Wolf Moon in a Snow Storm

https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/wolf-howl

Well that looks more like a wolf in a forest fire or hot lava. Or Mars. Oh well.

Every two or three days I get a reminder from Word Press, all cheery and motivational. ”It’s time to blog on Breathing Space!” Do something constructive while you’re sitting there on your ass, you lazy little twit! That last bit is inferred of course. I like to read a lot of bizarre extras into innocent things. It gets progressively more difficult to ignore these pesky notifications without guilt, so here I am at last. In my defence it HAS been less than a month since my last bit of blather, and it IS January after all. Both excellent excuses, right? I’m making a new rule for myself. No blogging in January until the month is more than halfway over. Also this rule is subject to revision like all my other life rules.

Tonight is the night of the Wolf Moon! I am so excited! First full moon of the New Year! We also have a snow storm warning today so the chances of seeing a moon worthy of howling at here are a bit slim I’m afraid. Like I’d be out there in ANY January weather checking it out anyway. So, not THAT excited after all I guess.

Other names for this special moon: (I looked them up in the Farmer’s Almanac) (I am ”my parents subscribed to this magazine” years old)

Center Moon (Assiniboine)

Cold Moon, Frost Exploding Moon, Great Moon (Cree)

Freeze Up Moon (Algonquin)

Severe Moon, Hard Moon (Dakota)

Canada Goose Moon (Tlingit)

Spirit Moon (Ojibwe)

January is obviously a good month for sitting around dreaming up moon names.

For us it’s been time spent more concerned than normal (whatever normal might be during a pandemic) about getting sick. Close family who spent Christmas with us are all triple vacinated, and yet a few of them have tested positive for Covid since then. Thankfully in all cases the symptoms have been relatively mild and over in a few days, but it’s still a scary situation to be in. After all this time of being vigilant and careful it’s so disheartening to have rampant cases of this new variant around and having next to no chance of preventing exposure to it unless you lock yourself in your bathroom and never come out. Never mind, if yours isn’t an air tight room, that one probably won’t work well either.

Anyway, what are your personal plans for this festive Frosty Snow Squally Frost Exploding Moon Evening? It’s the only one we’ll see in 2022 so I hope you’re acting accordingly and behaving appropriately, or ignoring it completely if that’s your cop-out choice. Just laying a little guilt on you all so I don’t feel so alone.

Did I mention the temperature is also supposed to plumet overnight? Not sure this day could get any better! At least we are still healthy and not in the middle of a raging forest fire or living on Mars! There’s always reasons to be thankful. Stay well and stay warm.

Sharing My World 87

Share Your World January 6, 2020

 

Is ‘hello” enough for you these days?  (credit to Rory –https://aguycalledbloke.blog/2019/12/29/is-hello-enough-for-you-these-days/ )

If it includes eye contact and a genuine smile, it’s good enough for me. However, if it also includes asking me if I’m over 55, and acting surprised when I claim to be 15 years beyond that, even better. And then telling me I qualify for a seniors discount, simply for being old – wow! This happened to me. I wasn’t even wearing makeup and my hair was still damp and a tad wild from my shower. Normally I dont leave the house looking like that, but maybe I should try it more often.

Do you believe in Murphy?   For those who aren’t familiar with Murphy, here’s a wee explanation:  Murphy’s law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.

Yes, I am a faithful follower of all things Murphy. That way, when things go right, it’s a mini celebration.

Does evil come from within?  If so, why?

Within, without, above, below and maybe even sideways, you just never know. I used to believe we weren’t born with it, but the nicest people can end up with the wildest houligans. One thing I know for sure, hate being the greatest evil, it can spread like wildfire.

Are intelligent people more or less happy than others?   What defines intelligence?

Not sure intelligence has much to do with happiness. I’ve met some pretty stupid people who aren’t at all sad about it.  Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand, and reason.  And then not act like a moron.  Unless that’s what makes you happy.  I try not to judge.

Gratitude Section

Please feel free to share a quote, photo or thought about gratitude.

Hmmm, what am I grateful for today.  Not the big snow dump we got overnight, or the drop in temperature, but because of both those things I’m grateful for a spouse who delights in snow blowing.  The house is warm, the sun is shining, the days are getting longer, the grocery shopping was done just before the weather got crappy, and I have chocolate ovaltine in the cupboard.  Sorry to the people who gagged about that last one.

I also talked to my sister this morning and have started another crochet project, this time for my daughter-in-law.  Those things aren’t exactly related, it’s just how my intelligent mind works, stating random things out of the blue and being annoyingly happy about weird stuff.

Life is good.  January is long.  Time to stop talking. Until next time.

Another January Day

I know what our next door neighbour did yesterday – pranced around on his front lawn in a t-shirt.  Okay, he wasn’t actually prancing.  More like zipping out to his car for something and then taking his sweet time going back inside because it was relatively sunny and warm here on the first day of the new year.  And by warm I mean around the freezing mark.

Sorry that’s all I’ve got on him.  Just happened to see him briefly from my front window and have no idea how he spent the rest of his day.  Here in the late afternoon we were feasting on an awesome vegetarian lasagna made by my son.  We didn’t have the whole gang because life and work and other priorities take people in different directions.  I’m always happy to see whoever drops in.  Especially when they bring food.

This morning the wind woke me up early and has been blustering away all day, blowing snow off the roof tops and the trees and depositing it in our driveway.  No t-shirts noted anywhere on the block.  Colder weather is forecast for next week.  I wish we could send some of it (minus the wind) to Australia.  Along with a ton of rain.  I fear the devastating disasters in store for all of us if we don’t take the climate crisis seriously.

But I won’t get myself started on that tonight.  I’ll tell you what I’m happy about instead.

– all the Christmas leftovers are gone

– except for some fudge and butter tarts, and W is taking care of those

– all the decorations are boxed up and put away

– except for the outdoor lights, but W is taking care of those too, probably by February at the very latest

– we have had our youngest three grandchildren around sporadically for almost two weeks.  We find them interesting and they find us boring, and that’s how these relationships usually work with the very young and the very old.  I suppose we could try to be less boring.  There’s a thought.

– I love quiet evenings inside where it’s warm, a hot drink before bed, reading until the kindle falls out of my hand and I can’t keep my eyes open.  Simple pleasures.  I’ve already said boring, no reason to repeat it.

This month always seems to go relentlessly on and on until you swear it’s never going to end.  Sort of like a pregnancy in the ninth month.  My doctor told me she’d never heard of a pregnancy that didn’t terminate (how reassuring) and I guess that applies to Januaries as well.

Two days down, eleventy seven to go.

This Tree

“I read the news today, oh boy” (McCartney/Lennon)

Every morning while we sit drinking our coffee, W and I trade interesting or funny or unbelievable crap we read about on our different news feeds.  Sometimes it’s really entertaining tuning in to the next instalment of the current gong show going on in our neighbouring country.  Sometimes it’s downright frightening.  I’m afraid that all the attention, no matter how negative, simply feeds the beast.  I’m afraid we all might soon be buried alive in alternative facts (a new and improved name for bullshit). I’m afraid there might be some devious method to their madness, piling it on so high and so deep that we lose the will to claw our way out from underneath it.

So in the interests of not feeding the beast (while at the same time not turning my back on him either) here is a slide show of our wintry ice-foggy  backyard.

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I snuck in a couple of shots of my bad hair day to show you how I am becoming one with nature.  By resembling a half dead tree.  Or something way more poetic than that.  This awesome big old tree is the same one in which my sisters grandson discovered an alligator nest last fall.  We had no idea it was harbouring such an amazing thing. Around Christmas time this same grandson explained to his grandma how he could recognize Frosty from the other snowmen by the brown hammer in his mouth. For sure this boy is going places.

I hope gazing at this tree with its magnificent icy alligator nest sheltering branches towering above the other frozen things in our yard on this cold grey January Monday gives you a brief respite from whatever doom and gloom crap is taking up valuable space in your brain.

If not, here’s something completely different.  Not all news is bad.

Family of boy in Justin Trudeau town hall photo to name baby after prime minister

The End, or The Beginning

And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.

(Junot Díaz)

If this quote has a more profound meaning than something like a new year beginning and an old year ending, sorry, its gone right over my head.  You will just have to figure it out for yourself.

I have my own conundrums to sort.  Somewhere back in 2016 I lost my joy of writing.  I would like to find it again. Maybe I lost the joy in a lot of things and that’s the root of my problem in a rather joyless year for the world in general.

But, you know, who the hell wants to hear about all that all over again.

Today my right knee hurts for no good reason and it’s making me sad.  See, this is what I find myself doing.  Complaining to whoever will listen (even if it’s only the little voices in my head) about insignificant crap. And if I were to write down these whiny complaints, that would just magnify shit.  No one needs shit magnified, do they?  So then I don’t write anything at all for a day, or a week, or nearly a month, and that’s easy, and it becomes a habit which gets progressively harder and harder to break.

So here is my brilliant plan for 2017 to blog my merry way to happiness.  Because for me, blogging was once joyous. I’ve set my goal at mildly entertaining for now and will work my way back up.

I have created a new category called “2017 Book of Lists”.  I will make lists of good things.  There are always good things.  If I can’t immediately see the good things I will list the bad things, but only as a last resort.  And only if they are so bad they’re funny.

Here are some good things that happened today.

1.  I used up the bag of leftover taco hamburger from the freezer.  No one is more surprised by this than me, except maybe for W who is always surprised when I spend longer than 15 minutes in the kitchen.   Normally I freeze leftovers and throw them out once I’m not really sure what they are anymore.
2. The cheesey potato hamburger casserole I made was edible!  No, you know what? It was GOOD.  Or we were both abnormally hungry.  It could go either way.
3. I also used up a bunch of apples that had seen better days by slicing them up and covering them with a sort of cake batter before baking them.  It was a nice change from apple crisp.  My mom used to make something like it, juicy sweet moist apple cake, maybe called Apple Brown Betty, but also maybe not.

Perhaps I should have called this a list of FOOD things that happened today.  Whatever, I am off and running, day one done like dinner.

Happy first day of January, what always seems to me to be the longest month of the entire year.  I don’t think filling it up with lists will make it any shorter, but ‘more fun’ is a possibility.  Hey, getting blown up by an asteroid is also a possibility, would you rather have that?  Yeah I didn’t think so.

Find Three Words

I found the words

• Beautiful
• Funny
• Nose

Nose?  I don’t think that one is supposed to count so I looked again and came up with these.

• Creative
• Mezilut

I kind of hate word searches.

Sharing My World 43

First month of my “World According to Curly Girl” calendar.

This is the last world sharing prompt from 2015, number 52.  Answering it now feels late, but isn’t really because the next one is due out Monday, and today is Saturday, right?  Even though the first of January felt like a Sunday all day to me.  Two days in to the new year and already I don’t know what day of the week it is for sure.  It’s going to be a great year.

Tell how you are feeling today in the form of a weather report. (For example, partly cloudy, sunny with a chance of showers, etc.)

Mostly sunny with a few foggy patches.  Much like yesterday, also predicted for tomorrow.  If there are clouds they will quickly disperse revealing silver linings.  Long range forecast…. rain will fall and then it will stop.  The snow will eventually melt.  The sun will rise and set and rise again.  This is the most boring weather forecast I have ever heard, but sometimes boring is the best thing you could wish for.

What is most memorable about your high school years?

Five years of my life, (this is way back when there was still a grade thirteen) and the first thing that pops in to my head is the hours and hours and hours spent riding in a school bus, to and from, day after day.  Sometimes running late and missing it, sometimes the weather and the road conditions making the bus late.  My brother missing the bus on purpose so he could take the car.  He had to space those out so it wasn’t so obvious.

I was a shy and introverted loner who got crazy high marks in everything.  My classmates were nice to me and most of my teachers liked me.  I had a few good friends.  Not really a recipe for popularity in there anywhere, and yet in my final year I was voted prom queen.  That was pretty memorable.  My sisters friends all voted for me, the rest of the votes were split amongst the popular girls and my favourite teacher counted the ballots.  This is how elections are won.

My first year of high school I had secret crushes on boys who would have been very surprised to learn about it,  since I so studiously ignored them, in case they might notice I existed and try to talk to me or something.  There was a chance they would say something stupid instead of a great line from a romance novel and I didn’t want any illusions shattered.  Gawd, high school.  Weirdest time of your life.

Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?

No ordinary rocks, definitely no pet rocks, and hardly any jewelry at all except for watches and earrings and a wedding band.  I have never owned a diamond, but that’s another story.

When I was having the mysterious lymphatic lumps on my neck investigated a couple of years ago and saw Yulanda, my favourite psychic, she gave me nothing but reassuring news (which turned out to be bang on, thus the reason she is my favourite).  She also gave me a flat smooth dark yellow stone, almost an amber brown, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it was called except that maybe it started with an A.  It wasn’t just a healing stone, but had balancing properties and other calming helpful things.  It’s the kind of thing I think is a little silly, because, come on, it’s just a rock, but I kept it close to me anyway until things felt resolved.  It was a little worry stone that soaked up my worries.  You do strange things to soothe your soul.  I still have it.  Even put it on a chain so I wouldn’t lose it.  Maybe I won’t need it again, but you never know.

Complete this sentence: I like watching…

Netflix.  Because I want to get every penny’s worth out of my eight dollars a month.  Occasionally I watch movies, but mostly it’s some tv series that goes on for many seasons so I can binge watch until I’m sick of it. There is no end in sight for the mystery shows;  lawyers, police, forensics,  investigators, detectives, criminals, victims, supernatural phenomena – I watch it all.  The latest thing I’m into is Midsommer Murders, but I have to say I’m getting a little tired of women screaming every time they stumble upon a murder victim. Really, there’s a dead body and somebody screams.  Several bodies, lots and lots of screaming.  Other than that, it’s a good show.

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 a lazy laid back Christmas and New Years.  I was in bed well before the fireworks on New Years Eve.  The Christmas stuff is packed and put away and W is back to driving and doing the grocery shopping.   The furniture is all back to where it’s supposed to be because we no longer need a wide path for the walker.  I am brimming over with gratefulness for that alone.  There was a much welcomed and appreciated phone call from the latest clinic I visited telling me my fibroid test results were normal.  Normal is such a beautiful word, we really should appreciate it more.

In the week coming up I would like to go through my many unfinished drafts and either finish them or delete them.  I expect most of them will end up in the trash because I won’t remember what I was talking about.  And I am looking forward to the increase in daylight motivating me to make use of it in my little art studio, where the artistic “drafts” are piling up much like the written ones.

There are only twenty-nine days left in January!  Yay!  Let’s all be grateful for that one!

Art du Jur 83

Or maybe I should say “art du réveillon de Nouvel an,” which might mean New Year’s Eve art in French, but to be safe, don’t quote me.  These are footprint pictures I did for one of K and C’s bathrooms for Christmas, because my son admired the ones hanging in mine that I did for myself.  Don’t ever admire something in my house unless you really mean it.

The photo was taken at night in not very bright light, so the colours are a little weird, but there’s never a lot of natural light in bathrooms anyway so maybe this is what they’ll look like, except less blurry.  Also I think they would look better hung side by side.

Okay!  My year in review!

Ha ha, sorry to scare you, I’m just kidding.  I survived it and that’s what counts.  If I don’t feel like looking backwards at the things I lived through, I can’t imagine why anyone else would want to.  My life is just not that damned interesting.  Onward and upward to another new start on the road paved with good intentions.  That doesn’t always lead to hell, does it?

Whatever.  I have a plan.  It may sound as if it’s made up of very vague resolutions. Because it is.

1.  Try to blog something every day, even if it’s just a picture or a quote or a weather report.  And once you are disciplined enough to do that, hopefully some of your posts will turn into something better.
2. Share your world fifty-two times!
3. Use your page-a-day calendars for inspiration!
4. Answer some WordPress prompts!  Maybe lay off the exclamation marks!
5. Creating art every day is a pretty lofty goal, so try for twice a week.  And if there’s more than that, well yay!  I mean just yay, with less excitement.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with all the things you want to do that you just sit down and don’t do anything?  Wow, I hope it’s not just me who does that.  And I hope I’ve gotten that bad habit out of my system for a while with such a slack assed December. Pardon my French.

January, my least favourite month ever, with 31 dreary days, is coming right up.  I would like to fill it with fun.  I have two half bottles of red wine in the fridge to finish up (in five ounce increments per day because that’s what diabetics are allowed) so I need to get right on that before it all goes bad.  I have several art projects on the go, and several more in my head.  Chapters had their calendars on for half price today so I walked down there and bought three of them.

PREPARED is what I am.  Bring it on, 2016, I’m ready for you.

Happy New Year everyone.

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!

Really Snow White

This reminded me of a funny story which I’ve told before.

But this is what old people do – we repeat things and don’t give a shit if you’ve heard them all twenty-six times already.

Granddaughter (the first) and I were sitting on the couch playing with her Polly Pocket dolls.  She was responsible for the actions and deeds and commentary of three or four of them, but I had just one.  I chose Snow White because she’s my favourite.  I had her climb to the top of the couch-back where she jumped around, lost her wig, put it on backwards, freaked out because she couldn’t see, and screamed for help.

My granddaughter sighed, rolled her eyes, and said in her firmest no-nonsense 4-year-old voice, “Oh Snow White, get a grip of yourself.”

Snow White made less of an ass of herself after that.

Here’s to the last snow white day in January.  And getting a grip when we need to.