Just Jazzy 96

This is probably the best advice you will receive all day, so please pay close attention.

Don’t buy a coffee table that requires coasters or that you can’t put your feet on. If you do, you’re missing the whole point of coffee tables.

 

Just Jazzy 89

Coping with my mildly serious caffeine addiction, and doing well.

Coffee! Magical jet fuel for the morning impaired.

 

Just Jazzy 80

There’s nothing wrong with me that a giant cup of coffee can’t fix.

(And yeah, in the morning, that’s often the face that greets me in the mirror.  Sad true story.)

 

Five Steps to a Good Morning

Weekly Writing Challenge  Detail a three to five step story or process, and illustrate each of the steps with something visual.

I have been practicing these Five Steps and having Good Mornings for a lot of years.  Time to spread some joy.

Step One: Push the Brew Button on your coffee pot until it turns Red or Green or whatever colour indicates “Yes I Am ON”.

The reason you are able to stumble down the hallway and into the kitchen and start your coffee brewing with one finger is because you got the whole thing ready to go the night before, in anticipation of being in No Mood to do much more than that before having your first cup of coffee.  I don’t know what life before coffee means.  I don’t think there is any such a thing.

Step Two: Select One Big-Assed Coffee Cup

I own four of these monster mugs, in a variety of colors.  Red is my favourite, but this orange one will have to do today because all the other ones are in the dishwasher.  At least I hope that’s where they are.  Frankly, they could be anywhere.

Step Three: Choose your Poison. Add to cup FIRST. If you do this first, you will not have to do any strenuous stirring later.

Hazelnut cream is NOT good for you, but then neither is coffee, really, so don’t worry about it.

Step Four: Fill Cup With Freshly Brewed Coffee.

If you are very observant you will have already noticed that I do not own a coffee carafe.  I never met one that I could pour coffee from without making a big mess, and do you know how easy it is to break one of those stupid glass things?  And how hard they are to replace?  There are some stressful things that can be removed from your life very simply, and I suggest you give the elimination of the coffee carafe some serious thought.

Step Five: Just Breathe. Inhale, Exhale. Take a sip. Enjoy the moment.

Look out the kitchen window.  Smile at the mountain of snow and the bird feeder being guarded by your very own freaked out nasty squirrel.  It doesn’t matter that the sun isn’t shining.  It doesn’t matter that the temperature is still below freezing.  It doesn’t matter that you have to get ready for work soon.  Oh, wait.  That one does matter.

Step Six: (Optional) Transport Mug to New Location and Continue on with your morning until you require a Refill. Details to follow but only by popular demand if there is anyone out there who actually needs help with this complicated process.

I hope you got all this, because if you did it right, you will want to do it all over again tomorrow.  Enjoy your coffee.  Enjoy your day.

 

Christmas Coffee

This is just one of the reasons why I love coffeepoweredmom (see, it’s not just her name, although I admit that’s exactly what drew me to her blog in the first place).  Anyone who gets powered up on coffee on a regular basis is certainly on my list of likeable, follow-able people.

Her Happy Holidays Photo Challenge is brilliant!  Coffee and Christmas – two of my favourite things.

Whoa – looks like somebody needs coffee to sober up on Christmas morning.

Peace on Earth and Hot Coffee for All

The only complaint I have about this challenge is that my coffee got cold while I was messing around.

Nutcrackers on Caffeine

Thanks coffeepoweredmom.  I hope lots of people brew themselves a fresh pot of coffee and take the challenge!  This was fun.

 

Just Jazzy 56

When coffee courses through your veins and love engages your heart, you have the power to move mountains.

 

Over the Second Cup

Good morning world.  In my little spot on the planet the snow is coming down so heavily it looks like a thick fluffy blanket hanging from the sky.  We’re stuck in one big crazily shaken snow globe.  I’ll be out there driving in it soon.  Yay.  But not before I finish my second cup of coffee while writing yet another installment for the ongoing saga of my life in lists.  Man, I love lists.  Whoever invented lists is my hero.

These are my random thoughts for the day, in no well thought out order whatsoever.

1. The election is over at last for our American friends, and, for whatever it’s worth, this Canadian is happy with the results.  What’s good for you is often also good for us.  And I’m so sick of hearing all things political at the moment but I’m sure my little sigh of relief was lost in the great collective one to the south of us.  Time for some serious back to normal.

2.  Having a house husband around certainly has its perks.  I can give him a grocery list, and he goes off and buys stuff.  Last night when I came home he was barbecuing pork chops in the garage.  Yes, I think he does realize it’s November, but his barbecuing compulsion is proving to be a hard one to shut down.  Maybe by Christmas he’ll give it up.  Then I’ll get him going on the George Foreman Grill.  I may never cook again.

3. W has just informed me that we have a heavy snow fall warning in effect in our area and that it’s supposed to keep right on snowing all day long.  See how useful he can be?  He loves his snow blower even more than he loves the barbecue.

4.  December is the deadest month there is in the optical business.  Nobody that I know of ever decides to put a brand new pair of glasses in a childs stocking.  For the rest of this month and into the next, my working hours have been cut back, supposedly to make the wages number look better on paper.  But I also have been given the time off over Christmas that I requested, so I am not going to utter even one word of complaint.  Well, okay, maybe one.  But no more than that.  This will give me more time to shop and to make probably twice as many lists as I would have done with a normal work schedule.  So everybody wins.

5.  Thanks to sillyliss, one of my awesome blogging friends, for a lovely comment in which she mentioned the name of an author I greatly admire. I have downloaded the newest Kate Morton book to my kindle – The Secret Keeper.  That would no doubt be a great one for curling up with when we’re snowed in.  And can’t make it to work.  Even though it’s like a ten minute drive away on a normal day.  Well it’s a nice thought anyway.

My second cup is empty.  My list is done.  As long as the world never runs out of coffee, I feel like I can face anything it throws my way.  Or at least have the strength to make a list of all the reasons why I can’t.

 

Ten Reasons Why Going Out For Coffee Tonight is Stupid

Coffee and Doughnut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  It’s dark outside.

2.  The roads are slippery.

3.  Coffee contains caffeine.

4.  I got off work at 5:00.  The coffee place is across from work.  It will be like driving back to WORK.  Gawd.

5.  Of the six people supposedly going, only one that I know of actually WANTS to be there.  That would be the inviter.  There appears to be a contest going on amongst the invitees to see who can come up with the best excuse to skip out.

6.  I NEVER win this kind of contest.

7.  There might be something good on tv.

8.  We could all end up with speeding tickets in our mad rush to get the hell back home.

9.  The Starbucks people will probably get seriously grouchy about having to brew a fresh pot of coffee at this bizarre time of day.

10.  W will ask me why I’m doing something I don’t want to do, and I will shrug and roll my eyes and not be able to come up with a sane answer.  I hate it when that happens.

What W actually wanted to know in this case was whether or not this person could make my life any more miserable than she already has if I don’t show up tonight.  Well I guess I’m about to find out, because I’m not going.

If you never hear from me again, it will not be because I drank a bad cup of coffee after 8:00 p.m.  So cross that one off your list of clues.

 

Magical De-Cluttering

Although it would be nice to just whip out my magic wand and zap about a hundred objects per room into oblivion, I haven’t perfected that method of de-cluttering yet.  I’m working on it.  In the meantime, I’m reading this book because I need help with housekeeping.  I’m sure recognizing that I have a problem is half the battle.

Sitting in the living room this morning enjoying my second (or maybe third – who counts) cup of coffee gave me a chance to look around with a critical eye.  I tried to be objective, and imagine how a stranger would view my collection of random things.

It might be a stretch for that person to believe I love, need, and use all this crap, or that it brings beauty to the atmosphere and joy to my heart.

Tess Whitehurst suggests several external clutter categories (paper, clothes, books, decorations, furniture, gifts, food, unfinished projects and broken things) but I think the decoration category is my biggest challenge.  I’m not ready to even think about my internal clutter yet.

In front of our living room fireplace there is a lovely stone shelf which I’m sure was bare when we moved in but has hardly seen the light of day since then.  It’s the perfect place to burn candles and put miscellaneous stuff that there’s no room for anywhere else.  It’s been looking more like a junk heap than even remotely decorative lately.

 

The book suggests starting small so this is where I decided to begin.  I got rid of my bowl full of rocks because I can’t remember whatever possessed me to have a bowl full of rocks in the first place.  Then it was easy to throw away a bunch of candles that were burned down to nothing or melted into ugly puddled blobs of wax.  Things that I couldn’t imagine parting with I moved somewhere else so that it looks like I threw them out.  I’m not telling you where they magically teleported themselves, but I will admit that I made several trips to other parts of the house and only one trip to the outside garbage bin.

I’m giving myself A for effort here.  It’s still a shelf load of junk, but it’s better organized.  I read to the end of the first chapter of this very helpful book only to learn that “clearing clutter is a lifetime pursuit”.  Perhaps the author has seen my house.  I wonder if I’ll live long enough to get to the rest of it so that my home will eventually become  “a powerful catalyst for personal transformation and manifestation.”  Huh.  I foresee a lot more trips to the black-bin or Good Will, or a colossal garage sale in my future.

But I’m going to completely ignore the book de-cluttering category.  The line has to be drawn somewhere and my books are sacred.  Even this one.  The good news is – the next chapter is about cleaning, and with all the de-cluttering still to do, I might never get to that part at all.

 

Once Upon a Time, Twenty Years Ago….

Today I am suffering from a serious lack of ambition.  It’s a cold and rainy day.  I’ve been to see my doctor, and I’ve shopped for yoga pants. I ate lunch.  I drank some coffee.

I’ve flipped through some photo albums to see if anything would scream “pick me!” for one of the photo challenges, and this is what I came up with.  It didn’t make a sound and it doesn’t go with anything.  But I thought all the individual stunned expressions were kind of interesting so I’m sharing it.  Plus now I get to sit down at the computer and pretend I’m doing important and amazing writing related historical family memoir type incredibleness.  Feel free to add your own big words here.

Making a wild guess I’d say this was taken in 1992.  My handsome son, yours truly wearing some kind of bizarre cowboy inspired shirt, my beautiful daughter, and W, needing a haircut. Or more sleep.  Ugliest couch in the universe.  Picture courtesy of W’s parents who could make posing for a picture into a face breaking kind of torture, where you’re all sitting there gritting your teeth thinking ‘just press the button, for the love of God.”

And of course there was no little digital screen to look at immediately – you had to wait and take your chances, hoping if you looked a complete mess the photographer would have the decency to destroy the evidence.

As we all know, that rarely happened.  But the good news is, the older you get, the better you think you looked way back when.  So you just have to say to yourself, wow – compared to a ninety-six year old, I look pretty hot!

That’s what I did.  I don’t think I’ll get any arguments.