Some Music and Art

First, the music...

So, having two children enrolled in the Local Public School of Marketing, you can just imagine the fundraisers I must deal with. There are, literally, several fundraisers for each activity and they often overlap as to what they are selling. Right now I have no less than 87 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts in my freezer. I also have enough gift wrap to wall paper my home and the homes of several neighbors. Cookies? Yep. Popcorn? Got it.

Then there are the magazine sales. Yuck. There are very few magazines I will even bother to read and you can rest assured that the fund raising people feel their efforts are better spent trying to bag the Sports Illustrated and People crowds rather than the Mother Earth News and Backwoods Home crowd. (I say crowd singular because, if you read one of these, you most likely read the other as well.)

It was, however, a nice surprise when the last magazine fund raiser rolled around becaues, this time, they included music.

Let me just stop here for a moment to explain my...um..."problem" with music. I love music so much that my children have often gone weeks without eating so I could by the latest items on my cdnow wish list. Right now the list is at about 95 or so cd's that I absolutely must have. Must. Have. Now. I'll be right back...just a quick listen... I can literally kill hours sampling music on that site. Believe me, I have.

So, when I saw that I can now feed my addiction and support the school activites, well, what could be better than that? I happily perused the catalog for some items to buy.

Now, again, it seems that the organizers of this event are gearing it towards a certain, select group of people - namely the ones who listen to top 40 radio and the ones who are in charge of programming the music at the mall around Christmas time. However, I knew that if I just looked hard enough, I too could find something to please the ears.

Well, I placed my order for 4 cd's and forgot about it. That was about 3 months ago. They finally arrived. This is where the fundraising thing becomes most amuzing because, when the order finally does arrive and you see what you ordered, it causes one to wonder "What the...?" So here's what I got and, what I can only guess, are the reasons why...

1. The soundtrack to Cold Mountain...Love that high, lonesome sound. And I'm especially fond of songs about death and heartache.
2. Yes - Yessongs...Never enough classic rock in the collection, especially when
raising teenagers. Plus it's fun to sing like Jon Anderson while the kids are trying to do homework - makes them batty.
3. Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around...Johnny finally explores his inner lounge singer with hits such as "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and everyone's favorite, "Danny Boy"

and finally...

4. Yo-Yo Ma - Obrigado Brazil...Background music for scooting around the kitchen in an apron and heels

I don't know. I can't explain it. But, oddly enough, they are all winners!


And now, the art...

During the month of April, we, as a family, decided we weren't going to eat out at all. I'm not sure why we decided this - I guess it stemmed from trying to cut out excess spending but I think it really just morphed into our own little reality show...minus the TV...a "Will We Make It?!" kind of thing. Part of this deal was that the kids couldn't buy lunch at school - they had to bring it from home every day.

Now, understandably, this can get quite monotonous - especially when one's mother is spending all the money on music and not lunch meat. Peanut butter and jelly can only hold a person's interest for so long. In order to make things a bit more bearable, I decided to include some inspirational notes and decorate the bags. Here's a little sampling of my art projects...














You'll notice, in the last photo, my work has taken on an entirely new dimension since I bought a pack of colored markers. I must tell you, the Snack Pack pudding is the hardest character to draw. It's very difficult to keep it from looking like poop.

I was once enrolled in Tyler Art School. See, education never goes to waste.