I have so many photos to choose from now, it's hard to pick which one I like best. My Zen Clam Photo Blog is filling up nicely.
Recent trips to a local botanical garden and a zoo have given me a lot of subject matter, not to mention flowers blooming all over the neighborhood.
This shot will appear on the Photo Blog soon - I think the leaves look like they're made of glass or ceramic.
Other than taking a lot of photos and reading, I'm not doing much. Perimenopause is getting me down - the aches and pains, the lethargy, despite eating well and taking vitamins - it's gets tedious feeling tired all the time.
Of course the voice in my head keeps telling me, just get some more exercise, and the other voice in my head says, if I had the energy to exercise, I wouldn't be so tired, right? Ugh.
The garden is finally coming along after so much rain and cool weather.
Potatoes - growing like gangbusters
Blueberries - Amazingly it looks like I'm actually going to get some berries!
Tomatoes - bigger every day - tiny tomatoes are starting
Strawberries - escaping their pot and taking root in another nearby!
Cucumbers - just starting to come out of hibernation now that it's warm
Carrots - growing steadily
Lettuce and Kale - taking over their planter
Spinach - bolted in the heat - so I pulled it out today
Jalapenos - growing slowly
Peppers - growing steadily
Basil, parsley, cilantro - hanging in there
broccoli - long and leggy so far, but getting leafy
So, surprisingly, the other day I got a comment on my writing blog [the one that passes for my professional website]. These are rare. My online presence is basically ignored by billions of people, so I was stunned to see someone had posted - and of course, it was not a comment on my work or a query about a long-awaited sequel, but the ubiquitous nutjob waxing rhapsodic about erotic romance equating to sin.
I was, needless to say, delighted.
In all the years I was an active purveyor of smut - no one cared enough to call me out on it. Now that I've decided to tone down my work and stick to stories that focus more on story and less on sex, NOW someone with a god complex decides to lecture me.
It's ironic in the extreme.
The sad/funny part is, this peddler of fire and brimstone started out with questioning whether I was worried about not getting into heaven because of my writing choices. [Oh, hun - I'm Gnostic. We don't worry about getting into heaven. We already have permanent residences there.] I might have been offended except said whackjob proceeded to ramble aimlessly about nonsense for several paragraphs and signed off as Fr. Sarducci from SNL [Saturday Night Live] - a show I have never watched or cared to. So, was this person just trying [and failing] to be funny? Or did this numbskull think that a tongue-in-cheek approach was somehow a better way to reach a wayward sinner who might sit up and take note of her transgressions from the promised path if the 'troof' was presented in a semi-comical way?
I can't really tell.
I deleted the comment unpublished, of course. Rule number one is Don't Feed the Trolls. But I did save the message in my e-mail under fan mail - because hey, maybe this dimwit doesn't like my writing, but at least he/she/it cares enough to presume to want to save my soul.
It might have been fun to take the twit to task and explain however tediously that someone else's spiritual experience has no meaning for me. Only my own spiritual experiences shape my thoughts and beliefs. So someone who fancies themselves a soldier of god is not only a moron in my eyes but also utterly ineffectual, as I'm well aware my path to heaven is MY PATH and I'm being led through my own relationship with the creator. No one else is qualified to be my conduit to 'life everlasting' as I already have that. No one else is qualified to teach me what I can only learn for myself. So, though I've decided not to communicate with this ditz any further, I do want it out there that this rather pathetically executed attempt at leading a straying sheep back to the fold was a complete waste of time.
I appreciate the entertainment value, though, and of course the opportunity to turn someone else's foolishness into a blog post. Thanks for all the fish!
I've been looking for new projects constantly, probably because of the season - I get restless in the spring/summer and don't like spending as much time on line. One of my re-released books is actually doing pretty well, so I have that itch to keep working on another book, which is always at odds with my need to disconnect myself from the computer as much as possible.
To combat that I bought a pad of water color paper and borrowed my daughter's paints. I made these two paintings this week and really enjoyed it. They're a water color base, embellished with colored pencils and black ink.
I have a lot more subjects to work from so I'm hoping to eventually use up all the paper I bought. I'm also working on a garden journal and have an idea to re-assign one of my book shelves and start creating more book projects to house there. A garden journal, a water color portfolio, possibly a recipe book, the photo books I've created and maybe start working on the color book idea I had - starting of course with The Book of Purple - a collection of photos all focusing on purple subjects.
I have this idea that I'd like to create a repository of my work, just a place to have a collection of things that define me - that other people could peruse. It's a long-range project to be shoe-horned in between the writing I should be doing and the time I want to spend dedicated to relaxing and working on de-stressing.
