The Spice of Nani

Daily Random

I have commitment issues. Yes, the whole love and marriage thing happened later in life for me and I say that’s commitment issues, but I say that jokingly. That wasn’t a problem committing; that was me staying committed to myself and not settling. Maybe that’s what the current issue is.

I am desperately and probably irrevocably behind on this year’s 365/52 project. After my success last year journaling a few lines every day and scrapping a page for each week I thought writing and scrapping a page a week on different topics would be easy. Not so. It’s been a good year for other goals I’ve wanted to accomplish, but not with the 52 topix idea.

I wondered what made writing 1-3 sentences about whatever in my life every day easy to keep up with that writing a paragraph about an assigned topic every week difficult. That’s easy; randomness! In 2010 I tried photographing something coffee every day. The photos were fun and the pages interesting, but that interest dwindled after about May. Again coffee every day while fun was not random. Real life is random. No matter how hard we may try to structure, it’s the random things we don’t expect that make it interesting.

I am putting away the 52 topix idea. I think I may use those layouts that I have done with the completed coffee layouts from 2010 and the completed layouts from the unfinished Patch 365 from 2009 and add some pages to make a “Nani’s Unfinished Symphony” book. Hmmm, maybe I’ll do it in a softcover and leave some blank pages to add some other unfinished things Smash-style and make it a multimedia art thing. Or maybe I’ll just get the pages printed and assemble it traditional scrap-style. I’ll give this some thought.

What I started doing on August first is adding an image a day to a folder called “Daily OPs.” (Other people's, places, possibilities, etc...)  I’ve done an image search for whatever flashes into my mind at the time and choose an image that inspires me or strikes my fancy on that day at that time. I’m not 100% sure where I’m going with this yet, but maybe for next year I’ll mix up photos I take, a few lines of journaling and a random image to suit my mood each day, any or all of them. I’ve got a few months to decide on next year’s project.


Life With Marco

It’ll be two weeks tomorrow since Marco came home. He has every bit the spunk Kaline did as a kitten, unfortunately Kaline doesn’t remember being that kitten! But the growling and hissing is already down and the girls are getting somewhat used to him and he to them. The interaction is interesting. Kaline and Carla will get close enough to give him a good sniff when he’s tired. They want nothing to do with him when he’s frisking around the house. When he runs into Carla’s face or jumps on Kaline’s back, that’s when he gets hissed at or swatted, but when he’s mellowed out they’ll ignore him or even let him get close! Believe me, that’s progress in cat relations after only two weeks!

Now he has some habits I love him to let go of including human leg climbing. He attached himself to jeans and climbs up all the way to the shoulder if he can. He usually doesn’t get that chance because in order to do it, he has to anchor his sharp claws into the legs he’s climbing. For David that’s painful and for me, with thinner fabric in pants, it’s awful! My legs and even my chest, to a little lesser degree, look like I’ve beet pelted with buckshot! I look positively broken out from all the little red-mark puncture wounds!

We got the kitten package for Marco that includes all his shots, healthy kitten checkups and his neutering. He gets 2 claw-trimmings in the package too. We decided not do it on his first visit because he wasn’t jumping yet and was climbing to get around. On Kaline’s birthday everyone goes to the vet, I know crappy birthday present, but they’ll get a salmon and crab party that night. Carla and Kaline will get their annual checkups and shots and rest assured Marco will be getting his first claw trimming!


The Cloud Is Raining On My Creative Parade

I was visiting Miss Edna’s Place where Edna mentioned her displeasure with Adobe and their new “Creative Cloud.”  You essentially lease your software instead of owning it. You pay a monthly fee to have the software and updates are automatic instead of buying an upgrade when a new version comes out, just give them your credit card number and they’ll automatically take out the charge every month. If you don’t sign on and let the license be updated monthly on your software, it just quits working. I’ve known about it for a while and I’m beyond “not happy” about it.

I was actually trying to find out if I could buy an additional license for the software I have. It comes with 2 which is one each for David and me, but I wanted to put it on a smaller laptop for travelling. I can’t add a license to PS CS5, but I could get the Cloud and pay for three a month. I did the math and since two licenses came with the old way of doing it and figuring in a student discount, after 2 years I’d have paid for the software and it’s all just monthly profit for Adobe after that.

Photographylife.com review of Creative Cloud

I did find out that I can just keep my Photoshop CS5 but they won’t be updating it. Conceivably that means it won’t work with Windows 9 or 10 someday. Maybe they’ll have changed their ways by then and the average consumer will have a choice of the Creative Cloud or just buying the software. Or maybe there will be a decent competitor with a better offer.

52 topix, Week 13 - Age

I had some fun writing Week 13's topic; Age. Remember that when I post my "Project 52" layout and journaling I'm always a week or so behind as I collect notes and photos for during that week for the week's layout. Same as in a photo Project 365, you take a photo a day and if you put them in a scrapbook layout you'd do that page after the week is done. So, while today starts week 15, I'm just now starting the write up and layout for 14, making 13 the latest. Age is just chapters in our personal books of life.

Age is good on some things, not so good on others. If the condition of an item is good it can be a “classic” or an “antique.” Cars over 25 years are classic cars, but they can still just be old cars if they bear the scars of fender benders past or rust has spread its cancer through the metal. A child’s toy that’s over 50 years old is an antique, but if it’s in more pieces that it should be, or if there are fewer pieces than there should be, its value and usefulness are not so high.

The value of people is not tarnished by age, not the real value. As you get older, your book of life becomes a greater volume. Every year that passes is another chapter of knowledge, of relationships of personal history. It’s another year of new companion books to the story of your life, some are new friends you’ll catch up on the parts already written in coffee shops and living rooms as you get to know each other and share the books of your lives. Some new ones will be children’s books with pictures and no words to be written in them yet. And your book has references to many other books, good and bad, as your book is written in the library of the world. Your book will recognize completed books; some with beautiful final chapters, some with abrupt ends, some huge volumes with dozens of chapters and some books that are too short.

When I look back at what I hope is only the first half of my book, there are some great chapters. There are also some chapters I’d like to mostly forget. The end of the 12th chapter was my very first rock concert and going to Italy, even though that chapter started with a broken front tooth that I had in my very first passport. Chapter 17 was when I finished high school and though it took longer than it should have, I love chapter 30 when I finally completed my college degree.

It was very early in Chapter 24 that I had lunch with a writer from Headline News at CNN Center and he told me that I should go home and sign up at Specs Howard, then come back and apply. Most of the rest of Chapter 24 was doing just that. It was a great chapter that I enjoy rereading a little of from time to time. For a few chapters after that I spent a lot of time in Atlanta, as a tourist and a job seeker. I had started a job a truly loved as a cable TV producer in Michigan in Chapter 26 and much of the next 4 chapters revolved around that.

In Chapter 28 two new companion books to mine started. I never thought children’s books would be as much fun to read or help write until I became an aunt. It’s amazing what plot twists can make your life story even better.

The plot hasn’t always been a great one. When my mother’s book ended after only 58 chapters, I thought the character of my book would never be the same. And for a while it wasn’t. In our bookcase of family, each book is so dependent on the books of friends and relatives for story ideas and the passion that makes us all great writers. We have many cowriters in the books of our lives and we co-write in chapters of many others. I was in Chapter 37 when my mother’s book ended, but you’d think I was in Chapter 3 and not able to write for myself for a couple of pages. It was one thing that I did in tribute to Mom’s book, a club I joined in her memory in my Chapter 38, which set my book on a coffee table next to another book I couldn’t put down. Mom’s book lead me to so many other great books through my chapters, of course her story’s effects on me still would! It’s a book Mom never read, but she would have loved the book being written by the man who became her son-in-law.

My book has had many twists and turns, Chapter 42 was the fun of eloping and surprising family along with steamy romance of newlywed life, but chapter 43 was a sad chapter of profound loss as 7 books in my bookcase became complete; one was one of my closest friends, John, after only 50 chapters and my grandmother and mother-in-law, both after 84.

As I move forward with writing my life story, though some books have ended and their authors no longer co-write any pages with me, the stories are still mostly good. They are filled with new endeavors and new ideas. There are new collaborators and new views from faithful coconspirators in my life’s capers. I have new challenges all the time which make for interesting and sometimes exciting stories as I face them and come out on top, which I usually do in one aspect or another. An optimist’s life story is an inspiring and fun read!

Age is a mindset. We ultimately don’t choose how long our books will be and we don’t always control what there will be going on to write about, but we do control how the story is told. The longer your book is the more cowriters you have and the more can fill it with your own history. We decide if it will be a happy, inspirational and strong book, a dark and brooding book or something in between. However you write it, like any book good or bad, it is part of the library of the world and will leave its mark on everyone who reads it.

Soup for the Soul

As promised, I’m adding a little of the things I’m writing anyway to The Chronicles of Nani. This is the journaling page for 52 topix, Week 4, January 22-28.

Credits: In The Kitchen by Inspired Designs

The topic was soup. As always with this project, the journaling page takes me on a tour of my thoughts, opinions or memories as I pretty much free-form journal and clean it up a little later.

Soup For The Soul

There are all those “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books out. I’ve read some of them; Mom even got me “Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan’s Soul” many years ago. They are all books of short inspirational stories. Actually, totally my kind of books! Mom got that about me.

A pot of homemade soup is like that. Aside from the ages old tales of chicken soup for colds or other illnesses, chicken soup is comfort food. It’s the most common and usually the first soup an American kid tastes. It truly does warm you from the very core; the soul. How is that?

I remember snow days where my brother and I would be outside playing in the snow that was some winters almost as deep as we were tall. I stayed out for a while, even though I never liked being cold, I did like building snowmen. Ours never turned out as good as the ones Pop helped us build, By helped us build, I mean he let us make the initial snowballs that he rolled into the body parts. He was usually home since if the buses couldn’t get to school, you sure couldn’t do outdoor construction work! After we finished our snowman, we’d go inside for something hot for lunch or a snack. “Something hot” always included soup. Most often lunch on a cold day for us kids included Campbell’s Chicken and Stars, which is my ultimate comfort soup today.

About those snowmen of my childhood, they were huge, they really were! I remember snowmen as tall as my dad decorated with everyday things Pop found in the house or garage that made our snowmen more lifelike than frosty. I don’t care what the lying photos say now; they were as tall as Pop, not just tall as us!

My mom made wonderful soup from anything! She made soup from leftovers that was a whole new meal and our favorite she made was Hot Dog Soup, which was pretty much potato soup with hot dogs in it. Noni would have a pot boiling half the day to make stock for her wonderful soups with noodles made from scratch. Pop makes wonderful thick and hearty minestrone starting with a prosciutto end. It’s no wonder that I can’t allow the carcass of a turkey or rotisserie chicken be the end of the meal! Our home is often filed with the aroma of soup turning the end into a new beginning for future meals!

Soup is warmth, comfort, memories and tradition; the ultimate food for the soul!

Luck O' The Hodge Podge

1. Do you play games of luck/chance for money? Have you ever played bingo for money? Visited a casino? Placed a bet on a horse? Bought a lottery ticket?

Not for big money, but I’ve bought a lottery ticket, usually scratch-offs, but I’ve bought or David and I have bought a Lotto ticket once or twice. I used to go to the harness races with my parents for a nice dinner and to watch the races. My Dad would place a $2 show bet for me and one for Mom for each race on the horses of our choice. I always picked the horse with my favorite name in the race. He let me keep anything I won. One night John and I were going to Canada the next day and I won enough to buy us a nice dinner. But that wasn’t my money doing the betting and I didn’t have to pay for the actual bets. I won decent sums in a few races, but nothing in a few too.

I’ve been to a casino a few times, including a few in Vegas. I brought the money I planned to lose, my entertainment budget for the trip, and brought home $100 of it, a net loss but I considered it winning because I didn’t lose as much as I planned. I did actually have a winning night in a casino once. John took me to the Motor City Casino with him for dinner; he was a regular player and got a huge coupon to a restaurant that he could only afford with a coupon and took lil' sis for a spoil evening. I brought $20 to lose after dinner and took $75 home. I love video poker!


2. Will you be preparing and/or dining on the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage meal this St. Patrick's Day? Mashed-baked-hash browned-french fried...your favorite way to have potatoes?

I used to love corned beef but now I’ll likely never eat it again. Vertigo and subsequent porcelain hugging pretty much killed the taste of corned beef for me. It happened twice after eating corned beef when I had an inner ear infection in early 2004. I thought I’d become allergic to corned beef, but it was just coincidence that had the same effect.


3. What's the last thing you felt 'green with envy' over?

Envy is something I really never have, not real envy. I will say “I envy you,” but it really means “I’m happy for you.” I really don’t have a feeling of wanting something someone else has or a situation someone else has that bad. Maybe sometimes I grumble because someone “doesn’t deserve” a situation or good fortune because they didn’t earn it, or hurt too many people on the way. But I certainly don’t envy the karma they did earn to go with it!


4. What's at the end of your rainbow?

A big cup of good coffee! :)

My Ginger Scraps signature this month

Credits: It Happened This Year by Connie Prince, 

coffee cur (slightly recolored) from Where’s My Coffee by Aprilisa Designs

5. March 12th marks the anniversary of the death of Anne Frank (June 12, 1929-March, 1945). Anne's diary detailing her time spent hiding from the Nazi's during the war ranks as one of the best selling books of all time. Besides your blog, do you keep any sort of diary or journal? Was this a habit you developed as a child or is journaling something new for you?

I kept a personal journal as well as a couple for classes in high school. Stupid me, I threw out all of my high school journals in my 20s because I thought they were silly “kid stuff.” I’d love to be able to go back and read that kid stuff now if just for the laugh. I started keeping a journal again in 1994, trying to be more formal about it, but I found that I had lots of personal notes in with my papers. Today, the Chronicles of NanI file on my computer and extended hard drive contains yearly documents that include my blog posts, papers, some message board and Facebook posts and my personal entries. Remember that I write when I’m angry, depressed or worried because if I just write, the actual cause of my negative emotions comes out and I can resolve them. Sometimes that takes a few days and 30 pages, but it works for me.


6. What's an item in your home or closet that contains every color of the rainbow?

Jelly bean jar

7. Write a limerick with you as the subject. You can do it!! Just remember this is a family friendly blog...don't make me get out my wooden spoon.

Nani likes coffee from Nantucket… hehehe

I suffer from creative blocks
For writing a limerick that rocks
The meter and rhyme
Though often sublime
Is messed up from changing the clocks


8. Insert your own random thought here.

I admit that I struggled with the fourth line of my limerick and I have to credit David for it. Sublime isn’t a word in my regular usage vocabulary, I just know it when I read it in context. That means all on its own, I had to get the definition before I used it because it’s not a normal Nani-word. The definition tells me David has a much higher opinion of my poetry than modesty allows me to have.


I haven’t been blogging as often as usual because I really have had blogger’s block, even for witty or informative answers for some of the memes. That may be in part to just time and the amount of writing I do for my Project 52 this year! What I think I’ll do is post the main journaling part of each week as a blog post. Hopefully that will kick my blogger’s block in the butt. I’m going to start posting some of the layouts and journaling I’ve already done, since I’m working on the week 10 layout right now and haven’t posted all of the layouts for the first 9. Also, Week 10’s topic is Smash Books and the main journaling is pretty much things I already said in the Smashing Defined…Sorta post from October. So I may start with posting the journaling as I go with next week. But look for a 52 topix post this afternoon.

Wednesday Hodge Podge

Sorry I’m posting so late today, well sort of sorry. I had a few things that needed done, including some hospital bill stuff from last year. I’m on a payment plan and the monthly due date is the first. Well, this month I was much closer to the hospital’s accounting department than I am when I call to make my payments! They were on my list of calls to make, they called me first and it’s all taken care of. I just love happy phone calls where bills are concerned!

So, my business calls and finishing up my Fresh Fruit layout took up some time. But I did it all on just ONE cup of coffee!


But now let’s join Joyce, our wonderful questioner extraordinaire at From This Side of the Pond for the Wednesday Hodge Podge!

1. Lake Superior University has once again published a list of words/phrases they think should be banished from the Queen's English...here's the list for 2013-

fiscal cliff, kick the can down the road, double down, job creators/creation, passion/passionate, yolo (an acronym for you only live once), spoiler alert, bucket list, trending, superfood, boneless wings, and guru

Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why. Go here to read more about how the words were chosen.

This one is SO easy for me! I hate, I mean I can’t stand it if I could imagine it out of existence I would, hate, the phrase “Bucket List.” Bucket List is “Things I want to check off before I kick the bucket.” What happens when you’ve checked everything off? That’s it, you’re done? Personally, I don’t want to put an expiration mark on myself. The only thing on my “bucket list” is immortality. So now I can go on living like I’m, alive not with a checklist to death.

Ah, but there’s a problem with my bucket list too, which is why it’s just a joke because I don’t have and never will have a “bucket list.” I’m not going to live forever. Which means many years for now, even if I invest with Raymond James and live to 187, when it’s over, I‘ll have failed at the only thing on my list. I’ll die a failure.

So you see? A “bucket list” is either an expiration mark if the items are attainable or a promise of failure if they are not. There is not a thing positive about keeping a bucket list and the term should be banished from the world psyche.


2. When was the last time you rode a train? Where did you go?

David and I went on a steam train trip in Michigan in 2009. I was on a city transit in St. Louis in 2011.


3. Bagels-yay or nay? Favorite 'flavor'? Favorite topping?

Bagels are good! I like cinnamon crunch, asiago cheese and last November I tried the pumpkin ones at Panera! I like sun dried tomato cream cheese on asiago ones and any sweet cream cheese that isn’t blueberry on the other ones.



4. 'Tis the season of awards shows...if you could star in a movie already made which one would you choose?

Wow, as not a movie watcher, I don’t have a lot of thoughts. Friends have told me they could see me playing Annie Savoy from Bull Durham.

5. The move towards single gender classrooms has been making the news in recent months....what say you? Do you think kids perform better if separated by gender and are taught differently or is that discrimination? If you're a parent, is this something you'd support in regard to your own children?

I think there is still too much sex discrimination and teaching genders separately only stamps it as okay. When kids grow up they’ll all work together and they’ll have never learned how to work together or in the presence of the other gender. It does way more harm than good.


6. What's your favorite thing about staying in a hotel?

Not having to clean or cook. We usually try to get a king bed and that’s nice too


7. Do you have a 'word' for 2013? What's the story behind your choice?

I don’t have a word for the year. I’m too verbose to try to choose just one word without going crazy. :)


8. Insert your own random thought here.

Stay tuned to this blog for a bunch of randomness, just not right now! For now, I’ll share my Fresh Fruit pages; uploaded in full size for ease of reading if you’re interested.

Credits: Thanks a Melon by blue Heart Scraps

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