Whatcha Doing Right Now? Vote for SheRetired!

Whoop, whoop, whoop!!!  WooHoo!!!

My blog, SheRetired.blogspot.com, been nominated as a finalist for this year's CBS Sacramento Most Valuable Blogger Award.

So what are you doing every day until the September 9, 2011 deadline?  Voting for SheRetired, of course! 

Here's where you can vote:

http://sacramento.blogger.cbslocal.com/most-valuable-blogger/vote/misc 

SheRetired is listed under the Miscellaneous Blog Section.

Many, many thanks!

Arlene

Vote for SheRetired!

Sacramento Historic Rose Garden: Deadheading at Dusk

As a retiree, the Historic Rose Garden is my most favorite place in Sacramento.  This piece of unlikely Sacramento paradise is a rewarding way to put in some volunteer hours.

   

Why should one volunteer for this place?  Well, it’s not just your average cemetery.  As part of the Sacramento Historic Cemetery, the Historic Rose Garden serves as a museum, a park and a place to socialize.  I’ve seen people meet for a date, eat bagged lunches, look for long lost relatives, and tend to gravesites.  Birders, tourists, bicyclists, and walkers also find a way to enjoy this popular location. 

The Historic Rose Garden dates back to the California Gold Rush and attracts visitors from all over the world.  A recent cover story, “Sacramento’s Bucket List, 99 Ways to Embrace the City’s Retro Roots,” appears in the Sacramento News & Review and lists the cemetery and rose garden as the #18 must see place in Sacramento to visit.  In the years I have volunteered here, I’ve been attracted to the roses, headstones, architecture, its history, and the Sacramento movers and shakers (well, they no longer moving and shaking if you ask me) who are buried here.  As a Farm Girl, I appreciate the rich soil, and since I like playing in the good, fertile dirt, I will volunteer to plant roses whenever they are available.

The all-volunteer Historic Rose Garden crew is led by manager and Master Gardener Anita Clevenger and rosarian Barbara Oliva.  The two women are a wealth of information when it comes to the Historic Rose Garden and the subject of gardening.   

Anita and Barbara can also tell you stories about the roses, rose rustling and how these particular roses ended up at the cemetery.  There’s the Broadway bed, other beds and acres of antique roses.    Anita and Barbara can give you the common and scientific names of each rose.  Ask Anita where a specific rose is, and she can tell you.  Barbara can point you to the plots.  Barbara tells you that if you can figure out which direction North faces, you won’t have any problems navigating the cemetery.

Even with a map, verbal directions and sunlight or a flashlight to guide me, I still get lost.

The mild summer weather has allowed volunteers to meet over the summer in the form of an event called “Deadheading at Dusk”.  Anyone is welcome to help out with deadheading roses, weeding and other tasks.  No skills are required.  If you have basic gardening tools like clippers, gloves and a common 5-gallon plastic bucket, bring them.  Wear comfortable shoes and clothing that you would wear for gardening.  Anita trains volunteers on the art of deadheading roses and provides gardening tools as needed.

If you are new to gardening or want to know more about roses, the Historic Rose Garden is a wonderful place for socializing with people who share the same interests.  As a group, the volunteers freely share their knowledge and love for roses.

The next and last “Deadheading at Dusk” event is scheduled for August 8 and begins at 6 p.m.  Volunteers are encouraged to slide into other events and fundraisers (www.oldcitycemetery.com or www.cemeteryrose.org) for the remainder of the year.

The popular “Lantern Tours” is the cemetery’s major annual fundraiser and will be held October 21, 22, 28, and 29.         

Spinning into Retirement

My article, "Spinning into Retirement," appears in the Fall 2011 issue of the Conference of Northern California Handweavers (www.cnch.org) online newsletter known as CNCH.net.  The piece is about my retirement and the art of spinning.  CNCH represents the guilds of Northern California, and I am a member of the Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Guild.  

The Sacramento News and Review Newsstand Art Project

I am your classic Red Personality and find beauty in almost anything.  I love the bright, tropical colors found in Hawaii, the scenery, Hawaiian shirts, pineapples, and that all-around happy feeling you get when visiting Hawaii.  The natives are friendly, and I'm usually called "Island Girl" or "Princess" whenever I'm there.  Paradise!

It all began with crushing aluminum cans and attending a recycling seminar when I was in junior high.  I have been recycling items for 35 years.

So, fast forward to 2011.  For months, the Sacramento News & Review  (SN&R) has been putting ads in their publication picturing their Newsstand Art Project.  Their goal is “Making News Beautiful”.   They have 600 newsstands available for local artists to design.  After completion, the newsstands will be put to work somewhere in the Sacramento area.

More than anything else, I consider myself a writer.  After decades of Writer’s Block, I’ve returned to writing as my #1 passion in life.  I have always been a highly creative person, but in order to create, I need to pursue activities other than writing.  I love to draw and paint.  As a photographer, I’ve been told that I have “the eye”.  These days, I’m trying spinning and weaving, but failed miserably at basket weaving.  I’ve been creating my own greeting cards using different mediums.  So far, I like picking up a different kind of gun—a heat gun to put permanent designs on paper.

The SN&R has been a free, alternative newspaper for Sacramento and has other similar newspapers published in Chico and Reno.  The newspaper comes out every Thursday and provides interesting reading which includes local politics, entertainment, reviews, interviews, etc.

It took me a little over a month to design and paint my newsstand.  At the time, I had Hawaii on my mind and set a goal to save for airline, cruise tickets and expenses for me and Jack.  I have no patience with people who cry and whine that they don’t have any money to go places.  Since I am retired and don’t have any money coming in as someone who works for a living, it will take almost a year to save for our travel expenses.  But if you stick to a schedule,  stagger your savings and stretch them out over a year’s time,  travel goals become reachable.

Some people write down their goals and tape the piece of paper it’s written on to a place where they’ll see it every day.  I only know that by painting big red flowers and turtles on my newsstand, it’s a vow for me to get the two of us to Hawaii next year for a cruise of the islands.  We’ve cruised the Hawaiian Islands before, and we’ll do it again.  I have finally found someone I can travel with.

I have nothing against recycling things and giving them a new life.  But I am thankful to SN&R for allowing me to participate in their Newsstand Art Project.  I don’t know where my newsstand will be located, but somewhere in Sacramento, it will be holding issues of the SN&R and will be considered a work of public art.  At the same time, it will be a reminder and a promise for one of my travel goals which will most likely take place next fall.

My newsstand is #248.  I signed my work and have shamelessly plugged SheRetired.blogspot.com and ArleneVPoma.hubpages.com.

 

Soap, Travel and Maybe You

My mom ran a lid sorting machine at Campbell Soup in Sacramento for about 13 years, and she worked a lot of overtime during the tomato season.  Everyone at the cannery worked overtime when tomatoes were harvested full force, and I could imagine all of these people walking around like zombies from lack of sleep. 

There were also periods of unemployment, and that was the nature of the beast.  During the slow months, when my mom was home, the TV was on, playing back-to-back soap operas.  But in my family, we watched the soap operas in big blocks.  We didn’t stick to watching just one show.  I grew up watching soap operas, and they came and went.

No one will really admit to watching soap operas.  I’ve had women at work calling them, “my stories”.  But to me, that’s what they were—televised stories in a serial form.  Depending on the soap and its writers, you usually got a story which kept your attention anywhere from half an hour to an hour.  To me, if the writing was good, the soap would carry your interest from day to day, week to week and year to year.

When it comes to retirement, the television can become your worst enemy.  If you don’t have anything planned to do when you retire, you can easily grow old in front of the television.  The television programs provide the American public with a great distraction.  At the same time, we all know what a great baby-sitting service it can provide for kids and people of all ages.  In retirement, it can turn into an addiction or an obsession.

“Gotta run home and catch my soap.”

Not anymore.  You can tape it and watch your favorite television show anytime you like.  To me, I like watching my favorite soap around midnight, when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep.  All is well in the world while I watch my soap and rip my newest knitting project.

Soap operas are packed with stereotypes and all kinds episodes based on modern day problems.  Soap opera characters would be a gold mine for therapists, psychologists and shrinks.  All of these soap opera characters are co-dependents, enablers, passive-aggressive personalities, and much, much more.  They tend to get into other peoples’ business.  They “fix” and “rescue”.  And, they never learn from their mistakes.  If they do learn from their mistakes, then other characters pick up the ball and repeat the same mistakes.  How many times has a character suffered from amnesia or ran away to another town?  How many times the same couple has broke up, had multiple spouses, but got back together because they were really meant for each other?

Problems?  Yes, people on soap operas have all kinds of problems.  In fact, you feel so much better when you watch them struggling.  Sometimes, it takes plenty of episodes for them to figure what they’re going to do in order to solve their problems.  But the audience has all the answers and will coach the characters from the privacy of our own homes.

 “Dump him!”

“She’s a cheat, so let her go!”

“Divorce him!  He was never good enough for you.”

My husband used to watch soap operas when he was a kid.  While staying at his grandma’s, she had her favorite soaps.  Although more and more soaps are being taken off the air, he understands why I still watch soaps.  He claims you don’t have to be an avid viewer to understand what’s going on.

Once a month, he’ll say something like, “Wasn’t she going to prison for killing her husband’s ex-wife by letting her fall into the volcano in Maui?”

“No, Silly.  She has now going to prison for killing his ex-wife, but we all know she didn’t do it because her husband threw the evidence into the same running water where her first ex-husband and their son just threw the ashes of the woman who hi-jacked her car from her when she had run away to New Mexico.  Those ashes weren’t hers.  The woman who stole her car crashed it and burned to death.  She was wearing her stolen engagement ring at the time, so everyone back home in Wisconsin thought that the woman who didn’t kill the woman in Maui was dead from the crash.” 

“Oooooookay.”  This is his cue to zone out, turn on his laptop and get with His People on the Internet.  When I say, His People, I mean his group of Internet people on his Facebook game who build cities, then rob and pillage other alliances within the game.  When Jack is with His People, I leave him alone.

Since I am in my 50s and don’t plan on doing anything other than staying married, I do like to watch attractive people on television and the movies.  On HD, everyone has perfect skin or immaculate makeup.  On soaps, everyone is fashionably dressed.  I like to see what the women are wearing.  I like to see the jewelry around their wrists and necks.  I like to see someone else walking around in high heels while I comfortably walk around in flats. 

In June, I started writing my own version of a soap opera for Hubpages.com called Two Rivers Rising, and I’m having a lot of fun with it.  I like writing about travel, so I throw in photographs of places in and around Sacramento.  This gives me an excuse to visit the tourist attractions.  You know how it is.  You can live in the same place for years and don’t explore.  It is sad to learn that tourists from as far away as Europe or Japan know more about California and the rest of the United States than you do.

  

Years ago, I was a plaintiff in a lawsuit.  About a year later, I hired another attorney to represent me in my divorce.

I am allergic to attorneys and lawsuits.  Can you blame me?  I know what it’s like to hand over a chunk of money each month to pay an attorney until the case is settled.

So, with this soap, I am practicing the twists and turns of writing about me and my experiences with retirement.  At the same time, I am doling out pseudonyms and switching things around so that you may not recognize yourself in my writing.  Whether you like it or not, the people I have kept around me inspire me.  Whether it’s their actions, their stories or their words, I get ideas all of the time.  Some of them slip away because I don’t have my writer’s journal handy.  

Anyway, if you see anything familiar in my soap, don’t take it personal.  I am having a lot of fun writing my version of a soap, and if you wish, I welcome you to write about me if you feel like getting even.  But in the process of writing this way, I sometimes blend fact with fiction.  But when it comes down to it, my soap is based on real people and true situations, and it’s a game to hide real names and hardcore facts.

Also, I’m afraid of getting sued.

ArleneVPoma.hubpages.com    

 

   

Two Rivers Rising: The River City Writers' Club, Chapter 11

Two Rivers Rising: The River City Writers' Club, Chapter 11