My soul has been refreshed as well and inspired.

That is what I wish and pray for you, my friends.  I hope yours have been as well, so that you can tap into your creativity and capture some of God’s goodness in this summer season for my Finding Direction 2010 Summer Photo Contest.

This time I have left the word “Desktop” out of the title, but originally, that was what this contest was all about, for those of you who have joined the party late.  For, I have been blogging now for five and one half years.

You see, it was winter time and I had no good “desktop” photo to look at here on my computer.  I tire of having the same one all the time and tend to change out my desktop photos as the seasons change.  Thus, the reason – and hopefully – inspiration for you to participate.  To make my computer desktop and joy to behold.

Even more this time, I shall award a grand prize to the top winner who most captures – or finds – the photo that gently murmurs, “it’s summertime and the livin’ IS easy.”

Have fun while doing this.  It isn’t meant to be hard to do or anything more than sharing camaraderie with fellow readers and commenters.

Many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

How’s everyone’s summer going so far.  I CANNOT believe it’s already after 4th of July!  Can you?

Anyway – here’s the latest on the brand new “Finding Direction Summer 2010 Photo Contest” that I just started last week, I think.  I can’t remember.  At this age, time goes by WAY too fast, ya know?!

Here’s some of the “rules” for you entrants, and I’m waiting patiently – or not – for the first of you to show up with some great summer photos.  To enter, just go to the “Contact Me” tab above and write to me from there.  I will send you my email address so that you may submit your photo(s).  The theme this time is “Summer Time & The Livin’ Is Easy.”

Here’s some “rules,” such as they are:

(1) Enter as many photos as you would like under the “theme” as stated above.  The photos, preferably, will be your own that you have taken, but do not HAVE to be, knowing that not everyone is a God-gifted photographer.  In fact, you may “Google” or whatever online to find some good summer time photos to submit.  People in the past have done so.

(2) I’m giving y’all the rest of July and until the 15th of August by which to submit your photos.  At that time, the revered Finding Direction Judges shall review all of the entries, shall go over each with a fine tooth comb and shall make their esteemed decisions, based upon quality of the photos, personality of the entrants (just kidding!), and appropriateness to the subject matter.

(3)  All photos should be submitted as jpegs or gifs, preferably jpegs.

(4) The Finding Direction Judges shall consider the entrants’ behaviors during the contest period, i.e., attempts at cheating, seriously and shall engage in appropriate “penalties,” as needed.  This is especially true of those who are currently ministers of the Gospel (Good News) and former ministers of the Gospel, now engaged in burying the dead, otherwise known as funeral directors.

(4) Humor in photos will have points added to their “values” as the Finding Direction Judges are greatly in need of humor in their lives at the moment.

(5) All decisions are final, based purely on objective values, and prizes shall be awarded, as needed.

(6)  The Grand Prize Winner shall have their winning photo displayed on the Finding Direction Judges’ desktop home computer, which is a “grand” prize, indeed!!

(7)  The Finding Direction Judges shall award an ACTUAL GRAND PRIZE award to the winner this time, for about the 3rd time, btw (Greg!), so y’all pay attention and get with it here, ya hear?!

That’s it for now, guys.  Take some photos or sift through what you already have taken and have stored away in your computer, because I KNOW that the lot of you have LOTS of photos to choose from – either your own, some you’ve received in Power Point presentations, or on the internet – that you can enter.  So, get WITH it!!

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

I haven’t done one of these in over a year, but inspiration has struck me (thanks to Greg over at “why, soitenly,” although I still have him booked as the “Ex-Rev’s Ramblings”) and I’m now on a roll.

For those of you who may be new, the quickest way to get up to speed is to check out my Categories on my right side bar and go down to the entry, “Finding Direction Contests,” where you will find all of the “rules” (slack though they may be) and entries of each of the categories, which are determined by moi at some point along the line.

I held five Finding Direction Photo Contests, in the Winter of 2005-06, Summer 2006, Winter 2006-07, Summer 2007, and Winter 2007-08.  So, y’all have had lots of time to collect photographs to enter.

I don’t have the time right now as today is Monday – Laundry Day – but when I do have a bit of extra time, I’ll put the links here to the winners blog posts from the five contests, along with the “rules,” – don’t worry if you don’t know any of them, it doesn’t matter.  Doesn’t even have to be your own work!

Okay – here’s two from Summer 2006 and Winter 2006-07.  I went back through all the winners’ blog posts and found that the photos  were all missing, so I’m going to have to check with TheoBloggers to see if their expert/genious status can pull them up for you all to see.  But, do go back and read some of the entries under that category – Finding Direction Contests, because then you’ll see how much FUN we all have “competing” in these.

Love you all!  Sorry I’ve been so long in posting.  We were out of town most of last week gone to a Tri-State Press Association convention in Tunica, Mississippi, just south of Memphis.  It was for Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and we had a great time.   I’ll post a photo later.

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

Well . . . this turns out to be a change-in-progress as not only can I not please myself, but also all of my readers.  Thus, I’m enlisting your help here today – whoever you are and however you happened to have come by here.

This page is the second theme I’ve chosen in the past two days and the third photo across the top.  The first photo I had, along with a multitude of sidebar widgets I had showing, just because they were there to play with, seemed to many of you – along with me after about the third time looking at all of it myself – way too busy and distracting from what I write and want to talk about.   (I’ll show it to you in a moment below.)

The second photo was of a road/path, which reflects the theme of my blog – Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles – but Tom thought was too seasonal and too southwest looking.  It was of a road in Santa Fe, New Mexico taken during a Christmas season.  Thus, Mr. Andrews – my number one guide and editor in all things written and photographic – nixed it and he – as he is 99.9% of the time – correct.

Moving on to photo number three – the current one.  It was taken by none other than Mr. Andrews, himself, nearby over in Pass Christian, Mississippi, at sunset, along the coast highway (you have to look closely at the photo to see the road in it, plus the photo is greatly cropped), a couple of years before Katrina hit us all, taking most of that tree with it, along with all of the old stately homes along that road.

I, with Tom’s highest pleasure, have now decided that I want to keep this photo on here for a while and keep this them, at least for the time being, if and until I can find one that serves as well or better.  The photo is local – south Mississippi – taken by my beloved – Tom – and offers a serene look at why we love living here so much.

So . . . here are the three choices for you to look at and see what you think.  Number 3 – the current one – first:

Now, the Santa Fe, New Mexico photo:

Last, but first on this blog the other day (I know – all of this is backwards), the graphic I started out with:

I guess I’m like Goldilocks and the three bears.  First the photo is too busy.  Second the photo was too seasonal and distant from us (New Mexico – remember that sad saga of our “dream” vacation turned nightmare?).  Finally – third time’s the charm (I hope y’all will agree with me) – I’ve gotten the photo – and cleaner look on my page, sans 57 widgets! – that I like, although I DO terribly miss the way my blog page looked before.  I agree with JoAnn Glock – the MistyLook theme and photo and layout were outstanding.  It was just very outdated and wouldn’t allow me to do much with it. Mainly, I had to give it up because it got hacked and was spewing a lot of spam email out to people.  I hope you didn’t get any of it.

You will note at the top of the page here I have a special place set up now where you can privately contact me, if you do not wish to publicly comment, although I wish you would.  (To comment, you now have to go to the top of each post – see above under the headline – and click on the word comments.  Thanks.)

Hope y’all are having a blessed weekend.  It’s stormin’ here.  Big time.  Very dark, thundery and stormy.  Love it.  Dee

I said this and the next two or three posts would be to “wrap up” last November’s Andrews Family Memories Tour of 2009.  This is obviously not one of them.  Question:  There are still some funny stories ahead in the trip as we tried to end it – which almost didn’t happen.  Would you like for me to finish them – and the trip – up before I go on?  Or just move on without sharing the last several stories?  I throw the vote to you.  Were you enjoying the trip enough to hear the rest.  (There are, actually, some of the funniest moments ahead, now that I sit here and think about it.  I’m just wishy-washy at the moment.)

Of course, it’s my decision in the end.  If I can get my mind together.  It’s  just that while I’ve had every intention to do so, March so far has been “Doctor” month so far, with me having already seen four of my specialists, with a couple more still to come.  We started off the month with my birthday/our anniversary, I’ve had several other out-of-town appointments lined up, and then there was the fun visit last Friday over in the Gulfport airport to meet Patrick Mead and Les Ferguson, afterward having dinner with friends.

There have been some other things going on as well that I cannot freely discuss.  Let’s just say that my life has been a bit frazzled!!  Just a BIT!!

Frazzled is a great word, isn’t it?  I could have said stressed, but frazzled sounds a little lighter than stressed, and I need all of the lightness in my life I can get.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I’m thinking once again of writing a book and would like your input on this, too.  I’ve wanted to write a book (and have written several small ones – self-published – along with some published articles and lots of newspaper columns and stories) since I was 21 years old.  The great American novel.  I’ve even had the title and the basic outline for it in my head since 21.  That’s a long time to ruminate on something, but not do it.  Over the years I always wrote, no matter what else I was doing.  I am a writer.

My style actually grew to be what they call “New Journalism,” which is writing non-fiction work about whatever your subject is with great creativity, interjecting/immersing yourself into the “story” as an observer.  Much New Journalism is very witty, satirical, humorous and the kind of reading you can’t put down once you’ve started it.  Hunter S. Thompson.  Tom Wolfe.  Joan Didion.  Gay Talese.  Truman Capote.  Those are some of the masters.

Okay – if I do that, it would have to be the great American New Journalism book, instead of the great American novel.  So . . . my questions are:

(1)  Do you think I should go for it?  Do you think I write well enough and/or in that style for anyone to want to buy my book to read?

(2)  What subject(s) would you like to see me tackle?

Actually, I could (and have thought about this at length over the years, as well) put together a group of my short non-fiction stories to form a book.  An anthology.  That would work well with some of the stories I’ve done here on my blog (i.e., the Arkansas Memories tour doctored up, comes to mind), including the three I had y’all read and vote on a couple of years ago for the local writer’s group contest.  If you remember, I won first place with one of my stories, all three placed and all three were published in the Anthology that year.  (Go to my sidebar and look under Wind Vane stories to find them.  Or email me here or comment if you want me to post the links back to them.  I’m lazy at the moment.  Haven’t gotten used to the time change yet this week.  I’m struggling.  How about you?)

I could (started it, actually) call the book “Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles.”  You like that?  Or no?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Time to go.  Tom will be home for lunch in a few minutes, so I need to (want to) go start working on preparing him a good lunch so it will be ready when he gets home.  That way, he can sit and read his book while eating at our kitchen table and watching the birds eating at their feeder out on the back deck.  I sit with him and we talk.  He then lies in his recliner to rest a bit, maybe read a bit more, before going back to work.  It’s a nice break for him during the day, one which he loves much more than he realized he would before we moved out here.

God has richly blessed us with this lovely place we live here on the wooded hill above the creek.  Hardwoods fill our lot, unlike most of the landscape around here which is covered with scrawny pines.  We have dozens of magnolia trees, which are lovely – always filled with their waxy green leaves.  Only a few, though, are female trees that have magnificent blooms come May and June.

Comment and help me out here today.  Like I say, I’ve had a sluggish, but busy week and cannot get my mind together.  (Plus, I had my eyes dilated yesterday when I saw the retinologist and still cannot see worth a flip.  I’m having to put my face up close to the screen here to see to write because my vision is so blurry and my pupils so extended.)

Many blessings to each of you today!!  Dee

Friday afternoon about 4 p.m., Tom & I both got to meet Patrick, whom I have long considered one of my dearest blog buddies (see “Patrick Mead” & “Tentpegs“), ranked right up there with you, Greg (see “why, soitenly“).  I just wish (1) you could have been there, too, Greg, (2) y’all’s wives could have come, (3) that the four of you were coming to our house, and (4) last, but not least, we could have all sat out by the fire pit on our deck Friday night listening to you both play your guitars.  Now, that my friends, would be heaven!

Tom & I first met up at the Gulfport airport, just down the road about 40 minutes away, with our “neighbor” Les Ferguson, Jr..  Les is a fellow blogger, too, author of “A Wayfarer’s Trek.”  He is the minister of the Orange Grove Church of Christ in Gulfport.  I was really happy to meet Les, too, as we’ve been “following” each other ever since our early blogging days, for me, some five+ years now.  We found we had a lot in common.  For one thing, Les had written a weekly religion newspaper column for several years for the Vicksburg, Mississippi daily paper, even after moving over to Laurel, Mississippi.  So, he and Tom hit it off and knew newspaper people in common.

Les was there to pick up Patrick to take him over to the Gulf Coast Bible Camp near Lucedale, Mississippi, a small town about the size of Picayune, but the other direction from Gulfport – northeast instead of northwest.  Patrick was going to be speaking to a group of teens at a weekend retreat the camp was hosting.  Tom & I didn’t figure we could pass for teens so didn’t try to break up the party.

The four of us only got visit for a few minutes there in the airport, but it was fun.  Tom was SO sweet to take off work Friday afternoon to take me over.  It was a gorgeous day.  About 74 degrees, bright and sunny, with a good wind for sailing, if Tom had had his boat in the water.  (It’s here next to the house on its trailer.)  We went on down by the water in Long Beach to visit with friends, then gathered more friends to all ate dinner together at a great little Italian place.  Quite a lovely afternoon and evening.

Oh yeah . . . we remembered our camera, so here’s PROOF POSITIVE of our Patrick Mead/Les Ferguson sighting in coastal Mississippi on a bright, nearly spring, day:

Patrick, me & Les.

Patrick & me.

And, last, but not least, Patrick, me and Tom.

Y’all come on down/over/up – whichever way – to see us, too, okay?!  Would love to have each and every one of you over for a visit.  There’s lots of fun stuff to do around here and you cannot beat the company you’ll be keeping. 

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today! Dee

P. S. Next time I’ll get back to the conclusion of our Arkansas Memories Tour of Nov. 2009, so don’t miss it, ya hear?!

Tell you what – if I don’t have, can’t find an answer for you, I’ll do some research to try to do so or pass your question along to someone who does have an answer for you, how about that?

In exchange (to be fair here, you understand), I’ll ask y’all a question.  Just one.  Okay, more than one.  Y’all know I can’t stop at one  question, after all.  There’s too much of a journalist left in me.  I always want to know the who, what, where, when and how (and/or why).

So, enlighten me a bit.  I could use some enlightening this morning, I’m telling ya.

Where are you coming by here from, i.e., what state, town, country, place?  I’m just curious about how you’ve ended up here at Finding Direction, how long you’ve been dropping by and for what reasons.  In other words, tell me a bit about yourself, even if you wish to remain anonymous.

That’s it!

So, let the commenting begin.  If you’ve never commented before, all you have to do is fill in the first box with your name, or pseudonym, or “Anonymous,” and the second box with your email address (which will not show on here, but only verifies to me alone that you’re a “real” person.   The third box, which says URL, is only for those of you who have a website address you wish to post.  If you don’t have a website or don’t wish to reveal it, to comment just leave your/a name and your email address, which comes only to me.  That’s it!  It’s simple.

Can’t wait to hear from you with your questions and revelations about yourselves.

Cheers!  And many blessings to you today!  Dee

Yesterday, Tom picked out one of his favorite caps to send to the winner of the contest, Greg England, who is going to love it, even though he doesn’t wear caps.  He may wear this one, however, from now on.

Instead of having Tom model it for you all, I’ve asked Greg to take a picture of it on somebody’s head (either his, Josh’s or Jackson’s) and email it to me so I can share it with you all.

So, look forward to a post on that soon.

My next post will be about some of Tom’s escapades, “Men Don’t Measure,” which you do NOT want to miss.  Then, I’m starting a new series, each with a photo, called “Story Tellers,” so you don’t want to miss them, either.  I’ll explain the series when I start it.

In the meantime, what do YOU think the series may be about?!  Closest guess gets a prize!!

Many blessings to you all this beautiful Lord’s Day in south Mississippi!  Dee

"The day ended with me wide awake.  As a new day began, I prayed for sleep, to no avail.  

Then, some 45 minutes into the new "day," – 12:45 a.m. Thursday
morning – me still in bed wide awake, the peace was shattered by a loud
knocking on the door.

What on earth, I thought."

April 2nd – Early Morning, DiamondJack Casino Hotel

I fumbled around trying to get out of bed and find my glasses, which were around the corner on top of the TV in the sitting area.  At the same time, Laura jumped out of bed just as confused as I was.  She followed me to the door, as a second round of loud knocking commenced.  She asked me what I was going to do, afraid I’d open the door, but I told her I was just going to look through the peephole to see what was going on.

Luckily, we were on one side of the atrium and the hall was well lit.  I saw a husky young black man standing at our door with a cell phone in his hand and as I watched him, he placed a call to someone saying, "What room are you in, again?  I’m here, but you’re not answering."

"Oh," he said.  He repeated the room number given him, which was on the same 6th floor, but he had transposed the other two numbers, leading him by mistake to our room, instead of the room he wanted.  As he sauntered off, Laura and I got back in our bed.  It was 1 a.m.

Mom had somehow slept through the whole thing, but Laura and I were both now wide awake.  Me, still, and as it turned out, her, too.  I’d been still as a mouse, except for checking out my indiglo watch every few minutes and thought Laura had been sound asleep the entire time because she had been still, too.

Nope.

We started talking quietly and giggling about things.  Mostly about Mom and how much fun she seemed to be having.  We agreed she was having a great time, some of which was evident by her falling asleep so quickly and easily when she got in bed at 10:45 p.m. and now sleeping through this latest commotion.

We talked about not being able to sleep and what to do about it, and I remembered I’d brought along a few sleeping pills of Tom’s that he’d used when the bursitis in his right hip was so bad, and I offered one to Laura, who was most grateful.  I wasn’t sure about taking one, myself, since it was already nearly 1:30 a.m. and I had a long day of driving ahead of me to get home, but decided I needed the sleep and the pills had never made me feel drowsy the next day before when I’d taken them, so I took one.

Laura & I giggled some more as I talked about feeling bad for not letting her sleep with me more often when we were kids.  Then, I told her I’d been lying there comforting myself with my new light up watch and showed her how bright it was (and that it was now a bit after 1:30 a.m.).  She really started giggling about me and my obsession with my new watch and showing it off so much, and then our voices faded to silence.

I could tell that she soon fell asleep because I could hear her soft breathing and a bit of quiet snoring. Me?  I tried my best, but still could not go to sleep.  By 3 a.m., I figured it was a lost cause, but there was nothing I could do about it but lie there and wait until Mom woke up, which was usually early.  I think I finally – maybe – got about and hour and a half of sleep, but by 5:30 a.m., I was once more awake.

Mom got up quietly about 6 a.m. and I called out to her, telling her I was awake, as well.  I got up and told her I’d not slept much at all and we talked about the day to come, both wanting to get our things together and get on the road as soon as possible.  We figured we could just wake Laura up to get her things together and that she then could go back to sleep in the car if she wanted.  What I wanted was to go home.  I felt totally wiped out, but wanted to get home with my precious "cargo" this day more than anything else in the world.

But, there were potential problems looming.  

We’d talked with Tom the night before and had been watching the weather forecast the previous few days and knew that this day was supposed to be very rainy and stormy all across the south, moving from Texas to Louisiana to Mississippi and then on over into Alabama.

We had decided the night before, as Tom had advised, to head straight east on I-20 across Louisiana to Monroe, then into Mississippi across the Mississippi river at Vicksburg, on to Jackson, where we would head southeast to Hattiesburg and down I-59 to Picayune.  We all thought that trying to head down across Louisiana on I-49 from Shreveport to Lafayette, then on I-10 to Baton Rouge and across the south part of Louisiana to Slidell and back up I-59 20 miles to Picayune would present more storm problems and much more traffic.

It was a toss up, I suppose, but I felt more comfortable with our plan because there were a lot more towns along the entire way and I knew the roads well.

As we got our things together and drank coffee, thunder boomed and lightening lit up the still dark sky to the west out our 6th floor window overlooking the Red River.  We were packed and down in our car by 8 a.m., glad to be under the portico of the hotel because rain was pelting down.  We’d had nothing to eat, but thought we could stop later somewhere along the way.  I was anxious to get us on the road.

We were on the far east side of Shreveport, Bossier City and interstate access was next to our hotel.  I merged into a good bit of traffic covering four lanes, but it thinned out fairly soon, although the rain in the dark sky kept coming.  We could tell that we were on more or less the front edge of the bad storm and thought we could drive out of it soon.  But, then we realized it was coming at us at an angle from the southwest toward the northeast.

Still, by about 10:30 a.m., even through sometimes very heavy rain and a lot of 18 wheelers, we’d made it 2/3 of the way across Louisiana.  We stopped to take a break in now light rain and I checked my blood sugar, which had done great the entire day before.

My old nemesis was back.  My sugar was low.  I pulled out a Coke and quickly drank it, thinking that would take care of things.  However, little did I know what lie ahead of us as we headed into not only major low blood sugar problems, but also the furies of the horrendous storm chasing us home.

To Be Continued . . .

 April 1st – Late Wednesday Night in DiamondJack Casino Hotel

If you remember (it’s been a while), I left you last time (here) with us – okay, Mom - beating the system by walking out of the casino with her $8.75 of their money late on the first day of our road trip.  

We slowly (Mom’s bum knee) walked back over to the hotel side to go to our room and to bed because it was about 10:30 p.m. and had been a long day.

 As we entered the hotel lobby, I saw Steven (Hotel, remember!) still behind the counter and also saw a tall young black man crossing the lobby from somewhere wearing loose clothing, sort of work out type, and carrying a very large shopping bag.  We crossed the lobby where I was going to talk with Steven and take his picture, because he had been so helpful to us when we’d arrived, but he was busy on the phone.

So, we went through a short hallway to the six elevators.  The three of us entered, Mom & Laura talking away, and I stopped in front of the panel to punch in our floor.  As I did so, the young man I had seen in the lobby strode in and stood behind us.  For some reason, I felt very wary.

As I punched in our floor, I saw that we had to put our room card into the panel to be able to get the elevator to work.  I had the card (being the "commander" of this endeavor), so started to look in my purse to pull the card out, while at the same time asking the young black man what floor he wanted.

He was mumbling something about his girlfriend having the only card to their room (in other words, he didn’t have one).  At the same time I was asking him what floor he wanted and he couldn’t tell me.

I immediately told Mom & Laura, "Come on, we’ve got to go talk to Steven.  I wanted to get his picture, remember?  Come on.  Come on."  (It was the only thing I could think of to get them out.)

They hesitated, looking confused, but I kept pressing them and said, let’s go.  I wanted all of us out of that elevator as fast as possible.  I herded them along till we got around the corner of the hallway into the lobby and told them I was highly suspicious of that guy & why.  Mom had not even noticed him at all & Laura had only noticed the big shopping bag.  She didn’t even see that he was black.

We went over to the counter & told Steven and I insisted he call security, which he did.  We then safely entered the elevator and went to our room, me cautioning both Mom & Laura the whole time that they must be more aware of their surroundings and what’s going on.  The guy had no card and could not tell me his floor number.  ‘Nuff said.

Here’s some pictures of our great room taken before we went to bed.  The first is Mom sitting on her bed (Laura & I took the other bed, Laura closet to Mom & me on the far side by the short "wall") counting her loot & putting it away!

The second is of Laura.  Our room was very tropical looking, with lots of mirrors, which made it seem much bigger than it was.

Finally – here is the huge whirlpool jacuzzi tub that Laura so wanted to lie back in to relax for a while before going to bed and watch the little 13" TV just across the way (see it in the mirror next to the coffee pot).  But it was so late, she didn’t get to do so.  Bummer.

It had been an eventful day and Mom was sound asleep by the time her head hit the pillow.  Laura and I took longer, but were in bed with the lights out (except in the bathroom) by 11 p.m.

I was very tired out from driving all day and expected I’d drift off to sleep.  We had another long day on the road ahead of us from Shreveport to Picayune and I badly needed the rest.

It was dark & quiet except for Mom’s soft snoring and all was still – except my mind.  It was cranked up in high gear.  I lay there as still as possible trying to think calming thoughts.  Instead, every 15 or 20 minutes or so I was checking the time on my wonderful new "indiglo" watch.

The day ended with me wide awake.  As a new day began, I prayed for sleep, to no avail.  

Then, some 45 minutes into the new "day," – 12:45 a.m. Thursday morning – me still in bed wide awake, the peace was shattered by a loud knocking on the door.

What on earth, I thought.

To Be Continued . . .