Last day of JuJoJan on 1LineWed, but Flaundering February starts tomorrow. Watch this space.
Archive for January, 2024
Per Linda:
Your prompt for JusJoJan January 30th, 2024 is “calendar.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
I love calendars. I love the pictures so I often keep them. Like this one:
I have calendars all over the house. But can you believe it? I thought it was Wednesday most of the day. Remember What Day Is It Anyway? Yeah. I went back in time.
Per Linda:
This post is part of Just Jot it January, and today’s prompt comes to us courtesy of my friend, Kim. Check out her blog here!
Family is the most important thing to me. If I had my choice I would live with everyone in a cave, my adult offspring most important, my husband is too. But masses of cousins all over the place and I miss all of them! We all used to live in one area. My grandparents were two doors from each other so we got to see all the relatives on Sundays.
What I only recently figured out was my cousins’ other grandparents were not where mine were.
I thought everyone had it like me. And most of my relatives went to the same church. My dad’s dad helped built the church. His wife and he were known in the church as Mom and Pop. So I was related to everyone. All the kids had my grandma as their primary teacher. We all learned to read The 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer from her.
My grandparents and parents are no longer with us, but we cousins are still here.
My biggest problem is a phone phobia that keeps me from calling. I know I’ll answer in a minute if they call me but deciding I’m calling now seems impossible.
So among other things I’m working on family is my primary goal.
I love my family, even the non-blood related ones, chosen extended family.
Per Linda:
Your prompt for JusJoJan January 28th, 2024 is “congregate.” This prompt is brought to us by Fandango’s blog Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Making It So by Patrick Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was lucky to read this on Libby Audio. I must admit that hearing Sir Patrick’s voice made it so–much better than (see what I did there?)
This book takes you on Sir Stewart’s life journey from the beginning through even the pandemic, bringing the reader (listener) as close to the present as possible.
For me, there were a lot of surprises. But I am not much of a follower of movie stars. I have always enjoyed Star Trek and enjoyed our knight’s appearances in a few cartoons. The sad part of my life is that I never got to take classes or learn about Shakespeare; so much of his work is lost on me. Still, I guess the best part of a book is that it piques one’s curiosity. I need to check out the Bard and learn more than a little bit that I have been introduced to. I can sing the songs of Oliver. Does that count?
Anyway, gathering a congregation of Trekkies to learn what Sir Patrick can teach us of William, not Shatner. That’s what this book inspires. I plan to become more aware.
I’m going to make the call. Somehow I got food poisoning. The middle of the night was not pretty. Today I’m exhausted and on a brat diet. Ugh! Yay for Pepto. I’m going to go back to bed.
Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 26th, 2024, is “atrocious.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Jemima of Jemima’s blog provided us with the prompt of the day. Thank you, Linda and Jemima!
My achievements for this Friday are meager, but I feel good about them. My greatest accomplishment is over a year in getting it done. Now, I need to find a way to send it to its new home.
The socks I was knitting ended up being tinked back to the arch area. I had them all the way to being close to done, but I held them in my hand and wondered about the size. They are supposed to fit a size 1 child, but when I looked that up, that would have been at least 7 inches long. These were only 5. So most of the week I have been undoing the work. The good part is I am getting better acquainted with the shadow wrapping needed for the heel and above. So when I finally get there again I’ll know what I’m doing. By the way, in the picture, you will see that each sock has its own needles. When I reach the heel of these no-show socks I find I do better with them separated.
When I want to just relax I am working on this pair of slipper socks.
I’m still only on day 8 of the lessons as I haven’t mastered the few chords taught so far. My fingers are getting tougher, but they still aren’t coordinated enough to not mute other strings. But, hey, I can now get through Row, Row, Row, and Mary Had A Little Lamb. Yay! I’m thinking I need to make a strap for my uke to carry it around and take the pressure off my hands. There are several patterns on YouTube.
I wish I had learned recorder as a kid like these guys. But I’m glad I do understand music so that I can read and play the notes I know how to play. I finally got out my alto and found I remembered how to play it. My lapse of learning happened when I realized I had been using the wrong fingering for the type of recorder I had. Baroque versus German. All of my recorders and I inherited a lot of them from the school I worked in, plus my alto and my tenor that I bought are the Baroque.
Now that I know that I have retaught my fingers the F. I stopped playing before because it sounded wrong, and I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know, and I have to re-train my brain for it.
Speaking of the musical instruments, this is the time I usually play around with them. So, have a great Friday night and week-end!
Per Linda:
Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 25th, 2024, is “cheesy.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Cheesy is from Yvensong. Check out my friend Yvensong’s blog. It’s not too cheesy!
She would definitely say I’m cheesy.
I’d say all my friends have to be a little cheesy. We are like fine cheese. The outside may not look like much, but we are aged to perfection.
It’s kind of sad how the world forces us to look at one another. We tend to see the package first. Well, I can tell you my friends had great packages way back when; I did, too. Sure, there were the imperfections we saw in ourselves, but looking back, we were something. Now, we have gone through a lot of life working on our issues and trying to become better people. I think we succeeded. And we are following our passions, the things that draw us to learn more and extend ourselves.
But when we get together, it is hard to say goodbye. We enjoy our time together even though we can only see each other through the internet. We are grateful we can see each other. Physically, it is getting harder and harder with lack of funds and aging joints, so a few hours being cheesy, or communicating our lives to each other, is so worth the wi-fi interruptions and family intrusions.
Each friend:
Raindrops beget humidity, beget sweat, and back to rain again. Thankful for the antiperspirant!
Per Linda:
This post is part of Just Jot It January, and today’s prompt is courtesy of Nicole. Check out her blog here!
I’m so stoked to finally develop calluses on my fingers. I am beginning to learn a few chords on my ukulele. My first couple of songs use the F and the C7 (Mary Had a Little Lamb), and the C gives us Row, Row Row! And though the fretting fingers still hurt a little, I am hearing purer chords.
This little uke was $10 at a BiMart in La Pine. It seems to hold its tune nicely for something so inexpensive. If I can get to changing chords quickly, I may invest in a more expensive ukulele. It is fun to learn new things. And hopefully, it will help my brain to stay healthy.
And I’m stoked that I finally know an F from an F# on this recorder. I am such a newbie on both of these instruments I feel I might never play nicely, but I am making myself happy with each little improvement.
Per Linda:
Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 22nd, 2024, is “mood.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
This was my prompt. Yay! I wanted a good word that offered lots of ways to go. But nothing came to mind. So I went to a word generator. I dismissed at least a dozen words because I wasn’t in the mood. Then suddenly, MOOD came up. What are the chances?
I’ve wanted to get over here and write this jot all day, but I was in the middle of tinking a sock project and then restarting, messing up then re-tinking the project again. As much as my mood was grumpily redoing the same thing over and over, I found my need to make it look good overcame the grump.
When we were talking about despair the other day, I talked about a game that proved a lazy streak in that the grump shows up when I have to click out of the scene and many scenes back. I decided to play the game and see if I could overcome that tendency. I made myself click in and out of scenes just out of curiosity. It worked. By the time I got to the big clicky one, I was ready to do it without even the slightest feeling of grump. So mind over mood this time.
I know that happens with my knitting. I can remember long ago nearly feeling the need for suicide if I had to tear out my work. Maybe it is because I am retired, and I have all the time in the world to get it right, but I don’t go dark. In fact, I kind of love that flutter sound of frogging, tearing the whole project up, and starting over. I tell myself now I start new, and I have all this yarn to play with that was in the project before. Tinking (knitting backward) isn’t quite as much fun, especially the finer sock yarns on the thin needles, my eyes get crossed and feel like they might stay that way. But when I overcome the grump, I am always happy I spent the day figuring out the problem.
This may not seem such a revelation to some. But for me, it has been a lifelong issue. How do I motivate myself on the bigger projects? I am still looking at a box of stuff to go through. I know that I will be happier when that ‘real estate’ of the house is open for something other than the box of stuff. But I need a better psychological mood fix to get the job done. My inner child is causing so much grump. How do I find the right mood?
~~~
Thank you all for your many ways of using this word. There were several that were really fun. Did you see Ghostmmnc‘s take with the mood ring and the mood ears? I started my day reading that and laughing at the ears.
My friend, Yvensong, gave an idea of where the mood magic goes.
I would put more of them here but the clock tells me I need to post NOW!
Darswords 
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