Welcome to my blog Upstate Girl, (a.k.a Follow Your Bliss Part II), I am an independently published author. This blog is all about writing and the stuff that inspires me to write, the joys and obstacles that come along with the writer's life, and my fascination with the psychology of people and what makes them tick...the human condition, as is...and my love for words, playing with them and making sense of them...and I throw in a few photos from my acre of the world just to make things pretty...sometimes there are things I have no words for, only pictures will do.

*Copyright notice* All photos, writing, and artwork are mine (
© Laura J. Wellner), unless otherwise noted, please be a peach, if you'd like to use my work for a project or you just love it and must have it, message me and we'll work out the details...it's simple...JUST ASK, please.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Storms, storms, storms...

A black and white study

The weather had been nutty, near zero and snow for weeks, then zooming up into the mid 50's with rain, and then down to the teens and single digits with more snow. Yesterday was crazy bad, blowing and drifting snow, whiteouts, travel was not recommended, but we had a funeral for my Fred's uncle to go to, so we braved the storm and managed to get there and back again all right (it probably helped that most sensible people stayed at home, so the traffic wasn't bad)...and then our exhaust system decided to crap out so we roared along so loud that if no one could see us, they certainly could hear us coming! Ugh, this winter has been brutal (aren't they all?) At least the melt got rid of the ice dams on the roof and the widow makers hanging off the eaves (or dummy-makers per our son's definition), and our driveway glacier receded a little bit... There's sunshine peeking through the gray, and light flurries floating and twirling past the windows...our acre littered with bits of branches, twigs, and pine needles...

I've also been dealing with yet another Fibromyalgia flare-up that has knocked me for a loop...on Wednesday I stayed in bed all day, dizzy, nauseous, and feeling like I was being crushed in a trash compactor...not a good day to try to be upright, so I slept through most of that day, it's not worth being awake for that shit...I bounced back the next day, but I have tread very carefully on a fine line that can tip back into feeling awful if I make one false move...

The busy news is...my Fred and I are collaborating on our latest publishing endeavor, and it's taking up much of our free time to make it happen...no, not another novel (Fishbowl is ongoing, part 1 is nearly done, I'm taking my sweet old time going through it.) Nope, not my poe-emz either. We're putting together a visual feast of 100 paintings (50 each)...the project has involved lots of new scanning, retaking photographs, placing images on the pages in such a way that compares and contrasts our paintings side-by-side, we've been editing checklist information, and writing personal comments about each piece...it's a HUGE undertaking, but something we've wanted to do since we started Field Stone Press...so finally, we're making it happen...it's going to be a beauty when it's done...

Another study...what is it? It's our little solar lights in the garden shining on the snow.