This is where I share my thoughts of polish, pets, life in general. Click on any of the tabs below to find out more about the Pointless Cafe Blog.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Thank Goodness for Quilted Toilet Paper



If you'd told me when I was young and poor and living in the trailer park wondering if the car would start that I would one day be SO thankful for the experience, I'd have kicked you in the shin.  I had the best mother in the world and she loved me unconditionally, but there were some serious hard times involving no heat, not enough food and creative toilet paper solutions, to say the least.  Thankful?  For that?

But I am just that.  Thankful.

I realized that probably in my 20s when I was having other struggles.  It made me strong.  And it made me appreciative of everything.  When I would see people who had nice things, who generally just had "more," I wasn't jealous, but instead I was hopeful.  Hopeful that one day, if I worked hard, I, too, could have nice things. It was like an inspirational poster that flashed at me in neon "This is America and You Can Have Anything You Dream!"

I will admit to some jealousy in school.  I suppose it was jealousy I felt when I saw all the other girls wearing Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans (yes, I'm that old,) but oddly, the girls who had those things and were NICE, I didn't seem to feel anything negative toward.  It was the snotty girls who judged me because I didn't have those things that got me.  So was that jealousy?  I was happy for the nice girls who had nice things.

What I didn't realize at the time and found out later was that we were just broke, while their families were hugely in debt.  Big difference.  They had nice houses that were mortgaged to the hilt and their clothes were purchased with credit cards. My family was just at zero all the time.  Never a negative number.

But as I sit in my own house watching Real Housewives, I am reminded of how truly blessed I am.  Now I am sure there are some exceptions in some of the RHof...but in general, I am finding that I pity these people.  I don't pity them because they have money.  I pity them because most of them seem to have no grasp on reality.

Now I've been around wealthy people.  Balanced wealthy people who at least have one foot in reality.  And I realize that they have a whole other set of problems that comes with having a lot of money.  But these people understand life.  Watching the Real Housewives shows are like watching a train wreck and I just can't seem to turn away.  They are so spoiled!

Again, it's not the fact that they're rich.  I can't tell you  how many times I've felt the need to "defend" the "evil rich" to ignorant people (like the rich needed ME to defend them or that the ignorant people would listen - Ha!) because of some ridiculous comment or another.  Heck, I hope to BE one of the wealthy people some day if the whole darned country doesn't turn completely socialist by then.  But these people I'm watching are just ridiculous!  I'm not going to expound on that here - there are enough other places to bash the Real Housewives.  But I am going to tell you that it reminded me, once again, how very thankful I am that I had the sort of childhood I did.

Because of that childhood, I am self-sufficient.  I am strong.  I am grounded.  I am appreciative of every nice thing I have - all the way down to the quilted toilet paper that I didn't, by the way, purchase with a credit card.

Another Quirk Rears its Ugly Head

Seriously?  I'm almost 45.  You'd think I'd be aware of all of my quirks by now, right?  Apparently not.  This time it's Twitter!

I've known about a lot of them for a long time.  I have many, MANY of them that surround food.  I no longer eat raisin bran because it reminds me how crazy I am sometimes.  When you start counting the raisins and on which side of your mouth you're chewing them, it's time to stop. I'm not eating fungus.  Or brains.  Or any "innards" for that matter.  And nothing that has to rot first like cottage cheese or sour cream.  And if it's green, it had better be some sort of green apple flavored candy. Yeah I know, veggies, blah blah blah.

And please, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT move my stapler on my desk.

But Twitter?  Yep.  I have discovered that it drives my crazy to wake up to hundreds of tweets that I don't have time to read.  I hate missing stuff!  I can't just jump in where I am.  I have to scroll back and read ALL of them.  Then I get frustrated and don't even pull it up.  Only to find over 1000 when I finally do.  What if I missed something good???

I don't like to miss dialog or scenes from movies or TV shows either, but Twitter?

Ugh.

Image property of Duane Hoffman/msnbc.com

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Now what's an F-Stop again?

Seriously, I think without all my paints and canvases, I might be going a little nuts. They're all packed up and in a storage unit awaiting The Move That Will Not Happen Fast Enough.


So now I'm totally interested in photography. I have always been interested, but that was nipped in the bud pretty early on by the nay-sayers that were my family. Since then, I've gotten past all that, but I just haven't had the time to re-visit. Until recently.  My inspiration is coming from a few sources lately, namely:  Phil McDermott @philmacphoto http://www.philmcdermott.com; John Mead @bluelionphotos http://paper.li/BlueLionPhotos and David Robertson @scot-image http://www.scot-image.co.uk/.  In case you want to know what the work of true professionals looks like, check them out!


I will probably never be a professional photographer, but it sure would be nice to be able to take decent photos of my travels and my dogs. As you can tell from all the pics in my last several blog entries, the skillz, they be alludin' me. But in my defense, there's not one photo of my thumb in the whole bunch!


What's putting the fire under me is that I can't even take a photo of the "supermoon!" I'm thinking, it's the only thing up there - how hard can it be? Go ahead. Laugh. Get it over with. Apparently, it's NOT an easy thing for anyone. So I do feel a bit better about my attempts now. Someone tweeted a great article about it that I now can't find, of course. Man, people tweet fast! But it did a lot of talking over my head about exposure and F-Stops and tripods, etc.


So here's what I did.  






That's as good as I could get it with my little "fool-proof" camera and no tripod. They might have been better if I hadn't been hopped up on caffeine. *grin* (For those interested, I have a Panasonic DMC-FX28 LUMIX, 18X optical zoom, 10 mega-pixels.) All I know it that it has an "a" for automatic, I assume, an icon of a flower for micro, again, assuming, and an icon of a skiier, for moving objects?


So here are some "experiments." (The images enlarge when they're clicked.)  I think the passion flower is the best because of the shadows and light.  But what do I know?


Mimosa


Roses

Wet Palm

Hibiscus

Passion Flower

 And can I just say??? Fireworks are HARD!









I have no clue how to edit them. I have Microsoft Picture It! Photo Premium and I know that because that's where I go to upload the photos from my camera. The extent of my knowledge consists of resizing and cropping.


So, the next thing on my list will be to take some basic photography courses, providing of course, that I don't have to sink thousands into it. Paints are relatively cheap. Cameras and lenses, not so much.


*sigh*  I wonder just how many creative ways I can find to spend money?


Stay tuned...

Beach Time!

Hi errbody!  It's Twinkie again.  I'm a happy dawg! Mommy took us to the beach today and we had a really good time!

We smelled all sorts of new smells and some were really awesome! I could tell Mommy thought so too because she made weird faces when it was really good. I did a good job and I know 'cause Mommy told me so a bunch of times. I was in charge of Murphy. I love Murphy but he's not very smart.  I'm really smart so I hafta make sure he does what Mommy says. She tells him but he doesn't listen.  She's trying something new called a clicker, but I don't think he understands her. So I show him where to go. That's my job 'cause I'm a herder and I'm really good at it!

Mommy took pictures and I'm gonna show you what we did (but I'm not showing you the ones of her thumb 'cause she'd be mad.)

This is Murphy on the way to our adventure.  He looks happy but I think it's 'cause he farted.

The first thing we did was run and jump in the water!  It was so much fun! I swam all over, but Murphy only stood up to his belly. But that's okay. I'll teach him to swim next time.














And then it was time to go home. Herding Murphy wasn't too hard because I'm such a gooddog. He was going the wrong way, but Mommy told me to go get him, so I did and then I raced him back. I'm a lot faster than he is.  I'm faster than anything! See how big we're smiling???



Mommy said we made a big mess in the car and she wishes she hadn't sold the Navigator, but I don't think she minded too bad. And we smell so GOOD now! But I bet she gives us a bath and takes all the good smells away. I think Mommy's smeller is broken.

I love Spring!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Spring!

Dog Days of Summer can't be far behind!

Murphy, the golden-mix, couldn't care less what season it is.  He's a lump.  A big, goofy, lovable doofus of a lump. Cold, hot - it's all the same to him. As long as no one makes him chase anything silly like a tennis ball or a frisbee, he's happy. IQ normal, activity level -2.  He's my "brother."






My name is Twinkie and I'm an Australian Cattle Dog. I'm very VERY smart!  Mommy tells me so all the time.  She tells me that I might have escaped from a Dean Koontz research lab?  I don't know who that is and I don't remember it, but I think Mommy's convinced. I'm THRILLED to see Spring!  Not because I couldn't have just as much fun in winter as in any other season.  No, it's because that's when Mommy stops being such a lump.

All winter I've been dreaming chasing the frisbee or a tennis ball, biting at and frolicking in the water, going to the beach or for a ride on the boat, playing with any dog that will run or wrestle. I really love to play.  I could play and play all day.

Mommy takes pictures of Murphy, too, but they're all the same.  He's ALWAYS taking a nap in them.  That's all he does! He's still a lot younger and kind of a teenager sometimes, but I love him.  Even if he doesn't do all the fun stuff like I do. Mommy takes LOTS of photos of me, but half the time, she gets her thumb.  She says she's going to take some photography classes or at the least, read the manual that came with her "fool-proof" camera.  So far, she only uses the auto setting.

Here are some fun pictures of me doing fun stuff!

Attack of the Dihydrogen Monoxide Monster!

At the ranch...

I see another doggie!!

I love summer.

I wanna go swim with the dolphins!

Fine.  I'll just play by myself.


Quit throwin' it in the TREE, Mommy!

Can't. Quite. Reachhhhhhhh.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!



Don't worry, I got this one.

Oops, the sun was in my eyes.


Beach!!!!

Finally sacked out.  

Mommy notes:  The Twinkster sacked out, as you can see, so I'll finish up for her.

Spring is the only time in South Texas being outside is even remotely tolerable.  Can hardly WAIT to move somewhere we can actually enjoy going outside.  It'll be nice to take walks with the dogs and just DO something other than stay indoors being a couch potato - or being glued to a computer monitor.

FREEEEEEEEEEEDOM!





Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Snapshots of Ireland...

Sorry for the photos not loading! I will see what I can do about getting them back on - in the mean time, check out lots of my vacation and other miscellaneous photos here.



Dublin Night Life
Irish Countryside, County Tipperary
Cottage on Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland
Blarney Castle
West Coast of Ireland, Galway

Georgian Door, Dublin


West Coast of Ireland, County Galway


Blarney Castle
Liffey Bridge, Dublin

Blarney Castle


Irish Countryside, County Tipperary
Buggy, Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland


Cliffs on Inishmore


Northern Ireland Coast

Cobh, Ireland

Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland