Yeah, so it’s been a while since I tossed out a Paint Chip Friday prompt, but I saw some new paint colors and got inspired. If you are so inclined, choose a word or two from my haiku and create your own ~ or go to Lowes and grab new paint color names for yourself. It’s also fine to engage in the usual non-themed TGIF jabber and link back. I’m easy.
Weird wet weather this week again here in SoCal. I’m so tired of dreary days and am ready for some sunshine, but sadly it looks like we’ll be getting drenched again next week. Naturally, the storms have triggered a raft of migraines, and I’ve been diligently managing those. I just discovered this week that the Rx medication I sometimes take for nausea with migraines (ondansetron) can cause headaches. LOL.
Oops, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, isn’t it? I should have used green colors for my ‘ku. Oh well, too late now! If you celebrate, have fun. I probably will just go to the office and come straight home, since my partying days are waaay in the past, and the idea of going out after work and drinking a green beer or whatever is simply too exhausting to contemplate. I didn’t have pie for pi day either. I’m so boring.
Happy Friday. It’s been a rather uneventful week, which is how I like them. I’ve just been slogging along, bundling up, and trying to manage my migraines/neck pain/back pain. Last Sunday I visited my three (3!) grandchildren; this weekend I plan to paint. My granddaughter had requested a painting, which I did Saturday and brought to her, and I squished out way too much paint for her picture, so when I was finished I used up the extra paint for backgrounds on new canvases. I did blue, green, and pink ~ and I have a painting in mind for each one. These are the little 8×8 canvases.
I’m taking my own advice regarding the blog follower issue, which was stressing me out. I’ve quit receiving notifications about them now and I’ve quit looking at them. (I will check out a blog after someone new leaves a comment.) It was a mistake to try to police my follower list to get rid of marketers, etc., because it takes so much time, plus they pop back in regardless.
I have a ton of new followers, many without blogs, many in foreign languages, and I’m just done worrying about it. It’s probably because I’ve been participating in the Daily Prompt a few times per week. I think this has also caused an upsurge in the reblogging too, which I also dislike, even when done properly with just an excerpt and linkback. So annoying to have my posts show up on these random sites, but there’s nothing I can do about it when my blog is public. I deleted the reblog/share button a long time ago, but it still happens.
Jim’s Thursday Inspiration prompt yesterday made me think of that 1974 song “Nothing From Nothing” by Billy Preston.
Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’ You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna be with me Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’ You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna be with me
That sounds cold, but it’s true, I believe. When we begin a romantic relationship, or even a friendship, we have to get something out of it to motivate us to continue. I was friends with a woman way back when, and our daughters were the same ages, which was convenient, but she dumped me when I couldn’t carpool with her. She found someone who lived closer and had a similar schedule. At the time, I was really hurt, but now I understand. I was getting something out of that friendship ~ playdates for my girls ~ but what she needed from a friendship was someone to help out with driving. I couldn’t do that, so I was of no more use.
I’m not tryna be your hero ‘Cause that zero is too cold for me, brrr I’m not tryin’ to be your highness ‘Cause that minus is too low to see, yeah
Our needs and wants can change over time. What worked once may no longer be of benefit, and someone who we dismissed way back when could have something to offer now. Of course, we also have to have something to bring to the table ourselves. That’s a given. It’s all just human nature.
Happy Friday. This is a pic taken right outside my place, or at least it feels that way. BRRRR! It’s cold. There is hail on the beach and snow on the Hollywood Sign. END TIMES END TIMES! Oh wait. That’s supposed to be fire, right? Whatever. Naturally, my migraines are going nuts from the rain and wind and dry air. I just can’t even.
I had a lot of stuff to say earlier, but I was busy and now I’m tired (writing this on Thursday night). I have more WP glitches to b!tch about, including the fact that they’re shoving a stupid ad in my face for a logo-maker every time I go to the admin page. It’s so unbearably irritating, and the button they gave us to hide it doesn’t work for me.
Did any of you fall madly in love with the book Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid? Welp, I did, and there’s great news for us fans ~ they’ve made the book into a movie and it’ll be on Prime starting March 3, 2023. Also, I haven’t forgotten about Manifest, and I wish they’d give us the final eps of that show already.
OK. More later. I’m going to sleep. Go ahead and write a TGIF post and link back to me. Maybe pingbacks will work and maybe they won’t. That’s the thrill of using WP… you never know when something else is gonna fall apart. Kitty snuggle time!
I made such a fabulous salad the other day for my lunch at work: leafy greens, tomato, carrots, avocado, blueberries, cashews, almonds, and dried cranberries. I poured a little dressing on it right before I ate it. So delicious and satisfying! It was very timely that I switched to salads over frozen meals because of the news this week saying processed food consumption is linked to cancer. But mostly I went the salad route because I’m so bored with Lean Cuisines, etc.
I read a book this week titled Someone Else’s Life by Lyn Liao Butler. It’s about a woman named Annie who suffers from depression, and how this disease has affected her ability to relate to her husband and son. The story takes place mainly over the course of a day, though there are many flashbacks. During this day, the weather turns very nasty, and a stranger appears at the door asking for shelter. Reluctantly, Annie lets her in, and over the next several hours they become best friends. But then…
It’s tough to stay engaged with a story when I’m constantly telling the protagonist not to do things. Stop! Don’t open the door! Don’t let her see your phone! Don’t tell her that info! After a while, the impulse is to give up, but in this particular case I did want to find out what would happen at the end. It was a bit surprising, in a good way. I was ready to give the book only two stars, but the fun at the end boosted it to three.
I’m looking forward to the weekend because I’m planning to paint again. Yay! What about you? Write a TGIF post and link back here. You know you wanna.
This week was weird, and I’m glad to be done with it. There were some highlights, such as my riddle post and the replies, finding a sweet birthday gift for my daughter, having Autumn kitty come visit, etc., but I tweaked my back and had to deal with extra pain for a few days, which wasn’t fun. Also, one night I began to update my profile here, there, and wherever, and I discovered that the KDP author page had gone all kerflooey (technical term). Both my author names were listed, but none of my books for either were associated with me, though I could find them via an exhaustive search. That made me so mad I took Anna’s books off KDP Select, which means Amazon will get even less money from my no sales than the zero they get already. Hah! That’ll teach them to mess with me!
Out of curiosity, I looked up both Paula and Anna on Goodreads (I had issues with them previously and deleted my account), and lo and behold all the books for Anna and Paula were listed, including some I’ve unpublished. Now, that’s bizarre, right? Amazon owns Goodreads and they are explicitly connected, so why would only one site have the correct lists?
Impulsively, I rejoined Goodreads because I have to admit it’s a more convenient way of tracking the books I read than using a spreadsheet. A few hours later, after tinkering with my profile a bit, I decided to change my photo on the Paula KDP page, and suddenly some of my books reappeared! By the time I went to bed, they all were showing. Today, Anna’s were back as well. WTF? Are they rewarding me for rejoining Goodreads or is this some kind of woo woo coincidence?
I’m going with the woo woo because it’s clear that Amazon has redone the KDP author pages. For example, they no longer have a space to display blog feeds:
“We have updated the look of U.S. Author Pages. As of Dec 2022, blog feeds are not displayed on U.S. Author Pages.“
Well, pffft. Whatever.
Feel free to TGIF and link back to me. What’s up?
PS: Be sure to check back on Monday when I’ll be temporarily hosting Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge!
Happy Friday the 13th! Yep, I am “going there” by talking about the spare heir’s nonstop news coverage. First, it is not Harry’s fault that for some bizarre reason American media must report on his every utterance the same way a few weeks back they hyperventilated over each tweet Elon sent. The one (only?) nice thing about Harry’s book is that for several days now we haven’t heard much about the Musky one.
Second, and this may offend some British subjects, I don’t think of the Royals as anything other than nepo babies. To me, the kerfuffles the Royals get into mirror the Kar-Jenners and other celebs having feuds and whatnot, some faked for attention, others real, and why should I care about these people and their problems when they all have So Much Money?
Granted, I do enjoy fairytales as much as the next romance novel reader, so I like photos from weddings and other glamorous events these peeps get up to, but as far as their issues with each other, meh. I feel the same way about the Oscars slap and the periodic catfights between Britney Spears and her sister Jamie Lynn: there’s nothing I need to care about there.
Third, I really don’t understand the insane amount of Spare sales ~ over a million on the first day of release! Who the hell is buying this thing? I mean, hasn’t the media already treated us to the juicy bits? So now people are gonna spend their free time reading those over again and the boring parts too. I just can’t even with that. Sure, it’s great that people are reading. Yay books! But wtf…
I guess that’s all I have to say about it (for now). It’s mostly a criticism of the media ~ of course people have the right to tell their own stories their own way, blah blah blah. I just wish the news coverage was more relevant to me and my taste. No matter how I tweak my newsreaders, I still see crap I don’t want to. Yes, I do see lots of animal stories too and thank goodness for that!
Anyway. I’m visiting one of my daughters this weekend and very much looking forward to it. Hope it isn’t raining too heavily while I drive. I would take the train, except apparently the tracks are about to crumble into the ocean, which doesn’t sound fun at all. What are you all up to? Jabber away and link back to me!
It does rain in Southern California, and this morning it rained a lot! One of the streets I take to work was getting pretty flooded and the rain continued for several hours after that. Overall, the rain is a good thing, though unfortunately it often causes damage, such as mudslides, roof leaks, fallen trees, etc. We definitely need rain though ~ I see on my weather app that more is likely next week, so I hope the State will be able to exit drought conditions soon.
Today I received one of the treats I bought for myself from Etsy. It’s a mystic topaz (lab-zapped quartz) silver ring and I’m really pleased with it. I left a nice review for the seller just now, and then Etsy informed me I’m a “small business champion” because I’ve patronized over 20 shops. Woohoo! Even more exciting, tonight Sprinkles informed me that I’m a “top fan” on Facebook because I’ve interacted with a whole bunch of their posts. It’s true. Whenever I visit Facebook I see a pile of friends complaining about stuff, so I scroll right past, but then there’s Sprinkles showing me a picture of a yummy cupcake, and OF COURSE I have to put a heart on that.
Someone on FB jokingly said “she hates people” in response to a comment I made about disliking small talk with cashiers, etc. Other people thought it was nice to connect in this “lite” way with strangers, even though the entire convo is trivial and no one really cares what the other person says. I mean, I sort of understand if you’ve been isolated that any human contact is preferable to none, but I don’t find that my loneliness abates when I engage in such chitchat. If anything, it makes me feel more disconnected. I had a peeve a while back about bank tellers asking me if I was on my lunch break, etc., when I went to deposit checks for work. Why would I discuss my schedule with them? I certainly don’t care about theirs. I understand being polite, but that’s just too far into meaninglessness for me. When I’m lonely, talking to my daughters helps, chatting with friends helps, and I don’t even mind small talk with coworkers because we know each other. But any random stranger? Nope, doesn’t work for me.
Blogging is a much better way to connect anyway. Then random strangers become friends after you interact with the same ones repeatedly. I’d rather chitchat with my blog readers than a grocery store clerk. How about you? Chitchat with randos or no? Rain, snow, what’s going on in your part of the world? Write a TGIF post and link back to me ~ you know you wanna.
Happy last Friday of 2022! I suppose that could make one sad or glad, depending; most of the responses I’ve read to yearly wrap-ups have been in favor of letting this year slide away into the muck and moving forward as best we can. My 2022 was all right, but yesterday, OMG, disaster! I decided that I’d try making my lunches for a week, but no PB&J sandwiches. I cooked a bunch of food last weekend and parceled it out into individual containers. I had a boatload of yummy veggies and potatoes, all ready for nomming up at work in proper proportions.
Monday was a holiday; Tuesday and Wednesday went fine. Then Thursday rolled around. As I exited my car at work, I dropped the bag with my lunch, but at that moment I thought nothing of it, picked it up, and went to my office. As I set my bag on my desk, I saw it was leaking all over the place. What the heck?
The lunch container had opened, ruining everything else inside the bag, and dripping in a line from the door to my chair. Yucky! I cleaned all that up and had to toss out my ruined bag (this was not my purse, btw, but a separate cloth bag). I ended up dumping my lunch as well because ick. At that point, I’d forgotten I dropped the bag and returned to my car to make sure my seat was clean because I assumed the lunch had been leaking all along. After seeing that there was no spillage in my car, I recalled that I had dropped the bag earlier in the garage.
At lunchtime, I went to the grocery store and bought a Marie Callender’s frozen meal to nuke in our office microwave ~ and one for today as well. It was delicious and not the least bit messy. Also, I had to go to Amazon and reorder a cloth bag and a wrist support that had been in the gross mess I threw away. (I had tried washing the wrist support, but that wrecked it further.) Pffft on trying to be healthier; clearly, the signs point in the opposite direction.
Hopefully, the few remaining hours of 2022 will be peaceful with no further leaks or other calamities. How is your Friday going?
Happy Eve of Christmas Eve! Hope you are doing well and not stressing out about the holidays or anything else. Feel free to use this post as a prompt (with or without the logo) to jabber on about your day/week. I have a random selection of items to share.
1. I finally finished watching Falling in Love (on Prime), a 1984 movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro. Unfortunately, I can’t totally recommend this romcom due to its ridiculous ending. Up until then, it was excellent, showing how affairs really work instead of the silly “swept away in the moment” crap we usually see in fiction. In real life, affairs take a lot of planning and there are a gazillion opportunities to say no. I also enjoyed how utterly awkward the characters were with each other, which again seemed much more realistic than the usual smooth, witty banter. They are such top shelf actors! But the ending was stupid, as I said.
2. I have a vague memory of making a pineapple upside down cake decades ago, where all the ingredients were included in the mix, but I couldn’t find that this time, or maybe it never happened. Duncan Hines had a recipe on the side of their pineapple cake mix box though, so I used that. Sadly, the can of pineapple had 10 slices, which normally is the correct number of things, but in this case I wish they had gone up to eleven. There were extra cherries at least so I stuck them in the middle, though I wasn’t completely satisfied with how the cake looked. The arranging was done at the bottom of the pan with butter and brown sugar, and then I poured the batter on top.
I was very worried I wouldn’t be able to flip the whole cake over properly after it was baked, but I did it ~ I flipped it onto a cookie sheet because I didn’t have a rectangular serving plate. Only a little bit of each edge crumbled, but it looked pretty pretty pretty good, imo. More importantly, it tasted delicious, especially the butter/brown sugar topping. Success!
3. Some peeps may recall that I had a happy Wordle post back in January. It soon became an annoyance, however, so I posted a peeve. I tried to quit Wordle… I really did. But then a friend began talking about the Spelling Bee puzzle, which is part of the NYT suite of games along with Wordle, and it sounded fun. Another friend kept posting about the NYT crossword itself and I remembered how much I used to enjoy that too. SO OK FINE I CAVED A COUPLE WEEKS AGO!
Now I’m paying $5 a month like a sucker for the set of daily puzzles from the New York Times. Sigh. They’re fun so far though and a nice distraction from the horrible news that assaults us daily (I do not get the actual NYT with a game subscription.) Don’t worry, I’m still not posting my Wordle scores on FB daily, since I find that extremely irritating. Also, my eldest is paying for the games too, so we can talk about them now. Bonus!
I may be forced to peeve soon about the nutty crossword clues though. So annoying!
Happy Friday. Hope you’re all in a good place and not too stressed out about the holidays or anything else. This is my TGIF prompt ~ write about anything you like, related to this post or not, use the logo or don’t, and link back if you feel like it. How about them easygoing apples? No rules, tags, syllable counts, themes, etc., needed to participate.
I watched Where the Crawdads Sing this week on Netflix, and it was excellent! I wanted to see it in the summer with friends, but that didn’t work out, and it was certainly worth the wait. My daughter says the book is better, but I haven’t read it yet. At first, I thought the film was a little slow, which is why I watched half one night and half the next, but I ended up enjoying the pacing after all. It’s a long movie, over two hours, and you really can’t skip any of it. The plot unfolds bit by bit, and each new piece of info is important. It’s a murder mystery and a love story ~ both aspects are equally enjoyable and also take unexpected twists. I highly recommend it.
This week we had our annual chocolate pizza delivered at work, and this time they mixed it up by putting bits of peppermint on the top, which was a fabulous combination with the choccy. Well, of course, that would be extra-delicious, if you were ever a fan of Marshall Field’s Frango mints (John, I bet you’re familiar with those), and I was definitely a fan. Once, the guy I was seeing in 1980 took me to a family function where someone had made Frango mint brownies, which were divine. You remember that guy, right? My college boyfriend who invited me to the Wisconsin Dells where we almost drowned. Good times. I can really pick ’em!
But I don’t tell dating stories here on my blog any longer. Couple reasons. I don’t want to think about all that negativity now that I’m happier. I just realized something today (Thursday): I have now been not dating post-divorce for a longer time than I dated post- divorce. My divorce was final in July 2011, I dated until the end of 2016, and I have been date-free since then. So that makes 5.5 years of dating vs 6 years of NOT DATING! I think that calls for a cupcake or something in celebration.
I had this delicious cupcake last December...
Another reason I don’t want to tell the dating stories is because of my fallible memory. I think I know what happened, but maybe time has washed away some of the details and enhanced others. That’s not really fair to the other characters in these stories, since they don’t get to tell their side (except for the very few who read my blog and occasionally comment). Plus, I exaggerate a bit for comedic effect because the most important thing is to keep my loyal readers entertained, not that I care anything about my stats. Oh no, not me.
Finally, I don’t tell these stories any longer because I don’t want advice. I’m out. So I don’t need to hear about what I did wrong and what I could do better next time. I don’t care. But some people just can’t resist giving advice, which annoys me, and I don’t want to be annoyed at my readers because you’re all awesome. Btw, I kept a dating tag after my April 2021 blog refresh because I need to continually explain that I don’t talk about dating anymore.
Anyway. I’m looking forward to Sunday when I get to see my whole family for the first night of Chanukah! (Crossing fingers that no one gets sick between now and then.)
Light Motifs II 