I Have Answers

Hello again!  There’s a whole new world sharing thing going on, but this isn’t it, and I haven’t gotten around to joining that again yet, but here’s something from sparks from a combustible mind (who is now hosting Share Your World) that has finally lit a fire under my butt and inspired me to blog some nonsense once more.  Good or bad thing, who ever knows the answer to that one, right?  I felt like writing.  So that’s what I did.  I left out most of the “favourite” questions though because I have such a hard time with them.  It’s like choosing your favourite child.  Impossible.  So I don’t even try.

Socks? Yay or Nay?

Well I used to say nay to socks and yay for bare feet, but now I say omg wtf my feet are freezing.  So yay for socks.  Especially the big ugly thermal ones.  They’re the best.

Is there a God?

Yep.  I follow him on Facebook and Twitter.  He’s a lot of fun.

Is a pizza a pizza without cheese on it?

Nope.  It’s just a pathetic attempt at pizza and is not fooling anyone.

Do aliens exist or are we alone in this vast Universe?

We are not alone.  We are being observed by more intelligent life forms.  From a great distance and with much head shaking and eye rolling.

Do you still have your childhood teddy bear?

Sadly, no.  But he was butt ugly so I’m not actually all that sad about his demise.  He had a plastic face for gawd sake.  It got all dented, poor thing.  I think my mom threw him out because he was looking decidedly unloved.

Brussels sprouts, yes or no?

Yes!  Steamed little baby ones with salt and melted butter!  And maybe a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.  Yum!  That’s three exclamation points in one answer, so you will know how serious I am about this delightful little vegetable.  I love cabbage too.  I will happily eat your portion too if you ask me nicely.

What’s sexier – a beaming smile or thigh high boots?

If a guy has a beaming smile I just assume he has an over zealous dentist, but also that he’s probably up to no good and hoping to get away with something.  And thigh high boots on a man would be hip waders, right?  Not the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.  Close to the bottom of my list, if I’m honest.

If you were stuck with one view for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I don’t mind the view from my living room windows.  It changes with the seasons.  There is a bit of traffic, a few trees and some weird neighbours in two directions.  The people next door are in and out of their driveway 50 times a day, mostly going on Tim Hortons coffee runs as far as I can tell.  And the people across the street do yard work constantly, weather permitting.  I don’t do either one of those things so they both seem weird to me.  And I rarely leave my house so I’m sure I seem equally weird to them.

Which do you prefer: Spring or Autumn, Winter or Summer?

Autumn over spring because there’s less mud.  Summer over winter because snow is stupid.

What is your favorite thing to do when bored?

I so rarely get bored it’s a rather fascinating thing, because there is nothing exciting whatsoever going on in my life.  My pleasures are simple.  I make things, I read, I play word games to keep my brain functioning on some sort of acceptable level, I binge watch strange things on Netflix, I drink coffee and I clean stuff.  That’s pretty much it.  And I wasn’t even bored telling you all that.  But you were bored reading it, weren’t you?  Ha ha, I knew it.  I don’t care.

What game did you play most when growing up?

We played a lot of card games if we were stuck inside.  Otherwise I remember climbing trees and long walks/runs as far away from the house as possible so we couldn’t hear mom calling to tell us she had chores for us to do.  If my brother was involved (oldest sibling) he made the rules.

You see a police car in your neighborhood, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

Domestic violence.  Break and enter.  Crazy loud party somewhere.  Years and years ago a police officer knocked on our door to ask us if we had seen or heard anything unusual on our street.  He was investigating something or other, but I was completely useless, with absolutely nothing to tell him.  I’m still exactly that observant.

If you had any superpower, what would it be?

Ooooh….I’d like to have that Star Wars Jedi mind bending thing where you say something to someone and make them decide to do the opposite of what they originally intended.  There’s probably a shorter name for it.  So I would ask W if he’d like some of my homemade vegetable soup with turnips and zucchini in it, and he’d say gawd, are you kidding? and I’d say ‘you love my vegetable soup and would be so happy to eat a big bowl of it’ and he’d say ‘I love your soup and I’ll have two servings please!’ He’d suddenly be so healthy and never know what hit him.

Sautéed onions, fried onions, onion rings, or raw onions?

Yes, please.  Is there a difference between sautéed and fried?  I guess there is.  I’d likely make up my own method anyway, rather than look it up. It’s how I “cook”.   I like raw red onions in and on many things.  No cooking required.

If you could create your own world, what would it look like?

Hmmm.  Maybe a cozy cottage in an endless summer close to the beach with no bugs after the sun goes down.  And a great foot-long hot dog vendor close by who never closes shop.   I wonder if that would eventually bore me?  Probably not.

Punch or pie? (which kind?)

I really can’t have either one.  Too much sugar.  A glass of water with lemon and a thin crust veggie pizza pie.  With a thousand pounds of cheese on top.  You can’t give up everything.

What is one holiday treat that improves your mood every time?

Frankly, all holiday treats piss me off supremely because they’re full of sugar and fat and carbs and toxic waste.  I made that last one up to help me say no thanks to them all.

What is one word that you love?

Goodnight!  It means I can go to bed and read.

King Kong vs Godzilla…who wins?

Who cares?  Do they even know what they’re fighting about?  Bet they don’t.

What cancelled (or finished) TV show would you most like to see again?

Offspring.  It’s the first one that popped into my head.  So many wonderfully dysfunctional characters!  I was so sad when it ended.

You landed on Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island…what do you wish for?

I have no idea what that is.  I would probably wish to get off of it.

Does free mean free?

Not really.  There’s always conditions.

Favorite colour?

Red.  In that world I created above, the cottage and the hot dog stand would both be red.  Also the sunsets would be red.  The water can stay blue.  We don’t want to have too much of a good thing.

Ugly sweaters…yea or nay?

Yes!  They’re hilarious!  Everybody should have at least two.  You know, for when one is in the wash.  And one of them should of course be red.

What is your favorite time period?

I knew this was too good to be true and there would eventually be a question to stump me.  I like early morning periods of time drinking coffee.  I am enjoying the retirement time period of my life.  I like late nights reading into the wee hours.  I liked the sixties but I don’t want to relive them.  Bell bottoms, for one reason.  The present is quite nice.  I don’t remember the 1800’s if I was there in another life so I can’t really pass judgement.  Lunch time is always a good time period, especially if you have vegetable soup.

And then of course there is the time that finally comes to wrap things up.  Yay!  It’s probably your new favourite!  Thank you for perusing my thoughtful answers to these burning questions.  And now it’s your turn if you’re so inclined.

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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.

 

The Little Red Hen

Another story from the 1920’s grade 2 Primer, written in cursive, so for that alone a true relic from the past.  I know that we had access when we were kids to these readers saved from my mothers childhood and although I don’t know who was responsible for all the underlining, I will plead guilty to the colouring.  That red hen was not red enough for me.

My grandmother was an avid reader, but I never saw her read a book without a pencil or a pen in her hand, underlining what seemed to me to be completely random words and phrases.  She would have loved hi-lighters.  Mom gave me one of grandmas “doctored” books as a keepsake.  It’s full of squiggly pencil underlining from beginning to end.  Maybe she passed this habit on to one of her kids when they were learning to read.

Anyway, here’s the story, underlining, bad colouring and all.  Sorry some of it is hard to see, but the pages have been around for almost a hundred years.  We should all look as good when we’re this ancient.

The Other Three Bears

Cousin “Baby Elaine”, Little Sister Ann, and me… Child of the Three Bears Skirt

I may not remember this moment (circa 1954) or why we called our cousin Baby but never referred to the littler sister that way, or posing with them all dressed up in skirts with straps, holding hands and no doubt being cajoled into saying cheese…but I will never forget that three-bears skirt of mine.

Just by looking at us you will understand how hard it was to compete for attention with these two gorgeous little Shirley Temples in my life, but I wonder if that day it didn’t bother me so much.  Because I was wearing the best skirt in the universe.  It was red corduroy with brown and white fuzzy appliquéd teddy bears, a birthday gift from a maiden aunt who always gave us birthday gifts to remember. Then she got married and had kids of her own and after that didn’t spoil us quite so much. She’s the one who cemented my love of all things red. There was also a shiny red faux leather purse another year.  But that fabulous skirt was still the best.  It was brand new, not a hand-me-down, mine first!  I put it on and wanted never to take it off again.

It was probably a very sad day when I outgrew it.  I expect it got passed  on several times to other little girls who loved it too.  That’s what we did with clothes, there was always someone else who could use them and when they were worn beyond repair the good bits got cut up for quilt blocks.  A favourite game was to sit with a quilt over your legs and  find grandmas Sunday dress or your brothers old plaid shirt.

Just so no one gets an overdose of nostalgia or cute I am going to try to limit my maudlin flashbacks to Fridays.  Once a week seems about right.

Here’s to a great weekend, and patchwork quilts full of memories,  and teddy bears,  and all things red.

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This is what I did yesterday while my house was being cleaned.
Yep, you read that right. I do not go to work outside my home, or inside it either.
For whatever reason, when someone other than me cleans up in here, I appreciate it immensely. It’s magical.

So, to the sound of my vacuum cleaner, I sat down at my desk and started ripping and pasting. I love red.  And all the colours that go with it, which is ALL the colours.   Seriously, I challenge you to think of a colour that can make red look bad.

In other news, there is no other news.  I am lazy and spoiled and well fed.  Like a pampered cat.  I think in a previous life I may have actually been a cat, and decided to come back to live this one still acting like one.  Except for adding coffee.  And being slightly less hairy.

W just asked me who I’m going to vote for next week and I said I couldn’t tell him because it’s private.  And he said you don’t have a clue yet,  do you?  He knows me too well.  But I have been reading up on the candidates so that I can make an informed decision.  Based on something other than who is wearing the most red in her campaign photo.  There are three women running here!  Isn’t that great?

I have many more red things to incorporate into collages so enough non news for now.

Have a beautiful April Tuesday!  Don’t work too hard.

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My inspiration for this composition came from a Pinterest pin. There’s no end to the ideas there, and I’ve pinned many.  I’d have quite a collection of my own art work if I sat down more often and used them.

I’m loving the colours here.  In my idea of a perfect world there would be predominantly reds and yellows during the day, and pinks and purples at night, with all other colours merely accents.

We are enjoying the most incredible weather for January today.  Well above freezing and snow melting everywhere.  W looked out the front window this morning and mused that perhaps winter was over.  That was a pretty delusional observation.  I’ll remind him of it when we’re in the middle of a blizzard in May.

But for now, time to bask in the sunshine.

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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.

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Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 51

Happiness is pampering your feet and having your toes painted not just any old red, but “love affair in red square” red. That’s RED.

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Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 17

Happiness is knowing which colour is your favourite and splashing it everywhere.

Tea Party

Cin’s Feb Challenge:

Day 8 – Tea Party

Day 9 – Brag about yourself or something you are doing

For most people (I think) it’s an uncomfortable thing to brag about yourself, and I believe that I don’t do that a lot.  However, I could be wrong, because isn’t this blog just one great big brag session??  I guess it is what it is.

This is a picture I painted in 1997.  Yes.  Seventeen years ago.  Amazing fact – it has survived seventeen years worth of de-cluttering.  I spent a lot of time on all the fiddly details and it was one of my first tole paintings ever, but that’s not why I love it.

It reminds me of the relationship I have with my younger sister Ann, the one closest to me in age.  (There are almost ten years between me and our youngest sibling, and a fifteen year old doesn’t set spending time with a five-year old as one of her priorities.)  So the tea parties I remember are the ones where Ann and I played at being civilized grown ups for as long as we could stand it, before taking off outside again to act like the little hooligans we really were.

My hair was dark and straight as a poker and I was always jealous of Ann’s Shirley Temple curls.  Mom dressed me in red while my sister got to wear beautiful blues and chocolate browns.  I would (of course) be the one in charge of the tea-pot and the slicing of the cake, because I was older and bigger and incredibly bossy. I’m not like that AT ALL anymore.  Just ask my sisters, and they had better agree with me.

One of these fine days I will get back into painting.  For awhile I rented a display space at a little store called “Rose Tree Cottage” and sold a lot of my stuff there.  I still have the records somewhere of all the things I painted, and they number in the hundreds.  When it became more like work and less like fun I just stopped doing it.  When I have all kinds of time on my hands and no job to go to I will set up a little ‘studio’ again and see what happens, and what magical memories are still stored away in my old and muddled up mind.

There are all kinds of flaws in this tea party painting.  I could point them out to you if you haven’t already noticed them, but sometimes I think it’s the imperfections in things that make them good.  And dear.  And worth hanging on to for seventeen years.