The Irishman [socs]

[Note: this is stream of consciousness writing for Linda’s Saturday prompt, taking the title only of the last movie I watched, not the content, and going from there.]

When my daughter received the results of her DNA test, there was a surprise bit of Irish mixed in. 🍀 It had to be from my side, just because. We speculated that my maternal grandmother slept with an Irish milkman. But why did he have to be a milkman? I don’t know. Probably because of a long-running alt.writing joke about them on Usenet.

I became excited about being part Irish. This explains why I like green, I decided, and my cravings for those delicious shamrock-shaped butter cookies. I also love rainbows… who doesn’t love a rainbow? 🌈 Apparently, you can’t say anything about rainbows now without some idiot making it political. Eff that. Rainbows are pretty! I put Ireland on my list of places to visit that I can’t afford, and I don’t have a passport besides.

But then a very smart science person in a Facebook group (I was on FB at the time) explained to me that genetics didn’t work that way. Just because a (not necessarily accurate) test showed my daughter with this 12% or whatever Irish doesn’t mean I have a quarter. It was a while ago though and I don’t remember the discussion cuz I guess once she said there’s no guarantee of an Irishman in my ancestry I lost interest.

But I went ahead and took my own test a while later… and yep, no Irish. Where’d my Irish grandpa go? Disappeared. 😢 At that point, one might start to look to my child’s other parent for the Irish connection, but let’s just not. There is no Irish there. It’s either in my genes or nowhere. We began to accept that the Irish part of her result was an error.

However! Ancestry is continually updating its database. As more people submit their DNA, the methodology gets more accurate, and they tweak your profile from time to time. The last time I peeked in, relatively recently… not only had they pinpointed my Ohio family with greater geographical precision, but also they threw some Irish on me. Just a wee bit, but I was wearin’ the green in mah genes!

I know, I know. Who cares? It’s fun though. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I thought all genealogy research was stupid. You hang out with people you love and who act like they give a damn about you, and… that’s it. Why does it matter who your third cousin twice removed is if you never talk to her? Who GAF about 100 year old newspaper clippings, bah! But now… as I’m close to finishing up my 50s, I’m getting all mushy about connectedness. Family ties. All that. My aunt sent me a totally awesome book full of family stuffs and I’m really digging it. When I was younger I wouldn’t have been interested, but…

Things change. ✨

~*~

Image from the Bitmoji app.

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

5 Things (That I Like About Me)

Sadje shared a nice meme from Cyranny: #5Things she likes about herself. It’s so easy to be hard on ourselves, especially now at the beginning of a new year when we want to start fresh and accomplish so much, but it’s important to be good to ourselves too. Don’t worry, there are lots of other people ready and willing to tear us down. If you don’t believe me, try going on a dating site.

Here are #5Things I like about me (YMMV):

1. That I’ve quit smashing my head into a brick wall–I mean dating. I’ve quit dating! This has decreased the drama level in my life to practically zero, which makes me happy. I am not an adrenaline addict. 🌹

2. That I’m resilient. Sometimes I get really down and think there’s no way out from a depressing spiral of whatever nature, but I’m eventually always okay and I adapt to changes. 👍🏻

3. That I enjoy my own company. This gives me the freedom to stay home often and work or write or read without feeling lonely and sad, and that in turn allows me to accomplish more goals. 🐱

4. That I’m open minded to new info. This is something everyone says, but few actually are, in my experience. I’ve changed my mind about many issues, or modified my positions, and will continue to do so until I die. That’s called learning and growth. ✨

5. That I never jeopardized my job for a man. Thank God, some molecule of sense kept me from doing that back when I was tempted by this idiot or that one. They’re all gone, and the job abides. 💖

This was a great exercise! Really made me think, instead of rattling off silliness. I hope Sadje continues the #5Things prompt with other topics. 🙂

~*~

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

Ten Year Report

Di of Pensitivity101 tagged me for this introspective challenge. I’ll begin with the high points of the past 10 years, followed by the low, and then answer her questions. I’m not going to tag anyone else. 🙂

High Points 2010 – 2020

In 2011, my sweet kitty Gatsby came into my life via the Orange County Animal Shelter. 😻❤️

My daughters both graduated from college (and did extremely well too), one in 2012 and one in 2015.

They also both got married to awesome guys (2017, 2019)! 💖💖

In 2018, a wonderful little granddaughter arrived! 😍✨🤩

I have published many books during these 10 years, and while they may not fly off the shelves, the fact that I have actual finished novels and other books out there gives me a great sense of accomplishment.

Low Points 2010 – 2020

My divorce was final in 2011, and while this was a necessary step, it’s still sad.

The relationship I had through my 2-year divorce process ended badly in 2011.

The entire 5-year dating debacle that followed was a depressing, and at times frightening, mess and continues to have repercussions to this day.

My dad passed in 2013 (my mom in 2008).

My cat Cocoa died in 2010 or 2011… my memory is a bit fuzzy right now. 😢

Di’s Questions

Is there any year in the past decade that stands out as the best?

-This last one (2019) ended up on a positive note because I moved into a new place with a good friend and got away from my old rundown apartment. I also spent quite a bit of time with family and friends and began writing a fun story. 🙂

Has your taste in music changed in the past ten years or do you think music in general has changed?

-I don’t listen to much new music, but in the last several years I’ve found myself liking more country and folk songs. Hard rock is a bit of a bore sometimes lately.

Are you heavier or lighter than you were ten years ago?

-I’m about the same, up maybe 2-3 pounds. But in the middle of these 10 years I was much lighter ~ I got sick from sushi (will never have it again) and could hardly eat for a month. Then a certain relationship stressed me out so much, anxiety kept my appetite away. I was 10 pounds lighter than today and so right now I feel “fat” because I liked the way I looked then. I’m hoping to get back there, but via exercise and good habits. 😇

How many cars have you owned in the past decade?

-Two.

Fun prompt! 🥳

~*~

Image snagged from Rory!

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

The Caramel Crunch: Topic 1, Faraway Love

Caramel has a new prompt, in which she sets up a hypothetical situation and then asks us to discuss what we would do. Here is her first topic…

WHEN IT COMES TO THE CRUNCH – WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

You realize that you have met someone who makes your pulse race, and who you love, admire and respect more than anyone else you have met. The two of you enjoy a romantic friendship and grow closer and closer. Love and trust build. But then…

…he or she goes home. Their visa has expired. They return to their home in a distant country. In their home country, they have responsibilities, they own a property, they have aging parents who need more assistance.

You accept that the person you are in love with had to go home. You miss them and they miss you. You both keep in touch regularly. But you also have family, responsibilities and a world of friends who you love in your home country.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Are you a great romantic? Or are you more practical in your outlook? Does family come before your lovelife? Or when love comes along, do you cling to the person you have fallen in love with?

I have given up “dating” in the sense of deliberately searching for someone suitable nearby because that hasn’t worked out well for me at all, so I could imagine a situation like this developing out of a friendship that inadvertently turned into love. But I’m not good at sadness and longing ~ that would quickly overwhelm my abilities to function at other things, like working and paying bills. So, unless there was some wisp of hope that my soul mate would return, I think I would have to emotionally disengage and taper off the messages with my sweetie. It would be important to protect myself from sinking into depression even if it meant cutting off communication with him, or at least a lot of it, so I could heal and move on. 😢

I’m not 100% sure about this… maybe I could continue to enthusiastically write and text message and chat on the phone, keeping the spark alive, if I were confident my sweetie still felt madly in love with me. Maybe. But I suspect I would be consumed with despair over never being able to see him, and our convos would end up being mainly about how sad we were. Or, if he was happy without me and his life was filling up with other stuff, then I’d think, huh, I shouldn’t be thinking about him all the time either cuz clearly he is getting over me. 🙃

Paradoxically, I’d want him to be happy, and I would encourage this. I might even encourage him to date because it would be horribly selfish to say okay I can never see him again so therefore he should be lonely forever. And if he were a good person (as opposed to the men I usually choose), he’d say the same to me. At this point (seeing others, or having the freedom to do so), it would be hard for me to feel as emotionally bonded to him. As soon as I suspect a man might be interested in another woman, my interest in him drops to zero, which is a huge reason why those dating apps didn’t work for me. You’re supposed to flirt with multiple people at once and be cool with the fact that they are doing the same. 😝

Now that I’ve “talked it out,” I believe all roads in this hypothetical crunch lead to ending things with Mr. Long Distance. 💔

~*~

Image from Caramel.

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

The Little Drummer Boy Challenge [dating story]

Oops, I did it again! 😀 Won the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, that is. It’s this fun game where you try to avoid hearing any version of LDB between 12:01AM Black Friday until midnight December 23. I first found out about it on ye olde book of face, but the host has a blog and a twitter, so I am able to stay connected, yay! I think I’ve been playing for 5 years and have lost once or twice.

I know I lost once for sure because it was at a Barnes & Noble, where I ended up after meeting one of the strangest dating site men. And that’s saying something, trust me. It was 2016, when I was totally broken-hearted and trying to recover, as was my way, by immediately flinging myself into something new. This guy and I hit it off online because he was funny. I like the funny. Funny is good. He was a bit mean though, which I don’t like, but often you have to take the mean with the funny. That’s how it works. I have heard, which I know you will find absurd, that I also am mean. I KNOW RIGHT? 😱

Anyway, this guy, let’s call him Mitty, was a total extrovert online and in text. He even called me in the mornings on the way to work and just jabbered away, all upbeat and flirty. I thought maybe he was gonna be too talkative and pushy for me, IYKWIM (AITYD). But I really wanted to meet him (or anyone above-ground) to get my mind off that other guy, so I proceeded.

We decided to meet at a Bed, Bath & Beyond because Mitty needed new drapes. We had these fun ideas like we’d pretend to be married as soon as we saw each other and try out the beds because ours had “worn out,” etc. I was definitely excited about experiencing his sense of humor in person, though a lil worried I might not be able to keep up. 😬

I needn’t have stressed. In person, Mitty was a mouse. 🐭 He could barely mumble hello. Where was the funny, flirty man on the phone? Idk! He was the same guy as in his photos, but he did not have the same personality… so weird! Maybe he didn’t like me in person, but I had sent accurate pics, so I don’t think that was it. In any case, we spent about 15 minutes looking at drapes, then Mitty said he didn’t like any and was going to try other stores. That’s it. The pre-date was over. Never heard from him again.

But the point of the story is that I had like an extra hour to kill before meeting my friends, since the Mitty meeting was so short, and that’s when I waltzed into B&N, only to get blasted with a version of LDB! Oh noooooooo! Not only had Mitty failed to lift me out of my sea of heartbreak, but now I’d lost the LDBC too. Life was so unfair. 😢

But I haven’t lost since, not even last week when I was at a real live Christmas carol singalong. 🎶 They didn’t do LDB, whew! The funny thing is that I actually love the song and there are so many fantastic versions. On the way home from work today, I heard Josh Groban’s for the first time, and it was so good!

I’ll leave you with Joan Jett’s take on the tune, one of my faves. Have a wonderful night! 🎄🎁❤️

~*~

Image from Bitmoji.

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

The Chocolate Lady’s Eight Candle Book Tag ~ Day 3

To celebrate Chanukah this year and my friend the Chocolate Lady, I am accepting her challenge to participate in the Eight Candle Book Tag. This is a fun game and very easy to play ~ just visit her link for the options. I am of course doing the most complicated version. 😀

One of my favorite books, The Great Gatsby, has a few triangles. Daisy is married to Tom but having an affair with Jay, her old flame. Tom is seeing a woman in town, who ends up in an accident ~ her husband blames Jay for it and shoots him.

Disclosure: my cat is named Gatsby. 😻

Happy Chanukah!

~*~

Images from The Chocolate Lady’s blog

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

Holiday Oversharing

Melanie has questions!

QUESTIONS FOR THE WEEK 12-23-19:

1. Do dogs ‘talk’ (communicate) with their own species?

I think so. I’m not sure if all that barking means anything other than to warn critters away from “their” territory, but dogs seem to have a complex system of body language to communicate with each other. So do cats and other animals, even bugs. We aren’t that special. And no I didn’t read any of the links; I’m just jabbering away, as I do.

2. Have you ever had to work on Christmas Day?

Had to, no, but it’s a good day for me to get work and other chores done, since I don’t celebrate Christmas. This year, I’ll do some work in the morning before heading over to a friend’s house to watch movies.

3. If someone gifts you something that you immediately loathe, do you pretend to really like it anyway or are you brutally honest about your opinion?

I find something about it to like and a kind comment to make. “Brutally honest” is a euphemism for being an asshole ~ it’s one of the terms you see a lot on dating sites from men who revel in being jerks. Yuck.

3. Which popular drink, found during the Christmas season most often, is called “milk punch?”

Don’t know, sounds gross.

4. How many ghosts show up during “A Christmas Carol?”

Just had this Q in a trivia game and luckily one of my teammates knew it was 4.

5. Are you all about the holly and jolly or more about remembering the alleged ‘true’ meaning of Christmas?

Neither really, since I celebrate Chanukah, and that only mildly. But I’m not a humbug either… I’m happy for other people’s joy and will go to parties, sing, dance, and be merry.

6. Please share a memory or thought about the holiday season if you’d like, whatever kind of celebration you may observe.

When I was in 5th grade the music teacher asked if anyone was Jewish. Unfortunately, I had told someone I was so she pointed to me. The teacher asked how I celebrated Chanukah and I said I didn’t. He was confused and made a joke about Santa not celebrating Christmas. Everyone laughed and I felt humiliated. I hated him. And them. But it wasn’t their fault. In 6th grade, I stayed home sick on music days around that time to avoid this scenario repeating.

I was a half-Jewish girl who didn’t celebrate the Jewish holidays because my father had no interest in them. My mom liked to put up Christmas lights and decorate cookies, so that’s what we did. We had Easter bunny baskets too. I grew up with all the standard American stuff, even though I didn’t really belong to it. It was easy to give it up when I married a Jewish man. Later, after our divorce, when faced with various dating options, I decided I didn’t want to observe holidays in my home that I no longer felt connected to. (I am fine with not doing anything for any holidays however.) Why do I feel connected to my father’s side and not my mother’s, when he wasn’t even interested in his own holidays? I don’t know.

~*~

Images from Bitmoji

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

Someone Else

Cyranny asked… if we snoop in other people’s medicine cabinets when we visit their homes. I don’t now, but 40+ years ago I did this and more. I had lots of babysitting jobs around our Illinois neighborhood and after the children were sleeping, I would poke around. It was very interesting what folks had hidden in the backs of drawers and closets.

I often found naughty magazines and books… and would read them. I’d be very careful to put everything back the way it was just in case. These were not my father’s Playboys, but Hustler and Penthouse, which were quite different. 😳 I read The Happy Hooker at one house… it took me the whole weekend, but the mom (single mom) was off at a horse show, so I had lots of time during naps and such.

My favorite thing to do however was to try on the mom’s clothes, especially if she had anything really sparkly. 💖 I was a plain girl with plain clothes, but I read romance novels and secretly dreamed of being a vibrant heroine in a glittering ball gown. Or a damsel in distress in a dark gothic castle. There was one house I loved ~ the dad worked for my dad, so these people were super nice to me. The mom was incredibly pretty and had tons of beautiful clothes. I loved going there.

I never got caught doing anything. No one used cameras back then, in the 1970s. Or, if they did, they must have thought it was fun to watch me, right? I was taking good care of the kid/s all along, so it was only a mere privacy issue not neglect. 🙃 In any event, I liked to pretend to be someone else for a little while… to immerse in a life that was not mine. I still like that idea… float in and then slip away… without letting anything really affect me.

Now I’m single again… have been single (“self-partnered”) for several years and I am enjoying my life this way. I can’t even imagine entangling my life with another person’s again to any great extent. But I do still enjoy reading romances and fantasy literature, watching romcoms, and even writing a bit of it myself at times. Romance is theater, masks, and costumes. It’s the slide into another life, being someone else. Thinking back… I guess I was never fully comfortable with taking on that role in a drama off the stage.

~*~

Images from Pixabay and Pexels

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

Song Lyric Sunday ~ Baby

Our SLS host Jim Adams gave us only one word to work with this week, but luckily it was a word found in a gazillion songs. “Baby Love” was recorded by the Supremes in 1964 for their album Where Did Our Love Go. The song was written by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. “Baby Love” topped the Billboard pop singles charts in the fall of 1964 and helped to create the superstardom of the Supremes. It also ranked #324 on Rolling Stone‘s The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Baby love, my baby love, I need you oh how I need you
But all you do is treat me bad
Break my heart and leave me sad
Tell me what did I do wrong to make you stay away so long
‘Cause baby love, my baby love, been missing ya, miss kissing ya
Instead of breaking up
Let’s start some kissing and making up
Don’t throw our love away
In my arms why don’t you stay?
Need ya, need ya, baby love, my baby love
Baby love, my baby love, why must we separate my love?
All of my whole life through
I never love no one but you
Why you do me like you do, I guess it’s me
Ooh, need to hold you once again my love, feel your warm embrace my love
Don’t throw our love away, please don’t do me this way
Not happy like I used to be, loneliness has got the best of me my love
My baby love, I need ya oh how I need ya
Why you do me like you do
After I’ve been true to you
So deep in love with you
Baby, baby ooh
‘Til it hurt me, ’til it hurt me
Ooh baby love
Don’t throw our love away
Don’t throw our love away

~*~

Image credit to Jim Adams.

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

FPQ52: The Good Life

Fandango provocatively asks…

What does living “the good life” mean to you? Do you think that you’re living “the good life”?

I’m going to guess that most people will answer in the affirmative to this question. They’ll say they’re living the good life, since anything else seems like admitting failure. We’re always supposed to upsell ourselves. My life is great! My marriage is fantastic! My new job is a blast! Six months later… divorce and bankruptcy court.

But I’m not most people. Not gonna upsell. (My phone doesn’t even believe that’s a word anyway.) I’m not living a “bad” life ~ obviously these definitions are subjective according to our own definition. In my case, I would say I am living an “okay” life.

To me, a good life would have included a happy long-term marriage. It’s not a whole lot of fun doing everything on my own as a single person… case in point, moving. Ugh! I had some help from friends, for which I am extremely grateful, but that’s not the same as a husband with whom you make mutually beneficial decisions. And it’s sure not making me happy to contemplate my lonely retirement on limited funds. Blah.

But as I said, it could be worse. Much worse. I could have ended up with one of the dating site psychos, gahhh. I could have made even stupider decisions than I did in all sorts of areas. No really! I could have.

There are lots of positives happening: good job, good friends, reasonable-ish health, adorable kitty, wonderful daughters, great sons-in-law, sweetest grand daughter, nice new place to live, etc.💖

But I’m plagued with chronic pain (yes, despite being in decent health otherwise). It keeps me from exercising and enjoying some of the good things around me. That gets me down a lot, and I don’t have one of those naturally bubbly type of personalities that goes wheeeeee it’s fine that my neck is all stabby… I’ll still go for a 5 mile joggeroo and smell the flowers cuz life is beautiful! Eff that. 😛

If I’d known I was going to be single at the end of the game, I would have focused more intently on education and career in my 20s. I had every opportunity, but wasn’t thinking about the big picture at that point. I could have done so much more… and made so much more money. You say money isn’t important? Try looking for a place to live in Southern California!😳

On the other hand, it’s gorgeous here. And there’s a lot to do, plus it’s still free to watch the sunsets over the ocean (not to park at the beach however). I’m glad I didn’t stay in Chicago, despite the pizza.🍕

There you have it. Again, not everything has to be extreme, good/bad, love/hate. My life is okay. Not great. Not terrible.

~*~

Image credits to Fandango and me and idk about the orange scissors one so whatever.

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