My first cat was Missy Lou ... and as a young girl I remember calling her Missy LuLu. My parents didn't allow her into the house, and didn't have much of a relationship with her at all. She lived outside for a long time. I remember a large tabby, and she eventually had kittens under our house. I don't know what happened to them. My parents didn't want us to sneak under the house to see the kittens but sometimes we did. They never told us what happened to those kittens. And then we moved.

Our second cat was Ghengis Khan, a Siamese mix with a loud yowl. This can was allowed inside, and was my sister's cat when we were teenagers. Ghengis Khan had four kittens. We found homes for them.

Once I was given an adorable black and white kitten we named Bellicose, but he disappeared.

I get the impression most of my experiences with cats were sad ones. I'll write more later...

I have written Adopt Black Cats - because they need the love... and Cat Collectibles, because I love them.

I love reading about other people's lives so biography reading is something I enjoy - also autobiography reading. Biographies are much harder to write. They require a lot of research and careful study, whereas an autobiography is simply spilled out of the heart, for the most part.

I started reading biographies as a child. I remember reading about George Washington, Florence Nightingale, and Betsy Ross. Later in life I read much longer biographies, for example, Mary, Queen of Scots and Baha'u'llah. These are carefully researched biographies - how else could they dare to write about someone else's life?

I admire biography writers, but I'll probably never be one. Memoirs and autobiographies are so much easier in comparison, because you're writing about yourself and your life... you already know all the details, and what you want to include and what is best left out. I also write a lot of fiction. One of my novels is about to be published - River Girl . . . it is juvenile fiction, for ages eight to fifteen, approximately... however a lot of adults have read it and enjoyed the story as well.

For many years I rarely watched movies. I was too busy being a mom, then a homeschooling mom, then a mom to teens in highschool type mom. I was a mother to children under age eighteen for over 35 years - from April 1973 to June 2008. Non-stop and continuous mommyhood. So I missed out on a lot of other things that people did because I was too busy taking care of my kids. I wanted that from life, and got it, so no complaints here!

Now that I'm retired from having kids in the house I'm stretching my wings. Writing, painting, making lenses and blogging, and watching movies! Since I missed many years of movies, when I started watching again, I had a lot of catching up to do. One of the very memorable and beautiful movies I watched a few years back was August Rush - a very musical movie with a sweet plot and great actors and actresses. Apparently a lot of other people like it too. I made the lens in August, 2008 and right now it is at 25,104 lensrank. It gets about 20 hits daily at this time.

Isn't it wonderful how a movie that old can still capture hearts and imagination so much that still many people come to the internet to find out more information about it? Even though my page isn't at the top of the search engine result pages, it gets quite a few visitors each week. I love that.

Honestly, I haven't made much money with the lens but I loved the movie and so I made a lens about it. These days I do most of my movie reviewing at my own review blog, Mystic Movie Reviews. I don't have much time for watching movies due to my busy blogging schedule and other things that come up that must be done… but when I do, I like to take time to write a few words about it as a rite of passage.

If you love music-filled music, and children, and families, and relationships, and would like to see a movie that will touch your heart, try August Rush. I very much recommend it!

I just want to mention some of the blogging sites I've found where I can write and focus on my work at Squidoo. The first one I started at was SquidTop... that was so long ago, and I think most people aren't even aware of it anymore. A few old-timer squids still blog at the site from time to time, including myself. My blog there is Lensmastery by Linda... I tried to use the site to put my advice and brainstorms in a useful place for others coming to the Squidoo site for prosperity manifestation purposes.

I have one blog, hosted by Crabbys Beach (owned by a Squid) for children's literature - a passion of mine, especially since I write novels for children. I'm about to have one published... River Girl - a Happy Camp novel. I'm so excited about that!

Another site I've used a few times is SquidLog where I'm known as Squiderella... because being a Squidoo lensmaster is like being part of a fairy tale. I like to write about Squidoo prosperity projects there, and whatever else is on my mind.

My first blogs way back in the early years of blogging... I think I started in 2001... were at Blogger.Com. So I started a Squidoo blog there as so many other lensmasters have done. Mine is called All My Lenses.

I have a few other blogging sites I like to use, but these are the main ones for my Squidoo related material.

Yes, I totally hear you! Most of us want to make money at Squidoo, even though our gracious founder, Seth Godin, originally envisioned this as a charity site, whereon we'd all want to work hard to give to charities. Such an altruistic intention brought forth a lot of people who are so desperate for money - their favorite charity turned out to be themselves!

I am no different. I lost my job in 2008 and in the long run I can say "good riddance" but in short term... I thought it was a disaster! However because of the job loss I worked hard at prosperity through Squidoo and through my blogs, and now I'm really doing very well all things considered. Of course I wish my income was twice the size, but who doesn't? I have enough to get along month to month, but not enough to buy a new home which is what I really want. I am tired of living in a pathetic rental. If you all knew what my home was like you would understand. My home is a cabin in the mountains and though that may sound romantic and quaint, in reality it is frustrating at times. This place is not the ritz! In fact, the room I'm sitting in right now used to be part of a "Honor Camp" - in other words, a low-security prison... back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Then it was closed and in the 70s the cabins were sold, and this one was moved here... and put together into my cabin... which I rent. Now it materializes as a cozy little three bedroom house type of cabin. But still... it is weird that there are numbers over the bedroom doors!!!

So yeah, I do manage to feel the need to keep most of my Squidoo income for myself and to that end have worked hard at Squidoo for many months, for a measly profit compared to the number of hours I've put in IMHO... but who's complaining? My main complaint is that I'm not better at this! I wish I had the magic formula for choosing to create ONLY lenses that will soar to tier one. Unfortunately my approach is quite haphazard and I'm not great at coloring pages. I suppose if I was that I'd be making thousands of dollars like some others are!!! Yay, for coloring pages! I really should give it a try.

Honestly, I don't feel like giving away any of my Squidoo success secrets today. I do have a few, like How to Promote Your Squidoo Lens and there's lots of info over at my message board: Content Writers Forum. So if you want success secrets, that's where I'm keeping mine.

Hi everyone... I haven't been here to write in a long time because I've been frustrated by the lack of activity on the site, but since I'm not dead yet and the site has provided me with a good deal of positive link goodness I'm going to pay for it to continue for another year. In other words, it is domain name renewal time and I had to think about whether I would continue to maintain it.

The good news is that the positive benefit outweighs my frustration at this point.

I am taking the advertising off the site because (1) it appears that nobody cares and (2) this site makes no money for me ... none whatsoever at all... (3) even though I made it a profit sharing site nobody cares to use it for that. So yeah, I feel like nobody cares... but this is still my site and I'll always appreciate the benefit of being able to use it to announce my projects.

Wow... so glad I got that off my mind!

I've got a new Squidoo strategy for 2012... really planning to increase my profit margin and do more with it this year... so I'm going to work hard at posting about my sites here. Maybe I should rename the site "the senior squid" ??? But no, I'm going to leave it open for all seniors who want an extra place to announce their projects. I don't know why, but I'm feeling it would be good in case anyone else remembers the site does have a value.

Good times, happiness, let's move on!

Hello, I am Linda and it is a pleasure to be here. Please let me know if I do something dippy, and I will cease and desist.

Today I met a senior, a man who has a profitable art business he's been working at for over thirty years. He buys canvasses from Mexico, spending $5000 at a time, then transfers pictures to them in a way that makes them look like paintings… very beautiful, detailed paintings!

He has a route on the USA west coast going to restaurants to hang his pictures, and they're priced low so people buy them frequently. The only problem is that this year, because of the recession, many restaurants are closing so his income has gone down.

I love the creativity of small business people. It is great to know that people are making money with art. Art contributes to the well-being and sanity of people, treating their souls to the solace of beauty.

When I started a small business for the first time in 2003, I also sold an art - the art of webdesign. You might think of that as a high-tech skill, but I always felt it was an art form, to create a beautiful and attractive website for a client's business.

After I closed the business in 2007 I wanted to continue using my webdesign site for something useful, and decided to blog about how to start a webdesign business. I also made a lens to go with it on starting a webdesign business. I've been surprised at how well that lens has done!

People want small business ideas and inspirations. There's so much uncertainty going into a business, prospective entrepreneurs scan the web looking for help and advice. I very much recommend making a lens about how to build a small business, especially if you know something about a specific type of business people need information on.

Have you made any goals for 2012? Um... resolutions? I know that's a bad word to a lot of people. It is discouraging to make new year resolutions and then forget them two weeks later.

I made a page about my 2012 goals because I believe that if you don't have goals you're not likely to get there... or something like that. My goals include things to read, books to publish, and of course, some more online money-making success.

I want to be reminded often of my 2012 goals so I've set that lens as my browser's home page. This means it will open often automatically and I'll be reminded of the priorities I've set for this year. Of course life is unpredictable, but it helps to have a few objectives in mind.