How to comment

I've had some folks askin' how to comment...well, you just click on the number of comments that a post has(ya know, down at the bottom where it says 0 comments) and it will take you to a page where you can write your comment. It took me forever to figure that out!! So, go ahead, leave me some comments!!! And, thanks to all who have!

Things I Learned From My Camera

Things I Learned From My Camera

1. Seen through the camera's lens, bugs are ART. Most of them, anyway.
2. Chihuahuas are fast!! But, with the judicious use of a few vienny wiennies, they can be talked into anything.
3. Cats are natural-born models.
4. Birds are fascinatin'. I had no idea!
5. Sittin' in a field of sunflowers can be fun!!
6. I love, love, love playin' with Photoshop!!
7. Unlike takin' photos of animals, takin' pictures of people is scary...they actually expect them to look good. You can tell I have problems with that one...this is the only picture of a person, taken by me, that I could find!
8. Goin' to the zoo is awesome!!
9. I found out that Rebel loves chipmunks. The hard way. Don't ask. You may be wonderin' what this has to do with my camera...if I hadn't taken such an interest in photographin' the chipmunks, I probably would never have been told about Rebel's doin's.
10. A lot of the ugliness around me looks, if not beautiful, at least interestin', through the camera's lens. I guess that's all for today. If you'd like to see more photos, go here.

There's good news and bad news...

The good news is we finally got some much needed rain. Yay!! The bad news is that it came in the form of a thunderstorm that dumped about an inch and a half of rain on us in a half hour. And, knocked down a lot of limbs, two of them HUGE! One fell out near the road and ended up propped up by another tree. The other one landed on the house. Yeah, bummer. It knocked a hole in the roof.

When I took this pic I was thinkin' about puttin' it in my blog. Little did I know of the much more dramatic photo ops that would soon be comin' my way! If you're interested, take a gander here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melnik55/sets/72157606340800260/. Thankfully, we're all ok...just wish I could say as much for the roof.

Okey dokey. I got myself a blog and now I'm tryin' to figure out what to write about. This is harder than you might think. I live a pretty uneventful life out here on the bayou. Oh, right...I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Melanie (mel to most everybody who knows me) and I'm a 53 year old woman. I am mother to one grown son, Sebe (short for Sebastian), and fostermom to 3 dogs and 2 cats. I am a polymer clay/mixed media artist, collector of many things, avid reader, puzzle worker, amateur photographer and, now, blogger! Heh, heh. I guess that last one will soon be proved or disproved! I have multiple sclerosis...diagnosed in 1989...so my life is different from most of ya'll's. Slower, for sure. I live in the Mississippi Delta with my parents and son. Yes, we all share one house and, no, we don't drive each other crazy. We actually enjoy livin' together. ;o) I am truly so very thankful to be able to live this slower kind of life where I get to know the people that I love the most! This wasn't the life I envisioned for myself when I was growin' up...I lived in books and saw myself as the heroine of most of them. I guess I've always lived in my own world...I don't fit in very well to the "real world". Bein' disabled...now, that's a misnomer if I've ever heard one because most of us can do lots of stuff, just not the stuff that let's us hold down a 9 to 5 job...has given me many advantages, along with the obvious disadvantages. It has allowed me to concentrate on my art, to explore it as much as I care to, to use it as therapy and recreation rather than a means of makin' money (altho I'm not averse to makin' money!). It has allowed me to spend more time with my immediate family because there are things that I need help with, things I couldn't do if I were out on my own. It has given me an excuse to live with my parents long past the time that most folks leave the nest which, in our society, is frowned upon. I have learned to adapt to the circumstances that this illness places upon me and actually enjoy them. Up until 2 months ago, I was walkin' a mile a day and playin' ball with Sebe whenever we felt like it and was feelin' healthier than I had in years. Then I started havin' arm problems...I won't go into all that now...and that ended up throwin' me into an exacerbation. Well, I got 4 days of intravenous treatment with a steroid and then was to be weaned off with prednisone...this gave me almost constant reflux and I ended up stoppin' the prednisone cold turkey. This, of course, threw me into another exacerbation...sometimes you really can't win for losin' !! Anyway, that was a couple of months ago and I'm beginnin' to feel better! Woohooo!!
You know, sometimes your prayers get answered in the weirdest ways. I always pray for humility...it seems so easy (and almost harmless) to become smug about yourself in relation to others. It's so easy to utter platitudes and believe that you are livin' what you're preachin' when you're really not. I always say to people that you only have 2 choices in life...you can either be happy or unhappy and I really do believe that. What I didn't realize is how hard it can be to choose to be happy when your circumstances change or aren't what you can easily adapt to. Durin' this time of the exacerbations, almost all I could do was read. Now, I love to read but everything gets old when you can do nothin' else. I got bored. I found myself gettin' cranky and takin' it out on my family and I was forced to reevaluate some of those platitudes I'd uttered so unthinkingly to others. I had to choose to make myself happy and, in this choice, I felt God's hand. I'm just tellin' ya'll this so you can see that often the things we need come from the things that we don't want. And, I'm extremely thankful that it seems to be comin' to an end!