Welcome back! Coffee's always on around here. Pull up your favorite chair and a grab a cup. Enjoy your visit today! And don't forget to stop back by again soon.

{Weather}

The weather here in the Seattle area has been just absolutely gorgeous lately! I’m really enjoying it. It’s still cold in the morning and at night – about 30-36?- and warms up to the mid 50’s by noon or so. Quite nice! Things that don’t normally bloom until Spring are starting to blossom already and there are a lot of birds as well.

{Shoulder}

I think I must have inadvertently slept on my shoulder last night because it and my arm are incredibly sore this morning. Not just sore, actually, but downright painful. I hope the referral for my MRI comes very soon. Kinda getting tired of waiting. I want to know what can be done about this pain before it gets any worse.

{Weight}

Now that it’s been almost a whole month since my doctor changed my blood pressure medication, I’m absolutely sure it was what causing the weight gain. Since I began taking the new medication, I’ve lost 10 pounds and I haven’t changed anything else – foods, exercise, etc – so I know for sure that’s what it is. This is very good news! I am so glad it was the answer.

Let me tell you – being “in touch” with your body and what’s going on with it is very important. If I hadn’t been, I’d still be taking the other medication and my weight would still be climbing. Many people don’t understand those subtle things about their bodies and aren’t really in tune with what’s going on. You owe it yourself – and your family – to understand your body and your health. Taking care of yourself is paramount.

{Cane}

My cane arrived last Thursday and I went grocery shopping with my mom Friday. Using the cane was so nice. I was able to take the pressure off my leg a lot and that really helped my endurance. My back didn’t start really complaining until we were nearly finished with our shopping. And I didn’t have that odd grinding feeling in my back every time I took step. I think this is going to turn out to be very helpful indeed! Glad I decided to go with it.

{Projects}

I’ve got two major projects going on right now. Both are for my cousin’s hair and nail salon. The first is designing a website for her home salon and make up line. It’s been fun and challenging! The second is a web-based application I’m building with Ruby on Rails for her to keep track of her client information. I’m having a good time learning RoR as I go along and I think the application is going to turn out well.

{Snow Leopard}

I finally took the plunge and upgraded my MacBook Pro to the latest OS X operating system – Snow Leopard. It’s running great and I like the updates. Lots of new features that I didn’t have in the Tiger edition of the OS. Some of the improvements are just little changes but those are good too. My system is now running faster (although it was never really all that slow) and I gained a few GB of space on my hard drive. That’s pretty cool! Before SL, I had 24gb of hdd space and now I’ve got 30gb, so that’s a bonus.

{The Husband}

My husband has been in college since last Spring, taking the AA degree program in welding. He’s almost finished! Yay! He gets to take a certification test next week and then he’ll actually be qualified to work in the industry in Washington State. Then, he has Spring quarter plus a couple more classes over Summer quarter to complete the full degree. Being that he’s never really finished anything in his entire life, this is a huge milestone for him. Now, hopefully, he will find a good job in the industry and stick with it.

{Miscellaneous}

I think I’ll do an “Around the Web” update this week and maybe even a few other things. Haven’t done those in a while and I know everybody always enjoys those. So look out for that, probably Wednesday or Thursday.

And have a great week!

Until next time -

Be blessed,

I’ve been ignoring something for a long time. Something I just didn’t want to have to admit to myself. But in an effort to live my truth – to CREATE my truth – I must let this out and acknowledge it.

Most people, just looking at me, don’t know there’s anything wrong with my arm. It looks normal – on the outside. On the inside, though, it doesn’t work quite right.

See, I have no feeling from mid biceps all the way down to the palm of my hand. It’s been like that for over 23 years now. Well, not quite as bad in the beginning – it’s gotten worse over the years. At first, it was mostly around my elbow and part of my forearm along with part of my wrist and hand.

What caused this?

A bike riding accident.

I fell off my bike going down a steep hill at a pretty high rate of speed and slid 20-something feet across the pavement. Thankfully I protected my head or I probably wouldn’t have had a face left. But . . . since I *did* protect my head as I fell and slid, I managed to totally screw up my arm.

When I was 14, about 6 months after the accident, I had surgery to repair part of the damaged nerves. The surgery rerouted the major nerve that goes from the shoulder to the hand, called the ulner nerve. It’s the one that makes your arm feel funny when you hit your “funny bone.” It’s not actually the bone you’re hitting that causes the funny sensation – it’s the ulner nerve. And let me tell you, when you DON’T have an ulner nerve there and you hit your elbow, it hurts like freakin’ hell. And I’m not kidding.

Anyway, the sliding across the pavement damaged that nerve along with just about every other nerve in my elbow region. In addition to the nerve damage, I also have tendonitis and bursitis in my elbow. I’m sure by now there’s arthritis too and who knows what else.

Over the years, the non-feeling area has widened and like I said above, it now goes from mid-biceps all the way to into the palm of my hand. Sometimes my fingers go numb too.

I cannot grip things with my right hand very well anymore as result. I drop things constantly or think I’ve picked something up but really haven’t. The sensation is all out of whack and it’s often hard to tell without actually looking to see what I’m doing. I can’t pick up a penny or a nickel or any coin from a table. I have to slide it to the edge of the surface and let it fall into my hand.

Now, as a right-handed person, this is not good. Especially as a right-handed WRITER. And although I am ambidextrous and can write left-handed, I do prefer to write right-handed because, well, it looks slightly nicer.

Yes, I can type – obviously. But do you know how beautiful it is to hold your favorite pen in your hand and write? Write on fine paper? Write and scribble and doodle? Pen lovely words to those you hold dear?

I’ve always been a “writer” type person. Even as a child. Most girls had Barbies and dolls and what-not. I had paper, pens, crayons and all that good stuff. I was always writing. (If I wasn’t out riding my bike, that is!)

I always knew this day would come, the day the doctor told my mom 23 years ago would eventually come. The day when I really couldn’t write well. The day my nice, neat, oft-complimented handwriting would turn into chicken scratch. That holding a pen would be so uncomfortable, I wouldn’t even want to write.

Well, that day is here.

It’s been here for a while now and I just didn’t want to admit it. I kept thinking maybe it was just the pen. Or maybe it was just the paper. But no, it really is my arm.

Earlier this morning, I wrote a note for my sons absence from school yesterday and didn’t even recognize my own writing. It looked like . . . I don’t even know what.

So, this is a very discouraging place for me. As someone who has always taken pride in their writing, to no longer have that is quite upsetting. It’s like losing your best friend or your most prized possession.

A part of me is gone.

And I’m really not quite sure what to do about it. I knew it was going to happen at some point, but I really had hoped it wouldn’t be until I was considerably older.

Until next time -

Be blessed,

Even though I’m not one of those uber organized people, I would like to be exceptionally more organized than I am. And I used to be – way back before I had a house full of kids running around. Not so much anymore. I still try, though.

One of the things I do, is make forms for myself. It helps me keep things on track and pretty much eliminates missed or forgotten things. Plus, I like to write (who knew?). Anyway, I have 3 forms to share with you today that I use regularly and I thought you’d like them as well.

The Menu Planner. It’s fairly colorful, easy to use and simply designed. But anyone from a small child to an adult can follow along and see what food is planned for what meal any day of the week. Even my youngest has learned to tell which color block is which.

Student Assignment Sheet. Even though I no longer homeschool my kids, I kept this form for myself and it’s been nice to have on hand for my college courses. It’s a plain form – no color embellishments or anything here, but it’s still simple and easy to use for most grade levels if you need to keep track of assignments. It’s 2 pages long and has lots of room for all the details you’ll need to know what assignment is due and when.

Mini Character Sheet. This is a form I use for writing fiction stories. It’s a simple sheet where I can put all of the details about a character when I’m sketching out a storyline. It lets me get to know the character and help develop a background for them. There are 2 character sheets per page which I usually cut in half but sometimes, it’s nice to leave them together. Depends on how many characters I’m sketching out.

I hope you enjoy them!

And please, let me know if you use any of them and what you think. Also, if there’s a form you’d like to have, whether for business or school or home, let me know. I’ve made so many different forms, it’s likely I have something similar to what you want.

Be blessed,

{ write * design * blog }

Just heard this and had to share it with you -

Jennifer Hudson and Michael Buble singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside”

Stay warm, y’all!

Be blessed,


{ write * design * blog }

Well, with all of the other housekeeping things for both Christmas and my bog(s), it looks like I’m just NOT going to get to the {W}rite of Passage Challenge this week. Guess I’ll just have to pass this week unless I have some time over the weekend – after Christmas.

I do want to tell you about two things, though.

Way back in 2006, I started a blog about the writing life over on wordpress. At the time, I also owned another domain name but I really had no idea how to install wordpress on my own domain so the blog remained on wp’s own hosting. After I started blogging here, I only blogged over there for about a year or so and eventually stopped altogether. Which is pretty sad, really.

Anyway, I’ve decided to revive that blog so I’ve spent the past few days moving everything from over there to a new subdomain here on AA|Blog. Now that I’ve got some of the tweaks accomplished, I’m going to give you all that link so you can check it out if you’d like.

Visit Margin of Error here.

If you decide to take a peek, let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I hope you have a fantastic Christmas and that you’ve got all of your shopping done. I am – admittedly – a little behind on mine and have a few more things to go finish up. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow during the day.

If it doesn’t snow. Which it better not . . .

And the other thing I wanted to tell you is – well, to ask you, actually. One of my former sister-in-laws, Helen, is having some health issues. She’s had a couple of small strokes in the past week and I’d appreciate it if you could send her and her family (husband, 2 children, their spouses and 2 grandchildren) some healing thoughts and energies. If you could do that for me, it would make my Christmas! Thank you! Helen is a great person and her family needs her.

Be blessed,

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

I’ll have the entry for this weeks {W}rite of Passage Challenge up Tuesday. Oops!

Got busy with other stuff and totally ran out of time.

See you tomorrow.

Be blessed,

I don’t know how many posts I’ve started over the past several days and then not finished for one reason or another. Something happens, I get side-tracked, I lose my train of thought and then they end up getting saved to my drafts.

Today there is a lot to talk about so with any luck, this one will make it to the blog!

Earlier this evening, a car went sliding down the hill after hitting a patch of slick ice/snow just shortly after dark (and shortly after freezing began!) and after doing a 180 turn around, managed to land *just* outside our pasture fence. (Not the first time it’s happened . . .)

I think the only reason she didn’t actually go all the way over the fence, is that she hit one of the taller posts. Had it been a shorter post or a spot with no post, she’d have gone into the pasture for sure.

Fortunately the driver and her daughter are fine. Shaken, but fine. The car is mostly fine, just a dent in the front where she hit the post and also some damage to the cowling under the front end where it hit an old post in the ditch. Depending on when they come for it tomorrow, I may get a picture or two of the car.

Here’s a picture from last years big snow so you can see what I’m talking about. The car went into the pasture just beyond the mailbox (on the right side of the frame). There’s a drop-off there and a pretty deep gully before the pasture begins. Fortunately she missed the gully too or it would have been much, much worse.

<--Warning! Short rant ahead -->

I hope she realizes how lucky she is. And I hope next time, she reconsiders the need to go out after it’s gotten dark in this kind of weather. Especially down this hill.

Oh and this accident? Only happened in about an inch, maybe two inches of snow . . .

It really amazes me how many people who don’t know how to drive in bad weather, actually go out and drive in it! Or at least, TRY to drive in it. That’s why I don’t. It’s not me I worry about – it’s everyone else! I can drive in snow just fine. I just choose not to. And especially not after dark when the temps are freezing and it’s turned icy.

Anyway, that’s all of my lecture/rant/soapbox for now. LOL

<--End of rant ;-) -->

This afternoon I was looking for a site to kind of be a central location for all of m social networking and online stuff. Like an online business card, of sorts. I searched for quite some time and was about to give up and just design something myself when I found a site called chi.mp. The cool thing is, it also acts as an openID. So, I set it up! And so far, I really like it.

You can find me at helloannie.mp. Check it out and if you sign up, let me know.

And yesterday, I found a cool thing called blogrollr. Basically, it keeps track of the sites you visit automatically (kinda like google web history – only so far, I think it’s better). I can see where I’ve been, how many times I’ve visited there and can even rearrange things or “blacklist” things so they’re not in my public feed.

And lastly, a really simple and totally cool To-Do list I found yesterday as well. It’s called TeuxDeux.com and though it’s kind of an odd way to spell it, it’s very useful. I’ve tried A LOT (a really lot!!) of to-do lists and this one is cool. Just trust me. Simple. Effective. And just what I wanted.

Hope you had a great weekend! Here’s to a good week! Can’t believe it’s the last week of school before Christmas break. That is just totally unreal.

In the arena,

Oh – one more thing – a toolbar thingy for your website called Wibiya. I have no idea what it means or even how to say it really, but it’s pretty useful. I just installed it on my website today so if you’re reading in a reader, go check out the site and see how it works. Then you can go to wibiya.com and get one of your own. And a little disclaimer – NONE of these links are affiliate links. They’re just stuff I use and enjoy enough to share.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.