I am an amateur photographer who fashions herself to become more professional sheerly out of the awe I experience when looking out from my fifteenth floor terrace (the superstitious call it the sixteenth floor since they like to skip scary floor thirteen – personally I love thirteen which symbolizes love or ahava in Hebrew).

I snap the oranges, golds, reds and hints of blue as if National Geographic magazine had me on assignment. I run the freshly taken photos to my home office and download them as if heading to a dark room to process film for an important story. In a matter of minutes I am ready to share and voila, my Facebook friends can ooh and ah from places and climes all around. I wonder for a moment if they find my shots redundant but little do I care. I have a feeling that the sense of wonder I feel when taking the photos seeps through which is why a lot of the same people repeatedly “like’” them.

Yesterday it was less than fifty degrees on my Florida patio. My cat, Mochi braved the weather with me but scurried back in ahead , spoiled (like me) by our tropical climate. As for my birds who are really bred for the tropics, I can only hope their little birdie tents and feathers are warmth enough.

Back to the moving part. Where will I be next and what will I see that will stir me to snap photos? That is for now, a minor mystery. (and a prayer)

I am a prisoner of technology.  Inside of that sleek silver computer-in-a-screen wonder, my iMac, I have surrendered. And, to an inanimate representation of my own deficits of attention. Simply spoken, I am f**ked.

Rather than opening a Word document in the fashion of turning to a clean page of yellow-lined paper in a memo pad, I sniff around first to see what’s crept into my computer since the prior evening. (Mind you, it wouldn’t be more than 8 hours since last checking.)

Must check email, then work email, then Facebook. Then the analytics for my blog, then how many times someone viewed that video, or what one of three horoscopes I get has to say about the day. Not to mention the love horoscope. That comes in separately. Oh, and how long must I prepare the avocado gazpacho ahead of time before I serve it? Three websites are required for that answer at least.

Now, what was it I had to say this morning? Didn’t I wake up with a germ of an idea – something to do with peace in the world? Or was it a tribute to the last day of my vacation time before boxing myself back up into a tidy, well-behaved, 9-5 worker bee?

I’m seeing a lot of question marks in this post. Not a whole lot of content. In fact, what the h*ll is it I’m talking about anyway?

Welcome to my brain. I didn’t even measure the chaos to be as serious as it looks here “on paper.”  Perhaps returning to the structure will have an organizing effect on me. Thwarting creativity, I hope not. Meanwhile, I have twenty-four hours left to revel in the mess. Up down and all around, loop –d-looping through this beautiful Florida day.

Excuse me, I have to open that email from my sister.

I made it.

Thank you God and all His/Her little helpers.

This year’s going to be a big one. This year is going to be great. This year’s my year- “the” year.  Isn’t that what everyone (other than the Mayans) is going around saying? Aren’t we expected to do good, tend to our bodies, be kinder to employees, yell less at our children, and stop eating sweets? And sever ties to our liquor, weed, cigarettes, porn, Red Bull and sleeping pills? Our precious little vices of choice have to go.

Senseless hours perusing Facebook? (Strike that. The withdrawal would kill me. Note to self: revisit FB obsession in spring)

After all, I am a vessel. What for, I can’t quite remember. Light, or love or some such thing. So here it is. The second Rosh Hashanah of the year (or first depending on which calendar your ascribe to.) An opportunity to reinvent ourselves – again.

The sarcasm has to go, too. Which means these pages will have fewer words. Without my cynicism who am I? A dull, dull girl is what I think.   Raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens make me snooze after a few paragraphs.

Around this time it’s my half birthday, another opportunity to pause and reflect. Which side of fifty does fifty-six-and-a-half fall on? The answer’s obvious but in my Pollyanna-esque form I always mused how I was turning fifty for the umpteenth time. In July, it will be the seventh. That was kind of cute pre-fifty-five but is sounding kind of lame now. Probably sounded lame then, too, but I think post-adolescence is finally kicking in.  Yes, blooming came later for me.

The less infantile way of looking at my age is that really, I am pushing sixty.

I heard a friend say that the other day and I nearly plotzed. Me sixty? What the hell? I saw myself in a picture yesterday and cringed at the myriad lines around my eyes. Unseen when I smile, or rather tucked neatly the way lines are supposed to, the crepe paper around my eyes is my mother’s. Not mine.  It was horrifying.

I’m approaching 2012 with a tinge of realism, sadness, and joy all at once. Yes, it’s possible. I have less get up and go and more lay down and nap these days. Less, I’m better than you are and more, what the f**k do I care?

I hope to make something of this year, something of myself this year. I hope I sell songs. I hope I meet the Mr. Wonderful that my once favorite psychic promised in each seasonal reading for the past ten years. I hope money comes easily and I’m going to savor the last lap of my mother’s existence and try to shed some of this belly fat. Topped with a clean bill of health and I’m good to go.

Are you with me God?  Forgive my sacrilege, it’s that compulsive creativity that puts words like that in my mouth. Or rather, You. I am tickled silly and grateful for the (seventh?) sense that is humor. Keep it coming, please.

Can I get an amen?

Happy ’12, y’all.

Posing for a salmon-flavored greenie, Mochi (the cat), that is

I have driven to the ends of three counties for my cheap fix. And, thanks to these merry coupon companies, my sorry fingernails have been glamorized in ways that only my toes enjoyed regularly. Of course, if you do the math, the total cost with the added manicure that I don’t usually get comes to the same as the pedicures I get at my local shop during lunch hour. And, with the extra miles, I guess that makes the whole experience more expensive.

The illusion of savings is alluring. Gets me every time.

But, that’s not why I’m writing. There will be another post called “Ode to the Groupon Consciousness.” I promise.

I write because I had one of those unexpected encounters last night at the nail shop. It was with the nail technician who coated my nails in transluscent pink and made my toes French. To protect the innocent, I’ll call her Abby.

After our perfunctory exchange of, “How long have you worked here? How many kids do you have? Where are you from?” the sky opened up in our conversation.

When Abby asked me where I worked,  she looked up at me and  lit up when I answered.

“You work for a publisher?”

She didn’t miss a beat with her emory board.

My happy surprise was that we would be talking about more than what movies we liked and what restaurants served the best sushi.

Abby was an avid reader. She told me that she never read books until her first pregnancy at which time she’d devour two books a day. Anything she could get her hands on.

As my right hand soaked in suds, Abby told me of her love of books.

“Oh yeah, Dean Koontz, Danielle Steele, James Patterson… anything by James Patterson.”

She was even reading books her teenage son brought home from school. I can’t remember the author but I think it was a fantasy series (not Harry Potter).

I sat there as she buffed the nails on my left hand and mostly listened to Abby rattle on about reading. We both admitted that we were ADD, were late comers to reading, but knew how to hyper focus when we sat down with a good book. Her son had the same issue but inherited his mom’s reading gene.

I offered to send books to Abby, the manicurist and asked her in exchange to review them on amazon.com or goodreads.com or anywhere. I now had a local envoy and felt happy inside.

Two blessings came from this Groupon experience (actually twenty-two if you count my fingers and toes):

1) I broke a prejudicial barrier in that I presumed  someone working in a salon environment wouldn’t be literary — okay maybe it wasn’t Dickens, but it was books. (shame on me)

2) I had renewed faith that the book business did still have many to serve. It was, forgive the cliche, one book, one reader at a time.

I’m writing from work so I have to get back to attending to the precarious business of books but a little more encouraged today than before I met Abby.

Small things.

Oh, and not only will I get to have stimulating book banter with Abby if and when I return to the salon she works in, if I book ahead, I’ll get $10 off.