I love all things under the sea… I love them and I’m terrified of them. Jellyfish, though, I’ve never been afraid of. I’ve been stung numerous times by jellyfish and everytime I’m amazed at the grace they portray as they take a stab at their victim. Most of the time you never even know they are there until the pain sets in and by that time, they are long gone, floating along to their next target.

This is officially the 4th print I have completed to be offered in my Etsy shop. Unfortunately, my current scanner sucks, so you can’t even get the full feeling of the intricacy of this illustration. I’ll be getting a better quality scan tomorrow and hopefully replacing my piece of crap sometime this week. This is how I see Jellyfish.. beautiful, elegant, disastrous, and mysterious.

For some ungodly reason, the school I work for decided to hold classes even though our vehicles were coated in an inch of ice and the roads were even worse. The day was slow and boring, fortunately. Unfortunately, that left a lot of time for people to get on my nerves. So I came home to this magical winter wonderland that surrounds my home and decided that whatever it was that frustrated me during the day wasn’t worth holding onto. I poured myself a glass of wine and decided to focus on what makes me happiest, drawing. (Aside from my husband, of course, but he’s not home

I poured myself a glass of wine and started ordering supplies for my soon to open Etsy shop while watching The Devil Wears Prada which, single handedly is able to make me more self-conscious than any other movie ever filmed. I snapped these photos of my beautiful yard when I got home as the sun had barely set and twilight fell. It really is incredible.. the way the snow makes the world feel like a completely different dimension. If it wasn’t so dang cold, I’d go walking in the forest and enjoy the beauty of the white woods.

I FINALLY finished this piece after who knows how long.  I’ve decided to submit it for the Faculty/Staff Art Show at work.  I know it’s a little… weirder than what most people here will be expecting to see, but oh well!  This is the kind of stuff I LOVE drawing.  All the intricate detail and making a little creature that I’ve never seen before.. It’s just fun.  I think I need to stick with it.  I’ll still do requests, of course.  This has really helped keep my mind off everything that’s going on right now.  And now that it’s done, I can move onto another!  The original is 14×17, so I had to take it to Kinko’s to be scanned and the ding-dong that works there scanned it as a PDF instead of a TIFF.. what the heck?  Oh well.  I suppose I need to be more specific from now on.. scan it at 600dpi and as a TIFF file.

Anyway… here it is.  Enjoy! 

When you look out your window and this is what you see, how can you help but smile? There’s something about the snow that affects me in ways sunshine can’t. It makes me feel safe, protected… maybe it’s because when there is 4 inches of snow on the ground people stay inside. Most don’t even attempt to leave the house and just choose the comfort and warmth of their homes. This is a good day.

I haven’t posted outfit stuff in awhile.. I’ve had the pictures, just not the time to post it. But now since all I do is sit on my butt on my couch, I have no excuses… Here’s one.. more to come later! ((Maybe in spring I’ll get past my boot obsession?))

White Long Sleeve Top - JCrew
Orange Sweater - Anthropologie
Blue Scarf - Gap
Jeans - H&M
Boots - Aldo
Purse - H&M

Today is better. Today it doesn’t feel like something is exploding inside my uterus. I’m able to go at least an hour without an emotional meltdown and I’m finally starting to see positively. I wake up every morning to my wonderful husband, to my 2 little kittens who continuously make me laugh and smile… there’s 4 inches of beautiful snow on the ground and covering the trees… I’ve realized how many friends I really have and how amazing they are. I can’t see it all right now, but I KNOW there has to be something good that’s going to come out of this. I have to believe that because if I don’t, I couldn’t go on.

I don’t sleep well at night, I wake up with nightmares of the card they gave me saying that they gave me the Rogam shot upon “termination of pregnancy”. Termination of Pregnancy. I see it over and over in my head. The phrase makes me cringe, makes me shudder, makes my heart stop beating for a moment. I terminated my own child. The doctors said it’s not an abortion. My baby didn’t have a heart beat. It was just a lump of cells. But it was still my baby. I talked to it the day before I went in the hospital. Is that crazy? I couldn’t let it go without saying goodbye. I told it I would always love it, that I would see it again someday and I wanted it to know that I loved it more than I could express. I feel insane just saying this. But it was my baby. I couldn’t just let it go without telling it I loved it.

Okay, enough emotional spillage for today.

The past 4 days have been the biggest roller coaster of my life. Saturday night I took a pregnancy test and for the first time in 11 months, it was positive. I screamed, I cried, I laughed, I hugged my husband, I told my family… rejoicing and celebration completely devoured the entire weekend. I began dreaming of the nursery and the furniture I’d put in it, the paintings I’d create for it, the books I’d read to my sweet little baby from my rocking chair as it slept in it’s crib so peacefully…

Then I woke up Monday and felt a little weird. I ignored it, assuming it was morning sickness. After all, I’ve never actually done any of this before. I pulled myself together and went to work excited to share with the people who had been through the past eleven months of hell by my side that finally, all my efforts were paying off. The day started off fairly well and I was on my way out the door to lunch when I started bleeding. I panicked, of course. The doctor said to come in the next day for an ultrasound and we’d go from there. After lunch the pain set in. By 2pm I could barely walk from my desk to the bathroom. My boss sent me home. The pain just continued to get worse and worse. Husband had to work late so mom, dad and Lindi came over to keep me company and make sure I was okay. I laid on the couch for 9 hours writhing in pain, crying, sobbing, wishing I would just pass out. Finally around 11pm the edge came off the pain and I was able to fall asleep.

Morning came (this morning) and I felt good. The bleeding stopped, the pain was gone, but something still wasn’t right. On my left side was a dull throbbing that seemed dangerous considering I am pregnant. We went to the doctor’s and had the ultrasound. After 15 minutes of digging around with the internal scanner, the tech was ready to stop when all of a sudden a little black spot appeared next to my left ovary. After about 5 minutes of silence and lots of different angles and measuring we heard what no newly pregnant couple wants to hear, “ah, now that’s a concern.” Another five minutes pass and she shuts off the machine and explains that I have an ectopic pregnancy. This has been my worst nightmare since we started trying to get pregnant.. being forced to decide between your baby’s life and your own… As soon as she said the word “ectopic” the tears began pouring out of my eyes.

My doctor came in and said that the only option is to terminate. We were sent directly to the emergency room. My baby was six weeks old with no heartbeat… By this time it should have had a heartbeat. The doctor was very adamant in telling me that this is not an abortion. This was just a group of cells stuck inside my fallopian tube. It was basically a cancer. So this is how it was going to be treated. I was given a shot of chemo which will dissolve the un-developing fetus.

I’ve never cried so much in my life. I’ve never felt so guilty, so ashamed.

And to make matters worse, I found out that I am RH- which means that if my baby (any baby I ever conceive) has positive blood, MY blood will try to kill it. I now have to take injections for every pregnancy I have to make sure that I don’t kill my own baby.

On the bright side.. the pain I was experiencing yesterday was that of my cysts in my ovaries popping. So no more cysts. What an awful chain of events.

Needless to say, it’s been an awful 4 days and now.. I’m going to lay on my couch in my sweats, watch American Idol and forget that any of this ever happened. (yeah right)