I just watched a story on the news about former Olympian and six-time gold medalist Amy Van Dyken-Rouen, now paralyzed from the waist down after an ATV accident in 2014, who is upset because a lock Dallas hotel employee referred to her as “a cripple.” Cripple is apparently an offensive term. Interestingly, nowhere in any of the reports that I have read on the incident does she ever say how she prefers to be called. This argument over how one refers…
I wrote this post on Friday June 3. I was writing on my phone and on a plane. I intended to post it here, bust somehow managed to post it to Facebook only. The Blogger phone apps are not the greatest. So, many of you may have already read this. Since I first heard about online dating, I was a skeptic. How could you possibly get to know, really know, someone online? How do you know they are who and…
The proverbial “they” say that we take, not make, time for those things that are truly important to us. I am guilty of saying quite often that I don’t have time for this or that when the reality is that I don’t take the time for those things. Consciously or subconsciously what I am saying with my choices is that those things for which “I don’t have time” are not priorities in my life. When I think about those slighted…
So what have I learned lately? My desire to do is greater than my ability to do. My intention, once school was out was to write more. I have done that…just not here, which was not the plan. I thought that I could keep up here, with my regular Pixels, Plates, and LOLs posts, and writing every day for Blueper B…oh, and a photo a day for him and for me. Then there was stuff like preparing meals, and laundry,…
There was a time in my life when I was indeed the pessimist. Not anymore. That is a tough existence! This photo is the result of camera settings that were totally wrong. But, it worked for today’s photo prompts around fastener and blue. Let’s just say it ended up being a happy accident! I had three finals to write tonight and another set to grade. Even after many years of practice, I am still terrible at multi-tasking so in trying…
A nice and calm Mother’s Day today…Offspring No. 2 and her significant other took me out to lunch after church. Then we, the mamas of four-legged fur babies went shopping for them. When I got home I took a few photos, played with the dogs, and wrote a final exam. It was an OK day.
Today was the final class day of this semester. By this time next week, final exams will be over and another academic year will have come to an end. I will have completed year twenty-five in the same teaching position. The music theory sequence is a minimum of four semesters of paired courses; it can be five if a student comes in needing to make up a deficiency. Of those five courses, I teach four of them, all but the…
Every now and then there is a photo challenge that goes around Facebook that challenges photographers to publish a nature photo a day for seven consecutive days. In addition to posting a photo, you also nominate someone else to take on the challenge as well. It is the 21st century incarnation of chain letters, but in the end you get to see lots of beautiful photographs. I was “nominated” to do this by someone back in February, but failed to…
It hurts my heart to admit that I have not written a single post here this year. I have been writing, just not here. One of the places where I do write almost daily is in my Morning Pages Journal. This is a discipline that I have had for many years, one that fuels me creatively, intellectually, and spiritually. Though this writing is not fit for public consumption, it is was inspires me to write in other places. Over the…
Yesterday was my 54th birthday. In the last week we have celebrated both of my daughters’ birthdays and Christmas. It goes without saying that this is a busy time in our family! Interestingly, all of the men in our family–husband, ex-husband, daughter’s boyfriend–all have summer birthdays, an they are months apart rather than days. Despite being packed in around Christmas, I have always made a point to keep my girls’ birthdays separate from Christmas and separate from each other. Everyone…