There is something sad about checked (losing) lottery tickets. All the possibilities are gone from them and they are just bits of paper, outlasting their usefulness. I put off checking my tickets so I can think of all the things I will do if I win. It's great to have that little fantasy. But, once you check the tickets you have to let go of all of that.

Right now I have five tickets to check. I wanted to make sure to check them before I move. I'm not sure if it would be a problem to collect winnings if I'm not officially living in the US, or even the state of Illinois. So I am going to the Illinois State Lottery site to check them. They are not too old, from the past couple of months. It would be so nice to win...

I would first of all tell Todd we need to take a long weekend trip to collect the loot. Todd says it's over in some town by the Missouri border, near St. Louis. So that could turn into a nice trip before the divorce is a done deal. Once I have the money I would put it into my Union Planters bank account, all but for $20,000 or so which I would use to buy a truck for moving and travel expenses including insurance for the truck. That way I could pack up the truck and just let Mom know I'm on my way up there without needing to wait and wonder any more. It would be so nice to have the drive up to Canada myself. I could take my time too, dawdle a bit, have a look at the Raggedy Ann museum in Arcola and wander up north to see Wisconsin before I cross the border. Wisconsin looked nice when I was chatting to a guy from there last month. It didn't work out with him but I still wouldn't mind the drive up there at all.

The rest of the money would go into travel, a house of my own (maybe the first place that I could really feel was my home) and of course savings so I could keep payments for electricity, taking some college courses, my eventual old age and etc. I would give money to family if I won a really big amount. Other wise I would be more careful about that and make sure I was ok first. I'd love to never have to worry about that whole bag lady thing. I could just freelance write without listening to family telling me I'm wasting my time.

Well, now I should check those tickets. It's nice thinking of what if but you have to come back down to reality. Walking around with your head in the clouds is a sure way to stub your toes.

"If you can get people to ask the wrong questions; they'll never find the right answers." - Thomas Pynchon

"The devil himself gets in my inkstand." - Nathanial Hawthorne

Heard on the Montel Williams show...

"There is no such thing as love at first sight. You don't see love, you feel it." Montel Williams.

... and you probably thought I didn't watch trash TV. Montel is probably upper scale trash but he takes advantage of people's pain to make a buck, even though he does try to help get the message out about some issues. Here, the Maury Povich show comes on right after Montel, I turn that off, I can't stand it any more.

"Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed." P.G. Wodehouse

"I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's greatest rewriters." James A. Michener.

"In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word you have written, you have no idea what vigor it will give your style." Sydney Smith

"Only a mediocre writer is always at his best." Maugham

"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." Justice Brandela

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Charles Benchley

"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money." Moliere

"Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other." Ann Landers

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." Cicero

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat." Rebecca West.

"Women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property." United Nations Report.

"Women have always been the guardians of wisdom and humanity which makes them natural, but usually secret rulers. The time has come for them to rule openly, but together with and not against men." Charlotte Wolff.

Once upon a time I bought the premiere issue of a magazine called Perspective. It was to be for women who are not your everyday supermodel type woman. After that it seemed to disappear. I never found another issue.

Here is what they wrote about their magazine, how they intended to go on.

Finally, a women's magazine that honors all women and celebrates the essence of who they are, beyond how they look.

She raises children, maintains the home, follows her own career path, and supports many relationships. Yet with so many fires to tend, the one most neglected - the one most important for the sustenance of the rest - is the fire of the spirit of the woman herself. Beyond the hairdo. Underneath the make-up. Aside from fashion. There is a real woman, living, loving, and creating. She is on the path or discovering and developing her true self. She is cultivating her femininity while reclaiming her power, her voice, her body, her life - so she may experience her journey to the fullest and most joyous extreme. Perspective offers information and tools to assist in the processes of self care, compassionate living, passionate loving, and joyful fulfillment, helping today's woman realize these principles as a mean and an end to meeting her deepest needs and desires as a woman.

Mission Statement: Contemporary and intelligent, Perspective is an informative guide empowering today's woman to embrace their femininity and connect with their spirituality. Our mission is to provide a vehicle for premium editorial to reach mainstream women currently lacking a resource for messages and products of substance. Assisting women on their journey toward fulfillment, Perspective supports the value of every woman. It is our goal to give each reader the empowerment and inspiration to realize her own greatness.

High ideals, it's too bad they couldn't get it off the ground.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to blossom." -Anais Nin

“To grammar even kings bow.” - Moliere

Marie Curie - “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”

‘Anyone can look for history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store.’ Robert Wieder

‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’ Mark Twain

‘The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” B. F. Skinner

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”- Amelia Earhart

“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.” - Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt, or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.” - Orison Swett Marden

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” - Edwin Schlossberg

“The freelance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.” - Robert Benchley

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.- Albert Einstein

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

These quotes all come from a cozy mystery I read: Murder in Volume by D. R. Meredith. Some of them I thought were good to keep in mind for mystery writers and others I just liked enough to keep track of them.

“Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.” - Agatha Christie

“Real, deliberate, unprovoked rudeness can be quite as shocking as physical violence.” - Michael Gilbert

“As long as we’re going insane we may as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.” - S. S. Van Dine

“If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.” - C. K. Chesterton

“A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

“Murder is always a mistake; one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.” - Oscar Wilde

“Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious to you at the time.” - John D. Macdonald

“Nothing is simpler than to kill a man, the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences.” - Rex Stout

“If you knew anything about detective work, you’d know that the most seemingly impossible conditions are often the easiest to explain.” - Carolyn Wells

“Real crime detection lies not in the microscope and test-tube, but in asking innumerable questions and weeding out the answers.” - Clifford Witting

I do it for the joy it brings because I’m a joyful girl because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world

• Ani DiFranco

Helen Keller - “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

You have to know what you want to get.

But when you know that, let it take you.

And if it seems to take you off the track, don’t hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be.

And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you go go dry.

Gertrude Stein

“Everything’s in the mind. That’s where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.” –Mae West

Quote of the Day - Aristotle - “What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” - Robert Brault

Thomas Carlyle - “No pressure, no diamonds.”

Mark Twain - “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

“The word is not just a sound or written symbol. The word is a force, it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events of your life” - Don Miguel Ruiz

Pat Benatar said: Most chick singers say ‘If you hurt me, I’ll die’…I say, ‘if you hurt me, I’ll kick your ass.

Rita Rudner - “My mother buried three husbands - and two of them were only napping.”

Conversations in real life are full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn’t writing and art be too? –Edgar Degas

“A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done” - Cardinal Newman

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” - Emma Goldman

Be who you are and be that well. - Saint Francis de Sales

“You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.” Anne-Wilson Schaef

“Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.” Robbie Glass

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Pablo Picasso

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilites.” Jean Houston

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” Joseph Chilton Pearce

“I cannot believe the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!” Louise Bogan

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” Henry David Thoreau

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.” Claude M. Bristol

These are all quotes which I highlighted as I began reading the 10th anniversary edition of ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. It’s set out like a 12 week workshop for focusing and increasing your creativity.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium… result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology.” Marshall McLuhan

“Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.