Count Your Blessings

I'm thinking I might owe my readers an apology. Yep--I'm sorry if I've sounded like a whiner this week, which is not why you come to Camera Crazy--you want fun, you want photos, you want uplifting stories! And what did I write about? All my petty woes which couldn't have been any fun at all.

I remember a little Sunday School song we used to sing at Fort Gatlin which went something like this:

Count your blessings,

Count them one by one, 

Count your many blessings, 

See what God has done!

While working outside all morning today this song continued on repeat in my head. You see, I had another disappointment since my last post and I was all fired up to write about it, however,  once that song came into my head, I couldn't help but think of all my blessings. Briefly, I received a rejection letter from the Winter Park Autumn Art Festival, the only show I applied to for the fall. Can you believe they sent it at 5:00 on a Friday night?? Some of you may recall how successful the 2010 show was, followed by last year's monsoon the weekend of the show, so, naively I now know, I assumed my entry this year would be almost guaranteed, sort of a makeup for the ruined weekend. I guess not. 

I took this yesterday afternoon while downtown which I'll cover next week. At the time I was thinking of other folks facing a little bump in the road, but gosh darn it, it applies to me. 

So, I've decided to make lemonade with all this week's lemons:

I'm blessed to have a home that a frog might want to visit, after all, there are loads of folks who don't even have a home.

I'm blessed to have a husband who has a terrific job, despite the travel. After all, lots and lots of folks have no jobs. And then, there are women who have no husband at all. My bridge buddy, Bev, lost her husband to colon cancer several years ago. Now, that's pain.

I'm blessed to be able to apply to art shows! Good grief! What more can I say?

Travel, who needs travel when I have such a lovely space right here? Plus I am blessed that if I really, really wanted to go somewhere I have the necessary funds to make it happen. 

And just because the internet is out for most of a day (yesterday, or I would have written then), I'm blessed to even have it most of the time!


Commenters, who needs commenters? I know you are out there because my stats tell me so. I'm more than blessed to be able to write this blog. I realized just the other day, that when I was young, if you would have asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, Lord knows, I would have never said, an x-ray tech. No siree, I would have said a writer. And here I am writing!

Just thought I'd throw in something pretty, pretty, pretty! There are so many great new varieties of hibiscus--my word I love those flowers. Are we all happy now? Good, because although last evening I was close to tears, I'm now over it. Well, sort of....

All the rain earlier in the week filled the pool to the brim, so yesterday afternoon, instead of draining it into the grass, Bruce and I took turns doing cannonballs, displacing as much water as we could. It was then I remembered a little something we did when we spent all summer long in the pool to stay cool without air conditioning.

For fun we would stand there,  swinging our arms around, skimming our hands on the water's surface, all the while splashing sisters. Lord knows, I've got plenty of them. For those unfamiliar with my family history, the number is four, which is what I somehow thought would turn into girls for us. NOT--four wonderful sons instead!

I actually took the above photo because I wanted to try out my new tripod which I did not buy, instead I found it in the parking lot of Colonial Photo and Hobby!

It's pretty heavy duty, unlike the one I already own and rarely use, mostly because I'm lazy. What happened is this: After discovering it, I took it inside the store, asking that if the rightful owner did not show up it would be mine. They promised to call. They did not. Stopping by on my way home from bridge, it was still unclaimed. I did have to buy a little connector for the top, which set me back $15, however, the tripod retails for $70 so, all in all, a pretty good find. 

A little picture of some of the many raindrops from this week, which is pretty normal for a Florida summer.

Getting into my car I noticed the drops, and decided to give that macro lens a go. The green is our grass on the other side of the window.

Guess what??? Our cardinals are at it again! According to this very interesting fact sheet about Northern Cardinals, they are right on schedule.

Instead of going to the market today Bruce and I worked like crazy cleaning up the outside, including, but not limited to, mowing, edging, power washing, trimming, and gutter cleaning. We are feeling both good, and tired, from our efforts. The weather cooperated nicely, as I'm sure it will tomorrow on market day. See that positive attitude? That's the spirit!