Having eyes to see . . . December 2, 2009

So isn’t it great?  All this time I’ve been telling you about meetings, and John1 working all the time on creating videos, and about what I do, and FINALLY you’re seeing, what all those words have been streaming (got a little Seussian there, love Seuss)  through the videos that are being posted on John’s YouTUBE channel.  It’s all so exciting!

It just occurred to me that you get to see John’s work but you really don’t “see” mine.  Like what I did  a good portion of the day.  So, let me give you the “eyes” to see it.  I do all things internet related.   So if its out there it came from here:  the web site,  setting him up on sites, his materials and name spread across the internet, all the learning of the new sites, working out the “Why didn’t that stupid thing work” problems, info in info boxes (if they are personal to him, such as “about me” boxes, I get him on the phone to sit with me for a bit and tell me what he wants in those little boxes, so those aren’t actually my words, those are my typing fingers entering text, then editing, and assisting with my, some times received, 2 cents.  Which I’m okay with.  I mean, it’s about him right?  Not me.  So my two cents may not have much worth.  LOL), pictures, links, mentions, FB Fan Page posts, his soon to be blog (which I’ll only set up, he’ll solely write)… all the internet criss crossing you might catch glimpses of.  That’s all my work and some of John2 too, can’t take 100% of the credit.

Being in our business is a team effort.  And in the age of social media serving as a business vehicle you better believe that it takes a team.  I also say all this because  the name of my blog is “From Housewife To Film Maker” and I really don’t speak of actual film making.  I’ve mentioned before the whys: we both can’t do the same thing, it needs to be subdivided and I was the best one for the tech stuff.  But still new friends may be scratching their head a little puzzled with my content.  So let me just say that when all the credits roll at the end of the movie, it took all those folks to create that piece of art.  And that is the case here.

So, I am becoming a filmmaker.  Just not exactly as I pictured it being, so far at any rate.  Some day my job description may change, but in the meantime I really am happy doing this end of things.  I’m learning to enjoy it really, well most of the time.  One neat thing is I’ve found some terrific blogs that I follow now.  Not that I have a blog roll to show them.  That thing remains a mystery to me.  Need more time to pick at that little bugger…

Yawn, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-came home this evening to a note stuck in my door: Tomorrow they’re doing an inspection of all the apartments.  Yippee Skippy.  They’ve never done that before.  And isn’t that dandy?  So I had to get those dishes done.  I had to tidy up the place.  The thing that ticked me off was I had actually planned another of my big deep cleaning days the end of this week.  Actually scheduled it into my life.  And instead I had to take time I didn’t have to shift it forward.

Yesterday, today. . . life of an entreprenure business woman/mom… November 27, 2009

  !!!!!!HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!! 

Why no post yesterday??

-First there was computer work
-grocery store-gather ingredients for holiday baking
-then meeting and work on video with John1, Me, John2, Frances (who’s working with us on the Red Book and Cotton book project)
-back to grocery store because now my eggs had exceeded the four hour without refrigeration limit by an hour and a half and they were now officially trash and I had to have them for Thanksgiving baking…
-Stand in line with all the other late Thanksgiving meal shoppers
-home
-greet Zach, who has been with me for the last 4 days 
-drop grocery sacks on floor, peel off coat, dive into sacks, grab cookbook, start dumping ingredients into Kitchen Aid blending bowl
-duel task: prepare dinner
-Have a thought: haven’t checked emails all day, oh dear: quick check.  While there: check the job site I’ve joined to find a new family to nanny for, no leads, pop onto Facebook to post a quick status report, “Oh, there’s two emails”, tell myself,  “Ignore them, too busy,” can’t ignore, I’m a terrible ignorer, read emails, respond to the quickest one, forget to post status
-eat a nice meal with Zach
-keep an eye on the baking Pumpkin Bread loaves
-clean up–because I’m doing my level best keeping up with my dishes
-respond to another FB email
-Dial up John1 and together we set up his new channel on YouTube.  Lots to do and lots of decisions and who knew.  It never ceases to amaze me how long filling in start up information can take. Profiles go on forever and if you want a respectable one they take time.  Then the proofing, tweaking and finally its done.
-Hang up, now it’s like right around 11:10 p.m.
-back to FB write another email response
-pittle around with some other necessary things
-bed 1:30 a.m.  Choose sleep over blogging I was zonked and I wanted to be really fresh for tomorrow…

TODAY:
-shower
-On phone: with kids, John1, kids again, my brother called and I missed it and am just now remembering, ugh, decide with John1 we’re going to launch the video today…
-Peel Sweet Potatoes, boil, mash with butter, brown sugar, and top with cinnamon/brown sugar and marshmallows
-Phone call, jam phone under ear continue to get ready: John1-what do I think about…??  (YouTube wise)… Again, firsts…loaded with time and questions
-Go get Zach a fresh set of clothes, he was out.  Blah.
-Return with Dan to help with wheel chair
-Phone call: John1, bouncing YouTube question off me…Then….Yes!!  Theresa we have liftoff!!  The sucker went.  And I feel like I just birthed a baby. Now the wait for it to be posted!
-Myself, Dan, Zach, his chair, Pumpkin Bread, and hot Sweet Potato dish are now in truck, on the way to the kids/Scott’s/the ‘exs’ house.
-Arrive. Right on the money for dinner: 2 o’clock.  Phew.  Make gravy while Scott gets food on table.  Eat.
-It was a enjoyable day.  I determined that I was going to do all I could to ensure that not a single annoying word passed between Scott and I annnndddd…there was a couple.  But overall, no bickering, no rubbing “the cat’s fur the wrong way” in any real noticeable manner.  Triumph. 
-Got home around 10 called my parents, talked for about 45 minutes.
-Checked to figure out why the video never showed up on YouTube.  Dig around… ohhh, the silly thing is set for private: another thing to “set”, Well…tomorrow we’ll launch it.  The name of John1′s channel: http://www.youtube/JohnSolomonSandridge
-Got ready for bed annnndddd just couldn’t go…I needed to spend a few minutes with you first
  Missed you yesterday!  Glad to be back today.  Wondering if any of this was interesting… Humm, well, it’s the 2 days in the life of a woman entrepreneur/mom anyway, if you ever were wondering what we do

Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who will be up at 4 a.m. to go to Walmart’s door buster sale to press through crowds of people…before the sun is up.  Oh Yippee…    Oh and the pictures today are the smile faces 

Catching up, leveling off . . . November 14, 2009

After about two and a half months of submerging into the swirling depths of social media marketing, today I suddenly feel like I’m leveling out.  It happened about 4 pm after I made a to do list and it fit on the front of a 4×5 card and I couldn’t think of anything else I needed to add.  Tension dropped from my body.  I didn’t have a list a mile long that branched in a hundred directions.  I was so relieved energy and brain power was freed up to do what I’m very good at, creating a meal, specifically for Caleb and I.  To scan the fridge and put it together into a meal.  Here’s what was to pick from in the fridge: chicken, carrots, tortilla shells, milk, cheese, and an English Muffin.   Almost made chicken and biscuits but didn’t want to take the time to make the biscuits.  So I  went with Chicken Enchiladas with cheese sauce and for dessert, baked cinnamon/sugar tortilla shells.  Yum.  I’ve eaten so much Cream of Wheat and English Muffins this last month I thought I was going to turn into them.

After that list I finally felt like I know something.  I know where it’s important for us to focus.  I know what else I want to learn and I know where to get the information to learn it.  I know where to go to keep abreast of the information we need with what we’re doing.  I know how to use a bunch of sites.  I know what else I want to do on those sites and I already have the source in my hand to take me there.

I’m not saying I know it all.  I don’t think this is a topic that one ever can “know it all.”  It changes every day, every hour practically.  What one must do is keep up.  But I feel like Ive almost caught up, nearly to the point of just needing to keep up.  And it feels great!  I feel accomplished and confident.  Nothing like feeling confident.

Still have a lot to do.  But I feel more organized and ordered now.  Know what I need to do daily.  I defiantly prefer feeling this way.  There was a day I thought it would never happen.  That I’d be swimming in gyres for the rest of my life.  PHEW.

John2 and I pecked away at my new WordPress theme for about an hour, but still stumped.  Posted a message in the forum.  Now we wait.

Otherwise, I’m going to sign off.  Sleepy, got about 3 hours of sleep last night due to working till 4 am making up for my hookie day and then when I went to bed and getting to sleep was tough with the two other children that wiggled in their sleep.
Losing steam fast…
Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane

Tags,Tagul, and a cup of hot cocoa cake . . . November 12, 2009

Gasp!  Horror!! The “please excuse us while we change” sign that I had up to tell the world that I was working on my soon to be launched web site wasn’t up!  What happened?  Thought we checked that?  Well it’s fixed now.

Coldness is setting in so I bought a new blanket today.  At?  Where else Wal-mart.  It’s brilliant white.  I laundered it and when I opened the dryer it was like freshly falling Christmas snow.  I felt like a kid as I laughed, cupped my hands and scooped mountains of it from the lint catcher, gathered it from around the door, and chased it through the air.  Much funner than the real thing!  Too bad snow wasn’t like that.

Tags, located on side bars with random words scattered throughout.
Tags, the list of words that appear above my posts.
Tags, give search engines a way to find sites.

Well!  These seemingly boring, do nothing, I thought they were just there for search engines to use and wondered why they even needed to be on a site, do more than that.  Today I:
1) Learned: You can click on them to search the for information pertaining to the word on a web site/blog. Who knew?!
2) Put this together: They’re totally handy to scan when you’re checking out someone’s blog/web site. Besides reading a couple posts, scan the tags this will help you know if you’re interested in them because they tell you the topics they discuss.
3) Discovered: Tagul.com.  Tagul is very similar to Wordle but with distinct differences.  They’re designed to be used on blogs and web pages as a replacement of ordinary tag clouds. And each word/tag is “clickable”so visitors can use it for navigation.  Meaning… we just upgraded our eye candy to practical:  click the word and bam, you get a list of posts related to the word!  This is where I learned that the tags in side bars are clickable!  And, it gets better… this site allows you to customize the clouds into shapes such as: hearts, triangles…and multiple fonts can be used in one cloud.  TOOOOOOO, FUN~

The kids had Veterans Day off today.  Sarah and Grace went shopping.  Zach and Ben slept till probably the time they would have gotten off the bus had they gone to school, and Dan and Cal came with me.  I was second choice for Dan as his plans with a friend fell through.  We went to the grocery store on the way home because Dan, my gotta have milk kid remembered, “Mom, you need milk.”  Right!  While in said store what does Dan’s eyes land on??  A mini cake in the shape of a hot cocoa mug with marshmallows on top.  What is Dan’s favorite thing?  Marshmellows.  NEVER let him hold the bag when the fam is making Smores.  Well, his eyes were googling, and his breath gasping, his fingers stabbing glass, other hand was tapping Caleb’s shoulder to get his attention, never taking his eyes off the case.  Two faces turned up to look at me and in unison they said, you guessed it, “Oh mom, please!”  With such delight the Devil himself couldn’t have said no.  I walked out of that store, muttering to myself and making a mental note: keep those boys out of the bakery section from now on!  And creating excuses… Dan loves marshmallows, and they both love hot cocoa, I never buy such wild extravaganzas, why, I’m making a memory, and this will be our celebration cake for my deciding not to move.

Yummm!

Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane,
-oh and that’s not all marshmallows, most is frosting.  And yeah it was as good as it looked!

Wordles. Not wordless! Wordle . . . November 10, 2009

Since I’m into all things cool.  And all things fun I must share what I found.  They’re called Wordles.  Well really it’s: Wordle but grammatically it doesn’t work to say it that way, So my adaptation: Wordles!  Found at: wordle.com: “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide….The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.”  My favorite words are: “yours to use however you like.”  They’re clear.  To the point.  SIMPLE! Dissolved the question, “What?!”

You can also have one created from the tags on your web site by giving them your URL (web address).  So I played.  First I had it make one for my blog.  That was cool.  Then  with Red Book and Cotton’s web site.  I had so much fun I wanted to do something else.  So I sat here staring at their blank window thinking.  Then it struck me.  Words that described me and what I strive for.  I share this part and the Wordles that were the result for two reasons.  One: in order to share this: All this blogging has enabled me to summarize myself into a list of words, something that I would have struggled doing once.  Blogging has really been a good thing for me.   I’ve privately journaled since I was 22ish, but it never rendered this much benefit.  Possibly it’s the arena: knowing others are reading.  Possibly it’s having to press my day into a tube and examine it for writing worthiness: keeping me focused on the meat of the day.  Possibly it’s the very act of writing itself: writing has always been lauded for it’s healing qualities.  Possibly it’s the timing: 6 years of inner healing work has culminated.  It’s most likely a combination.  Most things are.  And two: To encourage you to do the same.  It’s a very good exercise.  It may put you in touch with something!

Now that I re-read the words in my Wordles I’m realizing I should have added: communicator and spiritual.  Nuts!  You’d think wouldn’t ya, that I’d at the very least come up with communicator since I had a post a week or two ago dedicated to it!!  Oh well, I seriously played with Wordle long enough today and have two examples already inserted into this post.  I must close my eyes to this, resist the urge to go make new ones.

Here’s what a Wordle is: much easier to show then describe it.

Since, at times, I can be very black and white, here I am in black and white. :

I am very colorful most of the time.  So here I am in color.:

Cool aren’t they??  They would be fun for so many things.  To dress up a blog or web site, to make postcards/cards, add some fun to an office, use them for business promotion.  I’m thinking of doing one for each of my children, framing them, and giving them to them for Christmas.  Oh the thoughts are unlimited.
CATUION: Creating Wordles can lead to addictive behavior and may cause one to ignore their loved ones!  So proceed with caution!  And I can’t be responsible!

I hope you find this fun and possibly rewarding!!  Send me yours if you create some through my email.  I don’t think there’s a way to paste them into comments.  But if there is that would be totally terrific!  Do that instead so everyone can see.
Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who now comes in black and white and color    I like choices!

NaNoWriMo, X-rays, and WordPress self-hosting . . . November 10, 2009

I’ve decided, calling a doctors office immediately after rolling out of bed isn’t the best time for me to make such calls.  I’m not terribly coherent.  I babble.  I explain myself wayyyyy too much.  I can’t even follow myself.  But somehow this morning I managed to schedule an appointment for Caleb.  He hurt his thumb last Thursday late in the day and throughout the weekend he kept complaining of pain.  Then there was the slight swelling and bruising…   Although I think he just stubbed it hard, since he wasn’t any paler than he already is, or writhing on the floor in agony, I wanted to make sure.  I didn’t want this to go much further and have it be an actual break.  You know, get a call from the school nurse, “Caleb’s in my office and he’s in a lot of pain…”  Take him to the doctor, now days later than it’s already been…find out the boys got a break!!!  I really felt it best to spare myself the embarrassment.  So although my gut was saying, sprain, we went.  And this picture of him and Dan was taken while we waited to be X-rayed.  That hand of his you see extended?  Going to catch the ball that Dan chucked at him.  That’s the one with the hurt thumb.  What’d you think?  And why they’d ever put a ball in that room is beyond me!  After getting our turn at the X-ray machine it was concluded: it’s just a sprain.  I think he was disappointed.  I think he wanted a cast like Grace.  And he was sooooo close!

Today John2 and I worked on the following:
–Tried to get a slice of Red Book and Cotton posted to the web site to give people the opportunity to read some before buying.  For some reason it’s not letting us, terrible awful things keep happening.  You don’t want to know!  We bailed.  For today.
–I bought my new theme to get set up on my own self-hosted WordPress blog today!!  Exciting.  I’ve only scanned I think 3,000 themes to finally pick one.  Actually I narrowed it to two.  Had a tough time deciding but I did today.  Have a little twist in my stomach hoping I made the right decision.  But everything is changeable right?  At least that’s what I keep telling myself.  After the purchase we began to put it onto the web host.  I’m currently waiting for GoDaddy to have the name pointing at my new blog.  But this is all just the beginning.  Have a ways to go on this sucker yet!!
–Had brief, but productive phone meeting with John1, John2, and myself about point one and other goodies to start adding here there and everywhere around the wondrous world of the web. 

Kateness.wordpress.com is a blog I’m now following.  I found her because she found me and gave me a view.  So, I viewed back.  I mean, it’s only polite!  At any rate she is participating in NaNoWriMo this month– short for National Novel Writing Month.  It runs Nov 1-30.  The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30–and she’s blogging about her daily adventures with this goal.  So far, so fun, and interesting.  Being a writer I think this NaNoWriMo is cool.  Since I seriously can’t participate this year, unless I decide to stop sleeping altogether I’ve decided to live vicariously through her.  I also thought you all ought to know that there are bunches and bunches of people right now drumming words into word processors in the effort to knock out the first draft of a novel!

Would have gotten more done today but had to shove off to work and of course there was the doctor appointment.
Night and Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who is just now remembering, the alarm is set for 7 a.m.  Oh God… have to be at the school by 8 to watch a performance that Dan is in.   Being the not morning person that I am I have to question, “The boy is only in the choir, do I really need to go…”  I’m going to bed!  NOW!