If you first thought of Valentine’s Day you are right. Also we have the Presidents’ Day and Ash Wednesday.

Valentine’s Day spurs me to action and I make Valentines to sell.

I had ordered some neutral cards and envelopes to use in card making. With a collection of colored paper with designs and some magazine pictures I made big hearts surrounded by elements of design. Below is my work space.

If you are close to me you will have seen me talk to birds, especially the crows that live in the trees around my apartment. You will also notice in my apartment I have a wall hanging picturing many of the local birds that inhabit our area. Using scraps of fabric from many years of sewing and filling two drawers in the back bedroom, I created this wall hanging, almost from ceiling to floor. Wish I could remember now all their names. I wanted it to be hung in the walls of the gathering place at Bouverie near Glen Elllen. As luck would have it, I had it at home when Bouverie burned.

Many weeks have passed since I wrote here last. Deciding upon a topic has become hard for some reason. Not that I have covered all possible topics. No, the reason is more evident as time goes on, no one reads my blog. And how do I get regular readers? It’s much like how do I get buyers for my books. Selling my work or selling myself isn’t a skill set that I have.

This blog costs me money. I have an annual fee; don’t remember how much it is, but it will come to my attention when the time to pay is here. Then I wonder why I do it. Well, it’s a website. Fun to have one. I guess there is some kind of importance attached to it, though all one has to do is put it up and pay the fee, and there you are, important. The real purpose is to contact people and share your life with them. That’s the problem for me. Contact.

I need to take the time to add to it so things are new and fresh. That involves knowing how to add things, to know how to deal with Microsoft and it’s many tricky rules. I paid for someone to design and fill this website. Now, I need to learn how to do it myself. I have new paintings to upload. Maybe I could add a Rufus story every month to let people (my non exisistant public), see the books. Then maybe they might order one.

This brings to mind the angst I suffer as I try to turn my ebook publications of my ten Rufus stories into physical hard backs. I have almost given up when I discovered I must change the margins. One page tells me how to do it but then, in it comes problems that I must research. Now I have two pages of directions. I print them out so I can see what they are as I attempt to make the corrections. I almost gave up the other day; it is all so difficult and complicated.

Before I leave this earth I want to see my stories in hard cover. I don’t have enough funds to pay a publisher for all of them. The original book, “A Family of Geese,” cost about $3200. I don’t have $30,000 lying around to use to publish the remaining ten.

Maybe I could have a fundraiser? Any suggestions?

Maybe it’s the restless mind that awakens me in the wee hours of the morning. Many ideas about pictures and projects come to me and I can’t leave them to return to sleep. I fantasize how to make them purposeful and worth the time I will be using to bring them into reality. What is sad is oftentimes I do not remember them later. Yet how can anyone follow up with middle of the night wishes.

Yesterday I wondered how I could relate what the world looked at ground level. I know, that sounds like reaching for something weird. Who would be interested? But we were all living at that level as we entered this world before we grew to adult status.

I’m thinking that I can remember way, way back and catch the views I might have had at that time. Or consider others at that level. What did my son see at six months lying on a blanket of the floor. He was so interested is the little sister that could walk around that he learned to pull himself along sliding on the blanket trying to follow her.

What did I see looking out of the crib? Sitting on mother’s lap? I guess this moves beyond ‘ground level.’ Maybe the project will be views of a six month old.

I thinking maybe this impetus to check these views of a tiny Chlele is beginning a review of life. What do you think?

In the apartment complex are several palms standing 50 feet tall. Last year one was taken down for some reason, maybe of old age as it was loosing its huge fronds. I noticed a couple times a huge dried one on the pavement as I walked by to get the mail.

Because of their tall height I never looked up. Then I ordered a recliner for the back patio. When relaxing on it I could only see  high in the sky. A couple doors down I noticed another tall palm. Sometimes I thought it housed a murder of crows. I could hear their loud complaining coming from the tree though I never saw them.

Then, one day, as I rested on my new recliner I noticed the palm had huge yellow blooms hanging between the fronds. My goodness, could it be, could it actually be blooming? I had never seen this before except on my small palm that lived in my bedroom.

Many years ago, maybe 35 or 40, I brought home a pot of palms from the nursery. With careful counting I discovered there were twelve tiny plants no taller than eight inches each. I repotted them into a colorful pot and there they lived for many years, never changing or getting bigger.

When they began to grow some of the plants would give up the struggle and leave the area for those stronger. Those that remained grew big and I had to repot them from time to time. Finally I had five in a eight inch pot. They sent out new fronds regularly stretching up and out. They loved the area next to the bed in the corner of the room with the window close by.

One day while watering the palms I noticed a complex construction, yellowish in color, many branched. There were weirdly constructed flowers. Can it be? The palms were blooming? I had never seen this before. And no, I didn’t get dates as there were no other palms around. The blooming thing eventually dried up and dropped off and that was that.

Today I began to change my ebooks into a format that can be printed. Kindle Direct will print my ebooks if I get the material ready. I tried to upload Rufus and the Games and the report from them was there were not enough pages. As it was put in a design for ebooks there were not the 24 pages they require . So the job I have now is to lengthen each book.

I made a list of pages I could add to make the story run the length Kindle Direct requires. To add 6 pages I could have a glossary, a description of characters, a synopsis of the story, a list of discussion questions, a biography of the author, me, and a page listing the whole Rufus series. Sound Good?

The first problem is several of the pictures are darkened somehow. Maybe the photos I took with my phone didn’t catch enough light. Anyway they will need to be redone.

Another glitch: there are empty pages and I don’t know how get rid of them. Then I tried something and now, there is an empty page between all the pages. What do I do now? Brings back the memory of struggling with the computer to get certain things done. I don’t know enough computerese.

I know if I were working on the program that handles pages, things would be easier. But I forget how I change that into regular microsoft word document. Duh! Maybe I’ll go back to that and I’ll remember how to make the change when the book is finished.

I am excited to do this. I’ve always wanted to see my books printed. I didn’t have the money for that kind of expense so I uploaded them as ebooks on Smashwords. com for nothing. Now Kindle Diect will print them for nothing. They make their money when people order the books. Hooray!

My art supplies take up half of a closet in the bedroom that serves as my art and computer room. I bought metal shelving that stands easily in the closet and houses the many things I need to make pictures. Taking up space are the fourteen books in which I pasted a collage or drew a page as a graphic record. Most of them are mixed. It’s only recently that I do just the graphic record of my life. The collages aren’t backed with anything and stand in a pile on top of a cupboard.

The bottom three shelves house the blue topped containers in which I store acrylic paints, water color paints, puppet making materials, and charcoal and pastels. At the very top is a box with three containers for the colored pens. The shelves below store colored pencils, a container of wire, hangers, screws, etc for hanging pictures. I have a small box with my house tools, three screw drivers and two pliers. The hammer lays between things. Here and there one can find watercolor crayons, bottles of glue and gesso, card stock for making greeting cards, specialized paints, and books on color. It has everything I need when I have an impulse to make a picture.