Trying. I've been trying... It has been trying. And I am tired, but happy.
Lots and lots of life events in the last few months Important visit from the East Coast family branch was of major importance. My daughter graduated from college and I helped her move across country. I also visited family and the area in which I grew up for the first time since my mother's death. Now my hubby and I are negotiating the new rules for the empty nest. So in keeping with my usual modus operandi of trying to do too many things at a time, I decided to participate in the February Nablopomo challenge on BlogHer. I wrote some good pieces but didn't make the whole month challenge. My hosting company troubles ate up my "buffer" posts I'd stored up. Then taxes and converting our personal finance tracking software to a different platform did in the blog challenge. But our taxes are filed, and that is a good thing.
I write a lot, but I write in so many different places, I don't think I can showcase my writing to its best advantage because it is so dispersed.
I tried having all my blogs be scraped and posted to my business site, but with Google penalizing multiply posted content, I don't think that is such a good idea. This added to the dormant state of some of my blogs that makes me question whether it is worth my time to post new posts when I have new ideas to those that do not have an active, current readership. Plus the posting of personal blog posts on my business site just did not seem like a good idea, and I ended up censoring content I really wanted to share.
So I'm back in the search for how to blog my multiple passions, showcase all my writing, and still maintain some professional polish for my business.
I'll keep you posted on what I figure out. How do you balance and present your different voices?
Showing posts with label nablopomo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nablopomo. Show all posts
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Do Overs, Kapra, and Kurosawa
I'm trying to figure out the theme for today's post, Do Over is the GBE2 topic this week and I will work that in somehow, but I also want to post on the general topic of social media and how and why I the various forms of it that I do. In keeping with the NaBloPoMo monthly theme of Relative, I will throw in some thoughts on that topic, too. And I will probably work in a topic I've wanted to bitch about for quite some time. And I will do all of this while cleaning house and doing laundry. Am I amazing, or what?
There are no do overs in life. Sometimes we are offered the chance of doing something again, but it is never and can never be the same thing. The context, time, our attitudes, and the experience we bring to it, whatever it may be, will have changed everything. At the same time I sometimes wish there were such things as do overs, or at least I wish so until I realize that everything, truly everything, would change.
My favorite movie is Kapra's It's A Wonderful Life; that is closely followed by Kurosawa's Rashomon. Both were made well before I was born. Life's "truths" have been around for ages it seems. These movies are nothing alike on the surface, but they are both very much alike when it comes to being an movies that intimately examine perspective and "truth." Maybe in a game of marbles there can be do overs, but nothing else in life allows it, and I wouldn't want there to be. However that is not to say I do not have regrets. I never, ever will say that I have no regrets. The two people I have heard say that phrase specifically to me in private conversation are both dead. One died of cancer he probably could have prevented, the other died without a doubt by his own hand. Death will always be associated with, "No regrets." It is what people say before they die, at least it is for me.
There are things I wish that both I and others had not done or had done differently. But I will never know what else in my life outside of that tiny, narrow window of regret might come undone. Good things that I cherish might not have come to be on another timeline in an alternate universe. In my lifetime thus far I have managed to do and produce good things, a few at least, that make a difference in the world. What more could I ask for? Nothing.
I know I will never understand what other people truly think and feel, I know I will never know truth, I know that my perspective will always differ from every other individual who has ever lived. But this does not make me feel lonely, or wish for do overs, or a different universe. Every day I marvel that we can communicate at all given all the differences that exist in the world. I continue to look for what we share and not how we differ. It is all relative. We are all the centers of our own perceptual worlds. The fun is in expanding from that center and in finding similarity. Sure, I've made mistakes. No I wouldn't want a do over.
Part Two - Tomorrow: Do Overs and Social Media.
There are no do overs in life. Sometimes we are offered the chance of doing something again, but it is never and can never be the same thing. The context, time, our attitudes, and the experience we bring to it, whatever it may be, will have changed everything. At the same time I sometimes wish there were such things as do overs, or at least I wish so until I realize that everything, truly everything, would change.
My favorite movie is Kapra's It's A Wonderful Life; that is closely followed by Kurosawa's Rashomon. Both were made well before I was born. Life's "truths" have been around for ages it seems. These movies are nothing alike on the surface, but they are both very much alike when it comes to being an movies that intimately examine perspective and "truth." Maybe in a game of marbles there can be do overs, but nothing else in life allows it, and I wouldn't want there to be. However that is not to say I do not have regrets. I never, ever will say that I have no regrets. The two people I have heard say that phrase specifically to me in private conversation are both dead. One died of cancer he probably could have prevented, the other died without a doubt by his own hand. Death will always be associated with, "No regrets." It is what people say before they die, at least it is for me.
I know I will never understand what other people truly think and feel, I know I will never know truth, I know that my perspective will always differ from every other individual who has ever lived. But this does not make me feel lonely, or wish for do overs, or a different universe. Every day I marvel that we can communicate at all given all the differences that exist in the world. I continue to look for what we share and not how we differ. It is all relative. We are all the centers of our own perceptual worlds. The fun is in expanding from that center and in finding similarity. Sure, I've made mistakes. No I wouldn't want a do over.
Part Two - Tomorrow: Do Overs and Social Media.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Solo Road Tripping
Road trips have always seemed like they should be relaxed meanderings over highways and byways. For me they never seem to turn out that way though. I have a place to get to and while I might be able to have a bit of wiggle room in the dates and the stops along way to and from the main stopover of the trip.
Before I left in an old Toyota 4-Runner loaded down with some furniture, some art, clothing, bedding and kitchenware to help my daughter start her new life with her honey, Tree Boy, I had opportunity to have lunch with a blogger who really knows how to travel. Becky blogs at Kinexxions, a genealogical blog that focuses on the area and families from my old "neck of the woods." I do love genealogy, local history, stories of community, and someone who can string words together in an entertaining way. I stumbled across Becky's blog quite a while back and return to it because she is a darn fine writer from whom I can learn a thing or three! It turns out I was the first of her readers with whom she had ever met. I can't imagine that she hasn't met others as she is such an enchanting teller of stories of people, places, and procedures.
She has been traveling and living out of her mobile blogging studio for quite a while now, her comfortably equipped van. That is so inspiring! I met an actual woman who travels by herself, going places and doing research, taking photographs, and sharing the info unearthed along the way in her blog. Of course as an anthropologist I have known many women researchers and scientists who obviously travel, but to find a woman who lived the normal sedentary life, except for that stint in the military during the 1960s and 1970s, and only allowed her happy feet to dance across the country after retirement. Hers is a generous practice, and an inspiring one. Women who have a nomadic streak are not all that rare. Women who act on the urge are however a bit harder to find. She planned, met with a financial advisor, sticks to her budget, has a very well organized van, goals for her research, and does the research she is obviously meant to do.
Becky was going through Tucson and we had arranged to meet. I'm so glad it worked out. We met at the patio section of The Cup Cafe of The Hotel Congress for Tortilla Soup and conversation. Turns out we are shirt-tail relations! Hans Jakob Brubaker III who lived in the late 18th and early 19th Century was our last common ancestor from what we can tell. The link was found through the South Whitley Brubakers. We chatted about Whitley and Kosciusko Counties in Indiana, the place from which we both hail. Becky is not a gregarious person, does not like driving in big cities, and met up with me with a bit of skepticism. It was a bit out of character for me to just say, "Can we meet?" to someone I don't know, but I so am glad I did. It really helped me frame the trip of the last two weeks and plot about how I might be able to do a trip much more like one Becky might do the next time I head out on the road.
Before I left in an old Toyota 4-Runner loaded down with some furniture, some art, clothing, bedding and kitchenware to help my daughter start her new life with her honey, Tree Boy, I had opportunity to have lunch with a blogger who really knows how to travel. Becky blogs at Kinexxions, a genealogical blog that focuses on the area and families from my old "neck of the woods." I do love genealogy, local history, stories of community, and someone who can string words together in an entertaining way. I stumbled across Becky's blog quite a while back and return to it because she is a darn fine writer from whom I can learn a thing or three! It turns out I was the first of her readers with whom she had ever met. I can't imagine that she hasn't met others as she is such an enchanting teller of stories of people, places, and procedures.
She has been traveling and living out of her mobile blogging studio for quite a while now, her comfortably equipped van. That is so inspiring! I met an actual woman who travels by herself, going places and doing research, taking photographs, and sharing the info unearthed along the way in her blog. Of course as an anthropologist I have known many women researchers and scientists who obviously travel, but to find a woman who lived the normal sedentary life, except for that stint in the military during the 1960s and 1970s, and only allowed her happy feet to dance across the country after retirement. Hers is a generous practice, and an inspiring one. Women who have a nomadic streak are not all that rare. Women who act on the urge are however a bit harder to find. She planned, met with a financial advisor, sticks to her budget, has a very well organized van, goals for her research, and does the research she is obviously meant to do.
Becky was going through Tucson and we had arranged to meet. I'm so glad it worked out. We met at the patio section of The Cup Cafe of The Hotel Congress for Tortilla Soup and conversation. Turns out we are shirt-tail relations! Hans Jakob Brubaker III who lived in the late 18th and early 19th Century was our last common ancestor from what we can tell. The link was found through the South Whitley Brubakers. We chatted about Whitley and Kosciusko Counties in Indiana, the place from which we both hail. Becky is not a gregarious person, does not like driving in big cities, and met up with me with a bit of skepticism. It was a bit out of character for me to just say, "Can we meet?" to someone I don't know, but I so am glad I did. It really helped me frame the trip of the last two weeks and plot about how I might be able to do a trip much more like one Becky might do the next time I head out on the road.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
It's All Relative - A Whirlwind Trip Through The Midwest
Just arrived home last evening, so perhaps it is an odd time to start a month of blogging about travel, but that is what I am doing. I have a buzillion blog posts started, notes on things that need something written down about them, and well over a dozen voice notes of various lengths on my phone - that are travel and driving observations. I did not always have time on the road to put together a coherent post. And sometimes I was too tired at the end of the day to put a coherent sentence together.
This month the writing theme over at BlogHer's Nablopomo is "Relative" so I added myself and this blog as a Travel Blog. Traveling through time and space has always been my thing. I wonder if my rather wry sense of humor comes through? Oh well.
Anyway... relative is a good topic for me for this month as this whirlwind tour through the Midwestern U.S. that took about 2 weeks was a relative experience in oh so many ways. The baseline reason for the trip was moving my daughter to Minneapolis. She is most certainly a relative. Family is a relative term. I visited a few friends with whom I feel a bond that is just as close as family and closer, for me, than with many family members. I visited my brothers. They are most certainly my relatives. And all the experiences of the last weeks have shown me once again that most certainly everything is relative.
It is going to be an interesting month for me to see how I make sense of all the things I thought and did while making my way from Tucson, AZ to Minneapolis, MN, and back to Tucson with a quick loop through Chicago and Northern and Eastern Indiana. That is the backdrop for this month's posts.
I hope you can join me this month as I document what was for me a very significant trip.
This month the writing theme over at BlogHer's Nablopomo is "Relative" so I added myself and this blog as a Travel Blog. Traveling through time and space has always been my thing. I wonder if my rather wry sense of humor comes through? Oh well.
Anyway... relative is a good topic for me for this month as this whirlwind tour through the Midwestern U.S. that took about 2 weeks was a relative experience in oh so many ways. The baseline reason for the trip was moving my daughter to Minneapolis. She is most certainly a relative. Family is a relative term. I visited a few friends with whom I feel a bond that is just as close as family and closer, for me, than with many family members. I visited my brothers. They are most certainly my relatives. And all the experiences of the last weeks have shown me once again that most certainly everything is relative.
It is going to be an interesting month for me to see how I make sense of all the things I thought and did while making my way from Tucson, AZ to Minneapolis, MN, and back to Tucson with a quick loop through Chicago and Northern and Eastern Indiana. That is the backdrop for this month's posts.
I hope you can join me this month as I document what was for me a very significant trip.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Free Writing About Free Writing
GBE 2 - week 32 is a 15 minute free write. Check it out on the site, it gives the details. But this is what I do all the time, free writing I mean. I may have an idea to work from, but often I just start writing and something meaningful tends to come out. I think it just comes with practice. Writing is soothing, energizing, and everything in between for people who have to write. I do my best writing in the morning. When words just seem to slide onto the page without effort and in a coherent fashion almost like the experience writers sometimes describe as "it just came to me." I have poems descend upon me at all times of the day and night, but when essays, articles or the like flow from me as though someone inside by head is dictating the piece to me, it is usually in the morning. It is not necessarily the very first thing I do but I think I do my best writing when I starting putting words on the page before 9 a.m. So it is 6:30 in the evening now as I write this for the Tuesday post. Probably won't be my best effort ever. I just love writing and I'm trying to be more disciplined and using different types of motivations to develop the discipline needed for serious blogging and other types of writing. Blogging gimmicks are doing the trick to some degree. That isn't to say that the gimmicks are bad. They aren't. Nablopomo. GBE 2. These are just a couple of the blogging tools I'm employing to get me writing. I need a voice recorder too. I have to find an app for that for my Blackberry. Writing ideas down isn't always practical. And sometimes when ideas strike, I need to record them, somehow. Discipline is good, but so are ideas. Develop one and don't let the others get away.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Somewhere They Call It Boxing Day
Change on the home front is a constant but some time periods are more like rapids with swirls, eddies, and water rushing over submerged objects rather than the bucolic progress of a gently meandering stream.
The Holiday rush has ended, sort of, but just like this day that has the name of medieval, or possibly older, origins a sense of confusion about this next period aka the last 10 days of Christmas exists. That is how it is with our family life over the next few days and weeks: a bunch of eddies, swirls, and steady progress toward who knows what or where.
It's been a hectic few weeks. Zilla moved back in with us for the last few months of her university days, with her 110 lb. puppy. Hubby decided in July to take a short semester-long sabbatical this Fall. I frantically tried to get as much of a book written as I could but became overloaded in October and haven't gotten much done for about six weeks.
All this fal-der-al, and fiddle-dee-dee is a way to say I do not have as many neato keen discoveries for you today as I might have wished for a Must Know Monday or a Friday Finds and Facts.
I'm looking forward to being able to focus and follow-through on projects big and small beginning mid-January after my hubby is back teaching and researching everyday at the U., and I've helped Zilla safely move across the country to begin her life as half of a couple. Guess I better start saving up for a wedding in a year or two. She won't live with someone without some sort of promissory portable wealth (a phrase from my anthropology days) of some sort. She's my daughter and she learned her lessons well; you know, cows and milk and such.
I have to admit I'm looking forward to a road trip, even in the middle of Winter. I discovered, only a few years ago, that I love solitary road trips. There is something about the call of the open road that I just can't resist given half a reason to venture out on one.
A bit of a digression here: I haven't been on the road since driving back from my Mom's place for the last time after caring for her as she passed away in 2007. That last trip wasn't fun. There was another trip that was hard too, it was the one where I stopped to see my brother on my way to the Counter-Inaugural in January of 2005. It was the last time I saw him and was only a few weeks before he passed away from cancer. I suppose this may seem a bit morose but this Christmas Day was the 25th anniversary of my Dad's passing. Some anniversaries just can't be forgotten.
But it is time for some perspective that only the road seems to be able to give to me. Some of my less than wonderful life experiences taught me that I was only safe when I was by myself. In a car in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles from home where people know to look for me, and hundreds of miles from a destination where people expect me to be at some point in the future seems safe to me. There is a section of the book on this: "Inversion of the Expected." It is, I believe, a sort of protective semiotic strategy but that is too heady and abstract a concept to take up head or thought space during the holidays. I want to think about this more and in relation to a couple other ways people create rather intricate behaviors supported by belief systems that may be based on total logically created poppycock.
But you will just have to wait to find out more about all that, because it is a time for conversation with family and friends over jigsaw puzzles and board games while sipping mimosas or hot chocolate and nibbling on gingerbread and chocolate truffles, and have one of each for me will you, please, as I can't for many reasons. The Time of the Longest Nights, the days around the Winter Solstice, the 12 days of Christmas, the 8 days of Hanukkah, the 7 days of Kwanzaa, call it what you will is a time for hot drinks, rich food, and leisurely getting together with friends and family over a longer period of time than other times of year seem to allow these days.
Hope your holidays are continuing and you are with those you love!
The Holiday rush has ended, sort of, but just like this day that has the name of medieval, or possibly older, origins a sense of confusion about this next period aka the last 10 days of Christmas exists. That is how it is with our family life over the next few days and weeks: a bunch of eddies, swirls, and steady progress toward who knows what or where.
It's been a hectic few weeks. Zilla moved back in with us for the last few months of her university days, with her 110 lb. puppy. Hubby decided in July to take a short semester-long sabbatical this Fall. I frantically tried to get as much of a book written as I could but became overloaded in October and haven't gotten much done for about six weeks.
All this fal-der-al, and fiddle-dee-dee is a way to say I do not have as many neato keen discoveries for you today as I might have wished for a Must Know Monday or a Friday Finds and Facts.
I'm looking forward to being able to focus and follow-through on projects big and small beginning mid-January after my hubby is back teaching and researching everyday at the U., and I've helped Zilla safely move across the country to begin her life as half of a couple. Guess I better start saving up for a wedding in a year or two. She won't live with someone without some sort of promissory portable wealth (a phrase from my anthropology days) of some sort. She's my daughter and she learned her lessons well; you know, cows and milk and such.
I have to admit I'm looking forward to a road trip, even in the middle of Winter. I discovered, only a few years ago, that I love solitary road trips. There is something about the call of the open road that I just can't resist given half a reason to venture out on one.
A bit of a digression here: I haven't been on the road since driving back from my Mom's place for the last time after caring for her as she passed away in 2007. That last trip wasn't fun. There was another trip that was hard too, it was the one where I stopped to see my brother on my way to the Counter-Inaugural in January of 2005. It was the last time I saw him and was only a few weeks before he passed away from cancer. I suppose this may seem a bit morose but this Christmas Day was the 25th anniversary of my Dad's passing. Some anniversaries just can't be forgotten.
But it is time for some perspective that only the road seems to be able to give to me. Some of my less than wonderful life experiences taught me that I was only safe when I was by myself. In a car in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles from home where people know to look for me, and hundreds of miles from a destination where people expect me to be at some point in the future seems safe to me. There is a section of the book on this: "Inversion of the Expected." It is, I believe, a sort of protective semiotic strategy but that is too heady and abstract a concept to take up head or thought space during the holidays. I want to think about this more and in relation to a couple other ways people create rather intricate behaviors supported by belief systems that may be based on total logically created poppycock.
But you will just have to wait to find out more about all that, because it is a time for conversation with family and friends over jigsaw puzzles and board games while sipping mimosas or hot chocolate and nibbling on gingerbread and chocolate truffles, and have one of each for me will you, please, as I can't for many reasons. The Time of the Longest Nights, the days around the Winter Solstice, the 12 days of Christmas, the 8 days of Hanukkah, the 7 days of Kwanzaa, call it what you will is a time for hot drinks, rich food, and leisurely getting together with friends and family over a longer period of time than other times of year seem to allow these days.
Hope your holidays are continuing and you are with those you love!
Monday, December 12, 2011
Not the Best of Days
Stressing out big time, too much to do over the next three days.
The graduation party is Friday. I'm hopelessly behind. Zilla has her finals this week. One today, one tomorrow and one Weds. I guess I will just do what I can and say heck to the rest.
I wish I really could be that non-plussed by this sort of thing but after living with renovation for the last 5 years (my husband bless his heart wants to do most major projects himself) I am so tired of not having the house together.
I'm sort of in a bleak mood today. At times I wish I had it together a bit more than I do. I guess I will just tell myself that I have 10 years of backlog and I've only been regaining my health for the last 6 months of that time and it will get better.
Back to scrubbing, sorting and baby-proofing!
This is officially the lamest blog post I've ever done.
The graduation party is Friday. I'm hopelessly behind. Zilla has her finals this week. One today, one tomorrow and one Weds. I guess I will just do what I can and say heck to the rest.
I wish I really could be that non-plussed by this sort of thing but after living with renovation for the last 5 years (my husband bless his heart wants to do most major projects himself) I am so tired of not having the house together.
I'm sort of in a bleak mood today. At times I wish I had it together a bit more than I do. I guess I will just tell myself that I have 10 years of backlog and I've only been regaining my health for the last 6 months of that time and it will get better.
Back to scrubbing, sorting and baby-proofing!
This is officially the lamest blog post I've ever done.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Empty Nesters Done Nesting
Are you what is now referred to as an empty nester? I prefer to say I am done nesting. Empty nest syndrome is a maladjustment to children leaving home and heading out on their own. I prefer to frame the experience as a success. You reared your children and now you are done nesting. Seems perfectly logical to me. I know I am not alone in viewing this life transition this way.
So if you are also done nesting, feel free to grab the following image and scale it to your needs to post as a widget (badge of honor for being a successful parent) on your blog. I made it today.
So if you are also done nesting, feel free to grab the following image and scale it to your needs to post as a widget (badge of honor for being a successful parent) on your blog. I made it today.
I will turn this into a badge with code when it is a bit less hectic around the home front. I think I will host a Done Nesting Blog Carnival next month too.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Photos and Family History
Spent the day sorting through stuff in order to have a garage sale within a few days, and helping my husband organize the content of some boxes he brought back from being in storage in the state where he grew up. He passed through there when he came back from sabbatical on the East Coast.
My family is weird, but his family background is truly unusual. The snapshots we found today included baby and childhood photographs that I hadn't ever seen, and that he thought no longer existed. I was so glad that my daughter and her step-sister will have a more complete history of his family. Portrait photos to go with names, and houses and cars give a context that really fills out understanding of a time and place. There were semi risque pics of his mom taken by his father. They were very free-thinking people when it came to sexuality but they were arch conservatives when it came to politics and social issues. His dad was an extremely fine gunsmith. There were letters and documents in the boxes too. National Rifle Association memberships and awards, shooting club patches, and hints at Hubby's Dad's first marriage provided links that tied the photos and documents together. There are more dates to help us fill out a timeline that has always been fuzzy.
I went online and re-upped for ancestry.com and began searching. My husband always thought that he was a bastard... but that isn't really true. His parents did marry, a bit late perhaps by societal standards, but I found out when and where they married. I haven't found out much about his dad's first marriage. If there had been children I think I would have found the records from birth announcements in the newspapers.
When I was growing up my family always recited lineages as though they were litanies. It is odd to now be able to build those same sort of lineages for my husband's family even though both parents had been gone for ages by the time we married.
Personal history, family history, and the flavor of community are so difficult to capture after the fact. I'm glad we can write it down for the kids now while we still have control of most of our faculties.
I went online and re-upped for ancestry.com and began searching. My husband always thought that he was a bastard... but that isn't really true. His parents did marry, a bit late perhaps by societal standards, but I found out when and where they married. I haven't found out much about his dad's first marriage. If there had been children I think I would have found the records from birth announcements in the newspapers.
When I was growing up my family always recited lineages as though they were litanies. It is odd to now be able to build those same sort of lineages for my husband's family even though both parents had been gone for ages by the time we married.
Personal history, family history, and the flavor of community are so difficult to capture after the fact. I'm glad we can write it down for the kids now while we still have control of most of our faculties.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Bucket List or Dream List
Ok, here goes:
- Number one on the list is definitely to get the book on healing MSbP abuse done and spend a while on marketing it.
- The Gene Stratton-Porter biography is high priority too after MSbP book.
- A month of wearing wool sweaters, eating oatmeal, and writing in a stone cottage on an island (Hebrides - maybe Skye) just off the Scottish coast has always been a dream.
- Touring through the desolate wilderness of Patagonia in South America.
- Spending a week in Paris with time spent between the Musée du Louvre and the Museo de Orsay.
- Redeveloping my relationship with my husband so that we are best friends again.
- Having a garden again.
- Making bread again.
- Getting up to 400 plus as my regular score in Scrabble®.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Holiday Juggling Squared Feeds A Writing Experiment
Oh I wish I had time to write the way I would like to write. The coming Holidays, my 21 year old's graduation from university, her birthday, my husband's 35 year old daughter, her husband who is adapting to have a prosthetic lower leg, and their twin 1 year old daughters, and her birthday all arrive within a few days of each other.
I am challenging myself to write through the frenzy of the next month. Writing provides comfort, entertainment, solace, political engagement, and occasionally income for me. I have always written on a keyboard. My first big purchase in life was when I was 16 and I purchased a professional office model Royal electric typewriter. Crisp, tidy, inviting words that I put on a page have been a near daily occurrence for decades of my life. I like to revise, edit, and hone each piece. Many, many times my creative thoughts and fingers are racing so very much faster than my internal editor can run.
Blogging, especially on a daily basis, requires a spontaneous, yet rigorous, process of writing to create a product. At least it does in my world where I don't have hour upon hour to spend crafting a final Blog product every day. Writing poetry, and writing, and rewriting papers and research reports were the mainstays of my "keyboarded" writing for ages, letter writing and journaling were the purview of pen-in-hand. Blogging combines these modes of writing that, for those of us who learned to compose on paper and then transcribe via a typewriter, come into being through different brain to hand, neural pathways and processes.
A further difference, for old fogey types' such as "Done Nesters," is that we would also nearly always do a complete rewrite as we retyped from penultimate draft to final copy. This is how we learned to create coherent pieces of writing. This differs from how the bloggers who learned to write on personal computers and laptops create their product. Most blogs also require a personality-infused style of writing that is somewhat at odds with the multiple edits and more formal style of writing that lots of 40-plus writers have as their default.
So, I am giving myself permission, in this coming month of tightly scheduled events and impromptu family activities, to write for two hours every morning. This will keep me sane. This also will require getting up at an absolutely ungodly hour and going to the gym, then writing from 7 until 9 a.m., and letting my family know that joint enterprise breakfasts will begin to be made by us as a group endeavor at 9 a.m. What this will also promote, at least that is my plan, is the honing of my quick write skills when time is crunched but there is a wealth of material from which to draw upon in those limited moments of writing time.
This wealth truly is a wealth that is made up of many rich blessings: my darling baby all grown up and moving away to go to grad school, twin one year old grand baby girls visiting our home for the first time, a son-in-law who is a wonderful writer and is adjusting amazingly well to a changed body after life-altering boating accident, and my wonderful step daughter who works in the New York publishing industry and has said she might be able to shop around my memoir about growing up in rural, bucolic isolation on one of the last truly old fashioned farms while surviving the rearing of a mother who today would be classified as suffering from the factitious disorder, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. These are all very exciting elements in and pf themselves, let alone together!
I know my limiting and enabling constraints; I can churn out acceptable copy the first thing in the morning. Without fail this is when my best writing is done. While there is the occasional instance to prove my generalization wrong, the quality of my writing decreases with every passing hour of the day. With so much that I want to capture there should not be any lack of subject or motivation, so I just have to stick to the schedule and work on what I guess I will think of as flow for lack of a better word. Flow for me means combining the personal creativity of what I think of as journal and letter writing energy with the final draft polish and editing vibes that keyboarding provides for me.
I will have an overflowing basket of observations, rituals, and discoveries to provide prompts and topics aplenty to feed my urges to communicate in writing, and I have the schedule in place to facilitate my best effort; so, there is actually method to my seeming madness. Sometimes the busiest time is the best time to blend in a new ingredient, this time the combining of types of writing into my own style of blogging that captures the best features of both types.
Do you agree, or am I taking on too much?
I am challenging myself to write through the frenzy of the next month. Writing provides comfort, entertainment, solace, political engagement, and occasionally income for me. I have always written on a keyboard. My first big purchase in life was when I was 16 and I purchased a professional office model Royal electric typewriter. Crisp, tidy, inviting words that I put on a page have been a near daily occurrence for decades of my life. I like to revise, edit, and hone each piece. Many, many times my creative thoughts and fingers are racing so very much faster than my internal editor can run.
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Blogging, especially on a daily basis, requires a spontaneous, yet rigorous, process of writing to create a product. At least it does in my world where I don't have hour upon hour to spend crafting a final Blog product every day. Writing poetry, and writing, and rewriting papers and research reports were the mainstays of my "keyboarded" writing for ages, letter writing and journaling were the purview of pen-in-hand. Blogging combines these modes of writing that, for those of us who learned to compose on paper and then transcribe via a typewriter, come into being through different brain to hand, neural pathways and processes.
A further difference, for old fogey types' such as "Done Nesters," is that we would also nearly always do a complete rewrite as we retyped from penultimate draft to final copy. This is how we learned to create coherent pieces of writing. This differs from how the bloggers who learned to write on personal computers and laptops create their product. Most blogs also require a personality-infused style of writing that is somewhat at odds with the multiple edits and more formal style of writing that lots of 40-plus writers have as their default.
So, I am giving myself permission, in this coming month of tightly scheduled events and impromptu family activities, to write for two hours every morning. This will keep me sane. This also will require getting up at an absolutely ungodly hour and going to the gym, then writing from 7 until 9 a.m., and letting my family know that joint enterprise breakfasts will begin to be made by us as a group endeavor at 9 a.m. What this will also promote, at least that is my plan, is the honing of my quick write skills when time is crunched but there is a wealth of material from which to draw upon in those limited moments of writing time.
This wealth truly is a wealth that is made up of many rich blessings: my darling baby all grown up and moving away to go to grad school, twin one year old grand baby girls visiting our home for the first time, a son-in-law who is a wonderful writer and is adjusting amazingly well to a changed body after life-altering boating accident, and my wonderful step daughter who works in the New York publishing industry and has said she might be able to shop around my memoir about growing up in rural, bucolic isolation on one of the last truly old fashioned farms while surviving the rearing of a mother who today would be classified as suffering from the factitious disorder, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. These are all very exciting elements in and pf themselves, let alone together!
I know my limiting and enabling constraints; I can churn out acceptable copy the first thing in the morning. Without fail this is when my best writing is done. While there is the occasional instance to prove my generalization wrong, the quality of my writing decreases with every passing hour of the day. With so much that I want to capture there should not be any lack of subject or motivation, so I just have to stick to the schedule and work on what I guess I will think of as flow for lack of a better word. Flow for me means combining the personal creativity of what I think of as journal and letter writing energy with the final draft polish and editing vibes that keyboarding provides for me.
I will have an overflowing basket of observations, rituals, and discoveries to provide prompts and topics aplenty to feed my urges to communicate in writing, and I have the schedule in place to facilitate my best effort; so, there is actually method to my seeming madness. Sometimes the busiest time is the best time to blend in a new ingredient, this time the combining of types of writing into my own style of blogging that captures the best features of both types.
Do you agree, or am I taking on too much?
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
My rough notes from Captain Mark Kelly's Talk Tonight.
The talk is sponsored by the Tucson Festival of Books. My husband is p.o.ed that the Arizona Daily Star had the first 12 rows reserved for "VIPs."
The event was to start at 7:30 p.m. with everyone in their seats by 7:15 but there was security theater getting inane everyone was outside waiting in line in the cold as the very slow progression to get in finally started.
Someone is at the podium speaking about the Festival's good works.
New mayor and some council members in attendance.
M.K. will sign.
Message from Gabby. Month ago.
Kid in a space suit.
Physical, occupational, an hour each and a couple hours in speech therapy.
Injury: leg improves - right arm doesn't.
Stamina is very good.
Why the book? Telling the story to remember it. "Seemed like the right thing to do." They aged to tell all personally. Jeff Laslo collaborated with them. Couple hours a day driving and talking to him.
Grew up in neighborhood where the Sopranos was set as the son of two cops.
Twins.
1st date in prison. China/young leaders. Long distance.
Still haven't taken honeymoon. "Need to work that in."
Exactly the same personality. Right brain wounds alter personality.
He'd rate comprehension at 100 percent. Maybe 98.
Not like a stroke.
Caregiver of crew or Gabby. Prior skills in complex decision, planning, organizing. Advocate.marriage - that is what he signed up for.
She is positive, determined... Does not want to miss therapy, even for President Obama.
Gave her cane she walked to garage and threw it out.
Healthcare: we've made poor choices.
Limited amount of therapy. 10 yrs. With one month of therapy. A few months in a row would have fixed everything.
"Try not to mess up."
Remember that Michelle Obama is very tall.
Neonatal room with bed . No sleep 8th or 9th then decided decisions required sleep.
2nd opinion group think equal stupid. Ask a junior person's opinion. None of us is as dumb as all of us. In group Conf room at mission control. Told that to surgeons in care mtgs. Demanded a second opinion.
Gabby forced him to get 7 second opinions when he had prostate cancer. No way brain surgery with out.
Google effect. Gabby's mushrooming "presence." Bothered him at first. He got over that.
Daughters. Distant and strained relation teens.
Even worst things have good things come out.
On Bono, "Gabby is in love with both of us."
he had met gabby before. Same picture on her desk.
Danger of space flight. Courage learned from Gabby. 2007. 39 flights and 2 space flights and he didn't have the dangerous profession.
Patience. Learned to be patient.
She is a compassionate person.
Learned a lot from writing.
At Mesa verde school earlier today. Yearbook from school taken into space. the most impact from all of this year, Ron Barber, Gabriel's death? No - 9 yr old girl. Tragic. Christina Taylor Green.
Compartmentalization. Helped. Training for care giving and space flight. It helped. Focus you learn to - to fly. For moments in time to be able to forget about every thing else.
GG coming back to Tucson? Decision still to bemade. Eventually spend all of time in Tucson.
Continuing service is probably a motivator.
She wants to continue - time will tell.
Her office is still functioning. Everything but voting. Shooting on sat. Office open Monday.
Marches out the door every morning.
Will decide on anniversary events.
Next for him? "My job is to make sure she can run for office."
Audience questions.
Sarah Palin... Not yet, I 'm waiting.
Wash your bananas.
Destruction of rain forest seen from space. 2001 2011 clearly see the destruction. Atmosphere isn't that big.
Brain injury Iraq -- therapy early and for a long enough time. Treat early and enough.
E.T. - Paused???? Small sharp teeth and live under bed.
Book signing line outside (again) in the COLD. We didn't stay for the signing.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Baking with Stevia
Today I began experimenting with how to bake with stevia. Unfortunately I am out of eggs and butter. The Stevia in the Raw that I used had printed instructions saying that I could use it like sugar 1 to 1. I just make a no egg cakey sweet bread with whole wheat flour, a bit of baking powder and stevia instead of sugar and oil instead of eggs. I also used kiefer yogurt, a banana, and vanilla. It turned out edible but with an aftertaste of stevia.
This is a good start for learning to bake without sugar, using whole grains, and yogurt, but I have a long way to go.
Next experiment will be with unbleached white flour, eggs, and butter and about half as much stevia with apples rather than banana.
I baked this version in a 9 inch lined cake pan with the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. I also need to lower the temperature a little or decrease the cooking time a bit.
Eating it with butter and a glass of milk made it more palatable. I'm thinking that using it like bread and eating it with peanut butter smeared on it might be good.
An almond and cinnamon crumb topping might also be good.
I enjoy baking but I need to do it in a healthy way and sugar and fake sugars are not good for humans so I'm trying some alternatives. I used to use honey but I'm trying to use low glycemic ingredients.
The best page I've found on Stevia
This is a good start for learning to bake without sugar, using whole grains, and yogurt, but I have a long way to go.
Next experiment will be with unbleached white flour, eggs, and butter and about half as much stevia with apples rather than banana.
I baked this version in a 9 inch lined cake pan with the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. I also need to lower the temperature a little or decrease the cooking time a bit.
Eating it with butter and a glass of milk made it more palatable. I'm thinking that using it like bread and eating it with peanut butter smeared on it might be good.
An almond and cinnamon crumb topping might also be good.
I enjoy baking but I need to do it in a healthy way and sugar and fake sugars are not good for humans so I'm trying some alternatives. I used to use honey but I'm trying to use low glycemic ingredients.
The best page I've found on Stevia
Friday, December 2, 2011
The Gifts We Give to Our Children
I am so happy that my husband and I were able to help our daughter get a nice car -- today! She will be graduated from university very soon and will head off across country on her own. I'm not a 1 percenter, no where close, not even in the same universe. So the car is not brand new. But it is a nice car, an import, has all the bells and whistles, is a couple years old, and as a certified used vehicle has a two year or 25,000 miles warranty. We were able to give her a sizable down payment so that she could afford payments on a car that will last through grad school and beyond with any fortune at all.
The gift is more than we can afford, but that is okay. The Hubby and I are both products of totally dysfunctional families that did as much to hurt us as to help us. I swore when I married and had a baby that I would raise my daughter to know that she is loved and that she would never doubt that she is entitled to have her needs met. We've done better than our parents did in raising children, but we were far, far, far from perfect parents. But we've always tried to meet her needs and prepare her to launch herself from our nest into an independent life from the best footing possible.
So if I am posting a response to the Day 2 NaBloPoMo prompt: "What was the most disappointing gift you received as a child?" and I am not sure that the above stuff relates, but anyway... I guess that the most disappointing gift I received was during third grade when my Christmas gifts were an ugly hat, a Bible, and some bath salts. I was really sad that I didn't get anything fun. But now that I'm older, this does not seem as bad as it did then. We were very poor. I still have the Bible. The gift I was most disappointed by was the most precious gift a parent can give to a child, it was what I wasn't given as a child. That was the gift of self esteem and self-worth that comes from knowledge of unconditional love.
We gave my daughter a gift today that helped her get a car, but the most important thing we've given her isn't related to physical objects or money and while that is good, it isn't good that we understand this from getting not so good things in childhood. It can and does get better though with acceptance and understanding that healing takes place not only within individuals but over generations.
The gift is more than we can afford, but that is okay. The Hubby and I are both products of totally dysfunctional families that did as much to hurt us as to help us. I swore when I married and had a baby that I would raise my daughter to know that she is loved and that she would never doubt that she is entitled to have her needs met. We've done better than our parents did in raising children, but we were far, far, far from perfect parents. But we've always tried to meet her needs and prepare her to launch herself from our nest into an independent life from the best footing possible. So if I am posting a response to the Day 2 NaBloPoMo prompt: "What was the most disappointing gift you received as a child?" and I am not sure that the above stuff relates, but anyway... I guess that the most disappointing gift I received was during third grade when my Christmas gifts were an ugly hat, a Bible, and some bath salts. I was really sad that I didn't get anything fun. But now that I'm older, this does not seem as bad as it did then. We were very poor. I still have the Bible. The gift I was most disappointed by was the most precious gift a parent can give to a child, it was what I wasn't given as a child. That was the gift of self esteem and self-worth that comes from knowledge of unconditional love.
We gave my daughter a gift today that helped her get a car, but the most important thing we've given her isn't related to physical objects or money and while that is good, it isn't good that we understand this from getting not so good things in childhood. It can and does get better though with acceptance and understanding that healing takes place not only within individuals but over generations.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Happy December!
I really want to get back to FUN posting, so I'm doing NaBloPoMo this month, December 2011. I hope to fill the month with lots of photos and fun posts about family, milestones, grandbabies, baking, and traditions.
As an early Holiday gift, I'm posting this texture (above) that I created for use in Second Life® back a couple of Decembers ago. Feel free to use it if you like in a craft project or other non-commercial use.
Similarly, feel free to use this folk-craft texture made at the same time by me with the same restriction, non-commercial use.
Same story for this one.
And this one.
Similarly, feel free to use this folk-craft texture made at the same time by me with the same restriction, non-commercial use.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Happy Birthday Grand Daughters!
Sharing something from my amazingly adept at poetic endeavors son-in-law to the Grandbabies on their first birthday, which always and forever happens to be today.
I have a picture of that summer. There’s a thunderstorm going on outside
I have a picture of that summer. There’s a thunderstorm going on outside
a picture window. Georgia you’re standing on a couch, your hands
pressed to the glass. You are smiling, but your mouth is wide open,
so it’s like you’re both smiling and trying to swallow the landscape. Josie,
you are sitting on the floor staring at Georgia. You, too, have your mouth agape.
It appears you want to swallow your sister.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
One Failure Allows Another Success
Okay, NABLOPOMO was not a success this time around. Once I started feeling better, breathing is a wonderful thing, I realized I had so much stuff to do! So my blogging every day here in June sort of like, well, failed. But I have a pantry now! Imagine me doing a happy dance, let your mind fill with pictures of celebration, as those are the only types of pics of me you will get to see. I've lost 10 lbs. since mid-May but it is going to take several more tens of lbs. to make me want to post pics of myself. But I do have pics to share with you.
First, the "before" and I need to attach a content warning. They are scary!
But first, a little bit of a story. Last year I moved the washer and drier from the tiny utility/mud room that is just off the kitchen and opens onto the side yard patio of our home. I had been plotting to do this for years! The washer and drier are in a toilet/laundry nook separated from the master suite by a pocket door as you can see to the right. 
The utility room stood devoid of old washer and drier for months storing only plastic tubs of dog food and dog treats, and a few tools and lots of dirt. Then at the end of May my hubby and I decided to finally start the remodel on the room and turn it into a pantry closer to the kitchen than the old food storage area. Here you can see the old washer and drier hook-up. 
And the view of the room from the kitchen. Yech. I did a really good job of emptying out the room, TSP-ing every surface in the room in prep. Hubby did an amazing job of re-plumbing the old washer drier hook-up into a modern version ready to go hook-up in case anyone ever wants to put a washer drier out there again. Hubby and I both did a really good job of demolition, and a good job of spackling, up to a point. That point was when Zilla decided her poor old decrepit parents were not doing it right so she took over while I was down and drugged from my septoplasty and she spackled and sanded for days, which drove Hubby bonkers but he was headed out of town for a conference shortly after my surgery anyway so there wasn't much he could do.
So, Zilla and I finished off the room except for the trim around the doors and floor. We will put all the trim in at the same time we install that sort of trim in several rooms that we tiled a couple years ago. I still have to put up curtains too, but I have to hem them first.
Finishing off the room included: lots of measuring to see what would fit, spackling, paint prep., priming, painting one wall and ceiling yellow, one wall green, and two walls blue. It also included getting shelves for above the door storage of Christmas ceramics and linens.
The green wall is now graced by Talavera accents that we purchased at Mi Casa. I cannot speak highly enough of the proprietors who were gracious, quick to help without hovering, and very knowledgeable. If you are in Tucson and want something with a Southwestern or Mexican feel, Mi Casa is the place to go for great gifts and home decor at a reasonable price. I had been dreading the day my husband comes home with a cow skull, which he has been threatening to do for years, as an art piece so I managed to get him a ceramic one that will fill that void (yes, I'm rolling my eyes here) in his life. 
We celebrated the initial done-ness of the new pantry with a sumptuous Cauliflower Cheese Pie (recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook) that is an hash brown encrusted vegetarian (not vegan) main dish baked in a large pie pan. I made the main dish, zilla created the salad, and we all (hubby included) enjoyed the celebratory dinner. So I did not get posting done every day this month. But I did gain a pantry. I'm happy.
Monday, June 20, 2011
What I've learned from Nablopomo Thus Far
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| Image from sxc.hu by pawel_231 |
So I think I'm doing fairly well with this exercise in training and promotion. In fact, I'm thinking about doing this for another blog I write for the month of July. Will have to decide which of my blogs is the one I will do. To make things a bit better, though, I will:
- have at least one thematic day each week
- do daily postings only on the featured blog of the month
- 5 or fewer posts per week on non-monthly focus blogs
- have more than one alternate publication schedule:
Image from sxc.hu by bredmaker
- weekdays
- Tues, Thurs, Sat.
- Mon, Weds, Fri.
- weekly on the weekends
- have 3 to 4 emergency blog posts back logged on day 1
- have all posts ready the day before publication
- set post publication via auto publish
Regular posting for multiple blogs is not a trivial matter. I'd love to know how those of you out there who maintain several blogs manage to do it.
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