Goodbye, So Long, Farewell September

Leaving so soon?  Really?  Seems like you just got here, and now you’re gone for another year.

Hope everyone is out there enjoying our last sweet September Sunday.  Winter is waiting in the wings.

Tell Him No oh oh oh……

Skip and Flip/Travis and Bob/The Best of the Kalin Twins

This is the kind of music they were playing for the first ten years of my life.  I feel like one of those imprinted ducklings.  How else to explain my love for pop music from the fifties?

And who could ever forget Herbie and Hal, the Kalin Twins?  (Really – everyone?) Good thing we’ve got YouTube to bring it all back to us in living black and white.

Enjoy your weekend.

Just Jazzy 43

Time to stop searching for that buried treasure – you’ve already found it.

Me, Me, and Some More Shit About Me.

Cornelis de Heem – Still-Life with Flowers and Fruit – WGA11254 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This should maybe start with some sort of disclaimer about how I’m not the biggest egomaniac in the universe, but what the hell.  I am what I am.  This is a list called “The Best Things About Me.”  Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not longer.  (HAHA!!)  (My wild stab at being ironic.)

1.  Most of the time I have a flexible, even temperament. Some might see this as being shallow and unfeeling, but nothing really bothers me.  I like to think I’m sailing through life crisis free.  It’s not that my life hasn’t had its ups and downs or that I’ve never been hurt or angry or incredibly sad, it’s just that I prefer to handle everything without a lot of unnecessary drama.  I try to approach each day as fresh and new, not worrying too much about what happened yesterday, or what might happen tomorrow.  Because whatever comes my way, I’m confident I can handle it.  Experience so far has shown me I’m absolutely right about this.

2.  My interests are simple.  I pursue an easy, manageable, uncomplicated life and don’t allow myself to fall victim to all the should and should nots with which society bombards us all.  I’m thoughtful about my life choices and think in terms of myself first, others next, and the state of the world last. (If I don’t put myself first, who in the world will?)  Yes I know I’m not that important in the grand scheme of things, and that I’m only one infinitesimal part of the big picture, but I’m the only person over whom I have ultimate control.  If I am good to myself and good to the people around me, then I don’t doubt for a minute that the world will be good to me.

3. I know my limits.  If I don’t carefully consider what they are, I can become stressed out and overwhelmed, and ultimately no good to anyone.  I tend to be self-reflective at the best of times, and if my life is full of too many obligations and too much responsibility, I shut down and withdraw into myself even further.  I need time to kick back and find my serenity.  I’ve learned to slow down.  Breathe the air.  Smell the flowers.  Luxuriate in the simple things that bring me joy.

Bokeh – Flowers – Forget-me-nots (Photo credit: blmiers2)

4.  My notions about spirituality and love and life’s purpose may be viewed as daft and unrealistic by many, but I don’t let that stop me from finding comfort in what I truly believe.  If I am happy in this moment, if I feel loved and treasured by the people who are important to me, and committed to doing no one harm, what else is there to want?  Just the very same things for everyone else in my life I guess.

So why not make it your top priority today to find your own serenity?  Treasure what you have.  Count your blessings, and go ahead and bask in the sunshine of all the good stuff life has handed you.  Euphoria is contagious.  Pass it on.

Self Indulgence Haiku

Breathing, coffee, sleep,

time to think and time to write,

my greatest pleasures.

My list book suggested making a list of my guilty pleasures.  Pleasures should never make a person feel guilty – unless the whole point is getting away with doing something you shouldn’t be doing.  I suppose there’s a certain amount of fun in that.

I wanted to work ‘bacon’ into the above haiku, but gave up.  It deserves honorable mention though.  W made breakfast this morning.  I love a man who knows how to cook bacon so that every bit of it is crispy and not one bit of it is burnt.  He has an infinite amount of patience with some things, and slow cooking bacon to perfection is one of them.

So I had a choice this morning – write something interesting, or sit down and indulge in the best bacon and egg breakfast I’ve had in a very long time.  And the winner is…..

English: Open face bacon and egg sandwich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just Jazzy 42

Opportunity knocks once. Temptation stands there leaning on the doorbell.

W’s Return

W arrived home yesterday from his long sojourn in Ontario.  He was gone for almost six months!  We have a lot to catch up on.  You forget how different communication can be when it’s face to face, as compared to flat words on a screen when you’re texting.  Even talking on the phone, although better, can be hit and miss.  There’s all those facial expressions and hand gestures and subtle body language clues you can’t see that fill in a lot of blanks and missing parts.

Dona Paula Los Cardos Malbec, 2007 (Photo credit: mmwm)

We went out for dinner because we’re both sick of cooking for ourselves.  (Has it really been months and months since I went out to eat?  I think it has!)  Then we shared some Dona Paula Malbec when we got home. Stayed up way too late.  I’m not used to the satellite radio being on 24/7 but something tells me I’m going to have to incorporate that into my previously quiet life alone.  As long as I can sneak in a lot of jazz stations, we should be okay.

Encyclopaedia Britannica (Photo credit: septuagesima)

We are ‘inheriting’ the Encyclopaedia Britannica that W’s parents have had for 50 odd years – I am SO excited, although all he was able to bring back with him this time were the Book of the Year volumes from 1962 through to 1978.  Seventeen volumes of the back drop history of our lives.  Since I didn’t pay much attention to it while it was happening, I expect to learn a lot of new and amazing things.

But before I can get to that, there’s work.  I’ve been joking that now it’s MY turn to take a six-month leave of absence.  Maybe I’m not really kidding about that – the idea has a lot of appeal.

Anyway, it’s nice to have my main source of inspiration for sarcastic complaining back home safe and sound.

Books and Lists and New Age Twists

These two books are full of writing prompts – Listography, Your Life in Lists by Lisa Nola, and 642 Things To Write About by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto (many contributors).

I guess they’re actually journals that are supposed to be filled in.  But where’s the spell check fun in that?

  There’s one list suggestion that I will probably fill out but not share – “List Your Memorable Injuries and Illnesses”.  I know, it would make fascinating reading for somebody, but I really can’t think who that sad person might be.

I am also reading (at the same time, back and forth from one book to the other) Survival of the Soul by Lisa Williams, and Wicca, A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, by Scott Cunningham.  If you were to make a wild guess that I spent some time in the New Age and Occult section of Chapters the other day, you would be right.

When I start browsing in a bookstore there’s no foretelling the things I’ll end up bringing home.

Well maybe a clairvoyant could predict it, but it’s all news to me.

It’s absolutely amazing to me all the things that are out there to be pondered over and learned, and how we have so many preconceived notions about so many things that could quite possibly be completely wrong.

And yet….when you get right down to the bottom of things, the basic premises are so similar it’s incredible.  And thus doubly astonishing that there are some religious groups out there trying so hard to compete with each other to prove who’s the most right.  In these two books, Lisa Williams explains what she knows about the afterlife and how she knows it; and Scott Cunningham explains the beliefs, philosophies, tenets and rituals of Wicca.  No one is trying to convert you to anything.  How refreshing is that?

Well it’s damned refreshing, is what it is.  I think religion and spirituality are very individual and personal things, and different beliefs comfort different people.  How very boring this world would be if we were all the same.  And how very little we’d learn from each other.

I’m also reading a book on my kindle, but I’ll do a separate review of that when I’m finished, unless my head is so full of lists and topics and spirit guides and signs and symbols and deities that I never get through it.

With all this knowledge in my head, maybe someday I’ll be interesting to talk to.  There is some method to my madness.

Thirteen Lucky Fortune Cookies

Fortune cookies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  A merry heart does good like a medicine.

2.  You have an unusual equipment for success.  Use it properly.

3.  Truth is an unpopular subject because it is unquestionably correct.

4.  Land is always in the mind of the flying birds.

5.  Not all closed eye is sleeping, nor open eye is seeing.

6.  It’s a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to the waiter.

7.  If you eat a box of fortune cookies, anything is possible.

8.  You are not a ghost.

9.  You are thinking about doing something.  Don’t do it.  It won’t help.

10.  The quotes that you do not understand are not meant for you.

11.  Do not upset the penguin today.

12.  People who are late are often happier than those who have to wait for them.

13.  Only a fool seeks wisdom in dessert.

Just Jazzy 41

The past is the past – you can’t rewind. But you can learn, and shape the future.