Ornery Photography + Not So Silent Sunday: From the Treetops

The images were taken on 17 January 2017 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. You are welcome to use them, but please credit me. Cara Hartley/The Real Cie/The Ornery Old Lady.

I am not entirely sure, but I believe the skeleton in the bottom image may belong to one of those big brown tree-climbing critters in the top image.

I've changed things up a little with my photography shares. First off, I'm ditching the long titles. Silent Sunday (which is often Not So Silent Sunday) is specific to me (although not originated by me), so it is included in the title. 

These photography posts take more time than you might think to prepare, create, and share, which is why I sometimes don't do them for a while. I always have multiple projects that I am engaged in. I do consider myself a professional writer, even though I currently make very little money from my craft. I am evidently not a professional photographer, but I do enjoy taking photographs and sharing them with those who will tolerate my amateurish attempts.

~cie the ornery old lady~

Sharing with these folks:

Tanka Splendor: Vernal Equinox

Image Source

vernal equinox

fifty-fifth year of my life

will I find some peace

or will the dark curtain fall

as it tends to do in spring?

~cie~

notes

I created the Tanka Splendor badge with a free to use stock image on Pixlr. Please feel free to use it on your own blog. No credit is necessary.

I was not correctly diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder until I was nearly 40 years old. I was diagnosed with "depression and anxiety." I have both of those, but I have bipolar disorder rather than unipolar depression as my son has. My restlessness was sometimes blamed on ADD, which I have as well, but the restlessness becomes magnified in a hypomanic state.

My baseline mood is moderately depressed. Some of my depression is situational. Living in poverty is very stressful. I try to ameliorate the way I feel about it by the fact that I keep trying, but sometimes I feel like all my trying adds up to one big ole heapin' helpin' of horse manure and I become despondent. 

I live with suicide ideation. I think about offing myself a lot. Ideation is not the same as planning. My planning levels tend to be low regardless of how strong the ideation levels are. Generally speaking, I'm probably too much of an asshole to commit suicide because then I wouldn't be able to piss people off by existing in a corporeal fashion in their presence. But sometimes not having to struggle sure sounds like a winner.

I have experienced spring depression almost every year of my life since I hit puberty. My puberty was somewhat precocious and started coming on when I was nine years old. Thinking back on things, the first time I can remember seeing a strong manifestation that could have been identified as bipolar 2 was on my tenth birthday. 

Bipolar 2 can be sneaky since it presents with hypomania rather than full mania. Hypomania is like "mania lite." However, it can be just as destructive. I've learned to recognize the magical thinking that comes with the condition and to try not to act on my impulses during periods of hypomania. By magical thinking, I don't mean believing in fairies or even believing something potentially fatal like thinking I could get up on a roof and float down. Hypomania does not create that sort of delusion. (The delusion that jumping off a roof is a good idea. I like to hope that believing in fairies is not a delusion.) It does create the sort of delusion that I should buy into an MLM program for a thousand dollars and will make a butt-ton of money and be able to live happily ever after. I don't have the focus to be successful at such a thing, even if it is one of the few programs that is legit.

By the way, Watkins is not that sort of program. It is legit, and the "buy-in" for a year is only $30. I'm only saying this because the -666 of you who follow my blogs might be saying "oh, Cie, have you done this again with this Watkins thing?" No, I actually only signed up for Watkins to get discounts on my own merchandise but after reviewing the material felt good about recommending it to others.

I am trying to learn to forgive myself for sometimes really awful and personally destructive past decisions and to stop belittling myself for having a brain that works differently than the brains of the sort of people who tend to be held up as examples. Nobody will ever say: "why can't you be more like that ornery old hag cie? I mean, she's simply all over the place, and she's easily distracted except when she's laser-focused on one of her ruinous plans? Now there's someone you can look up to!"

I will be fifty-five in a month and a day from this writing unless I go tits up in the meantime. I have no hope that "this will be my year" as I always told myself on birthdays in the past and was inevitably disappointed. This will be a year. There will be no significant shifts. I will remain me and the world will wag on.

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: Ornery Senryu: First Sunray

Image Source

first rays of sunshine

after working the night shift

felt like a vampire

~The Ornery Old Night Owl~

Image Copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Ornery Notes:

I haven't had to work the night shift in close to three years now. But I'm still a night owl!

The night shift was always fine for me until about three or four in the morning. The last three or four hours were horrible.

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover Sez:

"I gotta tell y'all, on Halloween night in Telluride in 1880, I was whoopin' it up with some of the other miners, and when I went out behind the saloon to drain the ole rattlesnake, this pale feller with slick black hair wearin' a fancy cape come floatin' up beside me. I asked him if he wanted to come into the saloon and join me and the fellers fer a swig of Amos Fine's Famous Shine. 

That high-fallutin' feller said in a hoity-toity way that he didn't never drink Shine. Now, maybe he was jest eccentric or somethin', but when Father O'Malley come outta the saloon wearin' his big ole silver cross on a chain, that feller hissed like an angry tomcat, hollered "BLUH!", pulled his cape over his face, and turned tail and run. 

Maybe he'd bin slippin' outta the church after Sunday meetin's without tithin' proper, but there shore was somethin' weird about that fancy-pants stranger, and he shore didn't take a shine to the good Father and his shiny cross.

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem Sez:

"Well, Grover, I bet y'all didn't know it, but Ornery actually is a vamper. I done heard her tellin' someone all about how she got hammered on cactus juice on Saint Patrick's Day in 1992 an' ended up sleepin' on someone's bathroom floor! She ain't tried to drink the juice from my veins yet, but I'm gonna have to sleep with one eye open on St. Patrick's Day!"

Image Source

Further Ornery Notes:

Cactus Clem doesn't have anything to worry about. I really can't drink more than a few sips of beer or wine these days. But if you're feeling daring, you can click the link above and try the drink that the cute little buffalo is serving up!

We're back!

What Lunch Looked Like

How y'all am are? I was not expecting to be back so soon, but, as fate would have it, I'm here and so are you! So, let's do this!

After spending a freezing night without power in the old Grover Hotel, the Ornery Old Lady (that's me) and Sonny Boy headed to Greeley to gather up some supplies in case we were looking at another night to a week or more of this. We stopped at Taco John's, a place I haven't been to in some 35 years. In fact, that's where I made my last post from!

I was glad to find that Taco John's still tastes the same, but the price about knocked me out of the ballpark. Twenty bucks for a chicken quesadilla, a stuffed taco, Potato Ole's, drinks, and some guacamole, queso, and sour cream. Honestly, it's not that bad for today's prices, but I can remember when I was in high school and would go to Taco John's instead of eating the cafeteria swill. I'd have five bucks on me and get a whole meal and still get change back. Well, so it goes.

We went to Home Depot and bought a propane-powered space heater and looked into getting a backup generator. We picked up a snow shovel, which I thought was steel. It was aluminum and it bent easily. Not a winner there. We got a flashlight and a mini lantern. Then we headed to visit my son's second cousins on his father's side. They said that if the power was going to be out for a while, we could bring the cats and stay with them.

We hit the King Soopers to get some nonperishables like crackers and tinned kippers and then headed for home.

My son was reading the instructions for the space heater and I was getting the snow shovel out of the car when he came running out in an excited mood. The power was back on! I looked down the street to see the blinking red light just beyond the general store, and it never looked so beautiful!

It's still colder than a well-digger's ass in the old Hotel, but the furnace is back on and the temperature is rising. I've got salmon, potatoes, and corn in the oven. I also have (I hope) a fun opportunity.

I am going to need help deciding which poems to put in my manuscript for the November PAD Chapbook Challenge. So, for the next month, I will be having a Battle of the Poems. I will put up two poems, and I would like readers to decide which of the two they prefer. You can give me a reason, or just say "I like number (one or two) best." 

There will be a prize as an incentive for helping me. 

The person who comments on the most poems will receive a $5 Amazon gift card in their email. In the event that there is a tie, I will use a coin, dice, or Random Number Generator to help me choose.

I think this will be fun, and I hope I can get a few people to play along.

The first Battle of the Poems will appear tomorrow!

~Cie~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #110: Bush Warbler

Bush Warbler

A spring warbler casts

A dropping on the rice cakes —

The veranda edge.

I feed rice cakes to the birds

The earth drinking up my tea.

~Cie~

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover Sez:

"I shore don't blame you, Ornery. I wouldn't wanna drink no tea that a bird pooped in neither."

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem sez:

"Say, Ornery, you know that sun tea you was brewin' on the front porch? Well, I was kinda thirsty after my stroll on the Lone Prairie, and I done drank it all down. I don't think it had no bird poop in it, though, 'cause it had a cover on it and everything.

Visit Ghost Town Grover, Cactus Clem, and the Ornery Old Lady at the Grover Hotel

Read more Ornery Poetry