Sharing My World 52

My Curly Girl calendar for March. March apparently is pink.

Hello, I’m back!  (It makes me laugh when I read that somewhere else if I didn’t notice the person was gone.)  So if you think that’s funny I won’t be offended. I don’t know how an entire week has slipped by.  Never mind an entire month. I didn’t have to search for what number my last world sharing was to get the title right on this one because there have been no posts in between.  Procrastination has its perks.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 9

Have you done something you truly want to do today?

Yes I have.  I drove to the U of A Hospital for my CT scan which has been booked forever.  Sat in an uncomfortably hot waiting room for about an hour, part of that time beside an unhappy baby.  He didn’t scream the entire time, but sure gave it his best shot.  Had a nurse prod the insides of both my elbows (that’s what she called them – so much more descriptive than simply calling them arms) looking for a good place to hook up the I.V.  Got that all taped on, walked some more hallways and waited in a different chair.  Eventually got put on the CT machine, shot up with dye and x-rayed to death.  Did you know that when someone says don’t breathe and don’t swallow, those two things are exactly what you cannot possibly live another two seconds without doing?  And then it was done and I was unhooked and got a gigantic piece of gauze taped on and was pointed in the direction of the exit.  And WHAT I TRULY WANTED TO DO at that point was to go home.  So I did.

What can you help the world with?

It’s easy to believe you’re just one insignificant little person with no real impact on anything but that’s simply not true.  I try to conserve energy and reduce waste, recycle, donate to charities.  I vote.  Mostly I’m a nice person trying to be helpful, thoughtful and kind.  Except maybe for when I’m yelling at rude drivers – but lets just call that talking to Jesus.  Calling out his name anyway.  I don’t know if he’s listening so I’ll just forgive myself.

If life was ‘just a bowl of cherries’… which fruit other than a cherry would you be..?

Inky dark purple grapes.  The kind used to make Malbec wine.  I don’t know, that sounded more fun than being a boring old apple or a lumpy raspberry.

Quotes List: At least three of your favorite quotes?

Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.  Albus Dumbledore.

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.  Roald Dahl.

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.  Lemony Snicket.

What’s that guys name?  Soup Bottom Aladdin? My Grandson.

(Osama bin Laden – OMG.) (My Son.)

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

We had a nice visit over the weekend with the northern grandchildren.  Two have birthdays coming up in March and April.  Soon they will all be in double digits.  I’m grateful for good weather and mostly bare roads. The bump signs have me confused though.  We drove on a particularly rough stretch where two sets of big yellow and black bump warning signs were placed on the only two relatively smooth sections.  Is that some kind of highway humor?  I don’t get it.

I would like to say I’m looking forward to doing our income taxes but I’m only excited about getting it over with.  I have one more scheduled doctor appointment at the end of this month to follow-up on the CT scan and then  fingers crossed, I can forget about things like this for a while.

Because there is important artistic doodling and messing about to be done, and writing about it after the fact, and Malbec drinking and game playing and movie watching.  All things which probably are making the world a better place, right?  Just be nice and agree with me.  There.  How hard was that?

Wet Wednesday

Last night in a restaurant parking lot in the pouring rain.

Our back door, snow shovel and broom on guard.  It’s hard to take pictures of falling rain, especially in the dark.  This morning there’s sheets of ice everywhere.

We slid along water reds and greens, the changing lights captured in the canvas of wet tar.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

Three Quotes: The End

“The sky both exists and doesn’t exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn’t. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.”
― Haruki Murakami

Please feel free to take up the challenge of Three Quotes in Three Days.  Thanks again to Laura Bruno Lilly for passing this challenge along to me.

How do you like the blues in that sky?  Is that not a vast expanse worth drinking in?  This is a phone photo taken in the spring through the front window of my car (don’t worry, I was parked).  At first I couldn’t figure out why the top of the sky was such a vivid blue until I remembered with a forehead smack and an eye roll that there’s a blue tint at the top of my windshield.  So there you go, a secret filter photo.  If great photographers are not supposed to reveal their secrets, that’s why I’m not one of them.

Our weather has been up and down and all over the place this week.  The sunny cheery blue sky suddenly grows menacing and dark, the wind comes up and the thunder grumbles and rolls.  Rain falls in buckets or fine mists, but in such short bursts that if you turn away you might miss it.  Then the sun comes back out to say “just kidding” until it’s warm enough again to turn the fans back on.  Rewind and repeat.  About four times a day.

I’ve been using this unpredictable weather as an excuse for not walking to the grocery store which is only a couple of blocks from my house because I would not like to get caught in the rain and struck by lightning.  Even though I am out of coffee cream, which is pretty strong motivation.  And driving there would be the height of slothful lackadaisicalness.  Yes, that is a real word.  It means unwillingness to get off your butt.  Or out of your car to take a normal photo.

Hope your Wednesday is wonderful in a lackadaisical laid back way.  I’ve had fun matching pictures to quotes!  You should try it.

Three Quotes: The Middle

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Three Quotes in Three Days  (see yesterdays post)

I nominate three people out there who would like to complete this challenge!  You know who you are, even if I don’t!  Yes, that was a very lazy way of getting out of actually naming people.  No pressure here.  But I do recommend this book.  It’s wonderful and weird.

Hope you’re having an extraordinary summertime Tuesday.

Three Quotes: The Beginning

 “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”
― Max Ehrmann

Thanks Laura Bruno Lily  for this fun challenge – Three Quotes in Three Days.  I not only accepted the challenge, but decided I would also play by the rules!  Must be something in the air.

The rules of the challenge are:

1) Thank the person who nominated you.
2) Post a quote each day for 3 days.
3) Each day nominate 3 new bloggers to take part.

This is now your mission, if you choose to accept it.  If you don’t, we will put it behind us and never speak of it again.

Eileen at Laughter: Carbonated Grace

Pam at Catching My Drift

Alice at coffee and a blank page

 

 

Be Bendy

 

Perhaps nothing was ever “meant to be.” There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit “bendy.”

― Liane Moriarty, The Husband’s Secret

For One-Liner Wednesday 

I was going to skip posting today, but then I read some answers to this prompt and thought, hey, I can write just one line!  But apparently I have to write more than one, in order to write just one.  Good thing the rules are bendy.

Sharing My World 9

This is what you get when you ask everybody to smile.

Share Your World – 2014 Week 45

What is your favorite color?

For as long as I can remember it’s been red.  There was a brief period in my life when my mother was going through her “little dark-haired girls should be dressed in red” phase when I wished for my blonde haired sisters blues and browns, but I was just going through my own “jealous sister” phase and got over it.  Now I find myself choosing red for just about everything where red is a choice .  My I-Pad cover and my dinner plates are red.  I have a red wall in my living room.  A lot of my blood cells are red.  (My grandson helped me out with that one.)  I did a quick survey in this house and discovered there’s not a red lover amongst them.  Lime green, light blue, dark blue, purple, brown and yellow.  Maybe if the dog could talk and wasn’t color blind she’d say red.

In what do you find the simplest of joys?

Waking up well rested, that first fresh hot cup of coffee, my breakfast smoothie, a lazy relaxing day with no definite plans, some pleasant conversation, getting motivated to start an exciting new creative endeavor, getting something finished, making and eating a delicious nutritious meal, going to bed with an excellent book, long run on grammatically incorrect sentences which make you wonder if they’re ever going to end.

Would you prefer a reading nook or an art, craft, photography studio?

My photography skills are pretty basic and I can read anywhere, but for arts and crafts it’s important to me to have a space big enough to make a colossal mess.  Because the creative process is messy.  Or maybe that’s just me.

What is at least one of your favourite quotes?

“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

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

It’s been great visiting with family for over a week, seeing the grandchildren and how they’re changing and growing up.  It’s a bit scary knowing they’ll all be teenagers before we know it.  I’m looking forward to going home, of course, because I always like that part of a trip as much as any other part of it.  Here’s hoping for an uneventful and safe drive.

Next week it’s back to my favourite surgeon for a follow-up/recheck.  And then I guess it’s time to get into Christmas mode.  Time rushes on.

Living This Life

 

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

One of the Team Pepper prompts suggests finding a quote which says how you want to live your life and explaining it.  There’s not a lot I can add to this, except to say keep learning,  Keep laughing.  Be happy with your “now”.

 

What Are We Doing Again?

These words are so simple, and yet….

I can’t get them out of my head.  What does this mean?  The phrase takes me all the way back to high school English and teachers who analyzed poetry in particular,  but also pretty much every other written thing, to death.  I admit I liked trying to impress them with my twisted take on things.  I expect a lot of authors would have been totally baffled by the garbage we came up with that they never meant at all.

Anyway, I want to know what you think.  Please take my poll.

There are no wrong answers.  Probably there are no right answers either.  Thank you class.  No going home for you until you finish this.  I will mail you your marks.

 

 

Still Waters Run Deep

still water and treeline (Photo credit: the|G|™)

What a week.  I am out of practice in the ‘mom’ role, that’s for sure, the proof being that one preteen and one small dog seem to have taken over the entire household which now revolves around them. Not that that’s a bad thing.  God knows we could use some shaking up around here once in a while.

There have been daily rides to and from her school, which is all the way across the city.  W took care of that.  Our granddaughter made her own lunches, studied for her own tests, did her own homework, took her own showers, got herself dressed and ready every morning.  All I did really was make breakfast for her and then get myself off to work.  So it’s kind of a giant mystery why I think I’m tired.

I bought one of the little books in Anne Morelands 1001 Ways to… series.  The choices are Confidence, Success, Happiness, Tranquility, Wisdom, Patience – all things I could see no reason to want to improve upon in myself (hahaha – see, I’m so tired I can’t even think straight), so I chose Enlightenment.  Because we could all use some of that, right?

There are no magic recipes, but the book is filled with lots of inspiring quotes.  Probably a thousand and one of them.  Still Waters Run Deep has no source credited, but it’s something one of my teachers said to me once in high school when I was zoned out and daydreaming in class.  Thinking deep thoughts.  Or something like that.  Being quiet on the outside but a very interesting and complicated person on the inside. That’s my story of what he meant by it, and I’m sticking to that interpretation.  Because somehow acting brain-dead doesn’t have as nice a ring to it.

Flower Still Water (Photo credit: DeusXFlorida (2,006,995 views) – thanks guys!)

The still waters phrase is a good one to describe my granddaughter too.  She’s a very thoughtful girl who doesn’t say a lot unless it’s something of some importance that needs to be said.  She reads, she writes, she looks things up and she figures things out.  She is already giving dating and relationship advice to her grade six friends.  I sincerely hope it’s not coming from personal experience just yet.

And that she’s not in too great a hurry to grow up.  That will happen fast enough all on its own.