Nothing like a good book...

 I was catching up on my goal to read all the Newbery books when I caught my dogs reading Kate DiCamillo's new middle grade novel.           

My zombie reading dogs.

Truckers Can Earn Big Bucks in Texas...

No better time to take a photo than when you're driving right? 

But I've been having a hard time finding a job since we've moved to Texas

 and earning forty cents (obviously the company meant per mile) pays more than blogging. 

Feeling Blue...

Meet Blue

He enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame on Wednesday's CBS Morning News. 

He was the adoption pet of the day. 

After one look at that face, Lorne decided he belonged in our boxer pack.

Blue turned three years old in Jan 2014

Pee Wee will be seven years old in August

Dezzy turned nine years old in Jan 2014 

Do It Ourselves Project

Over Lucy's spring break, our family installed outside lights and wired the attic for a security system.

On the second day of pulling wires, Lucy fell through the garage. 

Never a dull moment in the Texan Woods.

I love Lucy!

 2000 at Grandpa Berry's house

October 2011 

December 2011 Carlsbad State Beach

Christmas with Marina and Rei visiting from Japan. December 2011 Space Mountain, Disneyland CA March 2013. Lucy hates roller coasters... can you tell?

Shiloh and Lucy at an LA Angles game April 2013

Lucy's last birthday party with CA friends 2013


My favorite photos ever... Lucy at her brother's football game 2002

Didn't mean to be depressing in my last post...

I found my yellow crayon today. Thus the reason for my post. I've been busy purging old photos and documents I'd like to delete from my computer. Things I feel are important or funny, but not important enough to clog up my hard drive. So where is the next best place to put them? On the infinite, internet super highway, that's where.

PRIMARY COLORS

I wrote the following poem for a an Equinox party one of my California critique buddies hosted. To me it expresses what life is like for a bipolar personality.

Red is...

Passion

Love

Heart

Blood

Hot

Spicy

Sassy

Selfish

Fire

Anger

Hate

Madness

Me

Blue is... 

            Jeans

Sky

Water

Ice

Cold

Weakness

Sadness

Self-pity

Therapy

Medication

Pain

Yellow is:

            Light

Sunshine

Smile

Gold

Happiness

Stars

Wishing

Fleeting

I’ve lost my yellow crayon.

Without it, I cannot draw a rainbow.

With my two crayons, I make purple and create a bruise.  

I hide it from the world, but it’s always there.

Mixing up the red and blue.  No yellow to prove it’s healing.

I hate blue, so I draw a river with my red crayon.

I want the river to flow until the blue is washed away…

Forever. 

Practice vs. Follow-through

Unlike many conservatives in my wonderful new state, I am grateful for Obama's Health Care Initiative. Without it, insurance companies in Texas would exclude me from obtaining health coverage. But, then again, I had health insurance with Kaiser in California and I think the work medical "PRACTICE" is the appropriate word with that particular insurance company.

Definition of practice: The actual application or use of an idea, belief or method as apposed to theories about such application or use.

Definition of follow-through: The act of continuing a plan, project, scheme, or the like to its completion. 

As I explained in a prior post about my brain surgery in 2012, I was misdiagnosed for over eighteen months, The doctors said I had allergies and asthma when, in reality, I had a brain fluid leak and my brain prolapsed into my sinus cavity. I thought this event would be the last of their incompetence.

I was wrong.

It took a Baylor medical professional to figure out a second medical condition Kaiser overlooked.

Upon my move to Texas I ordered my medical records from Kaiser. When they arrived I read through the lab reports. Every CBC blood test since 2007 came up abnormal. Every complaint I discussed with Kaiser doctors was essentially ignored because the doctors never followed through. 

After my first visit with a Texas physician, I found out I have perspicacious anemia. Within a week, I was scheduled me for a colonoscopy and endoscopy.The procedure proved my colon was fine, but my stomach has a colony of polyps building condos all over my stomach lining. This is a side affect of anemia.

The surgeon sent tissue samples for biopsy and they came back negative for cancer, thank goodness.

It is important for patients to protect themselves and be proactive in their health care. I trusted my health insurance medical professionals and they failed me. It is my sincere hope that everyone obtain copies of their medical records and lab reports. Don't let anyone, especially doctors, practice on you.

1. 
   

A mad dash to understanding the dash...

The em dash took me a while to understand. When I first started writing, all punctuation flummoxed me. One of the first books on the writing craft that helped me understand the basics was Noah Lukeman's A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. 

Here is the basics: 

The parentheses and the em dash are similar, but different. 

For me, the parentheses can be compared to a quiet stream in which the words of your sentences are interrupted, but the water (meaning) still flows around it. 

The em dash interrupts the sentence like a waterfall--its purpose forces the reader to process the information before moving on. In MS Word it is made by stringing two hyphens next to each and the software automatically makes the dashes on line. 

At a writing conference when I first met Deborah Halverson--November 2007--she suggested I read Noah Lukeman's A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. I was going to retype his chapter (pages 111 - 138) but that would have taken me too long and might be considered plagiarism.

The hyphen is used in the parentheses to show sequence and the parentheses quietly tells the reader where the info can be found.

Here is Deborah's link for her blog DearEditor.com and read how she explains it: 

http://deareditor.com/2010/08/04/re-help-for-em-dashaholics/

In addition to page sequences, the hyphen is used for breaking up words that need to drop to the next line, but that's mostly before justification on computers.  The hyphen also connects words like eighteen-year-old or the digits in a phone number.  

What do you think about when you think of the Fine Arts?

Let's refer to the definition:

Fine Art:

1. Creative art, esp. visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content.

2. An activity requiring great skill or accomplishment.

Here in Dallas there's an additional definition.

1. 
   

Makes me wonder what classes I'll need to take to a Bachelors of Fine Arts.