The New Look and New Name

Saguaro Cactus, Mesquite and Turpentine bushes

So I figured that it was time that I stop lying to myself (not about anything important), but about this Blog.  It was never going to be any kind of serious discussion of animation. Thus far there is hardly any reference to animation at all.

So as Google again changed the format of Blogger, I thought it was a good time to change the format of my Blog as well.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but that never stopped me before.

The background picture is my first lie.  Titled "backyard" or something, it's actually about a mile or so north of my house.  If you'd like to see more, just Google "phoenix mountain preserve saguaro" and select images.  They are outrageous cactus and grow in a very limited area. I intend to change the picture occasionally if I get out with my camera.

If you are reading this Blog and you are not ON Blogger, then you probably are not seeing the pictures anyway.

The only thing I regret about changing the Blog is that I lost the pendulum clock that told visitors the time in Arizona, which doesn't change (we don't need no stinking daylight savings). I miss the ticking and the chimes on the hour and half hour.  It was a nice reminder of just how much time I was wasting.  But I cannot seem to get Blogger to accept the gadget again.

As for the entries, they will be whatever comes to mind, I suppose.  I have no great plan.  No mission.  And no agenda.  

I hope these changes find you well.  And I hope you stop by the Blog, the real one...
http://distorteddogma.blogspot.com/  and leave me a reply or comment.

I'm also working on some new cartoons for my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/distorteddogma 

So, enough.  Time to move on to something more interesting.  Whatever that will be.

Be Well.

Taking No Hostages...

So I have been absent for over a year and a half, partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I did not feel that I had anything to say that anyone would be interested in reading.  Even if someone was reading.

Simply put, I had a series of major changes in my life, all linked, and happening in what seemed to me to be a rapid succession of cause and effect. 

I was happy about none of it.   

So what to do with my now empty days and nights?  

My kitchen more or less BEFORE

Call all my friends and cry on their shoulders until they began avoiding me? Nah. 

Write it all out here so my private life would be spooled on so many backup tapes and archived for a hundred years? Again, nah. 

Maybe curl up in a fetal position on my bed at night and cry myself through it all?  

Definitely, nah.

Instead I did something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time, but my ex and I could never agree on what was to be done....  I remodeled my house. Not that I could afford it, but thanks to some timely offers of deferred interest from some local do-it-yourself retailers, I pulled it off.

So days at work and working nights.  It took eleven months. If I could have rustled up some more credit, I'd still be at it.

More or less AFTER

Some rooms got just paint, others got more.  Ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, furniture, drapes, floors, cabinets.. nothing was sacred.  For the first few months, my right hand held little but a three pound sledge hammer.  I had lived in this house for nearly nineteen years and had changed only the laundry room and a bathroom.  Now those were the only rooms semi safe (although the bathroom did get a change of towels and shower curtain). The kitchen would be the biggest change. Lights, cabinets, floors, ceiling, counter tops... the works.

This would be my sanctuary, my therapy, the route to a new life.  I would do it myself (which I did about 98%). I would not go down, and if I did, I was not taking anybody down with me.

No hostages.

A time to leave...

It began as a glance.  

Not across a crowded room at a party or anything quite so romantic or cliché, but you walked past on a jobsite.  

Covered in paint, hair like a wild pony’s mane, coarse, knotted and bleached by the summer sun.  

It’s been a long trip since that day, well over twenty-three years.  

Since that first day I knew I would never be able to keep you.  

No one ever will.

Even before I had you, I knew.  

But I held on for as long as I could.  

Longer than I should. 

There is so much good to remember, sad that some is spoiled by the ending.

I will never know another woman like you.

But you will never be loved, like you were by me.

Good-bye.

Having a head cold is not the same as having a cool head

 I hope you will excuse my recent absence as the New Year has brought me the opportunity to explore the staggering semi-liquid production capacity of my nasal passages in the form of a whopping great head cold.  A journey which I continue this morning.  

I have also been struck by the amazing resistance, which my affliction exhibits, to all forms of remedy, store bought names, generics, and home styled.  No matter the active ingredient, nor the manufacturer, all seem to be totally ineffective.  

At one point it was suggested that it might be an allergy and not a cold at all.  But alas, Allergy meds from A to Z have also been tried only to find their way to the kitchen dustbin in miserable failure.

Felled by my cold have been boxes of various name brand facial tissues, all of which I now equate to the coarsest and most abrasive sand paper.

No sneezing, no “itchy eye,” no fever, or ache, just a continuous production of ever changing colors and consistencies as tissues by the truckload are filled and tossed away.

So excuse me for not participating in all the resolutions, hoopla, and joy exhibited by some.  I'm just not up for it right now.  

Happy Fricken New Year.