Using Lauren's Photos

Books and magazines, pretty pictures and ideas have always filled my world.  Public libraries my second home, my third grade librarian, Miss Bertz, at Walnut Hill Elementary School silently guided me into a realm for which I've ever since been grateful.

Twenty-five years as a school library media specialist, surrounded by 10,000 volume collections and a ton of periodicals, including a year in the New Orleans Public Library System amongst their government documents collections, in the business department where I answered the phone and researched questions, the seeking out of, and learning about, information has always been extremely intriguing to me.

I was excitedly sitting in a kitchen in Tybee Island, Georgia with Sarah several years ago as she explained Google Reader to me, "See, it's like having your own personalized magazine delivered to you each morning," thoroughly rocked my nerdy world, the one in which I felt self-consciously guilty about, in that trees were cut down to make the pages.

Digital is a dream come true for me, makes me smile each morning as I read over a pile of blogs, peruse stunning pictures, and basically leave no carbon footprint.

One blog leaves links to another influential one, and I traipse over happily, adding it to my ever growing collection.  I still subscribe old school style to Garden Design, Mother Earth News, and Organic Gardening, a tad unwilling to not do so.

My e-reader is chockful of books from Pixel Of Ink, all free e-books, mostly non-fiction in my case.

My phone full of albums, completely full, and no cumbersome hard copies to lug around.  I have three versions of the Bible on my phone, how cool is that?  On my shelf in my office however I also have three, the NIV is the black one, plus two versions of The Living Bible in Spanish and English.

My non-fiction entries are generally regarding gardening, farming, biographies, personal finance, sustainability, psychological issues, motivational books, and foodie tomes.  I, believe it or not, exercise some restraint each day in not nagging folks about food.  I'm not yo mama, but I do want to share a better life through better eating kind of forum here.

Doesn't everyone want to feel better?  To be more energetic?  That's what good eating can do for a person.  I receive encouraging comments in this regard, yesterday one speaking about being 90% vegan, a thought Sarah'd recently expounded upon that reducing one's animal product consumption to just 10% of one's overall calories would make a whale of a difference.

I was a pig all wedding weekend, consuming more cake than was humanly possible, feeling sluggish as a result by Monday, craving my regular plant-based diet once again.  I certainly don't regret the cake fest though.

The picture above was taken by one niece, Lauren, as I looked at another niece, Kelly's, wedding dress on a tablet for her upcoming March wedding.  Will that be my next cake opportunity? Shouldn't I rather be concentrating on her nuptials, not my cake menu-to-be?  I'm enthused about a new nephew-in-law, Casey, as well.  What a sweetheart and now my brother Gary, who has raised three daughters, will have a son-in-law for counter balance.

In town getting groceries yesterday, scoring once again with someone's yard waste, indeed I've returned to this one house countless times, as they neatly bag and discard their pine needles curbside to be hauled off. I thought about leaving them a thank you note, so happy have I been to receive that which they don't want anymore.

I spread it out carefully amongst my antique roses that border one side of the chicken moat, lifting a board, AKA a slug trap, scooping up 15 slimy slugs to toss to my happy hens. dragging my hand on the grass to get the residual slime off, a warm afternoon, gobs of sunshine, me looking around and thinking I'd busted my tail right good this past year playing catch-up, but also lamenting how much more still needed to be accomplished.

This'll be your second act, I told myself.  24-7 for the next 50 years to do what I want, versus the 48 preceding years that involved having children in my home.  Yeah, do that math, that'll mean me living to about 110 years old, but I do wanna see my great-grandchildren and beyond.