The Return of Scraparoni

I'm baaaaack!  What was that thudding sound?  You fainting and hitting the floor? Well, I certainly wouldn't blame you if you did.  It's been almost a year since my last blog post.  Life went a little nuts - okay, a LOT nuts - sapping me of my creativity and any free time I had.

It started when we decided to move after 15 years in our condo.  Never would have occurred to us had the housing crisis not completely trashed property values in my city.  Saying we were upside down didn't even begin to describe our overinflated mortgage and the value we lost, or the hellish process of trying to buy something new.  They put us through so many hoops we thought we were trying out for an NBA team!  Finally closed three months later on our new digs, which technically aren't new, just new to us.  The last two owners had been foreclosed upon.  You can just imagine what needed doing.  This began another new chapter in our lives - the Bob Vila period.  Husband learned he's an amazing painter and flooring installer, while I discovered I can't paint for beans, yet I'm quite the electrician. LOL!

We weren't in the house three weeks when the phone rang late one night.  Never a good thing, right?  That phone call began the next era, the CNA period.  CNA as in Certified Nursing Assistant.  My mother had a freak accident, falling out of bed and impaling herself on the corner of the night table, which went through her neck all the way to her spine.  She was completely paralyzed, requiring emergency surgery to do a double fusion on her shattered C5 vertebrae.  She was in rehab for four months.  Hence the new "job" as an unofficial CNA, until I fired myself after more than three months of being there all day every day, doing everything from feeding her, washing her hair, wiping her ass and picking her nose - the jobs she had real CNAs to do, yet they were never quite fast enough, attentive enough or competent enough to suit her.  Saying my mother is a difficult person is putting it mildly, and is in no way meant to diminish the hell she went through. I wouldn't wish what happened to her on my worst enemy. Nevertheless, the more she healed physically, the more demanding she became.  Gone was that sweet person who awoke in the ICU, grateful to be alive and promising not to sweat the small stuff anymore.  That epiphany lasted all of five minutes. My father is no better/different, unfortunately.  I figure this must be why I'm an only child.  ;)

Amusingly, they had another difficult patient during our time at the rehab facility, discharged before my mother, who was so loud and annoying the physical therapists celebrated her leaving by buying $200 in designer bundt cakes and sharing them with everyone.  I'm going to guess they bought themselves new cars after my mother was discharged.  Hehe!  At least, thank God, she *was* discharged and she's back home again - back to being my father's problem, which must be his problem with me.  Clearly my only value to them is measured by what services I'm performing for them.  Once I said I needed a break to take care of my own life and family, my name immediately became Mud.  Apparently it still is.  My mother has been home for over six weeks now, while I have yet to get a phone call or a thank-you from either of them.  I suppose I would be the crazy one if I expected differently, given our tenuous history.   Who knows, maybe I gave Florence Nightingale a run for her money even more for myself than for my mother, so I could avoid the guilt monster and sleep well at night.  And I do. :)

So, now it's time to move on - both literally and figuratively - and get to the good stuff!  I'm finally feeling creative again.  I felt like a stranger in my own life for a while there, but that sensation has finally passed and I have some new products in the store, along with samples for you to grab while you're here.  I'm even having a 20% sale through March 15th to celebrate.  Woo hoo!

First up, a very springy and blingy doodle action, Doodle Gems 07, which is also available in template form for those of you who don't use Photoshop.

Continuing the spring bling theme with Easter in mind, please allow me to introduce the next installment in my Eggcellence action series, Eggcellence Vol 02.  As always, also available in template form.

I have ideas for more Easter goodies, so please stay tuned, there will definitely be more to come.  In the meantime, grab some lucky #7 tagger-size doodles here, and the eggs shown in the preview here. 

Hope you'll like and enjoy them!  :)

Editing to test a different way to download my freebies. My premium account at 4Shared has expired, and I'm not too thrilled with their free setup. You shouldn't have to wait to download or to be bombarded with ads. Nor am I thrilled with the higher price to renew their premium service. So, let's try making the files available at my domain. I liked 4Shared mainly for the ability to leave comments, but let's be honest here - most of you don't leave comments anyway. You can always leave me some love right here if the urge should strike you. :)

I'll leave the links above to 4Shared for now, but if you'd like an ad-free, no-waiting download, try these links instead:

http://scraparoni.net/downloads/TS-Doodle-Gems-07.zip

http://scraparoni.net/downloads/TS-Eggcellence-02.zip