Friday I'm in LOVE!

High Five For Friday! This week has been crazy for us. My mother-in-law has been in the hospital all week. Nothing too serious but severe dehydration and at her age (95!) it had to be treated by professionals. So between twice a day hospital visits, running our two online businesses from home, crocheting my crazy animals, writing my book, blogging and trying to exercise every day (plus the usual cooking and cleaning and walking the dog)...I am welcoming the weekend with open arms. Here is my list:

Five things I love!

1.  The way my puppy Anna does a huge stretch every time I ask her "Do you want to go for a walk?" She is so cute and the BEST exercise buddy!

2.  I love this little Fiat 500 and every time we see one I make my husband snap a picture of me next to it, acting like it's mine.

3. This little guy I just finished! He is a gift for my dear friend back home. The pattern is from www.planetjune.com and she has the best crochet patterns for adorable animals. Check her out!

4. The flowers are blooming here and summer is on it's way! I love that!!

5. And with summer coming....I will soon be eating this again! My all time favorite food combination.

Happy Friday everyone!

In flux

I am trying to decide whether I should switch to a different blog setup. I want to get the most readers and followers I can and I wonder if a change would facilitate that. Since I know just about nothing about blogging and getting my blog visited, I'm really writing blind here. Any and all suggestions that you dear readers would like to make, I accept gratefully. And here is a link to a practice switch that I am thinking about.  http://mindofahummingbird.tumblr.com/  Please visit it and let me know what you think.

Should I stay or should I go?

Thoughts

A photograph is one second of one breath of one’s life, frozen.  A glimpse, just from the outside. We see a shell, a flash without substance. It can speak to us and yet says nothing at all.  The picture can be taken without the subject even knowing or remembering.  Violence, beauty, death and judgment.  All in a single frame. 

It feels powerful to have a camera in my hands.  It’s always been this way.  I think even before I had a camera I saw life through the lens….still images..caught on the film of my mind, suspended …with me, viewing them at a distance…an observer in my own life. Frozen and alone.

Even my memories are like snapshots that I am viewing with a critical eye.  I am the subject in the picture but somehow I feel detached from the image. I can look back and see this young girl, maybe around seven, climbing a huge oak tree, for example.  She has a book and a blanket tied to a rope that she is hauling up into the tree with her.  She keeps climbing until the branches are close enough together were she could sit jammed in between them…looking out over the neighborhood….reading her book.  She sits up there for hours until her legs go numb.  The breeze rustles the leaves…she feels completely peaceful. She feels safe.  And alone.

I am the girl.  I recognize her face in my memories as my own face, my own hands holding on as I am climbing the tree, yet I feel as though I am watching her from a distance…she is framed behind glass and hanging on the wall in front of me.  The label on the wall just below her reads

“Sarah- age seven, climbing the oak tree in the front yard of her childhood home”.

I think my total detachment for life started with my name. It feels like a name that should apply to a small, lovely creature.  Shy and demure. With a lovely voice and a laugh like bells tinkling. Needless to say, that’s not me.  Or at least that isn’t how I feel.  I kinda wish my name were Roxy.  Maybe my life would have turned out different.

But knowing me, even with a name like Roxy, my life would have been exactly the same. Riddled with mistakes and ugly photographs.  Or at least it seems that way to me. 

I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel not completely myself. Not real.  I spend whole days not really feeling real. My mind will flit over and under, around and through a subject, a memory, a fear, a thought and never ever really land.  Almost like a hummingbird. 

To the faithful kind followers

I couldn't help but notice that my blog has had some increased traffic lately. Let me say that it is a true honor to write and have someone read it. I know that many of you are family and long time friends and still some others of you may have clicked on my page completely by mistake...perhaps you were searching for places to find hummingbirds in Rhode Island or researching brain surgeons in your area.

Regardless of how you got here, let me say honestly and from the bottom of my heart,

THANK YOU

Just know that each and every time, even if it was only once by mistake, you clicked here and read my foolish words, you are feeding a dreamer and a dream. Right at the top with with poet, painter, dancer and photographer, WRITER is my all time dream to end all dreams.  To write and have others read, to make them laugh and cry and want to read more, that is my dream. To tell you a story that paints the picture so vividly for you, it's as if you stepped right into my mind and you enjoyed the visit.

And to dream, isn't that the best part of life? To hope, to believe huge things of ourselves, of others? I think so. I think to be a dreamer and to encourage one are great achievements.

I hope someday to have the sufficient courage to follow this dream to the end and write a book worthy of each of you. Every time you come here to visit me, you help me believe I could do it. So thank you, each of you and any that may come after this is published. I hope this knowledge won't stem the tide of readers in the hopes that I will shut up but even if that is the case, I am thrilled you came by at all. In fact, I am speechless by your generosity, well...almost speechless....I'd have to stop breathing all together to be speechless.  But close, very very close to speechless because every time I see my reader numbers go up by even one more, I catch my breath.  Thank you everyone. When I started writing here way back in July I never thought anyone would see my words. And yet here you are. Amazing.  What else is possible?