Crescent City Gal
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Lensrank Already Dropping - No Big Surprise, Though

3/22/2013

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The day I hung up my angel wings my lens ranks started to tank.


I predicted that my Tier One lens, which has stayed in the top 100 pages on Squidoo for literally YEARS now, would start to drop in rank, and that once it falls into Tier Two (and I've gotten paid for the T1 time) I would move it to this website.  


Looks like I was right.  Yesterday it had a rank of 83 after bouncing between 75 and 83 for weeks on end.  Today it's dropping like the fake rock from Amazon in the picture and is sitting at 112. 


I've suspected for a long time that there was something artificial about it staying so high in lens rank, and I believe that having turned in my Giant100 and Angel Wings I would see a drastic drop in lens rank over time.


Oh, Well.  It is what it is.  Time to move on.


Foam Rocks are fun.  When they filmed part of the Star Wars franchise up in Del Norte County, they gave one of the boulders to the fellow who owns the little store and gas station out in Fort Dick, where it is on display to this day.  When my kids were little, I had some foam rocks that were fun to throw at people.  I had a nice walk down memory lane looking at these foam rocks that are available on Amazon.  Goofy Gag Gifts, anyone?

 Studio Foam Boulders Foam Rock- Large,Gosh Foam Rocks - Small (3 x 3 x 5 Gentle Rocks-Foam Rock Rocks Studio Foam Rocks Studio Foam Foam Rock by Goshman

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I Hung Up My Angel Wings

3/21/2013

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Five years is a long time to work on something only to discover you've been barking up the proverbial wrong tree.  It's hard on the ego to step back and say, "you know, I have been traveling a path that isn't right for me, and I've been trying to fit my square peg body into a round hole and it's just not working for me any more."

I joined the Squidoo community in September of 2008.  Yesterday I deleted all but 9 of my pages there, and turned in my Giant Squid 100 status and my Squid Angel Wings.  I know that this was the right thing for me to do, given my personal situation, and I know that there are some who will not understand.  It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things ... and that's my lesson in all this.

Put your hand in a bucket of water then pull it out and see how fast that displacement fills back up.  That's about how much my page will be missed on Squidoo.  I don't care, though, and that's the good part.  I am getting out of the digital sharecropping arena and into a real business.  

Plus I am having a lot of fun making little music videos for my kids' and my sister.

Here's the latest:

I haven't touched the 80 or so Hawaiian shirts hanging in the closet ... neither of us has felt well enough to make the spot for taking photos, although we did buy the plant hanger that's going to be on the photography wall. 

Going through this rough patch with body has been an enlightening experience, and I think I'll come out of this with a better understanding and I hope a deeper compassion for those with disabilities that are unseen.  You wouldn't know to look at me how hard it is to function with this level of pain.  I've got another medical appointment on Monday, and I will be seeing a real doctor this time so I am hoping he or she will know what to do for me.  I'm living on OTC medications, and still find it difficult to get anything done.  

I've been sticking to the keyboard and guitar because I can't lift the accordion right now.  I am not entirely sure I will ever be able to play it again, but I hope so. 



This next video is one I made a few weeks ago (you can hear I'm still suffering from the Cold From Hell as I recorded it)  ... it's a song we sang when I was in high school taking guitar class in my junior year from John Starets, may he rest in peace.  We sang it with a calypso rhythm, but I learned recently that the original song was a lot different ... I think this is a John Starets arrangement.  I don't like the original song, but I do like this version.  Hope you enjoy it. 


By the way ... that photo at the top is of a necklace that's available on Amazon.  It's linked with my amazon affiliate link so if you were to click on it and then buy something on Amazon, I'd probably get a little commission from Amazon.  I"m not asking you to click, I hasten to say, just letting you know where I got the photo and disclosing my affiliate relationship with Amazon so as to meet the FTC requirements.  
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Spring Has Sprung ...

3/1/2013

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Big Changes Here, There, And Everywhere

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That, my friend, is the chore hanging over my head.  There are about 80 Hawaiian shirts hanging there that are waiting for me to photograph and list on eBay.  

See, we got a little crazy while Thrifting for Profit last year, and before we realized it, we'd acquired a huge inventory for eBay along with the stuff we wanted to ship to Amazon.  This is the result.

But I digress, because there's a little more to this story.

When last I blogged, we were hunkered down in the Argosy in the Lucky Too RV Park out by Elgin.  You may recall that last year, about this time as a matter of fact, we had to abandon our plans in order to care for my adult disabled son, who was at risk due to a change in the roomies living at his brother's house.  So for almost a full year, he resided with us in a space that was totally inadequate for his physical size.  It took a toll on everyone, and along the way we had some damages to the Argosy that really needed to be addressed that were impossible to repair with all 3 of us living in it.

That's how we came to rent an apartment in north Austin in February.  So now the yellow wagon sits in one storage yard, while the Argosy sits in another, and we are sort of "camping" in a 2 bedroom 2.5 bath townhouse apartment that's only 2 miles from our daughter.

So far, so good, except ...

  • Moving in wiped out every shred of savings we had managed to accumulate
  • We'd only been here a few days when Bob fell down the stairs and had to be transported to the ER by ambulance
  • We discovered that rats have demolished most of the stuff in storage, so we have a huge chore ahead of us to divest ourselves of the damaged goods
  • Daughter's alcoholic room mate has had multiple drunk in public episodes, and we've been involved with some of that drama
  • Discovered Son had run out of meds and had to make an ER trip for an emergency refill, of course we discovered this after he flipped out as a result of not taking his meds ...
  • And, last but not least, the Cold From Hell that has kicked our proverbial butts bigtime for nearly the entire month and still won't let go some 4 weeks later.

Oh, I'm sure there's more, but ... you get the idea.  Excrement Occurs and Shift Happens and no matter how bad it gets, it's still good to be alive and that which does not kill us makes us stronger... or so "they" say, whoever the heck THEY are.

So here it is March 1 and time to pay the rent again and we have only managed to empty the Argosy and make ONE lousy load from storage, most of which is still piled up in the living room because I've been too sick to work on it much.

So ... this morning I broke down and applied for another visit to the sliding fee scale clinic, hoping this time somebody there will listen to what's going on with this god-awful gut pain and muscle spasms in my back, and help me figure out what's causing it so we can maybe make it go away.  Got my fingers crossed anyway.

Been thinking a lot about dying and what's going to happen to me when hubby expires, since I have only his income at the moment, and also what's to become of my son when I expire.  Not pretty, these thoughts.  But ... on the bright side, I've been recording videos of my music so my kids will have them to remember me by. 

I've stopped worrying about what I look like or how I sound, I just want to leave some memories of the music.  Here's what that looks like. 

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