Roots Pt.2

 This is part 2 of yesterdays post "finding my Roots"

At one point in my life I wanted to be a carpenter. But that was not the girly thing to do. But I did need to work. I worked a few years in a hardware store. While there, I learned everything I could about paint. Its qualities, and how colors mix and compliment each other. I learned about wood. White pine, yellow pine, spruce, teak, you name it. I knew about their properties and their best uses. (Ask me now, I couldn't tell you) But wood was not about just building houses and fences. Wood was art. I used wood scraps to make things. Mostly boxes. I also used scraps to make what I called assembled art, and where paint was not available, collage did the job.  Still these works were just for me. People at that time were still into palm trees and tropical flowers. I was not sure if these clunky things would be accepted by anyone. And what would I do with all these boxes and so called pieces of "art" when they are done? So just stopped!

Enter the Internet and the digital age. I discovered photoshop. The almighty photoshop. You could call it luck or not, but someone give me their program. Just gave it to me. "Here take it - I'm upgrading my system for the latest of everything". Wow. That's when the digital love affair began. By then I was working with a company where my job was solely computer based. Eight hours on a computer everyday. In the evenings I went home to study. By then there was a threesome of kids. So every night after I put them to bed, I would be Learning everything I could about photoshop until midnight. Talk about commitment huh? I learned how to make scrapbooking elements, digital papers, alter and restore photos, textures and special effects. Yes my new love - no need to get messy with glue, and there was always an extensive color pallet at my disposal.

One day my fingers turned blue. I can giggle about it now but it was not funny at the time. I was at work, concentrating on an intense project on the computer of course when I realized I was not feeling anything in my fingers, and they were a strange color. A kind of grayish blue. What the....? I later learned that I was beginning to have circulation and pinched nerve issues. Some thing had to give and it had to be the photoshop. After all I had to make a living, and I needed to heal the muscles that were becoming damaged.

About one year later a new twist.

The last installment of this unexpected long tail will be tomorrow
Cause it still leads to something I promise