**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.

I LOVE CEREAL

I must come clean and admit that i have posted 2 Crazily Artsy Fartsy posts. Only to go back into my dashboard and save them as drafts....I don't know if anyone saw them except G. & he thought they were too weird to comment on so i just pulled them....sometimes i have to edit my Super strange stuff Out because i scare myself....which just makes me want to put them back in....Scarey is sometimes fun. Speakin' of scarey; I been treating myself to tasty morsels of short story scariness with this book:

but only in broad daylight and only 1 at a time. I just finished a dooozy called "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" in which a young couple gets lost on a lonely old road that leads to this little town out in the middle of nowhere. They go into a diner; Janis Joplin is their waitress and when she laughs, maggots fall out of her mouth. It's a lovely read....Maybe i'll re-work my posts and put them back in.

Golden Tuesday

these were shot outta the back passenger window of my best babydaddy's range rover.
i shot the first one with the window Up....i ended up flashing myself in the face but the picture turned out quite cool if i do say so meself....after that i verrrry carefully hung my kodak just outside the moving vehicle in the 65 mile an hour wind (draft?) to snap the scenery that was passing me by. i felt like a worried new mother holding her newborn doin' that. i knew if i lost my hold - if i dropped it This Time For Sure - it would be the end of the road for my beloved camera.

And for the last pixeliciousness:

- Golden AND Groovy -

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Oh, I forgot to tell you!

Right in the midst of all this Hula-Balooo (why is there - ALL THE TIME - hulabaloo???) So let's just list some things that are happenings so you don't think i'm - ALL THE TIME - such a Drama magnet/queen/hulabaloo hog....Please keep in mind this all happened within ONE WEEK.

1. Foreclosure on our house started the 16th of May
2. Found out Aunt Glory Be has leukemia (now we don't know if it's treatable)
3. My mother's Lupus came outta remission.
4. The gas pipe in the kitchen from 1945 leaked like a motherfucker and the house almost
Exploded so we had No Gas until we could afford a plumber
5.So the microwave stopped working/popping popcorn (gah!)
....and LAST BUT COITENLY NOT LEAST: The damn dog got sent to THE POUND! Zoe Pearl Hernandez, the exceptional white german shepherd that i love so much, followed us to the Bus stop which she never does....on a day when i couldn't just miss the 8:40 and catch the next one. She did a sneaky stroll by right when we got there. Like she had been hanging back but showed herself right when it was too late to walk her skulky ass back! (it's only like a country block away but the Bus! the busss was pullin on up) So i told her in my fiercest alpha voice to GO HOME and she skulked off towards the house. Only she ended up at the drugstore then they took her to the stupid vet's. The drugstore people gave the vet people our name and number (the people at the drugstore know my mom Really well)and they (the vet people)still called the pound because nobody answered when they called(what is Up with that?)I was @ Dewbug and my mother was on a frenzied steroid induced road trip couldn't they have tried again? It's a vet's place of business & it's not like they aren't equipped to hold a dog for a little while ...Zoe is not a strayer or a collar wearer. We have no fence and i refuse to tie her up because she's a very Good Girl (she's the best is what i usually tell her) so it's really all my fault. But still! $120 it cost to get her ass out! One HUNDRED and twenty Bux, that's a lotta money. I wanted to buy a webcam but instead i had to bail my dog Out. I couldn't let them put her to sleep, could I? Awwww, not my Zoe Pearl. That Bitch....

Welcome to my Living Room

SO:

if i were to ever get a tattoo which i won't because even if i could afford it, i have better things i would spend my money on (like my 3 kids & my mom & oh yeah paying off Animal Control!) ....but if i did get inked, my tat would be in script like a cholo's, located across my shoulders - It would read:

KEEP ON TRUCKIN'

hey! i think these are those rims that i love so much that got stolen and

RE-turned.....i found this negative behind the console stereo that's been spinning my brand new to me (3 in mint condition - $1.25 @ the goodwill)Peggy Lee Albums(!) They're sitting on the piano in that top pic....Oh it sounds glorious up in here. I wish i could borrow your ears so you could hear it.

Also: My fav. Aunt Glory Be who is doubling up on the dialyses and chemo - got sprung from the hospital on Tues. Yesterday we played Day Spa & did Treatmentz at her house (eucalyptus essential oil y todo) and today: SHE CAME OVER to our house for a visit! She looks good and [becuz of that] I am having a Happy (w/a touch of BLISSful) SUNDAY.... i wish you the same.

6 artsy fartsy Projects of the Apocalypse

(so what - i make out w/inanimate objects & also; i kissed my sanity goodbye ages ago)

The other day, some long haired hippy kid walks up to me at the bus stop as i am crouched down taking some funky picture that i can't even find anymore (i just looked in my kodak easy- share for like 25 minutes. where is it?!? gone? kinda not so easy to share....) so check out the one at your right instead, if you will. It's just as groovy with my flair for wtf- so anyway this kid,

he asks me very friendly like if i am an artist. And do you know what i said?

NO. i said no. I am not an Artiste. That i just liked to take groovy pictures.

What i really meant was YES! yes i am an artist. maybe...Sorta. Except i work at Dewbug Daycare and i'm mostly a single mom wannabe carpenter (that never builds any houses but knows how if she needs to) Only i don't ever hardly - okay sometimes finish my artsy projects. Did i lose you? Or are you still with me....I know this is confusing for you. Sorry. I'm also confused...what the hell am i doing? What am I? who am i OMG is this a mid-life crisis???

I don't know (&don't really care) any way here is something i like to call the

Six Projects of the Apocalypse that keep multiplyin' into 6 more

Wanna see???

this is some before

this is during and God ONLY knows what's coming after this. All's i know is that i am some sort of bizarre artist who really loves making her funky art/strange things/found angels of dyed wood & broken mirrors. I love it as in can't really live without it. Even though i don't know what i'm gonna do with it once (if ever) it's done. Or i'm done with it or it's done with me.

On My Way to Glory Be's

No pix could show you and no words can convey

just how cool my brother Albert really was. Today would have been his 45th birthday. I wrote about him [in my haphazard journal] today on The Bus, the bussss.....i wrote about the still freshly wounded/bloody Yearnings i still have to see him and/or just Be with him....how can that be when it's been almost 24 years? How come he's the brother that had to up and Die on me, anyway? That's the real Pisser. He's the Best brother i got and he's dead and gone. He was so good to me. He was good people, as G. would say. And he was a Really good dancer. We would watch Soul Train and American Bandstand and Albert could not only do the dances (he caught on quick), he would also teach me (not so quick). We wanted to go into showbiz together....like Donny and Marie. We actually practiced routines and made costumes. Theatre Geeks in the making. When he was a freshman in high school, he won a dance contest at the Santa Maria Towne Center. He and his partner Chandy won a free trip to Magic Mountain where they were in a big competition. He made sure i got to go with them. It was odd in a very groovy/cool way just how close we were. Once, when we were at a gas station, someone thought i was his wife. He thought that was funny, so he just smiled and didn't correct them ....i know that sounds creepy but i loved him for doing shit like that. When we got back in his car, we had a good laugh about it, then (so you don't worry, i'm just weird, not Sick)we both said, "ewwww." Then More laughter, always more laughter. I got to ride shotgun in his white '68 Mustang that he drove way too fast. He had a button that said "Fuck it!" pinned to the sunvisor. We were each other's closest confidantes. Sometimes i feel like he was my ticket outta here [poverty/the ghetto]. And sometimes i feel like i'll pull myself up outta here for the both of us. We were twins, you know. Double gemini, him and me. I wish he were here. Happy Birthday, Albert. I miss you something awful.

Third Birthday with Maximum SPF

We loaded up the beach toys and towels and blankets and headed to Pismo Beach for the WHOLE day. I coated the birthday boy Down with Coppertone 55 continuous spray action as soon as we got there. Good thing i did because the unsprayed: Got a Birthday Burn. Bad. We still had a blast, though. Sunny Pop-pops has a new arms stretched wide pose that he's rockin'. It speaks to his new three year old attitude. He's lovin' Life, Con Gusto!

अह्ह्ह्ह्ह्छ नुट्स!!! And Happy Tuesday, tambien.

The cool curvaceous recently enabled Hindi writings says: Ahhh, Nuts!!! Which is kinda how i feel...i mean really how i feel. I can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with me. Nothing sounds good. I want to blog and i don't want to blog. SO MUCH is happening in this messy crazy wacky jam packed life of mine and yet ....and yet i feel like i'm letting things slip thru my fingers. I'm extremely happy and content with my family, & so stressed about the house. This last weekend:

I was rushing around getting SUNBURNT at the beach for Pop-pop's THIRD birthday. Saturday I was ratting out Happy's hair for the Prom. I was writing a heartfelt letter to my congresswoman on Friday and we saw resultz/heard back in 45 minutes. My mom is now in touch with the Senior Legal Defense. On Friday, we found out my favourite aunt has a rare form of Leukemia. There was a lot of time spent on the phone (ugh!) with her beautiful girlfriend Kim who saved my aunt's life by getting her to the emergency room on time so that she could go thru multiple, invasive and conclusive tests that detected this rare disease. It would have been fatal if they had waited one more week. Now she's going thru chemotherapy. Her name is Gloria but i calls her Glory Be. She's gonna live. And so am i. And as you can see here by these two scanned polaroids: It really and truly is a Happy Tuesday. For sure.

Mama Mia! OMG!

So my mom's Lupus "Flared UP" (as she puts it). It had been in remission. This is some serious business that can be controlled only by Strong meds. She is on Prednisone which is a STEROID. My Mother is all Juiced UP with her flare up. OMG. She is on the constant GO. She pulled the car up onto the front lawn and handwashed it, vacummed it out, did her toe nails, went to visit her sisters, ate @ Red Lobster with them, tried to take Pop-pops to HomeDepot to get more sand for his sandbox ( i said NO as i envisioned her slingin' 50 lb bags over her shoulder) so she visited her best friend Bobbie Villegas, went to the Dollar and Grocery stores, gave Happy a ride to town to do her electronic media project. ALL IN ONE DAY. That was when she was taking the highest milligram dosage of roids....now the dosage is tapering off so she's just doing triple the YELLING and has crazy ass violent tinged mood swings. It's like talking to the wall when i ask her kindly in my most non-confrontational way to Sit Down and take it easy, man. I neeeed me some subdue-ing type of Angels. Strong ones.