Category: Blogging


Just Jot It January — Busy


I’m Busy

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I used to be busy. In my head, it felt like the buzzing busy signal we used to get before call waiting. When we were officially retired our busy looked like the above phone screenshot. It was fun to connect with family and friends and make new friends. It was fun to learn new things. Heck, I learn a lot about loom-knitting, felting, polymer clay molding, chair yoga. Gosh, there is no end to what you can learn on the internet.

But body issues crept in and brain issues. Yes, I am afraid that after losing both of my grandmothers from Alzheimer’s, my brain may be getting more than old. Eye-tracking makes a lot of reading, even on the internet, nearly impossible. It makes playing the piano nearly impossible. But I’m finding ways to do the things, all the things, differently. (Kindle text-to-speech, Audible, for instance).

I start to feel guilty about how I spend my time. How I don’t do the things everyone else is doing. I, especially, feel the guilt while playing games.

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Okay, maybe not that game. More like slower, calmer versions of Tetris-like games or wordy games, or hidden objects. Mixed in with bingeing shows, writing/editing my books, reading books, knitting. Still, it felt I should be busy doing other things, that my body can’t.

Today I read this:

9 Ways to Keep Aging Brain Smart Check out #3! So these are helping my brain stay alive. Yay! Not worthless playing for no reason.

And since watching Everwood, I am looking forward to more of this:

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I figure if I don’t try to start where I left off but go back to the bigger staves and letting my memory of the easier pieces help me relax and enjoy the stuff again.

Per Linda:

Today’s prompt comes to us compliments of Saumya. Thank you so much, Saumya! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 26th, 2020, is “busy.” Use the word “busy” any way you’d like. Enjoy!


 

 

Per Linda:

Your prompt for #JusJoJan and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “last call.” Talk about the enterprise (sales or service) conducted by the last phone call you received from a business you’re not associated with (i.e. your workplace), or talk about that phone conversation itself. Have fun!

 

Okay. I can’t fully join in the prompt. I hate the phone. I think I have said this elsewhere on the blog. If it comes to calling someone, even people I love, I get shaky and sweaty. I don’t understand it. I was the teen that had a mile-long wire attached to my phone, and an even longer coiled wire attached to the receiver. I could wander anywhere in the house and out on the porches outside.  I could be on the phone for hours. We could chatter on and on.

Fast forward half a century and I can’t make service calls. If it is an important call I have my husband do the talking. He has one of those deep in-charge voices that gets the job done and doesn’t seem to have the throw-the-phone-across-the-room syndrome.

On the other hand, I love meeting with people I love on FaceBook IMs or Skype. Especially now that you can talk to a couple people at a time. I love seeing the faces and the environment my loved-ones are in. It is the next best thing to being there. That being impossible due to weather and finances.

My last video call was with my friends. Before one of them had a heart attack and went to the hospital. Stents were inserted and my friend is home, thank all that is good. Gosh, if I lived there I would have been able to be moral support. I remember seeing my friends’ faces on that last call and feeling my eyes well up with love for both of them. I love our calls.

When my friend got home from the hospital, she found a key from one of her sisters. It was a key to the TARDIS. Gosh, do I wish we had one to go back and forth in time and space and seeing who you want when you want and when you need to.

Anyone want to join on a flight with me on this ‘last call’ phone booth?

 

Just Jot It January — Change


Change is inevitable.

Too bad this isn’t One-Liner Wednesday. I could let it go at that.  Still, it is Just Jot It January and anything goes. But I feel I would be cheating for me to let it go at that.

Before children and for twenty years my then-husband worked for the state of California. We moved all over the state. I enjoyed that kind of adventure. Heading into a new city and learning my way around. Meeting new friends, and getting to know me in ways I might not have had I stayed in one place all my life. I missed the old friends of my birth city, the place I grew up, and my extended family. I REALLY missed all of them There was never enough time to visit everyone when we came home. But he was my husband, and then my children’s father. His job kept us moving.

By the third pregnancy we ended up in this delightful desert:

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This is Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert. Offsprings three and four were born there and we stayed about seventeen years. Though we stayed in the same place most of that time, raising four meant that everything was changing every day. No time for boring. We did move two more times in that town.

But then came divorce and raising four mostly alone. As the oldest were ready to graduate I figured they needed the big city and university areas and jobs. More change. But there was a beach.

Before you know it empty nest hit. Talk about change! That was and is hard for me. My new hubby and I moved to this desert. It reminds me of the Antelope Valley without the Joshua Trees. I miss those trees!  I miss most of my kids. (One has returned as they do, you know?) And the friends I left behind.  All their lives are changing, too.

I have new regrets being here as a friend was in the hospital and I knew I couldn’t go be with her. As we are aging more things are going weird, ya know?

Weather and its changes –yeah, no snow right now. Buds on trees thinking it’s spring. But it is only January!

So this was a meander around in my thoughts. But the ideas just pop around thinking about change.

Per Linda:

Today’s prompt comes to us compliments of Wendy. Thank you so much, Wendy! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 24th, 2020, is “change.” Use the word “change” any way you’d like. Enjoy!


Janet gave us our prompt word for today. Thanks so much, Janet! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!.

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 23rd, 2020, is “drive.” Use the word “drive” any way you’d like. Have fun!

Drive equals passion. Passion may include romance but in my life passion is what you live for. In my past this was my passion:

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Not so much the roses or that is it a keyboard. But piano, music, voice. I felt most alive when in that element. As with reading my tracking has made reading music very difficult and headache-inducing. But I have found that my passions have a good shift control in that they can be redirected.

A lifetime passion has been the beach. Though I haven’t been for a couple years I tucked the experience into my cellular memory. I can go to the beach in my dreams, in my meditations any time I need to smell, feel the spray, feel the heat of the sand, hear the waves, envision myself walking or dancing at the beach or swimming in the surf.

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But every day, this is what drives me:

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I know to some this is boring. But during the time I am learning new stitches, feeling soft yarn, I can go to the beach or sing or think of my next story, or binge the next show.

Speaking of which, this is the show I’m bingeing now:

I’m watching it on Hulu. If you want to watch you have to be quick as it is leaving Hulu soon. It is sweet and fun to get to know the characters. A couple of the main characters just got their driver’s license. There. I managed to use a version of the word one more time!


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I wish good health to all my friends!

 

Just Jot It January and One-Liner Wednesday are brought to us by Linda G. Hill.

 


Tuesday is here, and it’s time for the 21st prompt for Just Jot it January 2020, brought to us by Cheryl. Much appreciation, Cheryl! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!.

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 21st, 2020, is “scraggly.” Use the word “scraggly” any way you’d like. Have fun!

 

Memory is a funny thing. Especially when you have to remember 65 years ago or more. So I saw the word Scraggly and I thought of the Golden Book. I knew I had it. Nope.

I loved those books. My favorite, though, was

So scraggly didn’t get put into the thought. But if you look at that puppy, I wonder if Kali looked like this cutie when she was a pup.

Nope. She not scraggly. But the dark ears and the spot on her back looks like that puppy. She’s anything but pokey. Though, with her being equal years to me, dog years, she’s a lot slower than she used to be. It kind of makes me sad. But I couldn’t keep up with her before. Now it’s sort of evening out.

Okay. None of that has to do with scraggly. And I will show you no pictures of what I consider the proof of the word. My hair and the weeds outside when the snow isn’t covering them. I can’t do much about the weeds but I think I will try to cut my hair again soon. Don’t you hate it when it tickles your eyes and ears and makes you think bugs are crawling? Thank goodness for winter and dormant bugs! And snow!

Just Jot It January — Humor


Per Linda:

Today’s prompt comes to us compliments of Sadje. Thank you so much, Sadje! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!.

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 20th, 2020, is “humor.” Use the word “humor” any way you’d like. Enjoy!

`Well, Kali won’t get off my lap. She takes her side of my chair, my leg, seriously. She tried to write something on the blog today, but I discouraged her.  She gave me the look that seems to say, “You have no sense of humor!”

I trust her as she makes me laugh every day. She knows humor!

 


 

 

Per Linda:

It’s Sunday, and time for the 19th prompt for Just Jot it January 2020, brought to us by Jim. Thank you so much, Jim! Please be sure to visit his blog to read his post and say hello. And follow him while you’re there!.

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 19th, 2020, is “gobbledygook.” Use the word “gobbledygook” any way you’d like. Have fun!

Is it just me, or are the prompts harder this year? Last year I felt a bit of inspiration with each prompt. This year my brain comes up with gobbledygook. Thank goodness in that that is exactly what I needed tonight.

We are now bingeing on Anne With An E and loving it far more than I thought I would. I kept telling myself that I was waiting until I read the books. And I obviously want to read it for when I went to see if I have it in my kindle or audible library I found I had four different versions of the complete set of books.

Though I have enjoyed taking German and Spanish on Duolingo for a few years now, the subtitles of French that show up on Anne With An E do look like gobbledygook to me. I tried to take that language, too, but taking more than one language is probably unwise. But I never can decide at which language I want to excel in.

Well, there you go, I did think of something to discuss! Here’s the Anne With An E trailer.


Per Linda:

Today’s is the 17th prompt for Just Jot it January 2020, and it’s brought to us by MB. Thank you so much, MB! Please be sure to visit her blog to read her post and say hello. And follow her while you’re there!.

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 17th, 2020, is “jade.” Use the word “jade” any way you’d like. Have fun!

The only thing that I can come up with for the prompt word ‘Jade’ is actually how jaded I feel about what is going on in the world and how divided we all are and how we all seem to get stuck in kindergarten name-calling.  And the flippancy of talking-points, cliches of oneliners that seem to prove one-up-manship. My biggest gripe lately is, “Getting ahead of your skies.” Really? Because cart before the horse is cliche? Okay, we don’t use horses and carts as much anymore. But I can’t imagine what happens if a person gets ahead of their skies!

Anyway, these oneliners are used as power points. Whichever side says the best one wins. Pow! Take that? Talking is cliche. Liking each other is soft. And if you listen to all of this a lot you start thinking about pre-school or kindergarten. I start yelling at my TV: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. What you say is what you are! Yeah. Jaded.

What isn’t jade is the latest slipper sock. Soft Red comfort. I feel better talking about this sweetie anyway:

Blue, 24-peg Knifty Knitter loom. Folded up cuff in e-wrap. Mostly flat-knit stitch. I tried to do toe-up but the Kitchener cast-on doesn’t work very well with this home-spun type yarn. By the way, the color is much redder than the picture shows. I’ll probably finish the second sock tomorrow as it works up very fast.


Per Linda:

Our prompt today comes from Dan. Thank you, Dan! Make sure you visit his blog to read his post and say hello. And follow him while you’re there, if you aren’t already!

Your prompt for JusJoJan January 16th, 2020, is “experience.” Use the word “experience” any way you’d like. Enjoy!

A rollercoaster experience in your youth is the most delightful ride. But when you are arthritic the above rollercoaster is agony. I was going along quite well, knitting some soft slipper socks and enjoying recorded programs we missed while bingeing Gilmore Girls (review to come later–loved it, by the way). Suddenly my body is singing Them Bones, Them Bones. You never realize how them bones connect until that barometric pressure shouts, “Buckle those seat belts!”

The snow is beautiful. The humidity is keeping us warmer than without. In other words, low thirties, high twenties, rather than the teens or below. My laundry got done. So lots to be happy about. But I might not be able to stay in the living room. Whoever thought a recliner could hurt so much? And who wants to go to bed at 7PM? Not to sleep. But to sit on the bed in half lotus as that is what feels best. I can still knit, read, watch shows, fold laundry but I don’t feel as mobile as I do when out in the living room.

Two hours ago I would have written a far different blog. But, just keeping the blog an honest and personal experience. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a couple hours. That makes me lucky. Others have to continue in whatever pain they are in. Mine will lessen. In my experience, enough distraction and a couple Advil will make it all tolerable.

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