Share Your World – July 10, 2017

This morning I was reading the new posts of the bloggers I follow, thinking I used the “like” button a great deal lately – kind of to let you know I visited and appreciated your words – but have not been so generous with comments. That shortage of words that I’ve had most of the time lately, I guess – certainly not intended to convey the impression I don’t care about what you have to say. I hope that’s understood. But, I digress – so now, on to share with you all and with Cee as I listen to the crows yelling at one another outside.

How do you like to spend a rainy day? That depends (my magic word) – sometimes I like to curl up in my big chair and read, sometimes I like to play with my inks, on a warmish day that isn’t blustery I might sit under the canopy on the deck and watch the raindrops fall. Always, I will take a nap. I might even, if the winds are blowing the right direction and karma is in the air, cook or bake or (gasp!) do some housework.

List at least five favorite treats. (They do not have to be sugary).
1.Chocolate. Anything chocolate. Unless it also has coconut.
2. Smoked Gouda with Good Thins corn and sea salt crackers
3. Salty potato chips
4. Ice cream topped with fresh fruit (warm weather only)
5. Cheesecake.

Where’s your favorite place to take out-of-town guests? Crater Lake. Living where I do, it has to be Crater Lake.

You are trapped in an elevator, who would you want to be trapped with? Someone with a sense of humor and a extra dosage of understanding, and it had better be a big enough elevator to allow me room to bounce off the walls. Preferably my kids, because they would understand and they would make me laugh. I do not like enclosed spaces for very long periods of time, nor do I like feeling trapped.

Optional 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 having done a couple of paintings I’m satisfied with. I’m grateful for sunshine, breezes, and glasses of wine on my deck with my furry girls. I’m looking forward to the arrival of my kids for their summer visits – Kat flies in this evening and Gep expects to arrive this weekend. My summer joy.

I must, I must do some vacuuming and dusting today. My old vacuum took one look at all the Shasta hair (labs like to shed) that had accumulated the other day and declared itself dead. It shouted “Nope! Not gonna do it!” My new vacuum arrived yesterday evening, and says it needs to jump into the fray and show me what it can do. And then I must ready myself to go pick up my Kat. But, before I do any of that, let me share those couple of painting I was satisfied with and one that was just for the freedom and fun of it. Those of you who are Facebook friends have undoubtedly already seen the first two.

First, Fire and Ice:

Second, New Mexico Mesa – or, Georgia O’Keeffe country:

Finally, just for the Fun and the Flow:

Wishing you a day, a week, a life filled with enough.

Share Your World – July 3, 2017

Actually, it’s now July 4 – Independence Day. I shall celebrate the day quietly, at home. Our little town has a parade mid-day, but the sun is hot and it’s much the same from year to year. Kind of a “been there, done that”, although I don’t mean it as cavalierly as it sounds. Instead, I’ll share with Cee, clean up my kitchen mess because I didn’t do it last night, then see where my heart takes me from there.

For your main meal do you prefer sweet and sour, hot and spicy, spicy and sweet, bitter, salty, bland or other? Like so many things in my life, that depends on my mood. Bitter is rarely a choice, hot and spicy has limits on how hot and spicy. Now that I have no one to satisfy but myself, I usually follow either my cravings or whatever is easiest. Yesterday I was craving macaroni salad, so I made macaroni salad – served with a hot dog for dinner. Satisfying a craving as well as easy. Perfect! Since cooking for one person is not possible, at least for me, I will be having macaroni salad again. A couple more times, at least. Until it’s the last thing I want for awhile.

Where do you hide junk when people come over? I try not to let too much junk accumulate, but I am a “piler”. If people come over, I would hope they’re coming to see me, not inspect my house or check on my housekeeping skills, so whatever has been piled up is there. Because. If I invite people, then I do try to clean up, at least surface clean, a bit.

What daily habit would you like to introduce to your life? Same thing as many others have said – exercise. I have always hated exercise just for the sake of exercise. I used to walk more than I do now because now the weather has to be just so to get me out walking, neither too cold or too hot, without rain, snow, or hail. Ice keeps me in. We had a very long, cold, wet winter, followed by a cold and wet spring, immediately into too hot to walk in the sun. So I think about walking, or at least riding my stationary bike, then decide what I need is a nap.

If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do? In a virtual world, I would like to have the daring and grace of a trapeze artist. I would fly, ever so beautifully, over the crowds, feeling the freedom of soaring and thrilling the crowds. In the real world, I would never be able to deal with the height, and my body was not blessed with grace. So.

Optional 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 being a week closer to having my kids here for their summer visit. I am grateful for sunshine and blue skies. I am grateful for birdsong and the beauty of blooms around me. I am looking forward to a week of more of the same – a week filled with enough.

Some of what I’m grateful for:

Daylilies starting to bloom in the windmill bed.

Early evening on my deck, with a glass of wine and my furry girls (sadly Bailey does not come out to the deck with Shasta and me very often anymore).

Labels Can be Divisive

I just read a post from Sparks from a Combustible Mind that I found very interesting, and want to share it with you – and I want to express some of my thoughts.

She quoted from an article posted by another blogger,The Happy Quitter explaining Liberal vs Conservative, according to the StudentNewsDaily.com. In reading these descriptions, I confirmed what I have believed for quite some time: I am neither Liberal nor Conservative. My beliefs vary, and range between both “sides”.

That article further confirmed, for me, that we are far too quick to “label” ourselves and others – we are far too quick to say “well, he is a Liberal/Conservative, after all”, and in the extremes of our emotions, fire off mean, disrespectful comments about the beliefs and, too often, moral character of that Lefty/Righty person. I believe the fact that we now have a president who feels doing the same is okay, that he has the right to be mean, disrespectful, extreme, and to do it publicly, only encourages this behavior. This distresses me – in my opinion, those who wish to govern their country should meet a higher moral standard, should act as role models, should put country before personal opinions, and should sometimes just keep their mouths shut. Perhaps follow the old “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” credo. After all, declining to comment, or preferring not to comment, can speak volumes.

Read the article, think about it – perhaps we have more in common than we thought. Remember it’s okay to disagree, we have that freedom, a hard-fought for freedom, and we should exercise it. But I believe we should exercise it in a more respectful, tolerant way than is being done by this society right now. I think we will not get along, we will not reduce the violent responses that are set off by anger, until we relearn tolerance, forgiveness, freedom. Labeling does not contribute to any of those.

It’s Thursday and I’m Feeling Random

It’s a lovely Thursday out there, but I did some weed whacking and mowed the lawn yesterday which resulted in sore muscles in the arm that supports the weed whacker. I have decided I deserve a day off because I have accomplished a few things this week, because I want one, and because I have the freedom to take a day off whenever I choose. Ain’t life grand?

Several years ago, I planted some ornamental strawberries, the kind the catalog said did not have runner and would not spread. Uh huh. I think the catalog did not account for birds who do a good job of planting by the process of ingesting and dispelling. But the catalog also lied about the runners. So now I have no ornamental strawberries where I originally planted them, but I have an overload of them in every other place that has soil showing. The plants are green, have pretty flowers now and then, and the birds like the berries, so they have been allowed whatever space they like. Yesterday, I watched through my window as a Robin stuffed as many berries as she possibly could in her beak and flew off – I suspect her young were having a strawberry breakfast.

Speaking of birds and their young, I think the tree swallows in the camera house have all fledged now. A couple of days ago, I watched one seriously considering launching – but, as happens every year, I was doing something out of sight of the house when they actually left. I did get a photo – not particularly clear, since it was taken through a window and the was asking the iPhone camera to zoom further than it really likes, plus the bird was moving – but a photo.

Going out for dinner with a friend tonight. We’re going to the Mexican food place down the road, which means I’ll probably order a burrito, because that sounds good right now, and will have half of it (at least) leftover for dinner tomorrow night. Fine with me, means no planning, preparation, or cooking will be required of me. Although in the summer, I don’t do a lot of cooking anyway – I eat lots and lots of green salads with lots of goodies in them.

I seem to have only one squirrel running about the yard this summer – although I did see one yesterday that I think might have been a new addition. I have read that squirrels nest in December and June. December seems like bad timing to me, but June works. I know my main squirrel was feeding young earlier this month because her little feeding nozzles were prominent. She likes the fountain out front, as do the birds. Again, I was asking more zoom of the camera than it likes.

I got a new phone in May when I was eligible for an upgrade. My Samsung Note 4 was beginning to get hotter than I liked when I was asking it to work much, and had started doing odd things – moving icons from my screens, suddenly telling me from my pocket that it did not understand what I was asking – I was not asking anything of it. That was a bit spooky. Anyway, I got an iPhone 7+ and love it, for one thing, it uploads my photos to iCloud so I can access them from any device. So far it’s behaving properly and not acting strangely at all. A bonus happy result of this was that my carrier has changed its plans and under a newer plan, my bills have been reduced.

Things continue to bloom in my yard. What I think will be the last of the iris are these pretty ladies:

The peonies are finishing up their bloom and the daylilies are beginning theirs, I just wish the flower would last longer than one day. One of the Clematis plants on the tower that covers the well head is also getting ready to bloom.

I’ve been doing a lot of house hunting, of the HGTV variety, lately. I have yet to decide where my ideal home would be. Definitely near water, preferably the ocean. I’ll keep looking until I find the place that opens its arms to hug me. And after I win the lottery – which will be a long time since I don’t buy tickets.

On that note, I shall leave you with the hope that your days are filled with enough.

Share Your World – June 26, 2017

Another week has passed – so quickly! The weeks have been doing that these past few years. It’s a little scary. So here we are again – ready to share with Cee and all of you.

What goal are you working on now? Your goal can be something fun or extremely serious. Have fun with this question. I find if I set a goal these days, it eats at me, nags at me, and when I don’t reach it, I suffer guilt. So I prefer to say I have “intentions”, none of them planned for very far in the future. Day by day, that’s how I prefer to take it. So my “intention” for today is to get out the weed whacker and clear around the trees and sprinkler heads – those places I don’t get to with the mower. Oh, did I tell you I also do not set lofty intentions?

What is one thing you’re glad you tried but would never do again? Getting a tattoo. I got a dragonfly on the outside of my ankle, so now I can say I got a tattoo. But once is enough. It hurts, and I don’t believe in deliberately subjecting myself to pain. Although I did subsequently get my eyebrows tattooed because after chemo I had virtually none and it was a real pain in the neck. I would get eyeliner done, in the hope that I wouldn’t have to wear mascara, but I’m quite sure that’s a bit more than I want to do in the pain realm.

Did you choose your profession or did it choose you? Originally, I chose my profession as a secretary, because when I got out of school into the working world, that’s what girls did. Many years later, I fell into my second and preferred profession of escrow officer in southern California. That one I really liked.

Have you ever gotten lost? Oh yeah. I have no sense of direction at all, to the point that I need to wear a ring on my left hand so I know left from right. Even with guidance, almost always I will go past my destination and have to turn around and go back. When we traveled, my husband used to ask me which way to go, then go the opposite way. Does that tell you anything?

Optional 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 getting closer to the date my kids will be here for their summer visit. I am grateful for waking every morning of the days of the last week, for all those things I am always grateful for – time with friends and my furry girls. I am grateful for the things that bloom in my yard and the birds that sing their songs. I am not grateful for the grasses and weeds that grow where they are not wanted. I am looking forward to a week with temperatures at a perfect level, and cooler than the past week.

Now, a little bit of Santa Fe art for you to enjoy:

Self Congratulations, Then Bitch and Moan

I’m looking forward (NOT!) to a day in the 90s, and in looking forward, avoiding launching into anything energetic. Although, if energetic was in my mind for today, I should be doing it now, not waiting till later.

I wanted to share my pats on my back with all of you. Because I have become such a sedentary creature, I require that I applaud myself whenever I actually do something, and Thursday, I did things! I have found that feeding just one person, using fresh vegetables and fruits before they start to fade away is difficult. I had things in my refrigerator that I thought needed to have something done in an attempt to lengthen their life span, so I spent a good part of the morning washing, slicing, dicing, and vacuum sealing celery, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries and zucchini into jars and bags to be stored in the refrigerator because not everything should be frozen for specific uses. Now we’ll see how that works.

And then I realized that my only source of sweets of late has been fruit, which is not bad – but – sometimes the body and soul just need chocolate. And my cookie jar was feeling sad.

Ah ha! Yes! I had a roll of cookie dough in the freezer.

Thus, my feeling that I deserved to pat myself on the back and give myself a round of applause.

Random thoughts buzz through my brain. This morning I was trying to read the fine print on a label and I realized how things change with time. In my youth, I would simply have read that fine print, no problem. As the years passed, I would have had to put my glasses on to read that fine print. More years pass, and my glasses are always on if I’m awake, but I need to find a magnifying glass to read that fine print. Sigh. Maybe I should consider learning to read braille.

Becoming quite annoyed with my current medical provider. It seems to take a very long time to get a refill for a prescription authorized. I am currently waiting for one that had expired – my hope in calling it in to the pharmacy early in the week was that if the doctor was reluctant to authorize a refill, they would call me. Still waiting. The problem is, it’s hard here in the rural world to find a doctor that’s taking patients. I think our medical system requires a major overhaul, and not the kind Congress is considering.

Also wondering what the heck reality is anyway. It seems there are different versions of reality in our world, and none of us are willing to accept questioning about our version. I worry – are we becoming a society with no standards or true values? Have we lost our respect and desire for integrity, intelligence, moderation? Discussions with those on the opposite side of beliefs only reinforce this notion.

On a happier note, yesterday I wandered about the yard for awhile and found what’s blooming now. Soak in the beauty, I think, because it’s badly needed.

I feel the need for a smoothie this morning. Should I use blueberries, strawberries, or pineapple? Perhaps blueberries. Hoping your day is full of flowers and sweetness.

Share Your World – 6-19-2017

Here’s me, avoiding going outside into the sunshine to do some yard work. Here’s me, wishing for a gardener. Once again, playing with Cee is me doing avoidance.

What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of? There are a lot of things many people are obsessed with that I don’t get the point of, just as I suspect some of the things I get obsessed with baffle others. I think, as someone else on here said, it would be most of the “reality” shows, which aren’t very real at all. I mean, really, would anyone choose to live on an island and eat insects if they weren’t being offered a lot of money to do so? Or subject themselves to terrifying challenges without the promise of big dollars? Well, okay, some might, but I don’t get it either way.

What quirky things do people do where you are from? Climb trees and swing from branch to branch. That’s my way of saying I’m not sure what quirky things people do here. Perhaps that just means I have the same quirks which I don’t recognize as quirky. Hunting is a big thing around here, and, although I don’t think that’s quirky, I don’t understand wanting to go shoot animals or birds.

What are some things you wish you could unlearn? I wish I could unlearn to follow the news. I wish I could unlearn needing to be informed.

Who is someone that you miss having in your life? I miss my mother, as she was when I was in my twenties and we could talk and share experiences, before the struggles of her life made her angry.

Optional 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 having some nice sunny days, time with friends, evenings on my deck with my furry girls and a glass of wine. I am looking forward to more of the same.

A few photos now, from my May visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where we visited the Georgia O’Keefe museum, and a few days later drove out to the Ghost Ranch area, where we saw the mountain known as Pedernal. I will forever think of that as Georgia’s mountain because she felt that if she painted it often enough, God would give it to her.

An interesting flower on a bush – fresh, but looks as if it were dried.

Interesting tree branches at the lavender ranch.