Me Myself and I

[post title stolen from Beckie]

Rory has a new game happening, which is all about me.

Now, I realize I’ve been saying that I’m gonna avoid these kinds of rambling personal posts and focus more on fiction and poetry, but the first thing you need to understand about me is… I’m a liar. Okay then.

1. What is your favourite sweet treat?

I have lots of favorite sweet treats. But first, let me announce that I’m not a chocoholic. I can happily leave the choccy treats to others… and while I enjoy a chocolate chip cookie like any normal human, it’s not at the top of my list. What is? Coconut cake, lemon bars, thick homemade peanut butter cookies, and crumbly cinnamon coffee cake (like the kind Starbucks used to sell before they made it “healthy”). I also love pie, but am super picky about it ~ if it’s not exactly right, I don’t like it at all. Forex, pumpkin pie is awesome but only if it has a graham cracker crust and whipped cream on top. Otherwise, meh.

2. If you want to really relax – what is your go to?

I have a hard time totally relaxing. There’s always something (usually several things) bothering me somewhat. Idk how people can forget about all that’s wrong with this world… even if you’re personally cocooned against financial horrors, what about other people and animals? You must know of the vast suffering that goes on day in and day out, unabated. I just trudge along, I guess. There are things that temporarily distract me like movies, games, poetry. But I know the other stuff is there while I divert myself with trivia. I spend too much time on news sites, which is depressing, and I know I should stop. What’s the point? I can’t do anything about all this outrage… it just boils in my brain, keeping me from being able to relax. Soon, I’ll be moving to a place where it’ll be easier to exercise; maybe that will help.

3. What is your guiltiest pleasure?

This is a weird question for me now. I don’t feel I even have “guilty pleasures” these days. I hardly indulge in anything because of fear of consequences. And after a while, not indulging becomes as much of a habit as indulging, you know? It’s like I’m too lazy to do anything wrong. Drinking? Nah. That’ll give me a migraine. Sex? No thanks. Too stressful to deal with another person. Overeating? Ick, tummy ache! The only self-indulgent thing I might do is not get dressed on a Sunday and watch movies or read all day instead of finishing any chores. But this isn’t even that pleasurable… I only do it when I’m really tired. And I’ll feel bad when the unproductive day is done.

So, there you have it, Rory. Super boring personal jabber. I warned you. 😜

~*~

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

FPQ45: Oreos

Fandango provocatively asks…

Are there limits to human creativity? Is it be possible for humans to create something completely novel and new that is based on nothing that previously existed? Or is human creativity just rearranging and building on previous ideas?

Well… I guess there are ways to stretch and say anything is somehow connected to something else. The internet was novel, allowing strangers to find each other and chat about topics in common, but before that some folks did manage to find pen pals in different parts of the world (or in prison) to communicate with. It was much slower, and individual rather than a freewheeling message board system, but one could make the case that there’s a similarity. Lonely people, reaching across the miles for new friends they’ll never meet in person…

Art, music, literature, science, medicine, etc. have existed since there were humans who had any free time between birth and death, so… nope, all of that will be filed in the “building on” category.

What about things that have been invented we don’t know about cuz they disappeared without a trace? There must be loads of ’em, and I’m thinking that many of these might fit the novel definition. But the reason we don’t know about them is because they were useless or unable to be marketed. We like things we’re familiar with. Sure, we crave novelty, but only to a degree.

This is why we keep seeing “new” offerings from the same old places, like Oreos with different middles. Ooh, a novel filling! How thrilling! But we’re comfortable with this product, and we trust it, because it’s still an Oreo.

~*~

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

Wrappin’ [socs]

Wrapping gets a bad rap. Peeps dread wrapping, which I don’t understand ~ I love to wrap. Maybe it’s just another one of my OCD things. You know, get everything at right angles. That’s key. Right angles. Then folding and taping and making triangles all over the place, mmm. ❤️

Well! I’m jumping ahead, aren’t I? In an ideal world, say at a gift wrapping salon, you could choose the perfect paper for each gift. Wouldn’t that be delicious? No more generic giant bargain roll of swirly rainbow confetti paper for everyone’s birthday. We would have little trains for train games, kitties for cat gifts, cupcakes for bakeware, etc. All the holidays would be represented of course as well as special anniversary paper and plain hues to mix-match. Fun! 🎉

After getting the paper business all squared away, we would deal with bows and things. How I love making my own boingies! Omg! I could do that all day… though I’d probably get my carpal tunnel back after a half-hour, oh well. But I’d definitely mix things up: some bows, some curls, some fancy ribbon, etc. It depends on the gift and the occasion and the paper.

Did I mention I love wrapping? 😻

~*~

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

The Monday Peeve!

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, and link back to me (or not ~ I dgaf), 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!

Speaking of that. This is so unbelievable that everyone will think I’m lying, but I swear to you it’s true. I finished my work around 4PM today (Sunday) and began this TMP post, which I shall schedule for 4AM tomorrow, and I thought hey why not watch a movie cuz I haven’t done that in a while. But I can’t because there is blasting mariachi music outside my apartment. I mean BLASTING! I have no idea where it’s coming from because I can’t see a band, but it sounds like it’s right under my window (it’s not). I shut the windows, even though it’s hot AF, because otherwise I’ll go out of my mind. It’s going on and on. Not that the music is bad, but you know… it all sounds the same (no offense okay, but it does) and it’s so loud! Why is this happening? Idk! This wasn’t even going to be my peeve. I guess it’s someone’s birthday ~ the guy just said “Happy Birthday, Becky.”

BECKY? Whatever. Why must we all be subjected to this? How long will it go on? Are we all going to get cake too? I don’t know the answers to these questions! But I am so very annoyed! I finally have free time and now I can’t even watch a movie. Ughhh! Why the hell would anyone think it’s a good idea to have music blasting through an entire neighborhood??? We don’t all want to celebrate with BECKY.

Omg. It’s never going to end…

~*~

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

Monday Monday

Why the heck am I posting about Monday on a Saturday, you ask? Okay, possibly it’s Sunday off in New Zealand or wherever, idk. But the point is we should be soaking up every delicious morsel of weekend fun without worrying about Monday ookies.

However!

There’s an exception to every rule. Well, maybe not to the rule that says there’s an exception to every rule because then that would mean there’d be no exception to… huh? Let me untangle my brain. K.

THE POINT IS… I forgot what the point is. Oh yeah. I’m going to start a new prompt on Monday! Wahooooo! It’s actually an old prompt called The Monday Peeve that I used to have on an old blog. People liked it, many people… 😂. Now that Di has stepped up to do the 3TC, I have only my Thursday Inspiration, so I’m free for another weekly prompt. This one is fun!

However2! This prompt probably won’t be for everyone, and that’s okay. Some of you like to stick with the uplifting, cheerful, positive posts, which I understand. TMP is gonna be about venting ~ some of us need that sometimes. I know I do! I’ll start with a theme, and those who wish to participate can stay with my theme or post about whatever peeve is on their mind, since there’s nothing more annoying than someone telling you what to vent about when you’re in the mood to vent!

However3! I do reserve the right not to accept linkbacks to any posts I find personally offensive, which could be any damn thing. You never know. But you should know. You know? Just be a normal decent human being ~ is that too much to ask?

~*~

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

Beautiful Lies

Mindlovemisery asks…

What does inner beauty mean to you? How do you cope with society’s unrealistic ideals of physical beauty? What do you do to feel attractive? Confident? Inspired? What message would you like to impart about beauty to the youth of today?

That’s a lot of questions. I’ve been reading a bunch of bs replies (no, not yours!) about how this particular writer looks beyond the surface and blah blah yada. All the lovely clichéd things we like to read. But in fact most people (no, not you!) do indeed judge by appearances. And I know this via direct experience from my time on dating sites ~ yes, of course I’m going to mention this yet again. 💤

Anyway. I used to think I was so clever in my search, trying to focus on intelligence and humor and writing ability, but those things are somewhat superficial as well. Is it really important in a relationship that a man is at my Scrabble level? As it turns out, I’m bored with Scrabble now. I have come to understand I should have been looking for kindness and honesty all along.

I guess that’s what inner beauty means to me: kindness and honesty. But many are somewhat kind and reasonably honest. The tricky part is that these qualities also need to be accompanied by a lack of narcissism, disloyalty, selfish agendas, etc. Forex, if someone is kind only because he wants to have sex with me, that’s transactional and doesn’t count as inner beauty.

How have I coped? Not well, in the past. I developed anorexia the summer before high school, partly as a way to deal with the expectations of society for girls at that time. It took me years to return to a semi-normal state of mental and physical health. We are always in recovery, no matter what we look like on the outside.

Decades later, I felt neglected and down, so I began to try to attract attention, mostly online. It’s pretty easy for a woman to dress a certain way, post photos, flirt, etc., and get what she needs from men in that way. But it’s all so shallow and meaningless. What’s the point? I proved I could do it, and then I stopped. It became boring, like most things.

What do I do? Beyond the basics, not a lot. I’m older and have been dressing much more conservatively than I used to. I don’t feel comfortable as a 58 year-old grandma trying to look “sexy,” whatever that even means now. So, I get less attention than before and I’m okay with it. Strangely, I feel more confident being comfy than I used to when I dressed to get noticed, since I was always wondering if anyone did notice me. Now, I simply assume no one does and stay lost in my own thoughts. 🙃

I don’t have any advice to give young peeps about beauty except you probably look better right now than you ever will again so live it up! 😻

~*~

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

The Fours Be With Me

From Rory’s Question Fun Directory

Welcome to The Daily Four!

Today’s Questions to the Readers are….

How important is your birth family to you?

The children I gave birth to? Well, they’re the most important things in the world, thank you for asking! I realize that popping out a couple of new humans isn’t exactly the greatest accomplishment ~ apparently it’s been done kazillions of times ~ but my creations are much specialer than anyone else’s because reasons.

What gets too much attention in the news?

Eggs. Effing tired of eggs already. One week they’re fine, the next week they’ll kill you. Then some new study comes out saying you can have a moderate amount (sorry, Cool Hand Luke)… but oopsy no wait! That was wrong and they’re back to little ovals of death again. Just go away egg stories. Roll on out of mah life!

If you could change 3 things about your country, what would you change?

Welp, I’d switch NYC and Las Vegas around, so it would be easier to visit New York, get some good pizza, and see a Broadway show. I don’t really care about Vegas, so nbd there.

Next, I’d fix Kansas and Arkansas so they were either pronounced the same or spelled differently because wtf? That’s really weird and confusing!

Finally, I’d have more Federal Holidays, honoring our Presidents, or whatever, on every Monday, so each work week would be four days. WHO IS WITH ME ON THIS?

What fact amazes you every time you think of it?

How cute kitties are! 😻

~*~

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

Things Nobody Cares About

Giving a fox…

1. I don’t get Linda’s initial SOCS posts in my Friday feed and yesterday was no exception. I saw someone else’s and the word “preposition,” grabbed the link, and wrote my story without reading the directions. Then I linked it and here we are.

2. I realize I’m making things worse by explaining, but (a) my OCD compels me to, and (b) I don’t understand why I never see the initial posts. Obviously I follow Linda and see her other posts. Sometimes I even see the SOCS post, but much later.

3. After Ashley said we should add alt text to our photos, I went back to the beginning of time (March 2011) and started doing it. Then I realized this made the posts repost in the feed and on twitter. Ack!

4. Now I have a few posts from 2011 with alt text in the photos and new posts with alt text, but a gabillion posts in between with no alt text. Inconsistent! This is giving me nightmares. This morning I woke up at 4:30 after dreaming about a picture of a half-finished flower from my Happy Color app that I wanted to delete but was locked out from my blog. Locked out!

5. Unfortunately I decided to look at my blog on my laptop, and now I’m unhappy. I don’t like the double-spaced poetry. It was already bothering me because of Mathew, and he’s right. Poetry shouldn’t look like that. Also, things I’ve been quoting are all screwed up, even when I deliberately paste them in “unformatted.”

6. Unformatted is a lie! I just tested it a few times. All lies. The formatting sneaks back in and screws things up. What you have to do is go to html view and then paste. Never paste in visual mode. For tomorrow’s song lyrics, I pasted my quoted lyrics in the html view and then italicized them. The post looks much better in the preview than that ugly block quote.

7. Also, fyi, if you paste a YouTube video link right under a block quote in visual mode, it can get screwed up too and only show as a link, not as a preview of the vid. So annoying! But it doesn’t do that if you do the html thingie that I just described and nobody read.

8. I have to have 8 things.

~*~

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

Update on the Thing

I don’t want to keep naming THEM, in case new people don’t know what’s what and go visit, thus generating more traffic to the Bad Place. Those who know will know. You know?

So, the thieves are now linking back to me at the end of each of my posts with my blog name and Paula Light, naming me as the source of the post. It’s like a reblog in that way, except still hostile because generally reblogs are occasional when something is of particular interest, not lifting every post.

I think I’m going to be done with this mess. I’m so stressed out as it is I can’t allow these jerkfaces to dominate my mind any longer. I have three audiobooks in production right now! My throat hurts, my head aches, my toe throbs, work awaits, chores languish, writing beckons, events glare… it’s ridonkulous.

I suggest you do what I did though, if you are not being credited as the source of your own posts and given a clickable link back at the Bad Place. Contact Digital Ocean and fill out their DCMA form via the front page menu.

Then try to put it out of your mind forever.

Happy August

I’m really discouraged right now. After a great weekend with my family mid-July, everything seems to be falling apart.

First, I got socked with the most outrageous rent increase. Yes, I’ve been overdue for one, but it’s not my fault they were behind. I still like my apartment, but now I have to worry about the next increase, and the one after that. At a certain point, I’ll have to leave. 😢

Second, I returned from my NorCal trip with some sort of virus I’ve been unable to shake. I thought it was gone, but I woke up with a sore throat again today. 😷

Third, I smashed my toe into the metal wheel of my bed Sunday night, and while I don’t think it’s broken, my whole foot is bruised and aching. It’s slowly improving since Monday, when I could hardly walk, but who needs this? I have enough excuses not to exercise already. 😨

Fourth, I thought I would promote some of my writing by turning my books into audio, but it’s the most grueling process and takes forever. The first book I submitted is only 36 pages and we began in June. It’s still not done! I approved the completed narration, but it was rejected by ACX for having some “noise” issue. Idk what. It sounds perfect to me. The second book is still in production and I have to listen to all 200 pages when she’s done, ack. The third one has just begun ~ another shortie, but I expect it at Christmas. Plus, I love this narrator and already screwed up a communication with her. I hope she doesn’t dump me. 🙁

Fifth, this fucking fuckery of that asshole site which is stealing all our posts is just making me so mad I can’t even. I sent the DMCA request to GoDaddy last night and it’s been rejected because apparently the assholes do not use GoDaddy to host. I just sent a new request to their server DigitalOcean.com, and I had to give them all my contact info. Who are these people? Idk! They could be self-hosted, in which case they will just tear up my notice like Queen Cersei. 😡

Anyway. It’s mostly the SOS. I spend so much time on my writing… writing, blogging, blogging about writing, writing about blogging, talking and texting about writing and blogging and poetry, making lists of what I’ve written and what to write next… and now my time is sucked up by this audiobook BS.

And you know what urgent message ACX has the goddamn nerve to send me? “We need to confirm your tax and bank account information.” Right! Because I’ve already made piles and piles of money there just like I have with my Kindle books and naturally Uncle Sam wants his cut! Sure, I’d be happy to give Uncle…

Oh wait. I’ve made nothing! How about you people approve my first book so it can go on the shelf? Then maybe I can make some money to share with Uncle! How about that?!? Hopefully it will be more than the eleven fucking dollars I made last year at Amazon. Yes, eleven.

Don’t worry. I shared with Uncle. 🙄

Can’t wait for that stupid asshole site to steal this post. Hey jerks! 😛😛😛