OPEN LETTER OF EXCITEMENT AND DISBELIEF!!!!! [Cue the bells and whistles and confetti]

Dear 10,000^th Visitor,

Who were you? Come on, confess! I have a present for you! (Other than my undying love which is a given.)

I hope you were someone I know! Or at the very least someone who knows someone I know. Or someone who knows someone who knows me, but I don’t know them.

Really, I just hope you weren’t a spammer.

I’ve been hit by those recently and would be bummed if I had to give my “You’re Awesomely Awesome for Visiting Me” present to federal student loan or lottery gambling.

In any event, thank you! Thank you for stopping by, even if it was accidental, and you only looked at my blog for a nanosecond. I still love you!

So, tell me who you were so you can collect your gift*.

And come back soon!

Gratefully yours,

Liz

*Would it help you to confess if I told you about the present? Well, it’s a one-of-a-kind mixed media piece by yours truly entitled “To the Super Best Blog Reader in the World.” Who wouldn't want that?

Office Update

I just realized that I’ve never shown you pictures of how I’ve transformed my little cubicle of despair.

It’s still gray.

It still only has a sliver of a window that overlooks my garden of air conditioning units.

And it’s still between two women who like to keep the room like a dark stifling dungeon.

But, I’ve made it much chipper! More chipper? Chippier? Maybe I shouldn’t use chipper? But just say happier? Well, you get the idea…

In case you don’t remember the absolute gloom of my original office condition, here’s a picture:

And now, here’s how I’ve livened it up:

This is a picture of my postcard collection. It adds a lot of color, don’t you think? Also, it’s a great tool for my meditation. When I need a little mental break, I just pick a card, let’s say, Oaxaca Mexico, and I focus on it and imagine myself there, really there, feeling the breeze on my skin as I’m being taken to the top of a pyramid to be sacrificed to the gods of humdrum.

Here’s a picture from another angle. As you can see, my back faces the opening of my tomb..er..cubicle. I have a mirror on my monitor to combat sneaky folks from sneakily sneaking up on me. And that sign on the back of my chair says “I can’t hear you. I’m wearing headphones.” You don’t know how many times people have started talking to me and I have no idea. And then they walk away thinking I’m rude, or mad at them or something. Hence the sign. I got tired of putting out fires.

This picture captures a couple of things. First, my window crack. (It looks much bigger in the picture than it feels in real life.) Second, a picture of one of my dead boyfriends, Mr. Walt Whitman. And third, my zen bonsai plant. Since I couldn’t see greenery out my window, I placed some in front of it.

Here’s a close up of the two little friends who came with my bonsai tree. I call them Chin and Steve. (Chin is on the left, holding a white scroll of ancient wisdom.) These guys really help me keep things in perspective. They’re always telling me “You are greater than your job. You hold infinite potential. Creative forces constantly flow through your life. Stop imagining your death in Oaxaca.” They’re great guys!

Well, there you go. Now you see where I spend the majority of my daylight time. (And you can be grateful that you don’t have to.)

I’ll leave you with a quote I have tacked up by my computer: “It is ordinary to love the marvelous, but it is marvelous to love the ordinary.” I don’t know who said that, but they were spot on! And I’m trying!!

Do you want to see it?

Then look over here!

And then stay tuned on this blog for an explanation on the spiritual/mental/emotional transformation that occurred as I worked on it.

Visual Aids Inside My Mind

A personal blog is all about sharing oneself with the world (or, really, the six people who know you have a blog).

And as I was thinking about that and how much I go on and on about myself, ad nauseam, I thought I’d do something new.

It’s still about me, of course, but instead of talking, I thought I’d show you. (Well, I guess I’ll have to do a little talking for explanation. So, maybe it's not new. It's just me blabbing on, but with pictures. Oh well...)

With that, here are the TOP FIVE Favorite Things in my bedroom:

1. This is my favorite picture. It’s of a crumbly old abbey in Ireland. You can't read the name of the abbey, but it’s “Hore Abbey.” I imagine it was an abbey for past women of easy virtue. When I go to Ireland, I’m tracking down this place and I’m going to frolic about with the cows.

2. This is my guitar. Isn’t it beautiful? I like to just hold it, and feel the wood grain as I beg its forgiveness for my lousy playing. You’d think after 3 years of lessons, I’d do better. Sigh… I haven’t named it yet, so if you have any suggestions, let me know! (I thought about Lucille, but I think that name is taken...)

3. This is my easel. It makes me feel all art-y just looking at it. The mixed media painting I’m working on (you can see its backside in the picture) is for Katie’s birthday. I’m about 6 months late. In my defense, this is actually the second painting I’ve started for her. The first one was given to Mr. A. Dumpster. It was horrible! This one’s coming along nicely. (Dear Katie, Please forgive me. I’m working really hard on your piece and am almost done. I’m only waiting for the quilting iron I ordered, so I can smooth out the beeswax, and then it's all yours. Pinky swear! Love, Liz)

4. This is my Shakespeare canister that holds all my paint brushes. I got it at Big Lots for $4.99. Yes, Big Lots. And I love it! Initially, I was trying to think of something else to store in it besides brushes. You know, something literary, like a scroll of some sort. But, I didn’t have any scrolls. So, then I put Post It notes in it, and that just seemed like a slap in the face to the entire creative world. So, brushes it is! I think Shakespeare would be okay with that.

5. And last, but not least, is my bedside carafe. I think everyone bedroom should have a carafe. Why, you ask? Well, first of all, when you wake up in the middle of the night, dying of thirst, you know you have clean water waiting for you. No dust in it. No hair. No bugs. Nothing! (Trust me; even if you’re half asleep, taking a swig of water with hair in it is no fun!) And, secondly, who doesn’t want to say “I have a bedside carafe.” Talk about being fancy!

Well, there you go friends. Some visual aids to help explain who I am, and what brings me joy!

If you want, take pictures of the five favorite things in your room and post them. (Or, if you don’t have a camera, write about your top five.)

I’d love to see (and hear) what you surround yourself with to make you happy!

A Digression (Or really, look over there...)

I posted on my almost-a-complete-waste-of-time poetry blog.

Give it a look see, if you want.

Oh, and I've posted on my book blog, too. (In case you can't get enough of me...)

Question: What’s big, and heavy, and rectangle inside and out?

Answer: A box of books!

So, I belong to a book society/group that sends me monthly catalogs of books I've never heard of. Most of the time, I don’t order anything. (I already have stacks of books to read, after all.)

But about a month or so ago, they sent me an email saying that if I send them $50, they’ll send me a surprise box of books.

Now, how could I pass that up!

What I expected to get was a bunch of junk—stuff I would NEVER read or purchase on my own. But, I’m a sucker for the element of surprise. So, I sent them my money, and then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Until one magical day, when I walked up the stairs, and saw my front door. There, resting as a possible safety hazard, was a beautiful cardboard box with my name on it!

And inside, I found joy in the form of seven blessed books!

They weren’t crap!

I’d actually read them!

Yay!

In case you can’t read all the titles, here they are:

The Traditional Shops and Restaurants of London (Now I’m ready for my trip to this great city! Who’s with me?)

Elements of the Table (Throwing a fancy party and want to know how to wow your guests? Well, this is the book for that. You know I’m going to use this for my next event!)

Reading Like a Writer (You all know how my favorite books to read are books on how to read! This is perfect!)

Drives Like a Dream (This is a novel I’d never heard of, but since I’ve started to write another book, (Did I tell you guys that?), I’m reading as many books as I can to “study the craft.”)

Gatsby’s Girl (Another novel for craft studying! This one looks pretty interesting…)

Cakes and Ale (I’ve never read anything by W. Somerset Maugham, but have always wanted to.)

And last, but not least,

101 Best Scenes Ever Written (Could this be more perfect for me right now?)


I wish every day I could come home and find a box on my doormat filled with surprises.

Don’t you?

What a way to live!

How I spent yesterday on the job… (Of course, I’m leaving out the majority of my “work”, so as not to bore my reader(s).)

- Stared out the crack of a window I have in my cubicle, wondering how I ended up here.

- Sat with Trainee as we went over a report that should have taken us 30 minutes but instead took us two and a half hours…and we’re still not done…guess how I’m spending today…sigh…

- Googled (That’s a verb now, right?) different words for “psychic.” Why, you ask? Can’t tell you. At least not yet. Possibly never. So, don’t hold your breath.

- Met with a guarantor rep. who tried to sell me on their financial literacy program. And yes, it was as exciting as it sounds.

- Realized that I’ve developed an annoying habit of spelling out words while adding “to the” in the middle of them. For example, here’s a sentence I actually said “Man, I really H to the A T E that song.” Heaven help me! (If I do this while talking to you, first, forgive me. Second, tell me to knock it off.)

- Stared out the crack of a window I have in my cubicle, wondering how I ended up here, and noticed that they added another unit in my air-conditioning garden.

- Walked to the university’s library to get 4 of the 23 books I’ve requested on freelancing while talking to Rachel on the phone. (I mean I was on the phone while walking to the library, and not that I have some weird need to freelance only while talking to Rachel—although that probably would be helpful since she’s hilarious.)

- Spent the majority of my lunch hour continuing my psychic research. Man, there’s a lot of stuff out there! And I do not recommend doing such research while at work because a) you can be taken to some questionable websites, b) if a co-worker happens to peek into your cubie, you have some explaining to do, and c) it’s so fascinating that you might spend your entire lunch hour on it and then feel sad that you didn’t go outside to escape the gray box of your work environment.

- Talked with my co-workers about food storage, and then tried to convince them that Mormons aren’t a bunch of kooks with ready-to-use bomb shelters for when it’s “the end of days”.

- Got roped into joining an office potluck. (Even though it broke the most sacred vow made on the head of my first born to never participate in voluntary potlucks. (Mandatory potlucks are another story.))

- Listened to the song “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille about 10 times trying to figure out some words, only to realize I could have googled (verb) the lyrics in 10 seconds and satisfied my curiosity.

- Stared out the crack of a window I have in my cubicle, watching water drip from one of the units, while wondering how I ended up here.

Well, that was a bit of my yesterday. I'll spare you from what I did when I got home--part of which I'm ashamed of. (Let's just say it has something to do with a woman named Tori, and a man named Dean, breaking my other cardinal rule of never watching reality tv based on the lives of the semi-famous.)

Don’t you all wish you could trade lives with me?

Please?

Someone?