What made you smile today?

A few things made me smile today. I'm a freelance editor and proofreader. I've been doing this for many years. Get the work. Ask a few questions. Do the work. Send it back. I never hear anything. I keep getting work from the same people, so I assume they think I'm doing ok. Today I received this message:

BTW, the editor feels that you are doing a very good job and that you have found all kinds of great stuff. I just wanted to let you know that we appreciate your dedication.

You coulda knocked me over with a feather. In fact I don't need a feather. Thud.

Izzie made me smile in her yabber line thread. Thanks Izzie. Can't have too many smiles.

She created a black and white photo with a small dewdrop in green representing sound for me. I mentioned elsewhere that I can make a slight sound with my voice. The green expanded from the dewdrop. What's not to smile? I tried putting a link here, but something weird happened. Best to leave well enough alone.

A particularly ridiculous post by rosborne 979.

Boita - fab news from the people who send you text!

I saw this video on facebook and watched with my jaw dropped. This kid is amazing.
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=76104266062&h=KGFj0&u=jyVqF&ref=nf

Love dat kid. Thanks for sharing. Smiling again!

Happy to get another smile on your face Roberta.

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations, Roberta. There's nothing like quality.

Learning that Brooklyn's daddy woke up today! And the baby pic she posted of her in his arms would make anyone smile. To see it, Click Here

I'd be totally surprised if Harvard doesn't have a landscape architecture firm honing campus planting choices. Wonder if that's true. But someone made that witch hazel choice. UCLA had major bigs design the planting, much to the good. I was talking about this in the car with D and D, about how I appreciate the little I've seen about the planting and the pruning at UNM (I've still not just walked around) and Diane said, well they have an agriculture major, don't they.. I was nonplussed, as campus design, including where to put buildings sometimes, and the specifications thereof, fall to the architects and landscape architects.

Well, at the UNM hospital, of which I go to a clinic too, there is, by the Coumadin clinic, in a courtyard, a gorgeously pruned tree about to bud.
Not an easy spot to design for. I know UNM has a land arch department, suppose I'll have to check it out. Somebody's good.

I remember a photo you posted a year or two ago, of a Harvard scene. Precision pruning, people who know what they're doing.

Jespah is a bundle of wrapped wit. Nobody better.


I'm glad downtown Abq displays some savvy in the sign department.

Just read this now, Roberta. Wonderful, wonderful, both the appraisal (I'm so glad they noticed) and the expanding dew drop.



Well, today starts with last evening, before sunset. I'd been working in the yard, moving sand hither and yon and pulling some weeds while planting lemon thyme, texas tarragon, italian parsley, transplanting the sage from a pot so I could put mint in a pot, and tucking in some onion chives across the yard. Oh, and the artichoke plant in the back yard. Getting dark, I gather my planting mix, trowel, and look for the three pronged cultivator. What three pronged cultivator? I know I had it.

I give up and go inside.
Come out again, figuring maybe I buried it somehow.
No. Go in again.
Come out again. Nah.
Go in, come out a third time. Absolutely not there, nor in the back yard, or by the back door, etc.

So. Today I come out to go to the bank and grocery and look at the yard in a pleased way that I got those things planted. Frown at the damned Photinia I still have to finish digging out.

About half way to the bank the car suddenly sounds like hell broke loose.
It dawns on me that I have a flat tire, I pull over. The good thing was this happened in a nice safe place re traffic. I now remember thinking I ran over a small rock leaving the driveway. Ahem...

I call Triple A, a card I keep up despite the yearly cost.

The good news - the fellow comes fairly quickly, puts on my spare, and off we both go into the lowering afternoon sun. I forgot to mention that changing the tire woulda been beyond me, as I can barely talk from the flu thing, that is when I'm not wracking coughing, with low energy for tire maneuvers. So, I'm happy and he's happy with all the thanks spoken by a woman with a weird voice (empathy flying to Roberta).

I go to the bank, and the grocery store. Buy some ice cream. I've been dessert avoidant for quite a while, except once in a while, for weight reasons and economy reasons. I get chocolate ice cream and blackberry ice cream.
Get in line. The woman behind me complains, it's so cold in here. I look at her and say, and I'm sick. She looks back and says, oh, no, that's going around. I said, so I bought some ice cream. She said, that'll cure you. And she and her little boy started singing an ice cream song.

I told the cashier I had the flu, to go wash her hands if she got a chance because I'd touched all that stuff. More nice talk.

Went home. Yep, there in the driveway, the three pronged cultivator with one bent finger. I must have missed the edge of the low retaining wall when I'd tossed it over there while planting, and it went under the car.

Went inside, put bags down, got out the blackberry ice cream. Heaven.

Osso, you have an enviable pain threshhold, being able to garden and shop with the flu. I hope you're feeling better now. Ice cream sound like a great comforter at such a time. I understand that the flu shot this year is not working. Agggh!. I've got too much to do to get sick.

Osso, you have an enviable pain threshhold, being able to garden and shop with the flu. I hope you're feeling better now. Ice cream sound like a great comforter at such a time. I understand that the flu shot this year is not working. Agggh!. I've got too much to do to get sick.

Well, that worked out. This is the first year in a long time I didn't get one. The good news is, the first bunch of my flu days have passed.. I started to feel it Sunday evening.
I didn't garden long, and you can tell I was sorta of stupid.

Well yesterday I learned how to use my new gadget that includes a turntable so I can not only listen to my vinyl records - but I can download the songs and put them on my ipod- so I listened to songs and records I hadn't heard in twenty years last night and it was really, really fun.

Today I was just in a generally good mood. It doesn't seem like much and normally it wouldn't to me, but it made me stop and think about when was the last time I felt like this. A long time. I knew I had been in a general malaise for the past year, but never really noticed that it had gotten so heavy and depressing.

I am not sure exactly why today I suddenly snapped out of it for a time, but I did and it made me smile more (and more genuinely) than I have in a while. Now that I know where I have gotten I can begin to dig myself out. I used to be that happy , light person all the time and I want her back.

I think it must come from my adamant refusal to continue living in the hell hole I am currently snagged in. I moved to the Dallas area a year ago and knew absolutely nothing about this area. A friend of ours who lives here helped us find an apartment that we could afford and that was presumably not a pit to live in. Well, apparantly his knowledge of the apartments he found were built on driving through one afternoon and since he didnt see any cars on blocks or drug deals going down it must be a good place.

It's NOT!

There are several drug deals that go on several times a day and the cops look the other way, even when they are called out specifically for that purpose. My neighbors have No respect for anything that isn't theirs. I have had to personally call the police a dozen times for various acts of violence that happen right outside my apartment. My husband was walking to our car to go to a meeting and interrupted a mugging. The guys ran off and shot a 45 at my husband as they were running away!! Luckily they missed. There have been 4 major fires (burning down of whole buildings!) in the 15 months that we have been here. The most recent (last Monday) was right by my building and fire was literally raining down on my roof. I had to evacuate all my animals just in case. By the way, 2 of the fires were from meth labs going up in flames.

I can't wait to get out of here! I have already gotten a list of apartments on the other side of town, far away from here and infintely better than this horrid place. It means breaking my lease, but I don't care.

Sorry this turned out to be a bit of a rant. I am just so happy to be leaving all of this behind me and it really did make me smile a lot today.

Aldistar, I'm glad that you are leaving. It's my smile for today. Is it not obvioius that your depression is of the situational sort--i.e., the fact that it lifted when you decided to leave that hell hole?
I wish you and your husband well.

I am glad to have helped a smile! Yes, it was the night before that we decided not to worry about breaking the lease and I got online and found about a dozen places that I am going to view next weekend. They all seem to be a thousand times better than where we are. If I had known what we were moving into I would never have even looked at this place. Live and learn I suppose. Hopefully I can get everything situated to be out of here by May.

The raisin bread turned out fine.

Making a new friend. An unlikely friend, but an awesome one. And one I'm really grateful for.