09.14.07
Now tell me, who deserves leniency?
Well here I am, mad again. Why this time. The injustice of the media and celebrity attitudes.
There are actually two things that are pissing me off this time. Let’s go with the Anna Nicole Smith issue. Okay, artists, writers, humanitarians and saints are not normally recognized until they are long dead. But if you are a mother with loose morals and you allow your child to load up on drugs as an escape for his lack of a real life and you die, you get immediate fame.
Personally, I think if I hear her name on the news one more time I will scream! As a matter of fact I did yell at the television this weekend. The woman worked hard for her death, let her lie.
Then there is the Paris Hilton deal. I have heard over and over and over, about how all these famous people, and even some not famous people think that she deserves some leniency. FOR WHAT! What has she ever done to deserve leniency?
Let me tell you a little story. I will start by telling you that this is my personal experience. I do not drink nor do I use drugs, well unless you consider caffeine and nicotine. I made our living when my children were growing up by driving a truck. I have an excellent driving record. In fourteen years, I got three speeding tickets, one of which I did not earn.
I realize that there are those that go their entire lives without ever getting a traffic ticket, but those people do not cover and average of a thousand miles a day.
When my son was approaching his 16th birthday, I helped him buy the car of his choice. It had to be rebuilt and we knew that when we purchased it. I taught my boy, at my kitchen table, as I made dinner, to rebuild a carburetor and we barbequed while we tore down the transmission and replaced rings. An interesting bonding experience for a mother and son.
Two weeks before his birthday, I came home to find him running toward my truck all excited. He had, on his own, finished the carburetor and was so proud of himself. I was proud as well. I arranged for his insurance while I was on the road that week. The following week, on Friday he went to get his drivers license.
I came home and we went over the car carefully for safety. When I left on Sunday, I left him an envelope saying, “Son, give this to your sister and she will pay your insurance on her way to work tomorrow. Tell your boss that you need to get off work early on Thursday. When you get your check and your sister will take you to get your tags.”
Oh stupid me. My children have always been relatively trustworthy and they did not lie to me. When I came home unexpectedly on that Wednesday to find that my son and his car were gone I was stunned.
To make an already long story short, when he got his tags, without insurance, the lady at the desk told him that I had to sign the title as well. He went out and signed my name, came back in and got his tags on Monday. That Wednesday night he had a wreck.
I supported my family for 14 years with my drivers license, I had a clean record, but the ordeal that I went through because of that wreck took my license! IT TOOK SEVEN YEARS TO GET IT BACK!
Now tell me, who deserves leniency? A rich, spoiled idiot that does nothing for anyone else? Or, a single mother trying to support her family?
Want to know how we made it through that winter, with me not being able to work? I chopped wood, each and every day while my son took my pickup after school and went around delivering and selling it.
04.22.07
New Book – Part 2 – A Missouri Mystery
The first two chapters seemed to almost write themselves. I was on a roll and fell asleep at the computer. I hate it when that happens. Mostly because I will have a line (or a few lines) of nothing but gibberish. If I could only decipher it. I know there was a good idea in there somewhere. I am a bit excited about this book when I really shouldn’t be.
For one thing I have no idea at this point where it will take me. There are so many angles that can be taken. I know one thing, I do not under any circumstances want it to turn into a happily ever after romance. YUCK!! I want to stick with the mystery of the thing.
An interesting thing happened while I was considering this story. I did a bit of research on the area that it is to be located in geographically. I was trying to find the origins of the tiny town but to no avail. What I did find was contact information for two gentlemen that grew up in the area. They do not know each other apparently as one was several years the senior of the other and they both have stories to tell of the folklore that inspired this book to begin with. Very spine chilling. I hope to integrate these tales into the story somehow.
If there is anyone with any clues as to conducting historical research I would sure like a hint/tip or two. I can be emailed at mari@inspiredwordart.com
Tallapoosa is located where 153 turns to the north.
04.18.07
The New Book – A Missouri Mystery
Well even though I don’t have my new computer yet I have started on the new book. When an idea takes root in a writer’s noodle something has to be done!
The reason I am blogging about it now is that I have discovered a wonderful and new asset to the Internet for writers and probably for small business markets and online marketing. Okay there are some of you wise guys that already know but others don’t and I wanted to share it with you.
If you have ever lost an important or almost finished piece of work on your computer you will really appreciate this tip. Check out http://docs.google.com I am not an affiliate of this program by the way.
It is a free word processing program that you do not have to download. What you write is kept online in a private file. There when your computer crashes or your files become corrupted. You can load files into the program for ease of inserting them into the system of a new computer. If you like Microsoft word, you will love this program.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Just a brief, first chapter synopsis:
(I welcome and would like comments. Title ideas as well.)
I live in S.E. Missouri near a community called Tallapoosa. Although the book is fictional the name of this community will be in the book and an old folklore is the basis of the plot. I would like to say again that the book is fictional.
In this sleepy little farm community on a summer’s Sunday morning a family of four, Mom, Dad, sis and brother sit down for breakfast in the kitchen of the five room home.
Several days later a neighbor comments to her husband that the family must be ill as she had not seen the 6 & 8 year old children at play or any other activity lately. The husband responds that he noticed that the family car had not seemed to move that week. Later, after night fall, the neighbors look out the window to see that the kitchen light was on and the door was ajar. Not that unussual on a warm summer night. When the gentleman gets up after midnight for a drink, looking out his own kitchen window to the neat little home behind him, he sees that nothing has changed.
Not able to sleep he awakens his wife and they decide that he will investigate while she watches ready to call the police or another neighbor if need be.
A shiver runs up his spine as the concerned neighbor enters the kitchen to find the half eaten meal. Walking through the home as he called out to the family he is aware of the eariness of normallicy. Nothing appeared to have been touched in at least a week.
Living on a gravel road, dust collects rapidly. All the furnishings of the home were covered in the dust from the chat road. It was as though the family had sat down to eat and been beamed out of the home without a trace.
03.14.07
Inspirational Word Arts
Inspirational Word Arts You know your on the right track when…. Read my story of disaster and tell me yours. Did it stop you in your tracks? Or, did you keep plugging away at it? What was the result?
You know you’re on the right track when…
My Grandpa Walter used to say, “You know you’re on the right track when everything suddenly starts to go terribly wrong. God let’s it go wrong to see how badly you want it.” Well, I must be doing something right because three weeks ago everything blew up in my face.
I had started a new website and placed more information on it than necessary. I intended to start two more and use half of the content on the first one for the third one.
I purchased the add-on domain name to use for the second site and started building it using my Netscape program. Then lightning struck, literally. We found it necessary to replace our telephone service box, all the phone lines and the telephone. The technician that did this was amazed that my computer seemed to be unaffected. Especially since the phone lines came in and went directly to the computer. It wasn’t unaffected.
Three days after we had all that replaced, the computer started shutting down for no reason until eventually it would not even boot up. I took it to the repair shop and borrowed this one from a grown foster daughter.
Although I appreciate the loan, this computer has no memory to it what-so-ever. There is no word processing program. You can’t load anything on it. It does have Netscape so I have been able to rebuild the pages I had on the other computer but it will not publish them to the add-on domain. If I store more than a dozen wordpad documents I start getting virtual memory and overload messages.
Today, the repair shop called to tell me that the power supply and the motherboard to my computer were toasted. I was advised to replace the computer.
Great! In the two and a half weeks they have had the thing I have lost, not only the job I was almost finished with but, two other contracts that would have netted me more than $500 a month. Which means that I can’t afford to replace it.
Well, I ain’t dead in the water yet God. I will hitchhike the 30 miles to the nearest library to do my work before I give up.
What is your – You know your on the right track when…. Story? I would like to hear it.
Inspired Word Art.com – Your one stop shop for all your content needs.
02.15.07
Inspired Word Art
t
INSPIRED BY THE ART WITHIN THE WORDS
http://www.inspiredwordart.com
Dear Friends;
What is in a word? Many people only see a word and nothing more. For us at Inspired Word Art we see Art. It is that ART that we draw our INSPIRATION from to create a work of beauty painted with the written WORD that will explain those words better and more fully.
Finding one place to furnish all your writing needs is hard, if not impossible, to do. We here at Inspiredwordart offer you just that. Inspiredwordart is your one stop location for all written material – all at great prices.
Inspiredwordart.com offers written work for all your needs. Interviews, web content, articles and product reviews, e-books and biographies. No matter the job and no matter the size – check out Inspiredwordart.com and get it done right the first time.
Stop shopping around to find the right deal. Check out Inspiredwordart.com and get everything you need at one location with a family touch of passionate professionalism. No matter the job we can meet all your writing needs adding our own unique blend of artistic style and flare to make all your material look like a piece of art.
To get pricing and project estimates contact Janet or Jeff at info@inspiredwordart.com or stop by our website at http://www.inspiredwordart.com
12.31.06
The Writing Expert
The Expert
I had just logged online and an alert popped up that I had an important private message. These messages tend to always get my immediate attention when I receive them right away. I don’t want to be interrupted while I am working later. So I opened my messenger service to read it.
I had been a member of a writer’s group for quite some time and the message was from one of the members of that group. He had gotten my name after I answered a post of his asking for help with his work, earlier that day. Following a link that he found in that reply he was directed to my business Website where he found several examples of my work.
A freelance writer’s Website is a necessary evil. It is necessary to show your prospective clients your work. It is evil because when a prospective client stumbles upon the site they often do not understand the form of the writing or the reason behind it. This can, at times cost you a client. Many freelance writers‘, I among them, don’t actually consider this problem until someone like my Internet colleague comes along.
This man, in his genuine concern for my success had taken two of the examples that he found on my site and rewritten them. While what he had done was, with one exception, grammatically and structurally correct, his revisions were written in his voice, not mine. The structure of it no longer suited to my purposes.
After reading his efforts, giving his suggestions careful consideration, and pointing out to him the one exception, which was redundancy, I tried to gently explain the form of my work. After rewriting the first piece he restructured the form, turning the sixteen paragraphs of Website content into six long paragraphs.
My explanation of the work was met with this response, as copied from my history files. Colleague: “Even in web content you need to keep things flowing,”
Janet: “In this case you don’t, not in the normal sense of the word anyway. My work flows with the rest of the content but each paragraph still, in its own way, carries a new idea or thought”
Colleague: “even in web content you need to keep things moving and flowing eveningly”
Janet: “Perhaps in the blogs but most of my stuff goes into a marketing format. This one is already sold to a mold resolution marketer and the EPA.
Colleague: “even in marketing format its ok”
Janet: “Now that’s where I am the expert, in marketing web content and it isn’t okay, I guarantee you that. I have researched it with identical sites. The only difference was the layout of the paragraphs. The site with the longer form did only 27% of the business that the site with the shorter paragraphs did.”
Colleague: “longer form doesn’t translate to longer paragraphs even in marketing formats you have to maintain a readablity of your story if you fail to do that the customer will wonder if they misread something and will have to re-read it. Some will forget about it and move on. complexity in marketing is something that will ruin a business as much as poor management. I had lots of business classes in colleges LOL”
Janet: “Well I am self-educated; I have never been to any school of any kind.”
It was at this juncture that I gave up. I felt insulted and stupid. I logged off the Internet and instead of working that night as I normally do I went to bed. The next morning I had every intention of rewriting everything that was on my Website. “After all” I thought, “who am I to judge. This man has a college education and must know something I don’t.”
My husband was on the telephone when I got up. We have a dial-up Internet connection so I would have to wait. Looking at my files the whole conversation and the way I felt about it haunted me. I knew that something about all this just wasn’t right. I had actually deleted two files when John got off the telephone and I connected to the Internet. I had just finished an eBook a few days before and was about to delete it. As I opened my browser I realized that I was getting angry.
Yes this man is educated and I am not. The fact is that most of the work I do is rewriting the content of websites that were originally written by writers with a college education in marketing. Yet the sites were creating no income, even the sites that had a large hit average on the search engines were not making profits.
Who am I to think that I know more than someone with an extensive marketing degree? I’ll tell you who I am. I am the representative of the non-college educated CONSUMER! That’s who I am. It dawned on me that this person was just like the media today. Always trying to ram down our throats their idea of what WE need and what WE want. I am sick of it.
Let me set a few of you people straight. I am talking to those of you that market but don’t buy and those of you in the media that writes but don’t read. None of you know how to LISTEN! If you did your websites and your magazines and newspapers would sell themselves better.
Marketers, when you post that Website that has paragraphs of nine and ten lines we don’t usually read more than one line or sentence of each after the first paragraph. By the time we have read the first line of seven or eight paragraphs we run to the end to find out how much you are charging for this thing we don’t know if we want or not. Then when we see that you are asking $19.95 or $29.95 we click on that little x that is located on the right corner of our browser or tab. Not only do we have no idea what exactly you were selling but also we don’t care.
Many of these sites begin by you telling us how poor and despondent you were and then you learned the secret. Now you are a millionaire. Hoopla! (Yes dear colleague, it is a word.) Our well wishes to you all but when you have 3-6, 000 words on one page for us to read, even when half of them are testimonials, we simply do not read it! It is doing you no good! Ask your web content writer to read the thing to you aloud. Bet he/she won’t do it. It’s boring!
Media: We don’t give a flying @@@@ in @@@@ who President Clinton exposed himself to, or who Angelina Joilee is living with or that Rosy O’Donnell is gay. Jane Fonda can protest anything she wants. Many of us remember that John Carey was one of the first people to scream ‘Baby Killer’ to the returning Vietnam veterans even though you did not mention it during the campaign. (Why do you think he didn’t win.)?
The exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast was only a big deal because you made it one and we all know that anyone that allows their child to live with or stay with her brother is out for the money.
The majority of us, you know, those of us in the REAL world, don’t care what color you are if we are mad at you. Hillary Clinton will never be president because most of us think that if a person cannot demand and acquire the respect and decency of their spouse they are ill suited to run a country.
Tony the Tiger is cute and funny but if we don’t like corn flakes we don’t think they are Greaaat! The beautiful girl that gets out of the minivan half dressed is not the reason this vehicle is widely popular with mothers of school age children and Nike is a well made product, that’s the reason we spend that kind of money and let our children wear them.
Get a grip people!
12.29.06
My Nightmare
A Nightmare
By: Janet M. Atwell
It was the early a.m. on a Saturday morning in October of 2006 and I had been asleep for about five and a half hours when I woke suddenly. As I jumped out of bed my husband, John asked what was wrong and I answered that I was going to be sick. He got up to follow and see if he could help me. As he entered the hall he saw me hit my knees in front of the bathtub. He said that he felt panic all of a sudden and started to run but the door was closing and he did not make it in time. I had apparently kicked the vanity under the sink as I fell over and the door was blocked by it. I had a seizure.
I am fifty years old and have never had a seizure in my life. This one lasted more than forty minutes and John reports to me that he had only about eight inches of opening to reach in and help me during the four occasions that I stopped breathing. He was finally able to grab my arm and pull me around enough that I was no longer against the vanity. He got the door free and taking our hand held shower attachment he began to soak me with cold water.
I do not remember the hallway, let alone the bathroom. What I do remember is being in a bear hug and opening my eyes to see the terror on John’s face. I remember asking him what was wrong as I began to slide out of his arms. When I finally came out of it I was on the couch in the living room. I was a mess. I had wet myself and vomited all over everything. John tells me that during the seizure itself I just got stiff as marble, gritted my teeth and made this awful noise. “But the vomiting was the most violent thing I have ever seen” he stated.
I had several seizures after that. None of them lasted very long, some only a minute. I was weak all the time though. I just couldn’t get over it. We had no insurance and it was several weeks before we were able to find the means of obtaining medical care. The doctor was at a loss. Several tests were run. The only thing they found was that I was suffering from pneumonia.
The last Monday of December that year my kitten had a seizure. She was sound asleep when it started. I lasted only a minute or two. It was then that I remembered Cloe and Tigger. Cloe was a cat that I had purchased for my daughter some twenty-two years earlier. She was a Russian Tortoise. My youngest granddaughter was allergic to her and she was brought to my home to live.
Cloe had been here for about three months when she had a heart attack. She had always been well cared for but at her age I was amazed that she survived it. A month went by and she seemed to be doing fine.
One morning I woke up to an odd tapping noise. I found Cloe in the kitchen having a horribly violent seizure. She had them throughout the day. She seized more than she didn’t and we had her put to sleep that evening.
Not long before her heart attack a truck drove by our farmhouse at about forty miles an hour. They threw a kitten out the window. I did not think I would get the poor thing out from under my house where he had run to hide from my dogs. Actually, I worked at it most of the day and John got him out when he got home. When Tigger was about a year old we woke up in the night to find him running in circles on our bed.
This circling occurred every few nights for several weeks. The veterinarian gave us medicine for the odd seizures but they did not stop them. Like Cloe he began to seize one day and seized for hours with only a few minutes break here and there.
Three cats developing this illness, none of them related is just too much of a coincidence.
History of Illness
I have had asthma for as long as I can remember. I rarely had an attack however. I could work in the heat for hours on end, which I did almost daily, and never have an attack. They seemed to come on more often at dusk on a humid day. It was during the early fall of 2002 that I started having regular and severe asthma attacks.
By the end of October that year I had a constant sinus infection and was more often than not too weak to do much of anything. I wanted to sleep all the time. January of 2007 came and I rarely walked outside the house. I am a minister and had to call the administration offices to find a replacement. When my parishioners learned that I was not going to be with them anymore they sent two ladies as representatives to find out exactly why I was leaving them. I had been to the doctor when I first became ill and was prescribed an inhaler and daily asthma control medication. The inhaler helped during an attack but that was all. When the ladies saw the condition I was in they asked if they could take me back to the doctor. I responded, “I don’t feel good enough to go to the doctor.” Then they demanded that I go. With the church checkbook in hand, the ladies hauled me off.
For months, I went to some doctor every week. None of them could figure out what was wrong with me. They would send me to another specialist for more tests.
I received a telephone call from the first doctor I had seen one day, about three months after my first visit to her. She asked me if there had been any improvement with the change of season. In my weakened state I did nothing more than answer a question. I made no further comments. This doctor has attended my services in the past and knew this to not be normal. Twenty minutes after closing her office that evening she was at my door.
When she entered my home she stopped just inside the door and stood there for a minute. Then she summoned my husband and stepped back out. When John got outside with her she said, “I just found out what is wrong with Janet. I am highly sensitive to mold. I thought I smelled it when I walked in, standing there for a moment I was sure. I needed to sneeze. We have to get her out of there.”
I went to the hospital then for just over a week. When John picked me up he did not take me home. I stayed at my mother in laws. Every stick of our furniture had been cleaned, the walls washed, the curtains disposed of and the ceilings and floors were cleaned and treated while I was hospitalized. I stayed with John’s mother overnight while they finished up.
When I was allowed to come home I smelled the cleaning supplies and the mold as soon as I walked in. The mold was still there. My son came over that day and told John that he had read something online about carpet being the worst thing a person could have in their home because it was host to parasites, mold and other allergens.
We live in John’s grandparents old home. It is more than a hundred years old. What they found when they pulled our carpet up shocked us all. There were two layers of carpeting over linoleum, which was over another layer of carpet and padding. Under that were two layers of linoleum. Then there was tile over a layer of tarpaper.
The place where I sat at the dining room table was in front of a set of windows. When all those layers were pulled up my men had exposed a hole in the flooring that was big enough to set the captains chair I used into. Each layer of floor covering that they pulled up had a layer of black mold between them. The house was literally black when they were finished from the flying spores. My husband, son and daughter-in-law began the cleaning process again. I improved rapidly after all this work was done. But I never fully recovered.
Oddly, and unfortunately for me, I had forgotten all that until the third cat had her fist seizure. Even then I did not remember it. I am the member of a writers’ forum, there is another member named Amanda who is a pet expert. Remember this, (doctors say the seizures are what has affected my memory) I logged into the forum and sent her a private message explaining my cats seizures and mine to her. She answered with mold or lead paint. That’s when I remembered. I went to the doctor the next day. She had me breath into a machine that counted mold spores, among other things in ratio to the air that I exhaled. The black mold count was off the charts.
Would you like to hear a little of what Amanda has to say. She is a great writer. Here are her links.
Pets are my passion!
http://funpuppytraining.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/petcareplr/
SYMPTOMS OF MOLD POISONING
There are hundreds of thousands of mold types. Approximately 40 known variations of mold are common to indoor environments, and they cause a myriad of health risks, such as: allergy attacks, arthritic aching, asthma, bloody nose, bronchitis, coughing, chronic head-aches, depression, dizziness, fatigue, hearing, loss of memory, nausea, pneumonia, restlessness, runny nose, sight, sinus congestion, skin itch, skin rashes, sneezing, trouble breathing, watery eyes, stiffness, balance or equilibrium loss.
The more severe common symptoms of black mold poisoning is your lungs will begin to bleed. This will happen after you have been exposed to black mold for quite some time and if your system cannot fight it off anymore. The black mold will attach itself to your lungs and begin causing them to be inflamed and become irritated. Over time the mold will cause bleeding and sever damage if not cared for properly by a doctor.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: I have learned that each of these symptoms as well as seizures and permanent neurological damage can also result in cases of lead poisoning.)
Do you or another member of your household have unexplained or recurring health problems? Do you suspect that mold may be in your home?
Would you like to receive an informative email that will tell what to do about this situation? I will not sell or give your name or contact information to anyone and there will be no fee required for this infomation. Send me an email: inspirationalwordarts@hotmail.com In the subject box type the word MOLD.
Thank you for reading my work.
Did you know that you learned the secret to a long lasting and loving relationship in school? Its true.
It wasn’t sex education, health, social sciences or even study hall. Would you like to know what class it was? Read my eBook, Split Families for the answer. Send me an email with the words, “I want to Know.” in the subject box.
