What happened? Life!

Well… you know what they say about the best intentions. Apparently mine left the train station in October and forgot to come back and here it is the first day of 2024! Happy New Year!

I spent NYE laying around our little cabin resting my ankle, waiting on my husband who broke his shoulder the first day out skiing, cooking dinner and watching football. (Darn those Seahawks) Then I went to bed at 8pm to read. I have two books to read for January book clubs: Lessons in Chemistry which I have read and All Good People Here. I need to just refresh myself for The Awesome Ladies Project  book club because for the end of the month  I really did like that book, but I read it in November of 2022 and I often forget details. 

I am still pondering my One Little Word which I usually do with Ali Edwards. A word usually just speaks to me, but this year I have NOTHING. I usually find a word shows up in quotes and songs and even on TV. I have resorted to taking quizzes which hasn’t worked. I read a few blogs to help, but I have come up empty handed. Maybe the universe knows that I am planning to do my #olw differently this year. I am not going to do it as a class. I think the class works for people along with all of the materials, but the content and materials really overwhelmed me last year and I fizzled out about March. A friend of mine online gave me an idea. She did her December Daily by making a tag for every day and shared it on Instagram and at The Awesome Ladies Project . Her project has inspired me to do One Little Word this way. Now for a word. I promise I will share it with you all when I get it figured out! Maybe even later today.

Wishing you a year ahead of good health, joy, great books, creative projects, good food, chocolate and coffee and most of all time with amazing friends and family. I hope to take it a little slower and savor every minute.

No way: October

 I cannot believe it is October! It’s my favorite month. I love the sweater weather, the smell of the air as we change seasons, the beautiful colors as the leaves change and pumpkin spice!

Many of my friends know I am not a fan of Halloween. My family says teaching elementary school ruined it for me and that is probably true. I had students who could not afford costumes and others who could rush down to the store and buy whatever they wanted. I also had an issue with the mixed messages we send to kids in telling them not to take candy from a stranger and then telling them it was okay dressing up, going to strange houses and begging for candy. I was fine with neighborhood parties and community parties. 

This year I am going to make peace; embrace the month of October and dedicate it all things fall and Halloween and All Souls Day. 

Best of Today: Mouth Photography

 Today I broke a tooth! I wasn’t even eating anything that hard. It was a Chipotle burrito bowl. I was eating lunch with my oldest daughter in the HUB and thought it was a hard bean or rice. The funny part is that the dentist asked me to take a photo of my mouth. For someone who takes at least one selfie a week and has taken thousands of photos, this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do!  In the end the dentist said it was amazing work. I guess I have a new skill to add to my list. 

Automating Selfies on iPhone

 I have spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out how to take Selfies easily. I am in a 10-day selfie challenge and I want to make it easy to take a selfie.

Curated links to make selfie photos on your iPhone without using the photo button or the volume button:

• Timer
• If you have the Apple Watch use the camera app on the watch
• Change the accessibility buttons to create voice command selfies
• Download Hey Camera (Free with In-App Purchases for unlimited captures $2.99 at the time of this post-iOS 13 or higher)
• Create a shortcut on your iPhone
• Buy an inexpensive Bluetooth device (affiliate link)

Just for fun:

• If you want to get fancy, buy a selfie ring for lighting (affiliate link)
• Siri Shortcuts to create a Selfie Strip (this is shown on the iPad, so the search may be on the bottom of the iPhone)

Photo from Unsplash

Taking Great Selfies

 

So I have been thinking about Selfies a lot. 

They are everywhere and anyone who has a smart phone takes Selfies. I participate in Thursday3 on Instagram as do many of my crafty friends. We take a selfie every Thursday and post three right now things. It is a great documenting practice created by @rukristen owner of The Awesome Ladies Project which allows people take control of their own images.

Recently I found a couple of YouTube videos that I have found helpful when taking selfies with an iPhone. I'm sure they can be adapted to any other smart phone so play around.

• Taking great iPhone Selfies https://youtube.com/shorts/pw3sJboEJx4?si=4-R-_EHp7T2gTKHA
• iPhone camera tips https://youtu.be/5GLd3hSQfdE?si=NtjHuyQtVsRTNsD5

What what? Link Tree and Amazon and Pinterest

 This week, I decided to try something new and actually make some side money that I hope becomes part of my retirement salary. I purchased an iPad, Good Notes, Procreate and signed up for Carina Gardner's bootcamp. I have always admired her work and she seems to do well at using her creative mind and ideas. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I also set up a Link Tree which you can find on the right. I signed up for a Pinterest business account and am an Amazon affiliate. We will see where this leads. Right now I am hoping to make just enough money to play.

It is also Labor Day so I hope you have a great day if you don't have to work. I have to work today because students are moving in. 

Awesome Week of Scrapbooking

 As I said last week, I was so excited about Scrapbook Festival with The Awesome Ladies Project! It really sparked my creativity hanging out with these like minded women. I cannot believe how much I got done. It was perfect timing for me as school is getting ready to start and I don't think I could have done anything this week. 

We had so many amazing challenges that I plan to share over time. I just am so excited for the work I have done and that I am working on me and who I am.

Virtual Scrapbook Festival

 Well this is a fun week for me! I am getting ready to start The Awesome Ladies Virtual Scrapbook Festival. I'm so excited about all of the great festivities. This group of ladies don't realize it but in the past three years, they have saved my life. It has been a rough three years and they have been such a support to me. The are a like minded caring group of feminists and I don't know what I would do without them.

I will be making a lot of art and learning some new techniques. I'm mostly excited about the connection with the community. Go to the website to join in on the fun. There are two levels: group members which is free and VIP upgrade at a small cost. We will be:

• learning
• sharing
• taking classes
• interacting
• playing games
• doing documenting challenges
• hanging out with people all over the world

Everyone who loves to create and document is welcome; join in the fun!

Perfectionism

 What is up with me? Why can't I start something and finish it? Why do I feel like I need all of the right things and everything has to be perfect? 

Today I have been thinking a lot about this and why I haven't started some things. For example, I think about my family history book about women. I do research and have a vision, but I just can't get started because I want to find the right album and I want to do these women justice. What colors do I want to use? Does there have to be a format? Ugh!

I just need to take the Nike attitude and do it!!! Write the damn story and decorate it! Get on the road and move forward.

Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash

Women in my family: Josephine Wilson

 As a child, my family would travel to North Idaho to visit my grandparents who lived up the Clearwater River in two small towns, three miles apart. This was what seemed like a long trip where we traveled through towns where my mother's people were buried and had lived. While driving through these little towns north of Walla Walla, my mom would tell me stories about the women who proceeded me; many I did not ever meet. 

My favorite story was that of my Aunt Jose who was married to a logger. He would go out to logging camp and then come home during the winter. When he came home he often found that my great aunt no longer lived there so he would ask around to see if anyone knew where she'd moved. My mom said that sometimes she lived in Dayton, other times she would be in Pomeroy or Pataha and sometimes she moved to the cities across from one another, Clarkston, WA and Lewiston, ID. This made me think a lot about Jose's life and what it was like being married to a logger who was hardly home. Was she independent? Did she take in work? What was it like when he came home? She must have driven or ridden a horse or something. If she drove in later years, did she change her driver's license between states?

Later in life, as an adult, my Great Aunt Jose's life and I seemed to paralleled a bit and I started thinking about her more. For the first twenty-five years of my marriage my husband worked out of town Monday through Thursdays. He came home on the weekends and left on Monday. My daughters and I lived for two times a week: Wednesday nights at 7pm when dad called (we didn't have a cell phone although he did, but long distance cost money) and the weekend where we devoted our time to hang out with dad. To this day, I have a problem planning things on the weekend with friends and it took me a long time 

Lately since I a great discussion with one of my online friends from The Awesome Ladies Project while I was at Awesome Ladies Live, I have been thinking about making books about these amazing family members. Since I didn't know them, I might include what their communities were like; where did they shop; what kinds of clubs could they join? I feel like I could learn a lot about them and it would help me in my genealogy and help me understand who I am and why I am here.

Painting of Josephine Wilson by Oliver G Hayes

 

Impact of being exposed to history

 Last week I posted about diaries I've read that have made me a better person, but also about women, their thoughts and what they were experiencing; good bad or indifferent. 

When I was a little girl, I lived in a small town called Connell, WA. I believe in 1976, the population was 1979. I remember this because everyone wanted three people to move so we could be 76 in '76, the year of the United States of America Bicentennial. In elementary school, we watched the historical fiction movie Seven Alone (1974) in the theater which made me think about the Sagar family and moving West. I actually obsessed about the Sagar children, who were real and their experiences as they lost their parents on the Oregon Trail and moved  in with the Whitman family. As a child, for school field trips, girl scouts, family trips I visited Fort Walla Walla and the Whitman Mission or Waiilatpu often. This and some other experiences that I will share later made me start thinking about westward movement, church history and the importance of women in that story. For example, what what it like to lose a child in a creek for Narcissa Whitman? What was it like to leave New York in a wagon or have to marry a man so you could participate in mission work?

On the flip side, I then asked myself questions about the Native Americans. What was it like to have children die from measles? How did they respond to the loss of the young Cayuse men who were hung? These women's stories are important!

On my bookshelf in my office is The Shallow Grave at Waiilatpu: The Sagers' West by Ewin N Thompson (1973), one of the first books I had to help me find answers to my questions.

Photo by Grianghraf on Unsplash

Documenting is important

 Today, I am posting about an incredible group who align with my ideals about the importance of women and women's stories. Last week, I spoke a little about the Awesome Ladies Project and my trip to East Lansing, Michigan. The trip was to Awesome Ladies Live and was part of an annual event run by Kristin or @rukristin who started and is owner of The Awesome Ladies Project. 

The reason I resonate with Kristen is because of her feelings about intersectional relationship and the importance of women's stories and women documenting them. I have always felt that women for years and years have passed down their wisdom and listened and shared with one another; often through isolation from men, quilting bees, garden groups, sewing guilds, salons, homemakers clubs and church ("the church ladies"). Many of these everyday trials were not written down or shared except verbally and this has always been frustrating for me as a reader, historian, genealogist and documenter. 

Over the years, I have been the girl looking for stories of the women of the past. What were their lives really like? Why are they swept under the rug? How hard was it for my great great great grandmother to drag her two young daughters half way across the world to North Idaho where people only spoke English? I have read the few diaries available by women; mostly women who are "important" in history whose thoughts and ideas do not align with mine today. Through those writings, I have been able to develop who I am today and have an understanding of the past and move forward into the future.

Kristin's ideas behind documenting your everyday life and making art is important for everyone, especially today. She is asking us to document our everyday lives. She has a Monday documenting practice called Currently where you can can document the things you are doing and feeling right now. On Thursdays, she asks you to document a selfie and share three right now things. I love to read through my Instagram and the Awesome Ladies Project website and see what people are doing and watching. It has helped me connect with people all over the world. 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

In the beginning

 
I've kept a blog off and on since 2007, but I have never kept up with them and then in 2019, things in my life got so busy that I just quit blogging and writing. Today I woke up and felt alive and creative and had this need to write and write. I don't know if I have any wisdom to share or if anyone cares, but I need to do this for me and that is okay. I have been consistent with four things over the past few months so I feel like I can do this and keep up with it: Using Day One, playing Wordle with my son in law, posting on The Awesome Ladies Project and playing Duo Lingo. Even as I am flying and traveling from Detroit to Washington State, I am feeling a need to write and complete my daily exercises that seem to be helping with my mental health.