Oddball Share

Melanie has plucked some questions from the weird zone and offered them to us this week in a crazy bouquet. 💐

1. Is cereal soup? Why or why not?

Cereal is not soup, whether either is hot or cold. Soup is a liquid, while cereal is a solid. Some cereals can become liquidy if you add milk or water, but grain itself is not a liquid.

2. What are some interesting ways to answer everyday questions like “how’s it going” or “what do you do”?

How’s it going? It’s gone! What do you do? Depends on the price…

3. What was your favorite toy growing up?

I loved Super Spirograph, puzzles, and Barbies. Caveat: I liked the Barbies of yesteryear when you had a few dolls and the fun was buying new outfits and accessories for them. Today, it’s not like that. Dolls come prepackaged to a theme, with everything included. You buy a new doll/package for a new theme. It takes away from creativity. I used to improvise stuff for Barbie scenes, crochet rugs for her house, find teeny play pets, etc. This is the Barbie from the year I was born. Find yours!

3. If you have a pet, and you could ask it three questions, what would you ask?

Why are you so loud? Why do you have to chase the other kitty until she swats you? Why don’t you bury your poop?

Attitude of Gratitude Section (Always Optional)

What’s one simple thing society at large could do to improve our world?

WEAR A MASK! 😷

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

I Feel Pretty!

Carol Anne @ Therapy Bits has nominated me for a Beautiful Blogger Award! Thank you, Carol Anne. 🌹

The idea is to list 7 random things about me, and then nominate 7 more bloggers. I will do the list, but I am not nominating anyone. Yer all beautiful! ❤️

1. I have not only already bought my holiday gifts, but also I wrapped them yesterday.

2. Yesterday I bought some wrapping paper, and mistakenly left it in my grocery cart as I tried to dodge the rain. ☔️

3. But I already had paper in that color at home anyway! 🤣

4. The shirts/sweaters and pants in my closet are organized by color, but my socks are every which way.

5. To celebrate yesterday, my roomie and I roasted a ton of veggies. Woo! Party time!

6. I have been doing new exercises to help my back pain, and these are called “pigeon poses.”

7. I discovered last night that I can clean my laptop screen perfectly with the soft eyeglass cloth I got at Costco. Yay!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, my friends!

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

November Share

Melanie has a new set of questions for us this week…

1. Which meal is your favorite: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Dessert!

2. Who do you admire most in the world?

My daughters ~ they’re awesome! 💖💖

3. With the obvious restrictions in place, what do you regret not doing in the last year?

I had to cancel my trip to NorCal to visit my daughter. I also had to cancel a fun trip to Las Vegas with friends. All game nights and restaurant type get-togethers have also been canceled, so I’ve just been sitting at home…

4. Feel free to share something you’re grateful for.

I did get to see my LA daughter yesterday and I made unicorn cupcakes with my little granddaughter. This also counts as my smile for the week!

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Striking…

…a happy medium is supposed to be a good thing (but make sure she doesn’t sic an evil spirit on you).

I’ve also read that striking a mildly unhappy compromise is better than one person getting their own way and the other being miserable even if the idea is that next time you switch (yeah right). Mostly I give in or give up and walk away. I don’t like to argue and I don’t like trolling. People used to troll me over being vegetarian/vegan, not that I ever was, at least not for any appreciable length of time. Back when I ate steak, I’d get mine medium rare. It’s not that I have a rule about not eating steak these days, but steak eating simply doesn’t happen. I don’t want to cook one and I no longer go to restaurants. So, by default, no steak. I think I’m better off eating very little meat anyway.

Generally, I wear a size small but sometimes a medium for certain items. I don’t like tight clothing. Plus, if I’m ordering a sweater, I want it roomy enough to wear a tee shirt underneath. Yes, even in SoCal ~ it can get into the 40s sometimes. Brrrr! My shoes are “B,” which is medium/average, though sometimes they’re a bit loose. Yet, I need room for socks because brrrr. I almost always wear socks to work because it’s cold in offices.

Medium is a website that contains fiction, essays, etc. I subscribed for a month or so and then quit. The problem was if I “liked” something, they’d only show me more things like that. But the whole point of being there was to “like” articles (by sending applause). I tried changing my interests, but no. They decided I could only see relationship related articles. Ugh! One of my friends writes for them and encourages me to try too. But I have enough going on without wasting time plopping my writing into more venues where it won’t make money. Pffft! 😜

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Images from Bitmoji

Truthful Tuesday Holidays

PCGuyIV continues his series by asking if the pandemic has altered our Thanksgiving or Christmas plans. 🎄

For the last few years, I’ve been flying up to NorCal to spend Thanksgiving with my eldest and her husband. This year, I won’t fly. I have a bunch of credit with Southwest for trips I didn’t take in the Spring, and they’ll remain unused. May end up losing them. I am planning to drive up there this year, which will be a giant pain, but worth it to see them. It’s about a six hour trip each way, fastest route, maybe more if there’s a traffic jam. I could go the scenic route, which adds at least an hour, but it’s so pretty along the coast that I might do it coming back.

Being a Jewish atheist, I don’t celebrate Christmas, though I enjoy seeing the lights and nomming up cookies, not to mention Reese’s peanut butter trees. I never had much interest in turning Chanukah into Christmas lite, so I’ll probably ignore most of the season as usual, except for giving gifts to my grandchildren.

Regarding the plague. I know some are tired of wearing masks, distancing, etc, but for me… I’m doubling down on all that. The Rose Garden fiasco says to me: be more careful, not less. I especially don’t want to pass this terrible bug to my family.

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

The Monday Peeve 56

Smiles and positive posts are all well and good, but sometimes I need to vent a bit. How about you? That’s what The Monday Peeve is all about, a chance to blow off a little steam at the beginning of the week, so then we can go merrily on our way once again (hah). I’ll pick a topic that’s on my mind, but you can vent about whatever you please, here in comments or on your own blog. Grab the photo, use the TMP tag, link back to me (or not), and Bob’s yer uncle. I do reserve the right to delete any links that offend my delicate sensibilities. So far, none have, but it could happen. I have feelings!

My peeve today is about masks and safety. What the hell is wrong with people that they REFUSE TO WEAR A MASK?!?!! I’m not talking about the idiots in the Rose Garden because they apparently believed that God was watching out for them or something. I’m talking about ordinary people going about their public biz. Where I live, stores and offices REQUIRE masks to walk in the door. The management team in our office building has sent repeated memos about the necessity of face coverings and there are signs all over the place. Yet there are still people walking around without masks. It’s maddening! 😱

Maybe things will change this week after the Rose Garden fiasco. Anyone can get infected. ANYONE. Protect yourself, your loved ones, your friends and coworkers, and your community by wearing a mask in public… why is this controversial? I don’t understand why people have to be such jerks. 🙁

Oh, any comments about conspiracies, breathing in your own air, or other wackadoodlery will be DELETED. 😡

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Image altered from the original at Pixabay

FPQ89: Karma Chameleon

Fandango provocatively asks…

Do you believe in karma (or a similar “reap what you sow” notion)? Why or why not?

I have a karma-ish belief. It’s more of the reap/sow Christian idea than the Eastern wheel/reincarnation structure. We can observe that actions have consequences, and some of the consequences take years to be fully realized. This isn’t a woo belief; it’s just logic.

Some people seem to lie in wait for karma to “strike” those they dislike, but it’s not always going to be observable. You’re not going to see every ruthless, selfish, greedy person crashing publicly to a terrible end. But many do suffer, which is why they’re so nasty. Pain, whether physical or emotional, can make people act badly toward others. We can infer their suffering by their behavior.

Perhaps more importantly, large-scale results occur after groups of people behave in a similar way. Again, they may take years to actualize, and even then are open to our interpretation. Look at this plague, forex, and how it’s affecting peeps/culture. We certainly haven’t been respecting the earth much lately, and I’m not the only one who “joked” last year that Mother Nature finds ways to rid herself of vast numbers of pesky humans from time to time….

However much we fantasize about karma as a vengeful goddess who smites our enemies, though, it mostly doesn’t work that way. But we can console ourselves that bad people who hurt others/animals often do get hurt at some point as a result of their own behavior. Karma however is more of a long game, group punishment idea (to me). We’re all going to suffer as the logical results take shape from the actions of a powerful few…

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Truthful Tuesday Halloween

PCGuyIV continues his series by asking us if we think Halloween should be “canceled” this year because of the plague, and more specifically if people should trick-or-treat.

I don’t think Halloween should be canceled. People can dress up, take pics, have parties over Zoom, and post to social media. Isn’t the whole point of Halloween (for adults) to end up with sexy and/or stupid photos to stick on Instagram or wherever? That can be done safely this year… just don’t get together in person.

Regarding trick-or-treating… that can be done safely. Dress up and wear masks. Hang with your “pod” only and stay 6 feet away from everyone else. People can put their candy outside, watch the cute kids from the window, and wave. As far as teenagers taking all the candy, just put it away at 8pm. The little kids should be done by then anyway.

I don’t see why Halloween should be dumped at all. It’s pretty easy to make a few changes and stay safer. 🎃

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Truthful Tuesday Food

PCGuyIV has some delicious questions for us today…

• Are you an adventurous eater, or do you prefer to play it safe when you’re feeling peckish?
• Do you prefer dining in or dining out?
• When you dine in, who does the cooking?
• When you dine out, do you tend to stick to places you know, or do you look for new places to try?

1. I’m not super adventurous. The edgiest thing I tried was raw fish back in 1987. I really liked it, and sushi/sashimi became one of my favorite dishes until I began reading so many articles about parasites (that was the biggest reason I waited so long to try it in the first place, but then was persuaded it’s safe here). However, in 2016 a poke bowl made me sick for a month, so I haven’t had any raw fish since. Mostly, I eat the same things, or slight variations, day after day.

2. I like eating at home, though it’s nice to occasionally have dinner out with people (not so much during a plague). The issue with restaurant food is that it’s oversalted and otherwise unhealthful. The portions are gigantic, so even if I don’t finish something salty and unhealthful, I still end up eating too much of it. 🙁

3. Who cooks? This guy…

I wouldn’t call what I do “cooking” these days. I’ll make a salad or sandwich, maybe an omelet or a grilled cheese. I’ll nuke a veggie burger or some other frozen goodie. When I was still going to friend-events, sometimes I’d bake a cake or some cookies.

4. If it were up to me, I’d stick to places I know and like, but others sometimes want to try new restaurants. Generally, I will order something familiar even at a new place. I do want to try a new restaurant I saw the other day called Plant Power. It’s all veggie fast food, mostly burgers. Mmm.. 😋

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

FPQ87: Pandemic Pondering

Today Fandango provocatively asks…

Having been subjected to stay at home restrictions (to one degree or another) over the past six months, would you say that the quarantine has made you a better person? If so, in what ways? If not, why not?

Yes, I do think it has made me a better person regarding doing things for others. In the past, I viewed dangers as something only to worry about for myself (and immediate family), but now I think more about the wider implications of my actions. Let’s take mask wearing. I hate wearing a mask. Just gonna say it straight up. I find them super uncomfortable and annoying. In the past, I might have worn one to protect myself, but now I wear one for that reason and also because I don’t want to infect others, should I catch The Thing and not be symptomatic for a few days or so.

I’ve also learned that I’m not as much of a loner as I thought. While I have a higher tolerance for loneliness than most people I know, it’s not infinite. After a while, I really crave in-person conversation. And zooming is not a good substitute for me. It’s okay for playing games at times, but it doesn’t make me feel I’ve been with people. Kinda like cybersex back in the day…

Perhaps it’s made me a worse person too though, in that I have less tolerance for some beliefs. Or maybe that’s better! I used to be pretty accepting of quirky ideas, but now I’m not. But maybe it’s time I quit thinking that every lunatic notion is “interesting.” We’ll leave it at that.

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.