I Have Answers

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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.

Sharing My World 7

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What is your favorite time of day?

Early morning, when the world is quiet, the coffee is hot and fresh and aromatically delicious, and I am curled up on the couch with my I-Pad reading my favourite blogs.  Scrolling through Facebook in case there’s something there to shock and amaze me or tell me something which will, without a doubt, immediately change my life.  Many pages make these kinds of promises but don’t deliver.  Well none have yet, anyway, but hey, you never know.

Early morning is for looking out the windows at my little corner of the world going about its morning business, full of busy people with their purposes and plans.  It’s about having the whole day ahead of me to fill with activities and actions and projects and deeds.  Or with absolutely nothing at all.

What’s your favorite charitable cause and why?

Cancer research.  Treatment and cures are admirable pursuits, but prevention deserves the most focus.  Because who of us has not lost someone,  somewhere,  to the big C?

How do you like to spend a rainy day?

If it’s simply warm and drizzly, not blustery and cold with the power to turn ones umbrella inside out, there’s something purely delightful about a long walk in the rain.  Even if it ruins your hair.  We live in a place where the air is so bone dry it can glue your contact lenses to your eyeballs.  When it rains, the clean fresh air and humidity and the deep, cleansing breaths you take to clear your lungs and your head are amazing – you can’t order that on Amazon.  I love all rainy days, including the ones not fit to be out in, because inside and out they wash the crap and the cobwebs away.

When writing by hand do you prefer to use a pencil or pen?

Pencils are for drawing.  Pens are for writing brilliant things like lists.  If it’s worth writing, it’s worth putting down in indelible ink.  Purple gel is always a good choice.  However, when I wrote things on patient files I used erasable pens (with boring black ink) so that I could appear to be a decisive professional who did not have to scratch out stupid statements containing spelling mistakes.  Has anyone thought of inventing a purple gel auto-correct spell-checking pen?  I’d buy one of those.

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 the strong anti inflammatory medication I am taking which has reduced the puffiness in my face to such an extent that the dark circles under my eyes are remarkably more noticeable.  Well, at least I know it’s doing something.  I am looking forward to seeing my up-north grandchildren after Halloween.  I am looking forward to Halloween being over so those little candy bars will stop calling my name.

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Share Your World Week 43

Colour

Colouring used to be crazy hard work.  There was all that staying-in-the-lines nonsense and being criticized for using the wrong colours.  Or maybe that was just me before I knew to argue about artistic license to justify my purple giraffes and polka dot faces.

Now there’s an app for just about everything, including colouring with your fingertips.  This is how I spent the better part of my morning.  Isn’t that a strange expression?  This was actually the very BEST part of my morning.

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I also did a couple of flowers and a bug and some kind of dwarf or something.  But I didn’t post everything because we don’t want to overdose on cute.

Every now and then a person must do something simply because they want to, because it seems to them worth doing, and that does not make it worthless or a waste of time.  (FB/sixties and 60)

So, what wonderful things are you going to do with colour today?

Posted for Cin’s Feb Challenge – Colour

Not Playing Favorites

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365 Writing Prompts January 6 – My Favorite:  What’s the most time you’ve ever spent apart from your favorite person?  Tell us about it.

I’ve got as many different favorite people in my life as there are reasons for having them so it’s not possible to come up with some finite time period to describe to you.  Who keeps track of that kind of stuff anyway?  An hour can feel like forever and years can pass by in the twinkling of an eye.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in this life it’s that everything changes.  A high school teacher once told us, after a train accident (of all things) had taken the life of one of our classmates, that this was the time in our lives when we would start to experience the grief of death and loss, and that it would continue to get worse as we got older.  Imagine that, life being even more depressing after high school.  It starts much sooner for some of us of course, when a beloved grandparent or uncle or simply someone we assumed would always be around is suddenly physically gone.

But here’s the good thing about that.  If we remember them, they never really leave us.  Everyone we’ve ever met becomes a small part of who we are.  I miss the physical presence of my mother but in every other way she is still with me.  I think she will be inside me for eternity, in my head and in my heart.  Maybe my eternity will last eighty years, or maybe it’s already into eons if my soul is as old as I’ve been told. That either matters or it doesn’t.  Does time have to be measured?

Another thing I’ve learned is that the only one who will for certain be with me for the duration is me.  I am the common denominator in this great math problem known as my life.  So that should make me my all time favorite person and either a raging ego maniac or someone simply comfortable in her own skin.  I can’t get away from myself, no matter what role I choose to play. Might as well like who I am with all the labels stripped away.

A casual friend tried to convince me once that the absolute worst and most feared state we face as human beings is to be alone.  She is that person all of us have bumped into at some time or other who asks for our opinion so that she can go on and on at great length explaining to us why it is not only wrong but also stupid.  I think that explains why we’re not really close.  When I was silly enough to mention that I love my alone time, she just said, no, you don’t.  Inconceivable that anyone could be on their own and happy about it.

Being alone was actually preferable to her company right about then, although I think she would have found that idea preposterous.  Just a guess.  But I do like my own company, I like the quiet and the stillness and how relaxed I feel when I’m being perfectly me with no one to impress or entertain or piss off with my dumb opinions.

If you have a favorite person and you hate it when that person goes away, that’s okay, but it’s also not something to get obsessed about.  Things change.  If that person never comes back, you will go on living.  The hole in your life will fill back up and even though it will never be the same, it can still be good.

Well, is that enough blather for today? Enough of me talking to myself and wishing I would shut up already so I can go read a book or something?   I think that’s a yes.  See how agreeable I am?  I love me.

365 writing prompts

Once Upon a Time

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Because of a personality flaw which makes me susceptible to various (mostly harmless) addictions, I’ve been lost in the enchanted forest and the town of Storybrooke, Maine for days and days.  I’m blaming it on Netflix.  I rarely watch television because of all the wasted minutes in life which are spent enduring commercials, but put a good series of shows together back to back with no interruptions, and I am hooked.

Once Upon a Time is a jumbled up mess of worlds and fairy tales and elusive happy endings.  The best stories always start with those four words, don’t you think?  That was my absolute favourite beginning to any narrative when I was a child, and I loved to add more details and adventures and complications to make the bed time story go on and on.  They lived happily ever after was always put off for as long as I could keep my eyes open.  And then after that on into my dreams. I don’t think I’ve entirely grown up yet.

It started off with mild curiosity and pressing play on episode one.  Then on to the next episode and the next and the next, until suddenly it was midnight and my head had turned into a pumpkin full of magic beans and I did not want this amazing fairy tale to end.  It is well written and it is well-played.  A lot of the casting seems magically inspired.

By sitting glued to my I-Pad lately, (that is every waking moment I’m not interrupted by tiresome things like going to work), I have managed to make it well into the middle of season two. For every resolved problem there are inevitably two or three new ones that pop up, and now ‘happily ever after’ appears to be everyone’s never-ending quest.  Kind of like real life when you think about it.  Eventually you realize happiness is all in the joy of the hunt and the experiences, and not in the outcome you thought you wanted after all.

It’s never time wasted if you learn something, right?  So here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1.  Sometimes you do the right thing for the wrong reason, and sometimes you do the wrong thing for the right reason.  Either way, shit is bound to happen. 

2.  Magic beans create portals to different worlds.  You can also use wishing wells, magic top hats and enchanted wardrobes. And possibly various other things as long as they’re sprinkled with sufficient amounts of fairy dust. 

3.  Not everyone who is bad is bad to the bone.  If you look deep enough you will discover their redeeming qualities.

4.  Powerful curses can be broken.

5.  Always be careful what you wish for and how you wish for it.  When you get it, you might discover that what you said wasn’t really what you meant at all.

6.  Magic always comes with a price. 

7.  Snow White was not just another pretty face. 

8.  People who mean well can generally screw things up just about as fast as those who wish you harm.

9.  When Snow White and Prince Charming are your grandparents on your mother’s side, your other grandfather is a powerful wizard of dark magic and you’ve been adopted by the wicked queen, guess what.  Your life is going to be pretty weird.

10.  Everyone has a story.

Be warned, once you start watching this series it may be very difficult to stop.  It sucks the real life ambition right out of you and glues you to your couch where you will sit mesmerized as if time is standing still.  Chances are, you won’t even try to escape until the story ends.

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Just Jazzy 136

“Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?”   (Pat Conroy)

No more waiting for some distant special occasion - life is short - let's share the good wine now.

No more waiting around for some far-off-in-the-future special occasion – life is short – let’s share the good wine now.