a whole new {arm}

so all week i've been rocking out to a new mix cd from my friend laura and scrapping my little heart out, since my first surgery. and holy bananas- talk about prolific (here are a few of my recent pages). i think i'm catching up from all these months of non-scrappage. this new machine is amazing in its effects, i love it. i can scrap as much as i want and if i hurt, i just turn up the stimulation to the nerves in my arm (or the Zap, as my brothers have been calling it) and i feel better. there's always some sort of stimulation to the nerves and somehow it re-sets their path and makes them not hurt me anymore. it's like magic!

and tomorrow is the 2nd surgery, the one that will attach the wires from my spinal cord to the new electrical generator. the new one will be inside my abdomen, so i won't have to wear this dumb itchy waist-pack. and it will be permanent. or at least 5 years permanent. and it will be my pain-management system and i will be able to do nearly anything, and i plan to do EVERYTHING. i canNOT wait to get back to normal life. tomorrow's surgrey will have a pretty uncomfortable recovery- i'll be growing lots of scar tissue, which takes a few weeks, but once it's over, this whole ordeal will be, in essence, over.

and to think that last september i was talking about being out for a week or two. Ha! Nine months later...

anyway, it will be so good to put all this behind me and continue on with the rest of my life.

i'm sniffing paper, i'm so happy!

so i've had the first of my surgeries and now it's a few days later. i can't sit down cause the incisions in my back hurt too much, but standing works great so i'm scrapping up a storm! my arm doesn't hurt anymore, it buzzes instead, with this faint electrical current that's sort of like the moments before you get pins & needles. strange, but at least it's not excruciating pain. wahoo for successful surgery!

so my instructions for the week are to do as much as i like, without bending or heavy lifting or twisting my upper body fast. next week is the finaly surgery to fully implant the pain-control machine in my back, and i'll be out for another week or so, they say. so today, i'm dancing withthe joy of a girl out of pain for the first time in months and i'm scrapping like a maniac.

it's perfect, cause i've got a ton of new photos. italy ones, and family shots and just random prints i've been meaning to scrap.

i've gotten some awesome shots of the kids i used to babysit- we had a visit last week- i miss them so much, it was soo cool to see how big they'd gotten. and they are always clamoring to be in front of my camera. they hammed it up for me at central park for a few hours, jumping out of trees and climbing "mountains" and smiling on the hillsides, but i think my favorite shots of the afternoon are these unposed ones of emily and julia dancing on top of a table in the livingroom, by the window overlooking the park. the sun through the window menalso there are italy shots and family shots and just everything inspires me these days cause i've been Non-Creating Girl for so long and OH! it's so good to be back with my tools in my hands and a mess on my table.

italy's lovely

just back from the most lovely vacation ever. traveled with my mom, dad, grandma, great-aunt jo, uncle pete, aunt anna, and cousins laura, brian & kelly to italy for 2 weeks. spent a week living in an apartment in rome, then flew to sicily and spent five days in the little seaside village where my grandmother grew up. tons of religious art and gorgeous light and laughing with cousins and learning the language and drinking with the locals and shopping and eating and i took so many photographs. i met a hundred italian cousins and ate enough pasta to kill a horse. i swam in the mediterranean. it was brilliant and amazing. i'm still kinda stuck on italy time.