Well, I guess I should break the silence, eh? After I posted about my lack of time and general frazzled-ness, I spent some time thinking. I feel like I have to much to do, becasue I have a metric ton of things to do. And so I spent the last two days reviewing a huge stack of books that had been sitting there by my desk giving me guilt. Books, done. Yay, me! Now I can turn my attention to other things.

Like video. That’s right, I’ve decided to branch out into video, and I have actually shot a few over the past couple of days. I used Windows Movie Maker to do my editing, but then tonight, I read this Blaze Media Pro review on Gadget Advisor and I’m thinking I might need to check it out. WMM does the job, but I couldn’t figure out how to mute just a split second of sound on it, so I had to cut more of my movie than I wanted to. If the Blaze Media Pro can do everything but the dishes, then surely I can cut one word out of a video, right?

As for the rest of my list, I’m not sure Gadget Advisor can help me. A new MSI x58 Eclipse motherboard may speed up my system, and the best extensions for Firefox may boost my productivity a bit, but in the end, it’s time management/goal setting and some boundaries that are going to allow me to get more done. Or less, depending. You know, less isn’t necessarily bad, particularly when you replace the things on your list with people you love.

I think maybe tomorrow, I’ll be tackling something else. Uploading my SPS to flickr? Maybe so.

So here I am on Saturday around noon, churning through my to do list. Why in the heck do I feel compelled to keep on like this? Every day, there is more stuff to do than minutes to do it in. And I am not just whining when I say that–I seriously need to sit down and figure that out, because this is just not right. I mean, Biblically, it’s not right, even, to never have a minute to just BE.

How are we supposed to be still and know He is God, if we are never still?
Where are my boundaries, and how can I make sure that they are respected?

Yeah, this is the first only shot I took, and I don’t even know what it looks like. I’m not taking the time today to make sure it’s “acceptable”.

Sometime this week, remind me to tell you how I said “I need 5 minutes” and walked into my room and shut the door, only to have it opened not 45 seconds later. If I look a bit harried, now you know why.

Ack, my glasses reflected. I hate that. Absolutely hate it. Not changing it anyway.

So, basically, I suck and I suck. I read three items: two books and a magazine. And I gained six tenths of a pound. But I also had the flu for 10 days and worked 16 hours a day anyway. I am so stinking tired! I want to sleep! I want to spend time with my kids! I want to blog! You know what I need? A wife. And if I can’t have a wife, I need Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, as recommended by Lisa.

Brett likes it, too. Check this out:

Here is another great video review by Lisa, who coincidently writes the blog Lisa Reviews. She writes about how she can write at 150 words per minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

I think one of the key takeaways from her video, the key insight that is, is that she is able to write a lot more in those spare moments of time that she has while she’s doing other things. Sometimes it’s great to multitask, but it’s even more important to be able to accomplish useful goals in those spare two or three or four minute pockets of time that we all experience throughout the day.

With Dragon NaturallySpeaking a four minute pocket of time can translate into 600 words! That could be three or four e-mails or one or two long blog articles if you’re a blogger like Lisa.
Slick

For just $99 you can get started with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and have it trained in running in about seven minutes. The software with version 10 is simply amazing.

I have been writing about Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost 2 years now. I have been able to type at rates of up to 167 words per minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. That speed was clocked while I was taking a typing test, but even in practical situations when I factor in not only the time it takes to type, but the time that it also takes to edit the words I typed, the end result is that I can still achieve about 100 words a minute, INCLUDING editing time! J

That is extremely fast, and the inclusion of editing time, speaks to the advances that you can see in version 10 as compared to older versions such as version 8 or version 9. It’s a lot easier to edit on the fly with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.

So if you’re looking for a practical tool for your home office, for your writing or blog work, or even just to keep up with e-mail in your spare time, Dragon NaturallySpeaking can give you the power to write at 150 words a minute for a price that starts at $99. Heck, I think I paid that much almost for my last keyboard so that I wouldn’t pound my fingers to death.

Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
Softduit Media
www.softduit.com
PS this article includes about 376 words that I wrote with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. It took me about 3 1/2 minutes to write and edit this article, which is just a little bit better than 100 words per minute and that includes editing time.

Man, he’s wordy, isn’t he? And to think that I sat here and typed those long posts I wrote this week. Obviously, I need to get with the program. If I could blog in my spare minutes….man, I could dictate my blog posts in the morning in odd pockets of time between this and that student/chore/distraction while my mind is still working and then edit/publish them in the afternoon during quiet time, and I wouldn’t be sitting here at ..what time is it??…. 8:20pm while my family is watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks without me.

Cause in the morning, when I am still smart, I say twitter stuff like this:

Dear Blog, I want to come into your inner, secret areas and leave a deposit of warm words on your public face. Why have you locked me out?

But now? All I have are memories of wit, and pitiful tweets like this:

just can’t make my brain work

More Wordless Wednesday

So, even though this is Wordless Wednesday, and it was indeed wordless when I put it up, and even though there are mountains of words underneath it, there should be words here and so now there are. They don’t make a whole lot of sense in this context, but none the less, here they are.

You know, I understand that many of you came here yesterday, and read what I wrote, and then didn’t know what to say to it. And I am okay with that. I didn’t really have an agenda beyond just getting it out there, out of me.

See, the other day, I was sitting here trying to pull myself out of the muck; berating myself, actually, for wallowing in my mental mire. And I remembered a friend looking me dead in the eye after he found out Grandma had died, and saying “it will take you a year to get over what has happened to you”, and I remembered thinking that I really hoped that wasn’t true, because, oh my word, who wants to live confused and hurt for a year!

But it was only in the past week that I was able to say to me, “ya know, there may be a reason you aren’t totally on your game. Pull yourself together and get over it might not be the best possible advice you can give yourself right now.”

And that was when I was finally able to admit it had been a bad year. Yep, three deaths, financial disaster, and yes, more stuff that I am not ready to blog about yet, and I was still trying to tell myself to just suck up and deal. We truly are our own worst critics, aren’t we?

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Hi, my name is Cass, and I am depressed. The good news is, I don’t plan to stay this way.

Those of you who follow me on twitter, and if you don’t you should, because I am clever and witty and bitingly sarcastic, and totally transparent, unlike my secretive and transcendent friend, Pete, who still has not approved my comment, might have noticed this little gem

can you hear that roaring sound? It is the vacuum created by the current suckage of my day/week/month/year. /end covering pathos w/ humor. 10:43 AM Oct 17th from TwitterFox

and then I have had a recent conversation with Ang., who doesn’t even moderate my comments at all, where she wondered if perhaps Satan was beginning to win the war within me. I was in a very bad place, and I frankly still am, and I mentioned to her that I could not see God anywhere.

Folks, this has been the hardest year of my life. Harder than the year I got divorced. Harder in some ways than the year I lost custody of my first born child. And it’s because there has just been so. much. fecal. matter. to deal with. Wave upon smelly wave.

When I got back from Vegas last year, I entered what can only be described as the pit of despond.

First, I gave my husband the checkbook, and I told him I was done with it. I was more than tired of the financial train wreck that had become the norm. I figured if I kept out of it, maybe he could get it back under control. Then there was the RankSpank, and my income dropped to just about pitiable levels.

And then, before I could take a breath, Mama called me and told me Grandmother had quit eating and was getting ready to die. And then she did. And I honestly do not know how I kept my grip on sanity during that time. I look back at the self portraits I took during the 10 days she took to die, and I do not even know that person in them. Those haunted eyes cannot be mine, because surely no one can look like that and live to tell the tale. I made it through her funeral stunned and shocked and clutching her picture to my chest on the way to the church and the cemetery. I remember the pull of my husband’s hand on mine, pulling me back as I was walking up the aisle of the church after the eulogy way too fast, trying to get away. I remember than same hand attached to mine and pulling me forward when my legs stalled and my knees locked as I made my way across the cemetery. (And you should know that I am typing this through tears even now). I do not know how I made it except by the grace of God, and if He had not been wise enough to make breathing an involuntary reflex, I might not have.

And then it was Christmas, and busy, busy, busy. And then it was April, and my Papa was dead, too. I had known he was sick, but my mind just refused to do the math involved with the phrase “stage 4 lymphoma”, and I still thought I had plenty of time.

And then, in June, we buried Grandma, too.

And the finances aren’t any better, and my husband quit his job, which did indeed suck, but it was a job, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my marriage is shakier than it has ever been, and that I am angry with him every

day. The disconnect letters keep coming, the creditors keep calling and here we are. This is not the life I dreamed of. I wanted to be Cinderella when I grew up, and instead life is handing me one full chamberpot after another!

Can you see what I meant up above? It’s bad in here where I am. I feel like I have been cut off at the knees, and people, I am not very tall to begin with! There has not been time to grieve, because there hasn’t even been time to breathe, and the situation just looks pretty desperate and I so want to run away from all of it. I wake up every morning thinking “if I have to ride this roller coaster today, I am going to throw up”, and I get in and buckled up, and off we go, and yet I barf not.

So, here’s what I shared with Ang. the other day:

[10:11:51 AM] CassKnits says: yk, settling long ago that God was real and the Bible was true, it has made such a difference in my life
[10:12:02 AM] CassKnits says: I think back, this past year
[10:12:18 AM] CassKnits says: my life since Vegas has been one suck after another
[10:12:49 AM] CassKnits says: seriously, and the only reason I have not completely thrown in the towel is because I know that I know that I know God is real
[10:13:09 AM] CassKnits says: I can’t give up, because He won’t

I can’t quit because the God of the Universe believes in me. He knows I can go on, if I just continue to hold on to Him. He’s the one buckling the roller coaster’s seat belt for me, so I don’t fall out. But if I had not made up my mind decades ago that God was real, then I would panic because I cannot see Him now. It’s still scary, but I know the fault is lies with my human eyes, and not God. Trusting Him to see me through is absolutely the best “decision in advance” I have ever made. Some things it’s just better not to have to try to do during times of duress, or when the fog is thick and the path overgrown and littered with chamber pots, and the roller coaster is making that horrid clicky tick tick tick sound that always precedes the sudden scary drop.

A friend of mine has been asking a lot of questions lately. Three days ago, he asked:

if you were given money to remodel your house what would you change first?

and then it was :

if you had $1 million to start a new business what would it be?

and then this morning, a biggie:

what’s one thing you’ve done that you’d like to erase?

I answered the first two pretty quickly, but I have been mulling over the last one for most of the day. What one thing is so big that erasing it could change your whole life? The only thing I can think of would be a life partner.

Now, before I go any further, I need to clarify something. I am NOT announcing a major change in my life at this point. And even if I were, I would not be going about wishing to erase my marriages. Both of my marriages led to children, and even in my darkest pit of darkest pit days, I know that I know that my children are blessings. Each and every one of them. Erasing one or both of those marriages would mean I didn’t have these children, and that would be unacceptable to me. Now, having clarified that, let’s continue. Back to life partners.

So, I was thinking about what an important choice it is to take a spouse. Studies indicate that this one decision is the over-riding factor in determining whether one is satisfied with life or not. I totally believe this is true. And I think if more people married with the intent of sticking it out instead of trying it on for fit, if they weighed the potential heartache, then they might be a touch slower in getting married. They might give it more thought. They might give it the amount of consideration it deserves.

YK, when I first started reading about online dating sites, I laughed at the very idea that someone would meet a man or woman online and then marry them. And then in the interim, I’ve watched relationships form with people I “know” and also with some I really do know, and I have to say, it may not be as crazy as I thought at first. Who/what better to decide if two people are really compatible than an unbiased computer program, who cannot “see” what either person looks like or be influenced by the size of their wallets?

Now, you do still have to be careful. Some of the sites out there are set up to rip you off. They charge high fees up front, and then they string you along asking for a monthly fee to continue searching. But a decent one, like True, will allow you to search for free. That’s right, FREE. Sign up is free and so is searching. Just do yourself a favor: answer the questions honestly, and mke your first meetings in public. It might not be a bad idea to make your first several meetings in public. actually. Just because you answered honestly doesn’t mean the other person did

So, back to today’s question– I still don’t have an answer for my inquisitive friend. Overall, I am thinking nothing. Everything or person I have encountered/enjoyed/hated/embraced/avoided has helped make me who I am today. I may not always understand me so much, but I am beginning to like me pretty well, finally. There may be things I would not choose to do again, but there is nothing I would erase, because life is a string, coiled back in on itself in innumerable ways, always touching itself in places we don’t see at the time. Anything I changed about yesterday would affect today or tomorrow in a way I might not like.

Here’s what I looked like about halfway through mowing my yardS this week. This led directly to the wine and icecream shot I showed you earlier in the week. I can finally move without hurting again, though I still have bruises on my palms. I’m saving this shot for when I get over being mad.

On a different note, I remind myself of Grandma in this picture. I’ve noticed that a few times in photos, usually those taken when I am under great stress, either physical or emotional. I guess blood really does tell, because I don’t think I look like her under normal circumstances. But then, what is normal? And also, why couldn’t I have had some of her amazing height, too? Or maybe even just get taller under duress? It could be my secret super power.