Beauty is where it happens?

This is a long piece, but quite good. It is a story about life and beauty and whether, we "the busy people", can recognize beauty when it happens, not just when we are in the mood.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?referrer=emailarticle

I also heard an interview with Joshua Bell on an NPR podcast and was fascinated. Thanks to Ali Edwards for having this link on her site. I wonder what I would have done...I wonder what would have happened if the "experiment" was done in another town, or on another street corner if the result would have been the same.

My message from the article was to continue to try to slow down and EXPERIENCE my life, instead of just GETTING through the day. And, more importantly, to appreciate what my kids have to say and think.

I'm going to do that more.

JMB

Blogs, blogs and more blogs

I have just realized that I was born about 5 years too late. I think that if I had hit college when the whole internet "thing" had actually been working, then I would have just dumped Biology, or whatever else I was studying and got on that whole programming nerd band wagon. I have been checking out ALL sorts of blogs in the last few days and I don't know how people are doing all they are doing and THEN still being a mom. (maybe they are really bad parents....JUST KIDDING)

But does anyone else find blogging odd? Surreal? A bit stalkerish?

Maybe it is just me with my obsessive nature, but I can't get enough of these cool things that other people are doing and then you can just READ READ READ all about them (or what they choose to share, if you want to think of it that way) and then I can go to all of their links and find people in other countries that are doing cool things.....why, it just goes on and on.

That is why I think that it was probably better that I was born too early, else I think that I would want to be some sort of cyborg and be on the computer ALL the time....living in a sort of fantasy computer craft world where everyone is so inspired and making things and things.

The other day this one woman posted some really beautiful flower photographs...and I commented and then she wrote me back....it was so weird, I mean she is in Germany and I am here and.....well, it is a weird and different world we are living in.....Great, and I love being able to peek in on what people are doing, but it is still a bit weird.

Here are some crafty blogs that I have been checking out lately:
http://www.angrychicken.typepad.com/
http://www.thegivingflower.de/
http://westcoastcrafty.wordpress.com/
http://lazygalquilting.blogspot.com/

Do any of you have any that you just can't stop looking at?? I, of course, need yet MORE.

Things that I have seen lately....

Scene in Roseburg....what a combo! Look closely, then look again.

My sweet boy and his love of my umbrella.

Super-man and dog breath chews.

Super-man in repose.

These are just a beginning, I am kind of fixated on this weird lolly-pop holder. It not only holds the pop, but if you press the "S" the lolly rotates and his fist pumps up and down. I think that I might ask my son if Superman can travel with us. He LOVES Superman.

I think that I might also.

JMB

Movies, ones I might be embarassed about...

Last night I was talking with some friend about movies that you "just LOVE", but you are sort of ashamed, or maybe just a bit shy about admitting to. It was really funny, mostly because I have a horrible head cold and I felt like I was inside of a tunnel and I was desperately trying to remember bad movies that I liked.....and I was trying SO HARD. I just couldn't think of anything. I came up with some thing like "Adventures in Baby-sitting" which everyone knows is actually a stellar flick. Finally I remembered "The Core", which is really bad, but SO good!! It also made me feel better that someone else had seen it and also respected its awful-ness.

So, I am needing some help, to dig out from the recesses of my mom-addled brain "good/bad" movies. I would like to hear yours too....they don't have to be total stinkers, but ones that, perhaps, people might not know that you know all the dialogue to, or that you're totally "crushin' on" the "McDreamy" of the "Can't Buy Me Love" era. These are also movies that, given a free Sunday afternoon, you would SO watch them yet AGAIN!

Here are a few of mine:

Can't Hardly Wait---Seth Green is mighty funny as "Special K"

Blast from the Past--Brendan Fraser is so charming with his 50's dorkyness

Anaconda--J.Lo and Ice Cube...need I say more?

10 things I Hate about you... Heath... what a dish!

An incomplete list, yes, but I want to hear yours!!!

JMB

Ta Daaaa....

So here it is....

My completion in reverse....not to be poetic, just because I can't figure out the format of this crazy blog page. Oh well...

So I finished it, completed. It felt great to put that last stitch in. Then there was this other feeling, what next?? What next? What do I fill my (few) extra waking moments thinking about or doing?

Ok, so this is the downside to finishing something, the obsession wanes and then there is a void. In the past there was no void to fill because I could always obsess about what I should be doing to finish whatever "it" was.

I think that I am going to have to get used to this "finishing" bit.

JMB

My secret, if I sent it in....

Not me, not my kid....Yes, it's my life. Here I am one year later, sorta tired sometimes....but the bad stress is gone....my late night panic attacks are about my art/craft desires not if I shut off my FIA. Thank goodness.

NO (emphatically), I don't miss the rat race one bit.

Especially not on an exceptionally lovely March day that I spent with my kids at the park. They got totally coated in nasty water and sand. Luckily, I had candy cane striped PJs for the oldest one to slip on to his knobby, colty legs. I can't believe how much can change in a year.

What a beautiful life!

JMB
(again picture from postsecret.blogspot.com)

PS
I talked to a wonderful woman at United the other day and she let me get a ticket.....I am so gonna love it!!!! Watch out you Swedes!

trying not to scream!

I am frustrated

Let's say I am trying to use some of the gobs of frequent flier miles that my dear husband has accumulated over the past 3 years.

Let's say that I want to go to Sweden to visit a friend.

Let's say that I deserve to go, I miss my friend, I need a trip. Did I mention that while my husband was on his work trips I was the single super mom?

Let's say that I was on hold, waiting for a human to help me because a certain airlines (bad, bad UNITED!) website keeps pooping out on me.

Let's say that after 30 minutes a human finally says hello to me, yet when he finds that I want to book an international flight and that the web site is not working that he can "transfer me"

Let's say that this "human" transferred me to a busy signal......

That's it

kicked off.

CRABBY!

JMB

PS

I know that this problem is not life-threatening or on par with war or famine.

But I am still irritated.