BLOGAHOMA

Taken with the Pentax Optio W90 made into panoramic on the fly. Previous photo from Canon Powershot 640 assembled in Photoshop.

Much what I have picked up about Photoshop has been from my husband. Not everything he shows me is of interest to me but I really like Zoomify. I used it to show the expanse of our front yard.

It is hard, if not impossible, to figure what starts and stops creative urges. It was during my husband’s chemo session I decided that watching TV or playing endless games of Sudoku was not a valuable use of this time. On chemo session number two I brought along a sketch book and drew anything with no particular end in sight. Some drawings were ho-hum others actually hummed. From there I scanned them in added color and began working them out in 3D followed by animation. I was experiencing the joy again that comes from creating. Once the creativity clicked in I woke up in the morning with half baked ideas and proceeded to finish cooking them up. I went back to Cheetah 3D software with ideas and began constructing things with more precision, improving where I had left off months before. Saying to myself “not good enough” when it wasn’t. Setting goals and story lines for animations I head dreamed up. Most of what I am doing is for the pure entertainment value, set to music and sound effects and shared across the social network.

And so “Bumper Dome” happened, a zany scenario in which 5 cloned Bump Staplers become the cars for the Dodgem Ride. Going at each other with zeal. I planned out the moves from and overhead view point sending one stapler careening into another until the chain reaction would be what expect from a Dodgem ride including one poor stapler trapped between two bullies. Aw! I thought to myself what if I mounted the camera on the stapler so we could see what the stapler saw. So funny, I loved the joke. A handful of people got it, loved it and it made them smile, which multiplied my joy in having made the animation in the first place. On equal footing to being creative for me is learning something new in the process. Frankly I don’t see the sense of even doing something if I haven’t dialed it up a notched. Novelty is my energy drink.

Right now my creative energy has been set loose. Will it be stomped on? I hope not. I have so much more to learn.

Maybe in April, when it’s all over, the chemo drip, the following days of Michael feeling yuchy maybe then normal will return. We’ll eat spicy food again and go to the doctor once every three months instead of camping out in the Cancer Center. We’ll unplug the alarm clock and wake up when the sun slips in the window and won’t take a nap in the middle of the day, unless we want to. Maybe in April I can replace all my bookmarks on cancer to ones on joy and thriving. We’ll unleash ourselves from the 100 mile map and be able to feel free to move about the country, if just to plan a weekend getaway. And come April we might again be able to open our mail box without dreading the medical bills spilling out. Maybe in April we will be able to accept a hug without fear of catching something. Maybe in April I can follow capricious whims and dance with serendipitous glee.

I am safety pinning my hopes to April. April don’t let me down. I promise, I will keep trying to live in the moment.

April’s Charms by William Henry Davies

When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long –
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;

When I can hear the woodland brook, that could
Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood;
Upon these banks the violets make their home,
And let a few small strawberry vlossoms come:

When I go forth on such a pleasant day,
One breath outdoors takes all my cares away;
It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold
Of wood that’s green and fill a grate with gold.

“We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.” Seneca quotes

Turning this quote around can be harder than one would imagine…. We should receive as we would give

I was taught by my parents from the earliest age on how to give. We had very little really but still we gave. I remember dropping pennies and nickels into the Salvation Army kettle when I was no taller than the money slot. My mother, who was too busy running a household of nine to go door to door, would volunteer me to collect for the Heart Fund for the Diabetes Assoc. and the United Appeal. It was  uncomfortable for me since I was extremely shy. My parents lead by example never turning away someone in need and they shared what they had, be it time, food or shelter. Once on my own and then married I followed suit opening the purse strings, and our doors when asked. So it came automatically, the giving. But receiving is a whole other life lesson, tough really, when you are not used to receiving.

In January 2010, when the ice storm of the century hit, neighbors with a wood burner took us and our two dogs in. While other friends an hour and a half north of here became hosts as we sought communication (cellphone and email) and a hot shower. We learned more deeply what it meant to receive. And now that cancer has entered our life we are accepting help from family, friends and neighbors in the form of rides, lotions, advice and time away from the chemo. We have gratefully received funding from Cancer organizations to help defray costs. Funding found by our daughter and by the financial manager for the Leah Fitch Cancer Center of Southwest Oklahoma.

Although we still give it is in smaller ways and usually not financially as our resources are directed to medical costs. And giving of time is hard as well with a chemotherapy treatment most every week and a day to recoup from the treatment. I am trying to find ways that I can still give outside our family. A drawing or print here or there, a letter, a listen, a kind word and a few coins dropped in the Salvation Army kettle. When it is all said and done we will hopefully be the folks on the giving side and know first hand what it means. We want you to know we know who you are and we know how you’ve helped and we will be there for you and others when and if we can.