What do you do that drives others crazy?

I am reading The Five Principals of a Successful Life (see link). It is very good & full of so much wisdom. One relation, from Tucker Carlson, made me think of the one habit (I swear, it is the only one) that I have that Jeff hates.

Tucker says that when he flies across country he talks to the people in the seat next to him and he always lands having learned something new about people & life.

I am the same way. I LOVE to hear other people's stories. I want to know where they are going and why. Why do they live where they live, how did they get there. I like to hear about their families and their stories in general. I love to talk to cab drivers, etc. I hate parties but I love one on ones. That is why I think that older people love me. Because I actually want to hear their stories.

One time after a two hour plane flight Jeff & I were taking the cab home & I started to talk to the cab driver & Jeff told me to stop talking. Hmmmm...but I did. He hates it.

When Jill & I went on our road trip, at our hotel in Miami, there was a large porch looking out to the ocean and everyone gathered at the tables to have their breakfast. We each talked to a different individual who shared the table with us. Her guy was here on a trip from the Turks & Caicos. He was here to visit his family. He talked about the Islands and his business. I think Jill enjoyed him. My guy was here from a Pakistan and he was here to buy computers and have them shipped back to his country. He had been traveling all over the world for the last year & one half buying up used computers. He was going to New York from Miami. I immediately made him into a terrorist! That sounded exiting, he was probably legit, but who knows.

It has been my dream since I was like 30 to just say what I please. When I see a pretty woman or a hot guy I like to tell them that they are good looking, or they smell good. I like compliments, I like giving compliments. If people are rude, I say something, even if not to their face I say it so they hear me. This makes my family a little squirrely but I think people should be made aware of their being assholes. Even me if I am one.

Anyway, what do you do that your loved ones or others hate? I do a lot of other stuff that I am sure drives everyone insane, but at least with this trait I learn something about other people & I feel good after talking to them. Plus a lot of times I learn about life in other countries that I may never visit.

Who really runied our economy - just MHO

The other night someone on TV said that economy has been going south since the late 60s. And you know what, I think they are right. Here is what I think, save your stones until you hear me out.

I think Women’s Lib and no fault divorce ruined the economy. Most of you who read this, if anyone does, does not remember what life was like before the bra burning began. That is sad.

When I was a kid we had one car. Everyone on our street had one car. Every mom stayed home except one. She worked in a typical “woman’s” job. Of all the people we knew, only ONE family had suffered a divorce. We all lived happy lives were we could play on the street and walk to school and visit our friends blocks and blocks away.

Our Dads went to work, most of our stores were in the neighborhood, if we needed to shop we went into town to the Penny’s.

In Georgia my Aunt worked at the Mill with my Uncle. The older children watched the younger. On Saturdays they went into town and shopped for the weeks groceries.

Our parents, you know, the Greatest Generation, spoiled us terribly. They had lived through the Depression and did not want us to suffer like they did, we baby boomers were to not want. We would have education so we did not have to work at blue collar dead end jobs. Even their daughters could go to college and even be president. Opps…that has no worked out yet, has it.

Then the bra burners on our college campuses, you know those illustrious bastions of truth, decided that women were not happy. They needed to go to work. They did not care that maybe some of were happy being stay at home mom’s. And then they started taking over the world. If anyone said anything against them then they were male chauvinist pigs. Even us women.

Now that Mom was at work, the family needed two cars. And child care. And a bigger home to make up for the fact that mom was not at home. The job mom took was from some other family’s dad. But then it was ok, because as the family got more money consumership increased and so more jobs were made to keep up with the demand. (Capitalism?)

Funny how the service industry never got out of the old school ways. Most professional services are open still from 9-5, even banks. They are still living in the early 60s. So now Mom or Dad have to take a day off from work if they have to take their little one to the doctor, or wait in a giant line with all the other working parents at the late night doctor. You know, the one who stays open till 9pm. Worse yet they send their sick kid to school and we all get sick.

Now everyone was working, and you know what happens when you work long hours away from your family, you are tired when you get home and you are dissatisfied. So you get a divorce. Then you have a family that used to have one car in one house in a safe neighborhood, moving to a second home, and maybe in a not so safe neighborhood. Dads are working to pay child support or they are just not paying and Moms are having to work longer hours. Then you have latch key kids. And the crime ratio goes up. Bored kids sitting at home alone for hours – they look for something to take care of that boredom.

The Yuppies then come along and it becomes trendy for mom to stay at home again. But by now those neighborhoods are all spread apart and nowhere is safe. So we still need two cars, only Mom needs a big car to hold the kids and the carpool. The house is further away from dads work, you know, to get away from the inner city, so Dad is driving miles and miles to and from work and mom is driving her kids all over in her giant car. But mom gets bored so she opens boutique stores to make a little money. And you know they now need an even larger house. So dad has to work even longer and he has an affair, or bored mom does and then they get a divorce and the cycle repeats.

Suddenly it all catches up to us, because the bra burners NOW are into the Green movement. They make so much noise that the car dealers are forced every year to retool their plants to meet environmental requirements. Blue collar workers lose their jobs because unions price them into oblivion. No one has the money to buy the glut of cars that there is so the car companies go bankrupt. There are way too many houses and no one can afford them. Houses are sold to people who have no stake (down payment) in the home. And the families now wanted larger and larger homes, McMansions if you will. Oh my, did that make those bra burners mad! Women were supposed to become enlightened and not need men, the family was suppose to be everyone. Not mom, dad & two kids. It was suppose to be whatever you imagined. Men were supposed to be obsolete. What happened to their plan.

In fact, the bra burners no longer care about women’s rights, because if a woman does NOT support their party they will turn their back on her and even campaign against her.

The bra burners ruined the economy, yes they did. If a mom stays at home now doing the noblest job of all, raising her children, she is constantly made to feel guilty for not working. Let’s live with less. Let’s have safe small communities again, where everyone knows everyone. You remember, if you did something wrong two blocks away, the person who saw you knew where you lived and told on you. It will take a long time. The bra burners have been ruining our country for 40 years now. They are still fighting to kill babies without a thought, they support the right for the pregnant woman to have a say what happens to her body. I think she had that say before she got pregnant. (Not talking about rape, illness, etc. but I still do not condone abortion in those circumstances either.)

Put your bra on ladies. Stand up for your family and your country. I know a lot of young SAHMs who are making it, I made it, it can be done. Clip your coupons, take care of your kids and show those bra burners that they are done ruling and ruining America. And Mom, if you have to work, do not feel guilty, just remember it was the bra burners who got you in this situation. They look for every way they can to destroy life as we love it. You read about them everyday…be diligent…save the country and the family for your kids.

You may cast your stones now if you will.

Have you ever taken a bad picture?????

I haven't but I still wanted to share this with you (ha ha). Some pictures will never be useful no matter what you do, or so it seems. See this example - camera shake has ruined this picture. There is nothing I can salvage out of it - at least for now. But....



Since storage is cheap I delete VERY FEW pictures. The reason is - there might be a place - somewhere down the road where I can use something from that photo. Now maybe you are thinking you will never get to the point where you would want to combine photos. But 2 months ago I never thought I would be doing that. I had read a long time ago that you shouldn't throw out any pix you take so I decided not to. Now I am making photo composites like the one below and I am happy to have my own stash of pix. There are people who buy stock photography to make their composites. In the photo below there are really 4 different pix. The picture of the pirate himself, a picture of pirate flags that I warped into his sunglasses, the coin on his chain and the background.



So what if I had a picture of the beach that had something offensive or just wasn't a good shot, but some parts of it were pretty good. You can see that most of my background isn't showing. So if there was something I wanted to hide, I could do that easily in a scene like this.

What made me think of this - is I was in a photography class where I learned a lot. Another classmate had taken two photos of her son which weren't "good" shots per the teacher. But I said I would never throw them away. I know, I am contentious. One shot was a little blurry in the boys face but he was crawling, face very near the camera and there was an empty space before his hands. I would have taken that bad photo and made a cartoon out of it, and put something before his hands - like a mini Godzilla or something. I would have salvaged that picture.

The other one, I thought it was a great shot, but the teach didn't like as the boy was looking off camera at something and we didn't know what. Again, here is where composites come in, I would have extracted the boy and put him into a scene where I could have used that gaze. See the photo below. It consists of a background and an extracted photo.



Sometimes now, I just shoot scenes to use in composites. Here I shot some rocks at the beach with the sun going down. I extracted two of my grandsons from different pictures and suddenly they are climbing on Mars. I am also planning on doing set up shots of the kids so I can make more composites.



I know we all don't want to make these types of art, but until January 2009 neither did I. So you never know where your creativity or someone in your family's creativity will lead them. Don't throw out your pictures!!!!! Storage is cheap. Keyword them so you can find them and you may surprise yourself someday!

Peace - KB

Just another day in a woman's life.

Destroyer of the Mundane
Originally uploaded by aaearhart (home)

Isn't this pix just great - it was taken by a photographer in one of my Flickr groups - the challenge - Self-Portrait. ½ the people seeing this photo (the men) would think "Holy Cow!", but the other ½ (women) are looking at it thinking "And...?"

Why is that - because we women have been juggling multitudes of chores all at the same times since we were very small. We do it so easily now we rarely notice. This is portrayed so significantly in this picture - because while she is doing everything - she is also meditating.

A woman's life is a flow. Synchronicity. Sometimes we stop and look at what we actually do and that is when we get all flustered and need medication. But usually, we just move along, handling it all without even knowing all that we do.

So, my challenge to you and to me is to make a little stick drawing of yourself - then start adding hands and legs and see just exactly what you do every day without ever thinking about it. Then feel very proud of yourself - then throw it away - otherwise you won't be a flowin'. And women - we know about flowin'.

Sensory OVER - LOAD

The last year has been full of stuff going on - not really for me, my life has progressed as before, but for our country. We've had a contentious election and then yesterday was the "big" day for all of us. No matter our political view, this day, today, means something - one way or the other. Who is to know? Hope is meaningless. We all hope for good. Faith is what counts, do you have faith in what's to come? Stress is the one certain thing.

I am a news junkie. Fox News goes 24-7 in our home and car (thank you XM). Thanks to them I am able to hear both sides of every story and make informed decisions. But that is a ton of info. Then I have 3 different e-mail accounts (home, work, Yahoo), which I check A LOT. There is Facebook and Twitter. I have abandoned My Space because it isn't as friendly as Facebook. I have several blogs that I would love to read daily. I have books that I am in the midst of reading (5 right now). I am starting a class this Saturday. There is my family who I want to spend time with. My husband who I like to get in the car, put the top down and just ride with. The daily newspaper, the crossword puzzle, my work, several TV shows I watch, they are TiVo'd so I can FF through the commercials, but I need time to watch them, over 30000 pictures that I need to catalog, restore, scrap, Photoshop - 1000s waiting to be scanned, a clean desk that has become cluttered again, and on and on and on.

There are only 24 hours in a day, as we all know. If I am home alone on the weekends I turn the TV off & try to get some stuff done, but it never will be. But the question is - what would I do if I didn't have all of this to do? Once I worked in an office where my only job was to answer the phone. I was told that I could read or do whatever I wanted. Pre-internet. So I read and I read and I read. I became more and more depressed. Why, because we NEED something to do. We aren't meant to just loll around doing nothing. At least those with my type of personality (if that idea is even real). I am not a complete A but maybe an A-.

So what about you? What keeps you busy, takes up all your time, what would you do without it? Are these little distractions time stealers or are they time fillers? Are they positive or negative? I guess that is up to you and what you do with your time and how it affects you mentally. As for me, they are pleasant ways to get through the day. I need a little stress in my life, so if I reach a patch where I am mainly stress free from lives bumps and bruises, I have my artificial stress - the in box, the pile of books, the hard drives & boxes full of photographs, the to do lists. Because you know, those things can go by the way, but they create that feeling of HAVING TO DO SOMETHING, being needed, having a PURPOSE.

Is that what goals are - ways of inducing stress? No longer do we have the stress of trying to survive day by day, now we need goals. We need lists. Wouldn't our ancestors laugh at us when they came in from a hard day on the farm trying to eek out some food for the coming winter, to see us sit down & make a little list of goals. Yep yep. But, we need it - we need that stress, artificial or real. It is necessary for survival. So next time you suffer from sensory overload, just lay back and appreciate it for what it is - sharpening your senses for survival.

What I would do if I could fly...

Ro Paxman asked an interesting question and this is how I responded:


1) I would fly over my old neighborhood in Pittsburg California(much like I do on Google Earth) and gather up all my old memories, write them down with accompanying old pix or drawings and make my heirs a book of who my parents and I were - long ago and far away.

View Larger Map (The house with the big tree on the R side is my old house - they don't have a street view just a birds eye - drat - my address was NOT 170)

2) I would fly to heaven to visit my son, my parents & my dogs.



3) I would fly to Germany weekly to check up on my other parents (yes I have two sets) to see how their health is and visit with my siblings.

4) Whenever it was dark, rainy or just cloudy I would soar above the clouds and enjoy the sunshine, play on the pillow clouds and wave at people in passing by airplanes.

5) Speaking of airplanes, I would dance upon the wings of jumbo jets, peek in the windows at the people flying inside and give them hope that something else exists out there.

6) I would go to Alaska during the summer and marvel in its beauty.

7) I would fly to all the places I have never been and long to go - the New England Seaboard, Nova Scotia, Great Britain, Jackson Hole & the surrounding area.

8)I would take prize winning pictures that even Art Wolf can't capture, write wonderful stories about people and places all with a new perspective, that of one ABOVE the din and noise of society.

9)I would never be afraid again of terrorists, because when I flew I would go somewhere and prepare a place that I could take my family too and we could be safe. I couldn't take everyone, I know that, I would like to, but I am only one person. But I could take my family and from there we would sit in our hiding place and pray for mankind.

10) I would write a book about how the impossible is possible - because I can fly!

Do you know me? Do you care? Today that is...

If I have learned one thing in my 54 years, it is this...I should have asked more questions and listened more carefully. To what? To my parents. Yep, my parents. Had I done that, then today I would have the answers to 100s of questions. Also, I would know why. Have you ever asked why, why you were raised the way you were? You know, even if you had the best life ever, there is a reason. Your parents decided to raise you the way they did BECAUSE of something that happened to them. It is how their parents and their extended family raised them that is mirrored in your own upbringing.
The way I learned to forgive my mom (which is a process that I am still working on), is because my aunt told me about her life as a child and then a wise person once said: You parent what you know. So I know both my parents were lacking fathers, they had mothers who had to work hard and weren't the most nurturing, and they knew absolutely NO different. They tried to make a better life for me than they had and they did - materially, but they lacked nurturing skills, because they rarely if ever were nurtured by a parent.

I talk a lot lately about when I was small and I see those eyes glaze over of those around me, like who cares. There is a time when your history is all that matters. Then you move beyond yourself. I feel slighted at times because only my oldest son knew my mom and dad, and the other kids and my husband act as (a) they didn't even live (b) they were of no consequence. When the truth is they did live and they are of tremendous consequence even to this day. So, I take time when I scan pictures like that one above, to write down what I remember. Not for today, because today there isn't one person who gives a crap that I was a child or a teenager, a young mom. or about my mom and dad at all. No one but me. But someday someone will say "Why didn't I listen to her stories, do you remember...?", because it may not be important now, but there will come a day. I know because that day is here for me now and I can't remember. That day will come when my children, grandchildren, etc. will be wanting to know. That makes me think of the movie "The Notebook". Hopefully, if I get Alzheimer's I have enough sense to end it before it is too late, but if not, someone might be reading me my own stories, trying to help me remember - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If you do genealogy like I do, what is it. It is trying to put flesh on facts, faces to names, lives to people that went before. So I encourage you, no matter how young or old you are, open up your word processing program or a journal and just write down memories as they come along. Get out your old photo albums and make notes about what you remember. I don't do it every day or every time, but I do it. Someday, someone who's name you don't know yet, who isn't even a glimmer, will be happy you did it. A picture may be worth a 1000 words, but a 1000 words with a picture is just better.

Peace KB