Unnerving in Many Ways!

Mes amies, thanks so much for letting me vent yesterday. I do indeed now have a bona fide Pinterest account. La de da -- touch me! Among the first things I found was one of my digital scans, a postcard back with sweet French script, being resold by another person (as you can imagine, that got my morning off to a frenzied start:) and Lynne, I found your item! The cute, cute collage you made of the little girl carrying a huge framed picture of Paris was tagged simply as "adorne from flickr." Well, I re-pinned it on "my" board and credited you by name as the maker and FrenchKissed as the source of the image. Within minutes, someone else re-pinned it on their board....
According to Pinterest's terms of use, items are supposed to be credited and the original source sited or linked back to, but ..... I repeatedly found a photo that I know came from Eric of Paris Daily Photo (pink skeleton graffitti painted over street drainage bars) with nary a mention of Eric.
SO....in one sense, Pinterest is like a huge Etsy treasury including everything from vintage goods and travel photos to food recipes and do-it-yourself crafts. It's a zillion things at your finger tips and yes, it's pretty incredible. It's eye-popping eye candy.
However, we have an entire generation who has been raised online and they do not understand the importance of giving credit to sources. "On the web" is not giving credit where credit is due.
Once again I will be reassessing how I want to handle my digital images -- and that is part of the reason I've placed an ugly FrenchKissed copyright line on the couple above.
I can't really think well this a.m. because I have been up most of the night. It was one of those nights, starting at midnight, where one wakes up on the hour every hour like clockwork. By four o'clock, I gave up and got up. So although awake and body moving, going through the motions of being alive, there is a major part of me that is still asleep somewhere.....
My body is reeling from yesterday's overload. Most all day my chest and stomach were revved up in anxiety drive. I don't have full-fledge panic attacks; I just get stuck in a 'flight or fight' nervous system overload mode.
Construction still going on outside my windows. Constant noise. Erratic banging, hammering, sawing and the unintelligible drone of a radio station (or two). Finally, I let my landlord  know the toll that more than 2 months of construction is taking on my nerves.
That was an interesting email exchange. Standing up for myself:)
In fact, I just realized what my experience is akin to: it's like living in a zoo and I'm the caged animal with people staring at me all day. By gollygeewilikers, if I wanna walk out of MY bathroom shower stark "nekkid" into MY bedroom, I feel I should be able to do that. But not when there are construction workers at the balcony, at the back door downstairs and at the front door and side windows, too.
Then, I kept watching the clock because The Hubby was going to come home early so we could get to the bank and take advantage of their free notary services. Sad to say, I am filing paperwork to request a court hearing to see if I can get my nephew hospitalized, to get him stablized on his medicine again. At the bank, the tension continued as the clerk questioned my signature. The issue isn't my maiden name, my former married last name or my current married name, but my first name. The bank account says "Patricia" but my signature on my passport says "Trishia."
"What name is on your birth certificate?" she asks. And I look at her and at The Hubby and I say "Lucia." Cause it is. That's my first first name and I have a middle name, too. Folks always bring up that you have to go to a judge and get your name "legally" changed. Well, when I told people my name was "Patricia" everyone kept calling me "Pat" -- and they didn't get the right to do that from any judge. So I figured if total strangers could shorten my name, I'd do it myself to a name I liked and that's how, when I was 13, I went from being "Patricia" to "Tricia" and spelled it with an "sh" instead of a "c." And it's been that way on marriage licenses, drivers licenses and passports, too. Isn't that legal enough? I'm thinking all this, biting my tongue, and The Hubby is starting to tap my knee because as he explained afterward, he feared I would say what I was thinking and he didn't want me rambling.
Rambling? I'm fuming! At my age, I figure I have earned a few rights. And I think the right to be called by a name of MY choosing ranks right up there with walking out of MY bathroom shower stark "nekkid" into MY bedroom...

But I digress....the other reason I was anxious is because I spent most of the day with that good looking man. I had anxiety about eliminating his wife -- I'm not in the habit of knocking off people, but she had to go. I was nervous about creating a "new" suit for him and about making up a collage sheet that would do justice to his fine looks. Just looking into his eyes was unnerving ... I teased The Hubby that I had spent the day with my new boyfriend. Since the man in the photo has been dead for likely close to a century, The Hubby didn't feel threatened in the least...Humph!
As I worked on the photo postcard of this nameless gentleman, examing him at 1200 dpi, not quite pixel by pixel but almost --- I looked at the delicate lines around his eyes, above his cheekbones and wondered if he smiled a lot. Did he laugh a lot? How old was he when this portrait was taken? Did he fight in World War I? Did he survive? Thinking of his mortality -- no wonder I was nervous... How did he get that scar in his right eyebrow? Does that curly mustache reflect a streak of vanity or simply a gentleman with refined style? Just how much can "looks" reveal about the personality?
One thing I'm sure of and another thing I'm maybe sure of.
No. 1: He's mine! Oh, I'll share him alright, but make no mistake about it, ladies. He's mine. I saw him first!
No. 2 is a bit iffy but ... I'm thinking he's my Paris postcard shop owner in my novel waiting to be born. What do you think? Does he resonate warm, bookish looks to you with those piercing brown eyes? Or do you think he's the neighborhood butcher, a local bartender or a lawyer perhaps?
What do you see? Look closely. You'll get nervous, too:)