Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Pearls


This one has something to do with the fact that I have been told all my life that God is a God of order, implying that he will not show up if there is not an orderly place for him. It's harder to see God in the messy places, especially if he does not run around putting things in order, but instead, just sits quietly with the one whose pearls are all over the floor.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Not Exactly What We Wanted

And not a fun way to begin the summer season.

First we received word surreptitiously from my son that he had been injured on the job by a piece of falling lumber. He said he was okay but he had to have three staples put into his head. We saw him this weekend for the workshop (not for an official visit, they are still on "tight house") we have been attending so we know he is all right.


On Friday evening, my youngest somehow managed to step/fall into a swimming pool drain hole. Her softball team had gotten together for an after-game swim. Somewhere around 1:20 a.m. we came home from the emergency room with a total of twenty-one stitches in the shin of her leg, seven on the inside that will go away and fourteen on the outside that will have to be removed. She has to walk on crutches, the doctor is afraid the inside stitches may pull loose. The cut was so jagged that it was hard to stitch things back together. I was amazed that he was able to put it back together. It looked like something had taken a bite out of her leg. There are pictures of the wound before it was stitched but I don't have access to any of them (and it was a rather gross sight). When we got her walked out to the car to take her to the emergency room and she caught her breath, she had to survey the damage. When she saw it, she asked her friends to get pictures.


I spent this afternoon transferring photos over to an exterior hard drive and deleting them off my computer to try and clear some memory on the main drive. Somewhere along the line, I "lost" my external hard drive with all my photos on it. Talk about a panicked feeling! My nephew came to my rescue when I called him nearly in tears over the problem.

I suppose we will all survive our little mishaps.

The good news is, she did not break a bone. And my son seems to be hanging on quite well in spite of the dadburn "tight house" situation, though Mama is getting a bit tired of all that. She wants to visit her son!

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Seven Things to Make One Say "Hmmm"

Linda tagged me one day last week to list seven little known or odd facts about me. I can’t remember where I came across Linda’s presence (Gluebooks? Or Everydaymatters?) but I know we have been reading each other’s blogs for a while. It’s been fun watching her art evolve.

I’ve been thinking for several days now and though I am very well aware that I am weird, and sometimes guarded, and therefore, there must be something I can list, I have a hard time coming up with specific odd or little known facts!

Here they are...

1. Can you believe I am the type of person who will wait patiently for two weeks for an appointment with the gynecologist (she wants to discuss the results face to face, in her office) to hear test results (irregular Pap smear, nothing too major, as far as I can tell now), get to the office to find the doctor is not in, and say yes when asked if I’d be willing to let the nurse-practitioner talk to me instead, only to have her tell me the test was unreadable and then, when I asked what exactly might I be facing, to tell me they would let me know when to start worrying…can you believe I am the type person who would walk out of that office with nary a word of complaint about having to leave work for a useless appointment (and no doubt being charged for the useless visit) and that I would not think a thing of that woman telling me they would tell me when to start worrying? Oh yeah, that is the type of person I am. But I have slept since then.

For one thing, I think I should start worrying when I discover I go to a doctor’s office where they don’t even have sense enough, or time enough, or courtesy enough to call their patient and tell them there is no use in coming for the appointment we have scheduled because there are no test results to discuss.

I will have a few things to say when I return.

2. An amazing sight I saw (and dang, I wish I’d had my camera!) this past week: We were in the line at McDonald’s after dark one night (after a softball game) and we looked over at the fenced in area where they put their trash (the gate was open) and there were three raccoons on the ground outside. My daughter rolled the window down and made a silly noise, and I kid you not, ten raccoons and one cat came running out of there!

3. I lived in the dorm of a conservative Christian college my first semester of college. One night they gathered us all around and talked to us about the importance of wearing our bras when we were out in public. Well, I am all for modesty, but we had this statue down in the lobby area of the dorm and it was Greek, and she one of those robes (togas?) on that only had one shoulder, and she was not wearing a bra. So, a friend and I slipped down one night and put one of my raggedy old bras on that statue. I have always been pretty much a goody-two shoes and I would have died if we had gotten caught! The next morning, the bra was gone and not even acknowledged. We were too scared of getting in trouble to brag about having done it, so we could not really enjoy our prank. (I left for home after that semester and it was a long time before I returned to college. Now I’d like to return again to college.)

4. It is my opinion that we should take all the televisions out of all the bedrooms of America, adults as well as children. Computers too. You can keep something in there to play music, but nothing with any screens on them. Why? Because I believe they make it to easy for people to disappear into their own little world, which cuts off communication and stifles relationships.

5. There is something about Willie Nelson’s weathered looks that I think is absolutely riveting. I love to watch him talk and sing. He carries himself like such an everyday type person. At times, he almost looks uncomfortable with the attention that is being paid to him. The people at work make fun of me for this! My youngest gave me a Mother’s Day card with him singing in it. If he is on TV and my husband sees him, he always gives me a head’s up, saying “your man’s on TV”. I like watching him. I think he has aged well. Of course, I also loved the video of the old man singing that Cold Play song, so you might assume that older people are interesting to me (and they are).

6. This is not necessarily a little known fact, but I do love taking butt shot photos. There is something poignant for me in seeing people walk away. And like I have said before, when you are photographing their backsides they do not know and you get a much more relaxed photo.

7. I think I have mentioned it before, but I have this annoying ability to see all sides of an issue. I call it annoying because it usually renders me incapable of standing real firm on some sticky issues.

For a long time, it ticked me off that others could not be as gracious as I about conceding that other people have the right to have differing opinions on these sticky issues. I finally realized that it is through no effort of my own that I am able to see all sides of an issue. It is simply the way I am made. So I can’t take much credit for being open-minded but neither should I have to take any grief from “the strongly opinionated” for my being wishy-washy!

As always, although I enjoy being tagged to do these things, I don't particularly like tagging others, so I won't.

(Does that make me a bad sport?)

PS-- Rachel, did you see they fixed Blogger for us? It now saves your drafts automatically! No more losing our brilliants post in mid-thought!

Monday, May 14, 2007

I Have Seen The Duck!


The duck is nesting in a chiminea on my sister's back porch.


She apparently was tired of all the attention we were giving her and left her nest to take a spin around the lake. Thanks Jules!, for reminding me to see God in the odd places!

It was a good weekend all in all. We've been attending these family information sessions at the rehab every other weekend. We have one session left. We only got to get a quick hug from my son this time around because the rehab place has temporarily suspended all visitation privileges. Hopefully we will be able to have a visit next weekend.

I would appreciate your prayers for my son. He has been in rehab for almost five months and I think he is discouraged as he thinks about how much longer he still has to go. He also goes sometime this month to take his GED. I think he is well prepared and I think success in that area will be a tremendous lift to his self-esteem.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Busy Bee

I mentioned in the part of my previous post that disappeared that I have joined a writing group that meets every other week. We receive a prompt via email and then we are to write about an early memory that comes up after reading the prompt. Last week was my first week to participate and it was very interesting. You read what you wrote to the group and they give you feedback on what they are hearing, which theoretically relates to how you are currently living your life. I did learn a few things about myself and about my reticence in trying to take myself seriously as I consider putting these things I do "out there" to sell (I explained all this much better in the post that disappeared!)

Anyway, here are examples of what I have been doing with my photographs. Putting them on artist's canvas is a different look from just leaving them as photographs. I don't necessarily think one is better than the other, it's just a matter of what one likes. The photos aren't that great, I was in a hurry and I had my camera set on a lower quality than usual.




These two are examples of how different the same photo looks. The top one has torn edges and is on canvas. The bottom one is the photograph framed (my reflection is in there because I took these photos quickly, not paying too much attention to details).

You can see the plain photo of this one in the previous post.


I posted this one as a photo a good while back.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Half a Post Beats No Post At All?

For those who asked, the flower is a Louisiana iris. My mother has them in her yard. I am not much on growing flowers these days. She could not remember the specific name of this particular variety, but I am sure she will look it up and tell me later. Here are a couple of links if you'd like more information. If you google Louisiana irises for images, you will see that there are many varieties.

http://www.louisianairis.com/what.are.la.irises.html


http://www.sunfarm.com/picks/louisianairishybrids.phtml


I guess one of these days I am going to learn to compose these posts in Word and save a copy and then bring it into Blogger (but not today, sigh). I just wrote several paragraphs about how I was working on trying to find a way to market these things on the internet when my computer froze up and I lost those paragraphs. I'm not going to try to recreate it tonight (it was so interesting, what I had to say!).

I will say the Jung quote is there because I used a Louisiana iris bloom from last year in the picture.


Friday, May 04, 2007