Passions other than Twizzlers...

...or Starbucks - I just came to the startling realization that I use one-third of a pound of Starbucks to make one large-ish cup of coffee for me. I like it *strong* but I also drink decaf so I'm a wimp with little muscles, I guess.

Anyway... a passion for me, and it has been for some time, is old photos. There is something so wonderful about them. So sad as well because certainly all these little people are dead now (but I don't dwell on that). Sad also, because they were lost. But then happy, because I found them. All the while I'm Photoshopping them...

Oh! Another passion... Photoshop.

...I feel as though I am giving them a new life. What a remarkable adventure these photos provide. And the excitement doesn't stop with me. It goes on with the wonderful artists who buy my collage sheets and take those images and spin wonderful stories with them.

Other passions for me are photography, and travel and thinking.

I think, probably, 50 or 60 times a day. Maybe more. Probably more than a third of a pound's worth. I wish that thinking was a commodity that you could turn in at the end of the day. "I've thought 53 times today". "Good job, here's $53,000". Probably not so improbable if the brains that are doing the thinking are Bill Gates or that Google guy. Or those two kids that thought up YouTube and sold it to the Google guy for $1.65 BILLION. No WAY do those two kids do more thinking than me.

I have so many passions and as I look around this disaster that I call a studio I can see the piles of antique books and papers, the shelves of magazines, art bits strewn hither and yon, unfinished canvases hanging on the wall as a laughing reminder that I'm not really an artist. My computer, my left hand, my window to the world. My left hand isn't lying on the floor - My computer IS my left hand.

It is indeed, quite chaotic to have so many passions. But I couldn't imagine living any other way. At the very least I have a lot of good stuff. At the very most, life is a joy worth waking up to everyday.

I will, eventually, get to the story about how my Auntie Coe made me deathly afraid of birds but I have a pot of chili waiting to be made and a hungry husband waiting to eat it.

Another passion... *My* chili and Doritos!

Life, death, Avon and tap...

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. Well, it hasn't been THAT long - a month or two ago I wrote this hysterically funny post about wearing all my mom's Avon fragrances to music class when I was in 5th grade. I wrote and edited and re-edited. Funny funny stuff. And JUST as I hit Publish Post - Blogger decided to do some much needed maintenance.

I'm typing like a mad fiend at the mo because I just KNOW they've scheduled a maintenance now that they've seen me log in.

So... Here's My Heart, Topaz, To a Wild Rose, and a bunch of others in one mad moment of 5th grade love. Poor Kerry Barnes. He got the full brunt of that toxicated, odorificous concoction. It was all for him and I made sure he got it. Now, why I couldn't smell *myself* was beyond me. It took the fainting bodies around me, Kerry among them (Kerry! Darling! Are you okay?) to alert me to the fact that I stunk. Like an Avon-afflicted skunk. If there's one thing you can count on with Avon - it's that they do not scrimp on the aromatic elixirs that they use in their fragrances. Heavy-duty arsenal strength stuff. Strong enough to kill mosquitos.

And that has reminded me of the time, after taking 6 full weeks of tap dancing, I did a dance routine on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of parents at our third grade pot luck dinner. Gloria Marconi playing the accordian in the background. Amazing. I have a feeling I stunk then too, and without the benefits of good old Avon.

I’m not even going to mention that I did a practice session of this dance routine for my neighbor’s insurance man while he was going over the state of their insurance affairs.

Can you imagine what I could have done with 12 weeks of tap? "And here she is! The toast of Lincoln Elementary School dancing to the strains of Beer Barrel Polka and wearing Hawaiian White Ginger".

The eighth deadly sin...

When I was a kid one of my favorite food groups was paste. School paste. In my old age I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only kid eating out of the paste jar but back in the day - sitting at my desk trying to figure out how to get that little paste paddle from the jar to my mouth without drawing attention to myself, I figured it was something akin to one of the deadly sins! Almost as mortifying as wearing all seven Avon fragrances on my mother's dresser because the boy I sat next to in music was the love of my life. Course he could barely sit next to me *that* god-awful day, but I digress...

Heaven only knows what those paste manufacturers put in paste but let's face it - they *made* it tasty to sell more of it. Half a jar for the art project, the other half for lunch. I'm sure that's part of the reason why most of my childhood years were spent being constipated. Between paste and swallowing my gum it's a wonder I ever pooped between the ages of 4-10.

I don't claim to be a paste connoisseur but I was a picky paste eater. I liked one in particular because of it's minty aftertaste. Heaven help the art teacher if that was the paste we were using that day. This jar is MINE! But it had to be a new jar - not the one with the grey crumbly crud stuck under the lid.

I also loved that flour/water concoction my mother mixed up. I don't think it ever stuck anything together but that was some good stuff. Like pie dough, which I also ate. And cookie dough and cake batter. Flour/water paste was practically a dessert at our house.

Once I hit puberty I fell in love with a different adhesive - Elmer's Glue. The stuff tasted like crap! But you could spread it on your fingers and then peel it off like fake skin when it dried. That was so cool.

This has been kind of cathartic, but I'm actually bored of paste talk, now. I was thinking maybe, on my next rant, I'll tell you about how my Auntie Coe made me deadly afraid of birds. Til then, bon apetit...

Where the heck are the scissors!

I am the most annoying person I know. I have no idea why people like me, when they do, because I'm such a pain in the bum. And not only do I find myself annoying, I also drive myself crazy. For instance . . . I must have about 14 pairs of scissors. All colors, all sizes. I buy a pair probably every few months or so.

Why this fixation with scissors? Do I have a scissors fetish? Perhaps a collection? Do I have a 14-room house that requires a pair in every room?

Non, mon ami . . .

The simple fact is that I have no freaking idea in hell, at any given time, where those scissors are. Though right now I'm looking at a pair and wondering when I put them there. Not to worry, they'll disappear in an hour or so when I pick them up to use them.

Good thing is I won't ever hurt myself running with scissors. I'll pick them up and start running, but when I look down at my hand they'll be gone.

Which leads me to the reason for this post. This isn't the first post I've published. I have another blog on this same website. Unfortunately, I have no idea what my user name and password are so I can't get in. Hence, I have now created a *new* blog . . . this blog. Hopefully, I'll remember in the next day or so, my user name and password so I can bore you with another rant.

Which leads me to another thought: I am the most boring person I know . . .