Sharing My World 4

You’re given $500,000 dollars tax-free (any currency), what do you spend it on?

Do I have to spend it?  Can’t I just do the typically Canadian thing and sock it away for a rainy day?  I read somewhere that’s what we tend to do.  I can’t remember why.  I also read that we spend much more on food and beverages and alcohol than Americans do.  Perhaps it has something to do with our long winters.  Anyway, I digress.  I’d probably give most of it to my kids who need it more than I do with their growing families.  And sock the rest away for a rainy day.

What’s the finest education?

Ever notice how little kids start off absolutely loving school and then end up hating so many things about it from about grade five on?  Part of the problem is that we don’t focus on having them develop a love of learning.   Their primary motivation is to pass their exams and get to the next level.   The finest things a teacher can teach are the skills needed to find things out for themselves.  How to have an informed opinion.  How to discover and develop whatever their talents are,  so they can spend their lives doing whatever it is that contributes to their day-to-day happiness and well-being.  Little kids know how to live in the moment, and then school teaches them how to live for the future, set goals, dream about the day they can call themselves successful.  We forget to teach them how to be happy and have fun in the process.

What kind of art is your favorite? Why?

At the moment it’s mixed media.  Taking a blank canvas and making it beautiful with paint and paper, pencils and brushes, glue and markers.  It’s like being six again.  Except for having better developed scissor skills.

Is there something that you memorized long ago and still remember?

Yes!  Hamlet’s soliloquy.  The first 12 and a half lines of it anyway.

To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

Isn’t that beautiful?  I loved it then, I love it now.  It’s the only bit of Shakespeare I can still recite.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for a visit with K and C last week, and an invitation to spend the up-coming Thanksgiving weekend with them and my daughter and all the grandchildren.  However, I don’t think that will be happening because my day surgery has been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.  There’s a possibility that they may keep me in over night.  I may end up with a temporary Jean Chretien smile if they stretch whatever muscle or nerve in my cheek or jaw controls that .

I suppose there are worse fates, and it’s not like it will ruin my modeling career or anything.  I’ve always been able to raise my left eyebrow independently of the right, so last night I tried it out in front of a mirror, while smiling with only the right side of my face.  Cool.  I really am still six in my head.

I’ve talked to the hospital booking people and they’ve gone over all the pre-op rules with me, although I already have them written down on paper.  What to eat and drink, when to stop doing each of those things.  No perfume, no make up, no finger or nail polish.  Surgery is apparently a scent-free beauty-free zone.  No alcohol for 24 hours prior to surgery.  Which means I have approximately 30 minutes left to drink my face off.

However, I think I’ll go for a walk instead and take advantage of our continuing beautiful fall weather.  We’ll be snowed in soon enough.

Share Your World Week 40