Whatever…

I guess I haven’t posted anything today. What’s left to say? I was looking forward to the FPQ, but then I saw I would have to listen to a news clip. Ughhh. Like I’m not glued to the news enough already? Too much and yet I can’t stop looking at it like I’m passing a car wreck except it’s the whole world in a wreck and I can’t just pass by because I’m living in it too.

Then I was gonna post for the Color Code Challenge, but I didn’t have anything. I had pics with colors, but no pics with groups of colors. Boo. That would have been a fun post, if it had materialized. 🌈

I thought about Sadje’s pic of the woman on a cliff with the broken god, but eh. Then there was a “glorious” sunrise or something too. Meh. Just not feeling the fiction. Or poetry. The challenge from last week was humor, but I’m too consumed with anxiety to be funny right now.

The weird thing is that I had a relatively good day, very productive. Things ended on a happy note too, and now I have a 4-day weekend. I had planned to go to Vegas with some friends, but obviously that’s not going to happen now. I’ll read, write, exercise, and maybe watch a few movies alone at home. Those are the kinds of things I enjoy, so I’m not upset about Vegas, but I dislike uncertainty. A lot. 🙁

Believe it or not, I watched Contagion last night. It’s a good movie! People wonder why I’d watch that now, but now is a great time to watch it imo. Absolutely stellar cast too. It’s weird to see Bryan Cranston before he played Walter White. (Never watched Malcolm.)

So anyway… I’ll be around. My Thursday Inspiration is coming right up tomorrow morning and I’m working on my April A-Z game posts here and there. It’s a good time to catch up on things.

Stay safe! 💖

~*~

Image originally found on Pixabay.

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

Bingo Update 4

See my previous update here.

I read 30 First Dates by Stacey Wiedower for my book with a number in it. At first, I expected this to be a fluffy, predictable romance I could read quickly. Well! I did read it quickly, but it wasn’t that fluffy or predictable. I loved it. All the characters were quirky and interesting, and the plot did loop de loops I did not expect. Also, the story centered around blogging. Hello! Yes, there were some unrealistic moments, but mostly I thought it was very well done. I’ll be looking for more of Stacey’s books in the future. 😍

PS: The next book that Goodreads showed me was Erin at 35, all yuppily successful and struggling to complete her new bucket list. Meh. Not interested.

For the beautiful cover square, I chose a non-fiction book from the library. Actually, my friend found it for me in the used book sale pile. The Romantic English Garden with text by Jane Taylor has stunning photos of gardens as I expected from the gorgeous cover. But I gave this book only 3 stars on Goodreads. The narrative was kinda boring and not that well proofread. I would have enjoyed more poetry and juicy tidbits of gossip about castle owners rather than dull lists of flower names. 🌷🌷🌷

For a colorful book, I chose Black Sheep by Rory Scholl. What a strange book; I don’t know what to make of it. Is it fiction? Is it autobiographical? Is it both? Chunks of a comedy routine (he’s a comic)? It was short enough that I read the whole thing in one blast before going to sleep the other night, and I flung a 4-star rating on it because it held my attention. But I’m not rushing to read anything else by Rory. It’s not because I think he’s using his relatives unfairly for comedic value (assuming they exist), but because I feel it’ll just be more of the same. You know… sincere but bumbling guy keeps getting in trouble when other peeps with impure hearts skate along doing better. One book is enough.

Woohoo, lookit my bingo card progress! ✨

~*~

Image credit to Kriti and Ariel.

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

My World Is Blue

Happy February! I’m participating in Bee’s fun music challenge again and hope you’ll join in (you don’t have to play every day).

Today’s theme is a love song with color. The colorful songs I had in mind weren’t love songs, but then I was playing with my grey kitty and “Love Is Blue” popped into my head. I should have thought of it first ~ it’s perfect! I found an Andy Williams version I liked, though it’s depressing too.

~*~

Written for Love Is In Da Blog Day 28.

Image credit to Happy Color.

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

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.

Mysterious Me

The lovely Sadje was recently given the Mystery Blogger Award ~ congrats! She in turn passed it on to me. Thank you, Sadje!

I will answer Sadje’s questions, which will ironically strip some of the mystery from my blogginess. 🙃

1. What is your strategy for dealing with stress?

Avoidance mainly. I’m really terrible at and scared of dealing with stressful situations. But if something does happen I try to focus on one thing at a time so I can get through whatever it is without going bonkers.

2. If tomorrow were the last day, what would you do first?

Check in with my children. 💖

3. How would you describe yourself as a color and why?

Turquoise. Sometimes peaceful, sometimes turbulent. Can be dark, deep, depressed. Can also be light, fun, sparkling. Like the waves, I’m moody, calm, crashing, and reliable… and I might have loved the moon once, a long long time ago.

4. Physical beauty or intelligence?

Intelligence.

5. Do you believe that Murphy is trying to mess up our day?

I believe we notice the things that go wrong because they’re so annoying. We take for granted all the things that go right, every person who does their job properly, every piece of technology that operates smoothly. We are barely even grateful for competent folks and our wonderful conveniences. We expect them. But let one jerk slow us up in traffic and an app glitch on our phones and our day is all screwed up… geez everyone is out to get us, aren’t they? RAWR!

Speaking of, please be on the lookout for my Monday Peeve in a few hours! 😻

~*~

Images for public use.

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

Basically Two Colors [cffc]

My colors are yellow and green! Thanks for a fun prompt, Cee. 🎄😻❤️

Merry Christmas 🎄 to those who do!

~*~

Images are mine.

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

Fuchsia [FOTD]

Posted for Cee’s flower of the day.

~*~

Image mine

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

Cocoa in Black and White

I’m thankful for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week, since it gives me the opportunity to post this pic of my kitty Cocoa (RIP).

Cocoa showed up in my life in the fall of 2004, just when I needed her. My neighbor had been feeding her, a stray, but she had 3 other cats, and Cocoa was all… the heck with this scene, I’m going to check out the accommodations across the street. Cocoa simply strolled into our garage and then on into the kitchen… deciding hey, nice place ya got here, would be a shame if it didn’t have a cat living in it. Now it does. Boom.

Cocoa was a large and lovely lady kitty, lots to love, and we all loved her a lot. She had a super sweet and interesting personality, and soon we adopted a lil sister for her cuz I liked having two of everything back then. Cocoa was probably 6-8 years old when she arrived in our lives and unfortunately already had a limp from arthritis.

By 2011, the arthritis had progressed to the point that Cocoa could no longer walk without pain. We tried some medications but to no effect. After she stopped going to her food dish, she lost a bunch of weight, and we said goodbye. 😢

I like to believe Cocoa was happy with us for those 7 years. We were lucky to have her. 💖💖💖

~*~

Image mine

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

Treasure [flash 200]

“Lou, are you sure this is the right way,” Sandy asked her husband. “The air smells weird. Didn’t the treasure map say we were supposed to pass a short fat tree with crimson flowers?”

Lou checked his compass. “I calculate that we will reach the crescent rock in fifteen minutes. Besides, that tree back there had crimson flowers.”

Sandy shook her head. “No, they were just pink.”

“Kind of a dark pink though, right?”

“Not really, Lou. Candy pink, like the sweater I wore last Valentine’s Day when we went to that steak place. We indulged in the decadent triple chocolate mousse after. Mmm…”

“What steak place? The one on Oak or the one off Westport?”

“Oh my God!” Sandy yelled. “You don’t remember where we went on Valentine’s Day?”

“Shhhh, Sandy!” Lou hissed. “Don’t give away our location. There are other treasure hunters looking for His Flagrant Mistress.”

“That’s a dumb name for a ship anyway,” Sandy said. “We’ll probably just find a giant chest full of romance novels.”

They both erupted in laughter until they shushed each other simultaneously. “Even if we don’t find treasure,” Lou said, “this sure has been a super fun day.”

“Yes, it has.”

~*~

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See 7.

Image credit to Pinterest.

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

Just A Softie [cffc]

Thought I’d partake in Cee’s pastel photo challenge this week…

~*~

Images are my own.

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