An idea

My friend at work has seen some of my photos, (because I made a calendar with some of my favorite scenic shots and used it last year at work) and suggested today that I should make a calendar and sell it, with intents of donating the proceeds to Komen, or CRAAB (a local group).

I'm on the fence (the mechanics of it all, how would I accept orders and the money and so on... I don't want to end up with a pile of calendars and I don't really want shipping costs... ) So I don't know. I will think about it over the next week or two. At the very least I will make one for myself, which I do every year anyway, and perhaps order a few more for a couple of friends.

So tonight I went through all of my iphone photos from this year. I am very happy with how some of them have come out. This picture is a bike I saw over the summer. I like that it says "Stella". :)

Validation

Yesterday I entered this image in the Flickr pool for a Pioneer Woman assignment. I love her blog, and her limited run show on the Food Network. (Blink and you'll miss it - only one or two episodes remain.)

My image wasn't exactly on target with Ree's assignment. She gave us the original photo of Charlie and asked us to edit creatively - but her instructions allude to photoshop, and I used iPhone apps. 

I still had fun, and I like the variations I did, but I am bummed that I probably won't be one of the submitted photos she features on her blog over the next day or two. Still, almost 200 people have taken a closer look on Flickr. So we will call that a win? Or a draw. 

(And yes, I know flicker is about 100,000 years old in Internet years and I do have an instagram account, but the assignment was to put it on Flickr. And I know that Ree gets many, many photos added to her assignments pool.  It's ok. )

So. This evening I exchanged comments over twitter with a local news anchor. We have discussed Dancing with the Stars more than once, and tonight she asked if I was interested in doing a guest column one week for her blog, recapping the show. Hell yeah! I am looking forward to that. 

Of course, it means I might have to link my "real me" name with my CarlyQ80 id, which was really more of an old joke that only a few of my friends understand. 

Once upon a time I picked the name of a soap opera character I liked, (Carly quartermaine on GH as originated by the amazing Sarah Brown) and threw on 80 to make a unique id, and I've used it for about 15 years now for various message boards like Fans of reality TV and things like Flickr and instagram. 

Hmmm. Maybe I should tell my husband I've been blogging since 2005? Yikes. Maybe we just won't mention this blog to the world in the DWTS piece.  Shhh. Our little secret. 

Taken by carlyq80 http://www.flickr.com/photos/93483329@N00/6186427501

Sunday evening

During the school year I find that Sunday evening is the most stressful.

All of the things I wanted to organize and clear out, the projects I wanted to start, the "I brought home work too and still need to do it" and grocery and laundry and aaaaagh. On top of that the things the kids need for school like lunch money and forms and so on.

September is also hard because we have TWO birthdays to celebrate. Only one day apart. I'm torn between feeling badly that I might not have done enough for the kids, and being sad that they just want a few friends over for pizza and a bonfire anyway. No more theme cakes and bounce houses or even printed invitations.

But I am thankful that we were spared by Irene. I heard from two friends this weekend and it makes the chores a little less onerous when you think about living with a friend for a month now because you had five feet of water in your house, or waiting STILL for the insurance company to give you money when you are basically homeless.

People don't mean to ignore you, I told my friend. They may not realize what you're going through and how completely your life has been turned upside down.

Tonight while I try to sort this all out in my brain, I am sitting on my porch listening to my fountain and working until MY homework gets done.

Dear Instagram

(see full image)

You use to save my random photos to my phone, so I could have a copy WITH the funky special effects. Now with this new release, you don't. 

Bummer. 

The weekend is over already?

So

all in all it was not a bad weekend. But I'm feeling stressed out in a way that I can only describe as "this is how I felt when I used to work at that bank."

I was supposed to work from home on Friday. I brought the work home, and a laptop. And didn't do the work. (There was a thing with the kitchen sink, and a plumber, and the day just got less productive from there... and then the whole weekend did... and then there was a football game... and a wedding... See me, right now, still not doing the work? See me editing this post four times? I'm stopping now. )

There were a hundred little things that I *DID* do this weekend....

• navigate tense family conversations - always fun. Enough said.
  
• try to plan part of an upcoming trip and then almost immediately change the hotel reservations, which took TWO phonecalls, not just one... (Dear Marriott, you suck, your call center in India SUCKS, and I bring lots of baggage to that one - see what I did there? - so I will stop now. )
• go to a very unusual wedding, and the upside of that one was lots of hugs from long lost cousins and some GREAT STORIES. (Do you read my twitter feed?)
  
• drive my daughter to Timbuktu to her boyfriend's dad's house (where his Italian grandmother flipped me off and swore at me in Italian and then said "Bye." Ciao to you too, ya old bat)
  
• type the lunch form, ask myself why I agreed to do it one more year,
  
• get my own groceries / wander around a store I don't usually go to and take twice as long to find everything
• get stuff to decorate cupcakes this weekend
  
• mop the skeeeevy bathroom floors, do some laundry,
  
• plan a double birthday party, worry about my son's best friend with peanut allergies because the decorations I bought are not "allergy OK"...
  
• drive by my beautiful friend ... I always manage to see her running when I am feeling worst about my lack of exercising...
  
• are you tired yet? I am. Did I mention how crappy I slept last night? Oh. Clearly, I can't drink two glasses of wine in one evening anymore. It's just bad for me. So why do I keep doing it? Spent a lot of time on this one, with That Voice in my head being very mean.
  

I am being very hard on myself tonight, on many fronts hinted at above, and also feeling very discouraged because my mother is rattling on how her fall cleaning is almost done, and I'm barely treading water on that front. Icky. Icky bad messy house.

The wonderful Jen of Epbot / Cake Wrecks blogs posted the picture above, and what she wrote made me feel so much better. I'm here. I'm not "really" sick anymore, just not in great shape. But I'm here. I need a hug though.

Fall is here

And so is Friday night football, under the lights.

Digital fun

This is an example of my new pasttime... I look through the specials on Designer Digitals and Two Peas and add to my collection, and then use the elements to make collages of photos of my adorable niece, or graduation / vacation / life / etc. Fun! and the only clutter is on my hard drive. I usually start with a template, (like in the top row, on the right) then tweak sizes and locations of photos and objects.

I have a backlog of "real" (printed) photos and supplies to work on them... just a different way to enjoy the hobby.

A little AB on a Sunday morning

I love Alton Brown - his quirky sense of humor, his geek approach to cooking (clearly the man is VERY smart), the Henson- like quality of his cooking shows with costumes and puppets and....anyway.

I am loafing in bed (ok, I'm hiding under the covers trying not to think about possible attacks today related to 9/11) and I replied to something he said a little while ago on Twitter, as you can see in this photo, and HE. ANSWERED. ME.

I was holding my phone at the time, looking through TIME archives of 9/11 photos, and AB's reply popped up on my screen as a text message. There's something delightfully fun about having a celebrity you really like be aware of your presence in the universe for a passing moment.

Roll your eyes, go ahead. It's ok... I get it. But surely, there is some celebrity or athlete or singer or SOMEONE you would love to get a text message from.

So this print screen will go in my scrapbook along with a reply from Ree Drummond from about a year ago. (If you're saying "Who?" then you need to check out The Pioneer Woman's cookbook!)

And I know it's an important anniversary in the history of our country, and I DO love NY, especially having been born there. But everyone remembers in their own way, and life is made up of all sort of things, both large and small, and this made me smile today.

A beautiful day

Today was a very good day.


I got some wonderful news. Some of it I can't share with you yet, but some I can. (My surgeon says I appear to be doing very well, no signs of any problems at all, and she pointed out that I am really almost at the TWO year mark of being a survivor, since my diagnosis was in December 2009. Heck, I really love that woman. ) I saw a woman at the doctor's office and overheard enough to know that her surgery is tomorrow, and she is batshit scared. I wanted to hug her and say "You have the most wonderful surgeon around these parts... breathe...you can do this." but there are hippa laws, and people don't always take kindly to strange women barging up and hugging them. So for now I am keeping my efforts contained to friends, and friends of friends, who I find myself (happily) sharing my story with more and more often.

The sun came out...we are having more horrible flooding in upstate NY but if the SUN STAYS WITH US maybe the floods will end soon.






I treated myself to a visit to Starbucks, and that made me very happy ;-)

And speaking of visits... I am going to see the most adorable baby ever, very soon, not once but TWICE this fall. I am craving those baby giggles and endless games of peekaboo.

To see a few of my other Cape Cod / Nantucket photos, please go to Flickr.

In the garden

As small as my so-called "gardening" is in scale, it makes me so happy. It calms me and clears my mind of things I shouldn't be dwelling on.

Like more storms. More bills. Less summer.