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It’s funny what triggers happy memories, sad memories, nostalgic memories. I was reading one of my photo magazines yesterday and I reached into my nightstand to find a bookmark and I found a Panera gift card, so I used that. It made me a little sad because my best friend of 56 years gave me that gift cart for my birthday a few years ago. She passed away at the age of 70 last December. I will always keep this card even though it’s useless. As I sit here writing this, I can see a journal she gave me for another birthday, in which I keep photo project notes, and a candle that is sitting on a bookcase that was also a gift from her.

On another bookcase, I can see a little stuffed scarecrow doll that was a gift from my other best friend who died in 2012. On my nightstand, I have a beautiful paperweight she gave me, and in my dining room on top of my grandmother’s sewing cabinet, there is an interesting glass container of river stones she bought me because she knew I love rocks.

I kind of feel my good friends whenever I see these things, so maybe my friend who made her transition last December is reading my magazine over my shoulder because her Panera gift card is my bookmark. I like to think she drops in to visit from time to time.

I alone in the peaceful snow,
with silent flakes catching eyelashes,
and almost breathless trees as witness,
am quiet and still without thought.

If only I could catch this and keep it.
Enter the silence when my world becomes chaotic
and go back to my original unencumbered self.
The one that entered naked from the void,
without all the dust and debris of life
sticking to my soul.

My face is wet, my hair is frizzed,
I'm sitting in my underwear.
The sun is baking everything,
Not my choice of weather here.

Hot and sticky, feeling icky.
I just want some cooler air now.
What a contrast Summer-Winter,
I can't wait to see the snow plow.

I have had enough of this,
Give me frigid snowy bliss.
Give me afghans, gloves and coats.
Give me soup and hot-cooked oats.

Wrap me up in woolly clothes,
Fuzzy slippers on my toes.
You may think I've gone quite daft,
But now I'd settle for a draft
Of cooler air so I could sleep
In comfort once and not in heat.

You know, I’m in a mood lately. I have to stop watching the news. It’s just too depressing. And I’m becoming an angrier person. This is not right. This is not me.

There are many forms of addiction and I have somewhat become addicted to the news. This is not healthy, especially lately. There’s too much hatred and bigotry being outwardly expressed now. It used to be that people were polite to each other even if they held distasteful beliefs about others in private. They might talk about you in a negative way when walking away from you but they wouldn’t call you a horrible name to your face. That’s no longer the case. Whether you consider yourself a conservative, a liberal or a moderate in your political views, there is no excuse whatsoever to judge a group of people by their ethnic heritage, nor is there any excuse for judging an individual before you know anything about them based on their appearance, their race, their lifestyle choices, or their religious beliefs. This is basic stuff people. Nor is it ok to belittle someone and put them down, call them an idiot if you don’t agree with their point of view.

I can’t believe some of the crap being spewed on Facebook, and I’m talking about from adults, especially older adults. What gives you the right just because you disagree with someone to call them an asshole or an idiot? What give s you the right to proclaim your point of view is the only one that counts? Why do you not care about other people at all? In other words WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

For those of you who participate in this trolling behavior, GROW UP. You’re not the be all and end all of social commentary protocol. You are just mean-spirited and miserable. Get over yourself and start acting like an adult.

I have a fan on my bathroom ceiling that stopped working a while ago because water got in through the vent on the roof and fried the motor. Thank goodness it didn't cause a fire, but after that, I had to put a bucket under that vent when it rained because it would slowly drip on the bathroom floor due to what I can only guess were rotten boards under my roof shingles. Finally, after a winter of kicking the bucket, we got a good estimate and got a new roof - or at least re-shingled and had the leaky part replaced.

Story of my life lately. I take care of the major repairs, but I cant motivate myself to clear out the basement (that nobody ever sees so who cares?) that is full of broken exercise equipment (including a treadmill) and other junk - boxes of old vinyl records and broken computers and lamps. And I cant get myself to do a major book purge - my one hoarding tendency. There has been a small pile of books in my entryway hall for a few months now destined for the library, and theres no snow on the porch finally, so whats my excuse? There are books upstairs on my three giant bookcases I have not touched since I got them and probably will never read. OK, as a visual artist, I can see the need to have several reference books, but lets face it, in this digital age Im never going to have a darkroom, so why would I need a book on developing my own film? and Ill never teach myself Norwegian (a goodly part of my ethnic heritage) so why do I need a book on Norwegian grammar? I will also never make my own paper - but somehow I really want to keep that one because I actually read it and find it interesting.

We wont mention the two or three duplicates I have of some books because I forgot I already bought them. Good thing Amazon has that little Purchased on. with a date above a book when you look at it now.

Lately, Ive been purchasing field guides so I can identify the tree or butterfly Ive photographed and Im finding those useful, but they are on one of the piles on my bedroom floor because there is no place to put them on my book shelves. This has to be remedied.

About 6 months ago, I brought out some books that I've had for several years about professional photographers in various genres - fashion, closeup, wildlife, portraits, and I was appalled at how bad these photos were. The portraits book is still impressive and so was the landscape book. Im keeping those two, but what did I do with the three disappointing ones? Did I put them in the pile by the door? No, of course not, I took them back upstairs.

I know I probably have some hoarding tendencies. My father (as I found out the hard way when he died) was a bit of a hoarder. Heck, I still have old flip phones and my blackberry in the closet even though I haven’t used it for three years now and its BROKEN, but my worst addiction is books.

I was going to go out with the camera either today or tomorrow, but its kind of cloudy today, so I think I will wait until tomorrow when the sun is supposed to stay our all day, and Im going to grit my teeth and add to the pile by the door. Maybe even put some books in my trunk. One step closer to breaking the addiction.

I’m planning on joining my local art association soon and I have a few photos printed to mat and bag for their store. I have close to 3,000 images to choose from so I was having a hard time deciding what to print.

I printed about 25 of my favorites and put them in a portfolio for further consideration. I have been thinking this entire time I should have printed this one. I should have printed that one.

This morning I had a realization. You may read this next part and say Well, DUH!, but Im almost embarrassed to write this. I thought You have some photos that have sold more than one time. Why don’t you print and mat those! Wow, where has my brain been? Several of my local photos have sold and the lady in the store said they sell a lot of local images. I didn’t print any of those.

What a giant brain mishap. Ok, so Im going to use up some more ink and print the stuff that has SOLD already. Sometimes I need a 2 x 4 to the head, you know?

I have mentioned my book-hoarding tendencies in previous blog posts. Yes, Im still a book hoarder. Sort ofI once spent two days searching for a thin book on composition that I thought I might have gotten rid of and which people were asking $75.00 for on Amazon resellers. When I finally found it, I put it somewhere I could always find it. I forget right now where that is. I may have to look later for my own peace of mind.

But I digress. I have way too many books for 4 wall-to-ceiling bookcases and three more short book cases which left 3 large piles on my bedroom floor. My bedroom is about 13 x 15, so its not tiny and the piles were against the wall by my side of the bed and on the other side of the tall bookcase, and not actually in anyones path, except when the piles by the bed would fall over, then it was hard for me to get into my nightstand.

Please, before I go on, I must insist I do read everything I buy. Well, almost everything I buy. Ok, at least half of what I buy, but a lot of things are strictly reference, and you don’t read those cover to cover - Audubon field guides and knitting pattern books, for example.

Being dismayed by the number of piles in my bedroom and the number of books shoved into a wall nook in my daughters old room, which consists of two shelves probably 3 1/2 feet deep and 3 feet wide (more suited for extra linens than books), I decided it was time for another purge. I had slowly built a few piles up in the short hallway by my front door, that were slated to go out. I started piling books there maybe 6 months ago.

This week, the piles by the bed and the piles by the door finally got to me. I cleared off the second shelf in my daughters room - now my guest room - and took some of my keepers up there. Im proud to say, I only filled a fraction of that shelf. I put several more books from this shuffling around by the front door so there were 4 significant piles there, and Friday, I took every single book out to my trunk and filled it completely - at least 150 books, consisting of books I had read, books that were out of date, books that were not what I expected when I ordered them, and yes, the occasional duplicate I had because I had forgotten I already owned it (maybe 2 or 3 of those).

Pathetic, I know.

Yesterday I drove to the local Meijer, which has a drop box in the back of the parking lot from Book world or World of books - cant remember the name exactly, and put each and every book in that slot - well, except I rescued two books I just couldn’t part with, but thats pretty good for a book hoarder, yes? I mean, Im looking for some kudos here or a well done. Not looking for someone to say you still have a problem. That was at least 150 books I put in that bin. So give a girl some credit. Ive taken over 200 books to the local library as well over the last couple of years. I worked long and hard hours to get all those books so if you try to take away the ones I really wont part with, there will be a bit of resistance. Ok, a LOT of resistance.

To close, I will say I am an amateur for sure. I watched an episode of Hoarders last week (it was a rerun, I had seen it before) about a couple who had approximately 400,000 books in their house. You had to walk sideways between the book cases. How their floors didn’t collapse, I have no idea. The city was going to be inspecting their property so they decided they needed to do something about the hoard. When the show was done, they had removed over 20,000 books from the living room and kitchen ONLY (this house had several rooms). Apparently they have been working on purging slowly ever since.

Ok, I maybe still own 300 books. Lets see, 24 book shelves times 20 books average per shelf - thats 400 books. Plus the overflow (theres still a pile between my dressers) and on one shelf in my guest room) so maybe 450 books. These people had 400,000!! I cant even imagine that. It takes me an hour sometimes to a find book I want to refer to but that should be much easier for me now that most everything is on a bookshelf. I don’t know how these people could even remember what they actually owned.

We wont discuss the few books I have in the closet in my sons old room. At least I don’t have any shoved under the bed. Well, I don’t THINK I do..

I have been enjoying discussions in the forum threads for the most part since I started participating about a year after I joined the site. I wrote a blog similar to this a while back when someone started a thread with a rather blanket statement at which I personally took offense. Since then, when someone puts forth an idea or asks a question, or makes a blanket statement about something, I'm familiar enough with the personalities involved after reading their contributions in most cases for well over a year, to either want to engage in a dialogue with them, tell them politely they are an idiot (not in those words, of course) or just ignore them completely so they will hopefully shut up and go away.

Please note - I'm not being sarcastic in this particular blog post. I'm not irritated, offended angry, frustrated or anything else. A lot has been written lately in the discussion threads about how we cannot read body language or see facial expressions or hear vocal inflections in someone's typed comment, so I just want to make it clear to anyone who reads this blog they should take it as intended - that is a light-hearted and amused look at personality types and the way they come across in the social areas here. Also, when I use the pronoun "he" it's meant in the generic sense, only because we have no neuter pronouns in English. There are women who fall into these categories as well. I also know there are well-known categories of web personalities - these are just my take on those I have encountered lately.

The "Normal" Contributor

This type of poster may start a thread asking for advice or posting a somewhat abstract question asking for a lively and/or serious debate, and responds to each contributor, even the insulting ones, with humor, reason and restraint in order to keep the thread on topic and to not let it turn into a free-for-all allowing the not-so-restrained personalities to take over and turn the thread into a food fight.

The Blowhard

This person comes into a thread just to argue. He generally doesn't stick strictly to the narrow parameters of the topic as originally posted but feels he has to expand the discussion beyond the scope of what was put forward and he makes "pronouncements" about how things should be without any phrasing such as "in my opinion" or as I see it in response to any counter arguments or opinions stated. This personality often repeats the same statements 20 different ways throughout a discussion thread to the point where the rest of us are finally rolling our eyes and wanting to tell this person You really do love to hear your own voice, don’t you? Why don’t you just go bake some cookies or something? this poster joins in almost every thread, even if its a subject he knows nothing about just to hear himself type - so to speak.

The Wise but unintentionally (or perhaps sub-consciously) Condescending poster

There are those here who have many years experience at the subject being discussed and can make substantive contributions to said subject, but cannot help but introduce the subtle put-down into their statements directed at one of the other contributors such as you’ll realize after you do such-and-such for as long as I have that you’re wrong about what you just stated - often stating this without having any idea at all how much experience the person they are speaking to has in the area in question. Ive had people do this to me personally, and I love to come back with Ive been doing such-and-such for over 40 years, and I DO know what Im talking about, (thank you very much). Some of these people also make pronouncements that other people do not know how hard what they do is, when any of us in any discipline know NOTHING is easy, simply by the fact that we’ve lived. Theres no need to keep telling people over and over you’ve walked on hot coals and suffered greatly to get to where you are, just to negate someone else’s statement and to imply the other persons contribution to the thread doesn’t matter because they don’t have the exact same life experiences. This type of poster perhaps does set me off a little more than some of the others, because unlike the "blowhard", who can be easily identified, this poster, in the attempt to appear humble, shows subtle contempt for others and/or the need for acknowledgement in his/her accomplishments and is not humble at all despite protests to the contrary, and is clearly patronizing even if it is a subconscious behavior on their part.

The Intellectual but Ineffectual Writer

I haven’t seen this type too much lately, but there have been those contributors who come across like self-perceived intellectuals with run-on sentences that are hard for anyone to read no matter their level of schooling, some containing grammatical errors making their entire post read like Lewis Carols Jabberwocky. Most of the time, whatever point they are trying to make gets lost in the attempted complexity of their sentence structure and a mass of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, and this persons post just disrupts and slows down the rest of the thread while the rest of us stop to try and figure out what the heck they are trying to say.

The Tongue in Cheek One Line Contributors

I like these guys. They can smell out BS quicker than most people here and know when to throw in that one-line zinger that generally wont get them banned from the forum, but is their way of saying to the previous poster you have got to be kidding me - do you really expect the rest of us to take that seriously? I often wish I had thought of what these guys have just said that so aptly tells the original poster they are being an A-hole.

The Whiner

These are people who come into the threads only to complain about how lousy the site is because they haven’t sold anything or there is an aspect of the site they think should be changed and they go on a rant about how inconvenient this or that is and they don’t understand why it was set up that way finally stating that they are taking their toys and going home. Im personally kind of amused at these people and Im also glad I don’t live with one of them because they sound like that personality type that complains about EVERYTHING. It's ok to point out a bug or a feature that is not working as intended, but some people take these things waaay to seriously. Theres also a category of whiner who takes offense at perfectly innocently posted contributions of other members and reads personal insults into a post and reacts almost violently. (Im not talking about reacting to the wise but condescending poster type - thats different). I was the recipient of one such attack a long time ago to what I thought was a reasonable and non-judgmental statement. I quickly apologized in that case, but Ive since come to realize you really cant avoid insulting this type of person. This type of person hears you say Good morning and reacts by asking What do you mean by that??.

There are a few other types of contributors here, but for the most part (and in my humble opinion - smile, wink), the posters who I consider to have some mild to extreme personal issues fall into one of these categories that are not the normal contributor category. Im sure anyone reading this could probably come up with a few more.

Thanks, guys. You may irritate me, you may insult me, you may put me down, you may disparage my work and you may disagree with me, but you certainly also keep me entertained.

Ah, a three-day weekend! What every traditionally employed person waits for. It’s here an I’m in the middle of it. Although I generally don’t exhibit any ADD behavior, give me three days off in a row and I bounce into walls. I can’t figure out what to do with myself until the weekend is almost over. So I sit and think “Should I read? Should I go out with the camera? Should I just watch tv? Should I stare at my navel?”

I could always clean my house, but what fun is that? I did go out with the camera yesterday and will probably go out again tomorrow, but today here I set watching “Say yes to the dress.”

Why is it so hard for me to pin down what I want to do in my free time? I would go out with the camera, but the skies are that kind of high-clouds hazy blue I don’t really like. I’ve also run out of ideas as to what to shoot around here, so I got on the internet and typed in “Things to photograph in Saint Clair County”. There was a list of a few things they considered photogenic including a few historic homes and some locations I have already photographed, but the list actually also contained a couple of drainage ditch bridges. Really? I’ve seen those bridges and I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would hang a picture of these concrete monstrosities on their wall.

Maybe sometimes it’s ok to not have a direction. Maybe I should just let this ship sail wherever it takes me. As log as it doesn’t sale over to the vacuum cleaner or the kitchen mop, I’ll be fine.

You know when you were growing up, ladies, and your mother told you “You have to get your work done before you can play”? How does one shake that off? I “should” get off my rear end and vacuum. I threw out a dead plant a couple of days ago, and I swept up the dead leaves of said plant with my little carpet roller-sweeper thing - you know, the kind they use in restaurants to sweep up crumbs - but I’ve been starting at the dead leaves right against my door wall ever since. I “should” get out my regular vacuum cleaner and use the hose attachment to suck up the rest of those leaves, but I don’t feel like it.

It’s very foggy this morning, and I “should” grab my camera and go down to the river to shoot the old pilings in fog, but I’ve done that from every angle I can think of already so I don’t feel like it. Besides, it’s so foggy on the river when it’s like this, I can’t get any shots of the freighters. You can’t even see them in this weather even though they are close to the docks.

I “should” get in the shower right now, but I don’t feel like it. I’m not going anywhere today so I’ll wait unit later.

I “should” do some online work, I’m slightly motivated to do that, but I don’t feel like it right now. Maybe later.

I “should” get the Christmas tree out - it’s small so it only takes me about half an hour to get it out and set it up and decorate it, but I don’t feel like doing it right now, so maybe later.

I “should” do the laundry. We went to our son’s house in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving and all that travel laundry is in the basket, but I don’t fee like doing it, to maybe tomorrow.

So what am I left with here? I have not made a blog post for a couple of months, so I “should” write one. I guess that’s what this is.

The quantum physics people say that “thoughts are things”, so maybe if I think about sucking up those leaves and getting out the Christmas tree and doing my online work and showering and getting some shots of the foggy docks and doing the laundry, it will all get done - let’s test that theory and see if it works, shall we?

Oh, yeah, here’s my blog post. Got something accomplished today. Yeah!

Throughout my photographic journey, I've come to realize, as everyone else who makes art realizes, I connect with some subjects and not with others. I'm partway through the book "The Zen of Creativity" by John Daido Loori and I'm enjoying it very much. His description of connecting with your subject before you shoot it brought very much to the surface what I was trying to do before, but I was previously doing it on a subconscious level.

I'm now consciously developing a relationship with an old dock downtown where I live, along with some old pilings around it. I've shot that dock from every angle I can think of. I have not, however, had enough guts to climb out on the other old dock next to it because even though I can swim, that water is frigid and I don't want to have to replace my camera equipment. Heaven only knows how strong that dock is.

I'm taking photos of this old dock and the one next to it in every season and in every weather condition and the water around them is an entirely different color depending on the time of day. Sometimes the water is green because it's overcast and the algae on the retaining wall and the rocks and the old pilings gives the water its color. When it's afternoon and sunny, the blue sky overcomes much of the green and the water is a beautiful blue. Sometimes the color lies in between. My favorite condition of all, however, is when the old docks and pilings are in dense fog. They seem to be floating in space and are quite other-worldly. The only thing that shatters the silence and peacefulness at the shore in very dense fog is the occasional freighter horn. Trust me, if you don't hear the thing creeping up on you and she sounds that horn while she's going by before you see her, well, you had better not be right at the edge of the dock because you may end up in the water from an involuntary startle response.

But back to my dock, I suppose I should not have favorites, but like Charlie Brown and his Christmas tree, I favor the poor broken dock over his more in-tact cousin. I get more comments and views on the more "perfect" dock, but my poor broken friend gets more of my attention every time I go there.

On a happy note, someone finally bought the historic inn right next to these beautiful old reminders of boating past, and is going to restore it. It has been vacant for a few years and needs some work, but the buyer is supposedly motivated to keep the charm and eventually open it for business again. I will be very happy to see the inn come back to its former glory - it's on the National Register of Historic Places - but I can't help but wonder what he will do with the old docks. Will he have them removed? Will my rickety old friend be taken away and replaced with something shiny and new? People used to dock there on a summer day to eat at the hotel dining room after a day out on the river. Since my friend is broken and unstable, I think he will probably be replaced, but until then I will continue the relationship and when he's gone, at least I will have several portrait of him to remind me of his silent, stately beauty.

I am getting older and as any older person can tell you it's quite common to get to a point in your life when you reassess some of the things you have done all your life and finally you say "Why am I doing this?". I Have what a lot of older people have which is a condition whereby my eyes are continually dry. I also have slightly darker skin under my eyes than the rest of my face, which is a family trait. I have for more years than I can count worn cover stick (makeup for under the eyes for you guys out there who are not up on your makeup terminology) and in the last two or three years, I've found that my eyes are sensitive to it and get irritated and even dryer.

Last week I shook off that last holdout of feminine vanity and forsook the cover stick which was the last vestige of makeup I was still wearing. It was liberating. Although I'm not ready to stop wearing a bra in public or stop bathing and washing my hair, I found that nobody ran away from me in horror or stared because I was not wearing cover stick. In fact, I don't look that much different without it unless I've been deprived of sleep for 24 hours, in which case I do look like I have gone a couple of rounds with Mohamed Ali.

The older I get, the less I care what the outside world thinks about me and I'm finding it exhilarating. I have nothing bad to say about older ladies who wear a tasteful amount of makeup, but I see far too many women in their 60s and 70s piling it on thicker every year making a person afraid to give them a kiss on the cheek or a cheek to cheek hug for fear of having to shower afterward. We will not discuss in detail the look of base makeup and powder accumulation in wrinkles (shudder).

Too many "mature" ladies are trying to hold onto their youth and to appear attractive to the opposite sex. I think what they don't realize is if a mature man is attracted to you it has nothing to do with your face (or very little anyway).

My husband has not noticed any difference in my appearance, and, indeed, I've worn less and less makeup every year until last week when I finally started going facially "naked".

Now you many think this blog entry is kind of silly and unimportant in the grander scheme of things, and you would be partly right, but just stop and think for a minute about the stuff that controls you instead of the stuff you control.

I no longer worry about what people think of me when I lie down on the boardwalk by the river in town to take a photo of a dew-draped spider web in fog along the railing.

And I do it now with a naked face.

I'm infatuated with all rocks and trees. I take at least five photographs of trees every time I go out with my camera. The problem comes in when it's time to describe what I've captured. I am botanically stupid. I have tree field guides but some trees look a lot like others and I can't always distinguish. I WANT to study trees - their usual habitats, their characteristics, the varieties around the world, but there's only so much time in the day and I'm still fully employed.

I also never met a rock I didn't like. I have several photos for sale of the beautiful lichen-covered granite in Acadia National Park - images of the stunning red rock formations near Sedona, Arizona and several other rocky locations through the country. I know slightly more about geology than I know about trees simply because geology has always fascinated me and I've actually read more about it.

It's hard when you become fascinated by a subject and you don't have time to study it well. I hate being "outside looking in" so to speak. I want to actually know what I'm talking about. It would be nice to be able to remember everything you read about everything. I could read a field guide one time in that case and actually know what I'm looking at when I'm out in the field.

This is just a small lamentation about what I have not had time to incorporate fully into my life. For now, I will just content myself with capturing the beauty and mystery around me with my camera, and if I live to be 100, perhaps I can squeeze in some learning along the way and have a deeper understanding of what I'm seeing through the viewfinder.

I have rabbits in my backyard. They live in the foliage under two large pine trees. Occasionally, I see a new group of little bunnies running around and I know Mr. and Mrs. Bunny have a new batch of youngsters.

In the past few months I have noticed a strange phenomenon. One of the adult rabbits will come out of hiding when it rains, pick a spot on the lawn and just sit there for hours. Today he has been sitting under one of my maple trees in the same spot, unmoving for over six hours.

I'm not making this up. He doesn't change locations, he doesn't move his head. The first time he did this, he was laying down in the grass and after a while I was afraid perhaps he had died there, but he eventually moved several hours later.

Today, he is sitting straight and staring into space. I wonder what could be going through that little bunny brain. This is the most Buddha-like rabbit I've ever seen. I have been calling him "Mr. Bunny", but I think it would be more appropriate if I change that to "Zen Bunny".

Maybe we can all take a lesson from Zen Bunny. Just slow down and be "one with the grass" once in a while.

I have not made a blog entry for quite a while now as there has been nothing come to mind that would be interesting to share, but lately I have been falling into a habit that I don’t want to encourage, so I thought I would share it here. The first step to recovery, of course, is to admit that you have a problem. I’ve been sucked in and I really want to stop now. I’m talking, of course, about Youtube videos.

Oh, those cute, funny animal clips! The cockatiel who bops to the music, or the kitty chasing fish on an i-pad, or the mother elephant helping her baby climb a hill. Let’s not forget the stunning surprise singers on Britain’s got talent, or America’s got talent or Japan’s got talent, the X Factor, the Voice, etc……

Lately I’ve found when I’m indecisive about what to do with my day that could generously be called productive, that red and white logo sucks me in and before I know it, I’m watching blooper reels from tv shows that went off the air 20 years ago.

Oh, I’m not saying Youtube is a waste of time. I’m still employed and I find when I’m stuck trying to figure out a function in Excel, for example, Youtube comes in handy because Microsoft Help files are pretty much useless. I also occasionally put in my ear buds and listen to Tibetan singing bowls, or some soothing meditative music while I’m doing something else. However I really have to stop clicking on those videos with titles like “Greatest flash mob ever” or “Child singer shocks judges”. It’s a giant time suck and a black hole - I’ve been in that black hole and emerged several hours later having lost half a day searching for the best, the funniest and the most amazing.

I guess I’ll try to withdraw by picking up that afghan I had been knitting and had set aside for a few months. Knitting has gotten me through a few addiction withdrawals - like those evil sugar-free reese’s peanut butter cups - so maybe it can help me to not type in those seven letters that call me every time I see them promising me that a life-changing experience is just a click away.

Dreams of horrors death and fear
I don't know why they just appear
I ate too much, I ate too late
Perhaps that served to seal my fate.

From now on, nothing after eight
To eat thereafter is too late
My psyche triggers horror scenes
Of aliens and things obscene

I'd rather dream of art and love
Of grass below and skies above
So I will do the best I know
To keep it light and peaceful so
The aliens will not appear
And give me all this graying hair.

I have a lot of food sensitivities - wheat, corn, soy, oats and almonds are my worst (and caffeine, but I can�t talk about that one. Losing caffeine was like the death of a friend - sniff, sniff).

My husband, dear man, is always on the lookout for new and different gluten-free things I can eat and yesterday he came home with a box of quinoa burgers. Basically quinoa with a few other things mixed in formed into the shape of a burger.

Well, I like quinoa, so I decided I would try one for dinner last night. The directions said to run it though the toaster a couple of times, so that�s what I did. What they don�t tell you is these things completely fall apart when you try to grab them. So half the stupid patty fell into the other toast slot when I tried to lift it out of the toaster. It kept getting worse every time I grabbed at it, so I finally unplugged the toaster and dug what I could out with a fork. I had to dump the rest out of the toaster over the trash can.

You know those kinds of directions when you try to follow them make you say �what were they thinking?� Yeah, well I�m using the microwave next time.

Remember when you were a child and you visited fantastic cities, countries and even planets? You went wherever you wanted to go. You did whatever you wanted to do. You were a princess or a queen or a famous artist. You had a black belt in Karate and saved people from evil criminals. You and your friends made entire households with chalk on your driveway.

Every flower was a fascination. You explored it in detail. You followed every vein in every leaf. Frost on your window in the winter was a fascinating study in fractals and crystals and swirls. You could spend hours making endless patterns on your etch-a-sketch. You had favorite books full of colors and rhyming words. You had the big box of crayola crayons. You and your friends played and skated and ran and climbed trees until exhaustion set in then you slept like newborns - deep, restful sleep.

Then you grew up and you had to do things. Things you didn�t enjoy. Sometimes you had to do things for hours on end also to the point of exhaustion but you didn�t sleep the same way after that. Frost on your window became a sign of the next day�s drive on icy roads. Traveling to another city turned into a calculation of how much money you would have to spend on gas. You really didn�t play much any more. You didn�t have time. You worried over the health and safety of your kids. You bought endless �stuff� trying to find enjoyment somehow in that new appliance or that new furniture or that new car. The enjoyment was short-lived every time.

You began to think you were consigned to a life of duty and drudgery and exhaustion. Financial difficulties and health issues and deaths of friends and relatives - continual irritation, disappointment and work conflict were the norm. You started to wonder why you were here and what was the point?

You must go back. You must remember the fun. You have to let in the sunshine. You have to be silly and laugh. You have to listen to the water lapping the shore. You have to look at that flower again. Really look. You have to make art and read books and enjoy things. Not appliances and cars and furniture - but your etch-a-sketch, your sketch books and your photo albums. You have to rest and relax and sleep well. Take your chalk and draw on the driveway.

You must go back. You left yourself back in that house where you grew up - on that street where you played with your friends. You must go back in time and find yourself. Keep the good stuff and discard the rest before you make the journey. Your true self is waiting for you. Go back now. Go find yourself.

I have a small Christmas tree - one of those three foot table trees - and I love it. It�s a pre-lit tree although all those lights are dead so I just string regular lights on it now.

Before this tree, I had a regular-sized artificial pre-lit tree and I think it had four sections. The cords for the lights on that tree were tagged �A, B, C� etc. supposedly to help you figure out in what order to plug them in so at the bottom, the main plug would light every string. Do you think I could figure it out? There were two plugs near each other on every section. I would try every combination I could think of and invariably, one string would remain unlit. I would utter very un-Christmas-like words while trying to light that darn tree.

One Christmas when my son was home for the holidays, I asked him if he could try to figure it out. I had given up and there was still one section of the tree that was unlit toward the top. I figured since he is a computer engineer and extremely left-brained, he would be able to get all the correct plugs in the correct sockets. It even took HIM half an hour to figure it out. A friend of mine had the same tree and she said she would also regularly curse at it when trying to get it lit.

The last year I owned that tree, before the branches started falling out, I made sure to have one regular string of lights I could use to fill in the gap - I finally gave up trying to get the entire thing lit. Now, I just string a couple of regular light strings on this little one. The heck with the ones that are stuck to the tree.

Now I also have, on the opposite side of my living room, a wood platform and a wood stove. I don�t use the wood stove, so I have a string of colored lights wound around the stove pipe in a spiral. I have another string under the lip of the platform draped like garland all along the base. I have that string secured with clear packing tape so you can�t see the tape from a distance. I have used relatively long strips of tape, but do you think I can get this stupid string to stick? Every morning, I have to re-stick one section or another back to the hearth because it has fallen down onto the carpet. I don�t want to put tacks in that platform, that would leave holes, so I�m stuck (pun intended) with the packing tape. This morning, I gave each sticking point another dose of tape. We�ll see how long that lasts.

Have a wonderful holiday and my your lights always be lit!

I have always thought it would be easier to either be stupid or a genius. I am neither stupid nor am a I genius. I could really relate to the character Salieri in the movie �Amadeus�. Talented, smart, but really not spectacular in any way. Also smart enough to recognize brilliance and to feel small in comparison. Oh, I have a healthy ego and I know I do good work. I�m also smart enough to pick up on social cues. I know when someone wants me to shut up about something or simply go away. I know what a glance across a table means or when someone is lying to me. I do not fall for scams. I speak well and without verbal crutches, such as �um� and �you know�, and I�m generally well educated.

But (and it�s a big but), I can�t make big decisions having to do with major shifts in my life. I�m not brilliant enough to be able to see the outcome and it�s driving me crazy. I like comfort and anonymity, so stepping into a flood light is uncomfortable for me. I�m also a plodder. I will stick with something until I know it well and do it well, but often when I do get to the point where I do something well, I don�t know what to do with it from that point forward.

Many artists are actually painfully shy. When we are told our work is good, we a) don�t believe it or b) think we�re better than the next guy. We often do not have the detachment necessary to really assess the work on its own merit no matter how much we know about lighting and composition. It becomes like judging your own children. Only you knew what it took to raise them and how much they struggled to become the adults they turn out to be.

If I were stupid, I would blindly and blissfully post image after image and feel proud of them and maybe wonder why the work doesn�t get any attention. If I were a genius, I would immediately know if something is brilliant or a completely worthless piece of junk.

Instead, I�m just smart. I look at something I�ve created and say to myself �well, that�s crap� or �say, that really turned out well� and I upload and take a chance that someone will like it as much as I do.

I am smart enough to know I am a good photographer. Way better, in fact, than I used to be. Being �not stupid� I have listened to critiques, studied and learned to really and accurately assess what�s good and what�s crap. There are still the occasional images I consider �in Limbo�, however. No matter how long I stare at them, I can�t figure out if they are any good.

Now I�m going through some life decisions that are affecting me in the same way. Am I making a mistake? Is this the right decision? This is where it would be easier just to be stupid and just forge ahead, or be a genius and understand in detail the consequences of my decisions.

I guess I�ll just do the best I can with the brains I was given.

I have, from time to time, been on the verge of some kind of epiphany, or mental breakthrough to a great truth or some universal wisdom that will change my life forever and give me profound understanding of the universe and the way it works. I�m not sure how to best describe the feeling I get just before this realization will supposedly hit me, but it�s like waiting for a mental �sneeze� that never arrives. You know how that feels�you�re talking to someone and you have to say �wait a minute�, but the sneeze never manifests.

These instances, where I�m absolutely sure I�m going to realize something that will completely change my perception of reality, eliminate all fear and doubt from my life, and show me the way to wealth and happiness, infuriate me instead because the culminating realization never breaks through that �pre-sneeze� stage and I�m left sitting here with the same stupid look on my face, plodding along as usual, not knowing the point of any of this business called life and not knowing where it eventually leads. Hopefully not Alzheimer�s.

In the meantime, the only thing I know for certain is I have to keep taking photographs and making art. At least I�m certain of something in this confusing playground.

They say �be true to yourself�. What does that mean? What if you don�t really know what you want?

I have a lot of interests. That splashes over to my photography. I like the sweeping vistas of a breathtaking landscape as much as anyone else. I love closeups of beautiful flowers. I love interesting trees. I love wood and brick and water.

I keep reading that you need to find a �niche� and concentrate on that to be noticed. what if you like EVERYTHING? what do you do then?

I do have some things I like better than others. Having been fascinated with architecture since I was a teenager, I guess I gravitate a lot toward bits and pieces of architecture and old buildings in general. Now I have a large gallery of architectural images, and I�m trying to figure out how to divide it. I guess I could separate out the black and white versions of everything into another gallery. That�s the only thing I can think of right now, but I like the viewer to have a choice of color or black and white and there is something to be said for having them next to each other so they can be compared.

This is where my brain falls short. I have a hard time organizing my images in a logical manner. They are generally just there. The thought of going through them all and trying to decide how to order and arrange them gives me a headache. Does it really matter? I think it does, but I�m not sure what to do there.

I have seen some people divide their galleries into colors. That�s an interesting concept, but I think that would work better with abstract paintings than photos. I know some people divide their work by horizontal and vertical formats. That�s also interesting, but there�s something to be said for having those images side by side as well so the buyer can decide which format they like better. I try to provide both when the subject lends itself to both formats.

Oh well, for now I guess I will continue as I have been and keep posting away until some brilliant idea strikes me and sparks my tired brain.

I know this subject has been discussed and written about until people are rather tired of it, but I still find it interesting so I decided to analyze my own life from the viewpoint of the right and left sides of my brain. My very first blog post was about my lack of math ability - which is certainly a left-brain related function. Not surprisingly, my math ability has not improved at all since I posted that blog entry.

I notice folks who are more right-brained by nature (at least in my case) tend to see things our left-brain dominant cousins do not. I see �things� - faces, objects, plants, for example - in the way a bunch of buttons are stacked in a glass jar. I take delight in the particular shade of blue in the sky on a particular day. I love the pattern of reflected car taillights on wet pavement.

Give me a choice between a coloring book and a book of Sudoku, I get a warm fuzzy, nostalgic feeling from the coloring book. The Sudoku book gives me indigestion. When I started downloading games to my computer, I very much delighted in the hidden-object games I discovered. These games challenge you to find things hidden in pattern-heavy images and I find it very relaxing. However, a lot of the game companies have been throwing in diabolical puzzles at certain points in these games which you have to solve in order to progress in the game. I work on a computer all day long at work. I don�t want to �think� in the traditional sense when I�m playing. Give me the visual stuff, please. I hate logic!

It�s almost painful to start a re-arrange project in my house. I�ve written before about my book hoard. My right brain actually likes the piles on the floor in my bedroom. It�s sort of organized clutter. But it is clutter due to the fact that the piles are overflow from my book cases. I would love for them to be more organized and all fit somewhere other than the floor, but when I switch on the left side of my brain to try to solve the issue, it�s like wearing one of those electric dog collars - my left brain sends out an electric shock and says �you have too many - they will not fit neatly in your house� and I retreat immediately back to the right side of my brain which allows me to take pleasure in having my favorite books near and accessible.

I recently cleaned out a closet upstairs, which was the subject of another blog post, and it was like watching one of those clown cars where way more clowns come out than could ever have gone in. To this day, I don�t know how all that stuff got in there. What to get rid of and what to keep wasn�t that difficult, but at the end of the process, there were several things left I could not just throw in the trash. My right brain just didn�t know what to do with this stuff, so it just went back in the closet for now. It was too labor intensive to turn on my left brain to figure out what to do with the overflow.

It amuses me to notice what category people fall into after I get to know them. My former boss is the most left-brained person I�ve ever met. He (by his own admission) cannot multi-task to save his life. He told me once he doesn�t read novels because he can�t picture in his mind what the author is describing. His excessive logic sometimes borders on the ridiculous, but any work he does is always error free.

My son, with a masters in computer science, is much the same way, but he does exercise his right brain with photography and music. He can�t draw at all, however.

My daughter, who has a degree in sculpture, struggled like I did through algebra, but is a wonderful artist and extremely intuitive.

Having a 40-hour job at which I must be organized, the left side of my brain does get a lot use, so when I come home, resting for me consists of being right-brained for the entire weekend. So, I�m going out later with my camera and the minute I step out of my car at my destination, I will be turning off the left side of my brain to let the right side run free.

Ever since I have been posting work online to sell, I have felt this pressure to constantly be on line either posting work or checking my visitor stats or going out with my camera on weekends when I don�t feel like going out with my camera.

Don�t get me wrong, I love capturing a beautiful or at least interesting image and photography is still my main preferred art form, but something seems out of balance right now and I have to step back. Unlike a lot of people selling art online, I do have a full-time non-art related job. I started doing the online thing seriously, however, to try to make some extra money upon retirement, which is not that far way for me in the relative term.

The photo work has not become stale for me. I still love finding a great subject. I still like editing my image to a final, professional state. I still like up-loading it and seeing it in my gallery. And it�s gratifying to receive positive comments.

The last few months, however, I�ve been feeling a bit unbalanced. I went to the craft store last weekend and bought some yarn and I have been knitting for a few days. This is an activity I have spent many, many hours doing since my college roommate taught me how to knit 40 yeas ago, and is part of my psyche - it�s necessary for me to do it as much as my camera is always with me when I�m not at work.

My brain seems to be balancing out now. I have pulled back from obsessively viewing my visitor stats, and constantly checking discussion threads. I will still participate, but any time you feel unbalanced, it�s time to pull back and look to try and figure out what�s �tipping you over�. In my case, right now it seems to be my constant mental pressure to produce work.

I had a dream last night that I had a bunch of uninvited guests in my house at night when I was trying to sleep. They were having a party. There were three or four televisions running in the room (supposedly my living room) and I kept trying to turn them off. No matter what button I pushed or what remote I used, there was at least one television I couldn�t get to turn off. It was extremely frustrating, I just wanted to �unplug� and be left alone.

So, I am taking a few weekends off. I visited a friend yesterday and purposely didn�t take my camera. It was a gray day anyway, and I only wished I had my camera briefly when I was looking at her garden. Otherwise, it was nice not to be �on� for a change. I needed that.

I have been to probably at least 30 national parks in the US, maybe more. I always have one reaction when I enter a national park for the first time = WOW. I have several photo albums full of national park photos - all film, all with mediocre developing. Now, several years later, I�m getting a chance to revisit many of these parks. In other words, I�m getting a do-over.

However, since I still work full time, these do-over trips are usually blitz visits where I do not have time to explore a park in depth, but I must content myself with stopping at the major overlooks.

There is another problem, which became apparent on my most recent trip out west. We were in Arches National Park in Utah, which is considered part of the geologic area called the Colorado Plateau. This is high desert - arid and hot and situated at about 9,000 feet above sea level. I live in Michigan. We are generally between 500 and 600 feet above sea level. In any case, we got to a feature in the park called �double arch� which has two massive arches, one behind the other. You can take a short walk over to these impressive structures and sit under them in the shade or explore further back.

We started walking over and my daughter, who is in her mid 30�s and in shape, was complaining about the heat. It was 102 degrees F, but it�s a dry heat and it wasn�t really bothering me so I said so. She and my husband reached the arches first and I was faced with about a 20-foot uphill climb involving some flat rocks and a slope. In other words, nothing major. I finally managed it, and collapsed next to my husband on the lower ledge of the front arch. I was literally praying I would not pass out or throw up. I was gasping so hard for breath, I couldn�t even answer my husband as he repeatedly asked me if I was OK. It took me about 10 minutes to recover enough to walk slowly back to the car. For every overlook we stopped at after that, I stayed pretty close to the car and just photographed what I could see from there.

I started the diet 2 days ago, and I�ve stared exercising again. That scared me. The next trip I hope to be 20 pounds lighter and a lot more aerobically fit.

The other issues I had on this trip are trying to figure out how to convey the massive size of a rock structure in a photograph, which is really impossible unless you have people in the photo for scale, and the other issue was exposure in some areas. In Rocky Mountain National Park, you generally have bright overcast skies and dark mountains with snow making the contrast situation extreme. I found myself wishing for a graduated neutral density filter, which I used to use all the time with my film cameras. I guess I need to order one.

In four days last weekend, I went to three national parks and one national monument, which was truly a blitz visit, but I�m just glad to be able to get back to these parks with a decent camera and occasionally to a park I have not visited before, which on this trip was Arches. It, indeed has the WOW factor.

�.dull, insipid, uninspired, lackluster, infrequent, characterless, boring, run-of-the-mill, stuck, repetitive, and just plain not very exciting.

This is how I feel about my art and my life lately. I have to work, and I still like my job, but outside of that, I can�t muster up any spark of an original idea to save my life. I recently took a trip to Maine with my husband and got several nice images, some of which I have posted, but one needs to make good art and not wait for special occasions. I have another short trip planned, but in the meantime, here I sit on my ass with not one original idea or thought for a direction in which to head. I know my strengths and weaknesses in my photography, and I can�t even decide whether to play to my strengths or work on my weaknesses.

Being a bit closer to being called �elderly� now, and having worked for many, many years, I kind of don�t want to make my leisure time and love for art and photography into frustrating episodes of failure after trying to figure out how to do something, so I�m leaning more toward the former and just admit defeat in the areas in which I do not excel.

Is this a �defeatist� attitude, or is this just a reaction to years and years of doing things I really don�t want to do, and just wanting to thoroughly enjoy my later years? Don�t get me wrong, I�m still learning every time I use my camera or put pencil to paper, but if I�m not enjoying the journey, what�s the point?

I have a love for architecture and textures of things. Old wood grain, the pattern in a rock face, wind blown sand on the beach. These things I have learned to capture quite well. Some other things, setup still lifes, and people, for example, I find extremely hard and illusive. At what point do you just learn to admire the work of others and concede the higher ground to those who do something better than do you?

I�m much better at capturing single things and bits and pieces than most people, so maybe it�s time I concentrated on that and revel in the joy that it gives me rather than trying to be a jack of all trades. I think that�s partly why I�ve gone off the rails. I keep thinking (as we all do to some extent) that I have to be great at everything I attempt.

I think it�s time I admit I�m not Leonardo - I can�t do everything equally well and I need to concentrate on the things I really enjoy and which I find second nature and rewarding, and with which I get consistently good results. Don�t get me wrong, I will keep learning, but I think I�m done trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Yesterday, I decided it was time to print out some of my vacation photos. I really enjoy flipping through photo albums. Much more, in fact, than scrolling through online. I can�t remember what happened when I switched from my really old, slow Windows XP desktop computer to my Macbook, but they don�t even make a printer driver for my really old HP Photosmart printer. That�s ok, that printer died shortly after I got the Mac anyway, after about 15 years of loyal service. I loved that printer. I will miss it.

In addition to the dead HP, I have a Selphy dye sub printer and a new Canon large format printer. Since I have a whole box of paper and dye for the Selphy, I figured I�d use that up first. Well, when I tried it, the printer would draw the paper through, then just sit there and do nothing with a little hourglass symbol on the tiny screen. I tried printing directly from a memory card, and that worked, so I have a feeling all these updates to my Mac have messed with the printer driver. It worked last year�I tried for two hours to get that thing to work. I finally sent an email to Canon tech support and they sent me a list of repair facilities. I don�t think it�s the printer, though. Oh well, it was only 100 bucks about 10 years ago, so I guess it will go the way of my dead HP.

So, Selphy printer paper in hand, I went upstairs to print on the shiny new Canon large format printer I got in December. The first two photos I tried to print made me panic. The ink just sat on top of the paper in wet globs. I was ready to cry at this point, so I just took a break and made my dinner. While I was sitting there eating, my old, tired brain said �You idiot, you were trying to use dye-sub paper on an inkjet printer�. So I tried some of the HP postcard sized paper I have left from my dead HP and it worked fine.

We won�t discuss the print menus. It takes me 5 minutes every time I print to find the paper type selection option. Why can�t anything be simple? I have the same problem with my phone. Every time I want to find a feature and change it, I have to text my son and ask him how to do it.

I�m not stupid. I really am not. I started watching tv on a black and white set. I took a manual typewriter to college. Our first phone had a party line, and I�ve worked on a big, bulky telex machine. I guess one just has to adapt, but everything just keeps getting more and more complicated. We need a new tv. Our main tv is a big, bulky thing we got when our daughter graduated high school, which was almost 20 years ago, and we�re ready for an HD flat screen, but we�re waiting for our son�s next visit before we buy one so he can hook it up for us. He had to talk my husband through setting up a new wifi router over the phone. We need three remotes just to use the DVD player.

Ah, technology. It�s convenient, but maddening at the same time. I still don�t know all the features on my DSLR and I�ve had the thing for three years now. Oh well, onward and upward, I guess. Today, I�m going to print out some more select photos and see how long that pricey ink lasts. It will hopefully last a bit longer than my patience with all my smart devices.

Yes, holy crap. I have written before about how not in the mood I�ve been to purge my house since I cleared out my parent�s house almost two years ago. I just didn�t have the stomach for it. Well, yesterday, I shook some of that off and started on a closet upstairs. I repeat - holy crap.

I found our old Atari 520 in a box up there. That thing hasn�t seen the light of day in 25 years. It�s going out to the curb this week. Someone will snatch that up. I found a suit jacket my son wore when he was probably 18. That was 20 years ago. I doubt he wants it now. In fact, I generated 5 large garbage bags of good jeans from my lesser-sized days, shirts my husband got as gifts he would never be caught dead in, shoes I wore to my son�s wedding that pretty much ruined my feet. Some old purses that are out of style, a box of my son�s homework from college. I don�t think he wants that now. I made him go through his boxes and take what he wanted when he came out for my dad�s funeral. I did keep his draft card, however. Odd to think I have a son old enough to have a draft card. What year did they stop issuing those?

Anyway, after hauling all that stuff downstairs, I�m taking the clothing to the local drop box that they never seem to clear out. I hope I don�t have to leave the bags on the concrete next to the box.

I then moved on to the antique trunk at the foot of my bed. In there, I found old, worn linens I haven�t used for years. I tossed all those and gained room for my grandmother�s quilts that had been in that closet upstairs just piled in there in plastic bags. When I cleaned out my parent�s house, I lost two dresser drawers to my mom�s old sewing tins, my first pair of shoes and various other odds and ends. I managed to get one drawer of that stuff in my trunk as well.

I found a granny square afghan in that trunk that I started crocheting maybe 30 years ago. I almost pitched that as well, but then I thought �No, I did too darn much work on this thing� so I started working on it again last night. I may actually finish it. Good thing I didn�t just pitch it - I found my old, 1968 team-signed Tiger baseball hidden inside the yarn. Those things were going for a lot of money several years ago. Now�.not so much, but still, not pitching that (pun intended).

Today, my legs and my back are very sore, but it feels good that I started the purge. Next weekend, the kitchen. I�m never going to use that turkey carving board again. I just carve them in the disposable pans. It will be interesting to see what else is lurking in there. Maybe I�ll find all the lids to my plastic containers. It�s amazing what crap just accumulates in a house.

I hereby vow to purge more often. It feels good.

I have written about my book hoarding tendencies in the past, and my urge to buy yarn even when I�m not finished with other projects (I have not purchased any yarn for over a year, by the way. I can�t say the same thing about books.)

Well, this morning I experienced a really strange obsession, which I think I have managed to pretty much quash, but at the risk of sounding like a nut case, I will share it here.

Yesterday, a cold and dreary day, I went out with my camera in spite of the gray conditions, in search of some interesting subjects that were not sun dependent to make them look good in photos. I went first to the local outlet strip mall that is sparsely occupied, and drove the to far end of the mall where I found some interesting graffiti, and some concrete retaining wall patterns worthy of calling art. Then I drove up to a park in Port Huron to see if there were any ice chunks still piled up in Lake Huron.

I found the lake is still iced over but flat. The big, beautiful blue ice chunks have dissipated or moved on down toward the Saint Clair River.

I took a few unremarkable images of the lake, then I started combing the ice and snow covered beach for something interesting and came upon an interesting piece of driftwood and a pretty, water-worn red rock. I moved my little red rock around and used it against the icy snow and took a couple of photos with it that I have posted in my gallery.

I love rocks. I have boxes of them around the house tucked away. My father loved rocks. I have a couple of boxes of nice Petoskey stones I bought home when he died. Here�s the weird obsession part. When I woke up this morning, I had the almost overwhelming urge to drive back up to that beach (about 20 miles from where I live) and look for that little red rock. There�s no tide right now because of the ice and snow, and I know exactly where I took those photos, so I could probably find it, but come on, really? It�s even colder out today so I was planning on staying in and working on my galleries, so spending the gas money to drive back there to look for a small rock seems, well, nuts.

I can�t believe I didn�t think to pick him up and put him in my pocket. Would his friends miss him? Would he be lonely here on my night stand? Or would he have bonded with my two quartz crystals sitting here?

I don�t know, but I�ve talked myself out of wasting an hour and a half looking for a small red rock on the beach. I will enjoy him only in the photos I took and leave him to be lapped in the tides of spring.

I�ve never been a real heavy coffee drinker. I used to drink two substantial mugs in the morning, and maybe if I were having a particularly tired day, I would have a cup in the early afternoon. By early, I mean before 3:00 pm, otherwise I would fall asleep at night, then wake up an hour later and stare at the ceiling for several hours.

Recently (within the last two years) I�ve developed a sensitivity to caffeine which makes it impossible for me to drink regular coffee. The symptoms of caffeine ingestion are best left to your imagination, but anyway, caffeine makes me sick.

I decided that should not deter me from seeking out the best tasting decaffeinated coffee�after all, I love the taste of coffee and anything coffee flavored. I had a Kona coffee ice cream in Hawaii that was to die for. I�ve never been able to find its equivalent here on the mainland.

My husband has been watching that show �Uncommon Grounds�. I don�t know if you�re familiar with it. That guy risks his life on a regular basis to find the best coffee beans. He�s crazy. He finds coffee in drug cartel territory or on obscure, hard to reach mountains. He mainly supplies to restaurants, but you can also order coffee from his web site (called La Colombe) that�s directly from some of the scariest places he finds these small coffee farms. This week, my husband ordered coffee from Nepal and Haiti and on the back of each bag is the roast date, which was 3 days before he opened the box, so they actually roast the coffee when you order it. That arrived yesterday so my husband will be trying it this morning. I will have to be content to smell the bag when he opens it.

But back to my decaf - I drink my coffee straight. I don�t want to mask the flavor of the beans with cream or sugar. There is one exception to that rule. I�ll dump some half and half into restaurant or hotel coffee if it�s that insipid Maxwell House pouch�..I hesitate to call it coffee. Tastes more like salty dishwater. In my humble opinion, Maxwell House should be ashamed. It�s going to probably be even worse for me now that I�m confined to decaf.

I�m a Starbucks girl. Or Seattle�s Best and lately a Trader Joe�s girl. Right at this moment I�m sipping a cup of Gevalia decaf my husband bought me. It�s not bad, but I like coffee with an edge. Coffee that screams COFFEE when you sip it. Coffee whose flavor doesn�t dissipate shortly after you swallow it. Coffee that gives you coffee breath for an hour after you drink it.

I used to drink Nestle�s Taster�s Choice instant as a backup when I ran out of regular coffee, but the decaf tastes funny. I really only resort to that if I�m out of the drip grounds and then I have to put something in it to get it down.

So, now I�m on a quest for the best decaf. I�ve just eliminated the Gevalia from my list. It�s good enough to drink straight but it doesn�t pack the punch of the Starbucks or Trader Joe�s. It�s too tame. There is, indeed, good decaf out there. I�ve even had some good decaf in restaurants where the management will not stoop to the M-word insipid pouch stuff. I�m going to have to start a list and buy the good ones according to my particular coffee mood that particular week.

Ah, when life hands you decaf, make it the best decaf you can find.

I write for 15 or 20 minutes every morning. Usually it consists of random thoughts. This morning two things come to mind. February 1 is my son�s birthday (I have to remember to call him later) and it�s the 2nd anniversary of the death of a dear friend.

I also don�t know what to do today. I already paid the local handyman 20 bucks to shovel our walks. He cleaned off the cars and shoveled in the street as well. He�s a nice retired handyman and I don�t think he has much money. I have to go to the bank today because I�ve paid him all my cash in the last 3 weeks, we�ve had so much snow this winter.

I�ve always had trouble figuring out what to do on Saturdays which is my only full day off, since I work a 40-hour job. I�m thinking of going down to the river to try to get some photos of the ice buildup. The Saint Clair river has a lot of ice buildup in the winter, and this year January was the coldest and snowiest on record in Southeastern lower Michigan, so the river is completely frozen over which is a rare occurrence. The problem is there has been no sun except when I�ve been at work during the week, and even then the temperatures have been in the single digits making it impossible to be out more than a few minutes without my fingers and toes going numb.

I just checked the weather channel app on my phone and it�s supposed to get to 32 degrees today and it will be in the 20s tomorrow so maybe I can stay out a little longer.

The arthritis in my shoulders and my back has been unusually bad the last month - I guess from the cold and damp weather. I can see some heavy yoga stretching in my afternoon today to stretch those sore ligaments.

I feel like a log floating in the river (although nothing has been floating in our river lately), just going where the current takes me and hoping I don�t run into an immovable object. We�ll see where the current takes me.

How long will traditional media be around? How can we keep them from disappearing completely?

It has been at least 5 years since I�ve been in an art supply store. The last time I went, I could not find what I was looking for. That is plastic drawing templates for basic shapes - circles, triangles, squares, etc. They are almost impossible to find on line as well. Architects and designers have all gone digital. I can�t get my favorite brand of drawing pencils any more either because that company does not exist any more.

I�m not disparaging digital artwork by any means. There is some really exciting and beautiful digital art on Fine Art America and most other art sites. Nor do I think making digital art is easy (I�ve tried and there is indeed a learning curve), although it may be physically easier than standing before a large canvas or leaning over a large sheet of watercolor paper.

I personally love woodblock prints, linocut, monoprint (monotype), silk screening - the look achieved with these methods cannot be faithfully duplicated on a computer. And before you say �yes they can�, I will argue with you all day about that. While I will be amazed by the effects those who have learned to make stunning digital creations can achieve, and I can appreciate them as much as an image created in a more traditional manner and I would, indeed, even hang them in my home, it�s just not the same.

100 years from now, this will not even be an issue. Almost everything will be digital. The discussion will be about something else - like traditionally grown produce vs. vegetables produced by a virtual printer or some similar debate.

I searched the Fine Art America web site this morning and found these statistics:

Monotype: 558
Monoprint: 251
Silkscreen: 408
Lino Cut: 665

Wood block print gives a much higher return, but the first several pages are prints by Japanese masters, not a living artist making wood block prints, although I�m sure there are a few on the site somewhere.

I also Googled the following:

Wacom tablets for sale: 4,100,000
Oil paints (as opposed to �paintings�) for sale: 2,730,000

Some of the �Oil Paints for Sale� search also returned actual paintings for sale.


To be fair, on the Fine Art America web site, a search for �oil paining� and �watercolor painting� the two most common traditional media, return over 10,000 entries each. That makes me feel a little better. I also got over 7,000 results for ink drawing.

While progress is inevitable, there is a deep sadness that settles into an older generation when things ingrained in the social memory become shunned by the younger generations when that younger generation embraces only what is easily available to them, and this shift is partly the fault of supply, demand, marketing and corporate greed.

I�ll give you two examples from the non-art world. I hate zip lock bags. I always buy the bags with twist ties. You get far more bags for your money. I have to search high and low in the food storage bag isle to find them. They may eventually disappear. I also had to search for a floor mop that doesn�t require you to continually buy disposable pads for the bottom of the mop. I finally found one with a cloth pad that you can launder. Everything is manufactured to keep you buying more (obviously).

In any event, this blog is a useless statement in a virtual sea, and it�s the same rant you�ve heard over and over by the aging population, of which I am now a member. Nothing new here. Just a melancholy anyone under 30 reading this will experience in their later years.

Two things in my life have now come full circle.

When I was a baby, I was breast fed then my parents fed me good, nutritious food free from additives and excessive sugar (although back in the 50s they were ignorant about the harm even minimal sugar could do).

When I first picked up a crayon, I scribbled like everyone else, then my mother showed me how to make a circle and a square and a triangle, and I started to draw identifiable things. Neither of my parents were artistic, however, so I had to learn the rest on my own.

Then I discovered, as we all do, that world of chocolate milk and candy and french fries and McDonald�s hamburgers (we lived less than a mile from the first McDonalds built in Michigan). Oh, my mother provided a meal every night consisting of a meat dish and a vegetable but she wasn�t a very good cook (sorry mom) and it took me several years of being on my own to learn to enjoy a good piece of fish because she always cooked it until it had the consistency of rubber.

My art started to improve and by the third grade, I could draw a pretty realistic horse head (my favorite subject). I became intimidated, however, by the one kid in every art class who seemed to be the reincarnation of Leonardo himself, and being shy, I always got discouraged and doubted my ability when looking at the work of these prodigies.

I was drawn to paint in oils, however, and my parents bought me art classes and music lessons and I improved and grew to the point where I could paint a decent landscape. I could also draw a portrait faithful to the model. The entire human body I found difficult until I took a couple of life drawing classes and studied on my own the classic books on drawing and anatomy, after which I could draw a pretty decent representation of a standing body or a body in motion. I copied old master drawings and learned lighting, composition, etc.

Then I was sick for a long time in high school so they put me through a battery of tests and found I was hypoglycemic (the opposite of diabetic - too much insulin) and I had to give up those delicious chocolate shakes and give up that chocolate pie and the candy bars. I still ate the poisonous McDonalds burgers and fries, however, and developed a taste for prime rib and potatoes slathered with butter. I was always thin, so it never occurred to me I was causing damage to myself with this diet.

Having kids put the brakes on bringing the sugar into the house. They were not exposed to sugar until they were older and didn�t know what white bread looked like.

I had to get a job when my husband�s family business was struggling because of the economy (I had worked before the kids were born), and started working again when my kids were 3 and 5 years old. I hold the same job today, 32 years later.

I still painted for a while, but them all the overtime started and I finally gave all my oil paints to my art-major daughter when she took painting classes in college.

Now, I have come full circle with art and food. I�m aging and a bit overweight. My drawing skills have atrophied, and after several stressful years, my body is feeling stressed and creaky.

This week, my husband bought a juicer and changed his eating habits. I ate my last hamburger yesterday (I�ve been mostly meatless for a few years now) and I�ve given up all artificial colors, flavors, additives, preservatives, trans fats, sugar, meat, etc. I have done yoga for years but it�s been a while since I did any aerobic exercise and I�m starting again this week.

I also dug out all my old drawing books and I�m spending this day off studying them and copying old master drawings again. I�m healing my body, my mind and my spirit. I�m coming full circle. I still have to work, but every waking moment outside the office is being dedicated to art and health, photography and drawing, deep breathing and stretching. I�m purging my house and my body.

I will not deteriorate with age without a fight.

If enough of us on this planet can get over our personal issues and struggles and pray to God, the Universal Intelligence, the Buddha, Mohammed, Yahweh, Jesus, Krishna, the saints or just Mother Nature, I truly believe we can make a difference. We can shift the planetary vibrations from a mindset that fosters war, unrest and even governmental gridlock to one where people respect each other, cooperate and do good works.

This is truly the day for Christians to take this mindset seriously but everyone should take it seriously every single day. Everyone is always so concerned about proving they are right all the time (I plead guilty) that we have all lost sight of the bigger picture. That is, we need to take care of the planet. We need to care for those less fortunate. We need to spread love, not conflict and judgement. This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking, Nor is it naive. Atoms can affect each other at long distances and so can we. Instead of hating the terrorist, pray for him to see how he has been deceived and molded into a hateful, bigoted and sick human being. Instead of avoiding that mentally ill family member, find out what you can do to help him. Instead of not giving to that charity because you don�t like some of their political leanings, give anyway because by holding back, you are only hurting the poor and sick that they serve.

And finally, to the people who profess to be religious and righteous, stop concentrating on the physical - that is how someone chooses to live their life - and consider only their spiritual condition. Do they do good works? Do they help their neighbors? Then stop worrying about who they marry or who their personal savior is or what their politics are and embrace them as a good human being. Who are you to judge?

I wish peace and joy to every human being and all creatures on this tiny blue planet and may your life be filled with love for others, not bitterness, distrust and judgement. I vow today, to the best of my ability, to be kind to everyone and embrace their goodness in spite of their flaws. How we think affects our own spiritual and even physical health.

We are all connected.

I�m finding as I age, my body is getting stiffer with arthritis, which is a common enough thing, and I try to combat the stiffness with some nightly yoga, but I think I�m going to have to get more creative about it. I need to add more stretches to the routine. I need to stretch everything it�s possible to stretch in a human body in every direction it�s possible to stretch it.

I�m also getting mentally stiff. That is, if I have to deviate from a daily and even weekly routine, it�s psychically upsetting to me. I get out of bed at about 6:40 am every week day morning, make breakfast, take vitamins, and before I get in the shower, I write random thoughts on notebook paper for 15 or 20 minutes depending on how much time I have. If I don�t have time to write for a few minutes, I feel anxious and out of balance. Writing has been incorporated into my morning routine as surely as brushing my teeth.

Once I�m entrenched in a habit, I really resent it when the routine is interrupted. I find that characteristic kind of annoying at times, but due to the outside chaos I�ve lived through during the past few years, I find I need to control the inner chaos with an outer routine as much as possible. What I need to eliminate now is the inner resentment and distress, though minor, when the outer routine is disrupted.

As it is necessary for me to work a day job, I don�t do anything on Saturdays except maybe draw or go out with my camera. The laundry and groceries are delegated to Sunday afternoon. Don�t mess with my Saturdays. Just don�t do it. Sometimes I do go visit a friend or engage in some other infrequent activity on a Saturday, but I�ve incorporated that into my psyche and I can deal with it.

I try to not gauge my success in art by the quantity but by the quality of what I create, and due to the fact that the art activity is pretty much confined to the weekend, I�ve had to get disciplined about the process. I can�t just go where a whim takes me. There has to be some planning involved. I have to decide early in the day if I will engage my time in photography or a different artistic endeavor, which is largely dictated by the weather. If it�s pouring and gray, I usually stay inside and do work on paper.

Everybody needs some kind of routine in their life in order to get anything done and to stay sane. My problem comes about when that routine gets interrupted. I have to work on my resentment and discomfort whenever that happens. After all, we can�t control everything no matter how much we would like to. The trick is keeping the inner balance when the outside world throws a bit of chaos our way.

I�m working on it.

This is the first year my husband and I have not had any parents to share the Thanksgiving holiday with. My husband�s father died in 2010, my mother died in 2011, my father in 2012 and my husband�s mother just over a month ago as of this writing. They were all in their 90s except my father-in-law, who was 89, so they were all, in a sense, expected deaths. My husband and I have transitioned into the elder family category. That feels like a natural transition in some ways.

Another transition I�ve found in myself is a level of instinctive and learned competence in my photographic skills. I was looking for some inspiration yesterday and I dug out some photography books from my book piles and I grabbed a series that showcases the work of several professional photographers in the areas of wildlife, product and fashion, portraits and landscape. I was shocked to find myself disappointed with most of the images in the wildlife book, most of the images in the product and fashion book, and some of the portraits. The only book that still contains what I consider professional quality images is the landscape book. Most of those images still strike me as stunningly beautiful.

What does this mean? Does it mean I, myself, have improved to that point where I�m taking professional-quality photographs? Or does it just mean I�ve studied photography enough now to recognize sub-standard images? I�m coming to the conclusion that it�s a combination of both things. When I went through the wildlife book, there were blurry images where the intention of the photographer was obviously not intentional movement blur. There were distorted closeups of insects with a depth of field way too deep so that the background clutter was distracting. Some portraits in the portrait book were taken way too close to the subject distorting their facial features. It may have been intentional, but the images were ugly.

To be fair, these photographers were all still using film and I doubt too many of these photos had any heavy editing, however that�s an even more compelling reason to get the image right in the first place.

These books, which used to inspire me, I will probably give to the local library. I�ve transitioned to the other side of them in many ways. It does not feel as natural to me as the transition from being a daughter and a daughter-in-law to being the matriarch of the family, but it�s a very interesting transition. I want to keep enjoying the journey and keep improving as long as I can. I no longer make insipid, poorly lit, out of focus images except perhaps by accident. The goal now is to make people pause and either say �that�s interesting� or �wow�. I�m slowly getting there and the fun thing is it�s nice to be on the other side of the dividing line between �making an attempt� to �that image really works�.

There are two things I CAN do well, but I absolutely LOATH doing. For some strange reason, I forced myself to learn how to do both of these things through years of hard work and dedication, hating every waking minute of it but I persisted anyway. What was I thinking?

When I was in high school we still had home economics classes and we learned to cook and sew. As the sewing project we were supposed to buy a pattern and fabric and make ourselves a blouse, then we had to model the blouse for the class. I did ok with the button holes and I got the hem straight, but any of you who sew know how difficult set-in sleeves are to sew in without a lot of puckering. I kept going deeper into the shoulder to try and keep the puckers out and by the time I was done, I could put the thing on and button it, but the sleeves at the shoulder were so tight around my armpit, the circulation to my arms was cut off. There was no way I could have worn that thing all day without losing a limb.

I became determined to do better and set out to learn to sew, but I always hated the act of sewing with a passion. I got good at it anyway, and made most of my clothing through college because back then, it was cheaper to buy fabric than buy clothing off the rack. Suit lapels and pants fly zippers didn�t faze me. I could make beautiful button holes, I made my daughter�s flower girl dress for my brother-in-law�s wedding and the pattern was a bitch. I even made my matron of honor�s dress for my wedding. All of my brides maids were broke at the time, but all of them could sew except my best friend, so I sent them all fabric and a pattern in their size and they all made their own dresses. It cost me twelve bucks each for the patterns and the material in 1973 and they were very nice dresses.

All this time I remember fighting with the sewing machine and screaming �F....you!!� at it. My father would chime in from the next room with �I don�t think that machine was constructed for that kind of activity�.

When I moved into my current house, I made curtains for my bedroom. It was the first time in about 20 years I had touched a sewing machine. I hated it so much I rushed through it and I wake up every morning to a crooked curtain hem above my head. Why the hell did I put myself through all that torture?

Another thing I CAN do but I choose NOT to do is cook. I used to bake a molasses bread that friends would actually request when they came over for dinner. I made Thanksgiving dinner for the entire family (up to 14 people) almost every year for almost 40 years, and my daughter-in-law now makes my stuffing recipe. But I do hate to cook. I absolutely hate it. I can make a really good meatless lasagna and lots of other things but I would rather have a salad and a baked potato out of the microwave. No cleanup. No three or four hours of preparation for something that takes you ten minutes to eat. Then you have to go back in the kitchen and spend another half hour cleaning up the mess.

Ladies, for those of you who like to cook or sew, I salute you. I will spend months knitting an afghan, but I find that zen-line and relaxing. Cooking and sewing - not so much. I would have been a failure as a prairie wife in the 1800s.

I�m in my senior years now. I will help my family members in any way but don�t ask me to cook or sew. My daughter is hosting Thanksgiving this year. I have to bring a dish or two. I will be perusing the isles at Meijer looking for something ready made and that I can buy in bulk. I�ve done my duty. It�s time to pass on the torch.

I�m not a hoarder of anything, really, except books. I�m not one of those women who has to have a pair of shoes for every outfit, or really cares about what people think of her shoes. I also don�t wear heels over an inch high. That torture device was invented by a misogynist somewhere who no doubt took pleasure in inflicting as much pain as possible. The only shoes I have with heels I wear to weddings. The last wedding I attended was probably about 7 years ago (and my son�s wedding, for which I found shoes to match my dress that will never see the light of day again. I could barely walk by the end of the evening). I would have to search the back of my closet to find them at this point.

Yesterday, my husband and I went to spend a few hours with our daughter who lives about an hour and 40 minutes away near Ann Arbor, Michigan. We went to lunch then walked through the University of Michigan natural history museum. It�s a nice museum. They actually have a few almost in tact skeletons of some very interesting creatures including a mastodon that was found right here in Michigan.

Anyway, back to the shoes. I have some white walking shoes that are very comfortable, but since I didn�t know where we would end up for lunch and I didn�t want to look too underdressed (which is kind of silly, Ann Arbor is full of students), I chose a pair of black, round-toed, stretchy shoes with a thick rubber sole that are (or were, as I found out) good for walking. It became apparent while walking the quarter mile from the parking structure to the museum, my friends are dying.

The uppers on these shoes are made from some thick and stretchy heavy nylon material. They hug your feet but stretch to conform so no pinching because they are not rigid . The soles are thick rubber for padded walking. Unfortunately, the uppers have stretched to the point where my feet were �sloshing around� with every step and it became uncomfortable after a while. On top of that, I can see a wear spot on the right shoe by my little toe. I know my toe is about to break through to freedom pretty soon.

These shoes are my friends. I wore these shoes all over Paris several years ago. These shoes have walked through the Palace of Versailles and all through the Louvre and the Orsay. They have even been to the McDonalds on the Champs Elysees. How can I let them go?

I�m a little bit in mourning today. Yeah, they are only shoes, but I don�t shoe shop that often - maybe once every three years - so I�m sorry these shoes are now on life support. I guess not being wealthy has some advantages - you appreciate what you have more. Oh, don�t get me wrong, I can certainly afford to go buy a pair of shoes, but I don�t think I�ll be able to find friends like these again, but it�s time to find another friend for my feet. RIP my stretchy black friends.

I usually write a blog about once a week and I was trying to think of a subject that wasn�t depressing or really serious, so I thought I would write about things that really irritate me, which I used to just take silently, and which I no longer tolerate.

When I first went into the work force, I was astonished at the number of men, supposedly professional corporate men, who would call me �honey�, or �sweetheart�, or even �babe�. These were actually clients. To this day, I don�t know why I never responded with something biting, but I never did. I�d just chalk these guys up to being a..holes and let it slide. I don�t run into that any more. I think most of them have learned that�s idiotic behavior.

Along the same vein, I had a salesman come to my house when my children were young who was a photographer trying to sell family portrait packages. After he made his pitch, I told him we were not interested. He said �Well, maybe you should wait until your husband comes home and ask him�. My immediate reaction was to punch him in the face, but I kept my self-control and politely told him no thanks. How dare he think I needed �permission� to make a decision. I wanted to tell this jerk he was for sure going to lose a lot of sales with a line like that. I don�t run into that any more either. I guess having women in high government posts and as CEOs and world leaders has kind of squashed that mind set as well. Thank God. What an ass.

Another thing that irks me are complicated, convoluted phone menus. I had to call the state of Ohio last week for a tax matter at work. I swear it took a full five minutes to go through the phone menu and every time it said �press zero for assistance from an agent�, it would take me to another menu. I finally got a live person, she faxed me the form I needed and this form didn�t contain the section I needed to fill out. In fact the form I had to fill out originally on a related matter contained the address where I should send a check, but it didn�t have the zip code for that address. State forms are as stupid as federal forms. Doesn�t anyone proofread these things?

Then there�s the insurance web site (not the new government one), for the health insurance company we use at work. I�m the group administrator and I went on the web site three months in a row to check off �auto pay� so the premium payment would come directly out of the checking account at work. Three months in a row I got an overdue notice in the mail. I finally called and yelled, and it�s working now. It�s also a horrible web site to navigate. Who designs these things? Maybe the same firm that set up the AHC web site. DUH, guys.

Recently, I needed new tires. I had the original tires on my car with 80,000 miles on them. The last time I went to the dealership for an oil change, the guy at the counter gave me a quote of a little over $500.00 on tires. I drive a small car, so I was looking for something more in the $400.00 range. He told me to wait a week because they were having a sale. When I called back, he said that tire was not on sale, but if I had a family member who had ever worked for Ford I could get 50 bucks off the tires in question. My husband�s grandfather worked for Ford, but he retired in the late 50s or early 60s so I had my doubts they could find him, but I gave him the name anyway and he said he would call me back. When he called me back and said they couldn�t find him in their records, he asked me to find out what factory he had worked at. I told him I would try to find out and hung up. Not once did he offer to give me a price on a sale tire. I called the local Goodyear place and immediately got a quote for $100 less than the dealer quote so I went there instead. I don�t think the guy at the dealership was trying very hard, and he was making me do all the work. I hate being taken advantage of.

Why do people always assume you�re an idiot? Why do some men still think women are stupid? One thing I�ve started doing in my later years is telling people to their faces the situation is unacceptable. The first time I actually did that was many years ago when I went to a hotel in Lansing, Michigan with my husband who was competing that weekend in a chess tournament at that hotel. None of the beverage machines on any floor were working. The hotel restaurant was not open on Sunday because the kitchen staff was on strike. I saw bats flying around on the top floor when I went there looking for an ice machine that actually had some ice in it, and they didn�t clean the room after the first night. I was pregnant and hormonal, and hungry, so I lit into the poor guy at the front desk. He kept apologizing and said the hotel had made a significant contribution to the organization holding the chess tournament. When I was done yelling, I was still hormonal and hungry, but it felt good to unload. From the look on this guy�s face, I must not have been the first to complain that day.

Don�t get me wrong, I don�t dwell or fume or stew or resent or hold a grudge. I just don�t put up with stuff any more, and the jerks and the people who are trying to take advantage of me get an ear full and they can just kiss my tushie.

I still search for the perfect writing pen and every time I think I�ve found one, they stop selling it or they start cheaping it down and making it differently. When I wrote my first blog on this subject a couple of years ago, I was still looking for a replacement for my Bic buddies. Since then, I�ve gone through a couple of varieties, including a Papermate Limited Edition ball point, which I can�t find anywhere any more, and a felt-tip, fine Sharpee pen. I like the limited edition pen - no globbing, smooth writing, but apparently they weren�t kidding when they named it. The Sharpie pen writes well when you start out with it, but being a felt-tip, the tip wears off before you use up the ink and the metal shaft end of the pen starts scraping on the paper. Very annoying.

Earlier in the week, I dug a pen out of my nightstand drawer, which is a black hole for unused pens that get thrown in there after I realize I have too many pens in my purse (I like to have a pen for every writing mood - yeah, I know, it�s weird) and I came up with my beautiful, long-forgotten (we�re talking years) Uniball pen fine point �Roller Deluxe� by Sanford. I�ve had two boxes of these pens for probably fifteen years - a box of blue ink and a box of black ink.

I used to draw with the black ones so I only have four of those left out of a box of twelve, but I have six blue ones left besides the one I�m writing this blog with now. I think I�m in love again.

This pen is like a felt tip in that the ink flows onto the paper the way a felt tip distributes it, but it has a metal ball in the tip like a ball point. The ink flows very evenly and there�s no globbing. Here�s the kicker - I bought these pens at least ten years ago, maybe fifteen, and they show no sign of being dried out. I�ve been writing with the one I grabbed out of the drawer for three days now and there�s no hint of skipping from dried up ink. (I write my blogs longhand before typing them). I wonder if they still make these? I wonder what I paid for them when I bought them by the dozen before years ago. I�m off to look that up before I continue....

Ok, there�s good news and there�s bad news. They apparently still make these (I forgot to look at the price - I think two bucks a pen maybe?) but the reviews are like �What happened to this pen? The last box I ordered is dry and scratchy�. I see on the box they were made in Japan. Maybe now they�re made in China and the quality on the new ones is crap. I have enough left for about three months if I write constantly, but I fear I may be disappointed in what I order next time and I will have to start the quest again for the perfect pen.

One thing I just discovered, though, while looking up this pen - I�m not the only one with a pen obsession. When I did a brief Google search for this one, a whole plethora (I always wanted to use that word in a blog) of �pen review� sites cropped up That made me feel better about coming out of the closet with my pen obsession.

When I die (hopefully not for another 30 years or so), let it be said �Mary was a woman who left no pen untried�. Ok, so not the most important thing in the world to be remembered for, but hey, I�m just trying to keep my pen awareness at a high level and keep my writing public informed.

I have lots of books. Mostly about art, photography, geology and linguistics as well as specific histories of things I am fascinated with, namely ancient Egypt and my ancestors, the Vikings. I also have collected several biographies, mostly of artists I admire.

I used to love diving into a book on a subject I find interesting and I read constantly for years.

Now, not so much. I WANT to read. It�s one of my joys in life, but with the advent of the internet and the fact that a very large portion of my job for many years consisted of proofreading for up to fourteen hours a day for two or three months straight, has kind of put me off my reading feed. I have a pile of books sitting next to my bed because I think I want to read about one thing, then the next day I jump to something else, and so they pile up half read and abandoned.

The only books I have read through from beginning to end in the last couple of years have been murder mysteries by my two or three favorite authors when they come out in paperback, but those only last five hours or so.

Have I become lazy? Why can�t I get back to my books? My work life right now still requires some proofreading, but not nearly as much as it did previously.

I think part of my problem is I have tuned to the internet, and oddly, my phone for entertainment the last few years. I play a couple of word games on my phone almost obsessively instead of reading words in books. I lurk on internet forums and read comments that sometimes inspire me and sometimes enrage me, but usually don�t enrich my life or teach me anything.

I�m reminded of a phrase someone used once, and I can�t remember the source or what the main subject was, but the phrase was �the dumbing down of America�. I read an article a couple of years ago about how college entrance essay exams have become alarmingly bad as far a spelling and grammar are concerned, and that�s easy to understand when you consider the fact that most people under 30 in this country communicate mostly by texting or tweeting using texting shorthand (which I really hate, except for maybe �LOL�), and they can�t construct an entire cohesive paragraph because they are usually restricted to 140 characters at a time.

I may pick up a book this weekend - perhaps that two-volume biography of Matisse, volume one of which I�ve been mostly through for the last couple of years.

Do you still read?

Did you even wonder where you would be if you had taken certain paths in life, or what you would be doing now if you were exposed to certain professions at an early age? What did you want to be when you grew up when you were about 10 years old?

I wanted to be an architect. Of course, there were no architecture courses in grade school or high school and when I found out early on I had the typical �math phobia� and algebra was as dense as a black hole for me, I pretty much gave up that idea. Oh, I�m not stupid - I did well in geometry, but geometry back then dealt mostly with letters (angle A in relation to angle B) and it made sense to me. However, I could never figure out when the train would arrive in Chicago at 40 mph in relation to the train leaving 45 minutes later going 50 mph. If you held a gun to my head and told me to figure it out, I would be a dead woman.

A turning point for me was when they started experimenting in the 1950�s with giving foreign language classes to us 9-year olds and we were asked to pick either Spanish or French. I chose Spanish. This wasn�t the one-hour-a-week thing they did in most school systems where a teacher came in for an hour a week and taught everybody how to say �apple� and �house� in another language. This was full-on grammar and writing and having rudimentary conversations. I found out I had a knack for it and it wasn�t difficult for me to conjugate verbs and memorize vocabulary lists. Since I was also one of the only people in my English class in junior high who could diagram a sentence correctly (they stopped doing that well before my kids were in school) and could sit and read a novel while everyone else retook the test, I figured language was apparently my calling.

I ended up getting a degree in Spanish language and literature with a minor in French literature, and I work in the translation industry, not as a translator, but I handle the material that comes in, proofread some of the completed translations in my two languages and pinch-hit translating things to English occasionally when necessary.

The only other class that absolutely fascinated me in college was Earth Science. Yes, Earth Science! My second calling after the architecture thing would have been geology. If they had sent a geologist into my grade school to explain earthquakes, volcanoes, rock formations, etc., I would be out in the field somewhere, or in charge of a seismographic facility or in a lab doing research. That profession (and all its off-shoots) would have been worth a math tutor to obtain (have you ever seen the math formula for Richter scale calculations?).

I have books on volcanoes, earthquake science, basic geology, earth systems, rocks, minerals, etc. I understand how they figure out the strength and type and epicenter of an earthquake. I�m familiar with various types of volcanoes. I have a book on the geology of all the national parks, and several books from specific parks about the geologic history of the park in question. I�ve been to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park twice and I could happily spend two entire weeks there and ignore the rest of the island. I have been to the Badlands, Colorado National Monument, Bryce and Zion Canyons and Acadia. I�ve been to Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park and the Cascades. I find the terrain and the history fascinating. I mean, when you�re on the highway driving past massive diagonal slabs of rock through which they have cut the roadway and can see the striae and the various layers of deposits accumulated throughout millions of years, how can you not be in awe of the forces that were necessary to tilt tons and tons of solid rock to that angle? I�m baffled by the fact that the continental-drift theory was only validated and accepted in the 1960s. It�s a young science about really, really old things.

It�s too late for me to become a geologist or earth scientist, and I don�t regret the choices I�ve made. After all, we could have all gone in several directions in life and there�s no sense in complaining, but I sometimes wonder where I would be now and what I would be doing if I were an expert in geologic formations, ground water flow and topography. Maybe it�s just as well I ended up where I am. I might have ended up working for an oil company that�s raping the land and I would grow to hate my job. Maybe it�s better I can just study the subject at my leisure (and not have to do the math).

Where would you be now if you had taken a different path? Do you ever wonder? Did you ever make a choice then ponder the life-path circumstances brought forth by that choice? Do you regret where you are? I don�t, but I still find it interesting to think about from time to time.

I have been inspired by many people throughout the years. Artistically, I love Georgia O�Keeffe and Louise Nevelson as female role models, but many times someone who jolts me out of my daly stupor is someone who has nothing to do with the arts but is a high achiever in another discipline. Over the Labor Day weekend I didn�t listen to the news at all, so Tuesday morning on my way to work, I heard on the radio that Diana Nyad had finally made her Cuba to Key West crossing. I was surprised, amazed, proud for her and inspired in one quick blow. I mean the woman is a year older than I am, for heaven�s sake. I�ve been breathing hard when I carry the laundry up from the basement. I�ve been stress eating. I�ve been popping the ibuprophen for joint pain, and all I could think of to say to myself when I heard this news is �You wuss!!�

I used to jog. I did it for probably 15 years. Then, when I started having a touch of arthritis pain, I switched to walking because it was easier on the joints. I walked a mile and a half at night (I work full time) about 4 days a week, and I did a full 3 mile walk one day on the weekend. I also continually did yoga stretching to keep all the muscles around my arthritic joints stretched out.

Then came overtime. Then came personal family tragedies and responsibilities and the exercise, except for the yoga, went out the window. The entire time I knew I would sleep better and be less stressed if I would just walk around the block, but somehow I just couldn�t get myself out that door. Hell, I used to walk in snowstorms and I�d walk in the street when there was ice on the sidewalk. I�d walk with an inhaler for the cold-induced asthma. What happened? People always say when you ask them why they didn�t finish that course they were taking or why they didn�t take that trip, or why they didn�t do some life-challenging thing they had been talking about for years �Oh, life happened�. What does that even mean? I understand if there�s a financial emergency that would make a person cancel a trip and other things happen that can derail plans, but what�s my excuse for not going out at night and walking a mile?

When my daughter moved home for a year, she and I joined the local YMCA briefly. I went with her about 4 times and we did laps in the pool. The first time, I could go across the pool and back and I would have to stop and catch my breath (back stroke and breast stroke. My free style or �front crawl� isn�t very good). The second time we went, I was able to swim about 4 lengths, pause briefly, swim 4 more, etc. The 3rd and 4th time we went, I could swim about 6 laps before pausing for a minute, then 6 more and I did that for about 40 minutes. The point being I know I could probably easily walk several miles if I slowly build up the muscles around my one arthritic hip, and I know specific yoga exercises to do that, so what�s my excuse? The entire time my daughter and I were taking care of my dying parents, those four trips to the pool were the only 4 nights I slept really well. What�s wrong with me? What�s wrong with any of us who actually know how to mitigate the stress in our lives and we say �Yeah, but....� What�s with the big �BUT�? And speaking of butts, I refuse to let mine spread any wider.

Diana Nyad, if you can swim 112 miles in 52 hours, or whatever the hell it was, at the age of 64, I can certainly walk a mile or more every night at the age of 63. You have put me to shame. You have also given me hope that I can shake off this complacency and stop saying �Yeah, but...� and I vow to change. Today.

After being in the language business for...well, forever, I�ve noticed from lurking in the forums that everyone has their own writing style and their way of expressing themselves. I think I personally come across as friendly and open. Others come across as egocentric and condescending. Still others seem hyper-sensitive as if every generic disparaging remark made is directed at them personally. There are others who write i what I assume they perceive as an esoteric and insightful manner that is in reality convoluted and annoying.

Sometimes it�s amusing, sometimes it�s annoying, but it�s always interesting.

I was thinking recently about the subtleties in a language that are the last thing a foreign speaker learns and may never grasp completely. I�ve studied Spanish for many years and speak fluently so I have a good idea what �machismo� and �gracia� (as opposed to �gracias�, meaning �thanks�) really mean, but there are subtleties buried in there that, as a non-native, I may never grasp. It�s kind of like when someone dismissively says �Whatever!� in the middle of an argument in English. As native speakers, we know to be dismissive and insulting, it has to be said in a particular way.

Years ago, I worked with a woman who grew up speaking both Polish and English so she was a native speaker of both, but what amused me (and I wish I had written these down) was she was like the �Ziva� character on NCIS - always mixing her metaphors in English. The one I remember was a mixture of �That really grinds me� and �That drives me up a tree� to express annoyance, which in her case came out as �That really grinds me up a tree�. Ok - close enough - at least she got her point across.

I was also thinking the other day about some of the sayings we, as English speakers hold near and dear that we have gleaned from popular media - mostly the movies. Anyone that says �I�ll be back� with a slight Austrian accent knows exactly where it came from.

I sometimes notice lines from moves or tv shows that make me stop and think �what was the writer thinking when he/she wrote that?� My personal favorite is a line from the original Star Trek series where Kirk and Spock beam covertly over to a Romulan vessel to try and steal the cloaking device. Spock gets caught, and he asks the Romulan commander �What is your current form of execution?� The Romulan commander�s response is �Our current form of execution is both painful (pause here) and unpleasant.� Think about that one for a minute....

I recently joined an Italian company and my boss emailed me about something the other day (his English is pretty good), and the last thing in the email was �...then you can ride your own horse�. I sent him back an �LOL� and �That must be translated from an Italian expression�. I�m still not quite sure what he meant. We have also discussed similar expressions - they have one that I can�t recall but it�s clearly parallel to our �closing the barn door after the horses have escaped� referring to some preventative measure taken after the disaster has already occurred.

Then there is George Bush. He even makes fun of himself. I bought a book of �Bushisms� once. I was sitting on my bed reading it and my husband came into the bedroom to see if I was laughing or crying. Tears were streaming down my face and I couldn�t speak. I will leave you with a quote to ponder: �Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the roadmap to peace.� - George W. Bush, Washington D.C. July 25, 2003.

As a photographer, I�m always looking at the big picture - the vast landscape, the interesting building, the famous bridge, the sweeping panorama - but I�ve found more and more, looking at the �small picture� instead of the �big picture� gives me the most satisfying images and the images that, for me, hold more interest.

Everyone likes the beautiful pastoral scene with waving golden wheat and fluffy clouds, or the night view of a cityscape with all the building lit up and stark against the night sky, but it takes a little more observation to notice the small, the interesting �piece� of something; the texture and pattern on a rock, the diaphanous wings of an insect, the sand patterns on the beach formed by wind and wave. Even though I�ve only sold two closeup images, and those were sold as greeting cards, I find myself more and more drawn to the tiny, the hidden, the abstract and the generally unnoticed.

The beauty in the rusted patterns on the side of a dumpster can be as interesting as the images of a babbling brook. The texture of an old wood plank with its stark grain and old knots are images that make me want to pause and look closer. Old, weather-worn paint, abstractions of wood grain, crystal facets in the sun, a spider web covered with dew, the life line in the palm of a hand - life is in the details.

I�ve noticed some artists and photographers are drawn to the same things and invariably, those images in their portfolios that concentrate on the abstract piece of a larger thing have fewer views than their more �traditional� work. I always try and leave a comment if I�m drawn to the work. Often, mine is the only comment on this lonely �outcast� image.

I would encourage anyone who reads this blog to pay attention to the smaller things when looking through other people�s portfolios. Celebrity portraits, animals and sweeping seascapes don�t have to be the only popular items here. Let�s also support the �less seen but also beautiful� art of the tiny and hidden by commenting on and voting for those small things we find beautiful.

At what cost does it take to be the best you can be at something? No matter what it is, there�s always a high cost, either emotionally, financially, or in time spent. Often the cost is all three.

Take someone who wants to train for a marathon and be the fastest, most efficient runner possible. Of course, the serious person is either going to hire trainer or do all the reading he or she can about how to train safely, how to build up to longer runs, how to eat, what shoes to buy, where to run when there�s snow and ice outside, when to suspect actual injury over normal soreness, etc.

The person who wants to be a concert pianist practices hours a day and studies under a qualified instructor. The guy who want to get to the master level at chess will study game after game - openings, mid-games and end games and will continually play someone with a higher ranking in order to improve their skills.

I fail to see, then, given this common sense approach to anything, why someone thinks they can become a brilliant artist over night, whatever the discipline. Oh, there is certainly instinctive talent in any discipline - the kid who remembers legal chess moves without any formal instruction after watching several games. The swimmer with the perfect body type - broad shoulders and narrow lower body. The outsider artist who eccentrically decorates his walls with thousands of different-colored bottle caps in an interesting, and instinctively well-composed pattern.

But these people are exceptions. They are few and far between. I see over and over again works of photographers that don�t even come close to following any established rules, who are blind to flaws which are obvious to anyone who studies their work. For example, a sharp photo of the lilies in their garden, with the dirt clumps far below the lilies in equally sharp focus which in effect ruins the shot. Or the guy that doesn�t see the fence post in the background growing out of someone�s head in the foreground. Yet when they ask for a critique of their work, they retreat and sulk in a corner when the obvious flaws are pointed out to them.

Being in love with a work you created because of the colors contained therein, but being blind to the blotch that was on your lens or the entire bright, blown-out section of the image (which can work in some shots) is like being in love with someone because you remember a time when he didn�t beat you daily. It�s a state of denial. In order to improve, you truly have to look at your �children� objectively.

I have a few ugly offspring still in my gallery that I have not deleted because they were some of my first born - but the ones that were embarrassingly poorly composed or were technically horrible are gone, with the exception of one or two that still get a lot of views. I know I should put them out of their misery - but I can�t quite kill them off yet.

At any rate, back to the original question, I think the cost of making good art is time, a good deal of study, a grasp of basic artistic rules and principals and knowing when it�s ok to break those rules, and one of the most important costs, you have to sacrifice your ego. That doesn�t mean you accept a critique from someone if their critique is based solely on personal preference, or taste in art, but if someone points out the big, ugly, glaring pimple in your image, shove your ego down where it belongs and pay attention to the criticism. Most importantly, study what you did wrong and don�t repeat it. Keep learning.

I turned 63 yesterday. It made me take a stroll down memory lane. You may remember these (not necessarily in chronological order):

- The invention of the hula hoop
- The invention of the frisbee
- The �invention� of the pet rock - geeze, I wish I had thought of that one
- - The invention of color TV
- The launching of Sputnik - the way my mom reacted to that one, I thought we were all going to die in a nuclear explosion. Or even worse, I would have to duck and cover at school in my good skirt.
- The Zaner Bloser method of penmanship - Those pens were way too fat for 10 year olds.
- Learning my colors in kindergarten. Aren�t they doing calculus in kindergarten now?
- Party lines - you had to wait to make a call until your gabby neighbor got off the phone.
- The Alaska earthquake of 1964
- Mimeograph machines - Ah the fumes....
- The invention of the electric typewriter.
- The death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- The death of John Kennedy
- The death of Robert Kennedy
- The ice truck man - he gave us all ice chips to suck on in the summer.
- Glass milk bottles delivered to the milk chute.
- Aluminum Christmas trees - now whose idea was THAT one? (my parents still had one when I cleaned out their house).
- The invention of pantyhose
- Leisure suits - I can�t believe my husband actually owned one of those awful things. Blue ployester ... GAWD.
- The dreaded and dreadful �saddle shoes� that were supposed to correct our arches. Yeah, right. I�d like to find the person who invented those and make him wear a leisure suit every day for the rest of his life.
- The jocks, the greasers, and the rest of us.
- Bubble hairdos - My high school group photo looks like a bunch of furry aliens.
- Granny dresses (yes, I wore those)
- Bell bottoms (yes, I wore those too)
- Head bands (no, I never wore one of those)
- Vietnam POW bracelets - I did have one of those for a soldier named Murphy (I don�t remember his rank) - fortunately, he came home.
- President Johnson on tv saying he would not run for a second term
- Fizzies
- Sweet Tarts
- Slo Pokes
- Soda fountains in the pharmacies
- Department stores with elevator attendants in white gloves and pill-box hats
- Studebakers - (Interesting - my spell checker doesn�t recognize the word �Studebaker�)
- Princess phones

And my very favorite - the first moon walk - I was 19 and kept going outside during the live broadcast and looking up at the moon in amazement.

I could probably come up with a hundred more, but these are the ones that pop into my head as I write this. Some good, some bad, all unforgettable.

My dad died last year at 94. Can you imagine what his list would have on it? His first car was a model T. His first toilet was out doors and he wore a dress until he was one year old. His brother (my uncle) had polio, his mother (my grandmother) died in the famous Spanish flu epidemic in 1918-1919. They plowed the fields with a hose-drawn plow and heated the house and cooked with wood.

When he died, he had 4 computers, most of which were severely infected because he still trusted everybody and opened everything he got in his email. My son and I knew there was a problem again when we started getting strange emails from his computer.

Can you imagine what kind of technology will be out there when our grandchildren are old? They probably won�t know how to read cursive writing (which, in my opinion, is a bad thing) and they won�t know how to type (which is not a bad thing) and their vehicles will all run on batteries.

I see the future like everyone else - happy to see the eradication of disease and advances in knowledge about the human body and the cosmos, and sad I can no longer sit at that soda fountain with my mom and have a root beer float with home-made vanilla ice cream, watching the soda jerk with the white hat making concoctions for his patrons.

Have you ever been in love with the contents of an artist�s work by their style of presentation bothers you too much to enjoy it?

For example, I grew up in the 50s and 60s and went to college in 1968 and was a big Dylan fan. I had a couple of his albums, but I finally gave them away to a friend because I couldn�t stand his voice even through his writing was superb. (I�ve since learned to enjoy him a little more - probably for the nostalgia).

I have a well-known book designed to help artists get over creative block. The premise is good and the ideas are sound, but instead of giving two or three examples of why you should do something a certain way, this author presents 10 examples in one sentence and I find it exasperating and tedious. I can�t get through the entire book and I finally gave that away as well. The writing style just ruins the book for me.

I also get irritated with (mostly) younger artists who think bodily functions and gratuitous violence or nudity or political stances that could be considered fringe ideas make good art. A lot of them are convinced they are the first to present the idea in question, and are making a name for themselves, are brilliant, innovative and are pushing boundaries, when all their art really is, is tedious and ugly.

Don�t get me wrong, I enjoy nude art and there�s nothing wrong with making a political statement - but I don�t want a photo or a painting of someone being tortured on my living room wall. It�s like saying to a vegetarian �here - I want you to eat this plate of liver and onions - it�s good for you and will enrich your life and I�m doing you a huge favor by giving it to you so you�d better eat it� and then get insulted and think you�re rude and a fool to refuse to partake.

Hubris. Ego. Thanks, but no thanks.

There are also artists I greatly admire for their talent and skill, but I just can�t look at their art, which is related to the torture reference above. For example, the German artist Kathe Kollwitz, in my estimation, was one of the most brilliant draftsmen who ever lived, but she was surrounded by death, war and starvation so that was her subject matter. I can�t get myself to buy a book of her charcoal drawings, as expertly done as they are, and as astounding as her talent was. The subject matter is just too close to modern history and too disturbing for me to enjoy the talent behind the work. I wouldn�t hang any of Goya�s dark paintings either, but that�s just me.

I�ve had enough struggles and distress in the last few years. Give me art free from sorrow. Art that will give my soul rest and peace. You can be brilliant as an artist and present beautiful creations without throwing acid in someone�s face. All that does is show people how self-centered you are.

None of the opinions above are meant to include art I simply don�t like. Everyone�s taste is different, which makes for an interesting and diverse art world which is as it should be. Just don�t show me a photo of someone removing a tampon (Judy Chicago) and tell me it�s brilliant art. I�m not that gullible.

I feel like I�m living in a version of Koyaanisqatsi lately. My life is out of balance. Several years ago, I had a routine down of walking every night. I went on regular mini-vacations and I had a busy work life and plenty of energy.

Then the bad stuff started happening and went on for about 6 years. I feel like someone hit me with a baseball bat and I�ve been dizzy ever since. Like a compass needle near a magnetic source - unable to center on true north. It�s uncomfortable and hard to rectify.

There is nothing mysterious here - I�m aging, my joints hurt, my life circumstances have changed and my spirit has retreated inside myself in an effort to avoid any more hurt, but that very condition is throwing me even more off balance. I look at other people who have been through life traumas - the Boston Marathon bombing victims for example, whose lives have been thrown even more off balance than mine and they (at least outwardly) pick up and go on. The young women in Ohio who were held captive - well thinking of them I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Even knowing that, however I have trouble taking physical action to center myself and do what I need to do to right my psyche.

Today, I will not turn on the TV. I will go to the local beach and take some photos, and then just sit and watch the water. I will make myself take a walk and exercise these old, painful hips. I will be very mindful of what I eat and I will stay �in the moment�.

Life is about balance. I need to get mine back before it�s so out of whack, I turn into the strange old lady on the block that mumbles to herself and stares at the sidewalk.

I have been joining the discussion threads a lot more often and I�m enjoying them for the most part. I would like to thank FAA for having moderators who are active and participate themselves, and who keep the threads civil for the most part.

On the other hand, I have noticed a few times that a relatively new member to the site will come into the threads with the idea that they are the best thing since sliced bread, their work is superb and they are willing to tell you so and if you don�t follow their particular work procedures, your work is crap and if you have anything good posted, you achieved the results by accident.

BUNK

I am a photographer, so I notice this more in the photography threads because I follow them more often than the threads about other media, but I�m sure there are some of those people who work in other media as well.

Here�s my deal: My ego is in tact. I keep improving as a photographer the more I work, and I�m not embarrassed to ask for an opinion on a work and I can take the criticism or the praise as long as it�s honest and not condescending or over the top gushing. Several members of this site have given me help with technical questions and thoughts on a particular work. Some of them are more blunt than others, but I respect their opinion or I would not have asked in the first place, and one person in particular (I will not name names) always provides a REASON for a harsh critique of something that is spot on. This is not disrespect, it�s honesty. I can appreciate that.

What I don�t appreciate are people who think I�m not a serious photographer because 1) I have never studied formally 2) I have never memorized shutter speed to aperture ratio charts 3) I don�t process my photos a certain way.

When I used to paint in oils, I was a �traditional� oil painter. That is, I would paint the background, let it dry for a week, paint some more elements, let it dry for a week, etc. I would never tell someone who completes a work in a day working wet on wet that their work is crap (it may be crap, but not because of the working method). Instead, I�m in awe they can paint that way successfully because I could never master that technique.

Bottom line - it�s fine to have a healthy ego about your work, but don�t go around telling people they will never amount to anything because they don�t work like you do. I have perused the galleries of people who come into the discussions with this kind of attitude and almost to a person, their work, to me, looks �over-cooked� in whatever software they are using.

Just an opinion.

I recently had a job shift and have been working more hours and earlier in the day than I have been for a while. I find it interesting that when I was younger, I could work a 50-60 hour week, sleep until 10:00 on Saturday, and be good to go, all the while staying up until midnight all week long and getting up at 6:30 am for work.

Now, not so much. I still get up about 6:30, but I find myself drifting off about 10:00 pm and this morning - Saturday - when I intended to sleep until 8:00 or 9:00, my body said �Nope...it�s 6:00 am. You will now arise and be tired all day�. What�s up with that? I�m upping the caffeine so I can at least pretend I�m not tired.

I plan on doing some retail therapy at the local bookstore later. I need (well actually �need� is a bit of a misnomer), I actually want some kind of a small journal to jot down photography and art ideas. Since Saturday is really the only day I have time to indulge in any art activities of any kind now, I need to record my ideas when they occur to me and not have them living on random bits of paper in my purse or on my night stand where I�ve forgotten they exist.

I remember reading something in the distant past about how rigid Benjamin Franklin was with his daily schedule. The man certainly accomplished a lot of stuff, but the right-brained part of my personality really rebels at all this organizational effort. I have to be extremely organized at work, due to my type of employment, so when it comes to my creative life, I kind of want to relax about it, but I don�t have the luxury of randomly experimenting due to time constraints. So I figure if I get a little art idea journal, I can see on paper whatever my brain spits out, and just go with the most feasible ideas.

Does that make sense? Since my body won�t let me sleep in (it�s time for my second cup of coffee now) I�m just trying to figure out how to best take advantage of this betrayal by writing down my random thoughts about how to best organize my meager creative time.

I can also tell be re-reading this, I have definitely not had enough caffeine yet because it�s not that well organized, but I�m posting it anyway since I haven�t posted a blog for a while.

I just got a new phone because my old one was dying. It was a Blackberry and I miss my little keyboard, but everything is a trade-off. The new one is very nice. I�ve discovered scrabble in the game store and I�ve been playing it with my daughter-in-law and her mother. For some reason, that stupid little addictive game keeps giving me either the �j� and the �z� at the same time, or all vowels. I know it�s supposed to be random, but I swear it�s out to get me. On top of that, I can tell my daughter-in-law has been playing this for a while. I�ve played several games with her and I haven�t beaten her yet. She�s been killing me.

At any rate, I don�t know about you, but sometimes I swear the electronics in my life are out to get me. My work computer seems to be catching cold lately even though I don�t surf on it and I don�t open suspicious mail. My camera has been making odd noises lately when I�m using one particular lens on manual focus....I hope there�s nothing wrong with it.

I used to make fun of my son. Everything electronic he buys has a problem and he has to exchange it. I�m not kidding. When he was still living at home, we ordered him a computer for college and the first monitor had a purple screen. We sent it back, and the second one came with a broken case. We sent that one back and UPS lost it. The credit card company only credited us for one of the monitors so we ended up paying for two. He bought himself a printer at a local electronics store and it didn�t work - he had to exchange it. When he got his first apartment, he bought a bread maker that didn�t work and he had to exchange that. Recently, he bought his wife an i-phone and the screen didn�t work, so they had to exchange it. There have been several more things I can�t think of right now.

Before my father passed away in May last year, I had been thinking about getting a new computer, so before my son came out for the funeral, he bought it for me in New Hampshire because he didn�t have to pay sales tax. I told him to make a point of telling the sales person it was for his mother, not for himself. Fortunately, it seems to work fine.

They say you can affect the things around you by the energy you give off. I guess I influence the letter generator in the scrabble game and my son influences everything electronic around him. Is that weird? Or am I just imagining things? I know you know what I�m talking about. Everyone has their odd �thing�. I swear my mother-in-law used to buy three scratch-off lottery tickets at a time and win on two of them. Every time. I never saw anything like it. I once saw her go to the drug store across the street about 5 times, exchanging winning tickets for more tickets until she won 25 bucks, at which point she stopped.

Ah, well, perhaps if I concentrate some energy on it, that little scrabble game will stop giving me the darn �j� and the darn �z� on the same turn.

I have small art journals that I started in about 2003 because I simply had no time to paint any more. I started art journals and I got much more serious about photography.

These small art journals were my art outlet because when you�re working 50-60 hours a week, there really is no time to do traditional oil paintings. These little art journals have 100 sheets and I use both sides, so that�s 200 images per journal. It took me about 5 years to completely fill the first one and about 3 years to fill the second one. I started the third one in June of 2009 and I have 29 sheets left.

Yesterday, I was feeling down and restless. I didn�t know where to go or what to do, so I finally pulled out my current little art journal and my Berol colored pencils and my drawing pens and just started drawing. It felt really good. I haven�t been drawing much, but now that it�s really cold and with holiday obligations, I have not had much of a chance to go out with the camera for the last week or so. I got out the drawing journal out of frustration.

Getting caught up in what I feel might sell, marketing my work (which I still have not figured out how to do) and trying to please everyone else has made me realize I�m not happy with what I�m creating. Oh, don�t get me wrong, when the weather conditions are right, and I have the time, my principal love is still photography, but I have been drawing all my life and I think one of the reasons I�ve felt really unbalanced and unhappy is the fact that I HAVEN�T BEEN DRAWING. It�s a necessary part of my life, like food. I need it to stay healthy. Recently, I started playing around with making some purely digital art and I like it, but the minute I start making marks on paper, it really feels like �coming home�.

I have three blank journals after I finish the current one, so it�s not like I have to go out and get the supplies. I�m searching for more balance, and when I pulled out that little journal yesterday, I think I found a way to get there.

Here�s to a new year and lots and lots of images. Do your thing, whatever form of art it is. Write that novel, make that sculpture, arrange those pixels....but like they say in the Nike commercial, �Just do it�.

Happy creative new year to everyone!

I wrote previously about some of my obsessions - finding a perfect pen, books, yarn, and my personal favorite - Lays potato chips.

Lately, I see a pattern emerging as a response to general life stress. An obsession with food in general and images here and on other web sties. The images obsession is a need to constantly troll the FAA web site to see what other people are posting and to admire a lot of great images, especially by my watch-list members. Unfortunately, I�m �watching� so many people here, I�m missing a lot of what they are posting. Later today, I may click on each one of them and see what they�ve been up to, although that could take hours.

I have also been commenting on a lot of work lately that I truly enjoy. I�m not doing it to get comments on my own work, although that�s always nice, but to express my true appreciation for what I consider to be a good image when I see it. I�m constantly scrolling through �today�s new uploads� and occasionally there�s a gem of an image that leads me to look at someone�s work of whom I was previously unaware.

I�m wondering, at what point does this become obsessive? I mean, if we are posting work here constantly and always looking to paint, sculpt, photograph something amazing, we�re already hooked, but I�m finding it hard lately to turn off the computer.

I hesitate to be this way - I can�t imagine what would happen if I could no longer afford internet service. Would I be at the library obsessively searching for images, sitting in the same corner every day like the unfortunate homeless person who comes in just to get warm?

I imagine this obsession is a backlash in response to having to live in a left-brained environment where I have to deal with everyday practical stuff, and for about a year, a lot of it has been unusually unpleasant. Shifting over to the right, non-verbal, non-logical side of my brain and viewing or making images shuts off all the unpleasantness and feels normal, restful, quiet.

The food thing - well, when I�m occupying the right side of my brain, it�s really easy to unconsciously munch on the stuff in the bowl next to me. I have to cut that out. Even the bowl of raw carrots with blue cheese dressing can be a problem when you�re eating them just to eat.

Ah, life. So hard to balance....I keep trying.

It�s been a couple of weeks since I�ve posted a blog entry. During that time I�ve written at least three blog entries and when I read them, I thought �wow, that�s lame - nobody would find that interesting�. Right now I can�t even remember what they were about, and if I can�t remember even though I wrote them, they must have been pretty forgettable.

So here I sit on a Sunday morning trying to come up with something to write about, and it comes down to what I�ve been struggling with lately. What to get rid of and what to keep.

I�m finding it amusing (sort of) that I chose to keep certain items from my parent�s house simple because they were unopened. For example, I found a jig-saw puzzle in a Chinese take-out carton which I thought was kind of clever, so I kept it. It�s not a problem if you only keep one or two things like that, but when you save everything in a hoarder�s house simply because it�s unopened, it can become a little ridiculous.

When we moved into our current home 20 years ago, the cheap chandelier in my dining room worked fine. It has six hanging glass bulb holders. Over the course of the 20 years we have lived here, the sockets for the bulbs have stopped working one by one and yesterday it died completely. I need to go buy another fixture today and have someone install it during the week. I found myself thinking earlier that I could save the glass bulb covers and use them in some abstract photos.

How much stuff do we keep in the name of �I�ll use this later in my artwork�? I have a few piles of magazines that I intend to canabalize later for collage images. I have two, two-volume sets of the history of art by two different authors because (and this is my mind set) they each write from a different perspective and you can get a better sense of an art movement�s place in history if you read about it from two different authors.

I have about 20 empty photo albums still in the shrink wrap, even though I hardly ever print any images any more. How much of this stuff do I really need?

I�ve already gotten rid of about 200 books, and I intend to get rid of some more. I also intend to get rid of a few things like the giant turkey cutting board in my kitchen because the family has dwindled way down, thus the need for only small turkeys, roasted in disposable pans.

I think I finally got rid of the complete works of Moliere in the original French that I read in college, but I�m not sure - it might still be lurking in a closet somewhere. I still have my son�s old keyboard he got when he was about 10 (he�s almost 37 now) that he doesn�t want and which is missing an octave, even though I now own my parent�s piano. I think the keyboard can go. It�s not worth anything, but I hate throwing stuff like that in the trash. I could go on, but I don�t even remember all the stuff hidden away in the closets and the attic.

I�ve had glimpses of other people�s collecting habits in some of the discussion threads - some confessions of studios packed with certain items, the obsessive collection of certain things (I still buy marbles occasionally), and it gives me some comfort to know I�m not alone in my struggle to free myself from an attachment to THE STUFF.

My husband and I have been married 39 years. I think in all that time we�ve been to a movie about 10 times. Seriously, we�re not the movie-theater type. We usually rent or buy a really popular movie when it comes out on DVD. The only movies I remember seeing in the theater are �Alien�, �ET�, the first 3 Star Trek movies and �Panic in Needle Park� (a really dark, depressing Pacino movie). There may have been a couple more, but I can�t remember them right now.

There are some tv shows we enjoy, however, so we have collected the DVDs over time for shows like �The West Wing� and �Star Trek the Next Generation.� We are currently working our way through the original �CSI� series, and we decided to watch a couple on Friday night. We haven�t watched anything for a while because I was taking care of my father�s estate and was basically not in the mood.

Well, neither one of us is that technically savvy. We used to turn on the tv, which is hooked up to cable, switch it up a channel to receive the signal from the DVD player, and watch away. Friday, my husband opened the DVD remote and found that the batteries had actually leaked, so that remote is dead. I said �OK, we�ll just have to use the buttons on the player.� The regular TV remote died a long time ago, so we have been using the DVD remote and the cable remote until Friday, when we got down to the buttons on the DVD player and the cable remote. Do you think I can figure out how to get the DVD feed to work? None of the �tv/aux�, or �tv/cd� buttons on the cable remote seem to do anything even though they light up when I press them. Everything seems to still be hooked up and plugged in. I do admit, however, there is a massive amount of wiring behind my tv partly because there is also an old VCR hooked up that we never use, and my daughter has her game console hooked up as well, so it looks like black spaghetti back there, but every wire I follow is plugged into something.

When I brought my parent�s piano over to my house, I had to get rid of a large fish tank and the cabinet under it, which housed some photo albums and the directions for the tv, the DVD player and the tape player. I can�t remember where I put them and I can�t find them anywhere - not that I think they would help.

I�m at a loss. This isn�t rocket science. It does remind me of a time when my son was about 4 and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law came over to baby sit so my husband and I could go out, and they wanted to use the old, primitive tape deck we had at the time and they couldn�t figure out how to use it. I told them they should have asked our son. My sister-in-law looked at her husband and said �I TOLD you we should ask Michael�. I guess my brother-in-law didn�t believe a 4-year-old would know how to run the tape player.

Now my 4-year-old is 36 and I want him to tell me what�s going on with my DVD player. Unfortunately, he lives in another state.

Does anyone have a techno-savvy kid they can loan me for a few minutes? Like I said, this isn�t rocket science, but I�m feeling pretty stupid right now.

If you were to write a novel, what would you write about? I read murder mysteries and sci-fi novels (although I overdosed on Stephen King a long time ago), but I don�t think I could come up with a good plot. I�m not an expert on anything. I�m more of a Jack (or Jill) of all trades, so a how-to book is kind of out of the question.

I can occasionally write a decent poem but nobody buys poetry books - at least they don�t sell in bulk.

I�m having fantasies of writing a best-selling novel and getting off the job treadmill, but of course, it�s just a pipe dream and it would probably take me several years to write anyway, and at that point I�d be blind and arthritic and in a nursing home.

I�ve started a few novels. One plot involved a woman being studied at a university because she could levitate objects. I never got past chapter one and I don�t know where I put it anyway. Then I started to write an autobiography - BORING - and the parts that aren�t boring I wouldn�t want anyone to read anyway (plus I don�t want to embarrass my kids).

So I keep thinking, what on earth can I write a novel about? I�m willing to work hard at it. Really, I am, but I can�t come up with anything interesting. I also can�t help but think whatever I write would be a rehash of something I�ve already read and I would be sued for plagiarism and spend my blind-arthritic elderly years in bankruptcy and disgrace.

They say there are no new ideas. If someone can think of it, they already have. I would love to stumble on a brilliant idea, write it down and make a million. Something they could make into a movie. A transvestite vampire who sleeps in his coffin in a negligee, perhaps. Nah, it�s probably already been done. Maybe a novel about a serial killer baker who bakes little surprises from his victims into his pastry...that�s a thought. Time for a snack. No pastry, though. I�ll think about it a little longer. There has to be something catchy I can come up with....

I have, in the past 20 years of occupying my old house, had an intermittent mouse problem. Usually, we set traps and catch 1 � 3 mice in the span of a few days and we're mouse free for several months. About a month ago, I noticed the tell-tale signs of another guest, but I was too busy with stuff to do anything about it, so I was just careful to keep food put away and not leave anything appetizing sitting around. My suspicions were confirmed when I was making breakfast one morning, and a small brownish-gray streak dashed under my stove.

Now, I really hate killing anything, but you can't have mice in your house � it's not sanitary. My daughter, kind soul that she is, doesn't want me using any lethal or cruel traps, so she drove to the local hardware store and bought a cage trap, but she couldn't find one specifically for mice. This one is for voles and larger rodents, so we have been providing this mouse with a steady diet of peanut butter for the past week. He's too tiny to trip the mechanism and shut the doors. At least it kept him from leaving calling cards on my kitchen counter.

So this past weekend I went to another local store and bought a small plastic trap with a door that supposedly falls down when the mouse crawls into the back of the trap to eat the bait. Well, this thing is so sensitive that the little door drops down any time someone walks past it. Also, it doesn't seem to close completely, so the mouse can get his nose under the edge of the door and scurry out. This morning, the peanut butter is gone again.

I'm going to have to study this problem. There must be a trap out there that won't torture the creatures and actually works without breaking their necks or gluing their little feet in place or providing a horrible, painful death by slow poison, which means they would die someplace inaccessible anyway and rot in your house.

All I can say is this little fellow is probably feeling pretty healthy right now. He's had a steady diet of all-natural peanut butter for a week.

There must be a better mouse trap�

I have had a week to decompress from clearing out my father�s house after it sold. I still can�t remember everything I found and a lot of it is in bins in my kitchen waiting to go down to my basement for storage.

I did find an old wooden cigar box, and when I opened it, I found a piece of white tape on the lid with the name of a former neighbor with whom I grew up. I met her when I was five and she was three. She is the first person I took a photo of with my dad�s Brownie camera in our back yard 57 years ago. Her birthday is exactly one month after mine, so I sent her a newspaper clipping that my parents kept about her parent�s 50th wedding anniversary. I went to her mother�s funeral about 10 years ago. Her mother was my other �neighborhood mom�.

I have not kept in touch with this friend except for major life events but she sent me a loverly birthday card last month, and I just sent her the two dollars I got for the cigar box at the estate sale. I figured the two bucks would amuse her.

In the last 6 years, I�ve lost two brothers-in-law, a father-in-law, both parents and a very dear friend. I can�t help but think I�ve come through a life hurricane and my mind and body and spirit are weary. I am a healthy person - that is I rarely get colds or other illnesses - but you know stress can trigger worse things, so right now, I�m trying to decompress as much as possible so that doesn�t happen. My joints hurt from lack of exercise, and the thought of cleaning my house after the massive, massive purge of my father�s house just makes me cringe. I have kept my dishes washed and I�m cleaning the bathroom today, but otherwise the dust just sits on my furniture. It�s not going anywhere, so I�ll catch it later.

Yesterday, I printed some scanned artwork that I�ve been wanting to print out. Today is supposed to be rainy, so I may read or make some more art. Feeling kind of scattered but I know I won�t be getting any emergency phone calls from my father, which was a common occurrence when my parents got into their 90s, and my husband is off at a chess tournament and my daughter has plans later, so I�m left to come up with my own entertainment. I might tinker around on the piano I inherited, or maybe draw or read - I just don�t know. I�ve been bumping into walls lately with no clear focus, so I need to find something to concentrate on that will take my mind off all the flotsam and jetsam floating around in my brain, which is the debris left over by this life hurricane. I don�t want to spend another entire day starting at reruns.

I feel very rested after concentrating on making a piece of art. I think I may drag out the �collage box� - a box I made of images and different types of paper, and see what comes out of that. I will drag out the yoga mat and stretch my sore joints, and just get the most I can out of the day.

I�m done now except for some miscellaneous paperwork and two final utility bills. I sold my father�s house after a 3 1/2 month purge. I have bins and boxes in my kitchen waiting to go down to the basement.

I have been through the majority of my father�s slides, and I found some interesting stuff - views of the house where I grew up right after we first moved in in 1955, when I was 5 years old. The house was new construction and it had beautiful wood floors which were promptly all covered with carpeting. There was absolutely zero clutter in the house and it was sparsely furnished. There is a shot of my mother in her apron with the front door open like she is greeting someone. I have a scanner, so I�m going to have to use it pretty soon and get some of these slides on my computer.

Then there are the piles of old photo albums. I already emptied the newer photo albums and categorized the loose photos, wrapped them in paper and put them in a drawer, but I have a few really old albums with photos from the 30�s and 40�s that I have to decide what to do with. There are entire albums where I don�t recognize anyone and the photos are not labeled. I imagine I will throw some of those out.

Which brings me to the heavily cardboard-backed professional studio photographs from the 1920�s on forward. Some of these are beautiful photographs, professionally posed, taken in a studio in nice photo holders or heavy-duty cardboard photo albums. Not quite sure what to do with these. I have a 2nd cousin in Minnesota whose grandparents (my great uncle Alfred and his wife Clara) are pictured in what looks like a wedding portrait. I talked to this cousin on the phone shortly after my father passed away and I told him I would send him a copy of that photo, so I should get to that.

The fact is, I�m tired. It�s been an intense 4 months (my father died on May 2 - exactly 4 months ago tomorrow). The photos may have to wait for a few more weeks while I recover from the sorting, shifting, sifting, throwing and moving. I need to decompress for a while - try and get back to my own photography which had gone by the wayside the last few weeks. I�m also purging my house. No way am I leaving as much stuff for my kids as my dad left - except for the photos. I will be leaving lots of photos.

My parents both passed away within 6 months of each other, most recently my father on May 2, 2012. It wasn�t tragic because they were both in their 90s and they were together 68 years, but it was emotionally exhausting to lose them both in such a short period of time. In fact, if you�ve read any of my previous blogs, you know my father�s funeral was on my parent�s 69th wedding anniversary.

For the past 3 1/2 months, my daughter and I have been cleaning out the house. 94 years worth of stuff, and for me, 62 years worth of memories. None of the furniture sold at the estate sale. Very few of the 500 or so books sold, several classical CDs were left as well as a house full of furniture. My daughter managed to sell most of the furniture except my father�s recliner, the guest bed, my father's desk and the filing cabinets in the basement.

What was left was the large desk, all the books, the guest room bed, a wooden cabinet with a copier/printer on it, various small tables, a bunch of small radios and electronic devices, a couple of small televisions, a broken computer, a desk where my dad housed his HAM radios (my son took the radios on his last visit) an old trunk, about 100 records, including a Beethoven Centennial collection, a couple of floor lamps and various other odds and ends - garment bags, jig saw puzzles, a few paintings, and some glass items like casserole dishes, a coffee maker, pickle dishes, wine glasses, some kitchen knives, 2 slide projectors with screen, ironing board, a vintage (but not antique) all-metal Singer sewing machine in its own cabinet, carpet pieces, metal snack trays, a rusty storage cabinet for laundry supplies, several boxes of magazines and a few other odds and ends.

Fortunately, my daughter wanted the desk, one of the lamps and two end tables my dad made in the 50s and a coffee table my father-in-law made around the same time, and the guest bed. They are now housed in my den until she moves.

One other item I couldn�t sell was a really nice Baldwin Acrosonic spinet piano in cherry wood. I really didn�t want to give it away so since I have a very large living room, my husband agreed we could get rid of the 70-gallon fish tank we never used that has been sitting in the corner of my living room for 20 years sans fish and water. The piano sits tucked nicely in that corner now, but I�m really rusty at playing. Having played the flute for several years, I find I�m having difficulty reading the bass clef.

My parent�s wonderful neighbor, who has become a friend, took my dad�s chair for the local homeless shelter so I wouldn�t have to watch it go into a dumpster. She also took my mom�s sewing machine for her mother.

Since the house sold in 3 days, I had to scramble this week to get everything out since the buyer got approved and the closing has been set. Enter the junk guys. The company I hired was the only one I could find who would come to that location even though it�s not in the middle of nowhere so I don�t quite get that. The gentleman who owns the company and another worker arrived to haul everything away. I watched them bag up the Beethoven Centennial Collection and my mother�s custard dishes. (I kind of wish I had saved the custard dishes, but I�ve brought home enough stuff already), old luggage, a vacuum cleaner, about 400 books (ouch), old electronics including a computer, two tape duplicating machines, several old stereo speakers, some old radios, two large reel-to-reel tape players, some cassette tape players (my dad had at least 15 of those in the house). They took some casserole dishes, a coffee maker, a couple boxes of bank statements I didn�t bother to shred (they�re dead, what�s the point? - besides the shredder sold at the estate sale anyway).

They worked for 4 hours. This was what was left after giving all the clothing to Goodwill Services, filling an 8 x 12 x 4 dumpster, at least 100 bags to the curb along with a couple of bookcases, and after an estate sale.

I�m exhausted.

My father maintained the house. It�s bright and cheery and clean, but my God for the stuff. I�m going back over today to sweep the basement and grab the box of stuff I have left to bring home - stuff I couldn�t let go in a dumpster, and take pictures of the house empty. I have pictures of the house empty from before they moved in, pictures of it full before the purge and during the purge, and now we have come full circle.

I didn�t grow up in this house, but I�ve gotten to know it intimately in the last several weeks. Now that it�s empty, I kind of have to let go. Even though I brought home loads of photo albums, old post cards, pocket watches, my mom�s recipe containers, which my daughter is keeping, the piano, an old wine chest, a couple of my dad�s hats, my mom�s scarves, my dad�s old cameras and several other things, I know it�s going to hit me that they are really gone when I walk into that closing next week.

They no longer live in that house. They now only live in my memory and my heart.

I�m sitting here trying to make a paradigm shift. For the last several years, I�ve lived on the emotional basis of �what�s going to happen next?� That low-level I-can�t-really-completely-relax feeling you get when you�ve experienced a bunch of trauma and loss for an extended period of time. It�s the �when is the other shoe going to drop� feeling when you�re always on guard for something unpleasant to happen so that even minor inconveniences become painfully scary. Like a person with exposed nerve endings.

It�s like being carried on a wave where you have no control over where the water takes you. You are just trying to keep from drowning.

In the last 6 years I�ve lost both brothers-in-law and in the last 6 months I�ve lost both parents. There are several other things going on that I can�t write about in a public blog. Oh, don�t get me wrong, I certainly realize I have it better than many people, and this is not a complaint blog, but I�m just trying to sort out on paper how to shift my psyche from the dark side. The side of fear and anticipation of problems, to the side of �when life hands you lemons...�

I don�t know what to do today. It�s been 3 months since my father died, and I still have not written my thank you notes to those who came to the funeral or sent flowers. I should probably do that today. I�ve been busy trying to clear out his house and take care of all the paperwork. I have the day to myself, I have nothing really pressing today other than some laundry, but I can�t figure out what to do. The weather is too lousy to take the camera outside. My daughter is off doing something for the weekend and my husband just went to a chess club, so here I sit with my own scattered thoughts. These thoughts bounce around in my head telling me to do one thing, then another - read this book, watch this DVD, clean this room....I feel like a pinball.

I really admire people who can partition things off in their mind and emotions and just concentrate on the task at hand. I can do that at work, but my personal life feels like Hungarian goulash - a mixture of everything left over in the refrigerator all thrown together.

I guess writing this blog is my entry into the day. Now, I just have to walk through the maze and find my way to the other side.

My mind is blank. For a few days I�ve been trying think of something to blog about, and nothing comes to mind, so I thought I would write a blog about nothing.

What is nothing? Is it actually the absence of something? The removal of something that was there before?

Sometimes I wish I had nothing so I could start over and limit my stuff to a manageable pile. But if I had nothing, I�d have nothing to create something with. When God created the earth, what did he make it out of if the world was �void and without form�?

Some say when you meditate you should think of nothing. But even the word nothing means something. I mean, you get a mental picture from the word nothing of an empty room or an empty table or an empty container. The room, the table and the container are all something, so they negate the concept of nothing.

Nothing also brings to mind the blank white canvases I�ve seen in several museums done by several painters (Rauschenberg, Rodchenko). (I wonder how much these museums paid for nothing? Maybe I should post a photograph of nothing and see if it sells.) On the other hand the canvas board is something so it�s truly not nothing. Even if I left this blog blank, with just a title, there would still be a blank page, which is actually something.

This blog is the result of getting up really early because I could not keep nothing in my brain so I couldn�t sleep. (Think about that sentence for a minute. It�s actually not poor grammar).

I guess I�ll end this blog now because I have nothing more to say. The next blog will hopefully actually be about something.

I held an estate sale for the last three days to sell my parent�s belongings and furniture except for the items we brought home to keep. I was disappointed that nobody sat down at the piano and played Bach, and nobody bought any of the furniture except for one couch and a table from the basement. I did, however, sell my dad�s computer and printer and most of his extensive record collection � I was giving the records away at the end and a couple who was interested in vinyl took most of them which included a lot of 78 rpms.

I still have a lot of books left, old electronics, a vintage desk and all the furniture upstairs, except for two televisions and a stand. I kept hearing people open and shut the old Philco refrigerator in the basement, which still works better than a lot of the new ones, but nobody made an offer on it. That thing is going to be a bear to get out of the basement, but oh well.

Nobody bought the really nice gold-rimmed University of Michigan glasses, which I will now take to work and give to my boss for his son who graduated from there.

Other than that, most of the tools in the garage sold very fast. The dishes and cookware took a little longer and the books and a lot of the other stuff in the house took even longer than that, but enough stuff sold so that I can now stage the house for sale. Well, I still have to get some of the stuff out of the basement, but it�s much emptier than it was before.

Now we have to try and sell the furniture online and start putting some of the other stuff out for the �pickers�, like old shelving and boxes of obscure magazines I was trying to give away, and engineering text books from the 1940s that the libraries won�t even take as a donation, empty binders, etc.

I don�t know what to do with my mother�s sewing machine. It�s in its own blond wood cabinet with 3 drawers and the machine itself is all metal as it was made in the 50�s. I guess I�ll donate that as well, unless my daughter can sell it online.

I�m sitting here feeling very strange about the coffee table that my dad made. It went out the door late today. I have pictures of myself in my brownie uniform sitting on that table. It will be sadder when my daddy�s chair goes out the door, but there�s just no room for it. I have plenty of pictures of it in use, however, so that will have to do.

As I was sitting at the house waiting for people to come through, I started writing a small biography of my parent�s lives and writing that did two things. First, it brought up a lot of memories of things I had forgotten about, and second it revealed some gaps in my knowledge of certain things like exactly how my parents met. I think it was through a mutual friend, but I don�t know the details. I think I will be able to fill in some of the gaps when I go through the old letters and scrap books I brought home. I just can�t do it today. I�ve shuffled, rearranged and thrown out enough stuff this last month and I need a break.

It�s time to rest a couple of days before I go back and �stage� the house so someone else can move in and make their own memories.

I have to step back awhile
From the piles of sheet music
The dead and dusty radios
The carcasses of dead computers
The cameras that hold no images

I have to step back awhile
From the scissors mom cut my hair with
From the slide rule dad taught me to use
The huge blond desk where I used to sit and draw
The sewing machine on which I learned to stitch

Hard to condense 90 years of life
Into a two month purge
Harder still to sell daddy�s chair
And the piano I learned to play on
The Patty Play Pal doll they kept
Waits on the couch for a new home

Today, I take a break. I will stroll the Saint Clair art fair. I may go out and shoot some things, and I will do yoga. All the lifting and bagging and sorting at my parent�s house has made my shoulders and my hips hurt � kicked up my osteoarthritis. And there�s so much stuff in the basement. I can�t really clean down there until some of it sells anyway. Rock and a hard place. Well, the ad is in the paper. I�m committed to a date and time, so the price stickers will be flying when I go back over there. How do you put a price on 94 years of stuff and 62 years of memories?

I have never posted two blogs in one day, but I had to write about the last trunk. If you have not read any of my previous blogs, I�m clearing out my father�s house and I have found literally tons of stuff tucked away. Today I went to throw out some more stuff and I finally went through the last trunk.

There are two trunks in the basement, one of which was pretty much empty, and the other, older wooden trunk I had left for last because it contained a few things from my grandmother who died in the famous Spanish flue epidemic of 1918-1919 when my father was 10 months old. There were some old handkerchiefs and gloves that were pretty musty from being in the basement. I know someone lovingly embroidered around the edges, but they were falling apart and smelly, so I threw them out. I found my hoarder father had kept all his valentines from grade school. I brought some home to photograph before I throw them out because I love the 1920�s designs.

The layer under the inset tray in this trunk had miscellaneous really old things including a huge two-inch hand-made swirl marble. My grandparents lived in South Dakota near a Sioux reservation, and as I dug deeper, I found a beautiful purse with extensive beading, a beaded strap and beaded streamers on the bottom. It needs cleaning, but it�s really like nothing I�ve ever seen before. I�m assuming it�s Sioux beading, but I�ll have to research that idea.

I found my mother�s grade school pictures from about 1928-1932, pictures of my uncle in his old 1940s football uniform, pictures of my great aunts and uncles, and pictures of people I didn�t recognize.

Farther down, in a plastic bag, I found my parent�s wedding announcement (there was no big ceremony), and a letter my mother wrote to my father when he was discharged from the army. She wrote how she was looking forward to sitting with him in the evenings and listening to the radio together. The letter was very sweet and brought tears to my eyes. She told him she was looking forward to their life together. They had 68 years together, and only spent about 5 months apart before my father went to be with her.

I have been yelling out loud at my father for the past couple of weeks because of all the stuff he kept. Stuff most people would throw out without a second thought, but the last trunk was truly bitter sweet and I�m glad I saved it for last. It contained reflections of a long life together.

I finally broke down and rented a 12 x 8 x 4 dumpster on Wednesday and my daughter, my husband and I filled it in two hours. We are cleaning out my parent�s house preparing for an estate sale and to get the house on the market.

We were mainly throwing things out from the garage where we had put about 40 garbage bags (about 100 more went out previously with the regular trash), but along the sides of the garage, and on my father�s work bench (which he had in the basement in their previous house), there were literally a ton of things we got rid of.

For some reason, my parents saved every jelly jar they ever used. I estimate we threw out over 300 jelly jars, maybe more. Wire, screws (rusted) burned out vacuum tubes (I found more in boxes I�m going to sell) broken tools, rusted tools, a taped-up electric drill, lawn chairs repaired beyond recognition, empty cassette tape boxes, broken HAM radio equipment�the list goes on.

I did find a 36-cup coffee maker, my old wooden sled, some copper wire, and 3 old microphones. I�m saving the microphones for my son, who wants the HAM radio equipment.

We�re selling the 75-rpm records that were stored in the basement for a buck apiece. My daughter spent a couple hours looking them up online, and none of them were worth very much.

My daughter is keeping the 1950�s retro blond wood end tables. I�m keeping two green metal retro table lamps (they sill work fine) and a crystal pitcher we found in the china cabinet.

Other than that, we�re selling the Norman Rockwell figurines, two Christmas trees, the hand-painted ceramics, the rest of the furniture except for one bed and another lamp my daughter wants, the piano, the CDs, the casserole dishes, the food processor, the yogurt maker, two filing cabinets, a large blond wood desk from the early 1950�s and my mom�s Singer sewing machine with cabinet, an antique wine chest, two antique trunks, a few toys, all the books except for a couple we brought home (I brought home a book on Native American artifacts to look up my dad�s arrowheads and stone peace pipes), and a retro Philco refrigerator in the basement that still works fine and is in really good condition. I�m also selling my dad�s film cameras and 3 pairs of binoculars.

I had a little breakdown a couple of days ago when I looked at my father�s first Heathkit vacuum tube radio sitting on a bench in the basement. I can�t throw that out. I watched him make it. I was probably 6 or 7 at the time. According to my son, it worked until some time last year.

I will be sad when we sell the Redwood picnic table my father lovingly re-varnished about 5 times. I spent many a summer sitting at that table with my best friend drinking iced tea.

Later today, I have a few more items to throw in the dumpster - old carpet pieces, more miscellaneous cassette tapes, a desk organizer and some empty binders � but I was completely amazed by how much of a life can go into a dumpster when you never throw anything away. I hope we didn�t pitch out anything super valuable, but oh, well.

I did keep my dad�s photo I.D. card from the University of Michigan from 1946-1947. He had an old wallet tucked away in the workbench. I think we�re through discovering things now. I�ve been in every nook and cranny including the attic.

I don�t know what to do with the shoes. Do people buy used shoes? I guess I�ll price them and find out. I can always take them across the street to Goodwill after the sale.

To be continued�

Well, I�ve been through the ringer for a good little while now. I often wonder what other people do to cope. Oh, I know there is the usual � drugs, alcohol, denial, becoming a workaholic, running 10 miles a day, obsessive compulsion � the list is as varied as there are personality types.

I consider myself a pretty normal person. I really don�t have any vices � I don�t smoke and I don�t drink. I�ve done enough of both and stopped years ago. I do take a day off from time to time. That is, I purposely don�t do anything that could be considered work and I�ve pretty much learned to quell the guilt about not doing anything for several hours.

However, there is that one small voice in the back of my head that wants to tempt me, to lead me off the path of the straight and narrow, to trip me up and see me fall.

I�m talking, of course, about my drug of choice � my heroin, my cocaine. It comes in a yellow bag, and its name is Lays. The Original Lays. For a long time, I liked the chopped and formed (and God only knows what else) Pringles. I liked the fact that they came in a can and were virtually almost always unbroken, with an abundance of that addictive salt. But I found if the can was even a little stale, the oil they use to make them tastes rancid and odd. I live in Michigan, so we have the regional Better Made brand, but they are unevenly cut and have burned spots that are hard to chew and they are quite oily for my taste.

There are also the baked varieties, but the baking process takes all the flavor out. They are dry and hard.

I go to the store and I try and walk past the yellow bags. I can usually resist and walk on by, even though I hear the soft voice calling �Maaaarrrry�.we�re right heeeere. Come and pick us up. We�re freshhh, we�re crunchy, we�re saaaallllttty�� I push my shopping cart a little faster and listen to the voice fading as I move away. But then I think about them. Sometimes at night, when I feel withdrawal symptoms, I get undressed early so I won�t be tempted to go out to the store. My husband has been trained not to ask me if I want any when he shops.

But once in a while the urge is too strong. I have to give in and it involves 2 full-sized bags because I know the first bag will go very fast. In fact, it usually disappears in one day with a family member getting only one bowl. I always jealously want the first bowl. The top layer is where the biggest, unbroken, less greasy ones are and it�s pure heaven to place the salty side of that big flat crunchy thing on your tongue and feel the taste buds react.

My daughter says I have a serious problem. She�s probably right, but I don�t drive my car off the road after eating them and I doubt they will give me lung cancer. I can�t speak to my cholesterol level, but I�ve never committed a crime to support my habit. After all, a large bag is only 4 bucks and nobody looks at you disapprovingly when you buy them. It�s not like I�m obese and I�m buying four boxes of chocolate doughnuts (although I can relate to that too and I�ve leaned not to judge.)

I know I should probably meditate, do yoga and maybe clean something as an outlet when I�m stressed, but addiction can be so�addictive! I was having the cravings again yesterday so I broke down and ate a hamburger instead (I�m basically vegetarian but eat meat once in a while). This blog is meant to purge the urge. Will it work? I�ll let you know later. Or maybe not if I give in and I�m feeling guilty, although they say confession is good for the soul.

My lower back is killing me this morning. I think it�s because I have not been doing my Yoga which is partly because to do Yoga, I have to get on my bedroom floor and to get on my bedroom floor I have to vacuum it because dust gives me asthma and I haven�t vacuumed the floor for a while because I bought my daughter an air conditioner for the upstairs bedroom for the summer while she�s living here and when you have the air conditioner running off the same fuse as the vacuum cleaner, you blow a fuse that covers one complete side of my old house and in the 20 years I�ve lived here, we have never labeled the fuses so we have to try them all before we find the one that�s blown because you can�t tell by looking at it.

I really hate thinking that way, but I�ve been through so much in the last year that the thought of having to do one extra thing really bugs me and tires me out mentally and thus, my back hurts and I suffer.

The same thing used to be true of my photography � I would think, �gee, that thing over there would make a cool shot but I really don�t feel like hauling out the tripod now� and so I would, of course, get blurry photos which weren�t good for anything.

Yesterday I had to go to the grocery store, so I stopped at my parent�s house and cleaned out another cabinet (see previous bolgs) and I found my dad�s dog tags. He was 94 so he kept them a long time. Anyway, while I was in the little metal box with the dog tags, I found a little silver ring with my mom�s first initial on it. She must have worn it as a child because it�s slightly too large for my pinky finger and too small to fit over my arthritic knuckles.

I think my back hurts today because I was bending over looking for that little silver ring because I dropped it and lost it for a few minutes in the clutter around the cabinet.

How many things do we not do because we just are too tired or overloaded that we don�t want to take the few steps necessary to prepare to do the thing we really want or need to do?

I just remembered, I recently bought a Yoga mat. Maybe I�ll put that down and my face will then not be planted in my dusty floor. Or, maybe I�ll suck it up and actually vacuum. It�s rather chilly outside so that air conditioner is not running now anyway.

I need a day off. In fact, I need a week off, but I have to work like everyone else and I have to clear out my parent�s house. I�m just whining right now � using this blog to generate universal sympathy.

On a brighter note, I started going through my dad�s slides last night and found some really cute slides of my kids when they were little, and some beautiful flower shots from Hawaii my dad took when they were on a business trip there. Maybe I will go through more slides today. I don�t have to vacuum to do that. However, I DO have to sort through the piles of stuff in my den that I�ve brought home from their house to find them (sigh). Maybe I�ll just sit here and simply exist for a while�.although, I do need to trim my nails before I turn on the computer and type this blog.

If you are reading this, it means I at least sucked it up enough to trim my nails and turn on my computer.

I had wonderful parents. They always supported me and were always there for me. My mother was the practical one, and was always pinching pennies, sometimes to the point of leaving bruises, but I had everything I needed growing up. My father was the most patient man I ever knew. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. He was intelligent and always studying something � religious philosophies, alternative health practices, UFOs � it ran the gamut.

I�m finding interesting things in the house. I found the naturalization papers for my great-grandfather when he became a citizen � he came over from Norway in the early 1800s. I found the army discharge papers for my great uncle Zack. He served in WWI.

I knew my father had a tendency to hold on to things but it wasn�t until this week I realized he was a hoarder. I�m not talking about the hoarders you see on tv who live in trash and have unworkable plumbing � you would never know he was a hoarder by walking into his house, or even looking in his closets. The closet by the front door is neat and organized as are their bedroom closets.

However�the basement is a different story. I cleaned out his desk as well as several cabinets that are jammed into the small basement. The desk was interesting, I found several things I remembered seeing when I was growing up including an old aspirin tin, an old gyroscope, a pencil you could switch leads and write in different colors with, an old set of drafting tools, an old slide rule as well as about 20 miniature plastic slide rules, rubber cement that was 50 years old, about 10 packages of scotch tape � some of which were never used � the property tax receipts for the house they lived in 20 years ago, about 20 old scratch pads yellowed by age. I got 4 large garbage bags of stuff out of the desk alone. Later, in another cabinet I found the actual black and white brochure for the desk itself and the desk is over 50 years old!

I have also stumbled across about 200 record albums and a pile of about fifty 35mm movies including �The Music Man� and a concert by the Mills Brothers. I threw out the initial pile of 3 inch floppy disks I found, but I know there�s another box full somewhere along with a large brief case full of floppy disks from a company he worked for before there were even personal computers, so why he had those, I don�t know. I think that company went out of business several years ago.

I threw out slides of various Amway meetings and trips (they used to sell Amway products), because I don�t know any of those people anyway. My daughter found a folder of jokes in his filing cabinet, a lot of which are the same jokes that ended up being traded on the internet when email became common.

I think I have gone in every cupboard and container now except another box marked �toys�, the linen closet and the attic, which I pray is an easy clean-out. I�m taking the day off from the purge because my back is killing me and I generated at least 15 more bags of stuff to go out to the garage until garbage day. There are at least 20 bags in there already and I threw out 10 bags last week and 6 the week before. That�s 51 bags of stuff that DID NOT include clothing or books. They also kept the box for every appliance they ever bought except for the washer and dryer. I think what�s in the attic are all those empty boxes. At least I hope they�re empty. I know the aluminum Christmas tree from the 70�s is up there, though.

To be continued�.

I am clearing out my parent�s house and since they were married almost 69 years (dad�s funeral was on their 69th anniversary earlier this month), and my dad was a pack rat, it�s pretty interesting.

I cleared out my den at home as a holding area. I�m not bringing home any of the furniture except for one antique wine chest and a couple of lamps, but the den is already half full with slides, photo albums, small boxes of memorabilia, etc.

Yesterday, I found my dad�s old cameras. I wasn�t aware until yesterday he had two old Brownies. I found the oldest one earlier, with which I took my first picture when I was 5.

I also threw out yesterday the following:

- About 25 empty prescription bottles with the labels removed
- A large box of McDonald�s plastic silverware
- Expired bags of flour, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, plant food
- Old Christmas candles with about a quarter inch of wax left
- 20 boxes of tea bags stored in the basement
- An old, moldy leather brief case (one of about 20 more that have to go)
- Boxes of empty slide holders
- Boxes of old Christmas cards that look like they were from the 60s
- Plastic containers for items that are long gone
- A plastic hard hat from the Henry Ford Museum
- Empty raisin bran boxes (?????)
- Old bottles of things from my dad�s bathroom that were not labeled
- A dead, useless electric shaver

Previously I had pitched a couple boxes of dried up rubber bands, daily calendar pages they kept for some unknown reason, blank planners from the last several years, petrified crackers, old stained Tupperware, expired food bars, 100 or so bottles of expired supplements, about 10 small flashlights my dad got free for making donations, solidified instant coffee, old flour and about 10 more bags of things I can�t remember.

I have not gotten to the paper or the electronic stuff yet, the cassette tapes, the old computer disks, the contents of his filing cabinets, and all the books. I donated all the clothing this week � took me about 10 trips to the car � I hope my dad didn�t have any money in his pockets because I didn�t check.

I took a peek in the attic yesterday and it doesn�t look too bad. There are some large boxes, but it�s not crammed full. I�ll wait until I have help to do that space.

I did find my first baby shoes in my mother�s dresser and a nice pin I bought her in Spain on one of her suits. Found the old white gloves I used to wear to church in the 50s and a fully-stocked Samsonite travel case in the closet.

This is very time-consuming, intensive, emotional work, but at least it�s not the house I grew up in � that would be more traumatic. I will, however, probably have a small melt-down when the piano goes out the door. I learned to play on that piano, but I just don�t have room for it. I�ll think about that later.

For now, I just have to take it one item at a time, like the stack of old 35 mm movies I found in the corner of the basement including �The Music Man�, along with about 200 record albums, some of which are 78s. I never knew someone could cram so much stuff in such a small house. Their living area was neat and clean, so you would never know the other areas of the house (mostly the basement) held so much unless you snooped around.

When this is over, I think I�ll do a major purge at home, although I don�t have nearly as much stuff � I do purge every couple of years - I don�t want my kids shaking their heads when they clean out my house eventually, thinking �What the heck is this and why the heck did she keep it?�

How many times have you said �OK, I�m serious about this now?� I was thinking about that earlier. I have said that so many times about the usual � diet, exercise, that project I keep putting off�

When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was an architect. When I got older and realized there was a lot of math involved, that one went out the window. Then I wanted to be a geologist. Have you ever seen the math formula for the Richter scale? I found out in junior high and high school I had a knack for learning foreign languages, and since there were no math formulas involved, that was the path I took.

Now �I�m getting serious� about photography. I�ve been serious about it for a while � read all the �how to� books and worked with some professionals, and I do know what I�m doing, but I really want to learn the technical aspects as well as the esthetic and practical aspects, and that involves, well, math. How much light is lost depending on your lens length and your maximum or minimum aperture, corresponding shutter speed settings when you stop down or open up�Kelvin setting numbers for various ambient lighting conditions, etc. I can�t get away from the math.

My brain rebels. I want to make good art, but I don�t want to guess at it. Pixel counts, resolution, aspect ratio � my head hurts.

On the practical side, I always wanted a macro lens, but I knew I needed a tripod first. I bought a nice light-weight travel Slik that gets very low to the ground and has a reversible center post for macro shots. It wasn�t expensive and I love it. Yesterday, I took the plunge and ordered the macro lens. Now I want to spend time reading about the technical aspects of each lens and what I can do with it over and above the obvious. When I talk about the art of photography, I want to really know what I�m talking about, including the (shudder) math. Wish me luck.

My father's funeral is next Tuesday, May 8. My mother passed away last October 22. My parent's were married 68 years at the time of my mother's passing. That was really hard, watching my dad lose his companion. Now, after a major surgery and a month long struggle, my dad went to meet her.

What I think is a little serendipitous is the fact that May 8, the day of the funeral, will be their 69th anniversary. There's no way your could plan that. It just happened that way. My mother was 91 and my dad was 94, so I can't complain. Funny, they let him renew his driver's license by mail this year. I have a valid driver's license for my father in my wallet that's good until he's 98. Of course, he can go anywhere he wants now without spending the gas money.

My daughter and I were with him when he left. I'm glad I got to be there. I plan on documenting his life with my camera as I slowly clear out the house. I already have his Brownie camera (with which I took my first picture when I was 5), and his old Polaroid, his pocket knife he carried always for the past 60 years or so, and a few other odds and ends. Being from the depression generation, they really never threw anything out, so I'm sure there will be a lot of surprises in the clutter. In fact, they have a working retro refrigerator in the basement that's older than I am (I'm 61), and they still have the sales receipt. I think it's out of warranty....

Anyway, I'm sad, but also relieved that they were only apart for a little less than 6 months. Life is an adventure at every turn. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes it just is what it is...

I�m sad. My father is dying and up until today he has been as sharp as a tack. Today, he was starting to not make sense and at one point, he handed me some imaginary object to put in his safe. He said it was worth 5 grand. In any case, that reminded me to try and open his safe, which hasn�t been open for years and is probably empty. If there is anything in there at all, it�s a few coin proof sets that are worth face value. I couldn�t get it open. My daughter tried and she couldn�t get it open. I guess I�ll have to hire someone to open it, just in case the Hope Diamond is in there or something, but I highly doubt it. I can�t just chuck it without looking, of course.

At any rate, while we were down there in the basement trying to figure out the safe, we found a bunch of photo albums and scrap books he was keeping in the basement where it�s damp and musty. For a smart man, I really don�t know why he kept them down there. At any rate, I brought home the most elaborate and oldest album and I have been looking through it. There is a hand-written piece of paper in there with the descriptions of who�s in the album, but I think some of them have been shuffled around, and the handwriting, which doesn�t look like my dad�s, is kind of messy.

I recognize my grand parents, and with the help of this piece of paper, I recognize one great uncle and his wife, and my dad�s brother, who passed away about 20 years ago. All of these photos were taken between around 1890 and 1920, with the exception of one of my uncle that I think must have been taken around 1935. In any case, I�m going to carefully label any printed photos from now on with names and dates on the back so when my grandchildren are going through them 30 years from now, they know who it is they are looking at.

I found another piece of paper inside the front of the album. It�s the actual original newspaper obituary for my grandmother (my father�s mother) from 1919. She died of complications from pneumonia after contracting the Spanish flu in that famous epidemic of 1918-1919. It made me feel kind of old to realize my grandmother was born in 1885. It struck me odd that this obituary says she is interred in the �Norwegian Cemetery� in Springfield, South Dakota. I guess we Norwegians had our own separate burial ground back them.

If I ever feel like blowing 150 bucks, I�m going to register on Ancestry.com and try and trace some of my dad�s family, but they all emigrated to that huge Scandinavian population in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, and they all have very common Norwegian names, so it might be kind of hard to sift through all the Ole�s and the Arne�s to find my relatives, but I think it would be fun. Also, I�m supposedly descended from Ethan Allen on my father�s mother�s side, so it would be fun to trace that as well. Although I�ve read Ethan Allen was actually a worthless drunk and it was Benedict Arnold who saved the fort at Ticonderoga, but given Benedict�s reputation after the fact, they credited my great-great-great (how many?) grandfather with that undertaking, even though he was probably drunk on his ass at the time.

And my final thought in this blog is for anyone who saw the movie �Fargo� � the police chief and the car salesman (Francis McDormand and William H. Macy) had the dialect perfected. Whenever they said �Geeze� or �Don�t ya know� I thought �My God, they�re channeling my uncle Arne!�

I am preparing for my second parent to make the transition. This is very hard. Logistically, emotionally and financially hard.

I'm not complaining. I have it better than a lot of other people, but it's still hard. Funny the stuff that goes through your mind when this happens. Fear, uncertainty, guilt (did I do enough?). Ultimately, you just have to let things take their course. There is nothing else to do. Explaining your state of mind to someone else is useless - if they've gone through it, they understand. If they haven't, they don't.

I honor the hours, days, weeks, months and years my parents were there to support me. I was there to support my mom at the end, and I'm now there to support my father. He's fully aware he is getting ready to make the journey and embraces the process. I'm constantly tense and sad, but that's part of the process too.

To anyone reading this who is going through, or has recently gone through this, I send you good thoughts. This is a hard thing. It is what it is.

I was doing some freestyle writing this morning. You know how you have a string of thoughts that start in one place and end up in a completely different time zone�Anyway, I wrote a word with the letter �l� in it and my pen hesitated part way down the right side of the loop and made a notch in the letter. This took me off the thought I was writing and led me to think about an odd experience � about someone who wrote like that.

20 years ago, I lived in Redford Township, Michigan, which butts up against the west side of the Detroit city limits. I grew up there, in fact. My parents bought a new house there when I was 5 and they lived in that house for 40 years until I persuaded them to move closer to me. I had moved to St. Clair, Michigan, which is about 15 miles south of the city of Port Huron.

Anyway, there was a local gas station on a corner near where we lived in Redford where we would take our cars for oil changes and basic maintenance before all the quick oil change places cropped up. My husband took his car there for an oil change, and later he told me that the guy manning the counter kept going outside and talking to the women at the self-serve pump. My husband said something to him like �Checking them out?� And the counter man�s response was �You never know. Sometimes you get lucky.�

About a month later, I took my car in for an oil change, and while I was sitting waiting, I watched the same guy joke with everyone who came in to pay for their gas. This guy was absolutely hilarious. I went home and told my husband �I just spent an hour with Robin Williams�.

About a month after that, I came home from somewhere and as I walked in the door, my husband said �You know that guy at the gas station you thought was so funny? He�s a serial killer.� I said �You�re kidding!�. He pointed to the TV where the news report was still on and sure enough, there stood Leslie Allen Williams being arraigned on two or three counts of murder. I had interacted with this guy and he had my address and phone number. Thank God I wasn�t his type.

Now that I write this, I remember I was at Eastern Michigan University from 1968-1972, during a spree by another serial killer, John Norman Collins. The head residents in the dorms had us signing in and out because bodies kept showing up intermittently. I knew the roommate of the last victim Karen Sue Beineman. I also went on a blind date with a guy who told me he had been questioned in the murders (this was before they caught John Collins). I was sitting in his jeep when he told me this with nowhere to go. It was an odd sensation. Of course, fortunately for me, he wasn�t the killer. There was a book published later called �Michigan Murders� about John Norman Collins and his killing spree. I think it has been re-released lately under a different title, but it was odd reading that book and being familiar with where all the bodies had been found.

Funny how writing one letter oddly (Leslie Allen Williams made notches in all his �l�s � I looked at the repair order from the gas station after he was arrested) will take your mind down a weird corridor in your memory.

I wonder how many of us have encounters with truly evil people and never know it.

Things I have learned that are universally true:

- The water from the bathroom sink tastes different than the water from the kitchen sink.
- It is a law of physics that 6 socks go into the dryer and 5 come back out.
- When your adult children move home, the tv remote can only be found on Mondays and Thursdays. The rest of the time it�s invisible.
- Your spouse assumes the can opener is broken without noticing the blender is plugged in instead.
- The phone always rings when you�re about to find out who did the murder.
- Clothing from the dollar store is 6 sizes smaller than marked.
- It�s not a good idea to have two identical pairs of shoes in different colors when you dress for work with the light off because your spouse is still sleeping.
- Putting coffee grounds in the water bin when you�re half awake will ruin your coffee maker.
- When you�ve been thinking about that food item all day at work, you come home and remember you ate the last of it the night before.
- Cheap Teflon looks like pepper on your fried eggs.
- Your stomach only growls when there is a lull in the conversation at the business meeting.
- That show you finally decide to watch for the second time turns out to be the rerun of the episode you watched a year earlier.
- The day you finally decide you are going on that diet, your spouse comes home with a gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream.
- Nobody will ever own up to the tomato sauce explosive matter in the microwave.
- You always find the molded fruit in your crisper drawer the day after garbage pickup.
- For women: you can never be too rich or too thin or have a big enough purse.
- For men: even if you are dressed impeccably, the wind always messes with the comb-over.
- When you find keys in a drawer you haven�t seen for 15 years, you can�t get yourself to throw them out. God only know what they�re for, but you don�t want to take any chances.
- And finally, for me at least, it�s a universal truth that major appliances tend to break down two or three at a time.

I know these only scratch the surface of universal truths. There are many more out there just waiting to be discovered by modern science.

I have not written any blogs for a while. My father will be 94 on April 8 (God willing). He called me a week and a half ago and said he thought he had appendicitis so I took him up to the local emergency room. After 10 hours and x-rays and CAT scans, they determined he had a huge blockage in his intestines.

A week later, after 4 days in ICU, they cleared him for surgery, which they performed last Friday. He's doing well now, had a hamburger for the first time last night and he told me he never thought a hamburger could taste that good (this after two days of liquids and jello).

In the meantime, I'm picking up his mail, paying his bills, taking him stuff from his house and holding down a job.

I find lately, the only time I'm relaxed is when I'm making images - which right now only consists of photography - no time to draw - so I plan on going out this coming Sunday and shooting all day before heading up to either the hospital or the rehab, depending on where my father ends up. My mother passed away in October, so I really would like my father to stick around for a while. Now I have to get him to stop taking some of the massive number of supplements he takes, which probably helped get him to the age of 94, but some of which, I'm sure, contributed to the huge mass stuck in his intestines. He's really a kind man, patient, unassuming, but stubborn as hell. If I remove some of the massive collection of pills from his house without permission, he'll probably be very peeved. I guess I'll just start reading labels and trying to figure out which ones won't hurt and may help. A daunting task when there are probably 100 bottles sitting there in his kitchen.

Like I said, life has been interesting.....

The first picture I ever took was in 1955 of my 3-year-old friend. I was 5. I took it with my father�s Brownie (which he still has). I made her pose with her arms in the air (heaven knows why) and I sent her a copy of the picture on her 50th birthday.

I generally don�t shoot people � at least not as �fine art�. I find it the most difficult thing to do well, and I�m not that interested in it for myself. I certainly take pictures of relatives and my grandchildren. Lots of pictures of the grandchildren, in fact, because they�re very young and won�t stay still and pose. I took a few pictures of my mother when I knew she was dying, which are still in my camera, and I have pictures of family members and events going way back, but really not that many.

I didn�t get into photography seriously until about 20 years ago because I used to be an oil painter and working 50-60 hours a week (and occasionally 70), I didn�t even have time to take the top off the Titanium White, let alone clean up after painting. And, as a painter who used a traditional working method, that is background first, let it dry for a week, another layer, let that dry, etc., it took months for me to finish a painting.

There are many fine photographers here on FAA � certainly many more gifted than I am, and many (in my opinion) not as good, but I�m fascinated by photographs of pieces of ordinary things that make beautiful abstract or graphic art. If anyone cares to comment on this blog, I would be interested to know what subject matter fascinates you and why.

I�m still trying to learn my camera, and I�m hoping to steadily improve in the digital world to the point I did with film. So much to learn. Some day, I�ll be brilliant at it.

I would say I have a normally open mind. I�m not gullible, but I do believe in things unseen, UFOs, loved one�s spirits hanging around (I�ve seen the former and felt the latter), and I�m often amused by people who are very intelligent, but either they believe in nothing other than what is apparent to their 5 senses, or they go the other way - into the conspiracy realm - and believe Elvis is alive and living in Canada.

One thing a lot of people don�t believe in is personality profiling through handwriting analysis. I�m not talking about predicting the future here, or anything psychic or paranormal in any way. I�m talking about taking a sample of someone�s handwriting and reading character traits from the pressure on the paper, the slant and the various letter formations, etc.

I became fascinated with the subject of handwriting analysis several years ago and bought several books on the subject. Some of the books I found to be too general and practically useless, but 3 of them gave good, specific information enough to do a pretty full analysis. After studying these 3 books for a while, I decided to analyze my own handwriting. It was SCARY accurate. Now, I know what you�re thinking � I extracted the traits I like from this analysis and dismissed the rest. Not so. I carefully matched my letter formations, slant, etc. against the best example in each book and only read those sections. There was plenty of negative stuff in there.

One item that really caught me off guard is �you tend to buy more books than your shelves can hold and you go overboard with your vices� (true � I have more books than bookshelves). It also said I�m a non-conformist in that I don�t care about trends (true), I would never be caught in designer clothing (true � unless Jaclyn Smith K-Mart clothing counts) and I�d make a hopeless Republican (true). It said I resent it when relatives encroach on my free time (true). I tend to pick up on other people�s emotions (true) and should not surround myself with negative people. I have a fluid communication style and I do not hesitate when I speak (true � I never use �um�, �you know� or other fillers and I don�t stutter or restart my sentences). One thing that I need to work on is my compulsive need to be right all the time (true � if I�m in a conversation where someone is wrong about a fact, I feel compelled to look it up and show them they�re wrong).

There was a lot more stuff, a lot of it positive, but these were the most specific and spot-on items I found. As a side note, during a particularly traumatic time where I was experiencing a lot of death and other stress in my family, my handwriting started slanting backward when it usually slants quite a bit forward. According to these books, back slanting writing is a sign of pulling back and being reserved and guarded. That lasted about 6 months.

So, my point is, if you look into a subject that you feel is out in left field, you might find some merit there once you get into it. Handwriting analysis may become a lost art � I heard on the news the other day that elementary schools are thinking about dropping cursive writing training because everyone uses a keyboard to communicate now. What a sad day that will be when our children no longer take pen to paper and write freely.

When I was in college, I had about 13 roommates all together, if my memory is accurate. I first lived with my best friend, who I had met when I was 12 and she was 14, and who is still my best friend today almost 50 years later. She moved to another dorm and lived with someone who was also to become a dear friend, and with whom I lived for a year as well.

We had a janitor in that dorm named Marion, who didn�t use deodorant, so you could always tell if he had been in your room working on something even an hour after he left.

Anyway, when I lived with the second friend, we had two bedrooms on either side of one study room and each bedroom accommodated two people. The study room had two long desks with shelves above them, which also accommodated two people each. The roommate who shared my desk and I put some bricks and boards on the book shelf to make it two levels to hold more books. One day three of us were sitting there having a conversation when all of a sudden 6 feet of book shelf, the extra boards, the bricks and all the books came crashing down on the desk. I had a ceramic coffee pot on the desk, which was severed in half, and the fluorescent light tubes that were part of the underside of the shelf shattered everywhere.

That evening, my friend and I were the only two in the room and we started examining how the shelves were attached to the wall. (Marion had come in to the room earlier to clear the debris from my side of the room and we had opened the windows to get rid of the �eau de Marion�). My friend was bent over, looking at the underside of her shelf, which was still in tact, and I suddenly heard a weird crackling noise. I turned around just as she stood up, and I saw flames about 6 inches high shooting out of the top of her head. She always kept a lighted candle on her desk at night, and apparently got a little too close when she bent down to look under her shelf. Well, I screamed her name, ran over and hit her on the top of the head repeatedly while jumping up and down (she was taller, thus the jumping part). I will never forget the look on her face � she was looking at me like I had completely lost it. Since only her hair was on fire and it didn�t get down to her scalp, she had no idea she was on fire. Later she said she thought she heard something odd and smelled something burning, but she didn�t know what it was until I actually attacked her. Fortunately, the part of her hair that burned was kind of on the top of her head and she could comb the front part over it so it wasn�t too apparent. She had red hair, and as the story got told through the years, we always said that event gave new meaning to the phrase �flaming red head�.

My friend was a talented writer and she wrote all of her stories longhand. I have typed some of them for her and have several more notebooks of stories I have not gotten to yet. When I started typing them, I was impressed with her talent. She said she didn�t know what she was going to do with them when I got finished � whether she would try and publish them or not.

41 years after we met, and hundreds of lunches later with my other best friend, laughter, tears, sharing family troubles and life struggles, my friend became very ill. We lost her yesterday. I don�t want to let her go. I look around the room as I write this and see gifts she gave me. They are reminders of a wonderful friendship and my heart is heavy today. My flaming read-headed friend � I will miss you.

The older I get, the more ridiculous some of the conventions and unwritten rules I grew up with seem now in hindsight.

Every summer we would fly to Omaha to see my grandmother. Getting on an airplane was a big deal in the 50�s, and my mother always wore her best dress, a hat, and white gloves. Of course, the flight attendants wore white gloves and hats as well. You didn�t get on an airplane wearing jeans and tennis shoes. It simply wasn�t done.

When I was about 16, I always wore a girdle to church. (This was before pantyhose � yes, I�m ancient). Now, until I hit the age of about 45, I weighed slightly more than Twiggy (look her up), but you wore a girdle under your good church clothing no matter how thin you were, making the entire experience excruciating. Do you thank all the women at church in the 50�s and the 60�s were smiling because they were friendly? Not so � we were all grimacing in pain. We just LOOKED like we were smiling.

My mother passed away this last October, and because she had Alzheimer�s my father took care of preparing the meals for the last 6 years or so of her life. I was talking to him on the phone one day and he made the comment �I don�t know what to make for lunch. I could get by with sardines and crackers, but the problem is your mother doesn�t like sardines.� I was silent for a moment, trying to discern the point, and when I finally got it I said, �Well, why don�t you have sardines and crackers and make mom something she likes? There is no LAW that says you have to eat the same thing at the same time as the other person at the table.� Eating something different than my mother at a meal never occurred to him. He also expressed distress at one point that they had some appointment that would interfere with lunch on the day of the appointment. They ate breakfast at 8, lunch at noon and dinner at 5 whether they were hungry or not. When I expressed amazement that he subconsciously thought there was a rule about mealtime, I noticed they started eating dinner later.

I have been wearing those trouser socks to work for several years. You know, ladies, the knee-sock high nylons you wear with your pants. I have some soft black pants I wear to work sometimes in the winter, and when I wear them with those trouser socks, the static pulls the pants up toward my knees and I look ridiculous. Just yesterday I was folding the laundry and I had an epiphany of sorts. I stole a pair of my husband�s black socks � which on me almost come up to my knees � and I wore them to work today. It was wonderful. I didn�t look like I slept under an overpass with my pants all wrinkled up around my knees. Who says women can�t wear men�s socks? Why did that never occur to me before? What other ridiculous unwritten rules am I living by of which I�m not even aware?

I think I�ll have sardines for lunch tomorrow no matter what anyone else is eating.

If any of you work in Microsoft products (which is probably true of anyone on the planet who has touched a computer), and you�ve ever tried to look something up in the help literature or on the website, you have probably done what I do every time � scream, swear, beat your head against the wall�.

I don�t know who Microsoft � or any company for that matter � hires to write their instruction manuals or help files, but just once I�d like to meet one of them and kick him/her in the shins. This past week I was quoting some work on a web site at my day job, and in order to do so, I had to extract the text from the web site, throw it in Microsoft Word and do a word count. This web site, like most, had a ton of links, which carried over to the Word file. I needed to disable the links and instead of doing it one link at a time, I figured there must be a way to do them all at once. Do you think I could find that in the Microsoft online help???? No. They tell you how to disable one link, which I already knew how to do, but this file had about 400 links. That would take hours�. I kept running across forums where people were explaining how to do it in Visual Basic Editor with coding, etc. I kept thinking �there has to be a simple way to do this without writing code!� I finally stumbled on a simple video on youtube posted by an individual showing how to do it. Highlight all the text, hold down control + shift + F9 � and there you go � links disabled! Why can�t they tell you that in the help literature WRITTEN FOR THE PRODUCT??? It may be in there somewhere, but it�s well hidden.

A few years ago, I had my cell phone in my pocket on New Year�s Eve (a basic flip phone), and I missed a call from my nephew. So, I decided to put the phone on vibrate because there was too much going on in the room for me to hear the phone. I had never put it on vibrate before, so I searched around the phone menus and couldn�t find it. I went and got the manual and looked in the index under everything I could think of; sounds, ring tones, vibrate, silent � but to no avail. I finally resorted to reading the entire manual and finally found it. They called it �manner mode�. Now, I really don�t care if they call it �SPAGHETTI�. All I ask is that they PUT IT IN THE INDEX THE WAY SOMEONE WILL LOOK IT UP.

Finally, I would like to say something about the manual (two volumes) for our old phone system at work. I personally managed to wipe out the mailboxes twice and had to have someone come in and reprogram the system. If I ever meet the man (sorry guys, had to be a man � no woman on the planet is that obtuse and disorganized), who wrote the manual for that system, I would do more than kick him in the shins. I might aim a little higher.

I got up before everyone else this morning and washed the dishes (my dishwasher has been broken for a while � getting a new one) then filled my coffee pot � a carafe-style pot � and pushed the brew button. Two minutes later it beeped that it was done. Now this is a regular coffee maker that takes at least 5-7 minutes to brew a pot, so I looked and the water was still in the bin. I pushed the button again and got the same results � beeping after two minutes with no coffee in the carafe.

Being addicted to coffee like most Americans, I was glad I have instant in the cupboard. I put a cup of water in the microwave to heat it for coffee and it stopped halfway through the 3 minutes I had punched in. The outlet I use for the microwave is a little stubborn, so I had to jiggle the plug to get it to work again.

I made the instant coffee too strong, so I dumped some in the sink and added water. When I took the sprayer from the sink to rinse down the coffee, I accidentally pointed it up my sweatshirt sleeve � cold water up to the elbow.

I was doing laundry yesterday, and my washing machine won�t close off on certain settings, that is, the water keeps draining out and it won�t fill up. I haven�t bothered to get it fixed yet because it has been working on one of the settings, but yesterday, I had to keep turning the dial around to get it to work right�.time for a new washer, I think.

Now, everything in life is relative and all this stuff is minor. My family is healthy, we had a nice New Year�s Eve, I did get my laundry done and I had instant coffee as a backup. I decided in 2012 I was not going to let anything bother me, and I was going to be mindful. I am now wondering mindfully what other mechanical or electrical equipment the gremlins have invaded this morning. Maybe I shouldn�t get out my camera today. It�s gray and rainy anyway�.

Christmas day, the sun is out
The universe is shining.
There is no need to rush about,
We�re doing simple dining.

Chicken Caesar with romaine
And sorbet for desert.
The fact that there are 5 of us
Means there is little work.

Perhaps a movie we will watch,
A song or two we�ll play
Together as my soul does touch
My family Christmas day.

Back in 2005, we celebrated Christmas Eve at my in-laws house, which has been our custom for the past 38 years of my marriage. There were my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my husband�s two brothers (who were identical twins) and their families, my son and daughter. In 2006, we lost one of my husband�s brothers to cancer. He was one month shy of 47. In 2008, we lost his twin to cancer. He was 49. A year and a half ago, we lost my father-in-law. Two months ago, we lost my mother.

Tonight there will be me, my husband, my daughter my mother-in-law and my father. We are down to 5 people from more than 14 just 5 years ago.

I titled this blog �missing bodies� because I think it�s appropriate. I know my mother is still hanging around. I think my brothers-in-law check in once and a while as well. The only thing missing are their physical bodies. Their spirits are still around from time to time.

Talk out loud to your departed loved ones occasionally. I think they can hear you � and mom, I bought myself that Sierra Club engagement calendar I always bought you for Christmas. I�ll think of you when I use it.

Merry Christmas!

I am working from home for the next week since most of my client base is off for the holidays. I will still be processing work, but I've decided I need to go out every afternoon and shoot as much as possible. The only way to improve and post as much good work as possible is to go out and just do it. If you don't try, it's like the guy who complains he never wins the lottery. Then you find out he never actually buys a ticket.

I've found the more I shoot, the better I get and I've purged my gallery a couple of times to delete what I consider my weaker images.

I went to the bookstore yesterday and picked up a copy of "Outdoor Photographer" and was flipping through it. I was astonished to find that I was critiquing these absolutely beautiful photos in my head with thoughts like "that one was over-processed in Photoshop", or "the color in that photo doesn't look natural." Does this mean I'm getting better as a photographer, or have I just become hyper-critical?

For each shot I have posted recently, I took at least 10 similar shots of the same view and then posted the one I feel is the best. I never used to do that with film since it was expensive to develop, but now with digital cameras it doesn't cost anything to shoot away. In a way, though, this can make you not as observant of what you're shooting because you know you can crop and tweak after you've uploaded.

I vow this next week to try to get the best images in the fewest shots possible. That is, I'll THINK before I shoot. I've found my new DSLR tends to over-expose when set to automatic (at least for my taste) so I will bracket a bit in manual mode, but I will only allow myself 3 shots of anything I shoot.

Resolution for 2012 � be the best photographer I can and keep trying to improve.

I moved into my current home in 1993. Before the move, I started going through all my stuff and trying to purge. I went through closets and boxes and I was stunned to find I had at least 10 knit sweaters and afghans partly finished that had been sitting for months, unseen, and skein upon skein of unused yarn that went with them. I think I ended up throwing out 5 large garbage bags of just tangled, mismatched yarn, and another bag of projects that were partly done for which I no longer had the pattern or that I couldn�t even identify.

When I moved, I swore any yarn I bought would have to be used before I bought any more (with the exception of any yarn used for gifts, of course) and I pretty much stuck to that for a while. I also swore off making sweaters because none of the sweaters I made past the age of 25 looked good on me because I put on weight and due to the fact I have broad shoulders, I always had to make a larger size which made me look like Joe Namath in drag.

But, of course, those nice size zero models wearing those bulky yarn sweaters in the patterns make them look so good, so I made a shrug (look it up) that I was really excited about. When I finished it and put it on, I looked like - well, someone�s easy chair with a thick, loose dust cover � not good.

Anyway, my daughter moved home recently and I had to move things from one room to another, which meant I had to go into �THE CLOSET�(dramatic reverberation here). THE CLOSET contained my old film equipment, that is 3 SLR cameras, various lenses, a medium format camera and what? At least five COMPLETELY KNIT afghans that were made in panels and were waiting to be put together. OOPS. Did I have a memory lapse? When did I finish knitting all these afghan pieces? (My daughter is making fun of me because I�m working on 3 more right now.)

Ok, so I have a yarn compulsion, a book compulsion and I�m on the search for the perfect pen (see previous blogs). If I keep writing these blogs, I may end up confessing all of my deep dark secrets. Secrets I�ve kept up until now in THE CLOSET (dramatic reverberation�..)

Black and White
Brown and White
My parents also bought the hype.

For years I wore them
Out of style
Stigmatized by "abnormal feet"

Turns out it was a giant scam.
And those of us who were not popular anyway, were forced into nerdiness even farther by our signature nerd footware.

In 1975, I went Christmas shopping at the mall and tried to finish in one trip. That was back when the economy was decent and I had a lot of people to buy gifts for. I was 7 and a half months pregnant I waddled around the mall with several shopping bags.

It was worse in 1977 when I was 8 and a half months pregnant and had even more people to buy for. I carried my daughter very low and out front, so people were staring at this obviously very pregnant woman walking like a penguin through the mall with about 20 large bags. No wonder I was exhausted. By Christmas Eve, I was overdue, and when my husband�s grandmother offered a lot of food for me to take home, I refused because I just couldn�t face handling a 22-month old and a bunch of bags and packages when I looked and felt like a beached whale.

Yesterday, I got on Amazon.com and about 10 minutes and $120.00 later, I was done with my Christmas shopping. I did it on my bed in my bathrobe.

You know the stories our parents told us about ��.walking to school 5 miles in the snow uphill both ways�.� Well, 10 years from now, I will be telling my grandchildren �There was a time when your grandma actually had to get in the car and go to the mall to do her shopping. It was brutal!�

I am a compulsive book buyer. There, I said it. I don�t compulsively buy anything else (well, I have a few purses and camera bags), but for a few years Amazon, Borders and Barnes and Noble were my guilty pleasure. I used to hide the bookstore bags at the bottom of the kitchen waste basket or under the seat in my car. I also had them delivered to my office so my husband wouldn�t see the box on the porch when he got home. The compulsion does become apparent after a while, however, when you start to pile them in corners and shove them under the bed.

There was a time when I had to have every book in a series � especially an art series � even if some of them were not my cup of tea. I was angry at Amazon.com a couple of times. Once, when I bought a biography of Picasso because it was on sale and when I got it, I found it was volume 2 of a 2 volume set. So, of course, I had to buy volume 1 at full price. The same thing happened with a 2 volume set of a Matisse biography.

At any rate, I have books on art, photography, linguistics and geology. Lots of books. I can only imagine how many books on every subject get published every year. I have, in the past two years, been able to leave a bookstore without buying anything. I couldn�t do that before. I knew going in I would be spending 20 bucks at a minimum. The economic downturn and lack of space at home have put a little damper on my compulsion.

I understand a shopping compulsion. I�m glad mine only extends to books. I can�t imagine having the compulsion to shop all the time and buy anything in your path. When I feel the need for retail therapy, I go to the dollar store and buy photo paper (yes, they sell that at my local dollar store) and candles for a buck.

But back to the books � I have a book (duh) called �At Home with Books� about people who have a similar habit. One couple profiled in this book said their relatives became alarmed when they started spending almost their entire monthly salary on books. They eventually opened their own bookstore.

I recently did a book purge. It was painful. It hurt. I took my friends to the library and walked out the door very fast. I just hope I never have to move to a one-bedroom apartment. I would be like those hoarders you see on tv �But I NEED that book�� But for now, I�ll just try and keep it to a book a month � I still have some empty corners.

My daughter moved home recently and because she has food allergies, she eats in a very specific and healthy way. I�m learning about all sorts of subtle toxins in everything we normally think of as healthy. I was aware of a lot of this stuff before � like there�s sugar in table salt � and even before she moved back, I gave up artificial sweeteners and the only sugar I have on a regular basis is a single square of dark chocolate at night after dinner.

Last month I lost my mother at 91. She had lymphoma. She also had Alzheimer�s and was pretty functional until the last month of her life. I watched her eat breakfast the last day before she became completely bedridden (which only lasted two weeks, thank God) and it took her a couple of minutes to figure out how to use the fork to eat her eggs. Thinking about it this morning, I realized my grandmother had dementia, and both of my mother�s sisters had dementia. The only person who escaped the condition on my mother�s side was my uncle. It seemed to only hit the women in the family.

Now I�m sitting here thinking about what I can do to avoid that problem since they say there seems to be a genetic predisposition to this condition. There are tons of pollutants we ingest every day � fluoride in the water (an industrial waste product), chlorine, pesticides, hormones and antibiotics in the meat � mercury, aluminum in our deodorant � it can be frightening when you read abut the health effects of all of these things.

Through autopsy, they have found that the brains of people with Alzheimer�s have much higher levels of aluminum in their brain tissue than people without that condition. Is that from the aluminum cookware we used to use? Is it from our deodorant?

And how do you know when something is labeled �organic� that it�s not processed in a facility that also processes food that has pesticides on it? You may think this is all an exercise in futility, and you may be right. My mother lived to 91, one of her sisters lived to 93 and her other two siblings were over 80 when they died. On my father�s side, one of his aunts lived to 98 and one lived to 101, so if I follow the family pattern, I may be here for quite a bit longer. I just want to keep the �marbles in the box� as my mother used to say, and not end up as a blithering idiot.

I notice several people on FAA and other web sites change their icon more or less on a regular basis. I have rarely seen a photo of me I like, let alone one I can tolerate. I'm making an attempt to get one I can stomach that I can post here instead of the self portrait that everyone who knows me says looks older than I really am. (Wow, that was an awkward sentence).

I saw someone on a late night talk show once - the Tom Sneider (sp?) show, I think - who made masks of people out of some substance that hardened in about 15 minutes. The person had to breathe through a straw for the time the substance took to harden, then they could view their mask when it was removed.

This lady made an interesting point that I had not thought about before; we never, ever see ourselves in three dimensions. Not unless someone sculpts us, or in the case of this woman, makes a life mask of us, do we ever see ourselves in anything other than two dimensions. Photos, videos, portraits, etc. are all two dimensional images. Even seeing ourselves in a mirror is a two-dimensional experience. She said most people were surprised by their three-dimensional image when they were able to hold it and rotate it around. Most of them realized that their noses really weren't that big and their forehead wasn't really that creased, etc. In other words, they didn't look as old, ugly, out-of-proportion as they thought they did.

So...maybe I'm being too picky. Maybe I'm actually a super model. Well, probably not, but I'll settle for a decent photo of myself that doesn't make me want to tear it up...

My mind is a blank. I spent two intense weeks along with my daughter taking care of my dying mother. The first chance I really had to use my new camera was taking pictures of her flowers. I�m drained. It�s like the aftermath of a storm � you just look around at the debris and try and figure out where to start picking up. I didn�t wash my bed sheets for a month, which is disgusting, but that was the reality I was living in at the time. You expect to lose your parents. After all, we don�t live to 150. It�s the dying process that can suck the energy right out of everyone. The tension can wreak havoc on your nervous system and your mental acuity. I�m forgetting every-day common words when I talk.

Today, it�s back to normal things. My sheets are in the washer. I�m going to the grocery store and the bank and bringing my father over for dinner. Slept in until 9:30. My body is still exhausted, but we can slowly get back into a routine now. And I know we were all there for my mother at the end. I�m sure she would have said �thanks� if she had the strength. In the meantime, I think I will plan a photo shoot with my father. He�s 93 but still independent and fully functional. I think it would be fun. He has one of my son�s old digital cameras. Maybe I can even get him to figure out how to edit. On the other hand, he has trouble figuring out how to use Microsoft Word, and doesn�t have a clue how to organize his computer. I guess I�ll try and teach him that first.

Life goes on.

Writing this one on the fly. I have not been very active in here for the past few days because I have been the primary caregiver for my mother who left this dimension yesterday morning. Thoughts and memories fly through your consciousness when you are picking out photos for the picture board. The photographer in me is saying "gee, I wish that one were better exposed", or "wow, that film in the late 70's was really crummy". But mostly, I'm amazed at all the stuff that goes on in a life of 91 years.

I'm exhausted. I will not recount the last two weeks, which is a wrenching account that too many of us go through seeing that our parents are living longer and longer, but rather say that the next time I see a Tiger baseball game, I will think of my mother. They next time I hear a cardinal sing in the trees, I will think of my mother. The next time I eat a Mounds bar, I will think of my mother. Just a few of her favorite things.

Goodbye for now, mom. I will see you again.

I have been very, very frustrated for the past several years working with point and shoot camera only. Having used film SLRs for a long time, the lack of control over camera settings and the cheap lenses were driving me crazy. Although the point and shoot digitals do a decent job with macro shots, the inexpensive lenses don't handle atmospheric lighting very well. Small prints are fine, but the more you blow up the picture, the more apparent artifact are, especially in the sky portion.

I finally took the plunge this week and got a DSLR and it feels like I've been let out of prison. Not only is the photo quality way better, it's so nice to be able to override the camera and set things the way you want to. Still learning the controls and what settings can be used in what mode, but I'm learning fast, since I'm familiar with the terminology anyway.

I'm looking forward to not having to filter everything heavily in Photoshop just to get a decent image.

Let the photos flow.....

Have you ever met someone � someone seemingly perfectly normal, personable, fun, easy going, and you think �this person is nice. There�s nothing strange about this person.� Then you get to know them a little better and all of a sudden you find out that he or she is an expert in something really obscure, like mold spores, or a type of insect. Maybe they make large sculptures out of toothpicks, or they collect socks once owned by famous people.

Most people don�t advertise their hobbies or interests when you first meet them, unless of course you meet them at a club or society that�s dedicated to the interest in question. Some of us are a little more quite about our interests for fear or boring our friends and acquaintances out of their skulls if we start expounding on the virtues of something they find abnormally tedious, or we are afraid they may think less of us, or even that there may be something a little �off� about us.

Wouldn�t it be nice if we all felt we could just blurt out what we are into when we meet someone so they could either bond with us or move on to the next person? Or maybe we could wear little buttons that say �I study bees� or �Elizabethan poetry rocks�. No, I guess that, too, would be a little odd.

There are also people you meet who are experts in several fields. I�m not talking about the guy that has an opinion about everything when he�s had a couple beers at the neighborhood Bar-B-Q. I mean people who are truly gifted and can seemingly do or learn anything. I know I�m an intelligent person, but I�m just smart enough to know my limitations, and gifted people fascinate me.

For a while, I only wanted to study things that would possibly make me rich, but I think that ship has already sailed. It�s time to really get into what floats my boat. I don�t think it�s ever too late to become an expert at something. I�m diving in now. I�m not going to tell you into what I am diving. I really don�t want to watch you yawn, but I find it fascinating. If you like something, go ahead - learn it. You never know, it may come in handy some day.

I have been having a stressful week, for reasons I won't describe here, but every so often, something odd happens that diverts your attention from the stuff you are dealing with. My boss was in my office talking to me, when he pointed to my security camera and said "what's that?". It was obviously a chicken walking through the parking lot.

I went outside, and there were about 10 chickens pecking away in our bushes and a few more wandering around the parking lot. Mind you, we are in a commercial area with a busy highway next to us so I was a little perplexed.

They have since wandered away. I called animal control and she said she knew who they belonged to. I hope they all went home...and they're not hitchhiking on the busy highway next to our building. At least I got 10 minutes of comic relief today.

Music as an art form is beautiful and as varied as any visual art. I admire those who compose, write, and perform music. Having studied both piano and flute when I was younger, I have an appreciation of music, like so many other people, because I know how difficult it is to do well.

On September 11, 2001, I was driving to work. I did not have my radio on in the car, so when I walked into the office, I could feel the static tension in the air while my boss and a co-worker were frantically searching for a working radio. It turns out my co-worker's sister worked in a building next to the World Trade Center and had called my co-worker to tell her there was debris and paper flying all over when she emerged from the subway. Then she simply said "Oh, my God�" as she watched the 2nd plane hit.

We turned on a TV we had in the office after scrounging up an antenna from my boss' house, and like everyone else, we couldn't wrap our minds around what was happening. One of the translators I work with who lives in Spain, sent me an email about how aghast he and his wife were about what they were watching on CNN. Everyone left early � of course we couldn't get any work done.

I believe it was September 12, the next day, when everyone left early again since not much was going on except watching the news, and I was alone in the office trying to catch up on some work. The TV was on just outside my office. I heard the Star Spangled Banner, so I went out to watch, and it was obviously a British band at what looked like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. People outside the gate were carrying small U.S. flags and weeping. That anthem played by a foreign nation at our time of grief was the tipping point for me emotionally and I sat back down at my desk and cried.

God bless the U.S. in spite of our political nonsense, our economic problems and everything else we struggle with, and God keep the victims and families of 911. We will never forget.

I like all kinds of art. My three favorite artists are O�Keeffe, Van Gogh and Matisse, all different in style and temperament. But I like a ton of other art as well, the Dutch and Flemish still-life masters, Netherlandish religious art, and everything from Giotto to Rousseau, to Thiebaud.

I don�t� care much for Renoir and although I acknowledge his role in the history of art, you couldn�t pay me to hang a Pollock in my house.

Recently, I fell into collage and I�m enjoying it more than I thought I would. The nice thing about collage is you can pretty much work out the composition before you commit anything to the surface of your support. What puzzles me is the collage I posted that has the most comments and compliments is the one I personally like the least and the one I like the most personally has almost no views and was rejected from a group on one art site. They say �be true to yourself� in your art, but at what point do you go in another direction just to sell? I�ve never really cared for watered-down �greeting card� type art, and it seems like that�s a big seller, but I can�t go there. I have sold 4 photos, 2 of which were normal landscapes and 2 of which were different viewpoints on something. I have far more views on the art I have posted than the photos (except one photo that someone much have �stumbled�), but no art sales yet.

I�m fascinated by what draws people to certain types of art. I was putting down a piece of art once that I considered particularly lame (and ugly), and my daughter said �but mom, you don�t understand it.� She�s got a degree in sculpture and in my mind that comment hinted at art training �brainwashing�. I�m not saying she doesn�t understand art � she does. But just because a piece of art �says something� doesn�t make it good art.

At what point do you listen to the �critics�, in this case the number of views and comments you get, and when do you ignore that and forge ahead where you know you personally need to go? I intend to keep exploring my new-found medium and unless I really end up with a piece I personally think is lame, I�m going to keep throwing them at the wall (the web) to see what sticks. I intend to have fun along the way.

I'm amused as I age at the way I look at the world and how ridiculous some things seem that I used to find clever.

Commercials: All the commercials with a yoga class scene show women in matching, tight-fitting, sleek yoga outfits and they all weigh about 10 pounds and their hair is done and their posture is perfect. I've taken yoga classes. The INSTRUCTOR doesn't look that good, let alone the students.

And what is it with the dual bathtubs at the end of the ED commercials? On the beach, on a deck, in the forest�(where are the mosquitoes in that one?). I don't know about you, but my husband and I have always found it romantic to prune up together in separate bathtubs in a public place.

Don't get me started on the McDonalds commercials. Everyone at that ad agency must be under the age of 12.

Life Experience: The longer you live, the more you go through, you either turn into a bitter old grouch after you've been thrown a few curves, or you learn to say "whatever�", and move on. I've never been through a war or been abused, or neglected or otherwise hurt, but I am 61 and you can't get to that age without experiencing some loss and having to do a lot of things you didn't want to do. I've been amused by people who complain about having too much work at their job (usually much younger people), but they manage go work 9 to 5 with a full hour for lunch and at 5:01 they are out the door like a shot. My days have quite often consisted of 9 to whenever (9, 10, 11) for days at a time. Lunch break? I try not to get my peanut butter on whatever I'm proofreading at the time.

Language: - I'm in the language business and I just read an article about the alarming jump in illiteracy and bad spelling on college entrance essays and they blamed it partially on texting and tweeting. Here are my personal irritations (the worse ones, anyway). These have been around way before texting and tweeting:

- In the word "often" the "t" is silent. I hear the "t" more and more even with news reporters.
- There is no such word in the English language as IRREGARDLESS
- Nuclear has three syllables � it's NU-CLE-AR. Come on people, you can get it right.

And finally, I'm proud to be a woman over 50. Several years ago I experienced what's called an "optical migraine". I didn't know what it was at the time and it freaked me out. It consists of a pulsing, jagged shape in your visual field, usually in one eye, and it lasts about 20 minutes partially obstructing your vision. I made an appointment with a doctor who put me through a CAT scan, an EEG and sent me to an ophthalmologist. I wish I had gone to that guy first � he said an optical migraine (not to be confused with a migraine headache) is a harmless spasm of an optical blood vessel. He said "Women over 50 are more prone�." Then he started his exam. First he said "You have a floater in this eye. Women over 50�". Then, "Yup, you have dry eyes. Women over 50�." Then, "You have a cataract starting. You don't have to worry about it for several years. Women over 50�."

Now I've never been sensitive about my age, but at this point I wanted to smack the guy. I estimate he was about 35.

Yes, I'm a woman over 50 and proud of it. If I fail to get upset by an issue, a problem, or a statement, it's because women over 50 realize it's just NOT THAT IMPORTANT.

Chill.

Previously I wrote about fitting the things in a 15 foot long bedroom into a 10 foot long bedroom. Uh�it's not working that well. I did manage to get my bookcases � three large ones � and my desk computer in the smaller room. I was proud that I single-handedly figured out how to plug in the monitor, the printer, the scanner and the speakers. I only had to call my son three times to have him figure out why the mouse and the keyboard were not working.

The closet isn't working out. My off-season clothing is in there and I can't get to it because I have four plastic bins in there with yarn and knit projects. I guess that will have to come out. The drawing table is going to be a problem�.I don't know how I'm going to squeeze it in there. And the books and magazines!!! Dear Lord, if I ever have to move to a smaller place, I'm in trouble. And I was ruthless with the purging.

Isn't there a magic hole where I can slide all the artwork? My art and my daughter's art is propped up against the wall. There are some large pieces and three portfolios. Ay, I don't know what to do with all the stuff. A dead Macintosh has to go down into the basement to join the three dead monitors down there. It's the dead zone for obsolete computers until they can go away to wherever dead computers go. There's a box of old books I'm afraid to donate because they might be worth something and the photo albums are everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot less stuff than a lot of people, but I've accumulated more than my house can hold comfortably. I'm attacking it again today. We'll see what happens.

Does anyone want some Samsonite hard-sided luggage? I guess I can put it out on the curb�.

I remember, as most adults do, coming into my own as a person and discovering finally that I was good at some things, not good at others, comfortable around some people, not comfortable around others and I remember feeling joy, sadness, disappointment, awe, fear, disgust, curiosity, all in pretty much equal amounts.

As we age, some of those emotions get dulled and buried by stress, work, fatigue, health conditions, outside pressures, obligations, rebellious or ill family members and just life in general.

How is it some individuals manage to stay focused, happy, optimistic, productive and compassionate even though they go through the same things they rest of us do? I�m searching around for answers to that question. I�ve extracted 10 rules for myself on how to manage life and all the crap it throws at us. They are all do-able and don�t involve buying something from an informercial. They can be placed in any order because I believe they are all equally important.

1. Be mindful. You can only control what�s going on at any particular moment. The past is gone, the future is not here, so stay in the moment.
2. Say �no� if someone asks you to do something you think is morally ambiguous � go with your gut.
3. Purge negative thoughts � this takes a lot of practice � don�t think �what if I lose my job?� Instead think �If I lose my job, I WILL find employment right away.�
4. Stay away as much as possible from negative, nasty people. If you have to work with them, or live with them, don�t buy into their negativity and don�t react when they try to engage you in their negative attitude.
5. Do what you love as much as life obligations allow � create art, take pictures, study a subject that interests you, and do so even if you have to occasionally neglect your laundry.
6. You are what you eat. To quote Jack Lalane, �Exercise is King, diet is Queen, and if man made it, don�t eat it.� Cut out all artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, white flour, refined sugar from your diet. If you can�t give up meat, use it sparingly.
7. Do yoga, tai-chi, walk, use a stepper, climb stairs, basically anything you can to keep your body limber and your circulation good and your heart strong. Don�t smoke and if you drink, drink only an occasional glass of red wine.
8. Try to learn to meditate � very important to keep yourself calm and centered.
9. Keep your �stuff� to a minimum. Don�t hoard or stuff your house full of things you don�t need and don�t use. Purge on a regular basis.
10. Remember, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction � if you harm someone by deed or even by thought, you damage yourself. Your circumstances are a result of all your past decisions. Karma is a bitch. She will always catch up to you. She is relentless and unswerving. Create as much good karma as you can.

Yeah, I know, this is all simplistic and you�ve heard it before, but most of us keep searching and searching for how to get rid of the stress � drugs, retreats, sleep, denial, retail therapy, alcohol, risky behavior and in the meantime, we are miserable human beings, unhappy and mean.

Today, I will accomplish some things and I will do so mindfully. I will follow this list to the letter and I will not do anything to disturb my peace of mind. I will work on tomorrow tomorrow. I will only work on today today.

You have, of course, heard the expression "10 pounds of potatoes in a 5 pound bag". That's what I'm dealing with right now. A family member is moving home temporarily and I'm trying to clear a room for her. Unfortunately, I have a bit of a book collection that has taken on a life of its own. I swear it multiplies while I'm sleeping.

I'm in the middle of moving things from one large bedroom to a smaller one � 3 large floor to ceiling bookcases, a large drawing table, a desktop computer with a very large monitor, a printer and 2 smaller bookcases. There are also piles of books on the floor along with about 3 large piles of magazines.

I started by moving the bookcases and I put all the books I'm going to take to the library in a holding area in another part of the house, where I'm piling the overflow. I was ruthless, but I still don't have enough shelf space for what's left. I purged several "how to" 35mm film photography books, some books by Ansel Adams about making prints (let's fact it, I'll never have a darkroom), several bargain art books, some knitting books I'll never use, some language books (my professional field), and some miscellaneous things I'll never read again. I don't like still having them in the house because I'm tempted to go get them off the pile, but I'm trying very hard not to do that.

I still have a bunch of artwork I don't know what to do with � three portfolios and several blank canvas boards, that are sitting propped against the wall next to the drawing table. I can't put that stuff in my basement, it's too damp. I guess it will just have to go in the corner of the other room. It's going to be an art/craft/computer room anyway, but the room is about 5 feet shorter than the room I'm cleaning out, so I'm really struggling with what to get rid of. My house was originally built in the late 1800s so there's not much storage space.

I'm not a hoarder, but I can see why hoarders have so much trouble parting with things because it's hard for me to give up one book, let alone 200. I think I'm at about the 100 mark with the discard pile. From the books that remain, I probably need to get rid of between 30 and 50 more to have a comfortable space. I don't know how I'm going to do that. In my defense, I don't read that many paperback novels, and when I'm finished with them I either throw them out or give them away.

I have a book called "At Home With Books" about people who collect books and one couple said their relatives became alarmed when they started spending most of their salary on books. Eventually they opened their own bookstore. In the scheme of things, that probably makes me an amateur.

I guess I should just grit my teeth and go purge some more. We won't mention the yarn supply�.that's a matter for another day.

I've read several posts on several sites where people suggest using foreign words in their search strings to attract a more international audience. For a few months, I have been meaning to do that, but I just have not had time.

I wanted to caution anyone out there about using internet-based translation software for anything other than the most basic nouns. You can get some embarrassing results if you don't know what you're doing. I've worked in the translation industry for 30 years and I've seen some doozies.

I have several photos of snails posted. That one word, run through machine translation software, would by pretty safe � a snail is a snail. But what if you've trying to express a concept or use a complete phrase?

I once had a co-worker leave our company to go work as an art director for a large advertising agency. This was a pretty prestigious firm and they were in charge of the advertising for the Big Boy chain of restaurants. For those of you who are not familiar with Big Boy, the chain has over 400 restaurants in the US and Canada and over 200 in Japan.

Big Boys (as we call it) serves a general menu of burgers, spaghetti, salads, fish, etc. It's low-cost casual dining. Once in a while they will introduce a temporary in-season food item, or temporarily expand their menu of a certain type of food. A few years ago, they introduced several Italian dishes to the menu and wanted to add "Love Italian at Big Boys" to the table cards � those cardboard things they set on your table, generally to get you to order that delicious-looking piece of chocolate pie for desert. My former co-worker called me and told me they wanted to have "Love Italian at Big Boys" in both Italian and English and they came up with the following "(inverted exclamation point here) Amore Italiano at Big Boys!".

First of all, the inverted exclamation mark is only used in Spanish. Second of all, "at" is still in English. Third � an Italian translator I consulted told me they don't use "amore" with food. I sent my friend a more appropriate translation as a favor and that was that.

Several weeks later, a co-worker and I walked to the Big Boy restaurant next to our office building for lunch. I glanced at the table card, and it said "(inverted exclamation point here) Amore Italiano at Big Boys!" I guess you can provide expert advice but that doesn't mean someone will take it.

Anyway, even though I know the Spanish language very well and French almost as well, I will be looking everything up before I start posting translated key words. Except the word for "snail". That I know is "caracol" in Spanish and "escargot" in French. Come to think of it, I haven't had any escargot since I was in Paris. I didn't anticipate this blog entry would make me hungry. Time for lunch�.Too bad I don't have any snails in the cupboard.

I bought a book a couple of weeks ago called "500 Art Quilts" published by Lark Books. These are not your grandmother's quilts. I have never made a quilt and had no idea where to start, so I was in the bookstore looking for basic instructions when I found this book. I had to have it. This is quilting at a higher level than I had thought possible.

There are abstract quilts, landscape quilts, portrait quilts, and everything else you can imagine in stunningly beautiful colors and some quilts in stark black and white.

I hate to sew. I taught myself in college and forced myself to get good at it, but it was never my favorite thing. Now, I had the urge to make a quilt for my next grandchild partly because I'm getting tired of knitting everything. I'm making it by hand � I hate using the sewing machine � and I like the way it's turning out.

Once you try something new, you get a greater respect and appreciation for those who do it well. Now that I'm making the attempt at quilting, I have much more respect for quilters than I had before. I'm just making squares, and even then they are not lining up perfectly, but I'm hoping that will part of the charm. I think I can manage to keep the overall quilt square.

I never thought quilting was easy, looking at some of the intricate designs I've seen in traditional quilts, but this book gave me a new appreciation of the fiber arts and quilting in particular. Anyone interested in quilting might want to give it a look. There's only a small introduction and the rest of the book is art. I might look for a "history of the quilt" book now to supplement.

For some unknown reason, this morning I thought of a game we used to play in elementary school called �button, button, who�s got the button�. If I remember correctly, someone would have a button and they would hold it between their flattened palms. The rest of us would sit with our palms together at the bottom, but open at the top forming a �V� shape, and the guy with the button would walk by everyone and dip his closed palms into everyone�s hands one by one, secretly dropping the button into someone�s grasp. It was the task of those of us who did not receive the button to determine who had it, and at the same time not divulge that we did not have it ourselves.

What a bizarre game to play with children. Let�s teach them early to lie and try and fake out their fellow human beings. For the life of me, right now, I can�t think of any constructive reason to play that game.

That leads me to think (painfully) about our physical education classes, at which I was not very good as a child. I cringe when I think of being constantly picked last for the soccer team and being yelled at by the teacher for not remembering which yard marker I represented while we were kicking the ball around on an unmarked schoolyard. I did get better at some thing as I got older, but that was in college where you could pick what you were good at for your physical education credits, or maybe more accurately what you didn�t suck at. I was pretty good at badminton and volleyball.

These thoughts meandering through my mind dredged up some painful childhood memories. I�m sure I�ve buried a lot more. I was very shy as a child and being yelled at and embarrassed in front of my peers by an authority figure was traumatic for me. I still vividly remember that over 50 years later.

What we do to children in the name of education and training is sometimes not pretty. Fortunately, aside from that one physical education teacher, I didn�t have any mean or psychotic teachers but they�re out there. I did have one college professor that was fired in the middle of a semester, but other than that, I was pretty lucky.

How much of trying to force a child to be what they�re not goes on in our schools? They used to try and force left-handed students to learn to write with their right hand. Dyslexia and other learning disabilities were not well understood back then and those students must have suffered a silent hell.

I�m guessing that�s why some of us gravitate toward the solitary in our private lives, such as creating art. Of course most of us still do social things like play Bridge or join bowling leagues (another thing I was pretty good at � the bowling that is. I�ve never played Bridge), but the act of creating touches our higher selves, and takes us to a place where we don�t have to pretend we have the button.

This blog entry is dedicated to my daughter and my father, both of whom have some severe food allergies.

Like most Americans over 60, I grew up with fast food and blissful ignorance about what I was eating and the consequences thereof. Don�t get me wrong, my mother cooked dinner every night and it was relatively healthy food, but we also frequented the local Dairy place for soft-serve ice cream and we lived about a half a mile from the first McDonalds ever built in Michigan. I also loved Big Boy�s chocolate malteds (a regional chain restaurant).

When I was about 16, I was having some severe problems with fatigue so they ran a bunch of tests and I was diagnosed with Hypoglycemia, that is, my pancreas produces too much insulin and it�s triggered when I eat too much refined sugar giving me the same symptoms as a diabetic going into �sugar shock�. Well, it was hard to give up my sugary friends, but I did so for the most part.

Now, about 45 years later as I�m watching some of my friends fall apart around me, I�m starting to realize the refined sugar is not the only problem. I had already noticed a while ago that if I eat too much animal protein � steaks, hamburgers, ham sandwiches � my joints really hurt the next day. I assume it�s because my liver is trying to process all that protein. How many of our physical problems are caused by our diet? I would guess at least 60%. The rest are probably caused by stress and our fast-paced, high-pressure life style.

Last Monday I made a decision to go 100% natural in my food choices. No artificial colors, no preservatives and no white flour, no refined sugar and no meat except for the occasional piece of fish. I already had crackers in the cupboard with no hydrogenated oil, some all-natural freeze-dried soups (although I�m not sure what the freeze-drying process does to the nutrition in the food), some organic frozen meals, whole wheat bread, some hummus and stuff to make salads. I have a jug of spring water, so I�m not ingesting chlorine or fluoride (an industrial waste product), and I have a bag of fresh cherries in the fridge to snack on. I bought a container of non-fat plain yogurt instead of the flavored stuff I had been eating that contained an artificial sweetener.

Today I have a severe headache. I�m not prone to headaches, so I�m wondering if my body is starting to purge itself of some toxins. I will be curious to see what happens in the next few weeks while I withdraw from the last of the �bad� stuff and try to slowly cut down on quantity as well (I�m not obese, but I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds).

I�d like to close this blog post with a quote from Jack LaLane, who died earlier this year at the age of 96. He said �Exercise is King, diet is Queen, and if man made it, don�t eat it�. I�m guessing a guy who still worked out 2 hours a day in his 90�s probably knew what he was talking about.

For years I have written in the morning or at night when I come home from work and it's not a journal or a story I'm writing, I'm just writing freestyle random thoughts. It relaxes me. I used to use a nice Parker pen, but I don't know where it is now and besides, I'm not sure you can still get refills. It was just slightly too big for my hand.

Then I found a nice, slim Papermate pen that I liked better. It wrote very smoothly, no globbing, no skipping and no dragging. Like the Parker, I don't know where it went and I don't think you can get refills for that one any more either. That started my quest for the perfect pen that wouldn't drag, wouldn't glob, didn't cost a fortune and would last a while. After trying a few cheap varieties, I settled on the old faithful Bic clear stick pens - black, medium point. I was finally happy. I had found my pen buddy and he was faithful and wrote well. He didn't leave excess ink on the paper, he didn't run out of ink quickly. He didn't drag on the paper and he didn't give me that unpleasant scraping feeling. I began to buy my friends in 12 packs and they would last me about 6 months - or two pens every monthly. I was happy. My pen world was complete and stable.

Then, about 6 months ago, my Bic friends started to betray me. I noticed about half way through a pen, I would start to get the dreaded globs of excess ink all over the page. At first, I thought it was just an anomaly, but each pen I took out of that pack had the same problem. I hate globbing pens, so when I got down to the last couple in the pack, I threw them out and bought a new dozen. I settled in to write, and things were fine for a while. Then about a week into the first pen from the new pack, it happened again. I started getting globs and blobs and blotches all over my page, making it look like I was trying to write a message in black blood. It was at that point the relationship was over. My Bic friend had let himself go and was no longer trying to make the relationship work.

I started on the hunt for a new partner. I found one called a G2 - I don't remember the manufacturer - and for a while I enjoyed the bold, black, even lines and feeling of control. The pen was a metal-tipped pen with a small wire inside that guided the ink onto the paper. There was quite a bit of drag with that pen, but I figured every relationship has its compromises, and I was happy again. I'm not sure when things started to fall apart. I think it was once I started looking inside the pen - you could unscrew it and look at the cartridge to check the ink level - and one day when I put the pen back together and started writing, the wire just came out the tip. This was way worse than globbing - my friend had died right in my hand. Again, I thought maybe it was an anomaly, so I bought another one. No sooner than I checked the ink level a week later, that pen's guts fell out as well.

Well, you know, I was on the rebound from Bic when I found G2, so I decided to be smart about it. I bought a couple different types of pens for the office because some of my co-workers liked felt-tip and some liked ballpoints. Being a non-discriminating office supply buyer - that is I don't discriminate by weight, color, national origin or pen tip -I bought different types of pens when each box ran out.

At one point, I ran across a pen called a Fineliner. This little guy felt good in my hand and made a smooth, bold mark on the page. There was some drag, but really not that much. I was happy for a while, but it quickly became apparent that my Fineliner friend had a very short life span - maybe half that of my old Bics and G2s (when they lived long enough to run out of ink). This just wouldn't do. Then I tried a pen called a Uniball Micro. This baby is a beautiful pen and has a solid metal tip, makes a nice line and doesn't have that much drag. The main problem I found was if you leave the cap off inadvertently, this guy dries up. I still draw with him, though.

Now, you may think I'm a bit obsessive on the subject of pens, but it's one of the pleasures of my life to write and draw - basically make marks on paper - and I would just like the chosen tool for the job to work the way it's supposed to and not fight back and not throw up on the paper. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Currently, I'm using a disposable Papermate - not clear, but a solid color pen. I can't read the name of the pen because it's worn off, but it's doing the job for now. Nice smooth flow, line not too thick or too thin, but there is still a little bit of the occasional globbing going on. It's not a match made in heaven, but we get along ok. I may never find my true love, but I keep looking.

He's out there somewhere.....

I went to college in 1968 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. That's just a few miles from Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan campus. We used to take the bus to ann Arbor quite often to use the undergrad library and just to "hang out" at restaurants, etc. Like any college town - or in this case, two college towns very close to one another - you could find a lot of neat stuff. There were cool poster shops, bead shops (remember, this was 1968), old sandwich shops from the 40's with the tin roof ceilings and high-backed old wooden booths.

Several national chains get their start in college towns. My dorm mates and I used to order pizza from Dominick's Pizza which later became the national chain Dominos. One of the startups I visited in Ann Arbor was Borders Brothers Books. It was a hole in the wall, and I think at the time they only sold text books and some used books. If I remember right, they didn't even have everything on shelves, but a lot of the inventory was sitting on tables. It was a one-room, small store. The first book I bought there was a Spanish dictionary, which I still have to this day.

I love bookstores. I was amazed over the years at how much that hole-in-the-wall expanded. They moved across the street and had 2 floors. They started franchising throughout the country and eventually moved the Flagship store around the corner to an old Sears Warehouse. That store has the best art and photography section I've ever seen in an actual bookstore, and I've probably been in over 200 Borders and Barnes and Noble store throughout the country. My husband and I would stake out the nearest bookstore and spend time there before heading to the airport while we were waiting for flights home on our many weekend trips.

When Borders announced earlier this week that they were liquidating, I literally felt like crying. It's like losing an old friend, or watching your childhood home being demolished. And while I understand it's easy to buy your books online (God knows I've done plenty of that), It's not the same as taking a pile of books into the cafe, getting your beverage of choice and a scone, and losing yourself in the smell of the ink, the feel of the dust jacket, or the joy of finding a specialty magazine you would never have discovered any other way. I know those electronic readers are practical and will probably save a lot of trees, but I hope bookstores don't disappear in my lifetime, like the dime store soda fountains I used to visit. That would make me doubly sad.

Borders, I will miss you.

I have a college degree. I've held the same job for 30 years. I make art, I take pictures and I make a mean stir fry. I've raised two children who are stable, responsible adults. I can speak 3 languages. I'm not a stupid person.

Sometimes, when I'm driving home from work, I try to calculate in my head how long it will take me to get home based on how fast I'm driving and how many miles I have left to travel. If I slow down to 60 mph, I can do it. Otherwise, it eludes me.

I used to watch my son doing his homework when he was in college. He would sit and study lines of code on his computer screen. When I would walk by and glance at the screen, I would break out in a cold sweat. Whenever my boss asks me to calculate something, I open excel on my computer since my scroll-tape calculator is now somewhere in the office basement gathering dust.

I don't get it.

Although I understand the concept of right-brain, left-brain tendencies, how can there be such a blank spot in my brain? I picture the language, art and common sense portions of my brain populated by people sitting at computer terminals busily typing away and completing tasks as soon as they are assigned The math portion of my brain, however, is occupied by a couple of guys in hard hats on a continual coffee break. No matter how much I pay them, they refuse to go back to work.

My husband and I were watching the movie "Excalibur" one time about a year after we had seen it before. I turned to him and said "I remember 'the charm of making'", which is what Merlin would chant while casting a spell. He didn't believe me, so I wrote it down and handed him the piece of paper. The first time Merlin spoke the chant, my husband looked at me and said "There's something freaky about you". I also remember most of what Klaatuu spoke into the computer when he was trying to prevent the destruction of the earth. About 30 years ago, my father told me the name of a character my uncle once played in a school play - "Jahonnas Hubbard Lubbard Lambert Lunk Van Dunk Peter Jacobus Lochamore Van Clevendoff". Now, I don't practice saying that and I have no earthly reason to remember it.

So why can't I calculate how long it will take me to get home when I'm driving 72 mph?

I don't get it.