Crazy For Her…

This is an entry or should I say “To Do List” to get my butt in gear. I wanted to write down all of my ideas so I could start on some of the projects that I have been thinking about. There are a lot of ideas swimming around up there and I believe they are good ones. They will require a lot of time and possibly some financial investment in the future. Of course I will have to justify the cost and right now we have more important things to spend our money on. And frankly I think Chris might beat me if I tell him I want to start yet another hobby because I have quite the history with unfinished endeavors. But this is not one of them. I started this site in July 2005 and that this is a record for me.  This IS my hobby and I have finally found my passion.  This is fun, relaxing and I am proud of what I have created.  Even more so, I am excited about my plans.  I will leave out the ideas that will require the money because I am not THAT sure of myself and I am worried that some of you may say to yourselves “She is doing WHAT?”  No need to worry. My plans do not involve nudity or a pyramid scheme.  I consider both of those things to be equally disturbing.

I love writing but it is tough to find the time to do it. I get a little sad when I check my site and find that I haven’t posted in nearly a week. When I started this blog I wanted to post daily but some weeks that is impossible. So I am trying to remedy this by keeping a mental list of the things I want to write about and the stories I want to tell. I will try to spend one hour each night editing pictures and audio files I want to post. There are several posts saved in my draft folder that do not need to be posted right away and I want to spend some time on the stories before I post them. I will try to write every night but it may not be as current as it has been in the past.  That is too stressful for me.  For some reason I thought I should rush home after a trip to the zoo just so I could tell you all about it -  RIGHT NOW!  That is unnecessary stress and a little obsessive compulsive on my part.

I would like to start adding video to the site as well and will need to buy a Fire Wire for the video camera. It would be great to share video with family and it would force me to shoot some footage of Maddie which I haven’t done in almost a year.  While we are on the topic of cameras, I would love to buy a new digital camera (I know! I just bought my camera) but more specifically, I would like to buy a camera that takes the picture when I press the button and not three or sometimes four seconds after I push the button.  I find that so many smiles are lost in that short but very annoying pause.  After doing some online price checks I found that the extra 3 seconds costs about $500 more than I paid for my Canon A610.  I don’t need a professional grade camera.  I just ask that I get the picture when I press the button and why the hell do you have to pay so much for that?  I don’t need the fancy lenses or the 300 customizable settings.  And I digress…

Back to the ideas

There will be interviews posted here is the future.  I haven’t made the final decision on what format they will be.  Would it be better to transcribe them to text or should I post the link to the audio file?  I can’t decide which would be best.  I need to get started on those interviews very soon.  Nana G said that she would be happy to go first.  I will have to wait until her classes end so I still have time to prepare for that.

Lately I have been working with graphic design software and it is slow going.  This is not something I come by naturally.  But I am gradually getting the hang of it.  I am still not ready to add my own designs to this site.  I am being very picky and I keep scrapping my ideas to the point that I am back where I started.  Clean slate, nothing, notta!  I will keep at it, I am not giving up.

So that is part of the to do list.  There is another list but that is for next year.  By then I hope to be in a new house, quiet surroundings with a new space to work.  Who knows?  I may be working at home.  Crossing fingers…

I just upgraded to the new version of WordPress.  I managed to complete it without losing too much information.  It wasn’t quite as bad as moving from Blogger but I still have a lot of work to do on the layout.  That will have to wait for another night.  There will be a new look in the future but right now I am too tired to be artistic.  Come back soon and check on my progress as I test my graphic art skills.  It should be interesting and mildly entertaining.  Be sure to comment and let me know what you think – but wait until I make changes because right now there is not a whole to comment about except for the fact that I am a total geek. 

The digital recorder is getting a little tricky. I thought it would be better than the video camera because it is small and I thought it would be easy to hide from her. But now Maddie knows what it is when she sees it and when she sees it she wants it. And she must hold it and delete everything on it. I now have to use great imagination when trying to capture her voice or if I am lazy I bribe her like I did today. Basically I treat her like a circus monkey “Maddie. If you want something to eat you have to sing the song.” It may seem a little cruel but it works and it’s cute. We can all listen to this when we are having a bad day and it will surely make everything seem a little better.

No More Monkeys!

We have come to the sad realization that in order to have a relaxing day we must leave our home. This is really frustrating to all of us because we really do love our home but we cannot just ignore the bad neighborhood anymore. When the area began its down hill slide we would occasionally be bothered enough to leave for a few hours and by the time we returned the drama had ended, noise subsided or the music had been turned down to a tolerable level. The down hill slide is now complete and I rarely feel relaxed or better yet, feel safe in my own home. Things are getting really bad and we don’t know that we will make it through the summer. We orginally planned to pay off all of our debt (getting really close), fix a few things, plant some flowers and then put the house up for sale, all the while hoping to make a profit for a nice down payment on a house with a little acreage. The longer we stay here the less I care if we make any money at all. If someone had made an offer on Saturday to pay off our current loan I would have taken the money and ran like hell!

When we went to bed on Saturday I told Chris that I wanted to wake up in the morning and leave the house for most of the day. I didn’t care where we went as long as there was water near by and somewhere safe for Maddie to play. Chris was in charge of deciding where we would go and I was in charge of packing what we needed. It was a great day – Truman Lake, sandwiches, water, fishing, reading – perfect! It didn’t even phase us that the canoe fell off the truck on the drive up and could have totally ruined the day. And it didn’t bother us that we had to pull over 4 different times to adjust the canoe so that it wouldn’t fall off again. Maddie and I also napped all the way home (Thank you Chris!)

 

 

 

 

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