Sharing My World 82

Share Your World – June 4, 2018

Is there a piece of clothing from your childhood you still remember?

I miss the carefree days of wearing nothing but red, before the notion settled in my brain that red made me look like the broad side of a barn.  Thanks to my dad for that  awesome expression, and thanks to my mom for choosing my all red wardrobe from ages one through six.  I never paid much attention to the clothes I put on, until I got this red corduroy skirt with three appliquéd white teddy bears and straps that crossed in the back and buttoned in the front and slipped off my shoulders a lot.  I imagine I begged to wear it every day, but had to keep it for “good”.  I’m so glad there’s a photo of it.  I loved that thing.

Those socks with strappy sandals are a much foggier memory, quite possibly my own fashion choice at the time.  And I think the white blouse had red buttons.  Best outfit ever.  It’s been all down hill since then.

Regardless of your physical fitness, coordination or agility, if you could be an athlete what would you do? Remember this is SYW, dreaming is always allowed.

I have given this question a lot of careful consideration while sitting here on the couch being totally not athletic.  My sport of choice would not include excessive speed or risk or danger or physical exertion.  So that limits the field somewhat. Beach volleyball, pole dancing, weight lifting and archery all crossed my mind.  But my final answer is darts.  It’s a sport which requires a keen eye, good concentration and accuracy, and possibly a great love and appreciation of drinking beer in pubs.

In a car would you rather drive or be a passenger?

Well that depends on who’s driving.  Mostly I’m content to sit in the passenger seat and be an annoying navigator, nodding off when things get boring.  But if I don’t trust the abilities of the person behind the wheel it won’t be a pleasant trip for either of us.  I think I’m a pretty good driver and I do like to be in control of the speed and the route and the pit stops.  But I’m also getting old and slow and more absent-minded, so hopefully I will be smart enough to give it up when it’s time.  However if you told me that time has come and it’s today I probably wouldn’t take you seriously.  It’s an old person thing.  We are all stubborn as hell.  Just hide my keys.

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

This made me smile because I do almost all of these things!  It’s like a check list for a simple life.  I can’t sleep when it gets light out, so my summer mornings are ridiculously early.  I always make my bed as soon as I get out of it.  I excel at sitting.  I enjoy folding clean, fresh smelling clothes and towels and sheets.  It’s wonderful to wake up to a clean kitchen and empty sinks, so washing everything up before bed is a bit of an obsession with me.  Eat when hungry, sleep when tired – no problem – perks of being retired.

This morning I cut the grass, trimmed a tree and two bushes, watered the flowerbeds, put out the green compost  garbage bin and the recycling and cursed at the bugs.  Like housework, doing these things is a weird kind of pointless because it all has to be done again.  And again, and again.  But it’s also pointless to dwell on that.  So I won’t.

And that’s my very ordinary little old world for another week!  It’s a blessing to be this bored and content you know.  There’s something to appreciate.

 

Sharing My World 65

Share Your World – January 23, 2017

Do you prefer juice or fruit?

I take medication (for Type II Diabetes) which helps my body deal with sugar.  I try to make its job easier by ingesting as little sugar as possible.  Fruit juice is deadly.  Natural sugars are still sugars, so I have to be careful with fruit too.  Thankfully I was never a big fan of juice (or all the other ways we mangle fruit) so I don’t miss it.  I do miss sitting down and eating a whole big bowl full of grapes though.

Did you grow up in a small or big town? Did you like it?

I grew up on a farm.  At the time I professed to not like it much at all.  Now that I’m older and wiser and living in a city I realize what an idyllic place it really was and how lucky we were to spend our childhood there.  But I would never go back.  Farms are a lot of work.  Plus there’s all that manure.

If you were to paint a picture of your childhood, what colors would you use?

All the colours.  Every last one of them.  Green trees, red barn, yellow brick house, brown garden dirt, blue skies, black and white cows, orange cats, purple lilacs, grey thunder clouds, pink spring blossoms, indigo nights.  Oatmeal coloured porridge.  Yuck.  Hey, it wasn’t ALL pretty.

Ways to Relax List: Make a list of what relaxes you and helps you feel calm.

• sharing my world, because it makes me remember
• making lists, so I won’t forget
• playing mindless (non memory) games on my iPad
• drinking coffee
• drinking red wine
• reading books
• drawing/sketching/painting
• binge watching whole seasons of tv shows on Netflix
• concentrating on nothing but breathing
• drinking more coffee
• reading myself to sleep

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

Last week I mentioned the bag of marshmallows left over from Christmas baking and my intent to use them up by making Rice Krispy squares. I sent W on a puffed rice hunting expedition and he came home with the biggest box of cereal made anywhere in the world (just a guess, but geez…) so after I made the squares there was half a box of cereal left.  Then I asked him to get me another bag of marshmallows so I could use up the rest of the cereal.  He came home with TWO bags of marshmallows.  And thus we are back to our original state of one unused bag of marshmallows sitting in the cupboard.  I am not starting over.  They can stay there until next Christmas.

That little story really doesn’t have much to do with being grateful except for another interesting fact or two.  I gave most of the first batch of rice krispy squares to my daughter and granddaughter, but the second batch I have almost finished single- handedly consuming all by myself.  Yes I know I am being redundant in that sentence, but seriously, what is wrong with me.  W has ceased to be much help, perhaps feeling he has already done his part by purchasing ingredients.  Although I guess I should give him credit for bravely trying to finish up the brownies I was craving and made and which don’t interest me anymore because they are stale.  I really need to stop making stuff.

I am looking forward to dealing more satisfactorily with my random food cravings in the week coming up.  Or not.  Truthfully it’s something which just now popped in to my head and will no doubt pop out of it again.  Sometimes I think there’s no point in setting goals for myself at this stage of forgetfulness in my life.  I’m looking forward to winging it.  There, that one sounds attainable.

Under The Bed

(http://sha-1.deviantart.com/art/Under-the-bed-II-154800409)

A comprehensive (because I like adjectives) list of things I believed were under my bed during my early childhood.

1. Alligators (this was long before Mercer Mayer wrote a book about it)
2. Bad men wearing masks, ready to grab the ankles of children foolish enough to forget to take a flying leap halfway across the bedroom after waking up in the morning.  These same men were never around at bedtime.   It was just the mornings you had to worry about.  So I assume they only worked the day shift.
3. Anything that mysteriously went missing, including socks, siblings and money.
4. Dust Bunnies the size of tumbleweeds. (No child worries about that – that’s more    a present day thing). Scratch number four.

I know, it’s not a very long list.  I advanced fairly quickly to scary things lurking in closets and on the roof.

Under the bed became a great place for shoving things when you needed to tidy up in a hurry.  So I guess it got too crowded under there and the alligators and the masked men were forced to move on.

Sharing My World 46

Daughters drawing saved by my mother for so many years that it’s probably a priceless work of art by now. BTW, everyone would look better with a neck moustache and arms growing out of their ears.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 3

What is your favorite piece of art? (it doesn’t have to be famous)

Well that’s like trying to pick your favourite blade of grass on the lawn.  Impossible for me to choose even a category.  I do have a great love for children’s art though, especially when they explain it all to you, or even when they can’t explain any of it.  Maybe my favourite piece of art will eventually be on that big old canvas that’s been sitting here staring at me blankly for several days. There’s not much art I don’t like, unless it is a depiction of something gruesome.

What made you smile today?

Being put through a check out by a purple haired cashier.  I suspect she coloured her hair herself (or had a friend do it) because random bits of her ears and neck were also purple.  What can you do, except show up for work anyway and carry on.  Purple ears won’t last forever, right?   She reminded me of my granddaughters who also do startling things with their hair.  It makes me smile to see them experimenting with who they are or who they wish to be.  All of them are bold and beautiful.

Which place do you recommend as a Must-See? Please state which country, state or province.

Really I haven’t been to enough places myself to do that with any kind of credibility.  I do think people miss out on seeing their own country from a tourists point of view when they prefer to rush off across the ocean or the equator in search of something better.  I’ve seen all three of Canada’s oceans – Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic!  Notice how far inland I am living from every one of them.  Travel destinations are a personal thing.  I loved the rolling green hills in Scotland but suspect some people might find them boring.  Imagine that.  Weirdos.

Complete this sentence: When I was younger I used to….

…..love it when cousins came to visit us on the farm, mainly because we got out of all kinds of work so we could entertain them. I was always surprised by their avid interest in such things as tractors and cows. And barn cats and pond frogs.  These were ordinary every day things to me but new and interesting to them.  It gave me a whole new perspective, seeing things I took for granted through someone else’s eyes.

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

In my ongoing seemingly never-ending pursuit of something suitably warm to put on my freezing feet I think I’ve finally made a breakthrough.  Men’s thermal socks.  If your feet are cold in those things you are probably dead.  Now I just have to be careful I don’t slide across the kitchen floor in them and break my neck.

That canvas is STILL hanging around and still blank.  I am looking forward to getting all artsy with it this week.  Anybody want a painting of my thermal socks?  Alrighty then!  I will try to come up with something better.

October Walks and a Wandering Mind

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This is the best time of the year for long walks, when it’s sunny but not too hot, the leaves crunch under your feet and the ones that haven’t yet fallen are brilliant colours against a clear blue sky. And then you go inside the mall and except for the Halloween and Christmas stuff everywhere, it could be any day of the year. I think when the snow flies I will continue my walks up and down the mall halls. I think I will take more pictures. I think entirely too much sometimes. My mind goes off on bizarre tangents making me think “scatter brained” is too vague a term.

Maybe it’s all the fall decorations in the neighborhood that reminded me of how Halloween has changed over the years. There used to be more trickery than treating, with pranks verging on vandalism. Every year our mailbox would go missing, car windows would get soaped, anything left out in your yard would be upended or put in some obscure and annoying place.

The “old-enough-to-be-everybody’s-grandparents” couple who lived on the farm across from our one room country school were the targets of much trickery speculation. I don’t remember if anyone ever did anything to them or their yard but we always made elaborate plans. The woman’s name was Beulah, poor thing, and there was a lot of talk about doing something crazy with the bloomers she had hanging on her clothes line. I suppose it turned out that bloomers blowing in the breeze were a funny enough thing all on their own without any help from us.  Plus Beulah gave everyone their choice of one luscious expensive chocolate in its little brown cupcake paper wrapper when you went trick or treating at her house. Best not to jeopardize a good thing.

I believe they were a childless couple, so why they had a little boy staying with them one summer isn’t clear. Maybe he was a great-nephew. Perhaps he was bored and they had no clue how to entertain him and since I happened to be the same age that’s why my mother volunteered me as a playmate for him for a day. I expect I wasn’t given any choice in the matter and was simply dropped off to fend for myself. I don’t remember the boys name or where he came from, but I do remember that he never stopped talking. That was fine with me, I’ve always been a great listener.

I remember eating lunch under Beulah’s watchful eye and then feeling ill. Maybe it was food I wasn’t used to, or maybe it was just nerves. Motor-mouth wonder-boy knew exactly what to do. Acid indigestion, he proclaimed. He marched me into the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine chest for the Eno. I don’t know what else was in there, because my attention was focused on a little blue mini bathtub. It was half the size of ours and I had never seen such a ridiculous thing before in a bathroom.  It didn’t look big enough for a child to stretch his legs out in, and I tried to imagine short stocky Beulah trying to squeeze herself in to it. There would hardly be room for water!

The boy ripped open a little packet of crystalline powder and poured it into half a glass of water, then thrust it at me and told me to drink it fast before it stopped fizzing. The bubbles went up my nose and it tasted like really bad pop. I drank it down and impressed my new friend with a loud belch. He told me it would make me feel better right away and that he drank it all the time. And he was right. It was like magic. The indigestion disappeared and it was my turn to be impressed. I could hardly wait to go home and tell my mother about this magical elixir called Eno.

Then he taught me the Eno song. I looked for it on YouTube today but I guess it’s older than dirt as far as tv commercials go and I couldn’t find it.   Nevertheless it’s still in my head all these years later.

E-N-O….ENO!
When you’re feeling low, ENO!
It’s mild and gentle and good good tasting,
E-N-O!

We sang it all afternoon. I guess he wasn’t that hard to entertain after all. Best play date ever, long before they were called anything like that.

What a strange memory to have retained, complete with little blue bathtub, and nothing at all to do with Halloween, which started this trip down memory lane in the first place. The moral of this story: beware of being overly impressed by strange men giving you weird things to drink. Or, it’s easier than you might think to write a commercial jingle that will stick with someone for over fifty years.

If you go for a long October walk and let your mind wander aimlessly, you just might come home and waste an hour of your life watching old tv commercials from the 1950’s on YouTube.  You have been warned.

Sharing My World 22

Through the looking-glass in my guest room/library.

 

Share Your World – 2015 Week #11

List 2 things you have to be happy about.

Huh.  Just two?  That’s a pretty short list.  Better make these two things count.

1.  Being RETIRED!  I’m so happy I have lived long enough to get to this point.  I can go to bed late, do bizarre things in the middle of the night,  nap whenever I want.  Make up my own schedule or simply wing it day-to-day.   It’s like being a kid again but without all the silly rules.

2.  ART!  No, not some random guy.  Drawing, painting, sketching, cutting, ripping, pasting, doodling.  Learning new things.  Letting my creative side loose on the world.  Amassing enough art supplies to last for several lifetimes.  Hey, at least there’ll be that to pass down to my kids.

Do you prefer ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise?

I like all three, in any order, accompanied by relish, sweet or dill.  I also like chili sauce, seafood sauce, guacamole and salsa.  Last week I had a strong craving for hot dogs.  I don’t know why something which isn’t good for you at all should taste so delicious.  White buns, charred mystery meat, and a pile of condiments, including chopped up onions and tomatoes.  Yum.

If you were to paint a picture of your childhood, what colors would you use?

My childhood was pleasant and ordinary.  Of course I had no clue that was the case until I got through it.  There were bits of misery and there were interludes of pure joy.  I would paint sapphire skies with distant black thunderclouds, golden sunshine after blue-grey rain.  A big red barn and a yellow brick house.  Dusty gravel roads.  Maybe some rainbow trees, a sea of turquoise grass waving in the summer breeze and a few purple cows lolling about in a meadow.  That sounds about right.

Do you prefer a bath or a shower?

Well there’s my cue to go off on a rant about how sitting in bath water is really disgusting.  I don’t know when my aversion to bathing started, but it extends to hot tubs and whirl pools, no matter how full of chemicals and disinfectants.  Also public swimming pools, but that’s mostly because of the chlorine and the chance that small children might be urinating.    I have to be thoroughly rinsed or I itch.  Everywhere.  So the short answer is “shower”.  I’ll spare you the long answer because that was merely the introduction.

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 our beautiful spring-like weather, although it’s supposed to snow again soon.  Winter’s last hurrahs which don’t linger very long at this time of year.  I’m grateful that W hasn’t yet taken the snow tires off my car.  He asked if I could remember when he did it last year and I told him it was the day before a snow and ice storm that had me slipping and sliding all over the place to and from work for two days.  Now that there’s no danger of it being a necessity to drive somewhere, he has finally lost all sense of urgency to get the tires switched around at the first sign of warmer weather.  It’s Murphy’s law that once he does get around to it, there will be freezing rain.

I’m looking forward to doing our income tax.  Thought I’d write that down to see how it sounds, but it’s a blatant lie.  I’m dreading it, as usual.  And putting it off with the snow tires.  Today I’m picking up some mixed media stuff at Michael’s.  I have a list.  It consists of more than two items.

I Have Answers

Yes, I do.  Ask me anything and I will undoubtedly tell you something which may or may not be helpful, or even relevant.  Like posting this random picture of an odd thing I have hanging in my kitchen.

Here are 15 questions of questionable origin (to me) and I am too lazy to figure out where they came from in the first place.  But they are good questions, and these three awesome blogging people answered them and now I will be a copy cat and do it too.  Thank you to –

Knocked over by a feather

Mental in the Midwest

To Breathe is to Write

 

What do you think you can do but can’t?

I think I can save everybody.  I think I know how every person in trouble or distress should think and act and feel and what needs to happen to have everything turn out right.  Too bad nobody will listen or cooperate.  I’m not even very good at listening to myself, so why am I surprised.

What’s a difficult word for you to pronounce?

There is more than one.

deterioration (because of that middle syllable),

barbiturate (because of that middle “r”)

and  remuneration (because there’s no numeration involved)

I also sometimes used to stumble over initial phone greetings at work (good afternoon, blah blah blah, how may I direct your call), but usually nobody listens to those either.

What are your favorite TV shows from your childhood?

We didn’t own a television set until I was nine years old.  Half my childhood was already over.  I remember watching Howdy Doody, I Love Lucy, Bonanza, Ed Sullivan, Father Knows Best, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, and Red Skelton.  We also got only one channel.  But look at that.  They broadcast some high quality TV.

What are your virtues and vices?

Most of the time I am kind and generous and patient.   However, I can also be an unforgiving snob.  I’m a work in progress.

What’s more important: love, fame, power, or money?

If you are famous and powerful and rich but don’t have love, too bad for you.  Love isn’t something you can demand or buy.  And without it, where’s the happiness?  Having never been famous, rich or powerful myself I’m making assumptions, of course.  But, as usual,  I still think I’m right.

If you could live in any era/time period, when would it be and why?

According to my psychic, I’m a very old soul and I’ve lived in all of them.  This would explain why I’m so smart and know so much.  Or maybe it was all that great TV I used to watch as a kid.

If you had to redo your entire wardrobe with 2 stores, what would they be and why?

I honestly have no idea.  Where do they sell yoga pants and sweat shirts?

Can you recall what you were doing a year ago on this day?

No, but I looked in my blog archives and discovered that on February 21st, 2014,  I was looking through an old journal and laughing at some of the strange things I had on my ‘grateful’ list.  The last half of the book is blank.  I don’t believe I suddenly stopped being grateful.  Probably lost my pen.

Do you have recurring dreams? If so, explain?

There’s a house I dream about a lot, in which I am being pursued by something (or someone) bad.  It has many staircases and hallways and doors and rooms.  I’m afraid, but I’m also very confident that I know lots of good hiding places.  Wow.  A psychiatrist would have a heyday with that one.

What’s your horoscope?

I am Taurus.  Generous, dependable, patient, pleasant and down to earth.  Also stubborn, self-indulgent, materialistic and lazy.  Well, nobody’s perfect.

What does your dream bedroom look like?

I don’t care as long as it’s warm and the bed is comfortable.  A large percentage of the time I will have my eyes shut in there.

What position do you sleep in?

I have a queen sized bed and I sleep on my side on the edge with my feet hanging out.  Hot feet are the worst.

What are your all time favorite films?

There’s only a handful of films that I’ve watched more than once.  Probably for the same reason that I don’t want to go back and relive any of my past  lifetimes.  Been there, done that, on to the next adventure.  W, on the other hand, can watch a movie a dozen times and never get tired of it.  I watched Bridesmaids three times.  I don’t know what that says about me, but I’m sure it’s probably something good.

What makeup are you currently wearing?

Foundation to even my skin tones (a nice way of saying cover up the blotches and age spots),  eye shadow because I feel naked without it (although it’s hard to see it under those over the eye bags) and lip gloss because chapped lips are just marginally worse than hot feet.  If I’m going somewhere I will add eyeliner and mascara.  But it would have to be somewhere pretty damned important these days.

Do you have neat handwriting? Show us!

This is a large sample in case you want to submit it to an expert for analysis.  To see if the results are in harmony with my Taurian traits.  I think it’s rather sad that cursive writing is going the way of the dinosaur and Ed Sullivan.

Well, that’s enough enlightening crap for this February Saturday.  Hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.  If not, you can always answer these questions yourself to liven things up.  But if you’re busy watching I Love Lucy re-runs,  I understand.

 

Sharing My World 16

Share Your World 2015 Week 4

Where did you live at age five?  Is it the same place or town you live now?

The year I was five we moved from one farm to another one.  Of the first farm I have relatively few memories, except that it was close to grandmas, it was a very long walk from the house to the barn and I was not allowed to go there on my own, and in the house we could run around in a big circle from the kitchen, past the stairs, through the living room and back to the kitchen.  There was a hand pump for water in the kitchen and a dark shed (where the dog lived) attached to the back door.

The new farm, to my five-year-old mind, was utopia in comparison.  The run in circles was twice as long, through the dining room, past the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen, past the basement stairs and back to the dining room.  We could also run up the front stairs and down the back ones, and from the front lawn to the side lawn to the back lawn, across the driveway and another side lawn and back to the front.  Obviously, running around in circles at this stage in my life was extremely important to me.

A lot of family still lives in that area so I go back to visit frequently, but I haven’t lived there, or in that province, for over 40 years.

Did you grow up in a small or big town? Did you like it?

Our farm was in the midst of many small-town Ontario towns, but I consider the one where I went to high school as my home town.  It was on the shores of Lake Huron, had amazing sunsets, and filled up with beach-going tourists in the summer.  I liked it just fine.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Hey, I still haven’t decided.  I was very good at running, with all that practice, and won lots of races in elementary school, so being an Olympic runner crossed my mind.  Then I became a lazy teenager who ran one relay race at one track and field meet (we came in second) and my ambitions shifted to obtaining my driver’s license and getting the hell off the farm.  After that, my plans were always rather vague.  University, teachers college, meeting interesting men, going to parties.  (I wonder for priorities sake if I should have put all that in reverse order.)

You are invited to a party that will be attended by many fascinating people you never met.  Would you attend this party if you were to go by yourself?

Sure.  I will be one of those fascinating people in attendance.  Just hopefully no one asks me what I want to be when I grow up.

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

I am grateful for our amazing weather, pretty much unheard of for here in a normal January.  I know there’s a lot more winter to come, but this has been a lovely little break in the middle.  A long cold month which usually drags on forever has turned out to be pleasantly quick in passing by.

Next week I’m going to see an audiologist.  All that running around in circles as a child probably damaged my ear drums somehow,  and I’m paying for it now.  I think I can hear just fine until people mumble at me on the phone, or garble some strange nonsense from another room, or when I decide I can’t understand what people in movies are saying without subtitles across the bottom of the screen.  Yep, it’s time.

Sharing My World 8

 

Artwork courtesy of Middle Granddaughter (it’s nice when granddaughters come in threes) who might one day become famous and then you can say you saw her early work here first.

Share Your World – 2014 Week 44

What is your most vivid memory of the kitchen in your childhood?

We had bright blue cupboards in the shape of a U, and in each angled corner cabinet on the lower half there was a three-tiered lazy susan.  I was six when we moved to that house and had never heard of such things.  To my young impressionable mind everything about them was brilliant, including their bright yellow paint job and how much they could hold, but especially the wonderful name they were known by.  Put it on the lazy susan!  Get it from the lazy susan!  Don’t we have some of that on one of the lazy susans?  I imagine my mother wished she’d never let on that they had a name at all, and was relieved when I got over my initial fascination.  Although there was a little lip on each shelf to keep things in place, if you spun them around too fast stuff would go flying off into the back corners and then one of us kids would have to crawl inside to retrieve whatever would otherwise be lost back there forever.  It was a sad day for me when the old cupboards were replaced with boring brown wooden ones with nary a lazy susan to be found.  See how I still love to say lazy susan? Yeah!  Okay I will stop now.

As a child, who was your favorite relative?

I had so many of them it’s impossible to say.  Aunts and Uncles and cousins galore who came from all over the place to spend time at our farm.  I can truly say there was something to love about every last one of them, and there still is.  Mom had three siblings and Dad had nine.  Grandma was always introducing us to long-lost relatives but I rarely paid attention long enough to figure out who was who.  Of course now I wish I had.  It’s hard to keep big families straight.  Especially when they keep growing up and getting married and having children and splitting up and combining families with somebody else and all the other things families tend to do.  I did like one aunt in particular who had no children of her own.  It was easier to get her undivided attention.  I think we found each other mutually curious and funny and interesting.  Or maybe it was one sided and she had me completely fooled.  I would have liked her anyway.

What did you like or not like most about the first apartment you ever rented?

This is no startling revelation, but I have never lived alone.  I always had room mates when I went away to school, and room mates when I went to work away from home.  Then I got married and had a permanent room-mate.  We lived in a tiny three room house the size of a small garage for several months.  Then we moved to a different town into a basement suite, and when W decided to go back to school we got our first real apartment in a high-rise with an elevator.  Obviously I was impressed with the elevator, otherwise, why mention it?  We had a bedroom, a living/dining area, a little narrow kitchen and a bathroom with two sinks.  Our t.v. sat on the floor and we watched it from two basket chairs.  We had a bed and a table and a couple of kitchen chairs.  That’s it.  The hardwood floor was bare and every sound echoed.  W did most of his school work in the library.  I worked at the University book store.  I bought a long black cloth pea coat at a thrift store for five bucks and wore it until it fell apart.  Good times.

The next year we moved closer to campus in to a married student complex, again living in a one bedroom basement apartment.  There’s nothing I can think of that l loved or hated about any of these places.  They were warm and dry and they were home. And if your friends had to sit on the floor when they dropped over, that was half the fun.

What kind of TV commercial would you like to make? Describe it.

I would ban commercials from every channel except one, which would be called The Annoying Commercial Channel.  It would not be part of any cable package, but strictly optional.  If you were in the market for, say, dish soap, you would be able to select nothing but dish soap commercials and watch them to your heart’s content.  With no program interruptions.  I have many more unworkable ideas for TV if any network people would like to get in touch with me.

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

I am so grateful to be spending some time with my grandchildren.  Last night the three youngest ones each read to me from books of their choice.  It’s part of their daily homework to read aloud to someone.  I love how they tackle the big hard words with no fear and use context clues to figure them out.  But mostly I love that they’re learning a love of reading.  That will serve them well all their lives.

Yesterday W had an in-office procedure done on his right hand to straighten out his ring and little fingers.  I am grateful that our daughter was able to drive him to and from his appointment.  I am grateful that I’m not home to hear first hand how things are going and how much pain and misery he is in with the stitches and the bandages and the splint.  I am eternally grateful that I never once considered it might be a good idea for me to become a nurse.  I would not have been good at it.  He sent me a text which said “I’ll beok”…. W. speak for I’ll be ok.  That’s pretty much all any of us really needs to be.  I’ll be grateful next week just to beok.

Just Jazzy 265

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 52

Happiness is discovering that a long lost “first chapter book” from your childhood has been safeguarded by your sister for all these years. (Anyone else remember Honey Bunch?)