I Am This Woman

I am not sure what is going on, but I’m getting some really huge bunches of spa*m, and some of it is suspicious. I need time to investigate.

It really irks me to have my content stolen and put on a spammer’s website as a “blog entry.” Just because I mention a keyword randomly that someone else is homing in on, that does not mean that my entry is worth linking to another blog, which is really just a robotic compendium of stolen content veiled as “ooh, check out this blog entry” with a pingback.

I had some content stolen from an defunct and archived website. I have no recourse because the owners of the website have closed up shop and disappeared for all intents and purposes. Or they may have sold the content…. against our agreement. I still hold the copyright to the content, which are some personal stories that I’d rather own and get credit for? but the links are all 10 years old and broken, so I’m getting nothing out of the “mention” and the content is polluted because it’s on a spammer site.

So I need to rethink my whole rationale for doing what I’m doing. Maybe it’s a Word Press issue, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. I will have a solution or workaround in a few days, hours.

Thanks for reading. (I’m ticked off about this too because I had a semi-big announcement - a drawing for prizes!)

The comment management really stinks in this new version. I shall be spending time tomorrow troubleshooting this shizzle, instead of doing my job or baking cookies or creating art or writing. I have deleted legitimate comments in the masses of sp*am that I’m also getting. But I swear to Goddess… I am APPROVING the legit ones first, then deleting the spam in mass delete… AND ALL of the new comments are deleted.

Again my apologies to the hardy few who bother to comment here.

This video is really amazing and wonderful, and slightly creepy (too much Twilight Zone).

I love how the marriage of technique, art and performance work to bring life to this girl, and then the video is a lovely little vigniette with the music and editing. Golf claps to the little girl and her footmen!

I also love how a group of creative people can get together and find cool stuff like this. I ganked this link from the lovely and talented LMNOP on Ravelry. (Not her real name or spelling of her username as I don’t exactly have permission to name her here.)

I am a knitter. I learned from my mother when I was probably about six or seven. I am backdating that to the house I remember knitting in. I can see the bedroom where she had her sewing stuff. There was a little Singer sewing machine for kids there too, and I made little Barbie clothes and horse blankets on the machine that sounded like a mini-tank clanking away.

I did not have a Barbie. I had a Midge. She was Barbie’s darker, more athletic friend. I liked her better. I don’t know if it was an accident or that is what was on sale at the BX, but I had Midge and liked her just fine. And she needed clothes too. So about the same time I remember knitting, I also learned to sew.

Back to knitting: I learned to cast-on but it was so difficult that I knitted one thing and didn’t knit again. That first thing? a doll scarf for Midge. I cast on with some itchy fingering yarn on some red #10 Boye needles. I still have those needles.

There was a summer when Aunt Ella came to us for a few weeks, and that’s when I learned to crochet. We made rag rugs together, and she showed me how to rip and sew the rags together, then how to make the rug. I have several of these rugs which she made and one that she started and I will finish. Eventually.

Early learning in handwork - especially with fibers and textiles - is beneficial for brain development. It really doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure this out… teaching children anything has the potential to make a lasting impression. But there definitely is something to stimulating fine motor control and intellectual development.

And perhaps this explains the grey-haired old granny stereotype for knitting. Grandma knew best that one of the best ways to keep the kids busy and out of Mom’s hair was to teach them knitting, crochet, tatting. And she was the one available to do this, so that is a possible origin of the stereotype. Children see old people and their grandparents as impossibly old, and since she was the one available for these influential moments of knitting and handwork instruction, the image stuck in the child’s mind. And I guess it doesn’t help that knitting needles are good for putting up your hair into a bun.

We’ve lost a generation or two of knitting Grandmas who were available to mind the kids and teach knitting. Grandma went back to work and expanded her horizons, and didn’t have as much time to knit much less watch the kids. Luckily, knitting and needlework are enjoying a rennaissance, and knitters are as likely to have purple hair, dreads or a shaved head (yes, I’m looking at you Franklin!).

Maybe in 20 years, the stereotype will have shifted to include eye patches, dreads, earrings… and grey hair.

Lap Dog, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

(17 of 50)
My 40 lb. lap dog, Miss Lucy. She is not allowed on the couch unless in a lap, so it works out for her. Tonight, I held her and scratched her chest until she fell asleep. Then she started snoring and did so for about 15 minutes. She missed most of House.

(16 of 50)

I lost my mama in 2003. So for her, I will try to remember the good times, even though there was thousands of bad times to try and forget. As I sit here today, I think I would withstand some bad times just to have her back for a few hours, to chat with, to giggle over stupid things with. I miss her voice and her encyclopedic knowledge of film. I would probably have to ask her about “Now, Voyager” (which I saw again yesterday, which makes me laugh and cry because it is probably the highest form of camp art EVER).

The missing her never ends. It just gets easier to live with, and even becomes comfortable after a while. My gift to her today is to remember her with love and fondness, something that was more complicated when she was alive. Something that I know was/is just as difficult for my brothers to do.

My dear child is 12, and knows full well it’s Mother’s Day… and is enjoying cartoons and getting himself breakfast.

We are ok with what our day holds, if we don’t listen to the world. In our little world, a loving gift for Mother’s Day is a hug, a joke, a plan to go see a movie together. But the world out there is screaming at us that flowers, cards, breakfast in bed, chocolates, resentment, duty, coercion and guilt are part of the day (spend money! make her blow her diet! she’ll get mad if you don’t!).

I hope I never ever become a mother who has to nag remind her son, or whine to be recognized. I can understand how it happens. But since I get a year-round appreciation, today is really just a pretty spring day which we will enjoy together. That right there is a pretty nice gift.

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms, anyone with a mom and especially those without!

(15 of 50)

I’ve been trying to upload a silly video of my silly dogs in the back yard for two days now, but the software (iMovieHD) I was using doesn’t have an automatic YouTube output setting. So, the result is a really bad QuickTime video that snapshots all over the place. Not very appealing.

There is an “upgrade” for iMovie in iLife 08, which I have, but I lose the timing and transitions when I port it over into the new one. So it’s back to the drawing board to re-engineer the thing.

That’s a technical snafu. Happens all the time with any kind of creativity - you lose a Word doc in a crash, your paint separates or cracks, your yarn breaks or bleeds, the glue dries out or the paper just won’t cooperate with your vision.

So you do it over again. I try to tell myself that it means I will learn more, have a chance to make it better. But right now, I have an empty blog page and a missed self-imposed deadline. C’est la vie!

(14 of 50)

Things here at Lizard Lodge have been going along really well of late. We’re feeling a burst of creativity as the leaves pop out on trees and start loading up the chlorophyll. So many greens! I’ve been so amazed at the greens that I’d almost forgotten about the bluebonnets. But I saw some bluebonnets yesterday which reminded me that I need a wildflower fix and soon. The yards, fields, parks and highways are a riot of growth, colors, photosynthesis and life.

The boy has begun to explore iMovie and YouTube. At last. He’s been a video camera owner for a couple of years, but never showed an interest in putting it all together. But perhaps he’s been incubating. However, now, his desk, the dining room table and all available flat surfaces in his room are taken up with Bionicles who are the stars of his movies. Read the rest of this entry »

(13 of 50)

While waiting to reach Nirvana, one must stay busy with everyday chores. “Chop wood, carry water” is the teaching that humbles even those on the verge of enlightenment.

The utter necessity of handwork is at the heart of enlightenment and creativity. Having finished up my little movie project, and having watched it a few more times until I was a bit embarrassed of its tone, tired of finding little quibbles that I could have fixed but won’t because it’s too late… I turned my attention to the dirty kitchen. Time to do the dishes, and then do something about those tomatoes that are going to rot.

I made corn tomato salsa in the style of pico de gallo. With spring onions, cilantro and fresh jalapeño. With garlic of course. It was delicious on my humble black bean tacos tonight.

But for me, it was the simplicity of chopping tomatoes, onions, jalapenos. Cutting out the almost woody tomatoey insides, putting the little black bits in the Mother Earth bowl along with the limp and slimy bits of spring onions – taking great care to deal with the seeds and pith of the peppers so that I wouldn’t give myself “the treatment” … it was all sheer pleasure while my mind happily babbled along.

Two thoughts came out of the chopping: 1) cooking from scratch engages all five senses and the mind, and 2) compost is nothing short of a miracle. (The Mother Earth bowl is the designated spot for compost scraps and gets dumped out there almost every day. Almost.) More on these later.

As for carrying laundry, thank Maude for a good washer and dryer because such mod-cons elevate the drudgery of hauling and heating water, hauling and wringing wet clothing to a near-scientific and aesthetically pleasing task.

(Plus when the child(ren) get(s) home, you can point to the folded stacks and say, “Put those away, or I’ll nag you.”)

Argh. I have two entries on this blog that have attracted an amazing amount of spa&m. Usually 10-20 messages a day. As a tidy blogger, I try to flush those out every day. This morning, I clicked the wrong thing however, and deleted the sp^m PLUS bonafide comments ON THE LAST FEW WEEKS OF ENTRIES.

Argh! My apologies to readers and commenters… it was not the comments.

Maybe I’ll turn that in as a “bug” report - the new version of WordPress does not have an undelete feature, nor does it have a big red blinky button for AWAITING MODERATION vs. already approved.