Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)

crowbelle's Diaryland Diary

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Journaling

I have to give kudos to all of you journalists out there who come up with wonderfully detailed entries every single day. There are a few that I read daily that are small masterpieces of work, and I think you may know who you are. You really should be making a grand living writing either fiction or non-fiction for a living because it seems that your talent may be way undervalued here in journal-land.

On the other hand, you have touched many readers with your daily musings and rants, so I guess it�s not a waste of time after all. You have touched me, and I�m sure many others, as well.

I used to love to write, back in the day when I would write letters to friends. I�d write on a typewriter � my handwriting has never been that great � and I�d go on and on for hours about my life and just anything that popped into my head. My friends would seem to love getting those long multipage letters, but then something happened. I changed jobs.

I used to type while I was at work, you see. I didn�t have a computer at home back then. I was at my previous job where I worked for 16 years. I was the only one in the office, and occasionally I�d get my work caught up and have some free time. My boss was out a lot during the day, so I�d write letters to friends. It was a good thing�

But then something happened around 2000 or so. I left that job, and got my current job as a medical transcriptionist. I needed to buy a computer because I was going to be working at home, so I bought old "Harry" here (my computer has a name, yes). I figured, �Oh great, now I can type all my long newsy letters out here at home, in my OWN time, and won�t that just be ducky?�

Not.

Once I got my new job, I worked at the office for a while to get broken-in to the routine. After a little while, after I got my computer here at home up and running, I made the transition from working at the office to working out of my home. It was great! The best part about this job (besides working with a fabulous group of ladies) is that I get to be with my dogs all day. As it has turned out, one of them is elderly and quite infirm now, and needs me around most of the time. So this job is just perfect in that respect.

But one thing didn�t happen as I had planned. I never got into the habit of writing those nice long newsy letters again!

I do it now and then, but it�s a chore now, for some reason. I keep it in the back of my head that I must write so-and-so a letter soon� and eventually I do it. But not very often � not often enough! (sorry guys, if you are reading this - you are not a "chore" to me, but just letter-writing is!).

I guess it could be because now my job is typing solid for anywhere from 4 to 7 hours a day � straight. And although I love to type, that is a long time for the fingers to be going at break-neck speed on the keyboard. I am developing arthritis, too, so that complicates things a bit. However, I�ve just begun taking glucosamine and chondroitin pills and, by gum, they seem to be helping! (Stephanie � if you are wondering how I am doing on these pills, the answer is �better, thank-you-very-much.�)

So, to get back to the point, after I have spent an average day at the keyboard typing, my fingers are pretty worn out by the end of it. My eyes are worn out from reading carefully every single letter that I type, because we have to be very exact in what we type in the medical field. Wouldn�t want to put in the wrong word and then cause some problems down the road for a patient! So every word is typed carefully, and then every report is re-read after it�s been typed for accuracy.

After all that typing, and all that reading and re-reading, my eyes and fingers have had it, and by the end of work each day, the last thing I want to engage in is long-letter-writing!

All this is much ado about nothing, I suppose. But then what are these journals for but for titbits of nothing, really? (Yes, you read right �titbits� � that is the British version of our word �tidbits� and I tend to veer toward the British version of words just because I am in love with everything British.) I lived there in a previous life, you see. I wish I lived there now, but that�s not gonna happen in this lifetime I�m afraid. Anyway, I don�t know the origin of the word �titbits� but I may look it up sometime. Just on the face of it, I�d guess (and this is only a wild guess) that it may refer to the bird they call a �tit� (isn�t there a bird called that?) and the bits of food that bird picks up to eat. I could be completely wrong, but that�s just my guess. Another British phrase is �bits and pieces� which we hear all the time when visiting England. I�ve noticed that word popping up over on this side of the pond lately, especially in adverts (British for advertisements) on the telly (British for television).

I think we are in a �let�s copy the British� wave over here lately. I see actors eating like the Brits eat, too, using the left-handed fork to scoop up the food and putting it directly into the mouth, whereas over here we usually cut the piece of food, transfer the fork over to the right hand (if one is right-handed) and put the food into the mouth with the right hand. Ever notice that?

When we first started going over to England on our holidays, we would go out to eat at a pub or small restaurant and we�d stick out like sore thumbs with our utensil habits. The whole room would know we were Yanks. We tried teaching ourselves to eat like the Brits, but after a few attempts, gave up in lieu of getting the food eaten in some semblance of reasonable time. I don�t know how they do it, especially with things like peas! They get the peas onto the back curved portion of the fork and get it into their mouths�but I think the secret is to have some mushy potatoes of some kind to add to the fork so the peas will stick to that. I don�t know. It�s all beyond me. You�d think that, since I lived over there in a previous life, I�d know how to eat like that by instinct.

This is getting rather long, and you are probably saying �All right already!� to me by now. You see, I�m typing this upstairs on my computer, where my fingers fly over the keys at a much faster rate of speed than when I do a journal entry from my webtv which has a little remote keyboard, with sticky keys, and is very slow indeed.

So, that�s all for now. I really should do more planning before doing a journal entry, but then, why not ramble? There's no law says I can�t, right?

Just as a note about something...the other day I had a picture here of our back deck at sunrise showing an old sled with a santa on it.

Click here for a close-up of the sled

That sled belonged to my Paul when he was a little kid, back in the late 1940s/early 1950s. He had left it at his folks' house when we got married and he moved out. One year, a while ago, his sister, Leslie, discovered it in their attic, and confiscated it. She had an artist who lives up in her neck o'the woods (in MA near the NH line) paint that old fashioned looking Santa on his old sled, after it was cleaned up and restored, and gave it to Paul one Christmas as a present. I think it's one of the nicest presents "we" have ever received, and I love putting it out on the back deck so I can see it every day in the wintertime. If I put it out front, I'd be afraid of vandals stealing it, and besides, I wouldn't get to look at it from inside like I do while it's on the back deck thru the sliding glass doors.

Cheers,

Bex

9:09 am - 05 December 2005

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