If you can’t snatch a picture, what can you do?

I follow a blogger who recently was sued for snagging a picture and using it. She gave full credit and thought she was within her legal limits. As soon as the person complained, she pulled the picture. That was not enough, and the owner sued her for a large sum of money. I am not certain how that has turned out but I am always in the hopes of becoming wealthy, “Ah, hope springs eternal; and delusional” so thought I should take action now and go through my blog, deleating all photos that are not mine.

I was surprised to find that there were probably under twenty photos I did not own. I did not look through my blogs, just through my pictures, so I hope I did not miss any, cause I am pretty sure poverty will soon be erased by great weath, especially if I spend my days deleating photos.

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You are never far from home, no matter where you roam.

It is always nice to have a new subscriber, but it is especially cool to find one from a far away land. I believe it helps to remind us just how similar we are. There are jobs we hate to do and then find out how worthwhile they were. There are times we do not realize how much we miss our relatives until we see them again.

If i cannot travel, at least I can read about other places and people. Sanchari is in Delhi, and blogging at, http://sancharib.wordpress.com/. If you scroll down her posts, you will see some great photos of the Jaisalmer Fort.

But, what really brought me home was her November post on cutting down the Mango tree which was just one year older than she is.

When I was growing up, my side yard had a large weeping willow tree. I could crawl under the branches and have an instant play house/fort/whatever I wanted. Many a day was spent eating lunch and playing under that tree. So, when mom and dad moved to a subdivision, they took a start with them and grew a new weeping willow in the backyard.

When I divorced, I moved back home again with my daughters. Super teacher daughter was in kindergarten and was delighted to live with a weeping willow in her very own backyard. It was she now who spent hours eating cookies or sandwiches and playing dolls under her grandparents tree. That is, until one day years later when lightning split the tree and it was taken down.

We had moved out a couple of years before this, but daughter always ran to visit her tree. We did not think to warn her as we got settled in for our visit, until she came back in the house in tears. Her beloved tree was gone.

She never ate mangoes from it but that tree was a wonderful memory for my daughter, as well as Sanchari’s Mango tree was for her.

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My addiction to crazy.

My name is Sheryl and I am an addict.  I am so addicted to http://thebloggess.com/.

 

If you haven't read it, you must!

I check about six times a day for a new post from her.  Should she go three days without posting, I am ready to write and see if she is okay or not?  I am stalking addicted.

I have even developed a ritual for her posts.  I savor read it to myself first, then I read it outloud to husband, while trying not to laugh so hard I fall off my chair, then I post it to facebook.  Then, I get to read all the neat comments I get from my daughter and others who also find her hysterical.

Now if my mind just worked that way, maybe I would post more regularly.

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The Bloggess – just in case you missed my earlier post!

I love to find bloggers who can make me laugh and I think I have discovered one of the best.  http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/   The Bloggess is hysterical.  I forwarded it to Facebook and got a comment right away from someone who tried it and loved it.  My daughter then wrote me and said that she was laughing so hard she was crying and her husband was looking at her like she was nuts.

When I find a blog like this, my main thing is to read as many old entries as I can.  That is the only thing about The Bloggess, it’s really hard to find/read her past entries.

But, they are all priceless hysterical gems.

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5 foot metal chickens are so much more fun than pink towels

I would love to have natural humor in my writing.

My humor is of the more dry kind.  Someone is having a conversation and I pop in with a blatently obvious observation that no one else will dare to say.

Okay, example:  I graduated from the School of the (Museum) of the Art Institute of Chicago.  You study all forms of art, 2-D, 3-D, 4-D, etc.  We had attended a show of some performance art, where a young man is naked in a cage and trying to pleasure himself.  (It is the Art Institute); lots of naked, lots of angst.  The class was discussing the ‘purpose’ of the performance and what we learned from it.  I, one of the older students, opens my mouth and out pops, “That it’s harder to come in public than you think.”

To me, it was just one of those rules of nature that everyone should know, but the class spent the next five minutes ROFLOL.  (See, I’m not as old as you think.)

Often, when I say these things, I don’t even realize it’s going to be funny.  This makes it hard for me to write humor.  I’ve had a lot of ‘things’ going on in the last year; ill health of family members, ill health of pets, the financial situation, idiots, etc.  Not a lot seems funny to me and I have made a point of going back through my book and MAKING some funny.

I used to read my daughter’s blog, BRAINDEBRIS  at http://braindebris.wordpress.com/, for lessons in funny.  AND, AND, that girl has started blogging again.  That girl is funny in her sleep and it is just all so natural.  I also have a niece who has you in stitches all the time.  I have just discovered, from one of my other favorite blogs, EpBOT at http://www.epbot.com/, to the Bloggess’ blog:  http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/  This one goes to the top of my list, right alongside http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/  BECAUSE, everyone should have a 5 foot tall metal chicken.

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The Last Muggle to Read Harry Potter

Each of our senses can bring back vivid emotions/memories. 

The commercial for Harry Potter World in Orland, Florida evokes one of those moments in the (approx) eight notes that start it.  Okay, I have no idea what they are calling Harry Potter World, so maybe the commercial isn’t all that good.  But, everytime it starts, I find myself transported to a dark theatre, heart racing but a little lighter, with all the hope and promises of a magical adventure.

I have been reading a new-to-me blog, ‘The Last Muggle to Read Harry Potter via The Last Muggle to Read Harry Potter.’  She is reading the Harry Potter series, for the first time.  Since she has seen the movies and is twenty, she has an interesting perspective on the whole experience.  She also comes up with things that I never thought.

We do not go to the theatre much anymore, even though AMC is only $5.00 in our area and I thought we would go alot.  We still use our criteria for what is a “Big Screen” movie.  I miss going to the theatre and I hate watching movies at home with husband.  He is Mr. Logic.  I get totally enveloped in whatever world the movie is in.  I suspend belief because, hey, we are in the author/screen writer’s world and they probably just have different rules.  Then, suddenly, I am brought back to our world by his telling me that something or other is, “blah! blah! blah!”  He can’t do that in the theatre.  He’s a real mood buster.

So, after he goes downstairs, I pop in a  Harry Potter movie just to listen to those eight notes.

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Persistent researcher gives up!

I am a presistant researcher.  I always figure if I just try to word my search in another way, I will find my answer.  It takes a lot to make me give up.   But, I am about there.

When I reformatted my computer, I lost my favorites.  One of them was a blog that I like to follow.  I have racked and racked my brain for things this blogger talked about but I cannot seem to find her blog.

CLUES:  (Please send me a link to her blog if this sounds familiar!!!)

She is a librarian.

People think she is East Indian but she is really from an island, maybe Samoa??

She lives in the Northwest, maybe Seattle?

Her significant other dances, at any odd time, to make her laugh

They fixed up their house and property, really improving the looks of the property and yet her neighbor gets upset because the one bush drops its leaves on the sidewalk.

She’s very funny and very close to her friends.

GOSH, if we were all reduced to five sentences, what would I be remembered as?

I am an artist?  Did any of you know that?

I live in the midwest.

My significant other sleeps on the couch but we do laugh a lot.

We have fixed up (rehabed) two houses but always wait to do it until we are ready to sell.  So, in the meantime, I live in a house with holes in the kitchen linoleum, a roll in the frontroom carpet and broken tiles by the door.

I try to be funny but my daughter is a natural at it.  She’s also my best friend.

What are your five sentences, or six?

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Throwing feces and playing with dolls

One of my near daily blogs to check is, Mr. Barlow’s Blog via Mr. Barlow’s Blog.  He’s a science or math teacher who blogs stuff he learns every day.  It is so cool.

A while ago, he blogged about chimps and the fact that they now know that chimps play with sticks, not just use them to suck up ants.  I could have used a chimp with a stick this summer to suck up the tiny ants invading my kitchen.  Oh well!

Chimps, and especially female chimps, use sticks like dolls.  They even build nests for them.

Hmmmm!  At a time when it seems that we have less instincts in raising children, the chimps are gaining more.  I only say this after being at the store where children behave much worse than any chimp I have seen.  Well, not quite.  A child has vomited on me but never thrown their feces at me.

So, given this new information, who descended from whom???

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Find what you have to do and do it!

In my continuing effort to read other’s blogs, rather than posting on my own,  I have discovered:  2010 – The Year In Jolie | Blurt via 2010 – The Year In Jolie | Blurt.    Check out her past blogs for a hysterical account of the time she was a contestant on “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me.”

I leave my studio radio on NPR and, I will have to be awfully ill to not work on Saturday when I can hear  ‘Wait! Wait,’  ‘Prairie Home Companion  and the whole lineup.  Alright, honesty here.  I have not been out to my studio in a couple of years, but this summer I will be out there again.  Feeling so much healthier and ready to go. and one thing that keeps me moving is NPR.  I particularly like late night jazz and Fusion.

So, what have I been doing, instead of working in my outdoor studio.  I have been writing. 

Husband says that I can get really crabby when I’m not working.  As I became more and  more weak, from undiagnosed heart problem, I got to the end of my rope and just had to work, so I wrote.  And, through surgery, recovery and weird news, I still wrote.  If they would have let me have paper and pen in ICU, I would have written there.

Now, I’m unwriting.  I just did a run through of the second half of my (either) Middle Grade or Young Adult fantasy novel.  I’m going with Advanced Middle Grade today.  I was able to get rid of 1,000 words and decided to go through the upper half.  It’s a matter of reading and saying, “I don’t need to say that.” “That is redundant.” and of showing instead of telling.

The big question:  Will I ever be done.  The fantasy is set in 2007, you’ll know if you know what the weather was like, in Indiana, in 2007.  My step-mother can probably read it and tell you what month is what.  The woman is a walking weather woman. 

So, what does 2011 hold for me.  Hopefully, I find an agent and then an editor and we work wonderfully together to make this book a success.  Because, I think it will be an important book for children to read.  But, even if it doesn’t, I am going to have to finish the series, because that is what I have to do.

I hope you all find what you have to do and do it, this coming year.  It’s the most satisfying thing in your life.

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Truckstop Oysters. How Bad Could They Be?

I was doing my daily “let’s avoid accomplishing anything” by searching for new blogs to read.  This is purely in the name of research and to get me out of the rut of writing blogs and then deleting them, prior to publishing, as they are not funny.  I seem to be doing a lot of that lately.

Then, there is the Christmas stocking issue and the knitted Christmas gift that I could work on 24/7 from now till Christmas and probably still not have it done.    I am on my second yarn and my twentymillionth rip out on this thing.  So, my days go, dishes, feed animals, knit four rows, search the internet for Vegan no oil food and any other excuse I can use.

When I am searching blogs, I am mostly looking for ones that make me laugh and today, I was in stitches over a new blog I found.  Truckstop Oysters. How Bad Could They Be? | Blurt via Truckstop Oysters. How Bad Could They Be? | Blurt.

All I can tell you, is I think it’s a guy girl (she asserted her he just asserted his alpha female status over Angelina Jolie’s dolls, another funny post, and he lives in North Carolina and he is funny!   And, he can tell you just exactly how bad of an idea it is to have truckstops serve oysters. 

If you have ever traveled, then you probably have a state that is NOT your favorite.  My state is Missouri.  I have broken down every single time I cross Missouri, except the last time.  Perhaps I am making my peace with the state.  But, I am pretty sure it just felt like it owed me as one trip, I broke down three times.  Never buy a used motorhome. 

It isn’t just that though.  Missouri is the state that has nice restaurants who bring you a cup of hot water and a packet of cocoa when you order hot chocolate.   What is more upscale than bringing you hot water and packets of cocoa?  I now travel a long way out of my way to avoid Missouri.

Let me know if you hear where Truckstop Oysters is playing.  Sounds like a great band to me.

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