So Tired of Computers ...

YES, tired of computers so I won't stay here long. Just wanted to end the month with the admission that no matter how hard I tried I didn't finish all my decorated coin packets, although I did come awfully close. I will finish them up in May.
Today in the mail I got "The Weight of Flowers" by Julie Fillo. It is hanging on my wall and. I. love. it! The painting will be posted her tomorrow. (Safe and sound, Julie, and I am sooooooo happy with it.) If you scroll down her blog you will see the painting I bought.
Art and flowers ... can there be better, more satisfying, investments?
Well, since I spent most of the day sitting in front of a computer trying to get Dreamweaver to do what I wanted, I am going off to bed now - right after I brush my teeth - femminismo

Will You Still Need Me? Will You Still Feed Me?

WHEN I'M sixty-four? It's happened! The whirling of the earth, the continual falling but never reaching the surface - not yet, anyway - and I'm still here!
Yes, 64. Tell me, if you can, how that happened in the blink of an eye, in the wink of a star. Yet I'm really truly here and my knees still work (mostly) and I'm running on nearly all of my original parts. (Knock, knock, knock on wood.)
In six months, my sister tells me, it will be time to apply for Medicare. They need all the warning they can get, apparently. Today I got lots of good wishes - more than ever before thanks to Facebook! I received flowers from my oldest son and lunch out with him. His treat! The day got better and better. My daughter and her family came by to give me more flowers - pink rosebuds, lilacs, tiny pink carnations and stock, with its lovely aroma. A great card and lots of hugs rounded that all out.
When I got home there was shiny bag hanging on the front door knob filled with treats and sumptuous indulgences. (There was an empty book to write in. Could the giver be hinting something?)
The Mister had a wonderful card for me. The kind you read and get tears in your eyes, because you know he read through a lot of them until he found the one that said what he wanted to say himself, but couldn't find the words. My brother and sister-in-law dropped by with a card too and scratch-it lottery tickets. I won $3! And I got hugs, too.
It's been a great day. I'm so glad I was born in April. There are so many flowers and the leaves are brand new and glistening and there is a feeling in the air that nothing can hold back nature and healing, and someday soon we will be on top of our game again - femminismo
p.s. Packet books are above. I've still got many to make before April ends. Best get to it!!

Using Technology

I'm enjoying using the technology of Blackberry to sit on the couch and "talk" to you. Wish I could find the magic button to put a picture of the labyrinth I walked. Next time - femminismo

I See The Train ... It's Coming

THERE'S a train coming down the tracks and I believe I can almost see it. I still don't know what day it will arrive, but for some reason I am getting more and more comfortable -- but not too much so -- with the idea that one of these days it's going to stop for me. And pick me up. And take me somewhere peaceful.
Maybe it was watching my granddaughter swinging her baby back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, in his car seat. She was trying to soothe him and get him to sleep because he had been crying. And I had *been* there. I had *done* that. My arms were once strong enough to go on and on with the swinging for half an hour. Not anymore, however. After two minutes they would have been "noodle arms."
Then on April 19, a former colleague died. She had been ill for over two years, I think, and her disease was never correctly diagnosed. She must have suffered cruelly and yet she continued to work to support her family and get her daughter through college. She went in to the hospital for a biopsy and they admitted her because she was so ill and a couple days after that she died.
Gone. No more walking uptown to cover her beat for the newspaper. No more driving the new little car she got and was so proud of. No more planning for flowers in the greenhouse to transplant this spring. The vines growing over her arbor will have to be taken care of by someone else ... or not.
But back to that train. If we are so fortunate as to live to 100 years, without disease making us miserable (picture that old lady who only has a mild twinge of arthritis on damp winter nights; that's who I want to be) that means I am in the last quarter of my life. The. Last. Quarter.
As in -- if life were a basketball game -- the last 10 minutes of play. "Make those free throws!"
Not to worry though. I will wait for the train patiently but play hard and have lots of fun before it arrives (whatever time that might be).
The other night on the way home there was a huge cloud formation that looked exactly like a humongous Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream cone with the twirl on top. I love clouds now. I used to be afraid of them.
Last night our piece of Oregon sky was the same color as the Kansas sky just before Dorothy's house flew up overhead. But the light was such that it lit up everything with an eerie glow and brought every color of every blossom and flower out even more vividly than at midday in full sunlight. It was windy and the flowers bent in the breeze. The poufs of pink blossoms hanging from trees looked sweet and sticky -- you could eat them like cotton candy. And the trees now have just enough leaves to still allow you to see their shapely branches and the trees in back of *them.* There are layers and layers of loveliness and I could eat it all up.
I think from the time it's taking to load the pictures that they may be eating up things too. Things like space and time to download, if your computer is not up to a big picture. Oh, well. Not going to fiddle with shrinking them at this point. Too late. Enjoy the closeup viewing.
And I told you I was taking a Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain class. Right? Here is my left hand. And I am not a good "drawer" - not a realistic one anyway - femminismo
Editor's note: There are 12 minutes in an NBA quarter. Yay! I have 2 additional minutes! - thanks for the comments oh lovely people!

Two Things In One

EDNA st. vincent millay - Her poem is what is in my little "two in one" book.
I had all this colorful paper and had folded it into pages, but I wanted to mix these colors up a little bit more. After sewing them together I found the poem I wanted to write down - Moritorus, by Edna St. Vincent Millay - and trusting there would be enough pages I began transferring the lines to my tiny, sawed-in-half book.
One line of the verse on the top left, the next on the top right, the third on the bottom left and the fourth line on the bottom right. While I was doing this a thought occurred to me that when I got done I was going to be able to mix 'n match. Scramble up the poem as it were. I created whole new lines that either made me laugh or really appealed to me.
The lines fit perfectly within the book ... until I. turned. the. poetry. book. page. Wow! Another whole page! Those lines will have to be in another book! I am too tired right now to even contemplate doing it and must finish dinner (Cheerios) and get to bed. I've been working hard (at work) and coming home drained and unable to take on the chores I should be doing. Well, better to have too much to do than not enough, that's my motto.
These little packets are fun and they are going together totally at random. There is no rhyme or reason, but most of the poems so far seem to have either spring or love in them - femminismo

April Daze ...

TODAY IS windy and the skies are mostly blue. It's a great day, full of springly things - like hyacinths and late daffodils. Tulips are fluttering in the breeze and lawnmowers are humming. Hope your day is going well and you get to do some art - femminismo

Help Us To Play The Man

THE Day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. - amen

-- R.L. STEVENSON

My prayer for you today is you find a way to be kind - femminismo

Photo is from Life magazine archives hosted by Google.

Upon Closer Inspection . . .

I FIND I have a project (coin packet book) but no overall great plan on how to accomplish it. But I'm thinking that since April is National Poetry Month it might be relevant (and enjoyable) to make small poetry books.
I am only two days behind on this project. It's the little finishing touches that kill me and my schedule. These words seemed to pop right off the page at me: "Lucky" and "Love never fails."
I have so many of these saved tea packets, and haven't been able to throw them away because they are such natural "envelopes" for all sorts of precious things.
I got me a date stamp like the big girls (Judy Wise and others) use in their journals.
We had a great Easter egg hunt on Saturday with all the family shoehorned into my brother and sister-in-law's house. It is a good thing we all get along!
I liked the way this shiny paper that lined a paintbrush packet reflected the lady's face onto the other side. An unintended benefit.
One more picture and then I am off to bed. Another busy day tomorrow and finding perfect poems to reflect spring and "green" and other vernal subjects like that. Love, too, of course - femminismo
p.s. I'm going to buy Gulf Sprite's video lesson on making foil paper - without foil. It sounds and looks like great stuff.

Dinner at the Led Robster

HERE we are again, viewing these unusual blinders. It only took a small suggestion from Dawn, and I zipped up to the attic to do a self-portrait before putting them back in the box.
The blinders are used during fraternal initiations, when "candidates" who want to join the fraternity (not a college fraternity; the Masons) put them on for just a while to participate in the ceremony they go through.
I have no clue what else the ceremony entails, but I do know it is nothing unholy and involves no animal sacrifices. It is quite inspirational, I guess, and solemn.
It was quite dark inside the blinders before I opened them up by holding the little knobs and tipping them up. There is quite a strong spring on one side, which yields when the knobs are flipped and stretches to allow the blinders to open up.
It was a frantically busy day today with two projects actually finished and one halfway done. Then we went out to the Red Lobster for dinner with my son and daughter-in-law and my granddaughter and her fiancé. Restaurant food always - usually - *sounds* like a good idea, but nothing beats a home-cooked meal. Imagine the amount of food you could buy for $130. (The Reisling was very good, however.) Now I am sitting here typing with a stomach that feels as if it contains an entire watermelon. And I am getting so sleepy . . . femminismo

Steam Punk or Fraternal?

LOOK what I found today! An interesting part of a fraternal requirement for initiation.
I think these are something that might inspire steam punk inventors to make elaborate eyewear. I feature a sort of Mad Max character wearing these blinders, but with lenses put into them, or darkened glass that would be lifted up when the wearer desired to speak eyeball to eyeball with someone.
These are not mine. I will put them back in the storage attic tomorrow, but I thought I would share this antique apparatus with you. They remind me of something Urbandon (Don P.) would make.
The inside of them is lined with a sort of red or purple velvet-type material and an ordinary cotton string ties them on the wearer. I like the little "knobs" that helps you lift the eye coverings. A little kinky, maybe? Or maybe not.
They were definitely made by someone who was into his craft - femminismo