Sharing My World 25

Share Your World – 2015 Week #14

What type of music relaxes you the most or do you prefer silence?

Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as relaxing music.  For me it is never in the background, no matter how soft and sweet.  It feels intrusive.  It gets in my head and interferes with everything else.  I hope that proves that there are actually a few things in there.  I especially don’t like music playing when I’m on hold on the phone or loudly blaring at me when I’m shopping.  Or when the next door neighbors’ son starts his car in the morning. That kid cannot possibly have much left of his ear drums. Recorded water sounds (rainfall, waterfalls, waves) and weird and random nature noises just make me nervous.  A harp makes me feel sad.  Piano music grates on my nerves because I used to play piano and I am constantly listening for mistakes.  Even the sound of somebody humming annoys the hell out of me.

Okay.  I guess the answer here is that I prefer silence.  Or white noise, like a monotonous fan, which filters out everything else.  I will probably be the happiest old deaf person you have ever seen.

Show us a two of your favorites photographs.  Explain why they are your favorite.   If you are not a photographer, think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.

Two of my favourite things are my adult children who both have families of their own now, although I still often think of them like this:

The best place to enjoy a drippy popsicle is wherever the juicy stains are least likely to be noticed.

I apologize if the sight of this furniture damaged some of your brain cells.  If colour made noise, this couch would probably give you a migraine.  It came with the government housing in the late 1970’s in Inuvik, N.W.T.  It was not my fault.  My daughter painting my son was also not my fault.

What is your favorite tradition? (family tradition, church tradition, whatever)

It doesn’t matter what we’re celebrating or where or why,  just being with family is what’s important.  As long as they don’t have their music turned up too loud.

If you could go back and talk to yourself at age 18 what advice would you give yourself?  Or if you are younger than 25 what words of wisdom would you like to tell yourself at age 50?

When I was 25 I could not imagine ever being 50. Now that I’m well past 50 I can’t for the life of me remember what I was up to at the age of 18.  Maybe I would just tell that girl to enjoy the music, because one day she’s going to kind of hate it.  I would also let her know her kids are going to one day paint each other for no apparent reason other than finding it funny.  She should laugh too. There can never be too much laughter in your life.

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

I love Netflix when they send me notifications that some crazy thing I watched for 15 minutes 5 years ago has new episodes.  Because how would I know that otherwise?  I love that I can take time off from writing or painting or thinking and sit down and watch six episodes in a row of whatever I want, putting off what I actually should be doing for another time when I might feel like getting it done.

I don’t know what I’m looking forward to other than putting something on a really beautiful background I painted. I promise I will post it soon.  I don’t know why I’m taking so long to decide on something.  Maybe I’m afraid of ruining it. Maybe procrastination is just my all time favourite thing ever.  I can almost hear my 18-year-old self yelling at me from my past to get the hell off my ass and get some things accomplished before there are no years or months or days left.  Sorry, my fan is on high and I can’t understand you.  Netflix sends me an email.  Maybe try that in a couple of decades.

Changing Traditions

What is My Most Non-Traditional Holiday Tradition?

This question has me seriously stumped. I’ve always thought of a tradition as being some practice or custom passed down through generations. Rituals of long standing. Conventions particular to beliefs which are deeply important and therefore should not be altered.

Well, big fail for me and my immediate family if there’s supposed to be some kind of continuity in how we celebrate holidays. We’re doing well if a ‘tradition’ lasts more than a couple of years in a row.

The only consistent thing I can think of that our family has ever done is to have ridiculously huge meals to celebrate occasions. Although there’s often no rhyme or reason to when or where or who gets invited.

When we were growing up we rarely celebrated Christmas or birthdays on the exact calendar day. Mom would arrange a date based on everyone’s convenience and ability to attend. (My birthday dinner was likely to happen some day or other in May. Early or late, it was no big deal, and often shared with someone else whose special day was however remotely close.)

Our Christmas dinner might just as easily be on the 20th of December as the 30th. Or maybe even the first Sunday in January if that’s when it suited people. When I met W. and discovered that his family observed their Christmas eve on the 24th of December each and every year no matter what I thought he must be joking, but he was dead serious about how it should be done.

So our kids celebrated on the exact proper day until they were off on their own and figuring out their own traditions. One of which, surprisingly enough, has become to pick a convenient day for “Christmas” (usually a few days early) so that there is more “after Christmas” time to spend with family (playing with new toys) before they have to head home and go back to work.

I’ve come to think of the random-day festivities as a tribute to my mom. So maybe our odd tradition is being basically traditionless, flying by the seat of our collective pants and making up the rules as we go along. It’s kind of fun to have a holiday looming and no set plan in place, no hundred and one things that you MUST get done by the dreaded deadline.