Today is SparkPeople Shout-Out Day, so like a good little lemming, I tout and brag and pronounce SparkPeople to the masses. Yay.
Seriously, though, it’s been helpful. There are pros and cons over Weight Whatchamacallit. Free v. non-free, fiber counteracts some of the calories, etc. But overall, I’m using a lot of WW ideas and tracking [...]
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I had the good fortune to spend time in the bosom of a friend and her family last week. And so many things transpired, at a subterranean level, deep inside my cold black heart, which meant so much to me. Without embarrassing her over much, I’ll just say that the hum of family life was [...]
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Some of us, I guess, require a lot more than a simple list or a decision to make a committment to change. We feed off of the collective energy put into New Year’s Eve. It is an impressive display, isn’t it, creating a lot of momentum for whatever project is at hand.
But what if today [...]
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Instead of resolutions this year, I believe I will ponder this three-word rubric that I used when I taught writing. It’s quite simple: what are you going to START doing, what are you going to STOP doing, and what are you going to KEEP doing in 2009?
One new start is an e-book I hope to [...]
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The above phrase is a medical school rubric for simple procedures, such as starting an IV, doing IM injections and other technical work, up to and including invasive surgical procedures. While this model is sometimes disputed for safety and confidence issues, in non-invasive procedures and operations, such as knitting, painting, sewing, baking bread and embroidery, [...]
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It dawned on me that I need to work on an “artist’s statement.” Which isn’t the typical kind of me-me-me statement about my aesthetic. It’s more of a discussion (treatise?) on why creativity is so important to me and why it can be, should be vital to others.
I have a new book from Amazon entitled [...]
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I find myself derailed by the slightest thing these days… apparently, it’s part of grief. Of “complicated grief,” that is. No, I can’t just have the garden variety “wear black for mourning then get on with life” grief. I have to get the complicated form… which is a lot like driving a car with a [...]
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While drinking my one perfect cup of coffee this morning, I watched a willow tree next to a little pond. As its branches floated gracefully up and down on the breeze in typical willowy gorgeousness, I was proud that I’d taken the willow as my namesake. Half of my namesake.
What that willow taught me was [...]
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I am — this close to signing up for two classes at the community college continuing ed program. In fact, I’m rather amazed at myself for even thinking I could do it, but the more I thought, the better I felt about it.
The classes? oil painting and piano. !!!!
I might as well take a tatting [...]
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Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings.
The Waldorf/Steiner philosophy holds handwork in high regard for the development of the mind through motor control (ha ha, I almost wrote ‘development of the motor through mind control’ — Waldorf joke!). The theory is that handwork can guide the developing young mind as well as express some inner traits [...]
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