penandpapermama2.com Blog

30 days of me:  day 21: a picture of something that makes you happy

Whatever else you might say about John Denver, he had it right when he wrote those lyrics:  “Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy, Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry, Sunshine on the water looks so lovely, Sunshine almost always makes me high.”

Yep, sunshine makes me happy!  Took this picture just a few days ago.  Spring is on the way

(Oh yeah, I liked the “Sunshine” movie too … that article about the song reminded me about it!)

30 days of me: day 20:  Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future

LOL   Such a silly, silly question!  I am already married, and have been for almost 29 years (plus a couple years of togetherness before that), to the most handsome, smart, charming, adorable, wonderful, Haida buck in the whole world – Lionel Seymour Hill.  And to those of you who might be wondering, no, I have no attention of leaving him!  So you’ll have to find someone else    He’s all mine! 

I’ve attached a few of my favorite pictures of him.  Isn’t he awesome?  Look but don’t touch

30 days of me: day 19:  my nicknames

I haven’t had a lot of nicknames.  When I was a baby, I was sometimes referred to as “Cucumber” when I was being particularly cute.   

Everybody called me by both my given names, “Norma June,”  until I was in grade 2 and my teacher decided to call me “Norma.”  My fellow students followed suit, and before long I was “Norma” to most people.  However, close friends and relatives who’d known me in my early childhood continued to call me “Norma June” for years – and even today, a few still do.

In high school, I was occasionally given nicknames, but none of them stuck.  A couple I remember are “N.J.” and “Fred.”  I rather liked the latter!   One of my best friends called me “Norm” for years.

Sometimes, people would tease me about my maiden name, “Wright,” and call me “Norma Wrong.”  They’d also sometimes call me “Abnorm.”  I rather liked that one, too

As an adult, and a high school teacher, sometimes this or that student would accidentally call me, “Mom,”  instead of “Mrs. Hill.”  I liked that a lot!

And so far as I can remember, that’s it for my nicknames.

30 days of me: day 18: plans, dreams, goals

I’ve talked about this, thought about it, planned about it.  Want to know what I’m thinking now?  Go on over to my penandpapermama.com blog and My Church Journey blog and have a look.

30 days of me: day 17: someone I would like to switch lives with for one day and why

Seriously.  Why would anyone want to switch lives with someone else?  Even for 24 hours.  I’m old enough to have realized that no, the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence.  I therefore do not wish to switch lives, even for one day, with someone who is rich, famous, highly educated, successful, or any other of those things that we sometimes think would make our lives better.

Maybe, on the other hand, it might not hurt to “walk a mile” in the shoes (or lack thereof) of someone who is in true poverty, suffers from a severe mental illness or severe chronic physical illness, lives on the street in today’s snow and wind and icy cold weather, has just lost everything they had in some kind of disaster, is living in the middle of a war zone…

Actually, I guess it doesn’t matter which way I go.  Walking in the shoes of the rich and famous might be just as enlightening, considering their widely broadcast tangles with drugs, divorces, papparazzi, total lack of privacy, totally unrealistic expectations from their adoring fans and their spiteful enemies alike…

Yep, I think I just want to be me.  I have to say that my life is pretty decent.  Blessed, truthfully.  

Reminds me of that children’s  “Butterfly Song“.  After gleefully considering the fun of being a butterfly or robin or octopus or fuzzy wuzzy bear or wiggly worm, the tune concludes, ”For you gave me a heart and you gave me a smile, You gave me Jesus and You made me Your child, and I just thank you Jesus for making me me, me, me.” 

That’s how I feel, too.  Thank You, Lord.

(And thanks for the tune, Brian Howard).

30 days of me: day 16: another picture of myself

Good grief!  Why?  Oh well, okay.  Here it is.  Isn’t my grandson adorable?

30 days of me: day 15:  put your IPod on shuffle, list first 10 songs.

No IPod, no shuffle!  Do have an MP3 but not a shuffle function.  That’s if for today!

30 days of me:  day 14:  a recent picture of my family

A recent picture of my family?  Easier said than done!  My family has been growing by leaps and bounds (6 new grandkids in about 2 years), and live scattered from Alberta to Vancouver Island.  Getting everyone together at the same time, especially with new babies and all, has been a pretty big challenge.  Our most recent family picture (minus our son and our sons-in-laws) was in October 2009.  Fortunately one of our daughters is getting married this coming summer and hopefully all (or nearly all) the family will be there for a new family picture.  Meanwhile, here is a selection of pictures that added together include all of us!

(Do you have any idea how hard this was?  I was searching for family group pictures from hundreds and hundreds of snapshots…  Why oh why don’t we think to take family-together photos?)

30 days of me:  day 13:  a letter to someone who has hurt you recently

Well, well.  I just have one thing to say about writing letters to people who have hurt you recently.  99% of the time (100% of the time on facebook or anywhere on-line) it is usually a BAD idea.    Wish I had figured that out years ago.  I’m sometimes a bit slow in the wisdom category.  My deepest apologies right now to people I’ve written “hurt” letters to in the past.  I should have spoken to you person to person.  Even good letter writers can’t always tell how the other person is going to perceive the written message.  When you talk person to person you have a better chance of conversing and working through it together (and even then it isn’t easy).  Public (on-line) letters should only come after you have both talked it through, and both agreed that a public letter is even needed or is a good idea, and both have approved the letter. 

And I am not judging you.  I am judging myself.  Yes I know.  I have written letters I should not have.  I have published things I should not have.  I have taken some of those things down – and need to remove more; I’m working on it – but once it is “out there” it is awfully hard (if not impossible) to totally get rid of it, and even if one can manage to do so, someone out there remembers.  And people are hurt.

Oh dear.  I really am sorry.  And embarrassed.   And apologizing.  To all of you who I have hurt when I was hurting.   Please, if you can find it in your heart, please forgive me.  I am sorry.

30 days of me: day 12:  how I found out about blogging and why I made a blog

Back in the day (around 1996 or so, when we first got internet connection on Haida Gwaii) my kids immediately started making their own webpages.  Not to be outdone, I took a little online course and built one of my own (you can find a bit of that original effort here and here ).  Then I added a bunch of pages about home schooling, which was my big thing at the time.  That was on Geocities; later my daughter helped me changed the look of those pages; and then later we changed them up again.  Eventually Yahoo bought out Geocities, so that is the platform I am now using for this site, with this blog powered by WordPress.org.  Some of the original site information is still on my Conversations, Reflections, and Meditations pages that this blog is attached to, in case you want to see it.  As a matter of fact, I only started this blog a couple weeks ago.  Take a look at the rest of the site, too, to see topics I’ve added like my family and Haida pages.

It was about 2 to 3 years ago that I decided to try creating blogs as well as the more static websites.  My first effort was on the Blogger platform, and I’m still adding to that blog.  The blog is called My Church Journey and as the name suggests, it is related to topics around my spiritual journey.  Recently, Blogger has attempted to add a “static pages” opportunity for its blogs, and I have taken advantage of that to put up some material on specific topics such as the street church I am involved with. 

I also started a couple blogs on the WordPress platform.  One is a “free” blog site, through WordPress.com, and I call it The Hill Gang.  It is primarily stories and pictures of our family, for my kids.  The other is on WordPress.org, and is my own domain, PenAndPaperMama.com.  It has been a kind of catch-all for all kinds of topics.  Recently, I have pretty much “gutted” it and am in the process of turning it into a hub site for all my different sites, some of which are under development and not yet uploaded. 

I also created a kind of website on a free blog/website platform through the server we use.  It is called A Mother’s Journey, and is to encourage women as their children go through their teen years. 

I have started one or two other blogs as well, but decided not to continue with them; that is the great thing of blogging on “free” sites like Blogger or WordPress.org:  if it doesn’t work out or your interests change, you can of course close the blog down, and you aren’t out any cash.  Free sites do have some limitations, though, and that’s why I use a combination of free sites and sites I pay for. 

I love writing, and that’s why I started blogging – as well as trying to keep up with my kids and technology!  It’s quite embarrassing for your toddlers to be able to do things on computer when you know nothing about it at all.  That’s how I got started using computers, lol.

I have not really done any monetizing up to this point, but I have been researching, and you will find that that will be changing shortly, especially on some of my new blogs that I will be posting shortly.  So keep posted!  I’ll let you know about them as they go up.