No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

We have all heard it; we have all had situations were no matter how kind and unselfish we are we get slapped with a fee, fine, bill or something. Here is one case in point, we took in a baby kitten from our grandma to help her get rid of a cat and so our daughter could have a kitten to play with. It was so small and so cute with enormous blue eyes, who could say no.

The kitten is sure of itself these days; no longer the jittery little baby, it is a wiry nimble feline able to climb anywhere. Yesterday it climbed onto the table when we weren’t looking and ate some of Becca’s cereal! Not a shy creature, it boldly goes everywhere in the house. The kitten has had a very difficult time learning how to use the litter box. It was formerly a barn cat and perhaps the entire idea of ‘litter box’ is confusing to it. We have researched the best methods for training it and are keeping it isolated in a small room with a litter box and letting it out (while supervised) to eat and play a little. I don’t know yet if this will work, but we all are trying our best to make it work.

In the mean time, perhaps to show us they are mad or because ‘the other one is doing it’, our other two cats have begun to urinate and defecate all over the house. You can’t know all of the places a cat goes in a days time, so I find little (or should I say big) surprises all over the house. To name a few places there were 8 piles in the corner of my son’s room, a dozen or more behind the entertainment center, about two dozen piles in the basement, one in the dining room, several urine stained shirts and urine behind the two chairs. Yesterday, I am not making this up; one of the cats had the nerve to defecate on top of our coffee table!@#*&!!

So now all of the cats are under lockdown and our once tranquil house has become a toilet. I feel like I am part zookeeper and part cleaning lady. All of the animals are confined and hopefully controlled while I gingerly lifts bed skirts, examines boxes in the closets, explores the crevasses of the basement and looks under all of the furniture. Carpet cleaners, deodorizers and sanitizers are my constant companions and best friends -- my hands are chapped from scrubbing and cleaning.

Just wanted to pass on one of my favorite digi-scrap techniques. I like to create an editing mask and use it t cut out another shape. I did this in Macromedia, but this can be done equally well in Photoshop or another graphics program. First you open an image that you want to cut into another shape, I used a dark orange paper that I created.

Next you place a layer one the graphic that has a shape you wish to duplicate. I am using a horse shape that I created.

Next I use the magic wand to select area around the horse shape.


Then instead of selecting the horse shape, I select the background orange paper and hit the delete key. This will use the horse shape to remove part of the other shape. It might look like I deleted the orange paper entirerly, but if you look at the layers panel you’ll see that I have two layers.


Next, delete the original shape to reveal the result.



I use this technique to create all sorts of shapes like:

and
and Happy Scrapping!

**See more techniques and other info at www.deco-pages.com.

We took a couple of hours and looked at furniture this afternoon. We can’t really afford new furniture but the local store has a sale going on—no payment for two years sounds too good to be true. Our family furniture is so old and ratty; it just makes my happy to see new, crisp colorful furniture. What started out as an afternoon trip for fun (it doesn’t cost anything to look) but the kids and the sales lady have it all planned out which pieces we would buy and so on. The only one who doesn’t know is Mike, the person who would pay for all of this. It would be nice to have new things, but we’ll see – we do need to stay in our budget.

The previous posts are of my family. Susie has been used a subject for clipart elements and Jacob and I are just hanging out.

Susie at the Beach 

Jacob and me on a hike. 

First entry


My husband calls me Babe. It is my pet name of sorts, short and sweet. It was my name for nearly twenty years but gradually he began to also call me Carol and I didn’t mind but I still answer to Babe without raising an eyebrow. It was eerie, I had been the only Babe in our family for twenty years but in a season it was applied to another Rupley, a nine year old, a big kid with a dynamite swing, Jacob. At 9 he was nearly hitting it out of the park, at 10 he did. The coaches and team started comparing him to Babe Ruth and the name stuck. I didn’t mind, I wasn’t really using the name, I didn’t own the name but it was just eerie – I am glad to share this with my wonderful son.

So that’s Babeland, why the name. But my screen name is Buddha-Babe. That’s because I am one, a Buddhist that is. I have been one for over 30 years now and I would love to hear about other experiences being Buddhist or to answer questions as I can about Buddhism. Buddhists aren’t necessarily more peaceful or less worldly, but we can be. Buddhism is about living in the moment and doing your best. There is an expression that says that if you want to know your past, look at your present circumstances and if you want to know your future, look at your present actions. Buddhism is all about responsibility and making the actions to be a better person. Of course people get angry, are greedy and etc., life is long and you have time to overcome obstacles and karma – if you choose to do so.

During the time I’m being a Buddhist, I also enjoy the arts. I have a wonderful job as a graphic designer for a scrap-booking website: www.deco-pages.com, please check out some of the wonderful designs available at the site. It is a truly liberating experience to create the digital kits and they are surprisingly affordable. Check ‘em out.

Well I will close for now; I’d love to get your input about Buddhism, the arts and design, Babe Ruth, baseball or other interesting topics.