An Announcement

All craft, craft industry, professional and jewelry making related posts can be found at Margot Potter The Impatient Crafter blog.  If you want self help and lifecrafting advice, please visit Craft. You.  If you'd like to enjoy pithy quips directed at snarky internet comments, please visit Internetiquette with Ms. Madge(rs).  Finally...stay tuned for my haven for all things retrofabulous at Your Grandmother's Crafts.

Phew.

This blog will be taking an extended hiatus.  It's become too much of a microscope and too little of a refuge.  I am turning a new page, if you are a reader here, please do come along for the fun at my other sites!

Love
Madge

Of Cabbages and Kings

The above picture makes me laugh. I do things like this to keep from crying. I am crying while I type this, so I guess I had better bust out another perfectly lovely picture to deface.

I know I haven't posted here much. I am sorry about that. This is really where it all started. Now I have fifty seven blogs.

Okay, I have four.

Or five.

Um, let me count them on my fingers...

Five.

Yup, that's it. Five blogs and not one of them pays the mortgage. Seriously?

Someone give me a book deal already, GOOD GRIEF.

As we all know, all fifteen of us, I have had a long and miserable year. Insert tiny violins...here. Extracting myself from this year has proven difficult.

Yay.

I am really, really hopeful (hope full) that this is all going to work out to be so fabulous and fanfuckingtastic that I will look back in a year or two and have a jolly good laugh about it all.

Yes, I shall toss back my strawberry blonde Leonine mane with my manicured finger tips in my bubblegum pink yacht as I drift past our new home on the coast of Bora Bora, wearing a ridiculous straw hat, a bedazzled sarong and drinking some incredibly fruity and delicious rum soaked beverage from a pineapple served by a cabana boy.

I'll meet you there. Be sure to bring wine and some delicious fancy cheeses.

They aren't really into fancy cheeses in the tropics. Alas. We make small sacrifices for our fantasies, but in mine, I teach the natives how to make fancy cheeses and a nice crisp Sauvignon Blanc and all is well.

I should be sleeping, but I'm just not that into it. It's the shortest day of the year, so it makes absolute sense I'd milk it for everything it was worth.

No, mostly it's hormonal shifts and other things you would probably prefer I not blather on and on about. Yet it's tempting to be sure.

It is Christmas, but Santa is not bringing me anything. Santa is low on funds this year. It happens. Please don't tell the children, they'd be terribly sad.

What I'd really like, if Santa is listening, is to sell my humor book, sell my TV show and to get my life back. The one that got lost in this horrible year. Yup, that about covers it.

Also some wine, fancy cheeses and good dark chocolate.

Oh and Botox and a trip to the tropics.

That about covers it.

Really just the first three would be fabulous, the others are just icing on the cake.

Make that a dark ganache icing...if you please.

I'm feeling a Scarlet O'Hara moment coming on...I simply must go whip up a dress from our curtains!

Love
Madge

Some Good News!

Some of you may recall that I visited National Jewish Hospital last year in my relentless quest for answers about my unresponsive asthma. I went on a 9 month course of antibiotics after that trip to eradicate a microbacteria from my lungs called mycoplasma. You can read about it here.

Well, here it is over a year later and I have interesting news.

I have been having a heckuva time breathing since the heat index went through the roof here in East Tennessee over the past two weeks along with some other extenuating breath challenging situations. I visited my new asthma doc for some relief and she gave me some new meds to get me through until the heat subsides and the ozone levels go down.

She also told me that I have the first viable improvement in my breathing in years! So that means the Biaxin must have worked, which means that my regular asthma meds may finally be able to get in there and do their job.

So...although I'm currently wheezy and exhausted, there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel!

Huzzah!

If you know anyone with unresponsive asthma, MS, Crohns, Gulf War Syndrome, Lupus, Chronic Fatigue, Rheumatoid Arthritis or any other long term chronic inflammatory or immune system condition, they may benefit from this therapy too.

I had to fight hard to get this answer and I really want other folks to know there is hope, it's not just you and sometimes you just have to fight long enough until someone finally listens.

Fight the good fight, you are worth it!

Love
Madge

Gentle Readers...Few Though You May Be

Dear Approximately Four Regular Readers

Yes, there are about four of you who read this drivel and a few who stumble through on their way somewhere else. You held on even when I took down four years of posts and mostly stopped writing here. You lovely wonderful four of you who for whatever reason keep coming back for the few posts I manage to eek out these days...thank you.

Thank you for offering me a virtual shoulder and for reminding me, especially in the toughest times, that you are out there and that you, yes you, gentle readers, genuinely care about someone whom you have never met. Someone who shows her seams, embraces her warts, colors outside of the lines and lives out loud. Someone who takes the side roads and rescues any turtles she might find stranded on them. Someone who, just like every other someone on this planet, merely wants to love and be loved and to find whatever modicum of grace and dignity she can as she makes her way through this weary world.

And if you're looking for something here that isn't bathed in unconditional love and covered in fierce fabulosity and glittery goodness, then I'm afraid you have come to the wrong blog.

To the looky loos, the trolly trolls and the thrill seekers, move along. There is nothing to see here. Show's over. I truly hope you find your pathway to joy, or at the very least find your way back to that bridge that is missing you.

Writing is my guilty pleasure. It is the joy inside my tears. I work things out by writing them out and I post them here because I know that in doing so I have given someone else who may be struggling to find terra firma a little message in a bottle that lets them know to hang on and be strong.

Just know, brave four, that you are light, you are loved and nothing and no one can harm you and if you ever need to feel just a little less alone, you can find me here.

"And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make." The Beatles

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were always waiting for this moment to arise." The Beatles

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all encompassing can have no opposites." A Course in Miracles

Be in peace,

Madge

The Scar

Her fingers traced lightly over the scar on her right cheek.

It was an imperfect circle, there were small almost imperceptible peaks and valleys. It was a fresh scar that was still settling into a state of permanence. When she caught a glimpse of it in a mirror, it was confusing and alien. She had spent 47 years living without it.

Most people were far too polite to inquire how it had appeared where it once was not, and so it hung in the air like a great unspoken question mark.

Maybe it was always there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows waiting to emerge.

The deepest scars are mostly invisible.

Perhaps this one had been making its way to the surface for a number of years only to meet at the proper moment with an accidental external assault.

She traced, sighed, gazed and reflected on the subtle changes time was making to her countenance. The scar felt like a vulgar addition to an already fading canvas.

"I will learn to love you, scar." She announced resolutely.

She had no choice, so she did, in point of fact, learn to love it. It was a part of her now, after all.

Rock the boat, don't rock the boat baby...

It has been a while since I posted here.

I have so much to say, yet I can't say it out loud right now.

I built my entire career on transparency. I am no longer running the show. I have been asked not to rock the boat.

I used to be the captain of the boat, the boat that I rocked with joyful abandon on a regular basis. I mean, who doesn't like rocking the boat now and again?

I can say I'm not really happy with the new sailing arrangements. This makes me sad.

I can also say that was not a pathetic stab at irony or sarcasm.

It is just how I feel.

I can also say that without hesitation that I will wrap my fingers around that wheel again and I will not ever let it go.

Just saying that makes me feel better.

I guess that about covers things in an obtuse way.

"The time has come, the walrus said,
To talk of many things.
Of shoes, of ships, of sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings."
Lewis Carroll (also being obtuse, but in a most delightful way)

xoxo
Madge

Shiny Things

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh...a shiny person who felt the strain.

Sometimes I feel stuck in the resistance of people who feel threatened by me. Let me be clear, it's not all about me, it's not about me at all. It's about them. It's about living in a state of lack and allowing that state of lack and fear to project outward and infect your actions. This happens to all of us at some point or another if we put ourselves out there and god forbid, achieve some level of success. I first noticed this phenomenon when I was a kid. People who don't sit quietly in the corner, who don't follow the rules blindly, who sparkle freely, who live out loud...especially people who do all of that and also boldly encourage others to do the same...we are threatening. We are threatening because our presence is catalytic.

It's weird, because my endless Pollyanna desire for community and belonging is ever thwarted by my square peg in a round hole reality.

I have never fit in and I'm afraid it's become increasingly obvious that I never will. Even among the misfits I'm some how odd girl out.

C'est la vie.

The thing that makes this frustrating is these threatened people often do their best to push me out of the spotlight, out of my jobs, out of my connections, out of the party...though how my leaving will make them appear any better at what they do is beyond my comprehension.

In point of fact, together we are far stronger than we are individually.

I want to take them gently by the hand and sit them down and say, hey, listen, I'm not the enemy. I don't want to take your pie, I'm busy baking my own. You don't get anything out of making someone else smaller, except bad karma and a side of guilt. It's okay for all of us to become exactly who we are and in doing so there is no possibility for competition or threat, no one in the entire world can be you better than you can. It's okay to get yours, but you don't have to kick someone else in the shins to do it. I don't need to take away from you to make me bigger.

I just want to shine and watch you shine and encourage everyone to shine...

Yeah, I want to buy the world a Coke.

Except for the diabetics who probably don't need a Coke, so maybe I can get them a sparkling water instead.

But I digress...

There is room enough in the sky for every star to shine. So just shine brightly and don't worry about that star on the left or the right, they're doing their own shiny thing. Do yours.

"Your life is an occasion, rise to it." Mr. Magorium

xoxo
Madge