ATCs for the Lost Art Creations Black and Tan January 2015 swap

I have to say, this theme was one of my favorites. I made 10 cards for the 9 card swap (so I could have one for myself) but I could have kept going until I had no more images left to use. 

Great Fun!

News Years Eve, 2014

So it's New Year's Eve, 2014 and I'm wondering how long it will actually take me to finish this post; but I did resolve to write more this upcoming year and blogging (versus personal journaling) will be my forum.  Of course, that takes the privacy out of the equation, not to mention increasing the need for grammar, punctuation, and political correctness, but c'est la vie.

I've been pushing around the idea in my pea brain of writing a book someday (don't ask what it's about other than it will be a best seller and you can say you knew me when...) and I think the efforts I put into blogging will help in the long-term book endeavor.

New Year's is always a time of reflection and regret.

People say, never regret - just learn from it.  I can't help but have regrets because I could have changed the habits I regret.  My decisions, yes, I made those in good faith and those that turned out not to be for the best, well, I've learned from those.  But habits and choices...I knew better and those I regret.

Example:  I've always been told never to feed a stray cat because they won't find their way back home if you feed them.  

A few years ago there was a gray cat in my garden while I was weeding, meowing at me.  I told it to go back home, I have three cats and a dog and can't adopt another.  I made "shoo-ing" motions and it ran.  I knew I did wrong at that very moment and felt bad, but rationalized those feelings away.  The dog would have fought with it, the other cats would have fought with it, my husband would have been upset with me, etc.  After all, I've been woken up in the middle of the night by cat fights.  There were always wandering cats that my cats were chasing out of the yard - why should this one be any different?  But it was different.  I knew this was a different circumstance.  I regretted it instantly.

A few weeks later a neighbor from down the road put up "Lost Cat" signs for two cats, one gray, and we saw this gray cat hunting in our yard and field occasionally.  I tried a have-a-heart trap but the dog kept springing it to get at the food inside it.  The neighbor gave up ever seeing either of their two cats again.  I though the gray cat would never make it through the winter, especially when we got 18" of snow early in the season and the ground stayed covered  for a few months.  

As soon as we saw grass peaking through in the spring, there was "GrayCat" out in the yard hunting mice again!  I was so happy to see him, but I couldn't coax him near enough to feed him.  This went on for almost three years!!  The poor baby lived on his own in Connecticut, from an indoor cat to being a feral, outdoor cat.

Two summers ago, my last indoor/outdoor cat was almost 18 years old and the other two indoor cats were picking on her.  She didn't want to come inside anymore, so I fed her outside all summer.  GrayCat finally discovered her catfood on the steps outside and started coming to eat on our doorstep.  After our old Lady cat went to the rainbow bridge, I kept putting food out for the gray boy.  I regretted my shoo-ing him away all those years ago.  If I hadn't done that, he might have been returned to his family or, at the very least, he might have been living inside with us rather than having several years of hardship that my habit of shoo-ing stray cats cost him.

I thought long and hard about what I did to that poor cat, just the simple action of pushing him away, and the impact it had on his life.  He's a tough guy - he survived it.  You see, his name is Barney now. He decided sometime that summer to adopt us.  We kept feeding him and come fall time when it was getting colder, I scooped him up and took him inside the house and said, "Barney, you're not going out again until you learn that this is your forever home."

Barney is one of the sweetest cats I've ever had the pleasure of living with.  He's so gentle with my toddler grandson that I don't worry about the child getting scratched.  Barney was never aggressive with any of the other animals we had, even when they were aggressive with him.  Barney cleared all the chipmunks out of my garden, the mice out of the cellar, and when he really likes you he will stand on your foot with his hind leg.

This simple, little 11 pound stray cat has taught me to think a bit more carefully so that I don't have as many regrets as before, and to enjoy as much of life as possible when you can.  Barney has shown me that family sometimes comes a second time around, not just the first time - so keep your eyes open and watch for the new friend that might become a treasured family member.  And he taught me to never refuse to be kind or to accept kindness.

As for the rest of the New Year resolutions, well, I'm going to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

Stampotique December 2014 Challenge #2, "Anything Goes"

This is a birthday card made on a gelli print.  The critters are colored with Dylusions in waterbrushes.  I cut them all out with my new Brother Scan N Cut machine, and it took longer to stamp the images than the machine took to cut them!  I am in LOVE with this machine!!

Stampotique December 2014 Challenge, "Anything Goes"

This is my first entry for the December challenge of Anything Goes.
It is a Christmas card for my daughter and her Jewish husband and their child.

Privacy, or lack thereof...

So blogging and writing and posting, that's all fine and dandy. Putting thoughts to paper, or screen in this case, is a great way to order the mind and ease a bit of the daily stress. For many people, writing daily in a diary or journal has been a rite of passage, a process of growth or personal evolution. Well, that may be a bit grandiose; I know of a few people who write what they do every day just so that they can recall what they did and when because they're memories are so poor.

I recall getting a beautiful blank book as a gift from a very nice lady friend of mine quite a few years ago. This book had a quilt motif associated with it, both on the cover and throughout the pages. I wanted to save the quilting journal for a good purpose, and put it away thinking that a really great opportunity would present itself to me someday. Many years later I found this book after it had been jammed in the back of a drawer, ruined by being stuffed and tumbled by years of sewing and quilting supplies been overstuffed in that same drawer. It occurred to me - this was not the prime purpose I'd been saving this quilting journal for.

My mother always read Ann Landers, the advice columnist. Dear Abby was another columnist in a different newspaper we received over the years. I don't remember who said this, but one of them published a column about a woman who had always saved things "for good," never using them for herself or her family. After she lost her husband she realized he was the best she ever had; all the years of saving the best table clothes and china and clothing were wasted because the person she wanted to share these things with the most was gone. That has always stuck with me... Therefore, I blame "Ann" and "Abby" for my house never having anything fancy or nice!! LOL! Everything gets used for us - daily. If we don't deserve it, who the heck does?

What does this have to do with privacy? Well, when you think about writing or blogging or journalling, you're spilling your guts - the intimate parts of your soul that many times you really don't want to share but are truly good to share because of the cleansing action it performs. The problem is, who do you share this with?

Have a chat with a friend and share some of these "issues"? Nopers! Can of Worms! Talk to your spouse/significant other? Well, sometimes these issue revolve around your spouse or significant other. Therapist? Sure...got a couple of months? YEARS?? And that much money? Cuz most insurance plans nowadays don't cover that much mental health care! There are options, but here's a clue - write a blog.

But that begs the questions of who is reading the blog and what kind of gut spilling does one actually put into said blog. I know there are people I would NEVER want to read some of the things I'm thinking! Nor would I write them!

So where does the line between the want and need to illustrate yourself, to share, to have a semi-anonymous chance at cathartic self rumination and the issues of privacy become blurred? AND, more importantly, how does one overcome this sticky wicket?

I don't think there are any easy answers. Anything that one posts on the internet is public and free game to everyone, everywhere. Illusions of privacy become moot. But what then of the need for publishing the written word? Somehow, there is a thrill of seeing one's own thoughts posted on a public forum, but how can any illusion of privacy be maintained if the need for total inner revelation is to take place? Seems like this may be why normal people write in journals and lock them up to maintain their private thoughts. Perhaps blogger who worry about privacy issues should regress to the real rather than virtual written word.

Nah, don't think so! My audience will miss me!!

SNOW!!!

Snow storm Albert, December 19, 2009.

This is supposedly a 50 year storm. We'll see tomorrow how Albert shapes up, won't we?

Personally, I love snow storms. It's so soft; quiet and serene. Even when the wind in howling and fierce, it's absolutely lovely. Now, don't tell the hubster - he plows for the Deptartment of Transportation and absolutely HATES this stuff! He was called out to plow today at 11:00 AM; didn't start snowing here until 8:3o PM. Yep, the state is close to bankrupt, but they're paying these guys overtime. Makes tons of sense. Well, it's the first snow of the season, everybody goes nuts - even the State.

But for me, I get blessed peace and quiet. I get to mute the television; I get to have music on; I get to talk to myself; I get to surf the net and NOT have someone interrupt me; I get to talk to my animals; I get to eat what I want when I want and HOW I want, and no one else is pestering me at all!


Don't get me wrong, I love my husband to pieces. He is my Rock! We've been married 30 years and I wouldn't trade one minute of those years. Ok, I'd trade a few of those minutes for Tom Selleck, maybe, back when he was in Magnum, P.I. shape... But to have my house to myself and be peaceful as in, NOT having an argument and him outside in a huff with me slamming stuff inside...this is PRICELESS! I only get this kind of peace when we have snowstorms.

When he comes back home I've usually found that I've missed him so much, I can barely stand it. The house is quite empty without him here. Like all homes, I think, we each leave an imprint of our molecules in the air once we've left for a bit. The house becomes stagnant without us breathing inside it.

When my daughter left for college there were still three of us living at home and she was coming back home every weekend for her part time job, but somehow the house knew she wasn't here at her regularly scheduled time slot, and it felt like the house rebelled. It seemed like her room went stale and lost it's life. I finally got to tidy up her room because she wasn't in it all the time, and when she came home Friday nights her room became the usually pigsty, but even then the house was still out of sorts... Off kilter in a weird kind of way. The house never truly recovered until she found the love of her life and totally moved away.

Now she and her husband come to visit and the house goes into shock. She blows into "home" like a whirlwind, leaving every light on in every room she passes through. She trails clothing, shoes, purses and tote bags, makeup, mail...all in a 2 hour visit. And the house sighs, "she's baaack!"

Ham

What a ham bone!!!

Ok, so I'm not making a social commentary... I just haven't yet figured out how to make a new list on my blogs' sidebar yet and I want to keep a link here.

I found a link that very nicely describes the difference between a country ham and a "city" ham. This is one of those links that I'd like to keep. If I had the gumption to have a regular website, I'd copy the text, giving proper credit to the author, of course, and post it in a new page. On my blog, however, I'll just save the link - and hope that the content doesn't get taken down.

http://virginiatraditions.com/news/news.aspx?nid=8

Is this information good to know? Probably not... But someday I'll get into a discussion about pork with my son-in-law, who knows just about freakin' EveRYthInG!!! and I'll want this article. NOW...I'll be able to put my hands right on it! (HA, Alex, Take THAT! LOL! Love Ya!)