Featured in February – 2022 – Rest?

Linda gives us the word “rest” to use in our SoCS today. Not gonna lie, I will not be getting too much rest the next week or so and I’m pretty happy about that. Today I have a pop-up craft show at our local mall which, sadly, has been sold and will be razed in the next couple years to make room for what they are calling “biotech campus and housing.” Not quite sure what that means but I’ll bet I’m not going to be able to buy groceries or clothes like I can now. However, the mall is not gone yet so I have a chance to showcase my newest cards and boxes.

I made two new exploding boxes for Easter.

And I made some new cards too.

As if that’s not enough busy, I also got some transcription work in, about 4 hours worth, which I should say for those of you who don’t do typing like this, one hour of audio time equals 3 to 4 hours of typing time! Honestly though, this is the best kind of busy for me. I love making things and sharing them and the typing keeps the funds coming in so I can continue to do it.

How about you? Busy this week? Like these cards and boxes? If they don’t sell today they’ll be listed in the Etsy shop or I can make one special for you, just saying.

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Featured in February – 2022 – Too Many People

WST for today is “Too Many People.” Today is Super Bowl Sunday. For many years we were in the habit of going to our friend’s house to watch the game. Or, I should say, my husband went to watch the game. I went to visit but, honestly, being the introvert I am, mostly I just sat on the couch and worked on some craft project I brought with me. Rude? I wasn’t trying to be and I did engage in conversation of course. If the half-time show was worth watching I got into that. There was lots of pot luck food and drinks as you can imagine but that’s another reason I would bring crafty stuff to do so I wouldn’t sit and eat all day.

Katy Perry during the half-time show in 2015

As you can guess, the last two years there has been no Super Bowl party. Also as you can guess that didn’t really bother me at all. My hubby would still watch the game but I’d be happily crafting in the studio. This year our friends decided to have a small gathering, maybe 15 people, to watch the game. My husband is all for it. I am still thinking that is too many people. It truly would be nice to see our friends and actually converse with someone who doesn’t live in my house but I just think it’s a bit too soon. Maybe it’s because our son just had a bout with the virus and he’s been vaccinated. Another vaccinated friend my husband saw recently got it as well. I just want to minimize my exposure for a little while longer.

And then there’s the complicated (to my way of thinking) idea of, do I ask if everyone who is coming has been vaccinated/boostered? Do I just trust that our friends are as proactive about protection as we are? Do we wear masks in the house just in case? It is all too much for me to want to deal with, especially because I don’t care about the teams playing and the half-time show of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog and Eminem really, really does not interest me in the least. It is easier for me to say, “Go ahead, honey, have a good time. Stay safe. Say hello to everyone for me,” as I head out to the studio. The ONLY thing that I am remotely interested in is the score. Not as in which team is winning but as in do those numbers match the squares on the football pools we have?

Thoughts? Are 15 people still too many people? Is watching a game that you have no interest in worth the risk of exposure to the virus? Would you go just to make your husband happy yet be miserable the whole time? Tell me!

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Featured in February – 2022 – Fortune, I Can’t Wait…

As has been my wont lately, I’m trying to kill two blog posts with one shot. What Sandra Thinks asks for us to use “I can’t wait,” and the lovely Linda gives us “Fortune.”

The easiest answer is, I can’t wait until I win a fortune in the lottery. The end.

The more embellished answer is I can’t wait until I make one more sale in the Etsy shop this month because I’m only $3.50 away from earning my Star Seller badge again for March. That’s not a fortune. A sale of one card would put me over. As we speak I’m making some new ones to add.

I was grateful that I made a sale just the other day of one of my new exploding boxes.

It was the black and white one. I like the way it turned out and I hope the buyer does too. So shameless plug of the Etsy store.

And there we have it. Two prompts, one post. Hope you all are having a great weekend. I’m so not into football so I’ll be working in the studio tomorrow. YAY!

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Featured in February – 2022 – In the closet

Okay have to be honest, I didn’t just want to post a picture of my overstuffed, messy closets so I Googled “In the closet” (our prompt for today) and the first thing that popped up was this Michael Jackson video of a song that I do not remember at all but…wow…

And so I will leave you with that. What’s in your closet?

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Featured in February – 2022 – Too Much?

Sandra at WST asks today, “Too Much.” I am not sure I know the meaning of too much. If you look in my studio you could say I have too much stuff. In fact, these are old pictures so if I took new ones, you’d really think there was too much.

Yet I could give you a few reasons why I need more of something!

I’ve said that my typing has slowed a bit but in the last week I’ve gotten 25 reports to do. Is that too much? No! It will mean that I can’t spend too much time in the studio for a few days though.

In my opinion, too much is a relative thing. I am, however, donating some things to PARCA next week because we do have too much stuff that we don’t use anymore. What about you? Do you think I have too much stuff in the studio? Do you have too much stuff?

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Featured in February – 2022 – He didn’t come.

Get your mind out of the gutter – LOL. WST gives us this interesting prompt. My take:

Bob Seger is one of our favorite performers. We have seen him twice in concert. The first time was extra special because we met Ross Valory from Journey in the bar before the show!

We saw him again a couple years later and I documented that one as part of the A to Z Challenge.

We really wanted to see him again so I got us tickets for a show in 2017. He was going to be at Oakland and that is an easy venue for us to go to. Unfortunately he had to cancel that tour because he was having issues with his spine and needed surgery. Of course his health is more important and we were told that the dates would be rescheduled so I wasn’t worried.

And then we got a notice that our tickets had been refunded because the venue was being changed. He didn’t come to Oakland when they announced the make up tour. He was going to be at Shoreline in Mountain View. That’s still a venue we can get to easily BUT it was smack during the middle of my husband’s annual golf tournament. We were so disappointed. That was to be his final tour. As I searched for news of a new one for this post, I see that his saxophonist, Alto Reed, died last January. That is sad.

I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with the times Bob Seger DID come to a venue near me and we were able to see him. Thank goodness for my concert scrapbooks! How about you all? Any time a performer didn’t come close enough for you to catch the show? Hope you are having a happy Sunday.

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Featured in February – 2022 – Drunk Page Missing Remote

Let’s see if I can connect all the dots and make up two days of prompts, shall we?

In yesterday’s WST’s February prompt it was “Missing Remote.” Today’s is “Drunk” and Linda’s SoCS is “Page.”

Yesterday I didn’t play because I took a road trip to my sister’s (about 1-1/2 hours away) to pick up mom’s ashes and some other things that were hers. It was a fun day, even though the reason for the visit wasn’t the greatest. We talked about mom and then we shared some pictures. We found we were missing remote information about certain events or people in the photographs and wished that mom was there to answer those questions. I’ve come to discover in talking with other relatives that none of the kids ever asked questions because we were always taught to “be seen and not heard” at family gatherings. Such a shame. Moral of the story, ask your parents questions. Talk to your kids. Tell them the stories or, better yet, make scrapbooks WITH JOURNALING about the pictures. Somebody is going to want to know those things at some point.

I’ve mentioned that the transcription business is getting very hit and miss for the past couple of years and I’ve been able to manage but I’m getting a little worried sometimes that we won’t be able to make ends meet. I’m sending the messages out to the Universe and applying for other transcription jobs through Indeed, hoping that the right one will come along. Then I got this email the other day:

I’ve written before that my very first job was as a Page in the local library. The page is the one who puts the books away and keeps things looking orderly. You have to know how to alphabetize both with letters and numbers, be able to climb stairs and reach high shelves. In high school it was the perfect job for me because I could go straight after school and while I did have to work some Saturdays, it was closed on Sunday. At that time there was a bouncer to handle the occasional drunk patron who would wander in.

I’m contemplating applying for the job again because it is a part time position and would give me the flexibility to continue my transcription and crafting work but also bring in a more stable paycheck. There are no benefits like medical, etc., but I don’t really need that. I still think I am physically fit enough to handle the workload. And, it’s not like working in a retail position as I did with Michaels a few years ago. I’d have minimal contact with people since there is no talking in the library. That works with my introvert personality. There are no sales pitches at checkout and I think that putting books away is a lot easier than straightening out the T-shirt section or, worse yet, the beads department!

Since I set so much store by the universe and what it sends me, I’m wondering if getting this email was a sign? If I apply, the worst (?) that could happen is that I wouldn’t get the job, right? What do you think? Should I go full circle with my employment history? Was I able to connect all the prompts? Happy Saturday all!

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Featured in February – 2022

One of the reasons I wanted to do the challenge from Sandra this month is because her prompts are so unusual. Take today’s, “suicide.” I wonder what it is that makes someone so depressed that they would consider taking their own life? It is sad.

At first I didn’t think that there was anyone close to me that had committed suicide but then I remembered that I had an uncle who did. I was young and the family didn’t talk about it much but when I tried to Google his death, I searched for my aunt at the same time to see if I could get some information that way and I found that she was buried with her mother and father, my grandparents. That means I was right about the suicide because I’m pretty sure in this Italian Catholic family they would have been buried together as they were still married at the time of his death.

I do remember that he had a candy factory and when we would visit my aunt we’d always get a box of “pokies” to take home. They were candy coated dots like M & Ms. Sears used to sell them in their stores. Man, what memories!

See what I mean? Pretty unusual topics. Thanks Sandra!

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Featured in February – 2022 – “Bad Idea”

In the WST (What Sandra Thinks) challenge today we have “Bad Idea.” Of course I can think of a few bad ideas I’ve had over the course of the 67 years I’ve been around.

Let’s just say it was a bad idea to wear a long dress when going down an escalator in the middle of the mall and not holding it up so it wouldn’t get caught, which it did, shutting down the escalator and leaving me stuck there until someone called for security.

It was quite embarrassing to say the least. I mean, I literally was stuck. And it was a dress, which means I had just my underwear on underneath so if I had to take off the dress…Fortunately there was a nice person who went and got security to come and set me free. The elevator’s mechanism would not allow it to go forward or backwards so we had to rip my dress to release me to make sure I didn’t get pulled down. Good thing it wasn’t my favorite dress and good thing it just ripped the bottom but you can bet I went straight home after that! I could just imagine people looking at me saying, “There goes the woman who broke the escalator!”

So, what was your bad idea?

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Featured in February – 2022

“You knew” I was going to try another challenge, didn’t you? This one comes from new-to-me blogger Sandra at “What Sandra Thinks.” I’ve seen her name before on other blogs but when I saw these prompts for February I was intrigued. Let’s see what kind of things we can come up with.

You knew I was doing the One Second Everyday app too, right? Here is my January:

What do you think? Look like fun? I’m sure the more the merrier. Thanks Sandra.

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