Sharing My World 86

Share Your World 12/28/19

What was the single best thing that happened in your life this past year?

I woke up three hundred and sixty five mornings in a row.

 The most challenging?

Getting out of bed three hundred and sixty five mornings in a row.

One thing you learned in 2019?

It is not a good idea to travel by car on the trans Canada highway in late October in a raging blizzard and freezing rain.  Well I knew that already, but a scary hour or so of getting caught in bad weather reinforced this for us.  We were heading west and the storm was heading east, so it all worked out in the end, after I helped W pry his clenched fists off the steering wheel.

Given all your experiences, insights, and lessons learned in 2019, what’s the best advice you could give yourself for 2020?

Stop spending so much time on Twitter, for the love of God.  It is making you crazy.

What’s the best meal/food you ate in 2019?

Anything I did not cook myself.  Except maybe for that one beef roast.  Neither of us could recall the last time I cooked one of those, so it was a rare and delicious treat.  Sorry, vegetarians.  Truly we don’t make a habit of it.

That Tim Horton’s iced cappuccino I treated myself to on the way home from Ontario was memorable.  I’m not supposed to consume that much sugar, probably in an entire day, never mind 10 minutes, or however long it took me to drain the cup.  It was worth every blissful slurp from the straw.  I wanted to lick the ice cubes.

What are three activities you plan to use in the coming year to relieve stress?

Blogging, crocheting, reading, Netflixing.  You may notice that each of these ‘activities’ involves sitting down.

Gratitude Question:

What brought you the most joy and are you going to do more of that?

Well joy is a little overrated.  I can settle quite happily for contentment.  We are SO lucky to have our kids and their families close by.  I treasure the time we spend together.

Lastly – Any resolutions you’d care to share?

Nope. I gave up on those.  There is no point in setting lofty goals for yourself and failing miserably. If there are positive changes, great! If not, oh well.

Here’s to 2020 and positive change everywhere in everyone’s world.

Sharing My World 84

Share Your World II 11-26-18

If your five year old self woke up in your current body, what would happen, what would you say?

I would probably look at my hands and think, wow, I have Grandma skin! Five year olds don’t normally look in a mirror unless they are carefully applying bright red lipstick in a circle from forehead to cheeks to chin just before leaving for church. Then I would be super excited that I could reach things without standing on tip toes. And finally I would find my mom and say “Hey! Look at me! NOW am I big enough to go to school?”

What is a relationship deal breaker for you? Whether you are talking about a romantic one, a friendship or a related to sort of relationship?

This might seem like an odd answer coming from someone who thinks she can tell very credible lies, but I don’t want to be lied to. Or taken advantage of. Or told to quit ending sentences with prepositions. I lie only if it keeps me out of trouble and doesn’t hurt or incriminate anyone else. So that’s a discriminating kind of fib teller I guess. As if there are degrees of wrongness about not telling the truth. Maybe I’m lied to all the time and have no clue, but if I see through a lie I’m doubly offended that someone thinks I’m dumb enough to believe them.

Is there something out there, a thought, an idea, a current event, or a fear that you find deeply unsettling?

Global warming and what sort of horrible world we’re leaving for our grandchildren. Consumerism could kill us all. We can blame the big environment destroyers all we like, but we are the idiots demanding the crap they produce.

And one that is a bit whimsical:

If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?

Having spent a large portion of my life trying to convince myself that what other people think is not my problem, not important, and none of my business, I am at a complete loss to answer this. So I asked W the question. Surprisingly he was pretty prompt coming up with an answer. He would assume some secret from my past had finally come to light. He used the word “clandestine”. He told me when I say I’m going to Michael’s for yarn, I could be doing something else entirely. How clever he must think I am to come back home in an hour or less with a Michael’s bag full of yarn to cover my tracks. Woman of mystery. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known someone or even lived with them, they can still surprise you. In our case, I guess that works both ways.

Finally

What were you grateful for this week? Something that brought some joy into your world?

My new keyboard for my IPad! Although my fat forgetful fingers are getting better, there has been a lot of fumbling and stumbling and wearing out of the delete button while I get back to what I think of as normal typing with all ten fingers. Its already getting better. Maybe blogging will start to feel like less of a pain again. You lucky blog readers.

The other thing giving me joy is crocheting. Like everything else, I go on binges. First it was slippers, then rugs that look like braided, and now suddenly it’s hats because I found a pattern. And bought a Pom-pom maker on one of my fake trips to the store. Life is good. And for all you know, I’m not talking about my secret one when I say that.

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.

Just Jazzy 305

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 92

Happiness is realizing that complaining is a bad habit, an addiction you can break if you start promoting what you love instead of bashing what you hate. Focus on your joys instead, and all the reasons you have to be grateful. Life is good. Appreciate it.

Just Jazzy 289

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 76

Happiness is having family and friends who fill your heart with joy. And who can shrug it off when you’re being stupid.

Knowing

The baby frowns.

There’s a delicate balance of sorrow and joy on my brothers face.

 If there’s  any kind of knowing after cancer takes him,

missing his little grandsons life unfolding will surely be his greatest regret.

This photo breaks my heart.

The Joy of Password Creation

I don’t know, I have days when the strangest things are funny.

Just Jazzy 176

“Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given–when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.”
― Joan Winmill Brown

Let your heart be light.

Just Jazzy Advent Calendar

Wear Red Shoes

It’s Red Shoe Day Two at Breathing Space.  I would like to scratch off the bit of advice up there that says to wear more skirts, but other than that, this is a great list.

I had shiny red mary-jane buckle up shoes when I was a kid.  There was never a pair of shoes before or since that I loved so much.  My sister and I got matching red shoes at the same time, so mine were handed down to her and she got to wear red shoes for twice as long. Or maybe not, because she was very hard on shoes.  That’s what our mom told her to explain why she had to wear sturdy brown oxfords to school.  They were so ugly we both had a good cry over the unfairness of it all.

The beautiful red shoes made the most delightful racket when we walked.  I remember clomping around on the hardwood floor in the living room until mom told me to stop.  Then I clomped up and down the staircases instead.  I thought tap dancing shoes must be the most marvelous of footwear.  I had no desire to learn how to dance, but I might have professed an avid interest in it if I thought that would get me even noisier shoes.

Is this where my love of red began? And are little girls born with a thing for shoes?  I think the answer to both these questions is a big loud yes.

Love Letter to My Life

From Therapy Room on Facebook

Dear Life of Mine,

I don’t know what I’d do without you.  Well, I guess deep down I do know that without you there would simply be no me.  That would suck.  I know sometimes I say that YOU suck, but of course I don’t mean it.  Not really.

Mostly I love you to pieces.

I love you when you’re busy and crazy and tell me to hurry up, but I love you more when you’re laid back and mellow and lazy. I love how you make me breathe the air, see and touch and hear and know the incredible beauty of all the other lives around me.

I love that you are funny and strange and complicated.  I love your ups and downs and detours.  I love your crazy joy.  I even love your sadness.  Your bad bits teach me to embrace and appreciate your happy side and all the good things that fill you up and make you so worth living.

I love that you are beautiful and good.  Sometimes I think you’re hard, but then I look around and see others who are not so lucky and not so blessed.

I am so very grateful to have you. I know how fragile you are, and I try every day to do the right things so that you’ll be around for a long, long time.

I know one day we’ll have to part.  But let’s not let fear and worry kill the fun we’re having in each small moment, okay?  I know you will always give me a kick in the ass when I need it and that’s okay. I will still love you with all my heart.  And all my might. For however long we have together.

I love you, my wonderful life, no matter how you may change in the blink of an eye; right here, right now, just the way you are.

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Prompts For The Promptless:  Sometimes called a billet-doux, or a love letter, a love note is a personal letter to a loved one expressing affection.  The loved one does not necessarily have to be animate, human, alive, or known.

Weekly Writing Challenge:  Blogging Events