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 12, 2012

Lake Effect...


It is snowing sideways tonight...nothing new about that sort of thing, it goes with the winter package, I rather like it when it seems threatening, the beauty of Lake Effect snow, it is fickle and drifts away, and sometimes it snows and sun shines at the same time, it's very pretty.

looking up, under the barn floor

Popeye's February Portrait

 I was trying to get a shot of the old seed pod, but it wasn't working out so well angle-wise...but the snow is certainly pretty!


A Portrait of Max, Nose and Paws - Stories to sniff and great rumors of travel, 2/11/2012

Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog’s paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumors of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog’s paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt.  It’s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen - a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

After reading this passage one day quite a long time ago…I never saw a dog’s paws in the same way ever again. That’s the power of a good book. (That never made it into the movie.)

 Old Willy Big is well known for his dramatic sleeping positions...he's so cute. (Don't worry, the Piggy is okay.)

Saturday, February 4, 2012

February...

tracks in the snow
 It's been a long strange winter, hardly any snow...when we get it, it melts in a day or two, or it's in the form of styrofoam-like balls of ice that are like driving on marbles...and then the rain and gray. There is a slight chance of sun today (or so I've heard), but the layers of gray seem impenetrable for the time being. I feel a little bit at a loss without having to slog around in knee deep snow while walking the dog...it's nothing to complain about, I'm not complaining, just observing like I do, peering out the window at the brown and gray season that is normally swathed in white powder brought to us by the great lake Ontario or some crabby Nor' Easter scrambling up the Atlantic seaboard, raising hell...I miss having a good blustery storm roaring in, messing things up for a day or two and then the calm, crystalline day after that is always a beautiful relief.
the snow dog

Last weekend a very brief event blew through our little acre of the world, shook the house, made the walls creak, the windows rattle and my desk swayed...I paused and thought, "Do I need to go in the basement?" Whatever it was, it was over in less than a minute, I noticed out the window that there was crazy sideways blowing snow in the headlights of passing cars, and then nothing just as sudden as it started. Weird. I really admire Mother Nature, she's awesome.

a tangle wrapped around a stone

How about them Republicans? Huh (scratches head). I know I'm at times baffled. Fidel Castro weighed in via Newsweek that the Republican Primary race is "the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance there has ever been." No shit, he's still alive? Trampolines vs. safety nets...we can't have both I guess. Yeah, whatever...talk talk talk...there's so much hot air coming from this campaign it's no wonder there's no snow in Central New York...

Back to the lack of snow...

If you think about it all the SuperPac money being spent on the Presidential campaign ads would help a shit load of poor people...and maybe have some left over to do something else good for the nation...

All I can say is it's an ugly election season...

The division between ideologies has invaded my family in a small-ish way a few months back...my sister-in-law unfriended me (and her brother) on Facebook because of our liberal leanings...claiming we're too angry...me angry? I don't think I'm angry at all, if anything, I'm just sensible and I can't stand ignorance, intolerance, and the flood of lies that support ignorance and intolerance...

Blah, blah, blah...
shells from dinner one night, dinner was tasty, the shells are pretty

a dried hydrangea blossom that came from the wind
frosty morning
 
the dregs from the road

I want some silence and contemplation time this weekend...and maybe a peek or two of sunshine.
Snow sprayed