My New Obsession....er...Emotional Medicine....

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How can we dance when our earth is turning?

How do we sleep while our beds are burning?.....

("Beds Are Burning", Midnight Oil)

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My world has been turned upside down lately, and so whenever I get a free minute (and I don't get many these days) I run to my art studio and close the door----so that I can wrap myself in some psychological balm.

The reason my world has been turned upside down is that Blaine took the entire week off from work to have time to do major spring cleaning, building shelves in the garage, pack boxes of junk in the basement to put out for trash pick-up, vacuuming cobwebs off the ultra high ceiling of the living room, steam cleaning the carpets, and putting up new blinds on the living room windows.....

Also, with Jon staying with us for the time being, having two men in the house increases the clean-up chores for me, like doing dishes, cleaning clutter all over the house, and other things. I don't mind having Jon stay here---he's quiet and independent. I'm more than happy to help him out while he's out of work---so that he doesn't have to pay $50 a day for a motel room. But with two men underfoot....well, you can imagine the messes.

I had my long day of therapy yesterday and I needed every minute of it. I am clinging to my therapists right now. My new therapist, Jack, told me that I could call him anytime for a "coaching call", in which I tell him I'm flipping out and he calms me down. He has me practicing some Zen mental exercises to teach myself how to self-calm and self-soothe.

But enought about that. Here's what I've got going in the studio that totally engrosses me and gives me some measure of relief from the stress this week:

I am making polymer clay jewelry---a new hobby for me. And I love it. I'll show you some of my first attempts. I hope I'll get better as time goes by. Below is what one of my "angel sets" looks like before going into the oven.

The picture at the very top is the "golden angel set", the first of my "angel sets", including "angel wing" beads. I transferred an angel image onto that pendant. And the picture above is how the polymer clay things look before I put them into the oven to bake. (You make a little accordion doohickey to bake the round beads on so that they don't go rolling higgledy-piggledy.

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Below is my collection of supplies, which keeps growing by the week as I discover more ways to improve my techniques and decorate the baked clay jewelry. God bless my Mumsy who gave me most of my beading and polymer clay supplies.

Below is the convection oven Blaine bought for me to bake my clay in. And I have an oven thermometer on the baking trays to make sure my clay is baking at the proper temperature. (Before I got the thermometer I burned several pieces to a crisp.....)

Below is my first attempt at a pendant. I'm not thrilled with it.....

And below is another one of my angel sets---the "blue angel set"--- in which I also baked some matching "angel wing beads" to go with it. I decoupaged an angel image onto it. (It looks better in person, believe me.)

And below are the matching round beads to go with the blue angel set:

Anyway, today my case manager is coming at 1pm and I really am glad about that---I need to vent even further and ask him about more techniques to handle my flip-flopping emotions caused by all the stress this week. I hate to say it.....but I really can't wait till Blaine goes back to work. I need peace & quiet--- but with him home demanding that I help him with all those heavy work chores, I am in a Defcon 1 emotional tailspin.....

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