 What have I gotten done this morning besides chores? I don't know what I'm talking about. Happy Sunday morning everybody. It is 9.42 a.m. Sunday, March 21st. If you watched last week's vlog, you know I didn't close last week's vlog until this morning very early before 8 a.m. because I forgot last night. Those of you who have senior parents know how stressful things can be at times and so yeah, Bob and I are of an age that all of our parents are in the senior category and have been for a while and one side of the family is doing okay health-wise and the other side's just not so much so it's just stressful. I'm continuing to do my self-care practices of art and just turning things off and reading a book or going for a walk or what I need to do to take care of myself, making sure I'm eating right, documenting what I'm eating and drinking, my blood pressure, my glucose. No, I'm not diabetic but I keep an eye on it because my mother is. And all of those things, I use the Lose It app to write it all down, FYI, and I have a Fitbit, I wear a Fitbit in my tucked in my shirt so I have tracks of all of that stuff so I'm making sure to take control of what I can and let go of the stress from that of which I have no control. Way easier said than done some days but I'm working on it so if you feel like at times in your life you're in a similar position I'm with you and there's you know a lot of us who have at times been there at one point or the other in life so you're not alone. Anyway, hi guys, it's just about 3.30, 3.28 still Sunday and we went for a long walk. We needed just a few groceries to make it through till like this time next weekend so we went and walked over to the grocery outlet which is near our house and it's about I don't know a mile and a half away and got a few groceries and then came back and this morning and then I went upstairs after lunch and I made a few journals out of the painted canvas. We worked on last week, yeah last week, two weeks I guess by the time you see this. I'll link the video in the description below. I had some artist canvas scraps and so and pads and so I painted them up and did some stenciling and pen work on them and then when they were dry I made some of them into some little journals and I will list I'll put a picture here of the journals they turned out so cute of course I kept two for myself and I listed the rest on the Etsy shop and I am out of mixed media paper and I think that might be the best paper for these journals so I'm going to get some more and as soon as I have some more I'll make more journals but there's four of them listed in the Etsy shop right now so I got that done that was a lot of fun and I forgot how to take the exacto blade out of my box cutter that I used to trim the journals with I figured it out finally but it only took me 10 minutes I know right good morning everybody at least I think it's morning oh yeah it's technically still morning 11 33 a.m monday march 22nd don't get excited I'm looking at the computer because I'm editing the vlog so I've been simultaneously editing video is my second one today having conversations with family updating people on the status of my mom and her health and what's going on with her she's being evaluated I don't know yet just in case you all are going to ask prayers are of course always welcome but we don't know I don't think it's going to be good but you know morning people it is just about 10 o'clock or just after 10 o'clock on what day is it Tuesday the 23rd I think only one duck there's a few others that keep flying overhead but I don't think yeah they're thinking about it yeah we people scared them away yeah I don't know if those are there's so many bees but they look like ducks Indian people happy Wednesday morning it's 10 55 a.m and of course I've been up for a while wow darkness I'm going to ID listed a few purge boxes a Nancy's shop they weren't moving they contained old artwork of mine which y'all don't evidently want so I'm going to unpackage everything I'm going to throw out smart work I might redo some artwork and then relist it and sorry I'm reading a text message from my sister and there's a lot going on still with my mom she's still in the hospital which is a good thing she's undergoing some testing getting treatment that she needs and I think we're getting senior services involved because she my dad need help and none of us kids are close enough to provide that help distance wise so yeah they have to do something and the their doctors finally on board with getting them some help so anyway so all the things for the things because of the things welcome to my world the old artwork boxes and envelopes purged I have a few things that were either good in their own right I'm going to sign them and then I'm going to list them individually for sale in the Etsy shop and a few new things that were already on my desk to do that with so I'm going to do all those sometime next week I did refill two smaller purge boxes because there were a lot of mark making tools and jump a couple of some juncture halls and stuff like that in the two big purge boxes so I pulled that stuff out and I refilled two smaller purge boxes medium ones link is down in the video description and they're full of mark making tools purge boxes some water brushes just all kinds of things there's a few stitching kits in there there's there's all kinds of stuff so that's done and I created a journal page so I'll put a copy here I had the little skeleton tree skeleton leaf Christmas tree shapes in a bunch of stuff that I found and so I created this page with it and then I also covered an old piece of artwork that wasn't the best thing on the planet that was in one of those envelopes with a layer of semi-transparent gesso which I mixed by mixing white just one quarter well about one-third white gesso to two-thirds clear gesso and then I braided over the top of the artwork which was done originally in charcoal and very smeary and messy now the piece is going to dry and the white because there's a little bit of white in it it did lighten up the black a little bit and on it because it's gesso a sealed everything in so now I'm going to go over it when it dries in a day or two and go over it with pen and marker maybe a little paint we're going to make it something hopefully interesting and then then the finished piece will go back up for sale on the Etsy shop by itself and I picked out a few other pieces that didn't work bad enough for the trash can that we are going to do something similar with so anyway if you'd like to see a video on that let me know all right I think that's it for a minute hey guys we're in the car again it is Thursday March 25th 12 26 p.m I think I'm gonna be a little late I have to pick up somebody at the airport but they have a checked bag so it might be okay my sister is coming in to town from Utah I said already why my niece is about to have another baby she's helping them the parents out with their firstborn son also while some things are being treated other things cannot be treated there's not much they can do so I don't want to go into too many details but yeah hey guys it is a bright beautiful sunny day today here in Oregon thank goodness um things with my parents are stable for the minute they have home health services coming by on Monday and we to find out about future therapies and tools are going to need at home going forward and as kids are going up Saturday tomorrow to uh before that to have dinner with them may talk about things um yes it's not exactly COVID appropriate but um about half of us have had our vaccines not myself but um everybody's just been keeping to their own bubble and I'm pretty confident it'll be fine so and my parents are sick I mean you know at some point the COVID precautions are all well and good but I mean you know gotta do what you gotta do so anyway and it seems sort of super cheery and not too upset about the situation with my mom and my parents um it's just because I'm trying not to show to how worried and upset I am the situation's pretty serious and we just kind of have no idea what we're going to do and going forward um it's not really up to me and what I want it's what I want what my parents want and um I can't really do anything until they figure that out they're currently have sound mind maybe not sound health but sound mind so at least my dad so I can't really do anything until he figures out what he wants to do which is why home health care is coming by on Monday and um all I can do is be sitting and waiting as my siblings to help when they figure that out we're worried it's it's not great so all right I'm gonna go in I'll be okay guys you all are so funny I posted a picture last night of my tissue box holder that I made in my car because I don't know about the rest of you but if you have allergies you have a box of tissues in the car and how many of you are tired of said box of tissues floating around somewhere in the front seat under your feet or it's away in the back when you need it or it's just floating around the car free for warm and it's never where you need it and it's never handy I get tired of it rattling around in the car I get tired of not being able to reach for it easily and safely so I made a little bag that I hung off the glove box in my car and out of scrap fabric and I'm going to show you all what I did because I'm getting so many comments about it so hold on one second okay I've got to like careful not to move my legs because I've got the phone propped up against a little stuffed animal that was in my car so this is the tissue box holder it just hangs here off the glove compartment thing on my car there we go and the it's literally just a bag take the tissues out of it it's just a bag that fits the box of tissues so what I did is I took my box of tissues I just we have the square ones and I measured around the tissues and added an inch then I measured from here down through halfway through the bottom and added an inch to make the basic bag so then I had just a long strip of fabric and I sewed it up on the short end then I hemmed the top I sewed up the bottom and then I put the box back in and it had oops sorry it had you know then it looked flat like this right with the pointy corners so then I put the box in and I pinned off the pointy corners and then I sewed them across like this so it would be flat on the bottom so it would nicely fit the box of tissues um how I'm holding it in I'm getting a lot of questions about that so before I was finished with it I added a flap of fabric that's a little pocket I kept it open on one end I have a piece of doweling in there actually to be honest it's a wood clothes pin an old one of those old fashioned round wood clothes pins I shoved it in there I sealed up the other side and then and it actually moves around in there you can see it moving around in there right you push it all the way to the top to the fold you oops put it over the flap of your glove box and the dowel is going to hold the fabric in without interfering with the locking mechanism on your glove box and then you can put the tissues in like that and you can slide it around a little bit at least on mine but it should work about the same on any glove box and then your tissue box is corralled now I wouldn't use this kind of pocket for anything that weighs a significant amount this tissue box is very lightweight you could use it also for a trash can but it's a little just a little pocket with a flap on the back with something to jam the pocket in between the glove box door and the dashboard when it's closed all the way that's basically all I did again I wouldn't put like your drink or anything in here because I think that would be too heavy maybe for the lock on the glove box door but you definitely could put trash in here you know nothing too heavy and definitely your box of tissues it works great and it's out of my way my when I'm sitting here my legs I have short legs so it doesn't interfere with what how I'm sitting I suppose if you're really tall and your knees like come up to here that might be a problem for me it's not an issue and my seats do go back so you can always push the seat back a little more anyway that's the tissue box bag corral item so if you all I guess want a different like tutorial we can do that it's a weird thing for me to give you a tutorial on but I mean it is practical all right I'm going to go back inside I'll be back hey guys it is Saturday morning March 27th I think we are getting some chores done around our house and my sister's packing up her stuff and doing a little bit of work this morning before we leave to head up north a couple hours to my parents house and meet with them a little bit of family that's up there zoom with the rest of the family for safety reasons because hello COVID and try to help my parents with what needs help because of my mom's health and medical conditions sorry male um she is pretty sick they are my parents are in their 80s and it's not cancer or anything but it is pretty serious oh my sister's going to be so happy her doTERRA is here um and we need to help them make arrangements living arrangements going forward to make things as comfortable as possible for my mom and my dad so we are going to go do that and I don't want to say too much more because I don't want to violate my parents privacy but it's pretty bad hey guys we are back from my parents house I think it's 10 30ish something like that anyway we are making a cup of tea going to have some snacks I'm checking to make sure I turned my computer off before I left because I don't know things with my parents as I said are a bit stressful my mom is sick and she's probably not going to get a lot better um I don't want to get too much into it because I don't want to violate any privacy on my parents part but to sum it up she's got some physical and mental health issues and they're pretty serious so um yeah so all we can do is make sure she gets the treatment she needs and make sure my dad's okay that's all we can do she's been diagnosed with dementia among other things so before you think it's like something else like she's not psychotic or anything but yeah anyway um I'm rambling now but it's pretty stressful and dealing with the whole thing with my siblings is pretty stressful and we're all worried of course so we're just doing what we can to support both of them and get her the treatment she needs and make sure that my dad's got the help he needs that's all we can do so that's why we were there today um but yeah prayers are welcome by the way if you do pray but we're home now I'm in the pajamas already and I'm gonna have some tea and a couple lemon cookies computers off looks like I remembered to do that because I forgot to turn some other things off before I left um I don't know what the schedule is for lives or anything what this is going to do to that I have no idea I don't know it depends on a lot of things my they're gonna be getting home care help hopefully but we find out more Monday and I don't know I don't know anyway it's been a weird week thank you COVID the decorative weirdness I don't know what do I know not much right now anyway I hope you've all had a great week hug your loved ones and you know just enjoy life while you can because you never know what that's gonna be it when your time card has been punched so please stay safe stay healthy stay creative please wear a mask and go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it I am going to take a lesson from this I'm going to keep walking I'm going to keep losing weight and getting healthy I'm going to do what I need to to make sure I take care of myself because I can't take care of anybody else in my life or do art or share with you all if I don't take care of myself first so I'm still continuing to eat healthier walk get my steps in we'll accept today because I got a lot of this car driving in and do what I have to so I think you should do the same maybe all right that's it for right now I'll see you next week bye guys