death in the year 2009

2009 has taken a LOT of wonderful people from us, it's been rough. both celebrities and friends and family.

i just spent a good amount of time reading over my posts from the past several years and laughing about all the funny stories my kids told. i documented local disasters, accidents, and sad things too. i have decided to post the ordeal of my dad's death here (rather than facebook) since not many people read this blog anymore. it's more for me but feel free to read if you want.

Mel Sykes Jr. was my step dad but for the past 28 years he was much more a dad than my biological father (who I don't hate but don't have a very close relationship with either). Mel could have written a book about how to be a great step dad. I was a pre-teen when my mom and Mel got married so I was at the height of my puberty dramatic girl self. I was a total brat. Mel never ever at anytime acted like he was sorry that I was part of the package. He stuck with me and with love and patience he won me over.

It was after I got married and had kids that my relationship with my mom and Mel really grew. I spent a lot of time with them and they both helped me so much with both babies. We spent many Saturday mornings in the summer driving to garage sales. Mel loved to ride with me and the kids to Bloomington to Menards or Sam's Club (he loved to ride the scooter around with Jude and eat all the samples).

Mel was much more than just smart, he was wise. I relied on his opinion and really miss that the most. Many times over the last month, I have thought "oh, I need to ask Mel what he thinks about that" only to remember that I cannot have that conversation with him. I would get the Pantagraph on Sundays and do the first few (easy) answers of the crossword puzzle. Then I would give it to him, he would work the puzzle and leave a few for me to finish (usually the ones that involved a celebrity or song title). It was a joke that I would "have" to finish his puzzles. I have never known anyone as flat out smart and wise as he. 

the door project:

A few paragraphs does not even come close to doing justice to the affect Mel had on my life. He loved doing projects, he would measure about 50 times and it would drive me crazy (because I would just eyeball something). He had to have everything perfect and I appreciated that when he did something, I knew it would be done right. The last project he was working on for me was a new front door. True to form, he took about 10 days just to get the door in place. He had to take out the original door, measure, measure, measure, put the door back on because it was late. Then repeat the process several days in a row. He leveled out the floor around the door, put in new insulation and jams and at last the new door was in. Now, to tackle the hardware. LOL, he had my uncle, my mom, and my aunt all standing around looking at it for an hour before he actually installed it. The lock was not working "smooth" so he spent another full day working on that. At last, perfect. He left all his tools sitting in front of the door until he could finish the molding and trim around the door. He was going on vacation and would finish it when he got back.

shark week

sharks scare the freak out of me but i can't get enough of shark week.

i stayed up late watching a re-enactment of the Jersey shore attacks of 1916. several swimmers were attacked (and eaten) off the shore of New Jersey and the Matawan Creek which the ocean feeds into. SHARKS in a fresh water CREEK?! not any shark but they are pretty sure it was a Great White shark. Holy Crap. I am convinced now that they really COULD get in my bathtub while my eyes are closed.

Right now, Survivorman, Les Stroud is on doing different experiments to see if sharks prefer humans or different animals. Proof that sharks want to eat us.

august 09

holy august already.

this has been a busy summer. we spent a week at preppygirl's house, the kids all went to a drama enrichment program. they did awesome.

with a lot of help from my mom, i cleaned up and re-did our basement. it is now a great (clean) place for the kids to hang out (our of my hair that is). plus they can get away from each other too. Grandpa Mel put in cable down there, we set up the bar with all of mazzy's art supplies and the futon is perfect down there (where I don't have to sit on it).

last week had a house full of friends. it was wonderful. the john hughes party was a blast, lots of laughing. already planning next year's party (circus/sideshow theme). loved having so many new faces this year and hope everyone comes back next year.

next weekend we have a wedding to attend out of town. i have been dared to wear my vintage 80's dress (that i wore as a costume to the john hughes party), i am thinking that's what i'll wear.

the week after that we will spend a week in wisconsin at the lake. hope it warms up enough to put on swim suits!

then back to school for the kids. jude will start kindergarten. i'm still not happy about the attendance center crap so we'll see how that goes. at least mazzy will still be at our neighborhood school (for one more year only).

launching a brand new at home company here in the US come september. NYR Organics is the very first and only organic home based business in the US and the products are amazing (and gorgeous). you can check out the UK website for now if you want to get an idea of the products. go to www.nyrhome.com (prices are in pounds).

the future is going to be all about reducing the chemicals we put on our skin (our skin absorbs the chemicals we put on it and takes it into our bloodstream). 

i'm excited so many of my body shop team members have joined me in this venture. ready to get it started.

random

len as cousin eddie as sammy davis jr as lou reed. take a walk on the wild side.

allison pre-makeover with clark griswald

smells like teen spirit.

java girl and her hubby downtown

quite late in the evening of john hughes party. singing a little monty python.

where have i been?

i was gone so long i had to reset my password because i could no longer remember it.

spending too much time on facebook.

looking forward to our John Hughes party coming up next weekend. friends will be here. karaoke will be here. stella artois keg. costumes.

i'm still looking for a piano.

cold july.

dreary sunday.

meme from galoots blog

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

I opened a store for two months. It was fun, I hope to do it again next year.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't really make resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

not anyone super close. Nate and Laura. Stazca and Luke. Danielle and Paul.

4. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

hmm, adventure

5. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

well no dates are coming to mind so i guess none are "etched"

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I earned the free trip to Aruba. I opened a successful store.

7. What was your biggest failure?

taking the month of december off from my workouts. (starting back up jan 5 though)

8. What was the best thing you bought?

we bought and had installed new basement windows, that was the most expensive thing we bought. the BEST thing was the new MacBook Gab bought for me.

9. Who's behavior made you appalled and depressed?

the people who voted to give the banks a bailout and even more so, the CEOs who profited to heavily from it.

10. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Mazzy girl who made ornaments for the store and donated her profits to the Humane Society instead of buying herself a new Webkinz pet.

11. Where did most of your money go?

yeesh, gas for the Durango. Mortgage and utilities

12. What did you get really, really, excited about?

my trip to Aruba. finishing my World Tour of Beers 

13. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer? 

happier, same, richer (but not by much)

some of the walls

clocks, bowls, mail centers, bracelets, shelves.

wine cork bulletin boards, paper angels, pictures of chairs and stuff.

crazy beaded skull that i've been working on for two weeks. it's finished, entirely covered by beads, one bead at a time.

the road is long

wow, i've really neglected this blog. i am so addicted to Facebook that I forget to check back here.

I was sparring yesterday morning with my trainer and it was my first time. I like it but damn it's a workout. No wonder those boxers are dripping sweat and exhausted at the end of a three minute round. Well, I was channeling the Three Stooges in my mind (imagining I was doing the foot work, etc.) and then I did the 'ol circle the right glove in the air over his head and when he looked up, I jabbed him in the face with my left glove. He spit out his mouthguard and died laughing at me. I was doubled over laughing and the other girl in my class (who was on the bag) was cracking up. It was hilarious AND it got me out of about a minute of sparring because we laughed so hard the time ran out.

I have opened a little store in our downtown. It's very folksy/boho and I love it. The majority of items in the shop are repurposed hand made items like melted wine bottle cheese trays and cuff bracelets made from records. I have a big studio in the back of the shop and have been making message boards out of scraps of wire (picture clips), rusty wrenches (magnetic), and old bulletin boards (cut down into mini corkboards). I am liking them and sold one yesterday so that made me happy.
I have some talented friends who have contributed and I have hair clips made from old buttons, fused plastic bags (made from local grocery chains plastic bags), hand made paper angels and cute little reindeer made from an Osage Orange tree that fell in our local nature preserve. SO much more.
Also some fine art on display looking for a good home.


well, if anyone is still checking this blog....i'll post pictures later.

Poem for Monday the 29th

Monday, the 29th of September
nothing happened today that i will remember
you began with some rain
you ended quite plain
You are nothing compared t0 the 29th of November.

i have a dream...

my four year old son told me his dream the other night:

the boy: mom, i dreamed i was mustard last night.

me: what did you do as mustard?

the boy: someone squeezed me onto a hotdog and ate my whole body.

me: ouch, did that hurt?

the boy: nope they ate me up and then i was just invisible.


someone once told me that Freud said when you dream about eating mustard you are dreaming about eating your own shit. we used to laugh anytime someone wanted to eat mustard and say "you know what Freud says about mustard?"
i just looked it up and can't find anything about Freud saying that but they say mustard dreams are related financial stuff. hmmm

i think the boy just had a hot dog for lunch that day.

they're everywhere

I just experienced a "live chat" telemarketer. I made a room reservation at Super8 and as soon as I hit "reserve", a window popped open with a message that was directed at me. It asked if I was there and called me by name, I made the mistake of replying (because she tricked me and said that because I had made the reservation on the home site that I was going to get $20 off my reservation). "Jessica" continued to try and sell me the Super8 traveler plan or something. She typed that she would just go ahead and use my credit card that I used for my reservation and it would be all set up. I typed "NO" and she countered with more sales pitch. I typed "NO" again and she gave up and said "okay your card will not be charged and your account noted that you declined the offer." AND I didn't get the $20 off my room either.

Has anyone else experienced this yet?

misaligned planets

it's been a weird week. i keep telling people the planets must be out of whack because things just seem strange to me.

wednesday morning i got a phone call telling me that one of my brother's closest friends had shot himself in the head after an argument with his ex-wife. it upset me because this guy is really kind hearted and i know he has made some bad decisions but i like him. i did find out later that evening that he survived, he shot himself straight up through the chin and while he still has a rough road to recovery, he didn't have brain damage at least.

guns...i've never been a fan of them but have also never been a strong anti-gun person either. i grew up in the midwest, my dad was a hunter, my brother a hunter, uncles, etc.
my brother is "gun happy" and always has been though. It really is a wonder he didn't shoot something or someone (like me) when he was a teenager. He has an AK47 in his bedroom, about two years ago he made me shoot it off his back deck into the pond. I did not enjoy it. I can't help but think, if this guy had not had a gun handy, he would have just gotten pissed drunk and passed out. Of course, as Chimp pointed out, he could have walked in front of a train too.

I've been working out with a personal trainer. It's been two weeks (three days a week, so I guess it's really only been six sessions) and I really feel stronger and tighter. The scale has fluctuated between down 4lbs and the same as when I started, what is up with that? I sweat my butt off every workout, interval training, circuit training, and boxing (which i am loving). I just got finished with today's session and my arms are feeling weak after some bench presses and other upper body stuff.


It's rainy and chilly today. Too dreary for this time of year, seems more like late October. Blah.

what i learned in Reno and then some

1. flying over Salt Lake is amazing. the swirling agate patterns in the Earth were unexpected and I had to google it to see what I was looking at. A five year drought and salt flats. Hmmmm.

2. Reno is not as beautiful as Lake Tahoe.

3. Mineral make up is the best. (of course I recommend the Body Shop's version).

4. I have some ability with a golf club.

5. I can run up the down escalators without stopping or falling.

6. I still know how to bowl.

7. The air in Reno definitely messes with your head and body. There is no way five beers should have made me act like that.

and then some:

1. your blood sugar should be around 4 to 6 on the scale. if they say it's 14.1 then you are in bad shape.

2. it's a honking sort of day (my four year old declared).

3. an arched window with sunburst pattern looks much better than a plastic sheet stapled in place.

4. facebook is addicting

foreign exchange program

so stinkypaw has started this food swap. a few of us were invited to participate (the few, the brave, the lovers of snacks, candy, and comfort food).
the idea is to send her sweet treats or some other comfort food that can only be found in our particular area.
i struggled a bit at first because the only things i was coming up with were items that would be impossible to ship to canada. my ideas that got shot down.

Culvers. A fast food chain in the midwest that has the best cheeseburgers ever. "butter burgers." mmmmmm.

steak n shake. another fast food chain with very popular milk shakes and skinny french fries. i rarely eat at the steak n shake but the very first one (which they only recently tore down) was opened in a town just a few miles away.

the horseshoe sandwich. a sandwich that practically every restaurant in central Illinois claims to have invented. this sandwich can really only be found on menus in central illinois. it consists of two pieces of toasted bread served open faced. each slice of toast has a hamburger patty (some serve ham instead), then the meat is topped with a big ol' pile of french fries and the whole thing gets smothered in melted cheese sauce. might be pretty difficult to mail to stinkypaw.

deep dish pizza. i live near chicago after all. i actually am a thin crust girl. we have monical's pizza and the crust is so thin it's like crackers...i love it!


So, i finally decided on two product samplers that i think will ship okay. i'll have to pack them with a freezer pack just in case but i think they'll make it. I don't want to spill the beans of what i'm sending because i'm not sure what stinky is planning to do with the final project. i will say that one of the items is something made right here in my home town. the lady who makes it has a copyright on the recipe so no one else in the world can make it (so she tells me). and the other item is coveted by people across the nation who used to live in chicago and have moved away. it's one of those "must haves" to take home and stock pile.
I am also mailing Preppygirl one of those items since I know she'll appreciate it like no one else.


Now the trick is to keep Monkeybrigade and the kids OUT of my bag in the fridge.

where there is much light, the shadow is deep. goethe

this was at the museum of science and industry. you stand near the screen and your shadow interacts with the blobs. the kids loved it.

family portrait at navy pier

tagged by galoot

My ex...is eddie vedder. (of course that relationship was all a figment of my imagination)

Maybe I should... eat more vegetables.

I love... a freshly painted room.

People would say... "who's shannon?"

I don't understand... math.

When I wake up in the morning... i'm happy.

I lost... $200 in Las Vegas a few years ago.

Life is full of... choices.

My past is something... I prefer to block out.

I get annoyed when... my son makes raspberry sounds for 7 hours on a road trip.

Parties are... fun when I throw them. Toga party. July 11th. My house.

I wish... that all my favorite people would come to my toga party.

Dogs... are unpredictable and bite people.

Cats... poop a lot more than you would think.

Tomorrow...I am going to Ikea.

I have a low tolerance for... Katie Holmes' movies, green peppers, filthy rich celebs who want me to donate my money for their causes, bugs.

If I had a million dollars... remodel my house.

I'm totally terrified of... something bad happening to my children.

tag. YOU are it.

my door

I am part of a group of local artists who occasionally do some group projects for downtown. It's been a long time since we've done something and my ability and motivation was really tested. It is true "use it or lose it."
The "assignment" was to do something with a door which would be placed at various places in our downtown. "Doors of Downtown" was installed today and here is my finished piece.

I really struggled with my conception. My very first instinct was to do "knock knock" jokes (it's a DOOR, get it?) I groaned and then decided to do "Star Doors" and do some kind of Darth Vader type door. I thought about "Adoornment" which led to "AdornAment" and I was going to glue Christmas ornaments all over it. Groan again...I kept going back to the knock knock jokes and that is when I decided it would be clever to insert them into Superhero Comic strips.

Here is a close up of my Incredible Hulk sneezing strip. When it got put up, it became blocked by the lamp post. The entire backside is painted with chalkboard paint and I hung giant pieces of chalk so people could write down their own favorite knock knock jokes.
I'm going to have to make some trips downtown over the next few weeks to see what people have drawn or written on the door. I imagine there will be plenty of profanity and some rude comments, I'll take pictures and report back. That might be more clever than my door.

Backside of the door, this side faces the street.

other doors

these are doors for our downtown art project. these are just a few of the other artist's doors. maybe i'll post more of them later.


This door was a 3-D piece with a girl popping out the front. Her foot is also popping out the back side of the door. Then it's covered with newsprint. The artist who did this door is my "art idol", joanE ~ she can do anything.

Another door from joanE. This one is funny. It says "Thus creating a false sense of security" and it has numerous locks and bolts along with a peep hole. Just funny since it's a screen door.

This door is from another local artist named Barb. She does these amazing little sculptures and pictures from found objects. She primarily works with white. She did two doors, both with the theme of "Leonar Door DaVinci"

Click on this one for the close up. It's a good example of her found object creations. Several years ago we did a window with the theme "Water Water Everywhere..." It was a window installation featuring designs inspired by Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and Barb's piece was a beautiful white on white albatross in a shadow box. (My contribution was hours upon hours upon hours of writing the entire poem which is very very long onto a long sleeve tee shirt. I used three shades of blue fabric pen and black marker and made the words into a raging sea that travelled across the shirt and sleeves)

sunday at duncan manor

This magnificent home is called Duncan Manor and it's huge and old and up until today
has been quite mysterious. It's located far up a looooong lane in the middle of nowhere.
It is so huge that it's easily seen from the highway though and I swear every person who lives around here has uttered these words when driving past:
"I would love to see what that house looks like on the inside."

For years it was rumored to have been part of the underground railroad. I have done my part to perpetuate this myth, only recently hearing the truth (that it was not built yet during the times when the underground railroad would have been effective.)

This home has sat empty for as long as i've been alive. A couple of months ago a couple purchased the house. The woman is the president of the local "Old House Society" and the husband is a contractor. They plan to restore it and make it their residence.
I read in the paper that due to such a huge response from local residents that they were going to offer tours of the home in the "before" stages.

We drove to a nearby school where a bus picked up all the curious people and paid our $10 per person. (The money was all being donated to the Old House Society). They did the tours two days and had hundreds of people go through the house.

In the bottom photo you can see the back of the house and the amazing open air patios between the two sections of home. There is one on the main floor and the second floor. This was the coolest thing about the house (close up photo on wikipedia). You walk from one bedroom out onto the patio and then into the master bedroom. All of the windows (something like 65) were ceiling to floor (10ft), of course they were all busted out and graffiti lined many of the walls but good bones are good bones.

Each bedroom had a massive ornamental fireplace, the doors in the parlor were still in tact and massive. Up the winding staircase there were niches with marble bases (can't believe they were still in perfect condition). There was a second staircase that was much more narrow (the servants stairs) and it went all the way up to the third floor. In the third floor attic (which a very cool room that the new owners son told me he wants to convert into his bedroom) was a ladder leading up to the roof balcony thing that can be seen in the top photo (that is the front of the home). We weren't allowed to go up the ladder for safety reasons.

The couple have said that they are going to offer another tour when the project is finished.

toothless, braless, garage sale

it's june again and the heat is here. it made it into the 90's yesterday. i'm not complaining about that (yet) though because it's been so cold here all "Spring."

my mom, neighbor, and i had a garage sale this past weekend. i sold a lot of crap...i mean...really great stuff. i cleared out some space in my garage, basement, attic, and closets and that feels good. i'm not crazy about getting ready for a garage sale but i actually enjoy having the sale itself. socializing and chatting with people all day, friends stop by because they see me sitting outside. donuts.
you also get the crazies. this year a toothless, braless woman purchased my mom's lounge chair (the patio chair that reclines) and then she bought a small table because that "would go perfect with it." she paid $6 for both items and carried it off to the end of my driveway where she had her BICYCLE waiting. her bike had one of those kit carriers attached to it and she pulled out some chains and rigged that table and chair up onto her bike and rode off.

my neighbor's husband sat with us for awhile and chatted. he was highly entertained by all the "lovely" ladies that a garage sale brings out. braless, toothless, dirty, scabby, sausage rolls, and yes, even one lady wearing an all crocheted petticoat and matching beanie hat.

we packed up and had a cookout. i played some after dark hide and seek with all the kids and that was lots of fun. when i came inside, i got drunk dialed by preppygirl. she and galoot were in cleveland with her brother and a friend to see kids in the hall. i told galoot that i was the coolest mom on the block (for playing hide and seek) and he informed me that preppygirl was the coolest mom on his cock. Niiiice.