reading (yes, books)

I finished Red Dragon and went right to Silence of the Lambs. But I think my favorite of the three is Hannibal. Can't wait to read Hannibal Rising.

I also want to get around to reading Forever Odd, since the new one is out. I really liked Odd Thomas but I felt so betrayed at the end! I think I even cried, didn't see it coming because I was so wrapped up in the story.

I don't like all Koontz books. Some I just can't get into, and I usually know within the first few pages. I love Mr. Murder, Intensity, Hideaway, The Vision ... a few others I tried to start and just couldn't get interested enough in what was happening to become involved.

Hubby likes these (fillintheblank) ______Slayer books by R. A. Salvatore. I so totally can NOT get into them. GiantSlayer, DemonSlayer, PlaydohSlayer, you know ... they have orcs and drows and things that splatter blood when you slaughter them.

The boy is hopelessly lost to sci-fi and fantasy too. Lord of the Rings (in its entirety), Narnia (likewise), Star Wars (any manner of 'novelization'), Eragon and Eldest, Series of Unfortunate Events (all), Animorphs (at least half), various Goosebumps ... and just about anything that has ... words on pages. He likes Captain Underpants and Encyclopedia Brown. Heathcliff, Garfield and Peanuts too. And who doesn't love Calvin and Hobbes. If he has nothing else, he will read boxes, dictionaries (I'm so not kidding—he loves to slip new words into conversation), nutrition labels, instruction manuals written in Engrish, anything. (Unless, of course, he is supposed to read it for school.)

The girl is not addicted to reading. It is rarely something she will choose to do to pass the time. She has a shelf full of Saddle Club and Pony Pals, likes Junie B. Jones and a few others. I keep waiting for her to hit that stage where I was as a pre-teen, where ANY book about horses was devoured from cover to cover. I thought I had saved my Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry books for her, but I can't find them. She has used a couple of her pony tales for school book reports, so I keep hoping that one of these days, she will become that kind of voracious reader that had my mom picking up 5 and 10 cent books at rummage sales to keep me satiated.

Leave a comment with an author or book I might like, given my questionable taste in graphic content. I grow weary of reading my tame Mary Higgins Clark books over and over, and I've read the Koontz that I have at least three times each.

Heavenly Hats

This organization was started in 2001 by a 10 year old boy.

I am so impressed with this young man's work.

I hope to be able to donate some warm fleece crowns to him soon.

http://www.heavenlyhats.com

I did write and tell him about CafePress and how easy it is to raise money for your favorite charity with custom t-shirts and gifts. No response yet.

just in case

Hope it doesn't look like I'm raggin' on the old man too much. For the little things he doesn't notice, being a guy and all, he more than makes up for with things like this:

When I went out to start my car and scrape frost from the windshield, I saw that he'd written "I (heart) U" in the frost on my hood. He does little things like this all the time to bring a smile to my face. :)

oh yeah

By the way, this is Day 9 and he hasn't noticed. And we actually got to spend some quality time together Monday. (Remember? I shoveled the poop, and he dumped. Good team.)

Not the kind of thing he would notice right away, but all the same ... I'll keep you updated. :)

making a living

I didn't know what I wanted to be if I grew up.

Went straight from high school into waitressing, fast food, etc. and within a year into office assistant type stuff, did word processing and data entry for a while, then started helping with editing and proofreading a publication ... wasn't long before I was "suggesting" layout changes to the designer, and finally realized the job I wanted to be doing was called "graphic designer."

One of the great and horrible truths of graphic design, is almost anyone can learn and use the software. There is ugly stuff out there in print because someone COULD do it. But many SHOULD NOT. There is art involved in great design, and not everyone is an artist.

I went to a community college a few years ago and got a certificate that shows I really do know how to do what I've been doing for a living for over a decade. There were a few really talented people in my classes, and some that really needed to rethink their career path.

That doesn't mean that I think everything I do is golden. Most of the time, I think my work is crap, and need validation from my clients. At times, they like what I throw together in minutes better than what I slave over for days. Other times, they take what I feel is my best layout, and change it into something dismal, and then love it more than the gem they destroyed. That is the price a graphic designer pays... their artwork is subject to "critique by committee."

One of the things I enjoy most about CafePress is the freedom to design my way. Sometimes, I put complete crap out there, in a hurry, and it sells. Other times, I work very hard on a design, tweak until I feel it is perfect and will sell hundreds... and no one bites. Nature of the beast.

I invite you to take a look at what items HAVE sold recently at freelief.com designs and iHope cancer fundraiser by visiting me on myspace and viewing my pics. I'd love to see your comments.

PeTA BS

To be honest, I'm not real familiar with Penn and Teller. I've heard the names, many times to be sure, but I had never seen what either of them looked like, or sounded like. My first exposure to them was a video I found entitled, "Bulls**t."



I watched it because it had to do with radical animal rights terrorist group PeTA. You don't have to know me for long, to learn that I am not an animal rights freak. Rights? Like, to vote? To bear arms? To freedom of the press? Not for critters.

Now, I totally support animal welfare. Because I'm anti-AR does not mean I am pro-torture, or pro-bullfighting, or pro-cockfighting. I believe in treating animals humanely. But that doesn't mean I believe that my dog has the right to run free without collar or leash, or that my horse has the right to not be ridden on quiet trails in the woods. I don't think the neighbor's cow has the right to live a long life of luxury and never be a cheeseburger. I believe she should be treated humanely and slaughtered quickly. I don't think a deer has the right to eat all of the field corn it wants and never become venison sausage.

I did quite a bit of research on the Humane Society of the United States recently, given their opposition to hunting. I support my neighbor's right to hunt and eat whatever legal game he chooses, whether it is a cute animal or not. Although HSUS comes off as a more mainstream, animal welfare group, the words of its leaders paint a more vivid and realistic picture. They share the same ideals as PeTA: no meat, no milk or eggs, no leather or wool, no animal use at all, not even pets. HSUS is not the same as your local animal shelter, which probably gives a damn about the animals. They don't run any animal shelters. They are a political group. They oppose stronger penalities for domestic terrorism. They support legislation that cripples many small family farms.

Your right to swing your arm, ends at my face

I would never expect someone to blindly believe everything I say. So do some research. Read what both sides have to say about the other. If after all of that, you decide you want to be a vegan, you have my blessing. All I ask is that you don't try to make ME become a vegan too. I respect your rights, even though I may not agree with your lifestyle. Afford me the same. (Don't worry, I won't try to make you like venison. More for me.)

chickens can't skate

They can't. I cannot express in words how funny it is to see a chicken attempt to fly rather than walk on ice. They can't fly, either. The only thing less graceful than a flying chicken, is one attempting to walk across ice.

I spent the first part of my day off work cleaning out horse stalls. A dreadful job any day of the week, but particularly foul when it is cold and wet, and stalls are flooded, and the scraping of the shovel against the rubber floor mats creates this brown sludge that cannot be defined. To make it even more pleasant, the stalls had not been fully stripped and cleaned in weeks, as we haven't shut the horses in the barn due to the unseasonably warm weather. That is, until Ma Nature dumped a few inches of rain on the existing deep mud, and topped it off with a solid half inch or better of ice.

When you walk across this, you can see water moving below the ice and above the dead brown grass. It is treacherous walking. It is even more difficult pulling a giant dump cart meant to be attached to and hauled by a garden tractor, full to the top with cold manure slop. Did I mention the two flat tires? That is why I married a big strong man. I shoveled, he dumped. It is a good partnership.

Three clean stalls later, I realized that the chickens weren't coming in from the coop to the horse barn for treats. I went out to the coop to add another layer of wood shavings to their bedding, and couldn't even get them out of my way to do that. It was then that I got to watch my first "chicken meets ice" incident.

One hen hopped right out of the coop onto the ice and went skidding and flopping like a fish out of water. She may have not turned visibly red, but I know an embarrassed chicken when I see one. The rest of the hens were a bit more wary. One tried very unsuccessfully to fly straight to the horse barn. Remember: chickens can't fly. What they can do, is flap miserably for a few seconds, just above the ground, and then crash viciously to the unforgiving ice below, slide skidding and flopping (again, like a fish) and attempt take-off once again into the slightly more graceful act of "flying" ... it took about three cycles of this before the hen made it to the ice-free barn aisle. The others looked around at each other and me like, we really don't need the extra chicken candy, thanks anyway.

So my next half hour was spent making a chicken sidewalk. I raked and scraped and shoveled the dirty hay and manure dust and various dry litter from the barn aisle and hay storage area floors, and sprinkled it along the quickest route from the barn to the coop. A skid-safe path for my little friends. Then I tossed out their candy (scratch grains) and let them enjoy picking through the wood shavings in the newly cleaned stalls. They do a great job of spreading out the horses' bedding for me.

I'm sorry, this blog really needed video, and I didn't get any. I hope I did a good enough job of painting the visual for you.

(Chicken photo above is our bantam silkie cockerel, Fluffy.)

breaking the cycle

Tomorrow I'll be going to the local homeless/domestic violence shelter and donating a variety of clothes, toys and household items collected from co-workers over the past two weeks.

No one asks why I choose to support a domestic violence shelter, versus giving outgrown or unneeded stuff to a thrift store, for instance. I think it is one of those things that you don't really think about unless it happens in your family.

• What is abuse?

Domestic violence touches too many lives for it to be hidden and reside quietly in normal-looking houses where the victims live in denial, fear and shame.

I don't think of myself as a victim. I went through some stuff. It was nothing compared to what some go through. It challenged me, but it did not defeat me.

I chose to forgive. I know that a lot of people cannot understand how I could do this, but I did it for me. Being unforgiving places an unnecessary weight on your shoulders; a blackness that stains you. I will never forget what is in my past, but I do not let it rule my future. Remaining angry at someone doesn't hurt them, but the negativity can ruin you.

• Cycle of violence

In leaving, I was born again. Not in the Christian sense, but as a whole individual person, emerging from a cocoon. The support I received from family and friends was phenomenal. With their help, I have accomplished more in the past six years than in my entire life before that. The power of a positive outlook is amazing.

Life itself has not gotten easier. There have been very trying times, critical amounts of stress, even despair. Frustration and sadness, fear and anger still exist in life... but having love, security and support where there once was the absence of such things, makes even the most painfilled days much easier to bear. I could never say enough positive things about my new husband, and how accepting he is of my every flaw. And oh, they are many. Like the stars.

• Power and control

Check into your local domestic violence "safe place" and see what you may be able to do to help someone without the network that helped me emerge. Our local shelter has a website with a list of immediate needs for their families. Many times, a woman (or man*) will have to leave in the middle of the night with the children and nothing else; even the smallest thing that we often take for granted can be a blessing.


*note: both men and women can be abusive... linked text is written from the majority viewpoint of the male partner being the abuser

Is this a good thing?

I know what it is from, as I've read the series (except the newest one) ... but I do not know what it means. Maybe one of my 2 readers can fill me in.

"It puts the lotion in the basket."

I tried Urban Dictionary, and was not satisfied with the results. When did this become a thing, and what is it supposed to imply? Is it one of those things like "all your base are belong to us" where it really doesn't mean a thing, but you're cool if you use it because that means you know the origin? Dude, I could like, be cool, or something.

~~~

Day 3 of the experiment (or is it Day 4?) and he hasn't noticed. Not that I would expect him to; he got home from work at 4 a.m. and I got up for work at 7 a.m. Hard to catch something as subtle as a ring on the wrong finger while you are asleep. :)

I'm reading Red Dragon again. I don't know why I can read stuff like this, and Koontz, but can't watch the movies based on the books. I guess my visualization of what horrible things happen in the book is much less gruesome than a movie directors' version. I really wish I had NOT watched Dreamcatcher. I can't unsee it!

Noobs. Taste like chicken.

Finally got all of my son's Noobs designs transferred from freelief to freeliefkids.


Down With Noobs

Still have some tweaks, but things are coming along. It's gonna take a while to move all the other misc. kids designs, but I'll chip away at it. I wish it were easier to move entire sections between premium stores. It should be.

Did I mention he bought himself a Nintendo DS with the money he's earned from his two stores? Now he needs games for it, so he's still very motivated to come up with new designs and help with "marketing" where he can. Such a cute little entrepreneur.

fighting cancer

Our family participates every year in Relay For Life to raise funds to fight cancer. Basically, it is a 24 hour event where teams of people keep a walker on the track the entire time. Sometimes exhausting, but always fun.

We do it for the ones we love. Those who lost the battle with cancer, those who are still fighting, and those we hope will never have to.

Ever since I was young, I knew I would not die of old age. Grandma Evelyn died of skin cancer before I was born. Grandpa Forrest died of colon cancer when I was 8. Grandma Lucile died of lung cancer when I was 12. Grandpa Ralph died of prostate cancer when I was 15. Aunt Carol died of breast cancer when I was 18.

It is not all doom and gloom. Uncle Stan battled cancer and won. My brother-in-law Kevin went through experimental skin cancer treatment made possible by Relay For Life funding, and has been in remission since. My sister Shawn and niece Jessica invited me to my first Relay in 2001, and since that time I have been a team member, a team captain and on the committee for our local event.

The Wild Bunch was our team name in 2002, and it was our first year as really active team members and fundraisers. As part of a large team, it was a great chance to really figure out what Relay was all about and how many opportunities there are to volunteer before and during the event.

Late in 2002, we got the news that my sister Charlotte had a tumor. Almost miraculously, she seemed to make a full cancer-free recovery after surgery in early 2003. It was a year of celebration at Relay, and Kevin was a crowd favorite, walking 400 laps (that's 100 miles!) during the 24 hour event. (He had walked 300 laps in 2002, and 200 laps in 2001). Another crowd favorite was my nephew Logan, who won the Ms. Relay beauty pageant, where men dress up in lovely gowns and wigs and the crowd "votes" for their favorite with cash donations to ACS. It was a great event, with a lot of good memories.

But Charlotte's cancer returned that fall with a vengance, and we lost her December 1, 2003. I can no longer hear or even read the "c-word" without physical pain and tears. The hardest part to face: my children experienced their first loss of someone dear to them, and cancer became very real and very horrible to them, just like it did to me when my "Poopa" died in 1981. It was no longer something that happens to other people. It was personal.

Relay 2004 was very hard. I don't think I could have made it through without my kids. They were on the committee with me, and as very active members of the "Family Tree Frogs" team, they really kept us all going with their determination and enthusiasm to raise funds and keep spirits high.

Our team's theme was "Cancer Demolition" in 2005. My children were co-captains together, along with Charlotte's youngest son. They are truly amazing kids, with huge hearts and a new compassion for all who have lost someone close. That sweet little girl could sell sand to a desert camel; to have her in charge of a donation table isn't hardly fair to passersby.

My only son betrayed his family and joined his school's Relay For Life team in 2006, walking 200 laps for them and instigating a mostly-friendly rivalry with his sister to raise the most money. Not to be outdone, our team member Uncle Stan walked 200 laps as well; not too shabby for a __-year old cancer survivor. My mother and her sister, Stan's wife Shirley, were co-captains. I can not imagine what it must be like to lose both parents, your baby sister, and then your daughter to cancer. She doesn't think so, but Mom did a great job with the family team and kept us on the winning side with awards for our team camp and theme, the "Beach Bums."

We are now getting ready for 2007. Last year, I was able to raise over $1,200 through the iHope cancer fundraiser shop on CafePress and can't wait to donate the money toward each of my kids' fundraising goals. They know they are making a difference. God knows it is hard, when there is a cancer-related death every single day in the news, but we keep on looking to the future with hope.

three things

Three monotonous things today...

First, have you ever had to get out a pair of pliers to open a plastic bottle of pop? This is the second time I've had to do this, when no one around could open the darn top by hand. I often get marks on my hand from the lines on the cap and still can't budge the thing. Are they getting screwed on incredibly tight, or am I losing strength in my hands/wrists again? I suffered from carpal tunnel-like symptoms about ten years ago when I was verifiably addicted to the internet (I heard AIM sounds in my sleep) and couldn't lift and hold a glass of water on bad days. Not good.

Second, I moved my wedding ring from my left hand to my right yesterday, because I have a callous from the darn thing that is really painful, oh and right where I have to try and hold a bottle cap to turn it too. This is Day 2 of wondering how long until my hubby notices. Will keep tabs on this for my readers. Could be fun. In his defense, with our opposing work schedules, we don't see each other in the daylight much. If sometime between 2 and 6 a.m. he happens to notice, I'll be really surprised. Perhaps this weekend. I really want a new ring. I like this one, but it was meant to be temporary, and it has been over a year now. Maybe we'll have to look at rings this weekend. As long as I reassure him that we won't be having another ceremony. (There have been three so far.)

Third, I want to reiterate what it is like to have ADHD, so I'm copying this from one of my Squidoo lenses:
I've heard it described like this ... imagine your radio is on and instead of turning the dial to switch stations, all 20 or so local stations are playing at once. And you're trying to focus on the news, while hard rock is playing, and jazz, and country, and hip-hop, and you just want to find out what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, but you find it nearly impossible to listen to the forecast because of the other 19 stations are blaring in your ear ... THAT's how it feels to have an ADHD brain.

Back to my regularly scheduled boredom.

stats are cool

Besides being a CafePress geek, Squidoo geek, gaited horses geek, etc. I am also a StatCounter geek.

For some reason, my daily summary reports stopped arriving in my Gmail Inbox. I just realized I hadn't gotten one since Dec. 26. So off I went to StatCounter to see what the matter is.

I still don't know. But while I was there, I added a counter to my new kids store on CP. Then I went to look at where traffic was coming from for my iHope cancer fundraiser, because it was pretty much the only site I track that is getting good numbers of visitors. (The Queen of Marketing has been slacking.)

Sorry if I'm all over the place. ADHD, remember?

So, I see a website that I've never heard of has referred 7 visitors to iHope. Here it is: GiftGasms. Another 5 visitors came from this CP store. A bunch came from Google searches, and Yahoo Mail. Most came from the freelief.com/relay website (cool) and the majority came from doing searches on CafePress for keywords such as: "awareness" "relay for life" "breast cancer" "pink ribbon" "colon cancer" etc.

I don't even know why I blogged this. I just got all excited reading stats. WOO HOO big fun I am at parties, huh!?

on the cheap

I often share internet "coupon codes" with my friends that help them save money. Sometimes it is a free magazine subscription. Other times, a buy one get one free (BOGO or B1G1F) or a free trial that you have to call and cancel later (my least favorite). Or free prints with your order, or free shipping. Free is always good.

My source of most of these deals is YDF. Your Daily Freebies has forums full of these freebies, discounts and deals.

The secret is out. Go find your own deals now.

amazing

Just blogging about being a slug actually motivated me.

I did some of those dishes, I finished some of that laundry, and I moved most of the kids' stores!

Opened up a new CafePress Premium Shop to house all of my kids' brilliant ideas. freelief.com designs should not really be in the "kid-friendly" niche, and this opens me up to explore the darker humor that is just waiting to be revealed. Bwah-ha-ha-ha ... ahem. Anyway. Here are the new sections at freeliefkids:


All About Soccer (DD-9)


Imaginary Friends (DS-11)


Molly's Mall (DD-9)


Waffle Mart (DD-13)

There are (at least) two or three more sections yet to come, but I am CafePressed out for the night. Watch for Down With Noobs, and Misc. Market, both creations of DS-11, who has made enough on CP to buy himself a Nintendo DS, and is quite thrilled by that. Plus a large generic section, that I think will have to benefit their college fund, which I better start thinking about since middle school has already arrived ... *sigh*

there is absolutely nothing happening today

That's why I don't think I'll be too good at this daily blogging thing. What if there is a day like today where absolutely zero things of interest occur, and you stare glassy-eyed at your Blogger "new post" link and wonder, why bother?

I added new photos to my personal myspace page, but none to my freelief myspace site, like I should.

I have not moved all of the kids' designs on CafePress over to the new kids store I'm opening for them, like I should.

I haven't tackled the laundry or dishes or anything else around here, like I should.

Just a good old-fashioned BLAH day. Not good for business at all.

people I've brainwashed

I've gotten a few people to drink the CafePress Kool-aid. They are now under CP control just like I am. When CP is down, we are down. When CP is hot, we are hot. Resistance was futile. Visit their stores.

• Equi-Sense Gift Shop

• T & C Designs

• Ladybrinx's Designs

I'll be glad to assimilate you, too. Just click here (you know you want to) and become a shopkeeper and make bejillions of dollars. Or just a few dozen, if you want.

not blogworthy

Time for a new blog name.

From what I've been reading (yeah, I do that sometimes) my key to success on the internet depends on me becoming a regular blogger.

If anyone is reading this at all, you know what a horrible blogger I am.

I guess I'll do what I can to change my apathetic blogging ways.

gaited horses on squidoo

I just finished some updating and changed the look of my Squidoo "lens" now that I'm learning the ropes. I guess it is kinda like a Wiki, although I'm not real familiar with those, either. The web is advancing faster than me, I'm afraid!

I haven't included all of them yet, and I've started a few that aren't ready to publish, but I am working on links to pages about EACH gaited horse breed, and then each breed page will have links to the registries, associations, breed profile and origin, etc.

Please check it out, and the breed pages linked to it so far, and let me know what you think. You can add your own links to the breed page lists, and also vote the links "up" or "down" depending on how relevant they are.

Thanks for taking a look. :) I love the gaited horses, but I am more familiar with some than others.

free prints

I guess I should blog about my free prints page. It is one of the main reasons I started freelief.com back in the day. (You know, like, the 90's.)

At freelief.com/freeprints I list all of the websites I've found that offer free digital prints, and then I also compile all of the coupon codes I can find for those sites, so you can get hundreds of prints for just the cost of shipping. I'm frugal like that.

Okay, I'm cheap. Really cheap. I'm not paying for prints when I can get them for free.

Most recently, I've used free print offers and codes to have "oversized business cards" made up for my kids' t-shirt stores. 50 for $0.99 shipping/handling at Winkflash with code. They are learning about marketing by using them as a promotional tool, handing them out at school to friends and teachers, tacking them up on the grocery store bulletin board.



   



I have also used free prints to promote my own freeprints webpage (ironic), advertise a horse for sale, and print full color regular business cards (you can fit three on a 4x6" print) as well as make photo postcards for thank you notes after the wedding.

Since my daughter is getting into scrapbooking and has her own new digital camera, I think there will be lots more free prints in my future. So I'll try to keep that page updated for all to enjoy.