Category Archives: UnProfessional Photography & Artwork

Hippie Pictures

Posted on May 17, 2012 by funnygurl2

Flower Child

My asbestos friend writes the blog lazyhippiemama about her earth-friendly adventures.

Photo of me from 1991. It was Woodstock Day during Spirit Week at school. (I wish I was still that skinny.)

But I was an earth-loving hippie before she was. I went through a “Save the Earth” phase in tenth grade. I think that is when peace signs became common jewelry and slogans like “Save the Trees” showed up on shirts. At least, the first time of my generation. I am between Gen X and Gen Y. I even got an “ours to save” logo with a little earth on my high school class ring. I was really obsessed. (And I wasn’t involved in any sports and didn’t want one side of my ring empty.) I took Environmental Science just for fun, and I don’t enjoy science. Too bad the teacher was also the FFA teacher and spent ¾ of the year talking about ground water. But I gradually gave all that up. I mostly blame an unsupportive mother. And maybe I was a little ahead of my time.


During my hippie time, I also drew pictures. Do you know that song “Hippie Chick” by Soho? (Ya, I had to look up who sang it.) Well, these are “Hippie Pix.” I think I envisioned that someday I would work at Lisa Frank (maker of colorful school supplies and stationary for pre-teen girls). These were sort of my first stab at that. I did so many of these drawings that my markers ran out of ink. Thirty-one drawings in all. I actually kind of miss making them, although I guess, when I think about it, it was a giant waste of time. They have just sat in a folder in my file cabinet for twenty years.

My Favorite


So now, I expose them on my blog, to the world. Or, at least the handful that I scanned. Please do not steal them. Although I can understand how you would totally want to 😛

Pop on over to I’m not stalking you. on Facebook to see more bonus pictures.

4 Comments

Posted in Childhood Reminiscing, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Boxelder Bugs Must Die!

Posted on April 13, 2012 by funnygurl2

Ugly little sucker.

I never really had Boxelder Bugs anywhere I had lived, until I moved into my house. I was told you only have them when there is a Boxelder tree nearby. As far as I know, we only have Walnut and Maple and Pine trees near us. Maybe a better name for them would be aluminum siding bugs, since that is where they love to hang out at my house.

I find Boxelder Bugs totally gross. But I was willing to only kill the ones that made it into the house. It is convenient that my dogs will eat them as “treats”. But then came the bad year. The Boxelder Bugs filled up my hard in big piles. I wanted to spray them with nice, poisonous bug spray. But my husband said that would kill the grass. I should never have listened to him. (Sorry Honey, but I think the grubs are doing in your grass faster than my bug spray would have.)

Mating. All over my porch.


So, I let them live that day. Then they started coating my house. They fornicated all over my porch. They laid their nasty little gold eggs all over my house siding and chain-link fence. I was overrun and distraught and disgusted by their very existence. I complained to everyone I knew. Finally, someone told me the secret. The wonderful murderous secret I use to my advantage to this day.

Dawn dish soap.

Yup. The same dish soap you buy at Meijer. The one that has pictures of cute little penguins on it and claims to help save wildlife. Dawn dish soap has been responsible for the murder of thousands of Boxelder Bugs at my house. I fill up the weed sprayer with a small amount of Dawn and lots of water. And I suffocate the hell out of those mother fuckers.

It took a lot of time and determination that year, but I did get the Boxelder Bugs under control. The mistake was letting them lay eggs, because Dawn doesn’t work on the eggs. The only way to kill the eggs is to smush them. They are small, so sometimes they just fall off too. Your best bet is to spray them when they are tiny little hatchlings with only fur for legs.

Threesome.


This year looks to be almost as bad, with our easy winter and early summer temperatures. But I saw them outside my window mating. So promiscuous. I grabbed my weed sprayer and went to town on them. Oh yes. My husband has an old ice shanty he leaves sitting by the driveway, against the house. And his toolbox for his truck. And they live there. I should move those obstacles, because I bet there are just red nests teaming with colonies of Boxelder Bugs under there. I have to be sure to spray not only the side of the house, but also the front and then the back, as the sun moves throughout the day. It will take a few weeks of daily spraying, but then they will be knocked down for summer.

I wish I had a hazmat suit to wear when I spray. After years of seeing their numbers decimated, they are starting to fight back. I can’t stand those THINGS landing on me. On my legs, arms, in my hair. One even landed on my glasses-ick! I come back into the house and can’t even enjoy a job well done because I feel as though they are crawling all over me. I am all buggy.

Some PETA person might think what I do is awful. It is the same policy I have against bats, birds, squirrels (don’t get me started)—all creatures. They can live wherever they want, but not in/on my house. No freeloaders. And nothing with wings or feathers or creepy crawlie attributes.

Did I mention the live ones eat the other dead Boxelder Bugs. They are CANNIBALS! You know why they have red markings, don’t you?

They were created by the devil.

I’m not stalking you. is NOW ON FACEBOOK! “Like” that I’m not stalking you and get an update when there is a new post to read. (It is sort of like YOU are stalking ME.)

80 Comments

Posted in A day in the life, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

The Werecart

Posted on April 4, 2012 by funnygurl2

A golf cart Halloween decorating contest. Sounds crazy, right? What if it wasn’t even held in October.

…and that is how the Werecart was born.

The Werecart


My Mother-in-Law has camped for years at a nearby campground. My husband and I would go out occasionally throughout the summer to spend time with her and just relax. She has a camper that she leaves parked there year round. Almost everyone there has a golf cart to speed around the dusty campground on. Riding on the golf cart and watching a campfire are the big entertainment there. And that is what makes it relaxing.

The campground closes in mid-October every year. Fear not, the children still get to celebrate Halloween. They usually hold a Halloween celebration during the summer. (Note: You can’t necessarily just use your costume from last year. A Halloween costume for October in Michigan needs to be warm. In the summer, it does not.) One year the campground announced a golf cart costume contest. It sounded completely insane. And that is how I knew I had to enter.

I pitched my idea to my MIL. She was open to anything I wanted to do. My husband and I made a quick weekday trip to the campground, so that I could take measurements. The campground is very deserted during the week. To measure the angle of the front of the golf cart (very critical to my design), I just folded a piece of paper. I am sure my Geometry and Trigonometry teacher would be very disappointed in me. I only had a week to complete my crazy project. I had to go the next day to JoAnn Etc. and buy a lot of fur. Fur ain’t cheap. Then I laid on my dining room floor for a week, trying to measure my limited amount of fur correctly. The fur was flying. I believe there were a certain amount of frustrated tears. By Saturday, there was more black fur on my floor from my project than from my two actual dogs.

Notice the blood on the fangs!


My husband and I drove out to the campground. It was a rainy, dreary day. I worried whether the pieces would fit properly. I also worried whether the weather would damage the fur. You never want a werewolf to be mistaken for a drowned rat.

It turned out everything fit fine and it was as cute as Hell. It even proved very durable when we test drove it around the campground’s gravel road and over potholes. But due to the rain, the Halloween festivities were delayed till the following weekend. This was a potentially devastating development for us, as now our competition had seen what we were bringing to the table.

My asbestos friend's daughter isn't afraid

Neither is my nephew


The next weekend we saddled up the Werecart again. Strange circumstance number one was that the judging for the golf cart contest was taking place after dark. It is hard to see details, or anything, that way. I had brought a tape player so that the Werecart could even growl while being judged. The winner would get a cash prize. I planned to split it with my MIL, and use my half to recoup materials costs and to buy a weather radio (which I desperately wanted). Strange circumstance number two: I believe the cart that won was just a big box over the top of it, with some windows cut out that had flashing lights and smoke coming out of them. But I have to admit, I don’t really remember who won. I was too busy being mad that we did not. My MIL felt robbed as well. We believe that the judges gave preferential treatment to their friends. We got a $10 prize for honorable mention, I think. I let MIL keep it for bingo money the next day.

The next year there was another cart costume contest. The Werecart emerged from his den to stalk the day. But, when it came time for the contest, he was gone. He doesn’t put himself up for rejection twice. The Werecart knows it rocks. ‘Nuf said.

The End.


I’m not stalking you. is NOW ON FACEBOOK! “Like” that I’m not stalking you and get an update when there is a new post to read. (It is sort of like YOU are stalking ME.)

4 Comments

Posted in A day in the life, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

I designed the Riga Township Flag

Posted on March 21, 2012 by funnygurl2

You’ve probably never heard of Riga, Michigan (population 1,439). I wouldn’t have expected you too. But that is where my Dad lived when he married my mom. She moved in to the old family farmhouse with him. That’s where they lived when he died. That’s where she lived when I was born. And that is where I lived for the first eight years of my life.

Riga is…small. There is one blinker light where Riga Hwy hits the main road, US223. No other traffic lights. Oh sure, sometimes the train comes through and the railroad flashers get stuck on, so it gives that illusion. There used to be a church for every bar in town. Then one of the two bars burned down. The post office and the bank were on the same side of the road, with only a few houses between them. As a kid, I could never remember which was which.

Riga is all about agriculture. So in the 90’s when some idiot decided that former swampland would be a great place to build a low-level nuclear waste dump, everyone banded together to stop it. They sold burn barrels painted with the “No Nuke Dump” slogan. High schoolers came into middle school classrooms to give the students a list of all the local, state, and federal politicians and their addresses. Being the good little letter-writing middle schooler that I was, I wrote letters to them all to protect my hometown. My mother always told me not to write to the President, for fear the Secret Service would show up on our doorstep. I wrote to George Bush anyway. The nuke dump proposal was chased the Hell out of town:)

So, in 1993, in the Blissfield Advance Newspaper, I saw an ad for a contest. Riga was going to have a Sesquicentennial Celebration. They were having a “design a Riga Township flag contest”. Something instantly clicked in me, that this was something I had to do (I have had those moments now and then throughout my life). So, I got a piece of poster board at the local pharmacy within walking distance, cut it to the required size, and chose colored pencils as my medium of choice. I did a rough draft first (which I almost NEVER do). I only did one rough draft design and that is what I used for the final design. When I think of Riga, I think of farmers, barns, livestock, people waving hello. I worked all that into my design. I sort of ripped off the United States flag, replacing the field of stars with an actual field. The house on the flag slightly resembles my old house. It was required to say “1843”.

I finished my masterpiece and turned it in at one of the listed locations, the bank within walking distance. I didn’t entirely trust the bank employees to turn it in to the proper authorities. And they probably all unrolled it and laughed at it.

The original drawing was in color.


I would have gone to the judging, but that night I had an academic awards ceremony at school. (That year I cleaned up.) So imagine how nice it was to come home and hear on the answering machine that I had won the flag design contest and the first prize of a $75 savings bond. I learned that they were going to make a physical version of my flag, but that they would cost like $50 each to purchase. Kind of steep for a seventeen year old with no job. When they gave me my savings bond at the July 4th Sesquicentennial Celebration, they gave me one of my flags for free. I found out they had other contests, like “design a postmark”. The same woman won all of those contests, but her flag came in second to mine. Somehow that made it a sweeter victory.

Now my flag hangs in my guest bedroom. (And, I assume, at the Riga Municipal Building.) It might make me a giant dork, but I think it is sort of cool to have designed a township flag. Maybe generations from now the people of Riga will look at their flag and wonder about who designed it. Or maybe they will have a new contest to replace it.

I’m not stalking you. is NOW ON FACEBOOK! “Like” that I’m not stalking you and get an update when there is a new post to read. (It is sort of like YOU are stalking ME.)

1 Comment

Posted in Childhood Reminiscing, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Mr. Ugly-Man

Posted on February 8, 2012 by funnygurl2

Mr. Ugly-Man is the cartoon character I created myself. I can draw him very quickly, like when I would see Charles M. Shultz draw Charlie Brown or Snoopy. Mr. Ugly-Man has no TV show or movie. Yet.

This is my most favorite Mr. Ugly-Man pic.


Mr. Ugly-Man was born in a 9th grade Algebra class. The teacher (who, by the way, was the worst teacher I ever had) had hung up a sign by the door. I think it said “Free Books” or something. So, in the double O’s, I drew eyeballs and evil eyebrows. The face, hair, and body all came later.

I love Mr. Ugly-Man. I have always dreamed of getting him put on a T-shirt. When I used to make mix tapes, I would use the name “Mr. Ugly-Man” for my make-believe production company. Hasn’t everyone considered what their make-believe music production company should be named? (Oh…You say you haven’t? Uh, never mind.) I wanted Mr. Ugly-Man to become a cultural icon, like Fido Dido. (Oh…You don’t remember him? Uh, never mind.)

As I have never before had a platform to introduce Mr. Ugly-Man to the world, other than meeting doodles, I figured I would feature him in my blog. Enjoy*

*And don’t steal him, or I will sue your ass.

I’m not stalking you. is NOW ON FACEBOOK! “Like” that I’m not stalking you and get an update when there is a new post to read. (It is sort of like YOU are stalking ME.)http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Im-not-stalking-you/309900919058297

To celebrate, this week the Facebook page will have exclusive additional content for this post. Click here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=310859855629070&set=pb.309900919058297.-2207520000.1354160884&type=3&theater

2 Comments

Posted in Childhood Reminiscing, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
←
Newer Posts →