are we out of focus here?

over on my studio blog someone commented the other day that they didn't know how I could work on so many different things at once.

it's that whole issue of focus

as in, I have a very hard time doing that

and thus has it ever been -- in fact it is that inability to focus continuously on one thing that has brought me to realize that I will never write the world's great novel

writing anything longer than a letter to a friend or a blog post requires more focus than comes naturally to me, and at this point in my life I don't see the advantage to it

I want to try things

lots of things that have to do with art

which means one successful project leads to experimenting with another -- then another -- until what the original project was is completely lost but I've found half a dozen others that are successful too

I've learned over the past two or three years to stop beating myself up about that

not that I don't regret from time to time not having focused while I was in the corporate world -- if I'd done that I might have an income and (gasp!) maybe even health insurance now

but then as now, I didn't have the patience for the "ordinaryness" of it -- once I'd done it once, I wanted to move on to something else -- not do the same thing over and over and over

the one place I was able to focus was in trying to keep my daughter on track -- food on the table, roof over the head and telling her not to make my mistakes --- I think I did a pretty good job of that (not to brag on myself here, but she's pretty damned awesome!)

so, about this time of year I think about this whole issue (my birthday's coming, what have I accomplished, blah, blah, blah)

this year I'm feeling okay with that

I'm making art, we're surviving financially -- at least for today, and right now neither one of us has any new major health issues -- its a whole new definition of success

I'll take it

Census

we've been counted

our form arrived in the mail yesterday

it took us about 10 minutes (just as advertised)

as someone who has done family history, I can tell you that this census asks for almost no information

from the questions you will have no idea 70 years from now (when it will be available to family history searchers) what we did for a living or where we were born or even if we were citizens of the USA

pretty small information for future family history

but it is important none the less

when you get yours, spend the 10 minutes, send it in (you don't even need a stamp!)

don't make the census workers have to come and knock on your door (consider that your contribution to helping the cost of taking the census a little less)

just DO IT!

1000 Posts Give Away

Over on my other blog, I have posted 1000 times (how amazing is that!?)

To celebrate, I'm giving away this piece of my hand made Rocky Mountain Beach Glass jewelry

You can use this link to hop on over and see more about it and enter to win.

(Come on, you know you want to!)

Confessions of a 3rd generation pack rat

it is truly scary what a mess one can create when one lives in the same place for 8 years at a stretch

we've lived in this house for longer than I've lived in any one place my entire adult life

and there are two other bad things happening here --- I don't like to clean -- the kitchen and bathrooms are clean enough to be healthy, other parts of the house, well, you can walk through there

and the DH is not a cleaner either (guess that's my job)

and he collects stuff too -- maybe worse than I do

so there you are

but we really want to put our house on the market, which means I need to get it ready

so I'm starting in this room, a bedroom that at one time had a bed and a dresser and a desk and a bookcase and a bench in it -- and now all of that furniture (except the bench) is in my daughter's house, so this became the place to stash stuff

and last year at this time I had a table and grow lights in there so we could get seeds started for the garden

and I'm not leaving that color on the walls

which is why these paint chips came home from the hardware store and they are on the carpet in there so I can pick a very pale color to paint it

I'd like to get this done in the next week or so then get this room "staged" and move on to the next one

not really my favorite thing to do all the way around, so I'm trying to think about the creative side of the project

oh yeah, a lot of that "stuff" in this room is going to be going to eBay, so I'll be putting up notices about that here, just in case you might want some of the goodies that are stashed here

Do I or Don't I?

The bill arrived yesterday for the renewal of my domain name

Last year because I didn't know if I wanted to keep the website up I only renewed it for a year thinking that would give me enough time to figure out where it was going

uh, right -- or not

so here we are again, trying to figure out if it's worth the cost of keeping the domain name registered and paying the monthly hosting fees

or should I just let it die

I'm thinking about it

the better to see you with

I finally gave in and went to the eye doctor

after almost 2 years of "making do" using one pair of glasses to read and do close work and another older pair to drive or just walk around

it had gotten to the point that I was taking the glasses off entirely to work on beading projects which meant I couldn't see anything clearly that was more that 10 inches away

so you're asking -- why wait?

well, here's the deal -- these are bifocals -- but because the first bifocals I ever wore were "progressives", my attempt with the last pair to adjust to wearing the kind that have lines was a complete failure -- I just never could get used to there being only two clear fields of vision -- things very far away and things very close -- but nothing in between

but here's the real deal -- while the vision insurance plan that we have will pretty much cover all of the cost of bifocals that have lines, they don't do likewise for progressives

and why is that? well, because progressives are EXPENSIVE!

and the bigger the difference between the correction for distance vision and close up vision, the more expensive they are

so even with our very good vision insurance program, these cost me almost $400 (it would have been almost $800 without the insurance)

OUCH! so this is why I've put it off and put it off

shall we say the budget took a major hit this month for this -- I hope I won't have to do this again for at least a couple more years

oh yeah, and we still need to get what the DH needs too, but we'll have to work that into the budget another time -- after we put tires on the car

Doing what I can

which, at this particular moment, doesn't seem like much

for the past couple of years I have participated in knitting of mittens (also known as Mittnz) that have gone to the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota

I came upon this activity in wanting somehow to "give back" to the world around me because I am grateful for what I have been given

and truthfully, even this activity would not be as possible as it is except that my sister is very generous with her yarn stash and has kept me in materials to create these out of

last night I was listening to a TV program and they were talking about the heavy snows in South Dakota, and that the people on the Cheyenne River Reservation have been without power for more than 10 days

wait! my feeble brain was brought up by the short hairs --- what? 10 days!!

they must be sleeping in those mittens!!

not only is it cold, but there is the whole issue of even having water to drink!

you can use this link to learn more about this crisis

you can use this link to donate a little bit to help them

I'll be knitting more mittnz

Radio Silence

I may be off line for a while

attempts to correct the problems with my desk top computer have resulted in it's total inability to see my printer or my scanner or my zip drive

since it is tax time and I desperately need to be able to use those things I will be focusing my energies on trying to find a suitable work around

see you on the other side

trying to change history

I bought this book for my son in law this week

the last few times we've been up to visit he has been working on some very cool charcoal drawings

and my daughter is a smart girl

she is encouraging his artistic side

and so am I

I didn't learn until I was much older than he is that it is not a good idea to suppress the inner artist

go for it!

one more example of why health insurance is so expensive

last year we got a notice from my husband's insurance company that they would no longer pay for the particular brand of the glucose test strips that he had been using for years

you know, the brand that fit in the testing meter he ALREADY HAS

no, now the insurance company is in cahoots with Walmart

we had to decide: he could continue to use what he has been using and have to pay more for the test strips; or we could ask his doctor to write a new prescription for a new test meter and the new strips (which, by the way, are available to us only by either mail ordering them or buying them at Walmart)

so, because in the end it is the test strips that add up in price, we had the doctor write the script and I sent it off for him

the package arrived yesterday

and for the first time in the 15+ years that he has been dealing with this condition, we have been billed for part of the price of the meter

a meter that we didn't even want to get

because you know he has that perfectly good meter

but of course if he kept using the original meter, we would very quickly spend a whole lot more than what we've been billed

but the wastefulness of the whole thing just bugs me

and the collusion

I'm thinking of calling and pitching a fit about it

just because I'll feel better getting it off my chest

the end of life as we knew it

in all the howling this week about how the election of a Republican to the Senate in Massachusetts was going to kill the hope of a real health care reform bill, we almost missed the even more ominous event yesterday

the Supreme Court -- the one that Bush loaded up with conservative idealogs -- decided that we no longer need to be governed by a democracy

nope, the corporations can now spend as much money as they like to elect the candidates they like

if you've ever worked for a bad boss, you've had a small taste of what this will be like

forget about affordable health care -- and if you think the scare tactics of the summer's discussions of "death panels" were bad, just wait -- the health insurance companies will decide who gets health care -- because they will own the representatives in congress

forget about being able to get a loan if you have a small business -- the bank will decide who gets their money -- because they will own the representatives in congress

get used to $4 a gallon gas -- or $5, or $10 -- the oil companies will decide what the price will be -- because they will own the representatives in congress

you want to put solar panels on your roof to cut your power bill and help clean the air -- forget about it -- that's going to cost you big time to the power company -- because they will own the representatives in congress

you think taxation on the middle class is bad now -- just wait -- the middle class will soon cease to exist under the new taxation while the rich will get the tax breaks -- because they will own the representatives in congress

perhaps we'll just avoid the whole voting thing --- we won't need to have Senators from Arkansas and Washington and Texas and Minnesota -- instead we'll have Senators from Walmart and MicroSoft and Halliburton and United Health Care

if you want to read (or listen to) Keith Olbermann's Special Comment about this issue, use this LINK

if you want to read about Alan Grayson's petition, use this LINK

Show stewing

I know, it sounds like a new weird food, like maybe I've posted this on the wrong blog and it really belongs over there in Hattie's Kitchen

nope

what I'm talking about is the unresolved "what do I do with these" thing that happened after I decided that I'm basically "Done" doing bears

I mean I have tubs and tubs of these critters still

and I can't donate them anywhere that they might end up in a kid's hands because they ARE NOT TOYS -- being that they have glass eyes and all

so I'm thinking that after we get done with all the "de-Christmasing" I may start putting them out on eBay at VERY reasonable prices and see if I can find them new homes

and there is still that lingering "why couldn't I ever get the selling of these right?" thing, but I'm trying to forget about that

so, now I'm thinking about shows with the newer stuff that we're doing

I'm thinking "in State" this year --- by the time I get all the "must be paid" things done every month there just isn't much to send off as a show fee (and then of course one must be able to actually get TO the show, and sleep and eat someplace en route and during, and all without being able to count on selling even one. little. tiny. item.)

ok --- 'nuf said

is the stewing done yet?

wherein the winged monkeys stay caged

I can not wait for all of the almost $4K of doctor/hospital/lab bills to be paid off -- which of course at the agreed to payment amounts will be sometime in 2012 (barring any more incoming bills, any other major illnesses, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah)

on Saturday I got the monthly statement on one of the bills and it had two lines on it showing reduction of the bill but with the words "Bad Debt Adj"

WHAT!?

so of course I got to fret and stew about it until yesterday morning when I could actually call and find out just exactly what was going on --- especially since the statement also recorded each and every one of my payments!

this was the bill that when I called about making a payment arrangement back in September they told me they had several matching programs that I might qualify for and had me do a boatload of paperwork and then I never heard anything back except the phone call in December where they told me they would no longer accept what I had been paying but needed a larger amount starting in January

first thing yesterday morning I called -- and while I was ready to be reasonable, I figured they better have a fast explanation or I was going to loose the winged monkeys

turns out that I did indeed qualify for the matching program -- in fact, for every $50 I pay they are going to write off $50

unfortunately, they program will note it with the obnoxious "bad debt adj" thing -- but they are not reporting me to credit agencies for it (which was my fear), and it means I will actually get this one paid off in half the time I thought it would take

ok, I can live with that

First "Pet Peeve" of 2010

let me say first that I have been a knitter for about 50 years, since the very first time I was introduced to it by my grandmother

my grandfather worked for the post office back in the 1950s -- in the days when packages and bundles of mail were tied together with white string (remember the line in the song "brown paper packages tied up with string" -- like that!)

anyway, he would bring chunks of that string home in his uniform pants pockets

I can remember helping tie the string together and rolling it into big balls

so, my grandmother taught me to knit with that stuff --- simple things first --- like dish rags made up of rows and rows of just plain knit stitch, the more knots the better because they added to the scrubbing power of the thing

after that I knit for my dolls, and graduated to sweaters and other "big" projects

like I said, I've been doing this a while

so of course, as I've been involved in the blog world, I've read the blogs of fellow knitters and LOVED them --- savoring their pictures, sympathizing with their solving of knitting problems, joining their knitting causes (knitting mittens that go to an Indian reservation for instance)

lately though my ability to "join the group" has been stymied by the fact that I'm not a member of "the group"

a while back someone came up with "Ravelry" and now those folks that are "in" belong to it and post their pictures there

ok, they want to be "exclusive" I guess, but it annoys me mightily that now instead of posting a link from their blogs to someplace that I can see their pictures, they are posting a link to Ravelry

folks, either you want to share with the rest of us or you want to share only with your little "in" group

I wish you wouldn't tease the rest of us lowly mortals

Be afraid

or not

in the last couple of days I've been catching up on reading of blogs of folks that I used to read every day

I haven't been doing that quite so much lately as I've been busy with my own "stuff" and instead of making myself and the DH quite so crazy have decided to get to those when I can and not stress about it

funny how we can create our own stress

what I've noticed, being not so much right on top of the daily postings, is a common thread that ties us --- change

one writer's husband had a major heart issue during the year; one went through radiation therapy for cancer; one had major surgery of her own; one has had some major issues that she has not revealed, but that have changed her life; one lost her husband

there have been changes in my life too, and changes to come

just because you decide to make that change does not necessarily make it easy

or keep you from feeling overwhelmed

I've been receiving applications to do art shows (both in the mail and by email) and I'm wondering how that will all work this year -- basically last year we did no shows -- mostly because of my medical issues -- and this year the financial commitment of them frightens me -- so who knows

meantime, I'm trying to not be afraid

change will come rather I'm ready or not, so I might as well try to embrace it and make it a friend instead of creating an enemy

New Year's Non-Resolutions

first just one more note about Christmas decorations

one of the things my mother gave me for Christmas is another building in the style of the little buildings that were her mother's

so the village grows

the only thing it doesn't have is the hole in the back to put the light bulb inside (I'm thinking I may be able to fix that)

it looks pretty good in there with the other buildings

so, it's New Year's Eve

I don't really do resolutions -- I know I don't do well keeping them -- changing is a process, not an event

I am reflecting, however, on where I am, how things are, what I hope for

it has been an "eventful" year -- recovery from the surgery is pretty much complete, so far the many doctors, labs and the hospital have agreed to let me pay amounts we can manage at least for now, and I'm grateful for that

for the first time in a long time the Christmas season was actually fun for me this year -- the result (I think) of having worked on presents from January so there was no big stress to come up with ideas and money all in one short month -- I think that is an idea that will continue

we have decided to put our house on the market in late spring (that is the time period when houses sell best in this area), so the next few months will include painting and repairing and packing and some of the accompanying stress that goes with any plan to move

we have lived in this house for the longest time I've lived in one place for my entire adult life, having moved in in January 2002 -- 8 years is a long time to acquire junk by my scale

but we do feel strongly about moving to the end of the state where our daughter and son-in-law are so we can continue to be a part of their lives -- it will also be a shorter distance to visit with my parents, who are "aging in place", but their needs will increase

and I sense within myself a subtle shift -- for years I have said that I wanted to be the best at something and have everyone know it -- but over the last six months or so that internal push has shifted -- I still want to do things the best way I can manage -- but the "have everyone know it" part has mellowed

whether that is because over the past year there has actually been "success" in terms of being recognized by achieving awards both at the State Fair and in a national competition, or for some other reason, I am much more at peace with doing what I do artistically for the pleasure of the journey

we will ring in the new year quietly -- a special dinner (as I write this the smell of yeast bread rising is drifting through the house), watch a movie

I look forward to the new year, to new possibilities, to facing and conquering challenges I don't even know about yet

I pray for peace -- within and without -- and wish it for all of you as well

Happy New Year!

Decorating complete

can't believe I was actually able to find some little lights that I'm willing to use with this.

Since it is so old (my best guess is from some time in the 1930's), I'm not willing to use any lights that develop a lot of heat.

I actually found a 15 light string of battery powered LEDs for a really reasonable price -- they work really well

(and I used some pieces of quilt batting to create some "snow drifts" to add to the look)

I really like the way this looks too --- the Nativity scene is in a new place ---

and I like it better here than where we used to put it!


so now I have just a few more projects to complete, and there is actually time in the day for me to work on some art projects too

nice

Snow Village

these were my grandmother's

I remember them from when I was a child, she used to set them up on a piece of cotton batting on top of the piano

last year at Christmas my mother gave them to me

and since the piano that used to live at our house has gone to it's rightful owner, I had to figure out a different place to put them

the DH built a sort of "shelf" that fits over the top of the loom out of some scrap lumber that we had in the workshop

then, because we decided against waiting to do a real "finish" job on the shelf (it's hard to paint and stain things when the temperature is below freezing!), I needed to figure out what I could cover the whole top with

this tablecloth is an antique -- a linen center with delicate hand crocheted lace corners -- made by some one's grandma, if not mine

because it's not used real often, I had to set up the iron and break out the spray starch, which was just another trip down memory lane to Mammy's house, ironing shirts -- not with spray starch -- no we did it the old way -- but the smell is just the same

so now I'm thinking about getting a 10 light strand of battery powered LED lights to put in the backs of the little houses (they're designed for that)

very cool!

and doesn't this just figure

I got a phone call yesterday --- from the anesthesiologist's office for the two surgeries this summer (oh yeah, I didn't even recognize the name as I have seen nothing from them yet as a bill --- six months later!!)

anyway, they wanted to know if my doctor (the primary care one) had completed the form from the insurance company about preexisting conditions

yes folks, after all this, the soon to be ex-insurance company had started looking for a way not to have to pay anything at all (and ask me to reimburse for what little they had paid) for the two surgical procedures I had this summer

excuse me?

when I sent the form to my primary care doctor her office was concerned that the insurance was looking for a way not to pay her for my office visit where we talked about blood pressure and cholesterol medication

but no, they are trying to say that I knew about the other problem before I got their insurance

nope, sorry -- if there is any preexisting condition involved here it is merely that I was born female

that phone call did remind me of one other thing though --- no doubt there will be still more bills (that I don't even know about yet) to add to the $4000 total that we're trying to find a way to pay

{sigh}

Officially a Statistic

Weird

Usually you don't know the exact moment when you became a statistic --

This morning I sent a fax (via the internet -- did you know there were places you could do that? for FREE?! -- ok, maybe I'm just behind the times) that officially cancelled the little pathetic health insurance policy I had.

That's right folks, effective December 15 at 12:01 a.m., I will be uninsured

Before you go all crazy about how irresponsible this is and all, let me explain the cold, hard, facts about this.

Since I acquired this insurance I have paid to them $2710 in premiums.

Over that time, through various doctor visits, tests and two surgeries they have paid a total of $400 -- WOW, they paid a whole 15% of what I had paid to them.

So now, since they did not pay anything more than that, I have almost $4000 in medical bills that were not covered by the Colorado Indigent Care Program that paid for way more of my surgery than the insurance did.

I would have been better off if I'd just been sticking the premium in a savings account.

So, beginning in January, I will be using part of the amount I was paying in premiums to pay the medical bills and part of it will go in a savings account -- no, not a HSA because those all require you to put in a set amount every month AND pay a premium for a high risk health insurance policy, which defeats the whole purpose here of somehow being able to pay off those medical bills.

Meantime, I'm watching Washington DC very carefully and wondering if they will actually pass a bill that will be of any help and I'm well aware that even if it is, it's three or four years away -- in fact, I'm surer of getting Medicare -- which happens for me in 2016.