**In COMEpletely UNrelated NEWS *

and or Why I Luv The Internet (because i have my own personal YAHOO! page) i Clicked on one of my newsie articles: from TIME magazine about our nation raising wimps that can't even cope in college (glad i don't have one of those). Something to do with coddling our children and not letting them be able to fend for themselves blah blah blah- Anyway the most Important news for me was an option i could Click on in the bottom corner NowThis Amazes the shit outta me:

I, Changapeluda, CAN READ ANY ARTICLE FROM TIME MAGAZINE ALL THE WAY BACK SINCE 1923



(for FREE thank ya very much)

6 lessons we are learning from The Busss the bus the bus the bus the bus

1. Say thank you to the bus driver when he gives you the transfer ticket and Hold Onto it til we can put it in our front right pocket but hold my hand the whole time.

2. Put the Strollie in the seat by the exit so we don't have to lug it on our swift exit.

3.If taking pictures of people on the sly - make sure the flash is OFF.

4. Have money ready and folded/easily puttable in the till.

5. Bring a good book/journal if it's a longish ride.

6. It's very important to Make ourselves comfortable and Enjoy the Ride....

Futzing with my View Picture and wanting to know which one i should pick that most indicates my Cleanliness, all lickety split like

which got me to thinkin' - Just how clean am i?

the air i breathe is pretty clean, i take big huge gulps of it at a time. This was taken underneath my neighbor's walnut tree. i might use this picture because it reminds me to take a good deep breath.

you know what? i feel like comin' clean about a silly little fact/problem i have when my picture gets taken: it's with my lips, i'm overly self conscious of them and i can't get the shape of them to Just Relax. so to get my mind off of my lips i think of a "motivation" and in this next pic, my motivation was to look like i want to KICK Somebody's ASS. This is my best Chola Veterana face. I feel tough when i see this. Plus it's got my best beloved beater kodak camera in it.

i did a lot of prep work [weeding, watering & washing] for this next picture. I really like and appreciate Armour All...i wonder if i've been showing my face too much around here and i wonder just how vain i am to post so many pix of my mug. to kinda get away from that narcistic bend, i may choose this picture as a nice clean breakaway.

side note:

my cousin called and he wants his stolen (that's one of them, all lovely and clean and pictured above) Model A rims back (only hello!my brother stole them from my mom's yard so he's not gettin' 'em) he even wants to know how much money i want. Little does he know how priceless Justice really is...when i asked what he planned on doing with them, he told me he had just gone to a car show & saw some nice ones just like these, that he
"wants to keep ahold of them" so i politely told him hell no but that i would call him if i changed my mind. i was super nice about it but after i hung up the phone, i flipped it the bird with both hands.

This is my fantasy kick ass/badass de la fregada fully prepared to take anyone on - a stance i think is necessary to take when you Do Not want to be messed with. Seriously. And i'm not that serious of a person. Seriously wacky, maybe.

Are you even wondering whose ass it is i want to kick?? Blackmailers of cool people and in Not a big surprise, even though i Still don't completely know what's going on, i have kind of an urge to kick my brother's but mostly my sister in law's ass. Okay, I really just want to kick her ass. BAD. Sorry about the violent tendency, it's the truth that i must come clean about here & can only get the whole truth - for sure - from Myself. I cannot believe my brother as he told my mom that the house is somehow Not in foreclosure (huh?), the mortgage company wants to work with them and he wants to refinance and lower the payments.... my sister in law doesn't want to make payments Anymore. She's done. She wants to hate us. I don't want to hate her. I just want to kick her ass.

but i only get like that when i think about how they screwed my mother and themselves, all of us really - Over. I don't think about that too much. I'm successful at the acting like an ostrich (is it?) and burying my head in the sand. I try to just Live here/savour and really Enjoy our time at home while we still have it. i may pick this pic for the colorfulness factor and i know how crazily all over the place i'm being but.... All's i know is right now, in this moment, writing this post feels really really good. Writing does this to me. It's its own form of art therapy.

I been doing a lot of Art Therapy. Building and painting and finding and gluing....i just finished Futzing with all of these pictures which i find tremendously relaxing/ gratifying. What makes it the Art part of the therapy for me (in my book, anyway) is when i look at the pictures i take - after i crop them and manipulate them and sometimes take all the color out of them, sometimes put all the color in that i can stand...when i'm done with it, i know i've gotten to My heart of the matter. No matter how strange and junky it is.

Also: I might as well come clean about this, too....strange and junky indeedy. All this junk in my trunk. This is a longass post, isn't it?

Okay, here it is.... lickety split before i chicken out: i'm having a lot of clean fun bein' a little naughty/dirty. That is IF you think Nude self-portraits are dirty. Which i absolutely don't. They're mostly just naughty. It's scandalous, a little bit....I take naked pictures of my own body and i like it. There i said it. Harmless stuff, really. Here i am Experiencing some brown sugared Sultry Saturday Night Proclivities/ooh laa la, involving a lil nakedness and the discreet digital camera.....it makes me feel sexy and powerfully free.

I cropped the hell outta this pic because i don't want to offend/scare/gross anyone out. It's best to leave the rest of my clean self up to the imagination. Or not. In my poor G.'s case - my biggest son has already been exposed to the breastfeeding of Pop-pops for Yeears....when on more than one occasion the dreadful weaner would just stop and expose me for flashingz....G. would just shrug his shoulder as if to say...."oh well" no use cryin over spilt milk For Real.....So hopefully this ain't nothin to him....I DO want to point out i am doing this in solidarity with someone. I very often get my motivation from watching this beautiful woman march to the tune of her Own Drumroll please. This partial portion of my Post is brought to you by the elegantly funky Miss Suzi Blu. I aspire to be as brave and prolific as her one day. This one's for you baby, con carino de su Nipomo Girl.

Well! i must say in doing this post and having this fun; i have decided i might choose the second to the last one.... because it's sometimes Cleansing to state the Obvious:

we are all naked under our clothes, you know. And Like Janis learned the other day on the train...tomorrow never comes, man. It's all the Same Fucking Day, man....a Missourian flashback ya'll. Just for the occasion...it's kinda momentous to me anyway that i posted semi-nude pix of myself on the internetz! I'm kinda rockin' my own world. And it's just so silly and slightly vacuous.

perfect place for a flashback from when G., Ruby and i lived in Missouri.

i just now remembered this:

There's A groovy nude of Janis Joplin in my friend Melissa's kitchen. I used to be a prude so her nipple got covered with a little sticker of a fish....

I've come a long way from being a prude, and since i learned i can't be a spinster...i made as well be an exhibitionist/nekkid... Big ole leap...& In honor of that, i personally encourage whoever reads this post to have a little clean fun their own selves. Snap some pix of your privates, it's interesting and you don't have to tell anybody (except me, if you want). I bet once you get over the little bit of shock, you'll have a whole lotta fun. Digital cameras were made for shit like this. Don't you agree?

Hot HOt HOTT!!!

i feel really hot today. But not sexy/hotttie culo caliente hot. Hot like fuck! it's hot. Too hot to do anything. Hot enuf to make me worry. I feel hotter then usual. I think it's global warmingz and that's a terribly hot thing to even think about. I refuse to buy spray paint anymore and wish every lonely person i see while i'm on the bus driving by in their big ole honkin' SUV's would hop on with me and Pop-pops, we've got all new corkscrewey light bulbs except for maybe 2 in the ceiling fan. i just read a story about a man who has a brilliant idea to strategically place these HUGE filter thingies so we could recycle/filter our air back out with something miraculously biodegradeable that could reverse the gas emissions of que sabe que. I didn't get all the scientific jargon laden facts but i did get enuf to make me hopeful. We've got some amazingly smart people in this world. We'll think of a way to fix our fuck-ups, won't we? If not, it's just gonna keep getting hotter and hotter....'til we all Burn Up.

Okay: let's cool it down, now....Talk about fresh and fruity rootin tooooty!

This is Changa tootin' her own horn. Trick Photography, man! Shootin from behind my back into a mirror even! I been gettin' INto the Self portraits here lately. I didn't even have to crop this one! It is - as it was taken....i was feeelin' it. And if you want to know the truth: i think i've aquired some magical ability. I LOOK prettier than i really am!
Hah! i luv it.

Family Portrait circa 1974 featuring Changapeluda as The Mexican Shirley Temple!

Have i told you lately that i love my Hewlitt Packard scanner copier all in one thinger?Well, i do. I just Love Technology. Scanning is one my favourite things to do. I found it especially fun to rotate this picture. It's like my brothers and sister and i are on a ride at the fair....goin' all upside down then right side up since i scanned it sideways......Our smiles got bigger when they were upside down. Except for my brother Albert's. He was always getting in trouble for being a smartass. ANOTHER thing i loves so much about him.

I love/trip out on the fact that i can take this picture off the wall (like i've been wanting to do all weekend and just now got around to doing) Take it out of the frame, pop it under my scanner lid and Voila! i can cut everyone Else out and just scan my brother Albert and I and put us side by side. Close together....just like old times. Oh such magical trickery. Now that i'm older, i've become more easily amused. Also i think i'm going senile.

Anyways, this family picture reminds me of pink sponge curlers and being everyone's favourite. I was spoiled rotten. Or so i've heard. They tell me i always got my way, otherwise i got pretty pissed off. Threw fits. I don't remember that but i do remember workin' it. All those

indulgences. It wasn't my fault that people were always indulging me. They just did and so i enjoyed it, encouraged it, basked in it. Mostly i remember just being Really really loved. I had it Made. I believe i still do.

Today, I turned Forty years old.

Huh. How 'bout that?? It sounds so old but feels so not. I was telling my favourite babydaddy that maybe it has something to do with me being the baby of 5.

Being The Youngest is kinda like my bag. It's what i'm used to plus i'm good at it. Although, I don't mind being forty at all. I suppose i am now officially a spinster. Having reached this age and never been married. Excepting - i think my three kids sorta disqualifies me for spinsterhood. Also, i think spinsters have to dress in grey all the time and wear their hair in a no-nonsense style. I ain't into that.