Rain

Finally, after a long hot spring/summer, we have been listening to the sound of rain for over 24hours.  It's amazing how peaceful you can feel, while sitting and listening to the rain.  Of course, I don't believe this is anything new, people have known it for years, but in our current state of the nation, it helps to be provided with peace, where the calm of the earth glistens and allows you to escape the stress of smog, consumption, and discontent.  It's a gravity that happens in the winter when the snow falls for the first time.  You look out your window and can actually feel alive.  What is our life without these moments?

Writing to Live, Living to Write

Puzzling

Working a puzzle lends itself, as a form of meditation, and peace of mind.  All of the important things that are going on in the world disappear, and the only important thing becomes putting in the next piece, and along with that next piece are the prayers sent forth to God through Christ Jesus, who shows me the way, and as i pray, I pray for my children, for my family and friends, and for an answer to the most burning question I've had for more than 50 years; why do I live?
My son is going to be incarcerated for the next 4 years or so, I don't even know the charges... I told my kids when they were young, if you get caught up and end up in jail, don't expect me to come visit you, because all my youth I explained to them the difficulty in the world, and how to avoid it, and if they went against that, then what can I do?  You do a crime, You do the time... rule of the streets.  Who's going to serve that time, well my son is for sure, but there are tears on my face that just never dry, because as he suffers that time, i most certainly do also, praying continually that God will keep him, and that he'll remain healthy and spiritually uplifted.
The other day, Amanda Knox was released from an Italian jail system, and it bought tears to my eyes as I watched her heartfelt words for those who supported her, but today on the internet, it's not the front page news any longer.  The stories just keep coming, and the internet, just keeps spinning around the world, with millions, like myself, putting words out there to be read by who ever happens in.  It's my life, and the commonness we share is that we love writing.
So, puzzling is how I continue my love.  I would love to write my stories down, like a narrative, but day by day, journaling is more my style.  Until I can find gainful employment, it's most constant.
Yesterday I watched a movie called, "Everything Must Go" with Will Farrell... a different role for him, but a good story.
After having a garage sale just last weekend, I guess you could say I relate.  I've been unemployed now for nearly 2 years, and I was never the CEO of anything except this house, and unemployment doesn't help. 
Last weekend my granddaughters flushed something down the toilet and caused the system to back up, and so the money that I made from selling old things went right back into getting the plumbing fixed.  And why didn't I think to become a plumber?  They get paid very well.  Roto Rooter coundn't have been her for more than 15 minutes, and it cost a bill.  $100!!!
That's just crazy right?  But that the way it is.  I must accept it and move on.  Back to puzzling...
The colors run together so much I don't even make areas, I am building this puzzle from the ground up and it's coming out find, as you can see from the previous puzzle, "Time Well Spent" by Henry Lee Battle, it' deserves a frame, and a place on a wall.
I think it's the least expensive way to get wall art right?

Living to Write, Writing to Live

The Garage Sale... Success

Sweet Success, OK, it's been a long time, and I didn't have any SMC items to sell... but all in all, I found out that, you can make a few dollars to help with the cost of food and gas from your home doing a garage sale.  But get this, the city only allows 2 (two) a year.  Are you kidding me?
I have spent a lot more time than that at the god of the mall, and the god of other garage sales, trying to find those cute little things that will make me happy.  And selling some cute things was impossible.  I think I priced them too high, and I also noticed that my home is decorated with African American Art.  So, I didn't sell any of my African American figurines, and i also didn't sell any of my stemware, but what the heck, I bought it all back in the house and placed it all back into the china cabinet.  Which also didn't sell... but it gives me a place to put those things that my granddaughters and grandson can't touch.
So, thank you Donna Partow, I have found your book to be very enlightening, and like a road map to make a home business.
Making my something better is taking on a whole new light.  And I am not mad about that.

Living to Write, Writing to Live

GARAGE SALE

It's come to the time, tomorrow I start selling off old books, coats, shoes, clothes, children's things, and my heart, my knitting magazines and books.  Now, it brought tears to my eyes when I put a price on my knitting books.  I've spent a lifetime reading about knitting, knitting, and learning various styles of knitting.  So, whether the knitting books sell will depend, because I am not parting with them cheaply.,  I have gone online to Amazon.com to find out what those books would be worth were I to buy them used, and priced accordingly.  Some books I will give away, FREE, and some of the old shelves, and knick knacks around my house I will part with for a song, but my crystal champagne glasses, crystal clocks and figurines are things that I have because over the years you collect stuff.  And those stuff, I love, so parting with some of them will be difficult, but I will for the right price.  I don't want to price too high, but I also don't want to devalue my years of collecting.  

So... it's going to be a wonderful experience since I haven't had a garage sale in years, but it's also going to be a pleasure to get some of this stuff just cleared out. I was once a dressmaker, now I use my computer practically 3-4 hours a day.  Once I knitted sweaters, and crotchet aftghans. now I put puzzles together.  While the kids were young and I spent time reading childrens books, now I take my grandchildren to the library and borrow their books.  Once I spent long hours in the kitchen cooking being inspired by music on CD, now I have a iTune and it's quite compact.  Once I played with my childrens organ, now it sits in a closet collecting dust.  The things we collect over periods in our life truly gets out of hand when we don't go through it when we are done with those things.  And I am sure you've heard the phrase, "one mans junk, another man's treasure".  So, while the things i once cherished, are now dust collectors, they might fit just right in someone else's life.

I am hoping for the best.  Wirting to live, living to write.

Preparing for my Garage Sale

After more than thirty years of marriage there are bound to be things that need to be gotten rid of.  Especially when you are a professional at garage sales, and second hand store things.  In a consumer driven industry, when you don't have a lot of money, the second hand stores and garage sales provide you that release you need, shopping for something without spending a lot of money, and finding beautiful things that someone else owned, but discarded or lost, or maybe even passed on to the next life, and left.  Where it all comes from, doesn't even matter.  It's the idea that if you can't afford the mall, you go to the second hand store and you are destined to find something.  
Once I went out looking, and i mean searching, for a 'podium'.  I wanted a place to place my bible, so that whenever i got the mind to, i could just open it up and read it.  Like when I get on my soap box.  Or when I get a feeling of dread, or loneliness, the bible is my word, the living word.  Who wouldn't want a podium?  Right?  Well, believe it or not, i found one, but it was sold to a minister who wouldn't part with it.  I don't blame him, I wouldn't have either. 
But that didn't stop me from finding something of use that day.  Clothes for my granddaughters.  I love trinkets, and anything shiny things like champagne flutes, or wine glasses, or coffee mugs.  I even once went out in search of a desk, to place my sewing machine on, because the vibrations rattled the little 36" table that I picked up from (of all places) Walmart.
Well, it's time to get rid of things and possibly earn a little cash on the side, and going through all those things, brought up many memories.  I found pictures of my kids, when they were born... my oldest son being more than 30 years, and I thought I had all my pictures in one place, but I have more pictures than can be counted.  And there's something about going back and looking at photos, something about actually seeing them, turning the pages of the photo album that gives one a feeling indescribable.  The digital age makes a lot of things like pictures in albums obsolete, but I don't ever believe that a photo album gift isn't something that will always be cherished by the receiver of said gift.

So, while I continue to go through my house preparing for my garage sale, i know that there are a few things that i must do to make it successful.  It's important to advertise in a local paper.  And with Craig's List, it makes it more successful to advertise even there.  

 Now with all my things, I hope to make this day something better.  Living to Write, Writing to Live.

Everything must go!

 

Things they are a changin

I survived this day.  And now, it's at the end, I am finally able to sit my feeble ass down, and I am thank to God Almighty that I lived through the insanity that i saw today.  Some days are just full of goodness, you know, like the cool breeze blowing on your face after a long hot summer.  As simple as a child wanting to go to the park, to swing, ride on the slide, or just sit on a merry go round, or just taking my little dog for a walk.  But today, I saw my granddaughters full of glee as they ate donuts while their mother was in the doctor's office, walk into the library where the hope of their future was calling out to them and they couldn't decide which book to get, and then going through an attic of old stuff preparing for a garage sale, because the stuff i keep is just too old. 
What happened after that, i cannot even speak about, but I am yet alive, therefore, i can still say, I am happy within because despite the sever arthritis that caused my kids to become people i don't even know, or want to know, i live, and as long as there is breath in my body I will give all power to Him who believes in me more than I believe in myself. 
So, I do well, and since it's over, done, the end of this day, I sit and relax, and remember the trip to the library with little people who'll one day become big people, who'll hope and dream, and maybe even make magic happen, I thank God, I Live to 'Write', and I write to live.

Afterall, these are the moments worth living, and with that in mind, I bid you Good night!

It's Sunday Again,

This morning, Father,
I awoke, but knowing that we had no coffee I just went to the corner supermarket and purchased some coffee.  In addition, I purchased Amaretto cream; which i walked all the way over to the milk section thinking that I would find coffee mixes there.  Wrong.  They were on the same isle as the coffees!
It's still pretty quiet when I get up in the morning, so I am most relaxed, getting the body moving very slowly, and the same with the gray matter in my head, just moving slowly. 
I can hear the nuts hit the ground this morning, since there is a walnut tree right outside my back yard.
Last week, Friday, I paid for someone to take down the two trees in my life than have shaded our house for more than 12 (twelve) years.  The evergreen use to house woodpeckers, but i think when the new beetle moved in, the woodpeckers left, and i don't hear them any more.
The tree stood the tallest in the front yard, and every time you gazed upon it, you could feel the majesty.  You could tell that there was something grand there.

I'll miss you evergreen of the front yard.  And the little poor looking crab apple tree.  Who plants a fruit bearing tree in the front yard?  There was a peach tree out there right in front of the curb; you can just imagine what happened to it when the fruit fell to the street below it, and the cars ran over them.  Who would do that?

I've lived in this house for more than twelve years now, and I have learned that until you actually take special time to pay special attention to your house, you really don't have an investment.

I did the credit card thing so long, i bankrupted us.  And guess what?  No one came along to bail us out.  We had to budget, live less extravagantly, buy only the things we really needed, and spend more time as a family.  I've learned that those were the times we remember most in this life.  We put puzzles together, we create good food, and we eat together now frequently.  I like that a lot.  Especially when my children cook, and take the time to prepare a meal.  That's something money can't buy.

Our front yard is now a clean slate to create.  Being the creative person that i am I pray to Father, through Jesus Christ my Lord, to make something grand.

Living to Write, and Writing to live, this is my something special.