Collateral Damage

I was trying to get a picture of the snowy (overnight) landscape in the backyard and the top heavy Christmas Cactus tipped over and hit the window.

This is the action shot of the pot and red flowers skidding over to the window. I now have to repot the top heavy plant into a larger and heavier pot and plant the innocent victims inside the pot which was their former home. Sort of like being at work today.

G had a bad day at work yesterday. So bad, he didn't even want to talk about it. That translated into bad dreams for me last night (because I have deep seated security issues). So, I was awake early and decided to take a shower right away and put clothes on. No sitting around in pajamas until 1 o'clock. Riley is confused. He is wondering if I am going to work and he is going to day care. I am ambivalent. Had to look that up in the frequently misspelled book. There is snow on the driveway. I haven't driven my new Fit on snow yet. Do I want to try it out today? Am I in that particular frame of mind?

Driving is an exercise in fear over need for me. It isn't joyful. There have been moments when I loosened the grip I have on the steering wheel, to actually relax my muscles and just drive, but that usually only happens at red lights. I have to actually want to go somewhere. And it has to be somewhere within my safe driving parameters. No highways. Actually, in the past 2 years, I have only driven in my own town and the one right next door. A radius of less than 20 miles. You can see why finding employment might be difficult for me.

A blog reader and friend steered me to another blog for Doodle help. And in that blog, I noticed that they were referencing a Cloth, Paper, Scissors article on Zentangles. It's the issue with the snowmen on the cover. Zentangles is doodling with rules. The specific designs have names and instructions. There are classes and licensed instructors. Who knew???? I did discover that while you can begin to design with pencil, the majority of the work should be in pen. Less smudging. I also discovered that erasing ruins the surface of the paper I am using. It's not hard enough to withstand even light erasing. Soft isn't a good surface for doodles.

I inked over the pencil lines last night after we ate dinner (at 5 pm) and by 7:30 I was exhausted. So I watched television. I had been looking forward to the PBS program on Louisa May Alcott. My mother wanted to name me after her favorite Little Women character. I think Amy was her first choice. Then Beth (Elizabeth). Then Meg (Margaret). You already know that I got to be Jo. My father didn't like the other three. And a mistake on my birth certificate made me Joanne. One word. My first name was "Jo" and my middle name Anne. When you go to school, at least back in the 1950's, the birth certificate name is the legal one. Period. There are family photos, early on, with our "Jo" written on them. Always with the quotation marks.

Anyway, the program was disappointing. It seems that Louisa destroyed all her journals and correspondence and hand picked her biographer who removed anything of any interest that remained. Turns out, historians can't even locate all the stories that Louisa wrote during her lifetime, or the names she wrote under. She earned over $100,000 dollars (she kept the records of what she earned) and made more money in her lifetime than Thoreau, Melville or any other contemporary male authors. They mentioned them, but I can't remember, as I was tired and the program was getting tedious. Louisa never liked Little Women. I don't know if I ever read it. I did see all the movies.

So, we have three examples of collateral damage in this post. The plant, doodle erasing and my name. Benign. And probably not all that interesting. I'll stop.