It is cold and i did not want to venture out

So I painted another snow scene.
Again do I slight mix with the acrylic white in certain places.

cooking inspiration

This is a lite post compared to what has been coming out lately...
I find my self inspired to do certain kinds or flavors of dishes by some typical inspirations;
restaurants, foods i have eaten at friends homes, even cooking shows, but then there are some really odd places i get inspiration.  An example is a meal of sausage, garlic, hot peppers and wine described in a science fiction book!
The other night I was watching the one show i know i am addicted to, "Bones" and they mentioned mac and cheese.
It hit me and I had to do a special one for dinner.
Joe's Mac & Cheese
2 pounds large tubular pasta - I used rigatoni
8 oz sliced mushrooms
1&1/2 stick butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup green chives
1 tablespoon freshly ground mixed pepper corns
1 tablespoon freshly ground alspice
1 tablespoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon tarragon
1# shredded mozzarella cheese
3 cups milk
1 cup white wine
2 eggs
salt to taste

While you cook the pasta, you make the bechamel sauce which is a white sauce of milk, butter and flour.
Melt the butter and an equal portion of flour.  Do NOT brown, but when blended add milk and stir (for those who can not eat wheat, cornstarch works, but must be added to a hot mixture of milk and butter).
I added the mushroom to half the butter, then the wine and did the flour and the rest of the butter RUE separate and added it into that mixture.
After adding the milk and getting it hot, I added the spices.
Drain the pasta and put in a large baking pan.
Mix most of the cheese and chives (or scallion tops) with the pasta,
Beat the two eggs and add them to the white sauce and then pour over the pasta.
Tap with the remainder more cheese and bake for 30 minutes at 350 F.
Serve hot.
This will feed 8 hearty appetites.

And this is what "Bones" did to me!

It is pouring out of me...

I know that pain,

I know that dark spot in your heart;

for I have one also.

I comes welling up out of nowhere

and engulfs me.

Its darkness blots out the stars,

but they still shine.

It covers the sun,

but it is still there.

For a moment,

in the torrent of the wave 

of pain that engulfs me,

I do not see them,

but they are there.

This place has blackness,
it has no faith
and it is hopeless.
It tells me I am nobody,
I am useless,
but not with a roar, but with a whisper.
The whispers are only lies,

its power was not in the words, 

but the wave of feeling that,

has now past.

I, 

tho am not with out faith

and I have hope.

And the blackness passes,
leaving me drenched in its form.
It is not part of me and it leaves quickly.

I tremble at its passage, but still I am standing.

Healing

I saw her as a mere babe.
A child
who I could see,
was in trouble.
She could not speak,
but I picked her up
and cradles her in my arms.
Protecting her as best as I could.
Pressed against my chest,
with only a blanket to shield her...

from the cold, 

the pain 

and the hurt.

She woke and smiled.

It was going to be alright...

Twisted

I have made mountain out of molehills

and

I have made molehills out of mountains.

It does seem strange how twisted this all is...

for the things I believed would be the most difficult

are not.

And those very simple things become,

well at best...

complicated.

How very twisted!

The Tsunami did engulf me this week...

I did see it coming,

but it was not from where I expected,

that situation was a mere ripple, it worked out.

From other areas it came engulfing me,

little things of no consequences...

that left me breathless and angry...

and swallowed me up.

But I am here

and that is good.

Drenched, but still standing.

Breathing, but heavily because I thought my breath had run out.

Still, I am

________Smiling, I am.

___________________Surprising people and laughing,

I am.

alone

There have been a few difficult days at work, not because of my physical well being (which has not been great), not because my eyes were giving me grief (they were, but that is besides the point), and not because i am emotinoally distraught from other things (okay, i am that also, but still not my issue).
The problem seems to be no one seems to want to work any more. 
Do the bare minimum and that is all there is to it. 
Do no more, have no vision, no interest, no curiosity, no compassion.
It bothers me because as i struggle with all my physical issues, I am trying to do just a little bit more.
Responsibility seems to be my theme, as much as I can take as I try to get better.
Sometimes I feel like I am alone in this.

Rainy Days

While rainy days usually gets other people down, they give me an opertunity...to paint~
Steve Borichevsky of Shooting my Universe has provide many wonderful photos on his blog site and a few have been inspirational for me.
The following photo showing a boat in rough seas did it to me.  It was posted a while ago, but the rainy day yesterday allowed me to try to capture the feel of the photo.
So here is my rendition!

I did something i am not used to, I left blank paper to try to capture the white caps and this was a difficult piece for me. It was done in water color on 10 1/2" x 15" rough cold press paper.

More than us

Picture by Peter van Leuteren - www.all-sky.nl.

The stars shin brightly above,
showing their brightness,
they gleam like diamonds on black velvet.
There may be clouds that cover them today (in truth there are clouds),
but they always shine.
Even in the greatest tragedy,
we are not in control,
but the stars shine on!

I really did not want to scare any one...

The signs I see coming are not about me, but they create a very emotional turmoil in me.
It is not a surprise and i have been expecting things to go "wrong", after all my mother is 87.
It is not imminent, but I find my self unprepared to do anything about it.
I am too far away and still have too much going on with my own health.
She is also resistant because there is this expectation, after all I am an only child...
And I still can not.
Her family is all around her, many of them, but she seems not to let them in close.
All in all a difficult situation.
What precipitated this?
Two things - a report from one of the 2 people I trust to tell me how she is doing.
And some of how she is comig acroos when I speak to her.
It is not dementia, her mind is sharp and it is not depression where she feels she is ready to go (she has been there), it is her talk of past people (family) who are no longer there with a wistful longing to be reconnected. That I have seen before and so I know what it means.
I, I am not ready, but she is.

foreknowledge

It is a worry of my heart, reading between the lines of things I hear.

I have a fear that it is coming,
the tide seems to be going out way too fast.
The danger signs are flashing in my heart.
I stop and remember to breath.
Are the birds just leaving because I have disturbed them or
is there more danger coming.
My heart trembles,
I
___feel
______alone,
helpless,
bewildered.
You demand my help.
but I can barely help my self,
How can I help you?
In the distance...
is it my blurry vision that changes...
the line were the earth meets the sky?
Or is it a tsunami that comes?

The machines Did NOT win this day!

The terminators did not kill most of humanity, the master controller failed.
Today, i took charge and got all the unruly beasts back in line.
Our poor IT department was befuddled for days,
but they had bigger fish to fry than my little program.
When the servers went down, I was in the middle of some VBA tweaking and as a result my entire VBA for the database was corrupted.
The backup from IT did not help, but my CD copy did the trick.
The new machine with some firmware/software problems was brought into submission by the Service guy from the company and my argon tank is no longer leaking!
So the end of the world and machine domination is not yet!

A path

I once thought life was a rollar coaster,
with its ups and downs.
I am no longer sure,
for it feels more like a simple path,
where we put one foot in front of the other.
It is not a tight rope walk,
with dangerous falls on either side,
Yet, there are sides, not always clearly marked.
One part like a swamp murkey and full of bitterness.
Sloshing through that muck is never easy
and it clings to your heart like mud to the skin.
The other side seems lighter and more aloof,
walking as if we were better than any one else.
The truth is that we are not
and each person should walk with each other.
Each side of that path is folly, but the lines are not clear,
no clear demarcations of black and white.
We wander in between those lines with every move we make.
For reason not known to me,
thankfulness seems to be the key.

Today I feel Like I am in a Star Wars flick

No, I am not the empire, but I did strike back at the machines which were plaguing me Friday.
Since the machines realized they could not defeat me, they then brought down both the city's Microsoft exchange server and the servers which have my programs on them.
They shall not prevail!
I have methods to defeat them at all levels at home.
Beware machines, I am not done!

Darkness crawls

I think i have gone a bit nuts as of late, all my thought come out as verse and metaphor...

Like a panther croaching, waiting fot its prey,
it stalks my mind and heart waiting.
No, no, it croaches on my heart,
keeping still its captive prey.
Torn and bleeding from things torn asunder,
my heart still cowers.
It was twice,
years apart it found joy,
another whose hearts
and souls
and bodies intertwined with its own.
They were lost,
not by some gentle breeze,
blowing 2 ships apart.
No they were torn asunder by that black cat of death.
Ripped from my grasp with nary a word to say
and no hope to recover.
That wound twice borne, lies deep.
They say it is better to love and lost thane never to have loved at all,
but is it?
Thee is no desire for some simple intermingling of bodies,
no the heart wants more and yet is fearful of that dark panther croaching and waiting on its door.
Freedom comes from a surprise.
Even the panther is taken a back.
For death came knocking and did not hold onto that heart
and even the panther slinks away.
The, no, MY heart still looks for that thing.
I still search,
but i WILL,
find it on some sunnier day.

Days

I have spent too many days crying for the things i do not have,
the things I did not need.
Too few days have I spent laughing for the things giv'n,
those things precious to my heart, for my soul.
Those things with wings and a life of their own,
which give to me all that I need.
Laugh then and smile for life is here now,

Rise of the Machines

Today was one of  THOSE days.
You know the kind, where nothing works out correctly.
In this case it was the machines I work with that were giving me trouble.
I should have suspected it, because last night suddenly something I had downloaded was not there in my suystem and the email had either been deleted by me or had simply disapeared.
Today, the new instrument refused to function giving me strange error codes.
I had done some work, but It should not have created a problem, or maybe not.
Then my beloved program, which has worked well for years on my work computer, needed a bit of VBA (visual basic code for applications) tweaking and then everything went haywire also.
That was a program I controlled and made do what I wanted.
My only question is...
Is there a skynet yet?????

an ode

Amazing it is to me,

To find someone whose path so resembles mine.

That path of life and lessons to be learned,

with hearts so alike.

Yet our paths of this life,

only meet but rarely.

There is joy in each encounter,

there is something special for each one.

Tho those encounters are rare,

they bind us one to one and leave us thankful for the lessons learned.

Pressure

It was a ruch of people and t h i n g s!
Hurry, hurry, get it done!
Push, push.
Not make work, but a scurry of motion and activity.
Confusion, chaos...
Why?
Rush, rush is the word and
In
__response
__________I
___________slow
_______________D
________________O
_________________W
___________________N.

There is no emergency, just take things as they come.
The information will go out.
The work will get done.
There is no hurry if you want things right.
There is if you want to hide.

We have met our Obligation, I hear.
It is not enough to me,
for curiosity did not kill the cat or me.
It made me stronger.
Do not look for more, I hear.
Fear for more to DO, I suppose.
I have much to do and I am not finished,
but I am not fearful for more.
I, I am still looking.

A short update

While my muse is very active, I think it is time for a simple update.
My shoulder, which I hurt a few times during falls, is only bruised, not torn or broken,
A few pain meds and some physical therapy will get me back.

There is real improvement in the doubleness of my vision and this is especially true in the mornings when I will spend as much as an hour without any glasses on ding "things".

Cooking, you ask?

Well, of course, daily.
My latest success was something known as Murg Makhani, or in English butter chicken.
I have some basic Indian cooking skills i learned from a close Indian friend and the recipe came off the internet.
Sadly, I spent all my real effort on the chicken dish, which came out wonderfully (but I did not add any real "heat" to it) and my "Dall" ended up a little bitter.  Mostly because I used my main cookware for the chicken and could not reduce the lentils to the oil enough.  Also adding extra spice after I added the lentils did not help.  Se la vie!
The muse will probably be present on this site again real soon.

The storm

The waves crash against my shores,
like the worries that trouble my heart.
The mist rises and obscures the land
and the ground shakes,
making me fall and tremble.
No longer knowing where to go go,
I am fearful.
A light springs forth and
the mist melts away.
My path is clear once more.
My salvation did not come from some distant shore,
it was the must that was within me.

I fall asleep.

troubled no more by nightmarish dreams,
I awake, refreshed in the morning;
and
I
Know
Everything
will
be
alright.

An ode to love

I never considered myself a romantic, but this is my feeble attempt.

Jenny
You came into my life, 
when your pain was still raw, 
your heart still hurting, sometimes uncontrollably. 
You hated your self for crying so easily and yet, 
I loved you for it, 
The softness of your heart, your soul. 
tho you were strong and proud. 
Maybe you had pity on me, 
you did not ask me to rescue you, 
You, you rescued me with your weakness. 
With all of your pain and trouble, 
you still reached out your hand and took mine, 
and showed love.
You say you are not nice and contest that you are not kind, 
but all you have ever shown to me was your kindness and 
you are always nice to me.
Thank you.

Many times,
i lie awake at night wondering,
could we more than we are?
Could we be the person we are ...
with each other?
For a couple compliments and
enhances the other.
They are not a perfect match,
but rather a work in progress...
For now you remain my friend only.

Snow

Snow

It started snowing last night and from what I here, it got mostly all of the East coast (save Florida???).
This snow was pretty, had mostly dissipated by 1 PM when I left work and it was warming up.
No more snow, but now comes the big freeze for the weekend, not something i am looking forward to.
The cold does effect my mood, making me feel more boxed in, not pleasant.
I keep on getting Emails from my Mom's conservative friend about the health care debates and I realized reading them, they don't get it.
The normal fear factor is there and there are statistics all over the place ( but you might know how I feel about statistics), but they miss the point.
The point is that many, many Americans do not have insurance or insurance.
People who have jobs (and are thankful at least they can work), but have health insurance that simply is rotten so they have to go into bankruptcy to deal with the bills.
People with "preexisting" conditions, who really are denied health insurance.
People who have jobs that do not provide health insurance.
If you get the drift, it is not about what the medical community can do, it is about the insurance which, doctor, the people who treat us, have complained about for years.
So it is about money and the fear factor about how the medical community will not give us the treatment we have been is fairly unfounded.
That is all from me on this.
I am fortunate, I have very good health insurance and I have been very well covered.
Not so many people are so lucky or fortunate.

Watch for tears

I don't normally put links on my posts, but I will amke an exception today.
A friend send me this U-tube video of an artist creating a story in pictures linked to a music production using a light box and sand.
I was impreseed.
Take a look and enjoy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

So in the meantime, between my own personal struggles and then finding I am am to better relate to others who have similar things happening to them, I took some one who was basically out of food for herself and 3 children.
They were embarrassed, did not want to ask for things, would not put staples that they had in the house in the cart and cried all the way home because...
It was a decision that my household and I made, even tho the person is my friend.
Because of my own needs, I understood everything they were going through.

dependancy

Like a sailboat,
whose movement depends on the wind,
I feel like that boat dependant,
on others to get me from one place
or another.
It some times feels awful,
stuck in the winter time, with out a way to get around,
the cold winds blowing, the ice on the ground
and yet I am not without a paddle,
I just must be careful.
I must reach out and
then,
and then
people respond, wonderfully.

Yes, it still is an adventure.

tidbits for the new year

The editor over here in goggle blog land gets weird at times and I kind of give up.
So here I am again because there are a few things going on.
My nerves which cntrol my right eye is becoming sporaticaly active.
That means if I close the left eye, everything in sight "swims" back and forth.
This is more than it has been and is probably a very good thing, but it makes me tired quicker.
With the snow (sunsiquent melt and freeze), I have had to be careful walking, never the less, I fell Saturday on black ice.  There are very few more helpless feelings than falling on black ice.
The funny thing about it is sometime in October I feel and hurt my shoulder, with the cold weather, it was hurting more.
After the fall, it hurt like the dickens for a moment then felt better.
That reminded me of One of the cop movies that I can not remember the name, where one of them has a trick shoulder.
Our Christmas guest has remain here and more permanant accomidations are going to be soon coming.
I have discovered a thread of thought that i am very fond of continuing through my life as i meet people who truely strugle (I struggle, but not to live or eat).
The thought has been when some one close does not have enought to eat, you make sure they do.
That was my thoughts in college (yes so long ago and idealistic, I guess i still am) when some one told me of a family who was their friend, who had not had meat for a month (not willingly) and i went and bought the biggest side of beef i could for them.This attitude has always been there, I like the attitude.
So while I figure this new dash boaed, while it lasts, from google, I will see you again soon.

A Change of scenery

I decide that since we have been having snow off and on , with some accumulation since a week before Christmas, my older painting, done sometime in the late 1980's, is a good view.
I have not done any snow scenes in a while and now the holidays are over, it is time for a new one. That will happen in a few weeks.
In the mean time sit back and enjot being snowed in, in Vermont.

A new year?

It is a new year or
is it just another day?
Things do not magically change from one day to the next or
Do t h e y ?
My mind, which now clearly skips and jumps
between knowledge and analysis to
feeling and comprehension.
Between creativity and
cold hard facts.
Can there be magic? One side asks.
In everything we touch! The other portion says.
Thus the war ensues between the 2 parts of my being;
and
___ they
_______are
__________both
correct.