Sharing My World 66

In case you slept through the first day of the month.  Not like that would ever happen unless January wore you out completely….

Share Your World – January 30, 2017

What is the most incredible natural venue that you’ve ever seen in person?

I’ve seen the Canadian Rocky Mountains and Arctic icebergs and glaciers and the Atlantic provinces rocky ocean shores.  I’ve been to Niagara Falls.  Those are all pretty impressive.

Whenever I see a picture of Glencoe Scotland I remember how being there gave me just the weirdest feeling of chills and deja vu and I get those sensations all over again.  In another life maybe I died in battle there.  Maybe I just have a green lumpy hills fetish.

I’ve seen the vertical sea cliffs of Santorini from the water and from the bus driving up the zig zag road and from various places at the top of the island looking down.  It made me wonder why any sane person living there would ever let their children go outside to play.  They didn’t inspire awe in me as much as a rather anxious fear and dread thinking about how we had to go back down them to leave the place.

How many siblings do you have? What’s your birth order?

I had an older brother who loved his visit to Santorini and was the reason we traveled there, to remember him.  I have two younger sisters.  So three siblings, but now two.  I am one of the middle children, but the oldest daughter.  How to make a simple question complicated, right?  Quite often I make people regret asking me things.

If you were a shoe, what kind would you be and why?

Oh, probably an old comfy croc.  Because it’s not making much of a fashion statement but it’s really amazingly good for your feet.  And bonus, it can also be crazy colours.

What is the strangest/weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

Muktuk, haggis and calamari.  Imagine having those three on your plate all at the same time.  I liked calamari just fine until finding out what it was.  Muktuk was smelly and disgusting.  Haggis was surprisingly not so bad.  But not good enough to want to ever have it again.

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

Hmmm.  Laziness without guilt.  Or more laziness than usual with less quilt than normal.  My knee is fine but I’m still resting it to avoid re-injury.  This could go on for weeks.  I’ve cut back on the news because I think I finally reached my personal disbelief saturation level.  I baked muffins.  Amazingly enough that was less stressful for me than baking normally is.  More proof that the whole world has gone crazy.

I’m looking forward to getting lab work done (because I will be leaving the house to do it), renewing my passport (not going anywhere, it’s just expiring in April) and closing a bank account which has gone defunct from me ignoring it for two years.  If the balance had been higher than sixty seven dollars it might have interested me more.

Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday!  I’ll be watching Netflix and eating muffins.

 

 

Not Too Wordy Wednesday

My mother was born on February 17th, 1917. She lived her life for ninety-one years.  She was seventeen in 1934.  The four numbers in that year add up to seventeen. She told me I was not permitted to go on a car date with a boy until I was seventeen.  Maybe seventeen was her lucky number.

Just Jazzy 318

Speak softly and carry a big beverage.

Birthday Girl

It doesn’t seem so long ago that “grandpa’s munchkin” was just a happy goofy little kid.  She’s not exactly front and center in this photo with mom and great grandparents but somehow she manages to grab the spotlight anyway.

She’s still doing that, fifteen years and counting.

I’m tempted to talk about time flying and growing up too fast but I’ll skip all that grandma blather we’ve all rolled our eyes at before and just wish Happy Birthday to our beautiful Valentine girl.

Sharing My World 49

Sunshine on giraffe in my junky world.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 6 

There are a lot of questions this week, so I’m going to attempt one word answers.  This will be a first.

What is your favorite word? Coffee.
What is your least favorite word? Hate.
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Art.
What turns you off? Stupidity.
What is your favorite curse word? Frack.
What sound or noise do you love? Rain.
What sound or noise do you hate? Rage.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Psychic.
What profession would you not like to do? Executioner.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Greetings Earthling.

Welcome, and well done, you.  Pick up your halo over there to your left.  The souls you’ve been missing are waiting for you over here on our right.  Debriefing in ten.  Next assignment to be revealed when ever you’re ready.  Should you choose to accept the new challenge, buses back to earth depart from the other side of the gates every thirty seconds.

You knew I couldn’t keep up the one word answer thing, didn’t you?

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 coffee, art and rain.  We are having the most delightful winter weather!  I never thought I would put winter and delightful in the same sentence, but there they are, twice.  I have doctor appointments coming up (what else is new….they seem to never end) and possibly a Family Day Weekend visit to the great white north. Although even up there it is no doubt less white than they’re used to for February.

I am grateful this is a short month and spring is close.  We have decided we will not have lawn care this summer because it is ridiculously expensive and the exercise will be good for me.  (W goes east for most of the summer). He is going to visit his parents in March and bring back one of the lawnmowers from the cottage.  There’s at least three of them there, maybe four.  I don’t even care what the reasoning behind that might be.

Well, that’s gone a bit beyond next week.  What will be will be.  I predict I will now have another cup of coffee.  This psychic stuff is easy.

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Share Your World – 2015 Week #6

What was the last time you went to a new place?

That would be island hopping in Greece, almost a year ago.  Various family members made the trip to remember my brother, who  loved it there but never got the chance to go back.  So we went back for him.  I even drank a beer in his memory.  Funny thing about Santorini,  his favourite spot, was that travelling up and down its cliffs by bus scared the hell out of me.  Never mind the gondola ride on which I faced the side of the hill rather than look at all that water.  How in the world could you raise children that close to a cliff edge?  With donkeys running around?  Plus be surrounded by ocean everywhere you went?  Those Greek people are incredibly brave.  Maybe there’s something in the olives.

If you were or are a writer do you prefer writing short stories, poems or novels, other?  And what type of genre would you prefer?

I fancy myself a writer, because I write things and always have.  I have never published anything except blog posts, and I don’t think that counts.  Short stories work with my particular attention span.  And whether I’m good at it or not, I love writing poetry.  I have a big sheet of paper with copious notes about many different types of poetry with the mechanics and rhyming information.  One fine day I will get around to actually using it.  Time is running out to write novels, I’m afraid.  A plot would be an excellent start, but I’ve never come up with one.  Maybe I should just stick to Biography/Memoir.  Soon I will be able to throw in some historical fiction based on my actual life.  And that could slowly turn in to Fantasy if I live long enough.

Out of your five senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing) which is your favorite?

I have five incredible grandchildren, and it would be just as mind-boggling to choose my favourite one in that group as in this one.  Seeing and hearing would maybe be missed the most if they were suddenly gone, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  If I didn’t have taste and smell perhaps I might enjoy my own cooking more.  Would losing ones sense of touch mean winter skin wouldn’t feel dry and itchy anymore?  That might be worth a shot.

If 100 people your age were chosen at random, how many do you think you’d find leading a more satisfying life than yours?

My life is 86% satisfying, so the answer is 14.  Well, I had to come up with something using my limited math skills.  But if all of these random one hundred people were asked to write down on a random scrap of paper their definition of a satisfying life, there would be a hundred different sized paper scraps, a hundred different answers, a hundred different regrets, and more than a hundred different reasons for each of them to celebrate the life they were given.  Satisfaction is all in your head.

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

I can’t remember what happened yesterday, never mind last week.  Oh, wait!  My son turned 39 on Saturday.  I also don’t remember what happened when I was that age myself for an entire year.  I’m sure it was a good time.  This weekend I’m looking forward to a visit from the far-away four grandchildren, and the Valentine’s Day birthday of the closer-to-where-I-live one.  She will be fourteen on the fourteenth.  Time is flying by at an alarming rate.  I’d better get going on that memoir.

Art du Jour 36

Finally got out my acrylic paints and a small canvas and messed around with a colourful sky.

Too bad I kind of suck at realistic trees, but the picture was crying out for trees. So there are trees.

Add splatter and snow splotches and voilà. Look how the color changes with the fading light.

Happy February Everybody!  We survived another January!  WooHoo!

What I Did On the Last Day of February

1.  Wondered how it got to be the last day of February all of a sudden.

2. Spent seven and a half hours (by the clock) and seventeen hundred hours (in my head) at work. Friday has become the longest day of the week.

3.  Listened to cold people complain about being cold, sick people complain about being sick, and people with broken glasses complain about their glasses being broken.  Glasses I can try to fix.  That other stuff, you’re on your own. Now please go away and stop breathing on me.

4.  Came home and ate an entire bag of Brookside dark chocolate Goji with Raspberry.  But not the big bag.  Found myself not caring that the small bag might still be a bit piggy for just one person.  (I’ve tried them all.  They’re all delicious, regardless of bag size.)

5.  On the advice of my baby sister, sat down and watched some episodes of Psych on Netflix.  Was happy to discover that even though I was tired, I was not too tired to laugh.

6.  Thought about this fun month doing Cin’s Feb Challenge and felt a bit sad that it’s over.  Today is ‘selfie and brag about your fun month’ day.  I’m too tired to brag, but trust me, it was awesome fun. Thanks Cin. ♥

This is not really me, but close enough.

Now I’m going to go to sleep for the rest of this month and tomorrow if all goes well I’m going to wake up in a brand new one.  The one where spring might actually happen.  Yay!  If it doesn’t, there’s always Netflix and chocolate.

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Happy Valentines Day and all that jazz.

Valentine’s Day never meant a whole lot to me until my first grandaughter decided 12 years ago that the 14th of February was a good day on which to arrive in this crazy world.

Happy Birthday Kenzie, our beautiful Valentine girl.

Snow Mountain

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our backyard mountain of snow is melting.  Sort of how a glacier melts or recedes, taking about 40 years.  Or so it seems.  But look at that lovely sunshine at the top of the mountain!  And those patches of blue sky!  And, ummm…. that’s maybe all the positive things I can think of to say about our February backyard.  Except that it’s no longer a January backyard.

The real purpose of these pictures is to prove that I actually left my house and ventured outside for five minutes longer than normal on my way to the car and work.  I didn’t want to tempt fate by breathing in that winter air any longer than that, just in case it’s toxic, like everything else about winter seems to be for me.  I like it just fine from the inside looking out where I’m much less likely to slip on the ice and break important bones.

The green grass of spring is coming – I can feel it in all my important unbroken bones.