Trick or Treat

Okay, okay.  I’m a week early!

But Astrid and I are in Atlanta as we speak, having just spent a glorious weekend in the north Georgia mountains with my kids and grandson.  Halloween is everywhere.  However, for this post, my thoughts are back home where we live in the Netherlands….

Where THOUSANDS of these chestnuts have fallen to the ground from the HUNDREDS of trees that surround our citadel city.  Seriously.

Actually, they had all but fallen by the beginning of this month.  OCTOBER.  AUTUMN.  FOOTBALL.  They sprinkled the ground like lost-n-found money.  Like gems from the sky.  I became the little girls and boys everywhere who came with their mommies…and bags…to collect their treasures.  “Look, Mommy!  Look at this one!”

One day I took out my own bag and collected my own.  Enough to sink my imaginary ship.

TRICK:  Not a one of them was edible.

All my life I had heard about chestnuts roasting on open fires at this time of the year.  Though I had never seen or experienced it, I envisioned crackling fireplaces in cozy, romantic homes.  No one ever told me about the 55-gallon oil drums around Europe's open-air markets, spitting their fires underneath iron plates sizzling with sweet chestnuts.  The kind you eat. 

Who would have known there were two kinds!  I first found ones like these in Germany years back and raced home to roast them in the oven.  I had eaten my first roasted chestnuts in Munich a few years before and could hardly wait to taste them again.  I thought I had found money on the ground.

TRICK:  Those weren’t edible either! 

And that’s when I found out they either are or they aren’t, depending.  The ones that are are sweet chestnuts.  The ones that aren’t are horse chestnuts or buckeyes!  Another trick and what a waste, since the Buckeyes are my archrival. 

  

Nevertheless, I found myself a perfectly-shaped specimen from the above stash (where I live surrounded by chestnut trees--the ones that are non-edible tricks), and turned it around tenderly in my hand on my daily walks…until it felt like a TREAT.

And because the Dutch don’t seem too keen on the edible variety (why is that???), I now wait eagerly for our trip to Düsseldorf, Germany, in early December, to visit the Christmas market…and to find my chestnut vendor on the corner who will serve me up a paper cone full of the sweet delicacies.

Such is life's sermonette.  Sometimes you have to pick through the tricks till you lay your hands on the TREAT!

Heaven On Earth

When we say "it's like heaven on earth," everyone knows exactly what we mean.  Because it is!

We were at a heaven-on-earth a week ago when we had the chance to take the 15-minute ferry from Den Helder, north of the Netherlands, to Texel (pronounced TESS-el), the Dutch island nearby.  Astrid had told me about it for 4 years and I finally got to see and experience it myself.

Such a heaven is usually a place, something we see, but it can also be something we taste (like an angel peeing on our tongue, as the Dutch say), or something we feel...or something we do. 

Eons ago when my back-then husband was ministering to college students, he became licensed to administer the SIMA profile:  Systematic Inventory of Motivated Abilities, a proven, predictive process for identifying people's unique patterns of motivated behavior.  What I most remember is that two components have to exist to qualify as a truly motivated ability:  you enjoy it and you do it well.  If both are present, it leads to exceptional performance and superior results.

Kinda like God creating something and saying "It is good."  We are made in that image, says Holy Writ.  It's like heaven on earth.  God in us.

Technically, to do something well usually means there is significant positive feeback confirming the abilities we enjoy.  This happens at work when we're promoted.  Or when our art becomes famous and puts money in our purse. 

Look at what we do here at V&V, as well as on our own blogs.  We read each other's posts.  We look at each other's images.  And we leave positive feedback.  This builds our self-esteem as well as our virtual communities. It's a Mutual Admiration Society.  We stroke each other's backs.  We build each other up.

Is it possible, however, to really enjoy something and do it well without feedback from others?  I notice, for instance, some of the excellent photographers at my Shutterchance site who never receive comments.  How does that affect them and how long will they continue "creating?"  Will they stay motivated?

My guess is we all thrive on affirmations.  When we have them, we fly higher than a kite.  When we don't, we fall into the slough of despond.  But can we, I wonder, create heaven-on-earth in whatever we do no matter who gives a hoot?  Can we be excellent and say of ourselves and our art "It is good" even if no one sees our proverbial sunset or hears the tree falling in our woods?

In other words, can our art exist in a vacuum?  I've been pondering these things in my heart because I hate being "dependent" on the affirmations of others to determine if what I do is good.  And by whose standards?  I want to know within myself that when I really enjoy something and do it well, it is good.  Period.  No matter who sees it or likes it.  No matter what the exceptional performance and superior results.

But then, maybe even God needs a "Man!  That's good!" from time to time?  And if so, why not we who are made in God's image!  It does seem to work wonders for the motivation factor.

Collaboration

col·lab·o·ra·tion Noun
1. The action of working with someone to produce or create something.

Remember when Astrid and I had the good fortune to meet up with Vision and Verb cohort, Petra, back in February?  Well, chalk up another one:  our own virtual reality named CherryPie becoming real in England!

Here's where the collaboration comes in.

Astrid and I met each other as virtual realities on 31 August 2007 when we first commented on each other's Shutterchance blog that day.  Actually, she started it.  And true to Blogging Ettiquette 101, I followed suit.

Just before that time in my life, I had been typing away day after day on my other blog, documenting all the traveling I was doing with my ex-partner.  Half of every month we lived in Atlanta.  The other half we lived first in Hannover, Germany, and later in Amsterdam.  Because of all the pictures I was taking, I wanted to start highlighting certain images in a bigger/better space for just one image/day.  Bigger images, fewer words.

That's when I picked Shutterchance (SC), at the end of 2006, a photoblog originating in the UK. By the time Astrid joined the same photoblog and found me in 2007, I was already pretty "established" in the core group of Shutterchancers, building a sweet little community.  In just a matter of time, Astrid, too, became part of the core.

Within 3 months of our first comments to each other, we had the chance to meet while I was  in Amsterdam...and, well, you know how they say the rest is history!   By 5 February 2010 we were legally married, living together here in the Netherlands.

That was last year, and for our honeymoon, we flew to England to be with Shutterchance friends, meeting up with 14 of them.  THIS year, in celebration of our 4th anniversary of meeting virtually, with those first comments, we flew back to England and had another meet-up.

And this is where CherryPie comes in! 

Our SC friends collaborated and planned a meet-up at Dudley's Black Country Living Museum on Sunday, 4 September, while we were visiting.  CherryPie, from England, who visits and comments regularly on my SC blog, read about the meet-up and wrote me that she would like to join us, even though everyone else was from SC. She was willing to brave the unknown...just so we V&Vers could meet!  And we did.

Are we happy or what?!  (Astrid collaborated by taking the image.)  Two women of a certain age met each other virtually on the WWW because certain other women conspired and collaborated to make a blog called Vision and Verb.  Within a short matter of time, BINGO:  they too/two were able to meet in real life.

My guess is this is not the last time it will happen...for me or for the rest of us.  Don't you wonder who will be next?  (Yes, Astrid and I are taking reservations should you like to make it to the Netherlands!)

Guilty Pleasures

Did you know that some of our "guilty pleasures" are actually good for our health and well-being!

I'll never forget the day I walked into a hospital a few years back and saw the poster, "Chocolate is Good for Your Heart," hanging right there on the wall.  The caveat was, of course, dark chocolate, at a minimum of 70% cocoa.  And in moderation.

Don't you love it when we have "professional permission" to indulge!

Most of you know that I moved myself, lock, stock and barrel, from America to the Netherlands in early December of 2009 to follow the love of my heart.  I had spent the entire year getting rid of everything I owned except the few treasures of my life that could be packed into 2 TruckPacks, 4'x4'x4'.  It was harrowing but invigorating.  I lost 10 pounds, reaching my 115 from high-school days.

It so happens that I had a "guilty pleasure" for many years of my adult life that stood me in good stead for my move.  I have no memory from whence it came but I got into collecting sheets of USA stamps.  By 2009, I had almost every sheet produced back to the 1930s, hundreds of them in myriad albums.  I would buy them off of eBay or at stamp auctions, one sheet at a time, usually between $3-10.  Like I said, it was a guilty pleasure. 

Little did I know I was collecting those sheets of stamps for my move to the Netherlands!  Religiously, relentlessly, I scanned every sheet, uploaded them to eBay, and sold every one, often at 10 times their face value.  They alone gave me enough money to buy our new car outright once I moved.  Someone asked me if I hated to see those stamps go.  Are you kidding me?!

Besides the stamps, I sold electronics and books and DVDs and anything I could get my hands on.  I LOVE eBay and Amazon.com.  They were my saviors, adding much-needed money for my move.  After the estate sale in November and then selling my car, it all was done.

Here I was, sitting on all that money earmarked for moving to Europe and buying the things we would need to set up a new home.  Astrid, too, was downsizing after her divorce.  We would need to consolidate what we salvaged from each of our past lives and build something new that represented us.

Now, if you're still following me, here's THE guilty pleasure I'm getting to.  Once I stopped all the packing and selling and was finally breathing again before the move, I mentioned to Astrid that I was toying around with the idea of buying a macro lens.  It had been on my "want list" for a long time.  But how could I reconcile doing that before the move, knowing every last penny would be important, especially considering the dollar-to-euro conversion.  I knew the lens would be cheaper in America, but ...still!

With adamant "professional permission" to indulge from Astrid, I just did it!  Blow all caution to the winds, right?  What she said made sense:  "Ginnie, call it your reward for what you've just been through the last 12 months!"

Funny thing is, I didn't start using the lens till this past month!  The above image is one of the first I took when I had no clue what I was doing.  It's been a steep learning curve but it sure has been fun, as any guilty pleasure should be!

So, you know I'm gonna ask you:  What is your guilty pleasure?  HA!