Mitzie

Mitzie just passed on. She came back to the bedroom to be with us. She was 17 years old. I knew something was happening. We'd been expecting it. I knew we were going to have to decide on taking her to the vet soon to put her to sleep. But, we waited too long. I woke Dennis up. She went into a convulsion and was gone. I posted the earliest picture we have of her from September, 1988 - when she was 3 months old.

I had turned the light on several times from when I was first aware that she'd come back to be with us shortly after 1:00 am. At one point I started saying a prayer and one of the guides interrupted me. They said, "The prayers are for you. What you can do is tell her that Molly and her dogs are waiting for her." So, that's what I did. Half an hour later she died.

We figure she was born in June, 1988. She died at 2:40 am today. For the first half of her life she lived with my friend Thayer. She had a really good life with him. They also had 2 Irish setters. She liked to be in the back yard. She was fiercely independent. She came to live with us in 1996. What she moved to was a house full of cats. She and Molly became inseparable. They were the best of friends for years. Now, they are together again.

Developing Psychic Ability

This isn’t something we are all exposed to in school. It just is not on the curriculum. What we do have, though, are scary movies and scary books. So, it is with trepidation that most folks approach a psychic.

I have one absolute caution though. People who are already under a psychiatrist’s care should not do this. Period. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it. NO.

So, you sit there thinking you would like to develop your psychic powers. First thing off the bat is to determine why it is that you want to do this. Be clear about it. The old adage of be careful what you wish for because it might come true comes into play with this one. What happens is a person would approach the whole idea of being psychic with not all the information at hand. Maybe they’d like to be one up on everybody else; just a bit of an edge to make life a little easier. Or maybe they are insecure and have a need of a bit more personal power. Well, if that’s how you go into this thing it’s not how you’ll end up.

Basically, I’m not worried why you want to be psychic. I’m only telling you that whatever reason you’ve got in hand will change by the time this is over.

I’m also not afraid that somebody is going to use their “powers” for evil. If somebody is going to do that they’d do it no matter their situation in life. Also, they will get caught.

What I’d like to do is to save you some time and anguish about it. To that end, here are some tips:

• Every teacher you run into will have something to offer you. Respect that.


• Be open to the idea of having a lot of teachers.


• Be willing to pay for either lessons or books. It doesn’t always come free.


• There are guidelines, but there aren’t any rules.


• In working on your development as a psychic you will also be forced to deal with whatever inner psychological healing you haven’t already dealt with.


• You probably won’t make any money at it.


• You probably won’t ever get famous.


• You should not quit your day job.


• You will find a greater enjoyment of life.


• You will find that you can help more people.


• You will find a much closer connection to God/Higher Self/Cosmic Consciousness.


• Hang around with other psychic folk; it’s contagious. You can find them easily in psychic chat rooms.


• Eventually, you won’t be such an ass, though you might still be odd.


• It’s not simple, so stop looking for an easy way to do it.


• Keep trying. What works for one person might not work for you, but if there is one way to do it there are fifty other ways that also work.


• You will probably, eventually embrace a cleaner, healthier lifestyle. Many things we do, smoking, drinking or eating to excess, etc do nasty things to our psychic energy. It might be a struggle or it might be easy, but I think eventually you’ll be able to look back at the former you and determine you’ve cleaned it up.

Well, then, how to develop your psychic ability? The first thing to do is to decide to do it. Then, you take the first giant leap and trust that your teachers will come to you. That means you need to learn to be open enough to recognize the fact that a teacher has come to you. For instance, a book falls at your feet in a bookstore or library. That’s code. Read the book. The next thing to be aware of is that your guides are there to help you. That’s their job. They are guides and teachers. And, even though you might not be aware of them in a conscious manner they are hard at work. Be willing to work with them. That means the synchronicities that start happening, the movies you see, the books you read, the stuff you find on the internet while you’re surfing around, the people you meet you begin to pay attention to. For me it was Stephen King and 222. Then it was my dreams. Then I learned to, or tried to learn to meditate. I’m still, 20 years later, banging away at it. I’m better than I was before. It doesn’t take me 45 minutes anymore to get into a meditative state, but I haven’t stopped learning.

And, my teachers haven’t stopped showing up either. So, no matter how proficient or effective you become, as a psychic there’s always more to learn.

Be aware that the things you sense psychically are colored by who and how you are. The more off balance you are the more off balance the things you are seeing will be. And, there’s a phenomenon of seeing yourself in others that happens too. You’re trying to psychically intuit something about somebody and what you get is a mirror of your own stuff. It’s all part of the learning process, but something to be aware of.

Basically, don’t sweat it. Everybody is born with psychic ability. Everybody. You can learn to sharpen it. It will fit easily into your life after you get used to it. Enjoy.

The Short Version Please

Well, once again I awakened not being able to breathe out of one of my nostrils.  I don’t understand why this happens to me.  It’s been happening for years.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that the weather is changing.  We had fog yesterday morning.  Right now it doesn’t look to be foggy, though.  

However, I did manage within 15 steps of having left my bed to step in something.  I wasn’t sure what it was for certain, but I had a feeling it was cat poop.  Our oldest cat had a bath yesterday.  She didn’t like it, but she smells a lot better and I hope she feels a lot better.  But, I figured she’d had an accident.  No, it was only throwup.  I hobbled on the side of my foot into the kitchen to snag a Kleenex.  There were no paper towels on the roll as I hadn’t replaced them when I used the last one yesterday.

Then, I began stepping on all the cat chow that got scattered about on the kitchen floor during the course of the night.  I got the dustpan out to clean that up.  Seeing as how I’d already managed to step in cat throwup I didn’t want to also be rolling around on cat chow.  Fixed a plate of toast and hard boiled egg (a story in itself) and on exiting the kitchen managed to find the only two chunks of cat chow I’d missed and stepped on them while balancing my toast and milk.  Then, once I got back into the study I stubbed my toe on the chair.  Shit.  Now, this isn’t psychic.  It’s me complaining.  I’m like everybody else.  I have my days.

I got a boat load of things done yesterday.  I started a list and decided to alternate them doing a yucky thing and then a fun thing.  I can’t remember what I started with.  I started to say that I’d begun with reconciling the checkbook, but somebody in Spirit said, “No you didn’t.”  Well, whatever.  Anyway, I did get our account done and only (thank you, God) had to subtract $5.34.  Then, later in the day I did our neighbor, Phil’s checkbook.  His was easier and I only had to subtract 5¢.  I also did 4 loads of laundry.  Had only figured to do 3, but then Mitzie needed a bath and I used a lot of towels with her.

Oh, her bath.  I knew she wasn’t going to like it, so I started as gently as I could with just a sponge and a bowl of warm water and a bowl of soapy water out on the patio.  It wasn’t a very good job, but it mostly did the trick.  I left her sunning herself to dry off.  Not 10 minutes later I return to see that she’d gone to lay down in the litter box and had clay stuck all over her.  That’s when we moved operations into the kitchen and she got a real shower in the sink.  She didn’t seem to object too strenuously, for which I was really grateful.  I tried to be as quick as I could.  When we were done I wrapped her up in a towel and we went into the living room.  That’s the part she didn’t like.  Did not like being dried off.  I had to leave her for a minute to go get another towel because the first one was soaked and that’s when I figured I was going to have to use the hair dryer to dry her off.  I didn’t want her catching a chill and as long as she was wet I didn’t trust her to not go bread herself in the cat box again.  It took awhile to dry her.  I ran an extension cord in from the bathroom and combed her while I wiffled the heat of the dryer on her.  Thank goodness she has short fur.  As it was I had to cut away a particularly matted piece of fur on her flank, but otherwise she’s fluffy again.  She’s just too fat and too old to take care of herself much anymore.  


Now, does any of this sound psychic?  No, of course not.  But, every once in awhile somebody in spirit will say something.  And, I know they are always at my side even when they aren’t talking.  Oh.  Speaking of which.  This is something I’ve done since I began channeling back in 1993.  I’d be busy doing something and want to talk to Seth.  I’d say, “Seth?”  And he goes, “Hmmm?”  It’s hilarious.  But, it’s how we do things.  

I was reading yesterday about how our brains change as we get older and how there are those of us who have more of a gene that gets us out there and doing things as opposed to being stuck in ruts.  They were saying that just doing something small and out of the ordinary would sort of get you in the mood for trying out new things.  I am the most stay at home sort of person you would ever hope to meet.  Also, I believe I’ve got agoraphobia that flares up in varying degrees at times.  It hasn’t been as bad in recent times as it used to be, but it also prevents me from being in the public’s face as a channeler.  I connect via the internet.   But, I must have less of that sociability gene they were talking about.  What got me wondering, though, is if there is a gene to control psychicness?  I channel.  That’s weird.  That’s really weird.  But, I do it.  I’m not lying.  I’m not crazy.  I can talk to Elvis.  Or John Lennon or President Kennedy or Hitler.  I don’t usually go around saying that, but it’s a possibility.  Oh, Ha.  One of the Wright brothers just stopped by to talk.  It’s like mentioning the names is me putting up a sign saying, “Open for Business”.  Ha.  Anyway, I wondered if anybody will ever do a study to see if there is a psychic gene.  My husband would be in here saying, “Enough already!  The short version please.”

Enough.  I’m going back to bed.  I can breathe again.

Before I Forget

Had a channeling funny today. I was wondering to myself which was more important to people...tv or the internet and somebody in Spirit said, "We would like to offer up church as an alternative." Actually, maybe it wasn't a channeling funny at all.

Satie

I’m listening to a sampling of Erik Satie right now. I highly recommend listening to him. He’s actually been dead a long time. He’s a composer. He was weird at the time. Nobody knew what to make of him. His music is haunting and compelling and I think it would be excellent writing music…for me anyway. Good channeling music too.

I will be writing an article today…perhaps I ought to start right now. It’s been awhile since I channeled one…Okay, folks. Here’s how I do it. I’m listening to Satie right now. I’ve closed my eyes. I push all that I was thinking about before, all the things I need to do today. I wrote them down. I won’t forget to do them. I can leave that alone for now. Clear my mind. Let it quiet. Flow with the music. Pause more often. Go more slowly on the keys. (This is like walking and chewing gum at the same time trying to describe what I do as I get set for a really intense, I’m going to turn this completely over to the guides channeling session.) Use the music. Use it to visit, to revisit, places I don’t often go. Quiet. Timeless. Quiet. Places. Where I am safe. Where I can be myself without holding in my gut or wearing the right clothes. It’s a place where my heart is bigger. It’s a place where I am true. It’s a place where I am me. In my heart and in my soul. The me I am, I have been forever. The me I will be when I die. The me I was before I was born.

So, assuming I am there. I really don’t know, but it struck some chords with me. I’ve notched it down a few levels. I’m quiet. I’m receptive. At least, I said I am. I really don’t know. It’s just what I do sometimes to prepare myself.

We welcome you this fine morning. It is with great please that Erik Satie has come this morning to speak with you, Darling. I am delighted to be here. Your guide will come in a moment, but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to say hello and to ride this tide with you. You’re quite uptight as they say, aren’t you? Yes, I see you are afraid to acknowledge that. But, then, you are not artiste. Ah, I see you have the inflection as well. Good for you. You need a good teacher. You were better channeling with the wine at your elbow, but then I understand you indulged too often. It became a matter of health versus what I want to do. I understand completely. It will be some time, I think, before you are to join us in a glass or two. Someday. Blessings they say, but I would say Hello to you. Practice , practice, practice. Over and over again. Odd instructions from someone considered during that lifetime to be an eccentric, but you know what the repetition does. Over and over again. It lulls, it soothes, it prepares you for something else. It is all a dance and you can see where this is going for if you were able I would whisk you from your chair and whirl with you about the floor to the applause of all those guides who have lined up against the wall. Wall flowers or wall eyed guides. Hee heee. Ah, yes. Let it flow. Show the people what it is like to be in the grips of the stream of consciousness coming to you from the Beyond. Show them that you can walk and chew gum at the same time. A channel. Yes, so that is what it is. Goodbye.

Yikes. Pauline back again. So, that was something. Thanks. Dennis just came into the study just now for me to endorse my paycheck. Sheesh. Pulling away from this and trying to do something normal was difficult. I couldn’t talk right for a few seconds. I apologized to him and said I’d been channeling…I just wasn’t acting right. So, folks, it isn’t as easy as falling off a log all the time. You learn to adjust. You learn to cope with it. Like when they say something funny and you laugh and the people around you look at you funny because you’re all by yourself you say to them, “Sorry, a private moment.” They don’t understand. But, they don’t ask anything more of you.

I’ll come back later on with the article I need to write….ta.

Writer's Hours

Nothing like a big project to get the creative juices flowing. My idea was to increase the number of people coming to Talking To Spirit. Though I know we aren’t supposed to talk about it, I would very much like to make more than 18¢ a day with my Google Ads. Right now, if it were just numbers talking I’d need to increase patronage of my site from 100 a day upwards. But, it isn’t just that. It’s also the types of ads you run and those are determined by the content on your page. Some pay more than others. I don’t know exactly whose are more, but I’m willing to bet the pharmaceutical companies have some money, though I haven’t figured out how to work them in. Unless I wanted to talk about the headaches I’d get during the year before I started channeling. Actually, I do have a number of aches and pains and I am quite good at pissing and moaning. Hmm, just a thought.

At present I’ve got about 25 categories in my resource pages. Over the last few months I’ve expanded that to 65, but the new ones are still only on paper. I’ve been surfing the web for months to get 10 neato links for each of the new categories. What happens is I get out there and find even neater neato sites that won’t fit into any one of the categories I’ve already set into place. Which means I add another category. This thing has taken on a life of its own. I just added Trees. I wasn’t sure what else to call it because I ran across this really cool website called Tree Totem

I haven’t actually constructed the new pages. Right now it’s all in an excel spreadsheet with one page being a listing of the categories, both just as they occur to me and a second listing in alphabetical order with what will be the eventual page number next to it so I’ll be able to find it more easily. My map. The next page is where I put the links I find that I will use to seed the pages with. The title of the site, the url and whatever description is there. My plan is to have about 10 sites per new page. Some of those might exchange a link with me. Time will tell.

What you don’t typically see with directory pages is something substantial along the lines of content. It occurred to me last weekend to write an article for each of those pages. 65 articles? Like I said, monster project.

Something else is that I have kept track in another document who on my pages has given me a reciprocal link. I don’t have them for every site. But, there are many I’ve asked for a link and never gotten a response. Those are the ones that I really ought to make a decision about whether to keep or take off of my pages. To see it easily they should have a bullet or star next to the site’s listing and be set more prominently on the page. So, something else I should do.

And, a final thing was that each of my directory pages has a listing of all the categories at the top of the page. I’ve noticed that sometimes you can’t even tell that you changed into a new category because the listing has grown so even at 25 categories the meat of the page starts lower and lower on the screen. Not good. So, my thought this last week would be to remove the listing and put a return to main directory link up there. That will give me a good 2 inches or so for my page. So, not only will I be looking for more links and I think it’s about 200 I still need I’ll be restructuring the pages I’ve already got. That’s why I haven’t made any of the new pages yet. There’s too much that needs to be done with the ones I’ve got. And, you ask, “Do you get paid for this?” No. This is my weekend thing. I’m too tired to do it when I get home from work so I do it on the weekends. Right now it’s 2:50 am Saturday. I couldn’t sleep and decided to get up. Made myself a cup of decaf in case I decided to go back to bed later on.

These are writer’s hours, although, technically (barring this entry) I’m not writing. I’m researching.

The next big project ought to be some more content pages for Talking to Spirit. I don’t have a testimonials page. And, I’ve had a lot of nice comments come back to me over the years. I discovered last weekend I’d actually been snipping them from wherever they’d come from and putting them into one document. It’s a 2 pager now. So, I could put that up. Sort of makes you feel better before you plunk down $75 for a reading.

I did have 3 questions I answered this last week. Somebody was desperate to find work and I talked to him about that. Somebody else had run into a disreputable (according to my lights) psychic and I talked to her about that. And, somebody else was trying to pull my leg. I ignored that one until they came back more insistent than ever. I felt like saying, “Hey, cough up $75 and I’ll talk to you.” But, I didn’t. I just told her to stop bothering me, tell her date she didn’t want to eat spicy food and go see her doctor. Sheeesh.

I came home from work yesterday to find that Dennis, my husband, had done a Company Coming cleaning. It was a horrible job and it took him hours. The place is immaculate. It’s just so nice to walk down the hallway in my stocking feet and not be stepping on “things”. Lots of different things. All I know is they hurt. Bits of rocks…bits of cat chow…cat toys…you name it. Anybody who has a messy house and can’t see so well anymore knows what I’m talking about. Little things that hurt your feet.

I’m not inclined to cook or clean much anymore (somebody in spirit just said, “You’re not kidding about that.” Ha!) Anyway, I come home and either sit in front of the television flipping through whatever is on, I read or I come back here to fiddle on the computer. I also don’t iron much. Basically, I’m a slob. Which for a Virgo was an interesting turn of events. But, being a slob, I’m not happy with it. And, having a clean place around me is important. What motivated me though was the threat that one of the folks reading my website wanted to meet me. I said no. I’m shy and have a filthy house. And, I thought about it and decided that was a really lame excuse. This last week I asked Dennis if he and I couldn’t do a company coming cleaning. What that means for us is to wait until the zero hour before company is coming and then the two of us whirl through the house as quickly as we can stuffing things into closets and under beds and then whooshing through with a dust rag and a vacuum so the place looks presentable. The faster you do it the faster it gets down. Normally you wouldn’t want to spend more than 45 minutes doing it, but it has been at least 5 years since we’ve done a company coming cleaning around here I just figured it was going to be a bad one this time. And, that dear, dear man did the whole thing himself. I asked him whatever made him do it. It’s not something either of us want to do. And, he said, “I just thought that you had to work until 4:30, so I would clean until then too. So you could have a nice weekend.”

Happy weekend.

Stats Tracking

Okay…I don’t want to forget.  I’m going to investigate AddFreeStats this weekend.  If I don’t write it down somewhere I’m going to forget.  My desk is a mess (as usual) and anything I put on it will slowly filter down to the bottom of the pile to be thrown away at some distant date in the future.  So, that’s no good.  But, if I write it here I’ll see it.  Also, if anybody has any feedback about the service, I’d sure like to hear about it.  It looks phenomenal.  It just really looks too good to be true.  No ads?  How many people are on the website?  The exit links people take to leave your site?  Track Google ads?  And, all this for free?  Just phenomenal.  Not what I’m currently able to track with my present service.   So, that’ll be my weekend project.  

Dream

I am always urging folks to write down their dreams.  I actually don’t follow my own advice.  Except, yesterday I had a really odd dream.  Ever since I began channeling my dreams are really full of a lot of people.  There are just lots of folks in them.  However, yesterday’s dream was extraordinarily full.  It began with Dennis and I having just moved into my parent’s home.  This actually did happen when I was 27 and Dennis and I relocated to California.  We lived with my mother for a year and a half.  My dad, at the time, was working in Saudi Arabia.  So, it was just Mom, Dennis and I.    And, I should say it was wonderful.  I got to know my mother as an adult, which when you leave home at 18, even though technically you’re an adult, you don’t start acting like one until you’re mostly 27 years old…sort of.

Anyway, the dream.  Dennis wasn’t there.  He was at work.  And, I was trying to get ready to go to work.  Except, suddenly this family with 34 kids in it has moved into the house.  The house was large to begin with, but it was crammed to the edges with all these people.  They absolutely swarmed through the house with all their boxes and luggage.  And, I had to go to the bathroom.  Every single toilet I found was occupied.  And, they’d even brought some sort of really strange porta-potty that somebody offered to me. I declined and kept searching.  Then, I realized I couldn’t find my clothes.  I knew that Dennis and I had been relocated in the house somewhere.  Finally, one of the ladies helped me to locate our boxes.  They were buried underneath other stuff and she helpfully began pawing through them pulling out stuff I could wear to work.

Which brings up another concern.  With all the folderol going on I was going to be late to work and I kept picking up telephone receivers different places in the house trying to call to work to tell them I was going to be late, but every time I picked up one of the phones somebody was on the line having a conversation.

At some point in all this searching and running into people everywhere I found a door.  I opened it and saw a stairway leading down into the basement.  It was quiet.  God, I couldn’t wait to get away from all those people.  It was just too crowded upstairs.  I started down the stairs and saw the place was full of cats.  Cats everywhere.  And, most of them were white.  I thought, “Oscar, where are you?”  He was a wonderful white cat who came to be with us for a number of years.  You can see a picture of him down at the bottom of my Charities resource page.  The cats noticed me but were very busy with their own concerns.  I left and went back up into the pandemonium of the house.  

I remember at some point in the dream I met the lady who was the mother of all those people and marveled that she was so nice. At some point I awakened.  I haven’t figured this out.    

Advertising

I have to rant. I don’t do it often. But, I’ve had enough of stupid and annoying advertisements at http://www.about.com/ This is really a great website, but the popup advertisements they have are spoiling anything they have to offer. I just wrote them a letter, which I doubt anybody will ever respond to. What I thought I might do, instead, is to write about their site on the internet. And, maybe then they will take notice. Or not. But, if I can get anybody at About.com to listen and to take off the annoying advertisements that get in the way and stay in the way, obliterating portions of what you’re trying to read on their website…I’d be happy.

At the same time I might mention the Better Homes and Garden website does something similar. If you find something you want to look at the first thing you have to do is to read a really huge advertisement. They’re sneaky too. There is no X or close button right away. So you sit there steaming reading the ding donged thing and then the X eventually appears. But, you were forced to read it. It’s really irritating. I’ve gotten so much Spam from registering to read anything at Better Homes and Garden it’s enough to make you sick. Suddenly two novels show up in the mail and I get a bill for $1.99. I decided to keep them thinking they might be good. The first one is horrible. Somebody in the 9th grade…excuse me 7th grade might have written it. And, what I do not understand is this is from an author who is advertised as being a New York Times Bestselling Writer. I just don’t understand. I’ve gotten bills for 3 magazines I’ve never gotten. All from wanting to read one recipe from http://www.bhg.com/ Forget it. I’m about to go through my website and take all links to those sites off. I don’t think I’ve got any to Better Homes and Gardens, but I know I’ve got a boatload to http://www.about.com/ . and it’s too bad because I really liked their site.

What Can We Do?

What can we do when death occurs on the massive scales we’ve been seeing lately? When Mother Nature and the Earth seem to take matters into their own hands and deal a deadly blow to people.  I speak now of the devastation we see in Pakistan with the earthquake of Saturday where the numbers dead stand at 30,000 as of Monday morning.  I speak, too, of the mudslides in Guatemala where an entire village was declared a mass grave in Panabaj and over 100 communities have been cut off.  What can we do?  We can give money.  To the Red Cross or to whatever agency will vow to help.  We don’t give money for those who have died.  We can give money for those who are left, for those whose lives have been destroyed and disrupted.  Seth said to me yesterday that Heaven can handle all those who died suddenly.  There is no waiting line to get in.  He said all are well.   I said prayers last night.  And, I dreamed.  

Wordpress and Ghosts

I got interested in Wordpress. I found a really neat theme called Dark Maple that just floored me. And, I wanted it. I began to investigate what it would take to switch over from Blogger to Wordpress. Well, in a nutshell, though my web hosting service, Pair, would accommodate it I’d have to spend $12 more a month to get the advanced account. Right now I spend $5 a month for a really basic ftp account. As Talking To Spirit isn’t exactly supporting itself yet, I can’t really say okay to spending the extra money. Also, the instructions to install Wordpress had my head whirling because I’m just not up on all the techie lingo. Ah, well. Though the service at Blogger sometimes leaves something to be desired, if I stay with it long enough I eventually get my posts up. Also, consider what do you want for free?

Additionally, the expenditure of effort learning a new system and switching everything over, tweaking, etc is going to take away from my current project of updating the resource pages at Talking To Spirit.

Hey, something somebody channeled to me recently? I don’t know who it was…just a voice in my head. But, I was wondering what happened to all the haunted houses that were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. I thought to myself, “What happened to all those ghosts?” The voice in my head said, “They will attach themselves to the next human being who walks by.” Now, this was scary, folks. I tossed up my left eyebrow in consideration and didn’t say anything else. But, I figured I’d say something here for posterity. I tend to forget these things. Now, since I’ve written it down I don’t have to think about it anymore, because, it was unsettling.

We're Not Talking Loafers

I thought I'd pass on an interesting website. This is Ian's Shoelace Site. You thought there were only maybe two ways to tie your shoes; a regular bow and a double one for slippery and/or long laces? Wrongo. 25 different lacing styles and 15 different knots.

Fun Under the Hood

I’ve been traveling about and have seen a number of blogs that people have out there that are just really, really interesting. And, I want one too. However, just as I wanted to become a psychic rather than have it done for me, I feel the urge to do this myself. In fact, tonight I did a very, very small tweak on this site.

I added a threesome of Google Ads at the top of the page and in doing so separated the title area and the body of the blog. There were these teeny tiny little curved things at the corner of each side of the blue which would have given a rounded aspect to the lower edge of the blue of the title area. Unfortunately, with the Google Ad in place it looked funny, like a piece of spinach stuck to your front tooth. It bothered me. I considered removing the Google Ads, but then decided I wanted them up high for folks to see. I’d seen others placed in the same area that’s where I want them.

What I had to do, though to remove extend the blue and square off the rectangle involved firing up both Adobe Photoshop and my XaraX program, neither of which I am proficient in. Turns out Photoshop was the one that did the trick. Though I had to painstakingly move gif by gif through the template of my blog to finally isolate the area of cruddy corner I finally found it, saved it to my computer as the only way it would save as a bmp file. Then, I loaded it up into Photoshop, changed it to what I wanted it to look like, saved it as a gif file and then uploaded it to my own website. I changed where my template was going to access that particular file from and voila, it worked.

So, in getting under the hood I am seeing the template as it is composed and beginning slowly to have an idea of what goes where. Because Blogger templates must necessarily fit within the parameters of the Blogger program I’ll need to color in the lines. But, some day I’d like to create my own graphics and upload them to be as original as some of the other wonderful blogs I’ve seen. Tonight was just a very tiny first step.