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 |  My blog for the blog challenge |
| Ahem, ahem, ahem ... cough cough cough ... mememememememe ... Okay, I'm ready to write now. |
| Serial Experience! Part Two Prompt for March 30, 2014 Photo albums. On the first day (yesterday), tell us all about your experience with photo albums (physical or electronic). Do you still have pictures from when you or your children were young? Did your mother ever bring out your baby photo album at an inopportune/embarrassing moment (family reunion, boyfriend/girlfriend visiting, etc.)? Feel free to share some pictures with us if you want to Bigsmile On the second day (today), let us in on your future photo album plans. Any big trips coming up you hope to document? What is your motivation for recording these important events if there is potential they will only sit in their albums on a shelf for most of their life until they are removed, leafed through, and winced at? As a follow-up question: do you think that hiding behind a camera lens removes the photographer from the experience taking place in front of them? So, I mentioned yesterday that I was in possession of all of my dad's families photographs from the Civil War to the present. I acquired them when my dad's brother died. That side of the family is quite large as thirteen and fourteen children were the norm for them even into my grandmother's generation. My dad was one of five probably only because his dad died young. These photos are mainly loose single pictures that have been only roughly categorized by family name and are residing in four large totes in my bedroom. Organizing them and creating a family album to share with each of my aunts and uncles and cousins is my next photo album plan. We aren't planning any big trips this year. We went to Yellowstone last year and I still need to put all of those photos into an album beyond the one on facebook. I sort of roughly divided them into different parts of the trips when I posted them online but I still need to go through and edit plus I need to add in the ones from my camera. My motivation for all of these photos is simple. I believe that to know who we are we need to know where we came from and to know where we came from means understanding all of the experiences that we can that have made our parents and other family members who they are. It would be easy for me to sit down and list all of the horrible things that my parents and siblings did to me while I was growing up. I read other people's blogs where they are going on about how their parents hated them or didn't give them the time of day etc ... and I think WHY were their parents that way? You know I didn't have a rosy childhood but as an adult, even before I became an adult, I had compassion for my parents because I understood how they were raised, I knew where they had come from, I have gained a respect for them despite all the crap they put me through because I know why they did they things they did. How do I know? Because I know the family history. I've seen the pictures. I've heard the stories that go with the pictures. The photographs are an amazing gateway to not only the past but to our future. Even though I'm a writer by profession and I can tell a story to captivate an audience, being able to show my children and grandchildren all the places I have seen and all the people that have made me who I am, is priceless to me. Who cares if they are only pulled out once in a blue moon? No one needs to sit around being nostalgic every day. But not having the ability to see those things ... I can't imagine. I know what not having photographs of family has meant to our daughter. We adopted her when she was eleven. She had only a couple of pictures from before then and it drives her crazy. She doesn't know what her birth mother looked like or her birth father. She doesn't know how she got red hair. If I had one ability in this world that I don't, it would be to give her those photographs. As the photographer in the family, I don't think hiding behind the lens removes the photographer from the experience taking place before them. Personally it gives me more insight into what is happening in front of my lens. I have to "see" the photo before I take the picture. I photograph all my animals as well and I think it gives me a perspective of them that others don't see. Of course I'm one of those weird people that lays on the ground and climbs trees and stuff to get "the shot" so I may be a little warped. Warped or not, I've had fun this month. Glad to be part of this blogging challenge again! Peace and Happy writing to all!! Cobe (or as people in the real world call me, Erin) |
| Serial Experience! Part One Prompt for March 29, 2014 Photo albums. On the first day (today), tell us all about your experience with photo albums (physical or electronic). Do you still have pictures from when you or your children were young? Did your mother ever bring out your baby photo album at an inopportune/embarrassing moment (family reunion, boyfriend/girlfriend visiting, etc.)? Feel free to share some pictures with us if you want to Bigsmile On the second day (tomorrow), let us in on your future photo album plans. Any big trips coming up you hope to document? What is your motivation for recording these important events if there is potential they will only sit in their albums on a shelf for most of their life until they are removed, leafed through, and winced at? As a follow-up question: do you think that hiding behind a camera lens removes the photographer from the experience taking place in front of them? My family has mountains of photographs/photo albums. Our oldest one dates from the civil war and is full of tin types. We have multiple generations of photos from both my mom and dad's sides of the family. While my mom has most of the photographs from her side of the family and from when me and my sister were young and growing up at her house, I am now in possession of all of the photos from my dad's side of the family. My mom was an only child so we visited her parents frequently on weekends. They were from the "old" generation that believed children were seen but not heard, so we dressed for dinner and then sat around listening to the adults talk before we all put on hats and went out to walk. As we got older my grandmother would give us family albums to look through while the adults were talking. For me they were fascinating ... not because I knew the people in the pictures but ... well, because I'm a writer. I've always been a writer. I've always made up stories. So I would look through the albums and think up stories about what was happening in the photos. In the last year of my grandmother's life, those photos albums became priceless to us. Every Sunday we would sit down with them and go through the pictures and she would tell us stories connected to each one them. I spent hours labeling who was in each photo and documenting her stories for them. My mom kept up with making photo albums for me and my sister throughout our life. Our dad was an amateur photographer and spent hours photographing us every where we went. My mom never embarrassed me with any old photos that I remember. I carried on the tradition with my children. Most of our photos from the last ten years or so are mainly stored digitally, on discs, on computer, and on micro SD cards. But I enter photography in our county fair each year and print out choice ones that are then displayed our home. My favorite set of photos of our kids were taken when we all went to Ireland together on a family vacation. We spent several hours wandering through the ruin of a half-built castle. Parts of it were weathered green with algae and other parts were grey ragged stones. I have a series of photos of our two kids and our nephew together in that castle. They look like photos for a record album cover. I would upload them to share but as of yet I'm not able to afford a premium membership upgrade to do that. Sigh. Til tomorrow ... |
| It's Funny Friday! Prompt for March 28, 2014 Your worst DIY disaster(s). Well I'm not sure any of our DIY would count as disasters. I'm an architect and it would be pretty piss poor of me to actually fail at a DIY project with all the resources I have. But there have been many interesting DIY foibles along the way to contemplate. We moved into our house nineteen years ago. It had belonged to my grandparents who bought it in 1944. Over the years, like every two years, my grandmother would get an itch and have to redecorate the whole house which meant new paint, new wall paper, new rugs, new bathroom towels, etc ... She usually did a good job of what she started. However, she was the sort of decorator who used make-up. By that I mean, she just put on a little more paint to freshen things up. And added another layer of wall paper over the existing. And dropped a throw rug over the carpeting. So when we started to actually renovate the house we were met with an amazing labrynth to comb through. Our son was a baby when we moved in so we decided that we needed to redo his room first. We didn't want him sucking on lead paint and such. We needed to strip the old wall paper off the walls, a job which should have taken us a day or two at the most. Three weeks and twenty-seven layers (to our best count) of wall paper later we gained an inch-and-a-half of floor space around all the walls. I'm not joking. It was the most amazing collection of antique wallpaper in the world, I think. And a royal pain in the butt to remove. And our fun didn't stop there. One day my husband went to the bathroom and stuck his foot through the floor. That prompted the bathroom remodel. But was it as simple as just taking out the old flooring and putting in new? Oh no. Nothing in this house has been that easy. To repair the floor we had to remove the toilet and the sink cabinet which isn't too hard, however, to replace either of those items turned into a nightmare. The metal flange for the toilet drain was rusted and rotted out. Part of it was missing. Which meant we had to replace it entirely. But to tie into the external sewer line we had to replace the sewer line. The sewer line turned out to be old clay pipe for the first twenty-five feet and then it turned into a hollowed out log that sort of kind of connected to city sewer line but not really. It was nuts. We ended up having to dig up a four foot deep, four foot wide trench through our back yard, remove part of the chain link fence, and take out three grown trees. All because there was a hole in the floor of the bathroom. And it didn't stop there because to replace the sink and toilet and connect them to new water lines, ... you guessed it ... we had to completely replumb the entire house. All of the water lines and drain line had less than a pencil width of open space due to corrosion. So we figured if we were replacing everything else in the house we might as well redo the tile in the shower/bath. So we had an inset soap dish with a single screw in the middle of it. My husband screwed and screwed and screwed that thing and it wouldn't budge. He figured it was rotted or stripped so he decided to pull on it. When he pulled, the entire wall of plaster behind the tub crumbled. It's funny now. It wasn't then. We ended up gutting the entire space, floors, walls, ceiling, everything and starting over. Then we started on the kitchen ... I won't detail it. You can just imagine the same process as we went through with the bathroom and you'll be pretty close. |
| It's Opinion Thursday! Prompt for March 27, 2014 What is your opinion on gun carry laws (concealed or not)? Is it legal to carry a weapon in your home state/country? Does it make you feel more or less safe? I've seriously debated answering this prompt at all. The last time I participated in 30DBC we were asked a gun control question and I was attacked and the conversation began equating gun ownership with slavery and the whole thing turned very ugly. It is the reason I haven't done another 30DBC until now. So please forgive my hesitation ... Because it is OPINION Thursday, I will offer my opinion but I will not defend it or argue about it. *Disclaimer* We all have a right to our opinions and though they may differ greatly on some issues they don't make any of us more wrong or more right than anyone else. In the state I live in it is legal to carry a concealed weapon most places. Anywhere that doesn't want people with concealed weapons has to post a sign notifying people. Personally, I have no problem with concealed weapons. In the town my husband comes from in West Texas almost all the men in town still wear side arms in a holster on their waist. It's like the wild west but with cars and air conditioning. I'll admit when we first lived there it seemed odd to see so many guns all the time. I kept thinking what in the world do they need so many guns for? But the longer I lived in the town, I realized that 90% of the population were either border patrol officers, FBI drug task force agents, or ranchers with million acre spreads. Guns were their life. Guns made the difference between life and death for them. They were a necessity, not a whim. Knowing that people carry concealed weapons makes me feel safer. In a world where nut cases spring up at random to kill large groups of people for no apparent reason, knowing that my husband or my neighbor or the guys I go to church with can defend us at given moment gives me some peace. As some of you know, I was in a car bombing when I was in my 20's. A concealed weapon wouldn't have made a difference then, of course, but I have very much lived with PTSD ever since. We go to a small country church in the middle of nowhere when we go. But there are days I can't go because I'm terrified that someone will walk in the door unknown to us and start shooting. It's an irrational fear, I know. But knowing several of the men have guns on them helps. |
| It's War Chest Wednesday! (or mid week Funny Friday) Prompt for March 26, 2014 Before answering this prompt, check out this video: http://www.wimp.com/classicdisney/ Which animated character would you like to hear sing your favorite song? Um, yeah. Cute video. Not tickling my funny bone in anyway though. Nor do I have a favorite song. So I'm like completely lost on this prompt. Oh joy, oh rapture. (and I thought it couldn't get worse than the medieval scribe one  )I do listen to music. A huge mix of stuff depending on my mood and creative needs at the time. If I'm drawing or painting I tend to like reggae and classic rock. If I'm writing I'm more into jazz and classical. Blues and big band swing are my chosen favorites for long car rides. And I have to throw in the occasional country song for my husband and as a nod to my old high school buddy who plays with Garth Brooks. Now that's something I find funny I could write about. When Garth Brooks started out, ooh boy. He was not what one would call "good" even in the 'I'm being kind' sort of way. The first time I heard him was at a fourth of July concert and it was like sitting in church listening to the daughter of the choir director who can't carry a tune singing at the top of her lungs beyond her range. It was painful. But my parents made me stay and listen. My best friend and I sat there giggling and putting our fingers in our ears. Somehow, he got better. I guess that's why I've always just kept plugging away at what I want to do. I may be crap now, but there's always hope. If Garth Brooks can have a wildly famous and fabulous career as a singer and song writer, I can write novels and be successful at that too. Even my worst poem ever couldn't be as bad as that 4th of July concert was. And yeah, all of that has precious little to do with the prompt we were given except that I am talking about music which came from the prompt idea of "my favorite song" ... so somehow it seems connected. |
It's War Chest Tuesday! Prompt for March 25, 2014 What is one of your favorite tourist attractions from your hometown? In other words, what site do you absolutely insist your friends see when they visit? bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Wait. Let me catch my breath a minute ... okay, there I'm good. Sorry, but I live in a tiny little town. The thought that anything here would count as a tourist attraction sends me into fits of giggles. The idea that there might be more than one for me to pick a favorite from is even more astoundingly hilarious. Can a river be considered a tourist attraction? It's about the only thing of prominence around here that anyone talks about unless you consider an abandoned Zinc smelter worthy or maybe the reclamation site where they built the new elementary school that leaches water through the foundation every time it rains. Oh wait, I know, I know ... the high school gymnasium that looks like an aluminum barn. Of course there is Wal-Mart. The only reason you come to this town to visit is if you have family here and you don't mind sitting on the front porch counting mosquitoes or walking the railroad tracks behind the Coop. We spy on our neighbors to pass the time and have extended fireworks launching season to a four week stretch of time around the 4th of July just so people have something to do in the middle of the summer other than drink more beer. Of course they do drink and shoot off fireworks at the same time which can be pretty entertaining as well. Our latest entertainment is the house with all the signs in the yard declaring that we need to impeach our local city government and remove them all from office because they are evil-doers working against the will of God. At least he's no longer adding more signs about the coming end of the world and asking us all where we've hidden our sex toys. I guess he might be considered a tourist attraction in his own right. Sigh. And there is the wind mill farm that somehow got built just on the edge of town without anyone knowing it was being built until it was done ... and from which we receive absolutely none of the power for the town. Don't ask. That's a whole blog all by itself. If you don't mind an hour's drive or so, I could take you past the largest producing oil well in the world and go to the selenite crystal digging area at the salt plains ... oh but wait, they closed that after they found the buried world war II munitions cache last year with all those unexploded bombs and dynamite. Shucks. Such possibilities. |
| It's Wildcard Monday! Prompt for March 24, 2014 You're on a train (or other similarly isolated area) - how do you pass the ti{/c}me? Daydream... Daydream...? Did someone say something about daydreams? I daydream constantly. It's my go-to escape in middle of chaos. I daydream in the middle of a crowded subway car or while shopping or standing in line at the grocery store or ... yeah, pretty much anywhere. If I were on a train though, like on a long train trip, I would write and take pictures and sleep. Trains have a way of lulling one to sleep (or making one throw up ... depending). Mainly I would write though ... of course I do that all the time too. Twice a week I go to the pool and swim laps. About half the laps I swim are back stroke just so I can lay there and write in my head. I try out different ways to phrase things I'm working on or come up with story starters. Sometimes I'll think up a poem. My kids have accused me of trying to figure out how to waterproof my computer so I can take it with me, float it on a kickboard, and actually write while I'm swimming. Ha. But it's a period of time when I am isolated from the world. My ears are full of water, my eyes are covered with goggles, my body is going through a rhythmic motion, and my brain kicks in. If I had a swimming pool long enough, I wouldn't have any distractions either because I'd never have to turn around. Maybe I should invest in one of those lap pools with the continuous flow water things ... hmmm. |
The Sunday News! Prompt for March 23, 2014 Provide your thoughts/opinions on a newspaper/magazine article or a radio/television news story from the past week. And if you feel inclined, let loose and blog about your week. Also, feel free to comment on your favorite blog entries from your fellow challengers from the preceding week, though this is not required. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/23/ebola-detected-in-guinea/679... So, this is the third week we've been doing these news stories and the last two weeks I have picked rather mundane, out of the way, off the wall stuff. I mentioned I don't follow the news regularly. There is a reason for that. I am incredibly sensitive to other people's emotions. I grieve for people I don't even know. I get angry at injustice. Etc. Etc. Etc. I learned as a young adult that if I was going to stay sane in this world, I couldn't watch the news. It is filled with bad stuff, sad stuff, grieving, injustice, murder, death, war, famine, ... And most of that stuff will engage me emotionally. The problem is I can't do anything to change any of it. I've always had a bit of a problem. I either jump in head first and plow through the world or I sit on the bank and read my book seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. I have no middle ground button. Therefore if I don't think I can make a difference or change something or help a situation ... I'm best to avoid it altogether. I can't change the news. I can't change situations in Africa or India or China or even in my own state in the US. So I avoid it. There is no emotional resolution for me so it eats away at my soul. That's why I have avoided using any news story with any depth to it. All that said, I have been told that when I allow myself to show emotion in my writing it transforms from words on the page into something that leaps out and grabs people. So I've been trying to allow myself to show more emotion. So far in my fiction writing, I'm succeeding at it. But in my non-fiction writing, I'm still struggling. Fiction is so much easier. I can pretend to be a character. My thirteen year old character can have a melt-down and cry and throw things, my sixty-year old can grieve and be depressed and the only consequences I have to deal with are on paper with another character for a chapter or two. Real life emotions are no so easy. This is the story of another Ebola outbreak in Africa. This time it's in Guinea, a place that has never seen Ebola before. Fifty-nine people have already died and at least thirty others are ill and will probably die as well. It's heart-renching stuff. A man gets sick, his wife tends to him, his children hug him, he gets worse and dies but by that time everyone in the house has been infected as well. Everyone dies off, one by one. The last has no one to even care for them unless the neighbors come in ... and then they are exposed and carry it home to their spouse and children. The only thing anyone can do to save themselves is to not get involved. But how do you do that? How do you stand back and not help someone who is sick and needs help to even eat or drink? How do you let someone die without offering a hand? How do you look at your spouse and walk away from them when they need you most? How could anyone not help out if they were able? We think we stand between a rock and hard place when we meet troubles in our lives, when things don't go the way we planned, when the kids act up, when we have to face family members we don't get along with, when we meet unexpected expenses and have no idea how to pay, etc ... They grieve us. They cause us stress. We become anxious and engage in pity parties. We whine. We avoid. We argue. We defend. But what would any of us do if we faced what they are facing in Guinea? |
| It's Creation Saturday! Prompt for March 22, 2014 Let your mind wander back to the Middle Ages and imagine you are a scribe in the King's Court. Tell us about the goings-on in the castle (accents optional, but encouraged Wink ) Maius, in the year of our Lord 1349 The noise of the hammering and chiseling are quieter today. Not so many workers. The black death has taken a number of them as it has done in most villages around us. The outer castle walls were to have been completed by now, readied for the return of the King from the wars in Burgundy. He is to return in a fortnight under the dark of the moon. But the mason, the architect, and the brick maker have all died. The Queen settled on the court banquet for his arrival feast including: cod liver pastries, stuffed peacock, 18 calves roasted en spit, marinated leeks, sugared almonds and walnuts, salt fish, spiced wine, sturgeon in vinegar and parsley sauce, roe deer, pigeon, wild boar roasted with apples, 300 boiled quail eggs, capons, cheese, strawberries, clotted creams, almond cake, and a marzipan replica of the castle. Although who will be left to serve and attend is anyone's guess and only 18 calves won't make a difference in the over-burdened stables. With the new deaths last evening, we have lost nearly a third of us all in the court with more falling ill each day. I burn incense and apply the oils each day but so did poor Gustav and he is gone now two fortnights ago. Perhaps by the time the King returns we will feast on nothing more than sop bread and spiced wine. Sorry folks, that's all I got in me today. I'm exhausted and while I normally love to write about the middle ages and could do research on it all day long, I just don't have it in me today. |
| It's Funny Friday! Prompt for March 21, 2014 Have you ever been embarrassed in public (and had people laugh at you)? And/or have you ever laughed at someone who had been publicly embarrassed? Tell us the story. I got my first job as an architect the summer after my fourth year of architecture school. It was an internship position in Washington D.C. and I was working in historic Georgetown. The firm was small and was working on renovations for the East Wing of the White House, and I got to shadow the bosses. Needless to say I thought I was pretty hot stuff. My classmates were stuck running blue prints in some big company in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Georgia, etc and here I was going to the white house (and pentagon), working in Georgetown, rubbing elbows with the big shots. Architects are odd professionals who dress well, but not typically in business suits. So I typically wore a dress or skirt to work. Well for my birthday my mom sent me some money and I went and bought a new outfit for work. I thought it was great and couldn't wait to wear it on Monday. Monday rolls around and I don my new outfit and head off to work. Oh yeah, did I mention I lived in Alexandria, VA? No? Well I did. I lived a twenty minute bus ride, a forty-five minute subway ride, and a mile and a half walk from my office. I left home at 6:45 am to get to work on time and then didn't get home again until almost 7:00pm. It was a looooooong day. Anyway, I put on my new outfit and head off on my various connections to work. All along the way people are smiling at me and I even see a couple of people pointing in my direction. The smiles were kind of odd, after all is was a Monday morning in a big city where no one looks at anyone but I thought, you know, I had my new clothes on and they were "wowing" people. The pointing just confirmed it for me and I was feeling pretty proud of my selections. Then on the walk from the subway to the office, I passed a construction site and usually there was some idiot who would whistle at me to be a jerk. Well on this day almost everyone of those dudes in hard hats stopped what they were doing, lined the fence and whistled. I was really embarrassed but then again, I thought I had done a great job of dressing myself so I smiled and went on proudly. I get to my office and go in the elevator. Our elevator is fully mirrored on the inside so feeling so great about my commute to work, I do a little twirl when I get in the mirrored cubical ... And that's when I realize that the back of my skirt is tucked up inside the back of my panty hose and I have traveled all the way across Washington D.C. on public transportation with my butt exposed to masses. No one had a clue what I was wearing. They were too busy staring at what I wasn't wearing. I could have died on the spot. Yes, now it's funny. I've told this story to many people and they all laugh hysterically. Back then I was simply horrified. |
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