Category Archives: blogging

A Slice of My Life

Posted on February 17, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Sometimes I am too ill to write a blog post. Does it count if I am too depressed? I feel so self-indulgent even considering such a thing. Ooh, maybe this is a good lead.

That is what I just now posted on Facebook.  Almost before I had copied and pasted it here, a friend had commented that depression IS an illness.  I suppose I feel it counts for everybody but me.  You know, that thing many of us do that we treat our loved ones way better than we treat ourselves.  I know, a lot of people do the opposite, especially with physical indulgences.  However, I know a great many people who will put themselves down using terms they would NEVER employ when talking to a friend.  Just saying.

Where was I?  Ah yes, trying to make a Non-Sequitur Thursday post before I hurriedly get ready for rehearsal for Steel Magnolias at Ilion Little Theatre.  This is what I posted on Facebook earlier:

Here’s the problem: I have so much to do, I not only keep thinking I’m forgetting something, I keep forgetting what it was I was just about to do. Making a list does not help. I not only forget to put stuff on the list, I forget where I put the list!

To make this a true Non-Sequitur Thursday post, I should make a catchy headline that has little or nothing to do with the post.  What is this post about, anyways?  Not much, as is par for the course when I am involved in a show.  Right now I am involved in two shows and need to finish writing two more to begin working on them within the next two weeks.  Yikes!  Why do I do these things to myself?  Ah yes, refer to an earlier paragraph about treating others better than I treat myself.  And I’m not all that freaking nice to others, either!  Happy Thursday, everyone.

 

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Too Much Theatre?

Posted on February 16, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

It’s that moment when you are pondering what, oh what, to make a blog post about and you’ve got just about enough time to do it, and you find out your rehearsal is at 6 not 6:30.  Oh NO!  I can’t handle it! (Said in a dramatic tone of voice, posing with my wrist to my forehead).  Incidentally, it is rehearsal for Steel Magnolias at Ilion Little Theatre, which will be presented the first two weekends in March.

I’m thinking it’s Wuss-out Wednesday, but given that last parenthetical comment, perhaps it is Wrist to Forehead Wednesday.  The sad thing is my husband had just started to tell me a story about his past.  I may have heard it before, but I do not mind a re-run.  That is one of the secrets to a happy marriage (not a very well-kept secret). (A lesser known secret is to have a husband that tells good stories). I guess he’ll have to tell me later.

AND we are watching WKTV News at five, where I believe there is to be a NewsTalk about Rubbed Out at Ruby’s, the murder mystery to be presented by LiFT Theatre Company at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls. DVR to the rescue!

You may have noticed that I am a little stressed lately.  I have mysteries to write, costumes to find, lines to learn and blog posts to make.  And who’s fault is it that I have too much on my plate?  That’s right, the overriding problem in my life is ALWAYS Operator Error.  Maybe I can get caught up on the weekend.  But don’t count on it.  Happy Wednesday, everyone.

 

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The Vagaries of Non-Sequitur Thursday

Posted on February 10, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Well, now I’ve done it.  I sat here stressing over the fact that I CAN’T WRITE A POST TODAY (said in a dramatic voice, with a wrist to my forehead), and my sweet husband, Steven said that he wished I would not put myself through posting every day.  I said, “It’s just because I have rehearsal tonight.  I just have to stop doing PLAYS!”  Oh yeah, like that’s going to happen!

Thus adjured, I put my fingers on the keyboard and started typing.  I can’t stop posting every day, it’s what I do.  But I can’t let my husband feel upset because I am stressed.  So, as of right now, I am not stressed.  About the blog, at least.  I mean, let’s start small.

I just paused to eat a very delicious dinner that Steven fixed.  He really is a most satisfactory husband.

Earlier today I was pondering the vagaries of writing.  I have been having a difficult time lately, but earlier I sat down and wrote a page of dialog with very little problem.  It was part of Rubbed Out at Ruby’s, the interactive murder mystery LiFT Theatre Company is presenting at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls in — yikes! –just a couple of weeks.  I thought to myself, “I can’t write, I can’t write, I can’t write, I sit down and write.”  For some reason I can’t just skip to the last step.

I just know that some of you are sitting there smirking, “Well, have you TRIED?”  Yes, I have.  In fact, most of the time I want to have at least a couple more rounds of “I can’t write, I can’t write” before “I sit down and write,” but I somehow manage to write.  Like right now.  Then again, perhaps that is not the best example, since this is just another of my foolish posts about I Can’t Write a Post Today.  Then again (I can have as many “again”s as I want; it’s not like “on the other hand,” where most of us only have two hands), today is Non-Sequitur Thursday.  If I can think of a punchy headline, I’m all set.

Hope to see you all on Lame Post Friday.

 

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Steven and Me and Bobby McGee

Posted on February 3, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I’ve been sitting here staring at the blank screen and half watching a re-run of Reba, and I feel completely unable to write a blog post.  Now Reba is over and Steven has found an episode of Snapped on Reelz.  I have to leave for rehearsal for Steel Magnolias (at Ilion Little Theatre, remember?)  in about an hour.  Oh, crap, and I have to curl my hair.  They’re taking head shots again.  I hate having my picture taken!

So I’m having a kind of a mental meltdown.  How embarrassing.  I am such a huge baby! In my defense… OK, I have no defense.  I had a migraine today, but it wasn’t all that bad of a migraine.  I made it through work.  It kind of went away when I drove to New Hartford for a doctor’s appointment.  Now it’s back.  So what?  Many people have headaches.  They take an aspirin and drive on.

Speaking of driving on, the Mohawk Valley weather has been living up to its “wait five minutes” reputation today.  When I drove to and from my appointment, the snow came down like it meant business.  The roads weren’t too bad, but they were wet and no doubt would get worse.  Yikes!  I got back to work and the sun came out.  A beautiful afternoon!  Swell!  The snow dumped down again as I drove home. OK, whatever.  The sun has come and gone twice since I’ve been home.  Go home, February, you’re drunk!

AAAAAAaaaand I just remembered: it is Non-Sequitur Thursday.  All I have to do is think of a catchy headline that doesn’t have anything to do with this foolish post and I’m done.  And, yes, I did feel I needed all those a’s in the first word of this paragraph.

 

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Any Anniversary at my Age

Posted on January 31, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

So there I was, looking at Facebook and wondering what I could make a blog post about when on my On This Day, I noticed:  Five years ago today was my first Middle-aged Musings Monday!  I know that has largely been replaced by Monday Mental Meanderings, but it just seems so perfect:  I’m looking for a topic, I notice an anniversary.  So I’m going to middled-agedly muse.

OK, so far I don’t have much to muse about.  I had kind of a lost weekend from not feeling well and not being especially ambitious before I started feeling unwell.  There must be some sort of truism about how your level of ambition is usually indirectly proportional to the amount of things you need to accomplish.  Indirectly proportional, if I am remembering junior high math class correctly (if that was even where I learned it) means as one goes up, the other goes down.  In other words, I have a lot to get done. I need to make a list.  And then start actually doing the things on the list.

Naturally the first thing on my list would be Make Blog Post.  It is, in fact, one of the few things I reliably get done.  Not always easily.  For example, just now it took me several tries to type in a sentence because I couldn’t quite make up my mind if using “reliably”  and “on a regular basis” in the same sentence would constitute a tautology.  Tautology is when you say the same thing more than once.  It is redundant.  Yes, that is a joke I make on a regular basis:  You used a tautology by being redundant and saying the same thing more than once!

As you may guess, I am not feeling a whole hell of a lot better than I did yesterday.  I went to the doctor today, and I’ll probably have something else to complain about soon.  In the meantime, I need to eat more chicken soup.  I’ll try for a better blog post on Tired Tuesday.

 

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Not Useful But Not a Bad Saturday

Posted on January 22, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Once again, I post in haste on a Saturday so I can get back to enjoying my evening.  Hey, bloggers like to relax on their days off, too, you know!  I am at the coveted bra off, sweats on, wine drinking, TV watching, with husband hanging portion of the evening.  Why did I not post earlier in anticipation of this time?  No good reason.  I could not think of anything good to post about, but, really, when has that stopped me?

It has not been a usefully-spent Saturday.  I don’t know if I even did enough to warrant a Scattered Saturday post, but let’s try anyways.  We slept in till 6:30 this morning and could have slept even later but Steven had to go to work.  Rats!  After we hung out and had coffee, and I made my usual Saturday morning phone call to my parents (I call them other times, too, of course, but the Saturday morning call is kind of a thing), I started writing post cards (another Saturday morning thing).

I waited till after Steven had left and I took Spunky for a business meeting to walk to the post office.  Spunky did not walk with me.  He doesn’t seem to care for long walks.  I started making it an even longer walk than last week, but I got kind of cold and depressed, so I walked back home sooner than planned.  At least I got some exercise.

Back home I worked a little more on the murder mystery LiFT Theatre Company is doing at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls, NY.  I read a few of the newspapers that collected all week (I don’t get the chance to read them every day).  I looked at Facebook.  I took a short nap on the couch.  I did a load of laundry and folded the last two or three that have been waiting to be folded (don’t judge me).  I talked to my sister on the telephone.

Finally I judged it OK to pour myself a glass of wine and sit down in front of the television with my knitting.  Ah, my favorite time of day.  After a while I changed into my sweats and started fixing a fairly interesting dinner.  At last Steven came home!  Now he is looking at the television and waiting for me to finish my blog post so we can go on to the movie watching portion of the evening.  And I think I’m there.  Happy Saturday, everyone.

 

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Typing… About… Writing…

Posted on January 16, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Must… get… blog… post… written.

You know, like in the comic books?  I don’t read a lot of comic books, but I know there is often a frame with the hero going through something dire and saying he must… do… something…  I find that perfectly appropriate for Wrist to Forehead Sunday.

I truly am feeling very wrist to foreheady this afternoon.  For anyone just tuning in, wrist to forehead refers to the old timey heroines about to swoon.  I stole the expression “wrist to forehead” from a former co-worker.  I think I made the pose and she said, “It’s a wrist to forehead situation.”  I know I have explained this before, so my apologies to longtime readers for being redundant.

The reason for my current angst is that I am having the damnedest time writing.  Yesterday I managed six post cards and a blog post.  I have other things to write!  What the blankety-blank is my problem?  I know, I know, I have to just sit down and bloody well do it.  Well, I am.  The first thing I have to write is today’s blog post.  And here I am, typing away at it (as Truman Capote famously said, and as I have previously quoted, “That’s not writing, that’s typing”).

And I see I am over 200 words.  That is all I require of myself for a blog post.  Self-indulgent, you say?  That could be.  Then again, I am not burdening my readers with too long of a post.  I don’t always read the really long posts myself.  Oh dear, any bloggers reading this who make really long posts might take offense at that.  Then again, you never know. Maybe I read all of THEIR posts, and it’s the BORING long posts I give up on.  I hope nobody has given up on me.  That would really be a wrist to forehead situation.

 

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A Beer or Wine with Joan?

Posted on January 12, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

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I am  learning more about including pictures in the blog.  It is very exciting for me.  This picture was in our laptop’s downloads. I think my husband, Steven, may have used it for a profile picture last October.  It appeals to me, because I love skellingtons and I love beer.  In fact, it has not been a bad day at all.  But I am quite tired and cannot think of anything to make a blog post about.  Let’s see if there are any more fun pictures in the downloads, to make this a kind of a Wordless Wednesday post (I think we’ve already discussed that I am almost never entirely wordless) (and “Wordless Wednesday” sounds SO much more respectable than “Wuss-out Wednesday”).

 

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This is my current Facebook profile picture.  I was having a Lizzie Borden kind of a day (another profile I’ve used is a plaque that says, “I’m having a Lizzie Borden kind of a day”).  The picture is Joan Crawford in Straitjacket, a William Castle flick and one of my favorites.  I wonder if I’ve ever written a blog post about it.  I believe I mentioned it once on Severed Head Sunday (one of my favorite days).

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For our last photo of the day (I think three is a good number, don’t you?), I show you my Facebook cover photo.  It is a lovely welcome mat which was given to Steven and me by our dear friend, Bruce.  Bruce’s most frequent comment on any of my Facebook posts is, “It’s WINE TIME!!!”  I like the way he thinks.  Happy Wednesday, everybody.

 

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Monday Mental Muck

Posted on January 10, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Well, I would have a Monday Mental Meanderings post, but my brain is mired in the muck (just to alliterate a little further).  Seriously, my thought processes seem to have slowed down almost to a halt.  In fact, they may be moving backwards.  Oh dear.

There.  I just took a break and read a couple of blogs. I don’t know how I thought that was going to help, but I thought it couldn’t hurt and it is the only chance I will have to read any blogs before tomorrow night.  I have rehearsal tonight.  I know, I know, it is not yet time for this blog to become All Steel Magnolias All The Time.  That time will come much closer to production, I hope.

Here is my problem:  I can’t write.

I know, I know, one must be merciless in the matter of mood (I think that is a quote, but I do not remember who said it.  I hope I do not have it exactly right as it might constitute plagiarism) (which some say is the sincerest form of flattery).  Well, here I am, aren’t I?  I’m at the keyboard, typing away and, as you can see, nothing very good is coming out.   Could this be Wrist to Forehead Monday?

Earlier today I tried to write.  It did not work out very well at all.  Not one word made it from brain to paper.   And you can clearly see not much brain is at work in the words I’m typing here.  This may be my worst post about I Can’t Write a Post Today yet (I’ve labeled some “Why I Can’t Write a Post Today” and some “How I Can’t Write a Post Today,” but I feel that today the how and why eludes me).

 

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Lame Production

Posted on December 31, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

What’s wrong with Lame Post Friday anyways?  Have I used that lead before?  No matter.  I typed in two or three leads earlier and backspaced them out, I am determined not to do that again.  I asked yesterday if bloggers got vacations.  Today I answer my own question: Yes, we do, and this is mine!  I’m going to post my usual foolishness and NOT feel guilty about it?  Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The weather was better today than yesterday, but my level of productiveness held steady at the low level I have been at all week.  That I feel guilty about. Then again, I have three more days off before I go back to work.  Who knows how much I can get done?  I know, some of you are saying YOU know and it isn’t damn much (you know who you are).

What is this preoccupation with being productive anyways?  Why can’t we just BE?  (Ooh, I just flashed on Hamlet. Not my favorite Shakespeare soliloquy, by the way.)  That sounds remarkably like the half-baked philosophy in which I often indulge on Lame Post Friday.  I’m afraid the only things I can think of to say, though, strike me as painfully obvious.

Namely, that there is no point in being productive for its own sake, just to say, “Ah, I accomplished something today.”  However, there are specific things one might like to accomplish.  For example, I clean my house because I want to enjoy sitting in a clean house, not so I can say, “Ha-ha!  I just spend two hours cleaning my house!”

And now I have the dreadfully uncomfortable feeling that sometimes I publish a blog post merely so I can say, “Ha-ha!  I published a blog post!”  How mortifying.  I guess I’m not too mortified to hit “Publish,” though.  For one reason, I said in the first paragraph I was not going to feel guilt about it. So there.

 

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