hope that this helps a little bit! And if you're not already a subscriber to the Greenleaf Gazette, you can see the archives of past issues here and there's a link on that page to sign up for it too.

I knew I forgot something.......

2009-09-09T02:13:00.004-06:00

I just realized that I've been rambling on about Magick Street and haven't shown any pictures of what I'm talking about. It would probably make more sense if you could see it, huh. These are the houses that started Magick Street. The Glencroft (left) is home to Percutio the Wizard and the Orchid (right) is where Maharet the Witch lives. They've got a thing goin' on. Oh, and Percutio has a pet dragon named Phideau.

I fell in love with bombay mahogany combined with antique white on this house. The interior is focused on the woodwork from the ceiling beams to the shiny floors. The windows are all stained glass and use assorted sigals and pentacles for the designs. Percutio is a ceremonial wizard.

In between the two houses is a small, romantic cemetary. There is a little wrought iron lamp post by the gate, but the grave stones look best in the light of sunset.

Maharet is more of a hedge witch.....a true wise woman. She's very grounded in the elements and most of the time she's a nice witch. However, judging by the frog on the front porch reading the Wall Street Journal it's probably not a good idea to give her bad financial advice.

Maharet's greenhouse.

This is how some of my dollhouses are displayed in my living room............the Victorian street is on the tables and Magick Street is on the floor under the tables. (there are 9 more dollhouses scattered thru my house but these are the primary groupings) Our house is a tri-level and these houses are the first thing people see when they come thru the front door. I've yet to have a visitor make it up the stairs to the living room without stopping to look. Anyway, you can see the arrangement of Magick Street with the Glencroft, the Orchid, the rgt shoppe (Wise Ways Emporium) and the Aster (Emerald Fairy Cottage) in a row. You can also see that the current building for Wise Ways just doesn't fit in at all. All my other houses are back opening and the front opening stands out like a sore thumb. That's why Sarah Ann and I have been so eager for the Brimbles to be re-released. Brimbles is side opening so the other houses will be moved down closer to the fairy house and Brimbles will go on the end so the side and front are both visible.

Here's how the houses look from the back. (you can just barely see the fairy cottage interior hiding behind the arm of the love seat) The Victorian street from left to right is the Beacon Hill, the Willowcrest and the Pierce.

But I'm not addicted. LOL! I'm really eager to get Wise Ways moved to its new store so the whole street looks perfect.

Some decisions are easier than others

2009-09-08T23:02:00.002-06:00

I had such grand and glorious plans to put a wrap around porch and a boardwalk on the side of the Brimbles. It would be soooooooooooo awesome. I even had the porch facade from the Willowcrest and all the other wood carefully laid out to make sure that I had everything I needed and that it would work. All that remained was measuring the space for Brimbles on Magick Street to see how much room I'd have.

Turns out it's only 1 3/4". I could have gotten away with 2 1/2" and used some optical illusions to make it look wider than it is but 1 3/4 is just a little too narrow for a board walk. Another thing I noticed while I was moving things around and measuring is that all the other houses are landscaped on the side that faces the street. Brimbles would look just a little out of place with a boardwalk.

So it' s on to Plan B where I make a small herb garden instead! Sarah Ann thinks that's a better idea since Wise Ways advertises their fresh herbs and it's only natural that she'd have an herb garden out back. There will even be room for her bammy-gilly tree. It will just look so much better with the landscaping of the other houses too so I'll roll with the changes.

I still want to put a boardwalk on the side of the Brimbles. It would just look so totally cool! The solution for that is that I'll just have to build another Brimbles! I've always thought that it would make an awesome old west saloon! I could put it next to my ghost town stage stop and start a whole new street. Since I love ghost towns, this makes perfect sense. I'm excited now about building a Brimbles as a saloon with a bordello upstairs, a mirror behind the bar and tables with card games in progress. The one closest to the door will have a hand of aces and eights of course. I'll put a hitching post outside and landscape with tumbleweeds. Hmmm. As long as I'm making a saloon to go with the stage stop, I should probably make a hotel and a blacksmith shop too.

Time to go back to work. I have everything painted except the walls and Sarah Ann wants me to finish those so I can wallpaper upstairs tomorrow and start putting everything together. I think she's eager for me to start on the parquet floors. Oh! And another happy thing! I found a smoking stand to go between the wing back chairs in the research room! It's those little things that mean so much.

Wise Ways Relocation Project Begins

2009-09-07T15:20:00.002-06:00

Great-Grandma Sarah Ann is a very happy little lady right now. I started building the Brimbles for her this weekend and she's already starting to pack up her inventory and get ready to move. She's never, ever liked the store I built for her and told me that she only tolerated it until I could find a Brimbles. I reminded her over and over that Brimbles was out of production and finding one on eBay would cost an arm and three fingers (and how could I build without my fingers anyway). She told me not to fret about it, she'd make sure that we found one. Then Brimbles came back into production and was re-released in laser cut! Hmmmm.............she may only be 6 inches tall, but apparently she's still a mighty little witch. I need to get her to tell me which spell she used for that.

Anyway, the building has started and I think I'm happier than Sarah Ann. For one thing, I've lusted after a Brimbles for sooooooooo long that this is a dream come true. It's an awesome house and it's HUGE! I mean, those rooms are really, really, really big! I had no idea from the pictures just how much space there is in this house. I already made over 350 books for Wise Ways and now I need to make more. Oh well, that's okay. I found some burgundy leather and mixing that in with the black and brown books will look excellent.

And it's laser cut! OMG! This is the third laser cut kit I've built and it just gets better and better! Before the laser cut I had cringed at the idea of sanding all the porch pieces and dormer window parts and trim because of what it would do to my hands, but there's NO sanding needed at all. Woooooohoooooo!Wait till you see how the laser cut window frames take stain! It's SO gorgeous that I've been drooling. I'm using bombay mahogany and the dark laser cut edges make the stained wood look even richer and really pop the grain. After seeing this, I'm positive now that I have to pick one of the laser cut kits to simply stain both and varnish just to showcase the wood grain and the lines of the kit.

I had planned on putting in four or five lights but Sarah Ann had different ideas about that. We ended up planning for 18 lights and a total of 26 bulbs. I decided to put lights in the front windows to highlight the displays there and discovered that if I turned a couple of floor lamps upside down, they look exactly like those old department store ceiling lights on brass poles and are the perfect length to show in the windows. Cool! We're going to have two more chandeliers downstairs and one upstairs plus lights in the display cases, on shelves, and on the desk in the research room. Oh, and Sarah Ann wants to have glowing crystal balls on the shelves so we're going to do that too. All these lights will really make the mahogany woodwork and parquet floors glow!

When I was planning the design, I had fully intended to put the staircase in coz it's as cool as the one in the Glencroft, but Sarah Ann nixed that idea. She pointed out that if I put in the staircase there wouldn't be enough room for all of her shelves and counters for inventory. She wants wall-to-wall shelves from floor to ceiling downstairs. Okay, no stairs.

One thing we're still discussing is wrapping the porch around the side to make a boardwalk. I still have the porch post assembly from the Willowcrest and it looks *perfect* with the Brimbles porch. It's not an exact match, but it's close enough to work nicely. I was all excited about it until I did some measuring and discovered that if I put the boardwalk on the side, the store will be too wide to fit into the space allocated for it on Magick Street. I'm going to go back upstairs and mess around with the Glencroft and Orchid to see if I can possibly rearrange anything to make it work. I might be able to make it fit if I make the boardwalk really, really, really narrow. It would be more of a facade about an inch and a half wide but if I make some shadows with paint I might be able to create an optical illusion so it looks like it's wider than it is. Wish me luck.

Sarah Ann is telling me that break time is over and I have to get back to work. I'd call her a bossy old woman but the truth is that I'm so excited about this build that I don't want to stop for anything!!

A mini celebration!

2009-09-05T16:23:00.003-06:00

Actually, every day is a party when it involves minis! I think we celebrate our joy in life with the little things we make, but sometimes it turns into a party. I had an accidental celebration the other day when my muse suddenly felt like doing something with a bit of color and sparkle. My muse loves sparkly things. Anyway, I got to digging around in my fabric stash and ran across some Hoffman's prints from waaaaaaaaaaaaay back. I can't remember if these were part of a Hoffman's challenge in the 90s or not. I think they might have been. I had several prints from the collection and used them in an art quilt called "Moon Over Mardi Gras". MOMG took best of show at two exhibits and I think it was just because it was such a fun piece to look at.

The man in the moon is done in needle turn applique. His mask is outlined with gold embroidery and instead of quilting around the moon, I used crystal beads. There are some enameled charms here and there and lots of star shaped sequins in the background. The confetti fabrics are beaded with bugle beads in matching colors. It was just a lot of fun to do.

When I ran across the remnants of those fabrics, I grabbed them up and thought what a great mini bed they would make! After rummaging thru the drawer of silks and satins, I found the perfect emerald green satin to use for the sheets. I used a white washed bed frame so the colors in the fabrics would really pop. For some reason, a neatly made bed didn't seem right, so to give it the right tone, I rumpled up the sheets and named it "Morning After Mardi Gras".

Of course I had to have sparklie things on this bed! The fabrics have the Hoffman's signature gold worked into the design and I used gold loop trim on the throw over the foot of the bed, but I had a need to bead. Making a pile of Mardi Gras bead necklaces was easy to do and then I tossed them over the bed posts.

When it came to the pillows, I used the confetti and ribbon prints for the smaller pillows but for the big pillows, I fussy cut two masks from the larger print in the collection and was delighted with the results! The final touch was to drape some bead necklaces over the pillows.

I like it! My muse is satisfied with our use of color and sparklies too. Most of all, I got to have a little mini celebration!

Minis are like a box of chocolates.......

2009-08-31T02:53:00.007-06:00

You really just never know what you're going to get. LOL Now that I've done my movie quote for the day, I'll get make my actual point. Minis *are* like a box of chocolates because we can get so many sweet varieties into a small container. It's never boring! There's always something new and different that we can do or see. I spent a few days last week working on my website and created a virtual box of chocolates. I started by going thru my files looking for pictures to present a nice assortment of my minis. (turns out I have over 7000 files on my domain server!! That's a lot of minis!!) I narrowed it down to about 270 pictures, dumped them on a webpage and converted them to thumbnails. Thumbnails are cool because when you click on them, they open a new page with a big picture. It's simple techno magic, but I like it. It's amazing what entertains me. LOL!!

(I'm going to apologize to y'all about the watermark on some of the pictures. That's coz thumbnails show up in image searches and, well, you know what happens if you don't brand your work and establish a copyright.) Anyway, the end result is a fun page on my website with random and assorted minis.............everything from dollhouses to really weird things to go in them. My main galleries are still on the website but sometimes it's fun to get a quick fix instead of sitting down to do some serious surfing. As long as I'm in chocolate box mode, I'll share a few here. The first one is Aunt Harriet. She tends to enjoy her wine just a little bit too much but she doesn't want the family to know about it so she drinks in the closet. Aunt Harriet was one of my tutorials for the Greenleaf Gazette. I think I ran that one last year around Halloween. Anyway, wave hello to Aunt Harriet and then we'll move on.

This is the plant room in my Beacon Hill. The top floor of the BH also has a meditation room with a temple size prayer wheel. It's very serene and one of my favorite mini rooms. I put the plant room with the statue of Shiva next to the meditation room because they go together so well.

I was messing around with the Greenleaf die cut furniture kits one day and decided to do an art deco bathroom. The sides of the tub are mother-of-pearl inlay pieces scavanged from old jewelry kits.

I never thought much about floating staircases till I wanted to put one in the Magnolia. I googled some images and then decided that I don't have to understand the mechanics behind a cantilevered staircase, I just have to make it look like one! So I did. Nope, there's no handrail and it would scare the hell out of me to try to go up or down this thing in real life. However, the Magnolia is home to my bachelor (who has a bar, a pool table and a juke box instead of a kitchen) so I figured that he'd be drunk enough to handle the staircase with no trouble.

Wise Ways Emporium needed lots of books before the grand opening. A LOT of books. I think I made around 350 of these to stock the shelves. As long as I was at it, I did a tutorial for them and ran it in the Greenleaf Gazette.

I decided that my bachelor needed a pet because all my houses have some kind of pet living in them. But he's a playboy and you can't count on him to take care of a dog or cat so I gave him goldfish. I knew there was a reason I never throw away those Ruetters boxes!

I love landscaping! This is part of the formal garden around the Samurai Summer House. I made a "planter" for the tree with real stones and put the mudmen under it. I love the way they're in such intense conversation. There's a tut for the planter in an issue of the Gazette somewhere.

This is Herbie!!! I loooooooooooooooove him so much! Isn't he adorable? Herbie tends to turn up in gardens and lawns around all my dollhouses. As a mole, he tunnels easily and really gets around. In this picture, he had popped up in the Willowcrest yard for some lemonade.

Speaking of all the books I made for Wise Ways Emporium, here's what part of the store looks like. The shoppers are Percutio (the wizard) and Maharet (the witch). That's my great-grandmother Sarah Anne behind the counter. Seriously. I had a custom doll made of my great-grandmother.

Meet Phil O'Dendron! He's a delightful creation of Blue Kitty Miniatures. (look her up on Etsy.........she's a fabulous artisan) As soon as I saw Phil, I knew he was destined to live with me. He's kinda like Herbie and gets shared around between Maharet, Percutio and Sarah Anne. He gets a little nervous around their familiars tho. Mahret and Sarah Anne have cats and Percutio has a dragon named Phideau. I'm not sure if the mouse is an ingredient for a spell or the result of one but Phill seems a bit nervous about him too. I'm going to have to find a mini pot of valerian to keep next to Phil to calm his nerves.

This is one view of the interior of my Samurai's Summer House. The shoji doors (rice paper) actually work. When they slide closed, the living space and the tea room become two separate spaces and you can see the bamboo front door behind them. I had a lot of fun with this house. I made the futon and the pillows in these rooms and upstairs are kimono chests, tatami mats and a kimono on a stand that I made as well.

This is another part of Wise Ways. I keep stones of all kinds and sometimes they get used in minis. This scene includes tiger's eye, lapis, flourite, amythest, quartz, jasper, onyx, peridot and emeralds.

I really like this zen moment. In fact, this mini sits on my desk beside me as a reminder to relax more. I took an online class with Tracy Topps for creating a mini vignette in a picture frame. The results were really awesome since Tracy asked each person to choose their own theme. Very cool!!

That's just a little sampler box of mini eye candy. If you want to get the full candy store, click here. All this talk about candy has given me a craving for chocolate. Time to go raid the cupboard and find that bag of M&M's!