Update...

Well, they did not operate on Joy yesterday because she refused treatment, even knowing she would be gone within 3-5 days...yes days!! So after my nap, I went to OHSU to try to get her to go ahead and have the mass removed. She agreed and her surgery is today...in just a few hours. I am waiting for the phone call letting me know she came out of it ok. And until then, I can't seem to function. It has been a rough few days.

Yet again

I lost a friend yesterday. Tried to go to school today, sat through half a class and just could not stay...am home now and I am going to take a nap and have some art time for Jax a little later tonight. We also have other friends who are hurting; Wade and his wife, Joy, who suffers from cancer went to the ER yesterday where they found a mass in her brain and she was taken to OHSU from Good Sam for surgery this morning. It doesn't look good for her. I am tired....I see people go on about their day as if the world didn't stop for a while yesterday. They don't know....they just don't know and I resent that.

Taking a break

I am taking a break from my homework to get my thoughts out so I can begin to focus once more. First off, I am slammed!! Whew!! Second, I am loving nearly every second of it. I am collecting a lot of valuable information, yet I find myself hungry for the action, the practical applications of what I am learning. The last month has put a wedding band on my finger in Maui, my mother in the hospital, and has seen both my husband and my daughter sick sick sick. I am continuing along the path laid out before me with gusto and praying I will not get sick. I presented my art journal project today in class, but didn’t get much feedback, so I am hoping to get more once I get out there. Art journaling is such an important part of who I am and has had such a profound impact in my life, I just can’t wait to see what it can do as a tool for learning, understanding, and loving literature and poetry.
I sat in the park blocks today at lunch and read, for the first time, my first art journal from beginning to end. Something happened as I did that. I realized I was good at this writing stuff and that some of the things I said were so intimate and profound that I can’t help but be proud. Then something else happened; almost before I could stop the thought, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I could publish parts of it along with a autobiographical account of the entries and prompts for people to do there own. Then, as if by magic, I am walking to my next class and there is the best professor in the world (hi, Susan!) and I start in telling her how excited I am at my discovery. Before I tell her my thought, she tells me I could publish my journal! How groovy is that? Of course, why stop at that? I wonder if I could take my story to teachers and get them to integrate journaling into their classrooms. I wonder if I could use my own experience with my own students as research for my dissertation? The gears are grinding…..
Ok…maybe now I can focus.

Copyright Question for GTEP

So......for an assignment I am posing a question and would love your input. I need at least three people to respond (hint hint). Should teachers be allowed to disregard copyright laws for educational purposes? In other words...photocopy chapters of books, play movies, entire songs??? Input? I am withholding my own thoughts here, but I would encourage you to speak freely. :) In your response it would be helpful if you put your occupation or let me know if you work with copyright issues regularly or not. I am sending invites to answer this question to a variety of people. Anyway.....Thankx!!!

What day is this?

To say that I am a tad bit overwhelmed would be the understatement of the century. I imagined grad school to be different. Different how??? I will let you know, but for now, let me just say it isn't what I imagined. For some reason, and I hope I am not alone in this, nothing is clear in any of my classes. Constant changes and vague assignments seem to be the norm. That being said, I like (a lot) 4 out of my 5 classes. I find myself getting confused at the same time though. I am up late every night doing some sort of assignment. I need so badly to do a photography outing, I am thinking Eagle Creek. Maybe I can make it there over the weekend. I do some of my best thinking while taking pictures or making art.
My sweet little Sydney has strep throat, but she is on the mend now, but my heart breaks when she comes up to me saying she is sick. Her eyes just looked so tired and out of it. Shelby, my wonderful husband, is pretty much recovered from his heart attack and is showing vast improvements in his attitude and outlook on life. I, too, am healing well from my surgery in March, and am totally off the pain meds and the withdrawal is over. I wish that those dozens of ER docs over the last year would have given me a heads up about those pills though. Guess that is it for now.....I leave you with pics of my trip to Hawaii once more. :)

Holy Moly

Well, the last few weeks has been a whirlwind. One week ago today Shelby and I were standing on the beach on Maui getting ourselves hitched. Mom ended up in the hospital on Friday morning but was released today. And only 2 short days ago I started Grad School. I am pretty sure I am not going to make it through without some sort of breakdown. I haven't hardly seen my daughter except to take her to daycare and pick her up from my sister's house, I then take her home and put her to bed. It makes my heart ache to think of what I am missing out on. Don't get me wrong, I want to go through this, I just wasn't expected the anxiety attacks to start so early, yesterday I had to leave class to go vomit in the bathroom. I am trying to manage it, but I feel as though I am not doing a very good job. The week is almost over, the school week, that is. So I know if I can only make it to the weekend that I can get ahead on my homework and able to sleep the rest of the week instead of staying up past midnight. The pictures I am including are from Hawaii because when I look at them I can still feel the breeze and I let myself relax. :)

Newest journal entries

Have been able to make some art this week!! It is good for the soul!!

Fun at the gorge

To celebrate the last day of classes (before final's week), Shelby and I took Sydney "Fairy Hunting" in the gorge. Here are a few of those shots....

A little bit of fun....

My newest journal entry...



Me having tea at a Tillamook tea house!

I was able to take some adorable pics of Sydney.....the great thing about her is that wonderful smile, everytime I see it I can't help but smile, too.

I hate waiting...an ode to Murakami

So the newest Murakami book hit bookstores in Japan yesterday, 1Q84. Its release is surrounded in mystery, we know nothing about the plot....we know the book is almost 1000 pages long and we have no clue when the English translation will be released. Having just discovered Murakami a few months ago, I have to say I am still as hardcore a fan as I can be, considering I have only read one of his books. But....I do have the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" on my shelf just waiting for me to finish that tome 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I ask myself why I am soo impatient for the new Murakami book, it isn't like I don't have the new Wally Lamb book to read, too. I just want to have 1Q84 in my paws, I want to own it, so that when I finish what needs to be finished, I can pick it up. Its that simple. I am pretty sure I will have read most of his books by the end of the year, I adored "Kafka on the Shore" and I want more more more! :)

Update.....

I have created yet another new blog... http://vortexofpoetry.blogspot.com/

So things are looking up...I will be graduating magna cum laude...not summa as I had hoped because I got a stinkin B in Pscho 311 and a few A-'s. Sheesh. I do care that I graduate.....truly...and I am all butt hurt that I am not graduating summa cum laude. Yes...I know...poor Brandi, right? If you knew the person I was when I scraped through high school back in the early 90's, you would understand why I am so desperate to prove myself. Plus, I love this school, my classes rock, except for Spanish cause I am a dork who can *get it*. Being an English major has been the highlight of my life. But being an English major with a 3 year old, chronic health issues, and utterly broke is hard to pull off, yet I keep trying to not only pull it off, but do it perfectly. I want to make sure all my homework is perfect as I can make it....staying up until 2am on a school night to make sure a 2 page response paper is flawless. Yes, I am a grade snob. I want to learn this stuff..I have to be able to teach it, right? Plus I love it and I want to prove to myself that I am a perfect student, to make up for those high school years of smoking behind the grotto across from GHS and skipping school to go hang out in the area above the stage. Anyway...for no particular reason...here is a pic I like...this is an art blog after all.....

Slow up, Speed down, rightside up and upside down

Chaos rules supreme in my world where I can no longer process things as they come to me, I pick and choose what to take in and deal with and the rest goes into the void surrounding me. I have found myself recovering from another surgery during spring break, addicted to pain pills, depressed, not caring if I even graduate (which is a month away), and eating pretty much everything in sight and then bitching about having put on weight. I am a walking contradiction or perhaps hypocrit is the better term-although I can't explain exactly why-it just feels right. I panic in my classes and have to leave in order to calm myself down. The cherry is that Shelby had a heart attack on the first of May. I was there with him in the hospital and he was fine, in pain, but not dramatic, chest-grasping pain. He is now off work for another month, we are poor and I am avoiding going to the hell that is the Oregon Department of Human Resources, I can't ask for help. We need it, but what I can't deal with is being a grown up and going in, filling out the paper work, sitting there for hours while oblivious mothers allow their children to hit mine, scream, and spill food everywhere. I am brain-fried after having come face to face with the possibility of loosing Shelby. It seems as if I am numb most of the time when I am around him-who am I to bombard him with more stress? I broke down in my Spanish class, left and went home to get my camera and took myself on a self-pity ride through the gorge. Most of the pics sucked, but I got a few good ones:

Huh? What? Where am I?

I have been accepted into graduate school at Portland State, specifically, the Graduate Teacher Education Program. When I am done, I will be certifiable..LOL! Sorry, could not resist. I will be a certified teacher of English to grades 7-12 and I will have a Masters in Education. I will be graduating Magna cum laude assuming I can maintain my GPA this term and next. I have worked, read, studied, written a billion papers on topics I didn't even understand and I find myself closing in on the end of it all. What will happen to me? What if I hate teaching? What if I decide teenagers are hell spawn? What if I just can't hack it? So many questions. I thought I would feel a sense of pride at what I have done, not to say I haven't, but I find that my doubts are crowding me and overwhelming my accomplishments.

I have not been healthy this term, as nearly everybody knows. Random things are keeping me down and the frustration is giving me anxiety attacks in addition to all my other problems. I think once we figure things out with my body, that I will be able to focus on the good. I wake up everyday saying today will be different, today I will need no pain meds, no anti-dizzy pills, and I won't be so tired that I can barely hold my head up. Each day I disappoint myself.

I have nothing to say here

The last post implies something that isn't quite true...yet. I am having some issues, mentally and physically and one may be causing the other. I am longing to make some art and I can barely find the time to do my homework, let alone my art. Yet these are the times I most need to set that time away for myself. I am loaded on Vicoden (sp) right now, so pardon the random rambling. I don't even have any new pictures to post, but because this is my art blog, I will post some older things that seem to belong in this particular post at this particular time.

In response to mental illness

There is an element of comfort in diagnosis,
As in my particular case.
At last or at least
I have an excuse; a reason why
I Can’t grow up, only down and slantways, as if I am afraid of heights.
But I am only half-ways to being
Checked out. It is a painful enigma.
Being able to feel the drop, the wind whistling in my
Face, drying, cleansing.

If I were at bottom,
I would not notice so much, you see.
I can’t even lose my mind properly.
I think this is what
Limbo must feel like.
A huge field, lush and brilliant.
The tall grass tickles me.
But not to the point where I am compelled to laugh out loud.
It is almost like
A deprived sort of moderate torture.
I want to wholly embrace the green.
I want to bathe in
Self pity there, in that field.
But I am afraid
Of the bugs getting all over me.
So I walk. Tickle. Tickle. Tickle.