Holiday Share

Melanie has questions…

What’s your remedy for the Holiday blues?

I don’t get the holiday blues… I just get cold. Yep, even in Southern California. Due to a mix of meds, genetics, and lack of exercise, I am almost always freezing 🥶 to death. This is depressing because I sit around my apartment huddled in layers of blankets and feel too emotionally paralyzed to get up and move around, which would make me feel better. When I am forced to go out, I do okay, but it’s hard to move around much when you’re already bundled up. Thanks in advance for the advice I know is coming in comments… I’m sure I haven’t thought of any of it before. 🙄

Your favorite beverage (if it differs) during the holiday season?  If it doesn’t differ, just answer the ‘what’s your favorite beverage” part. 

I love eggnog, especially with booze, but it’s cold and alcohol triggers migraines. 😢 So, the next best drink is delicious hot black tea with orange spice and a dash of milk. This is my favorite drink all year long, btw.

This one has been asked before, but what’s your take on pumpkin spice?

Indifference. Don’t particularly care for it as a beverage, but in muffins it’s yummy… and pie with graham cracker crust! 🥧 I do like the scent of anything pumpkin or apple mixed with ginger/cinnamon/cloves. Not sure why everything is love/hate these days; there are loads of things I mildly like but don’t love, and others I prefer to pass up but won’t freak out about if they end up on my plate. Dial it down. Same goes for politics, music, movies, etc. Not everything has to be so extreme.

Is there is a person or god connected with your holiday? 

I am a Jewish atheist, so yes we have the sky guy novel… and no I don’t believe he is real. I am math/science all the way… those are my “faiths.” That doesn’t mean humans know everything or ever will; it just means I don’t feel the need to leap to supernatural explanations for stuff we haven’t been able to figure out (yet). And when it turns out we’ve been wrong about something, we can revise our ideas, unlike some religionists…

• Who are they and do you believe in them?

I don’t believe in any supernatural beings, though they are good material for poetry and fiction. I lump all gods, ghosts, genies, vampires, etc. in the same category. Once you admit one, why not all? Why a god and not a werewolf? 👹

That said, I find militant atheists irritating. It doesn’t bother me that peeps believe in the supernatural as long as they don’t try to convert me or tell me I’m “lesser than” or immoral or whatever. To each their own. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong and there is a god, or a bunch of ’em. But people telling me so won’t convince me. What would? My own direct experience. That’s right. I would need Mr. Big to appear and say hey his own self.

• If you do not believe in these people or gods, does the celebration/honoring of that being, bother you in any way (e.g., ignored, dismissed, angry, etc.)?

Only a few people I know celebrate the Jewish holidays. Mostly I see those around me celebrating Christmas, etc… I think there should be more of that. I love having days off work for other people’s holidays when I don’t have to do anything but laze around. I especially enjoy Christmas lights and cookies and sales, along with the fact that I’m not expected to cook a goose or buy anyone gifts.

Gratitude:

Share a song that you enjoy during this Winter season (whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, The Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa and so forth.

I adore this version of “Silent Night”…

~*~

Images from Bitmoji

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Pop pop fizz fizz…

I thought we had longevity, but our time together expired long ago. Why didn’t you tell me we were over? I didn’t even know! Guess I took you for granted, expecting to reach for you in the night when I needed you, but you wouldn’t have done it for me, would you? Not for years apparently. What a cruel way to find out, reading it like this as if I’d meant nothing to you at all…

~*~

Written for Sammi’s Scribbles

Images from Sammi and Paula

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon

One-Liner Wednesday

This is somewhat true for me. I’m still missing my mom 11 years on, and she was definitely someone I “had,” a huge part of my life, but otherwise… yeah. It’s pretty easy for me to dump material possessions as I downsize (again) for moving. But it was difficult for me to let the “soul mate” dream go. I’ve never had a soul mate, which may seem ironic for a romance writer, so when my 20-year marriage ended, I became more determined than ever to find this person. It took 5 years of increasingly frustrating and depressing situations for me to realize I had to let the dream go for my own mental and emotional health. I talk about this a lot because it helps me reinforce it to myself. I just today posted in comments to 2 blogs how much happier I am without the wings of this dream beating in my brain.

But it was a struggle to lug the thing to the trash bin and leave it there.

~*~

One-Liner Wednesday

Image found on Google

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

FPQ48: Like A Surgeon

Fandango provocatively asks…

“Do you believe the government of a country has a responsibility to provide universal, affordable (if not “free”) healthcare for its citizens? If you live in the United States, would you favor a Medicare for all/single-payer health plan? If you live outside of the U.S., does your government provide universal healthcare? If so, how do you feel about it? If not, what kind of healthcare coverage do you have?”

Okay, first, this type of healthcare is not “free” ~ nothing is free. It is paid for from the monies collected from taxes, as are all government programs, benefits, military spending, foreign aid, etc. I’m an American, btw. Rah. 🎉

Second, I don’t believe that what we have now is good. I don’t think that our health insurance should be tied to our jobs. I realize it’s a “tradition,” like turkey, and Americans hate giving up anything that’s traditional, but it makes no sense. We don’t get auto insurance through our employer, so why should our employer have info about our medical coverage/needs? Why are they involved at all? This is my “big thing.”

Third, relating to the above, when we leave a job or are an independent contractor, we’re usually stuck with some expensive medical insurance plan, since we must be doubly punished for not having that traditional paycheck. Yeah, that makes sense… our income has declined, so now we have to pay more for healthcare. The American Way. 🙄

Fourth, I used to be on board for single payer, but now I’m not so sure. Competition is healthy, though it doesn’t always make sense in the context of medical care, does it? If I need new tires, I can shop around, but if I break my leg, I kind of am at the mercy of the first hospital an ambulance dumps me off at. If they charge $5,000 or $25,000… welp, what can I do? Not to even mention what the ambulance charges…

So, to ramble back to my own argument that I just defeated… maybe competition isn’t the best thing for healthcare? There should possibly be some oversight and enforced limits. Who should be in charge of that? Our corrupt gobblement? Lol! 🤣

Fifth, Fandango was careful to use the word “residents” in his post, but I’m not PC and will go right ahead and use the word “citizens.” Yep, I do believe that whatever healthcare benefits we give out to those who can’t pay and don’t have insurance should be reserved for our own citizens. It would of course be lovely to give everyone medical care and housing and all the things, kumbaya, but as I said at first… none of that is actually “free.” Taxpayers pay for it all.

On the otter hand… it seems really wrong to pretend that our country as a whole doesn’t benefit greatly from the labor of the “residents” here illegally, who work for less than minimum wage and no benefits. There’s a reason why illegal immigration never ends and it’s because there are jobs waiting for these peeps… if there weren’t, they wouldn’t come. If someone gets sick after working in a meat-processing plant for 10 years so we can enjoy cheap wings while watching the big game… who should pay for his hospital stay?

See, no one has to argue with me in comments; I do it all here upfront. Just another service from Light Motifs and you don’t even have to buy me a coffee. ☕️

So, to sum up: I don’t have a fucking clue what we should do about healthcare in our screwed up country… and neither does anyone else, no matter how loudly they screech about it, nor how many trillions (trillions!) of dollars they want to throw at it. There ya go.

~*~

Image credit Fandango himself.

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon

One-Liner Wednesday

If you can’t grok this dishy 1961 transformational grammar, golden-ager, just lip-synch to some soul music, take a diazepam, and don’t call me in the morning.

^^^ That was my one line… bolded words courtesy of my birth year neologisms. You can find yours by entering your birth year at this link. Diazepam is Valium, if you didn’t know ~ a great invention, if I do say so myself. Yay science! 😍

Here are more neologisms from 1961, grouped in what I think is an interesting way…

-bionic, computer science, operating system

– chocoholic, fettuccine Alfredo, eating disorder

-gunnery sergeant, military-industrial complex, compassion fatigue

-rocks glass, mai tai, after-party

And my personal favorite… benign paroxysmal positional vertigo! Thanks for that one. 🙄

Written for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday

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©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Questions from Carol Anne

My lovely friend Carol Anne has given me some questions. They’re associated with her Liebster Award. Congrats on your award, Carol Anne, and thanks for thinking of me! 💖

My 11 questions to you my nominees are:

1. Can you swim?

I know the basics, but I’m not a strong swimmer, and frankly I prefer to stay on land and gaze out at the beautiful waves.

2. Pepsi or coke?

Coke, please.

3. Snail mail or email?

Email is less wasteful.

4. Do you enjoy traveling?

No. Shocking, I realize. Everyone loves to travel, right? Well, I do enjoy experiencing new sights, attractions, nature, etc., but the expense and inconvenience make it a net negative for me. Travel is very costly unless you go by car, split the cost of gas, have people to put you up at your destination, yada. Or go camping, lol. Then there are all the migraine triggers for me that happen from noise, light, discomfort, etc. Also, there is my ongoing back/neck pain. Not to mention I don’t like leaving my kitty for more than a couple nights because I miss him too much! 🐱❤️

5. Snow or rain?

I’m from the East and honestly I miss the idea of snow but not the reality of it. Snow is beautiful and fun, if you don’t have to be anywhere and can bundle up and take a lovely walk. Rain can be romantic if you’re snuggled indoors with your sweetie, or a kitty and a good book, but again not if you have to drive in it. Since I’m in California, land of perpetual drought, I welcome any and all precipitation! Of course, we always get the “wrong” kind, in the “wrong” place, so they tell us the drought goes on…

6. What is one of your favourite quotes?

Life is short; eat dessert first. 🧁

7. Are you a glass half full or glass half empty sorta person?

Depends on the day.

8. What is your favourite flower?

Sunflower. Or tulips!🌷

9. If you could give your younger self some advice what would you say?

Go to Northwestern (in high school)! Stop dating insane men (in the 1980s). Buy tech stocks (in the 1990s)! Sell the tech stocks (before the crash). STOP DATING INSANE MEN. 🙄

10. If you had one superpower what would it be?

Repelling insane men.

11. Favourite book?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Tied for second place: Where I’m Calling From (short stories by Raymond Carver) and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (short stories by Haruki Murakami).

~*~

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

El Camino [review with spoilers]

I was super stoked for El Camino, the Breaking Bad movie. In fact, I rewatched BB in its entirety during the last few weeks, all 62 episodes, to prepare for the movie. God, that was one fantastic show, perhaps the best series ever written.

This review contains spoilers. Get out now! 👻

I watched El Camino last night and was disappointed, maybe because of all the Twitter hype. That happens. The actors were all great, of course, nothing against them, but you know what? Breaking Bad was Walter White (Bryan Cranston), not Jesse. Now, I love Aaron Paul. He could totally star in his own show, and I would watch it, but BB was Walt’s show. Without Walt, I was like, meh, who cares?

This is a different criticism from the one I have about Better Call Saul, which is that the slick, wisecracking, one-dimensional character of Saul Goodman was perfect for BB, and reimagining him as street punk “Slippin’ Jimmy” and then as an idealistic young lawyer who gets shafted by his own brother, was just all too JTS. The Goodman character was not made for this much baggage. I don’t think I made it through S2.

But with all the crazy stuff that happened on BB, I never once went okay that’s it… the show has jumped the shark. Even with the Nazis. Nope. It was still solid. Start to finish. It left a few minor threads hanging, such as what was the deal that Gus had come out of Chile with a fake name? They mentioned that twice, but left the gun on the table.

Back to El Camino. There wasn’t much of a plot. There were some historical revisionist convos, a couple of which looked odd on screen because the actors appear their current age. Jesse is fine because he’s young anyway. Walt in the diner looked sick as he was supposed to, but I thought Jesse was talking to Mike’s ghost for a minute, lol. That was bizarre. And Todd looks older and heavier now than he did during the original filming, so when they shovel in this new scene, right after I just watched the old eps, um… Weird.

The writing was great. All the characters were in top form. Jesse natch, Badger, Skinny Pete, Jesse’s clueless parents, etc. But without Walt… I just didn’t care. I knew Jesse would end up escaping this time. You could just tell that the whole point of the movie was to give fans of Jesse a reason to cheer. Yay, he got to start a new life! He’ll meet a cute Alaskan girl in about 5 minutes after the credits roll as he does…

Anyway. This reinforces my idea not to watch either the prequel series to Game of Thrones or The Many Saints of Newark. The appeal of GOT to me hinged on the specific characters played by the specific actors and their relationships. I dgaf about Martin’s pretend world, except for the dragons. The dragons are cool. And The Sopranos was Tony Soprano. (RIP Jim G) That’s it. I’m not interested in his lookalike son playing a younger Tony. Why should I care what made Tony into Tony via not-Tony when I already had all that real Tony?

Okay, so yeah… I’m behind on all the blogadoo things. Regular prompts, picture fiction, my continuing chapters with Lexi and Liana and whoever else (are there more?)… and now a new week relentlessly begins with Laura’s music and Fandango’s flashing and omg I’ve missed like a million days of the October challenge already… AUUGGGHHHH!!!

~*~

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

A POP of Perception

Angie (aka King Ben’s Grandma) tagged me in Beckie’s positivity prompt. The theme this round is graciousness. Please pop over to Angie’s to read about the origins of the prompt along with her wonderful take on gracious greetings.

My idea of graciousness is rooted in being considerate. This probably comes from my years in administrative support. I’m always aware of people’s moods and when it’s a good time to stop and chitchat, and when a simple “good morning” will suffice. I try to be constantly aware of others’ moods. This is something that only works in person, of course.

Now that I’m noodling on it, this awareness of mood goes beyond my working life and back to my childhood (doesn’t everything?). My parents often argued bitterly, and this was scary to me, so I was forever “taking the temperature” of the room and adjusting my behavior accordingly. I needed to know if it was time to be funny or quiet or what.

I’m a person who says “good morning” with a smile, but I don’t go beyond that unless I perceive it will be welcomed. And I would rather err on the side of too little than too much. I don’t tell people to smile; honestly, I hate when people do that. It’s just so… selfish. An unsmiling face makes us feel bad, which is why we exhort people to smile.

But how do we know why someone isn’t smiling? Maybe they’re in pain. Maybe a family member is desperately sick. Maybe they just got walloped with a bill they can’t afford. Leave them alone! Let them look sad and deal with your own discomfort over it. Unless you’re actively prepared to help them with their problem, don’t mouth off with a meaningless comment. K?

Thank you for coming to my rant. Now go be less annoying and more gracious in your greetings.

If you would like to participate in Beckie’s prompt, please visit Angie’s blog for the rules. I graciously decline to tag anyone.

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©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

One-Liner Wednesday

I’ve always felt that autumn is for fresh starts, not endings, probably because of the school year. But also I get so lazy in the summer and fall revs me up. I’m already more productive. Plus, early September is horrible for my migraines and then they suddenly and mysteriously taper off during the last week or so.

Looking forward to a good October!

~*~

Written for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday and Laura’s October Challenge (Day 2)

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©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Fan of… Brie

I am a huge fan of brie ~ it is my favorite cheese! I’m perfectly happy nomming on a chunk of brie all by itself, but there are a lot of delicious foods to pair it with as well. It works with every type of cracker and chip, but also fruit, from grapes to pears to crisp green apples. 🍏

Here’s something you may not have known: brie is fabulous as a melt. Yep, you can top your burger with a piece of brie, melt it for 30 seconds… mmm! I will make a confession… I deveganize veggie burgers by melting brie on them. Sacrilege! But this transcends yumminess, especially on the spicy ones. 🌶

I’m a happy camper right now because there was leftover brie from game night, and it is ensconced in my fridge as we speak, er write. Trent says even the littlest moments count as weekly smiles, so I’m using this as mine. 😻

It’s a wonder I don’t waddle through this world, given my food preferences, but here is a secret ~ I don’t eat everything in the same day. I make choices, and I’m not afraid to throw things in the garbage. I can buy more later. Otherwise, I’m the garbage can and that’s gross. Like the warnings about texting and driving say: “It can wait.”

I include the above paragraph, not to engage in a verbose lecture, but because someone inevitably asks in comments.

~*~

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.