Category: Gratitude


NaNo Update :-(


I had a marvelous Thanksgiving. I hope you did, too. As often as I have enjoyed Zoom calls, today I set one up. It worked but I felt silly as I didn’t find the automated thing to send everyone. I sent out a text message typing out the number and finally figuring out where the password was. Oh, well, like I said it worked. We got to talk to all our grown kids today. I was exceptionally surprised to wake up to an FB IM from my son! ❤ 

I even got to chat with my friends and that was fun, too.

Oh, and my son foot the bill, and my husband picked up the Thanksgiving Pizzas. Yum! No one slaved over a meal I never was fond of. And there is always pizza left for breakfast tomorrow morning.

.

SO all that means that I didn’t get my words for today. I think this is the first Thanksgiving that I didn’t. Even when we’ve gotten together at each other’s homes I’d bring my laptop and type while visiting. Oh, well, I do have a storyline that is making me happy to pursue. So only added 644 words making my total to date 42,435. I need 907 to make the required 43,342. I really do far more math during NaNo than the whole rest of the year combined!

Anyway, I am so sleepy I can’t write another word.


 

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “the last thing you put in your fridge.” Start your post with the last thing you put in your fridge. Let your mind wander from there. Enjoy!

The last thing I put in my fridge was the ranch dressing that fell out because the last person who put it in didn’t make sure it was in there securely. I wanted to complain, but I am very grateful for a full fridge. We have been blessed this month with a little extra on our cards, and so when we got the boxes, the cabinets and fridge are full. In my life, that has hardly ever been the case. Not that I have ever been hungry. But just enough that I can find what I need in the fridge is the usual scene. I am so glad my husband is starting to like my vegetarian ways. Yes, he eats some meat but very seldom. My son does the same thing buying the occasional tofu meal. He loves Kimchi. I tried to cook it a lot once I learned about it. I make the rice and veggies on the side and make sure to fry the tofu to crispie-ish. The trouble with the lockdown is that we don’t get into town to find the Kimchi. I think I will try to order some on Amazon.

Yay! Got me some Kimchi, noodles, a cooker, and tofu coming. My mouth is drooling!

Okay, now for the NaNo word count: 35,167, still barely above the goal of 35,007 but, I’m happy. I like how the story is going. Not sure I should share until I am more sure where it is going. I’m having fun. That’s all that counts.

I didn’t have a finished product yesterday for Finished Friday. I had one slipper sock done, and while chatting with my friends, I nearly finished the other. Boom! Done today!

And I have the next pair toed and ready to make the next pair.

Wow! It’s Friday!


Where did this week go? Seems like just yesterday was Sunday. Today was actually the first day we had blue skies. It is been so smokey from the fires in California and Oregon.

Since my computer broke down I’ve been doing everything on the phone or on my Kindle Fire. It is much harder to blog and certainly harder to put in pictures or make something interesting. But we’re working on getting a laptop working for me again. I’m trying to get ready for NaNo and all kinds of things like that so–

I just wanted to stop in and say everybody’s fine here and I hope everybody out there is doing okay. Stay safe and try to find breathable air.

Looking out my window at a cloudy clear day, very little smoke.

Thankful Thursday


A couple people have asked how we are doing. So far we are okay in our little Oregon town. But the news of nearby towns is tragic. My son is getting well. My other son broke his pinky toe in solidarity. I’m kidding. It is just a coincidence. But he’s okay. We’re okay. It is 2020 so keeping good thoughts for all of us, all of you, too!


A Scrubby!

I used 32 pegs of a KB Hers of a His and Hers Sock kit. The yarn is Scrubby Cotton. And it hurts and is hard to purl with. Since the pattern calls for one-row knit and one-row purl. that second row of each part of the garter stitch took me forever! And it hurt from pulling and pushing the little texture knots through the former stitch. The knit rows were easy-peasy. This took me a day and a half. Partly because I had to frog it due to the first loom, the wood with metal pegs sock loom, I think it is a KB also. I tried to pull the stitches onto a circular needle but the loom crunched apart in my hands so I just frogged the project. My brother was able to fix the broken loom back to new. But meanwhile, I just grabbed the Hers loom and started again.

If I had attempted this pattern by crocheting I think it would have been finished in an hour. Maybe it was the yarn and I should try it with the yarn recommended in Kristen’s tutorial. I think I’ll go order some of that when I get finished with this report. Here’s the Youtube tutorial again. I know! You watch this while I do a dish or two so I can report how it does its job.

Did you enjoy it? Yeah. I know. I was on my own doing those dishes. Oh, well. Oh, yeah. The dishrag easily did the job my scrubby sponge could. So there’s that. By the way, GoodKnitKisses has a left-handed tutorial, too.

I still have my craft project taking up the whole coffee table. Oh well, I think the family is used to me. They all have places to call their own. I lost my hobby room when my son moved in. So if anyone has a complaint… No one does. They are pretty mellow guys with their own hobbies so…

Speaking of guys, As of today, I have been married to this terrific man for 17 years. We’ve been together as of the fourth of July 25 years. Go us!!!

Oh, and it was a Monday because the Easy Writers group Zoomed. I do enjoy getting with this group of ladies. Each seems to have unique personalities and styles. Anyway, that answers the What Day Is It Anyway question. #WDIIA

Happy Monday

and

 


Half-Birthday Beach Parties Are The Best!

That’s the One-Liner for Wednesday answering the #What Day Is It Anyway? question. Except the Half-birthday was two days ago. So here’s how it happened:

My friend sent out little boxes to those who attended. And she sent the Zoom address to get us to the party.

The box:

An alligator squirt gun, a shell-shaped soap, a Booktastic trivia card, a baggie of wipers, a postcard from the beach, and a beach ball. I immediately blew up the ball.

Sorry for the quality it is a picture of a picture, and so on, and so on.

So despite the lock-down, lack of money, Weather that tries not to look like June, my Half-Birthday Virtual Zooming  Beach Party was a success! I have fun friends!

 


Let the Fanfare Begin

Do you remember when you were young and someone asked you how old you were? And you’d square your shoulders and tell them your age plus a half or three quarters or even larger fraction according to how much math had been imparted to your brain. Then somewhere mid-thirties or forties that all started changing. I, for one, reversed the numbers to reflect a smaller number. 41 became 14, 52 became 25. At one point that became useless. Face it. When that happens you have reached maturity. Scratch that, You’re old. Fantastic. I was hiding from my actual age the whole time I’ve been alive. Never happy with the moment wanting to be older or younger. I would have loved to be 33 forever. Mature enough to make my own decisions and young enough to do everything I ever wanted to do. At that age, I could even play in the park without feeling silly as my kids needed the accompanying adult on the slide and the swings. Then I could enjoy a drink and pretend to be a full adult.

Pixabay.com

Well, here I am at 07 and thinking maybe I should be the fan of the half or three-quarter again. Maybe if the world didn’t have a pandemic and other apocalyptic things like murder wasps, I wouldn’t embrace this. But for those of us with birthdays in December, which has never been a great month for those who were born under its cold, crazy, Christmasy times, the fact may be that many of us might not be here for our birthdays. If and when we do, all the better to show we fancy every moment of life.

So today I attended a half birthday Zoom party. There were elements of fantasy as this was with a cosplay bunch of friends. I could have sworn one of the ladies had elf ears. Anyway, I thought this idea was fun and look forward to my half birthday in a few days. We have life. Let’s celebrate it. even if only on Zoom with friends and family. It may be we are closer to loved ones now than ever before as we need to keep in touch often. Wouldn’t it be great if we could measure our lives in Love? Is Rent playing in my head again? Let me share the earworm. (One of my favorite songs of all time!)

Each second should have always been this precious. We should have never put aside our elders, how quickly we become one! As we try to save lives let’s make sure to pull it in and let it sit with us. Before COVID19 a car accident or cancer could rob us of a loved one but it was so seldom that we didn’t bring it in until it was too late. We’ve been given a bit of a gift to look at saving and loving our lives and loving the lives of others.

Half-Birthday? I’m a fan. I might even enjoy a three-quarter Birthday! Hey, remember being a newlywed? We got so sappy! Two-week anniversaries were fun! Let’s get back to that kind of excitement. Life is a gift. We can still be careful and distance and hand-wash, AND love life!

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “fan.” Use it by itself or find a word that starts or ends with it. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

#WDIIA


 

This is both a greeting to you and an assessment of my day. All quarrels of the past were mended, and hilarity ensued. I wonder if anyone has done a study of the lockdown process and where the highs and lows are. How many arguments happen and how did the people survive, not killing each other, and these are the people we love and would never want bad things to happen. I’m sure if lockdown were alone or with roommates, one doesn’t like much it could get scary!

 

Anyway, this #What Day Is It Anyway and #AtoZChallenge is brought to us by the letter:

Before I get too far, I need to say that once again, it is very close to midnight, so I hope I can get done before I lose my daily blogging record. And that is #What Time Is It Anyway. But Hey! I had a

And I used it in my #CampNaNo Writing today as I will assign it to one of the characters or a couple of them. What if we all write down what we don’t want to be left unfinished, or unsaid? Since the virus is hitting closer and closer as we know, more and more people who have it or have recovered from it or sadly didn’t get to finish with the rest of us. I made a list that was quite long but

At the top of my list is I would hate to not finish my daughter and her boyfriend’s socks.

My CampNano seems second for now. The characters are holding their own.

There are letters to write

People I want to see again and give GREAT BIG HUGS to

The list went on and on. The more I thought of it.

I don’t know if it will work. It has in movies. The main character can’t die because there is just too much for them to do.

And speaking of CampNaNo:

I wrote 2,248 today without a problem. The story is taking off. The word-count is now 10,076. It should be 11,669. So close, but if I can pull off another day like today, I will get caught up. Yay! Me!

Shoot it is after midnight. I hope I didn’t lose the daily streak.

Anyway, a quick recap of my CampNaNo story Pandemapolypse. So, of course, write what you know. There is a pandemic. My characters have learned via a dragon that is in all my Haven books, Enelrad came to help us all. She chose these characters because they have this innate ability to communicate with each other. How many of you have friends or family members so close that you talk alike, you pick up the phone at the same time, you can sense their troubles and are ‘Johnny on the spot’ for them and they for you? Well, this band of mothers and daughters have this for their peers and maternal bonds. In fact, when the daughters were having their last camp/picnic/birthday party, and the dragon appears, the girls were so afraid, for only a moment, but it was enough for the mothers to drive up to save the daughters.

And the adventure starts. And there is a lab cave. And there are huge aquariums where one of the daughters learns to communicate with marine animals. And the biologist/microbiologist has discovered that she can communicate with the virus on the slide. What! Yes! Well, this virus has it’s own name for themselves: ZOTci. They are angry beings! One of the first things they do is call humans bigots. And I guess from their point of view that must be true. We, vegetarians, don’t eat meat. But we kill the virus whenever we can.

There is a lot to do to solve this issue, on the real-life timeline and in the story. I think I will have much more fun trying to see the world from a virus’s point of view than facing lockdown and hospital truths shouting at us all day every day.

Anyway, that’s the gist of it! So hopefully you are all snug in your beds and staying healthy or getting healthy, Stay safe. Find ways to be grateful.


Per prompt-maker Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “beside you.” Write about whatever is beside you when you read this prompt. Not when you sit down to write, but whatever is beside you right now. Take note of it if you think you might forget. Enjoy!

I noticed the prompt last night as I was turning off the computer.  As usual, my cell phone was beside me. I have a feeling this will be a common answer to the prompt. If we weren’t holding our phones close enough before this new craziness, we are now. We want to make sure our loved ones are safe, we want to stay updated on all the things going on around the world. It is a way of holding the world close. As close as a prayer. As close as an appendage.

Sure it is where we find the relief while playing a game or two as we wait for the next emergency we hope won’t come. The second-shoe-to-drop feeling that we’ve all been living during our two-week isolation. Hearing the bad news about the curve and checking to make sure it isn’t us. Knowing the numbers will probably get more personal. All that in one little tiny rectangular item. Not even as large as an envelope that our foreparents would have waited to receive to know how their loved ones were. Who knew an item a little over 5 inches could hold so much for us?

Pixabay.com

 


On Linda’s Page (prompter of What Day Is It Anyway?) she talked about not getting to sleep until the third hour. In comments, I mentioned how it isn’t fair that the senior hour for shopping is early mornings. That isn’t really fair and is assumptive of the rule-makers. (I do understand that the cleaning and shelving of products happen at night. Thank you shop-owners for being so kind. This is a life-long issue for me! A night owl by nature.) Though there must be seniors that are early birds, I would guess a lot of us fall into the tossing and turning and seeing holes in the ceiling and stars above, or mountains or monsters that are just clothes or bedding tossed on the corner chair or table–and those are the creative moments. Most of the tossing and turning is pain enhanced by what-ifs, worst-case scenarios, or guilts of what didn’t get done the day before, or that never-ending list of things that must be done tomorrow–which never get done. And we of the senior variety or high-riskers have the most to worry about.

And that leads me to the wake-up with a back story. It is a non-COVID19 story. <shock-face> One night a month or so ago I was rolling over in my sleep. I grabbed the blanket to cozy in. My hand felt crusty-gooeyness. Yuck! I was so sleepy I wanted to ignore it. But YUCK! I’m sure it was upchuck! So I got up and removed said blanket, washed my hands and donned another blanket with a note to myself to keep the cats off my bed. Yeah. That’s gonna happen!

Solution: I found an old pink blanket to put on top of my regular covers. My day starts with me waking because two cats are lying on my up facing side (I sleep on my side) while Kali is curled up near my tummy. I wake because I know that this cozyish moment could turn into World War III including teeth and claws if I don’t get ahead of the situation.

I get up. I yell, “Everyone out of the pool, now!” I do the fastest bedmaking because Teddy is impatient to get the special blanket. Which comes next. It is an old pink blanket. Though thin, it should protect a little against possible crusties. Teddy seems to smile at me and steps right on it and curls up with a sigh that says, ‘Finally!’

As the morning moves on one becomes two as Rosey joins him. These two can be the worst of enemies but it is obvious they like to be together.

 

 

In other news:

I love it when my nails get this long.

There are things you can do with nails that you can’t without. Like a good back-scratching. And they make my fat fingers look nicer. But regardless of the science that says nails stay cleaner when they are short, I tend to disagree. See how clean these sweeties are? When I have short nails, the free-edge gets blackish with dirty, greasy, grimey, crud. I use the brush and have to scrub harder. Without nails, there are things I can’t do with nails, like rub my face. It’ll be nice not to scratch my eyeballs! Though we are advised to keep them short during the pandemic, this is the stage I have to cut anyway–rebel much?–because they break down below the quick. That hurts! So bye, bye nails!

Guess what. I know it is Thursday because last night was Chicago Med, Fire, PD or the Josh Gates shows which are on at the same time so we watch them on the weekends.  I love C. Med. I like C. Fire. I tolerate C. P. D. I love all the Josh Gates shows. I will share the trailers in a moment. I just wanted to finish my thought, it is Thursday and we already took out the trash for tomorrow! Now the trailers.

 

I think of Josh as another of my sons, in fact, he looks and has similar humor to my step-son, so I love him! And I think the shows are very exciting while being educational.

I know. I just noticed this is two trailers from the same show. He has other shows but I didn’t want to wear you out with YouTubes–no, more like, I didn’t want to wear me out looking them all up. Sorry. <–I wanted to say, ‘My bad’ but I hate that phrase!

And now, for no particular reason, a picture of Kali. I think she wanted equal time with the cats starring on this one. Sorry that you had to see the (cleanish except for the cats’ scratchpad cardboard flakes) piddle pad and her ‘hide the biscuits’ (really dog treats not the other) towel. But hey, there’s Pictionary!

Gotta love that face!

😍😘🥰🤗

How is your day going? I hope you are all staying safe and well! Enjoy the close you can get or the internal reflections that can bring you peace, hope, and love. Whatcha cooking? Today we are having Lana Burritos.  Leftover beans and rice with smashed (pressure cooker) potatoes.

 

Pieces Of My Heart

"Words & Wonders - Where thoughts meet art

💫The Afterlove Voice💫 Justice For Liam ⚖

Justice, Channeling,Spiritual,Astrology,Truth- Seeker.

Amin Academy

Education, Information, Motivation

WhatIf.in.net - Alternate Realities

Where Curiosity Meets Creativity

Luso Loonie — Devin Meireles

Portuguese-Canadian Writing About This Portuguese Thing of Ours

UNDER THE WILL... OVER THE DRAMA...

Inheritance. Narcissism. Turf. Welcome to the family.

Selma

Finding the extra in the ordinary

Sip, Snack, See

A Blog About Food and Travels

Golu lodhi

I upload photos & videos Golu lodhi village pairakhedi

Hunza

Travel,Tourism, precious story "Now in hundreds of languages for you."

intricate cantrips

twisted yarns, unraveled

Introverted Growth

The Introvert's Roadmap to Self Discovery and Growth

Histopedia

story telling from history

KaustubhaReflections

Where ancient wisdom meets modern technology. Stories that illuminate the wonders of science, culture, and life — crafted with human creativity and a touch of AI magic.

Roads Lesser Traveled

Life is just down the road lesser traveled....

Enlarge my heart

In the Quiet Space of a Benedictine Heart: Seeking God in Every Moment