Any of you who have read my posts for over a year may remember that I went to Italy last December. And it was not good, for me or Italy. I was totally stressed out before I went and I met up with my daughter who had been living there, for a jaunt that would take in towns all over the country, while dragging along many bags, one that was the size and weight of a small refrigerator, and the one that gave my daughter the most trouble, that was the size and weight of her mother.
At least two of my sisters and my mother are going to be in Venice until the end of next week, and now I read in my brother's blog that he has also headed to a gorgeous spot in Italy. The picture on his last entry is of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast line. Gorgeous! I can still picture the ocean views of Gore Vidal's cliff hugging home there, from Architectural Digest.
So, I feel like it is time to tell Italy that I'm ready for a second date.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Recovering eBay Addict
I discovered eBay back when you could have a three digit password. When giving a reason for why I went to the web site in the first place, I kind of point the finger at my grandmother, even though she was no longer with us. She had a modest collection of small coffee cups and saucers, espresso size, known as demitasse cups. I thought they were really cute and my three sisters, my step mother and I split up her collection and we each got a few.
It could be hereditary, but tiny things like that have attracted me ever since I was little. In kindergarten on the base in Japan, they had a little grocery line set up with small versions of canned soup, etc.. I went nuts when I saw the tiny Tabasco bottles in military MRE's one of my sons had, and yes, I have saved one.
I decided to see if I could find some pretty demitasses on eBay. You could spend years going to antique stores and never see anything but a couple of ugly ones. Big waste of time. EBay is a collector's dream. You want something obscure? They will have it, and perhaps thousands of different ones to choose from. This is how I became an expert on my chosen obsession, silly as it is. I'm not going to count them all, but I have well over 200.
Well you'd think that would be plenty, but there are always those that are gorgeous but that I know will be out of my price range when the bidding is over. Every now and then everyone who will bid a great item up to a couple of hundred dollars, will have overlooked it because of a mistake in the description or the seller won't know what the china mark means, or some other good luck for me. But as I said I don't need a bigger collection, and as soon as I get a camera that will work with my new computer, I'm going to try to sell off the ones that I'm no longer in love with.
I used to have my own store on eBay, Beautiful Mind Fine Art, selling stuff I wanted to get rid of, plus large prints of Savant's art work and the cookie jars I make [see november 2005 archives for some of Savant's older pieces, and march/april 2006 archives for some of my older cookie jars that aren't always used for cookies]. I may start that back up now that my co-dependent is off at college, taking a course load of one class. It may be a good time to sell more of his work called Chomsky.
One of the drawbacks on eBay is sellers who have a screw loose. I had one guy in England reply to my email, regarding shipping, with outrage that I was yelling at him! I had no idea that if you type using the caps lock, or if your font size is larger than this, some people think you are yelling at them. I was using a larger font in capitols because I just liked it. When the plate came, it was completely smashed to bits, in a box that didn't have a dent! You can sometimes spot the nut jobs before you get stuck in a transaction with them, by looking at their negative feedback.
I spotted something great with a tiny opening bid and was tempted until I checked the guy's feedback and decided there was no way I'd ever do business with him. I have copied some of his replies to complaints to give you an idea of why this seller rates as a nut job:
1. Complaint: NON-SELLING SELLER. Paid TWICE aggressive seller refused to complete sale BEWARE
Reply by seller: PROUD TO HAVE SOLD AT A £60 LOSS, YOU NEVER PAID SO STOP TELLING PORKIES
2. Complaint: Item was damaged prior to dispatch, ignored emails, not recommended as ebayer
Reply by seller: vindictive and malicious comments made me cry for days..pass me the tissues
3. Complaint: Seller threatens negative feedback when I complain about shipment problem
Reply by seller: Not that I use them, however I have a number for a 1st class shrink for you.
I'm starting to wonder if this is the same guy who sent the broken plate.
We sold our tractor and bush hog, and a vintage sports car on eBay with no problem. The people who bought the tractor and bush hog, drove down from Ohio and picked it up in a snow storm. The person who bought the MG, sent it to Europe where it was bought by someone in the Netherlands who emailed us that he was thrilled with the car and wanted to know if we would send him the Tennessee Vintage Car lisence plate it wore here. We sent him the lisence plate and he sent us a picture of the car!
It could be hereditary, but tiny things like that have attracted me ever since I was little. In kindergarten on the base in Japan, they had a little grocery line set up with small versions of canned soup, etc.. I went nuts when I saw the tiny Tabasco bottles in military MRE's one of my sons had, and yes, I have saved one.
I decided to see if I could find some pretty demitasses on eBay. You could spend years going to antique stores and never see anything but a couple of ugly ones. Big waste of time. EBay is a collector's dream. You want something obscure? They will have it, and perhaps thousands of different ones to choose from. This is how I became an expert on my chosen obsession, silly as it is. I'm not going to count them all, but I have well over 200.
Well you'd think that would be plenty, but there are always those that are gorgeous but that I know will be out of my price range when the bidding is over. Every now and then everyone who will bid a great item up to a couple of hundred dollars, will have overlooked it because of a mistake in the description or the seller won't know what the china mark means, or some other good luck for me. But as I said I don't need a bigger collection, and as soon as I get a camera that will work with my new computer, I'm going to try to sell off the ones that I'm no longer in love with.
I used to have my own store on eBay, Beautiful Mind Fine Art, selling stuff I wanted to get rid of, plus large prints of Savant's art work and the cookie jars I make [see november 2005 archives for some of Savant's older pieces, and march/april 2006 archives for some of my older cookie jars that aren't always used for cookies]. I may start that back up now that my co-dependent is off at college, taking a course load of one class. It may be a good time to sell more of his work called Chomsky.
One of the drawbacks on eBay is sellers who have a screw loose. I had one guy in England reply to my email, regarding shipping, with outrage that I was yelling at him! I had no idea that if you type using the caps lock, or if your font size is larger than this, some people think you are yelling at them. I was using a larger font in capitols because I just liked it. When the plate came, it was completely smashed to bits, in a box that didn't have a dent! You can sometimes spot the nut jobs before you get stuck in a transaction with them, by looking at their negative feedback.
I spotted something great with a tiny opening bid and was tempted until I checked the guy's feedback and decided there was no way I'd ever do business with him. I have copied some of his replies to complaints to give you an idea of why this seller rates as a nut job:
1. Complaint: NON-SELLING SELLER. Paid TWICE aggressive seller refused to complete sale BEWARE
Reply by seller: PROUD TO HAVE SOLD AT A £60 LOSS, YOU NEVER PAID SO STOP TELLING PORKIES
2. Complaint: Item was damaged prior to dispatch, ignored emails, not recommended as ebayer
Reply by seller: vindictive and malicious comments made me cry for days..pass me the tissues
3. Complaint: Seller threatens negative feedback when I complain about shipment problem
Reply by seller: Not that I use them, however I have a number for a 1st class shrink for you.
I'm starting to wonder if this is the same guy who sent the broken plate.
We sold our tractor and bush hog, and a vintage sports car on eBay with no problem. The people who bought the tractor and bush hog, drove down from Ohio and picked it up in a snow storm. The person who bought the MG, sent it to Europe where it was bought by someone in the Netherlands who emailed us that he was thrilled with the car and wanted to know if we would send him the Tennessee Vintage Car lisence plate it wore here. We sent him the lisence plate and he sent us a picture of the car!
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Some Things Can't Be Fixed
A piece of junk mail, with Newton, Massachusetts as the return address, came a couple of days ago. We used to live there. Before I lived there, I believed, as almost everyone does, that the city called Boston was the large one on maps marked with that name. In reality, Boston is one part of a conglomerate of small cities. For instance Harvard and M.I.T. are really in Cambridge. One city blends seamlessly into the next. It is hard to know where the "big" Boston ends. Newton is on the western edge of the larger metropolitan space, and is itself divided into sections. If you live in Newton Lower Falls, that is different from Newton Center, or Waban, etc.. Lower Falls borders Wellesley and we lived about a block from where they meet.
From our kitchen window, we could see the Boston Marathon runners on Washington street, though it was more fun to walk down the hill and sit on the sidewalk. The highlight of the day, which always brought me to tears, was to see the Hoyts. Dick Hoyt, runs all of the marathons pushing his handicapped son Rick in a racing wheelchair. The feeling of their love was nothing short of stunning.
Near that corner is an old graveyard. I was fascinated by the old headstones and the inscriptions that left so many questions unanswered. The one that interested me the most was the stone for the Moulton family. Our street was named after them. The stone was very tall and listed the births and deaths of many children. All of them but one, died as infants or as very young children. Some died within days of each other. I tried to imagine how this couple could survive the loss of so many babies. I still wonder why they all died. I know that back in their time, many families lost young children to what we now consider simple or avoidable illnesses. I can not imagine how difficult it must be to experience that kind of tragedy over and over again. How did they do it?
It is probably because of the unexpected things that have happened to my family members, that the recurring theme of my thoughts today is of parents, children, loss, and love. When the loss is associated with one or more of your children, the result can be crushing pain. Most of the time you may seem to be handling it well, and it becomes easier to appear occupied with the mundane tasks which make up much of life, that you have moved on in a healthy way. No one wants to hear, more than once, if at all, that you are forever broken inside. It is a topic that should be kept to oneself. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and soldier on. Do you think you are the first person who has had it rough? Other people have had it much worse than you and they bore it with grace. I already know all those sayings, and they tell me that I can't even do this right, this suffering.
I cannot write or create art when I am in the depths of grief. If you think Van Gogh did, you are wrong. It was in between, when he was feeling better that his art was made. His suffering was part of what he had to survive in life, but his work stopped when he was in the depths of his psychosis and mental anguish. The pain had to recede at least somewhat to let the art out. I watch Savant lose and regain his abilities in much the same way.
I wrote "In The Rain" because I wanted to see if I could capture in words, at least one day when I was so consumed with sadness that my body felt numb except for the knots in my chest and stomach and the cry in my throat. I wish I had never felt that way more than once, but the truth is that I have felt this way, at times, throughout my life.
The rainy day was months after Savant's disease turned on, and my devistation was so overwhelming, that every time I came out of the numbness that followed the anguish, I would know, as if knowing it for the first time, that he was gone forever, and Love and Time and God could not change the finality of that fact; and the pain would hit with me with full force again. My husband found me and carried me into the house, got me out of my dress and into a warm bath and then into bed.
From our kitchen window, we could see the Boston Marathon runners on Washington street, though it was more fun to walk down the hill and sit on the sidewalk. The highlight of the day, which always brought me to tears, was to see the Hoyts. Dick Hoyt, runs all of the marathons pushing his handicapped son Rick in a racing wheelchair. The feeling of their love was nothing short of stunning.
Near that corner is an old graveyard. I was fascinated by the old headstones and the inscriptions that left so many questions unanswered. The one that interested me the most was the stone for the Moulton family. Our street was named after them. The stone was very tall and listed the births and deaths of many children. All of them but one, died as infants or as very young children. Some died within days of each other. I tried to imagine how this couple could survive the loss of so many babies. I still wonder why they all died. I know that back in their time, many families lost young children to what we now consider simple or avoidable illnesses. I can not imagine how difficult it must be to experience that kind of tragedy over and over again. How did they do it?
It is probably because of the unexpected things that have happened to my family members, that the recurring theme of my thoughts today is of parents, children, loss, and love. When the loss is associated with one or more of your children, the result can be crushing pain. Most of the time you may seem to be handling it well, and it becomes easier to appear occupied with the mundane tasks which make up much of life, that you have moved on in a healthy way. No one wants to hear, more than once, if at all, that you are forever broken inside. It is a topic that should be kept to oneself. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and soldier on. Do you think you are the first person who has had it rough? Other people have had it much worse than you and they bore it with grace. I already know all those sayings, and they tell me that I can't even do this right, this suffering.
I cannot write or create art when I am in the depths of grief. If you think Van Gogh did, you are wrong. It was in between, when he was feeling better that his art was made. His suffering was part of what he had to survive in life, but his work stopped when he was in the depths of his psychosis and mental anguish. The pain had to recede at least somewhat to let the art out. I watch Savant lose and regain his abilities in much the same way.
I wrote "In The Rain" because I wanted to see if I could capture in words, at least one day when I was so consumed with sadness that my body felt numb except for the knots in my chest and stomach and the cry in my throat. I wish I had never felt that way more than once, but the truth is that I have felt this way, at times, throughout my life.
The rainy day was months after Savant's disease turned on, and my devistation was so overwhelming, that every time I came out of the numbness that followed the anguish, I would know, as if knowing it for the first time, that he was gone forever, and Love and Time and God could not change the finality of that fact; and the pain would hit with me with full force again. My husband found me and carried me into the house, got me out of my dress and into a warm bath and then into bed.
Monday, September 18, 2006
In The Rain
When I feel this bad, I want to be near the trees. I know it is raining. It feels cool and wet and makes my dress stick to my skin. I don't think I have shoes on, just a dress. Walking into the tall weeds of an unmown field, my hands are out above my sides, grazing the tops of the plants. I lie down. No one can see me here. Insects are welcome to join the weeds and rain upon my skin. I am the same as them. The word, WHY, is growing silent now. The anguish is being replaced by calm. I want to sleep here. I reach up with one hand and run it over the wet plants. There are flowers in here. I didn't notice them before. The rain continues to fall, replacing the tears that have stopped. I want to sleep here. Now from my mouth, the words directed toward the sky, "No! No! No! No..." Fading into an ache in my chest and stomach. It can't be true, but, No.. it is. IT IS
I roll over on the ground. The crying begins again and I cover my face with the plants. I want to be near the trees. I stand up and walk slowly to the pine trees. The pine trees, my babies, I put you in the ground when you were the size of my hand. I want to feel your trunks with my hands, your wet needles with my face. You are so beautiful. I fall to my knees and lie down under the branches that come close to the ground. The world will never be the same, now. How many times have others felt this. Millions I guess. It is unbearable, but it has to be born; God, no other choice is given. I am only strong enough to stay on the ground in the rain. To leave, to leave is calling me, the liquid will mix with the rain and I will go to sleep. It would take strength I don't have to make the opening. And I can't leave you alone. I'm useless, covered with dirt leaves rain mud crying crying No no it can't be true. But it is. IT IS! Again I rise upon the wave of the reality of the horror, in a while it recedes and I am numb again. Thank God for the receding pain.
I want to lie in the field below the weeds in the cool rain. I want to sleep here.
I roll over on the ground. The crying begins again and I cover my face with the plants. I want to be near the trees. I stand up and walk slowly to the pine trees. The pine trees, my babies, I put you in the ground when you were the size of my hand. I want to feel your trunks with my hands, your wet needles with my face. You are so beautiful. I fall to my knees and lie down under the branches that come close to the ground. The world will never be the same, now. How many times have others felt this. Millions I guess. It is unbearable, but it has to be born; God, no other choice is given. I am only strong enough to stay on the ground in the rain. To leave, to leave is calling me, the liquid will mix with the rain and I will go to sleep. It would take strength I don't have to make the opening. And I can't leave you alone. I'm useless, covered with dirt leaves rain mud crying crying No no it can't be true. But it is. IT IS! Again I rise upon the wave of the reality of the horror, in a while it recedes and I am numb again. Thank God for the receding pain.
I want to lie in the field below the weeds in the cool rain. I want to sleep here.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Weird Day
Thursday, my computer committed suicide. I'm using Savant's computer, even though he doesn't want me to use it or hang out in his room. The restore disk didn't fix the computer and I am too stressed to even begin to tally what is lost. I was told by the manufacturer that my computer, five years old, is obsolete anyway. I was reading blogs and hit a highlighted link in one and the screen went black and the computer started making clopity clop noises like a fake radio horse.
I removed all the rude expletives from this.
I removed all the rude expletives from this.
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