Back in Normal Days, I used to stay off the roads on the weekends. During the week I’d make appointments, have meetings, go out for groceries, etc., but I’d stay home on the weekends because that’s when people who were stuck at work all day would go out. I figured I’d just cede my space on the roads, in lines, and in building to them.
Now it’s the New Normal and weekends don’t really happen anymore and I never go anywhere. I was just lying here with the fan blowing on me and three dogs snoozing and realized I have a fridge full of food since I cooked like a demon yesterday, all my errands done, and a full blesses Sunday to lie out under the trees nd watch the sunlight filter through, while the bushes rustle with baby animals–lots of fawns and baby bears on the roads these days so we all drive slow since they’re all idiots about cars–and the birds flit about mindlessly and every now and then a chipmunk darts through the greenery. I have plenty I should be doing, but nowhere I have to go and nobody I have to talk to. Pure Bliss.
What made you happy this week?
My husband and I watched the Melissa McCarthy movie “Spy” last night. I’ve got to be honest, some of it is a little bit too gross for me (both in violence content and in bodily function humor content), but other parts are hilarious. It’s very, very broad humor, but sometimes when I’m having a bad day, I just watch the goofy Jason Statham parts on YouTube until I’m almost crying with laughter. He plays a spy that is equal parts macho/hapless doofus and he really needs to be in more comedies.
I enjoyed two excellent displacement activities yesterday, making playlists on Spotify and watching/listening to old Craig Ferguson interviews with Scottish people. Just Scottish people b/c I love their accents and the sense of humor. I think my favorites were Gerard Butler and Shirley Manson.
I do that to, I watch the Craig Ferguson Scots chats. They’re having such a good time being Scottish.
I watched one with James McAvoy yesterday. I get a kick out of how much more pronounced their accents are when talking with another Scot.
Are the chats from his late night show or did he do something special somewhere else? In which case, link please! (Also, Gerard Butler. Sigh.)
Just old clips from his show. I never watched it, so they’re new to me đ
Absolutely agree with you regarding “Spy”. I got it from our library and was rather surprised by the full frontal nudity. And not happy about the rather gross bits of humour. I guess though that in cinemas they showed it without those explicit nude scenes… #
Totally agree also with the Scotting accent being wonderful! I never read The Lord of the Rings so wasn’t too keen on watching the films. But after I saw the two hobbit cousins Pippin and whatever-his-name-was, I was sold and hubby didn’t have any problems taking me with him to see the films.
Happiness is finally getting the dragon to cooperate. And sorting out my referees for my resume. It was a bigger deal for me than it sounds.
Very productive yesterday, so nothing I HAVE to do today. Plus I have cookies and microwave fudge and whitefish salad, so all I need now is to find something good to re-read and I will have a perfect Sunday.
Just finished up talking via Zoom with my two sisters, so that made me happy. And I finished up the blanket for my niece (actually finished up two – one orange and one pink). Happy to have that done, and on its way for delivery.
Lots of good things this week to get happy about. Goldfinches, fans in the house, cortisone shots that relieve arm pain. Went to an outdoor “concert” by a friend’s band (think Pink Martini). They were standing in a derelict green house, so they could plug stuff in and stand on the foundation. The horns had plexiglass shields hanging in front of them, guitarists and percussion wore masks, everyone was about 10 feet apart at least. The listeners were tailgating, or had brought chairs, we were far apart and masked. Still, out on a Friday night with other people hearing fun music. It was great.
The croquet set has arrived, so I need to set up the events. Distanced sports and G&Ts, with chair on the sidelines, and polite British clapping for a good shot.
That sounds like heaven.
And big straw hats!
Reread The Forgettable Miss French by Kristin Painter. Love that book. The thing I’m most happy about is that I left the house voluntarily and drove around for half an hour. I also washed my bedding, all of it: mattress pad to bedcover. It’s a pain and time-consuming and the washer here is cranky and often requires readjusting when I do something as heavy as bedding (apparently clothing — small loads — is all it wants to do; it protests everything else). But clean, dust-mite-free. Yay!
I am happy for you, too. Getting out of the house when there is a specific task or commitment (or a distinct lack of chocolate in the house) is one thing, but to do something difficult without an external prod is a much higher level of progress. And the memory of your accomplishment will make the next time easier.
May this be one in a long line of such happy milestones!
I have to make myself leave the house every two weeks to drive the car and make sure it doesn’t die.
Turns out, two months is too long and the battery was so dead my remote lock thingie didn’t work. I knew this, of course. Now I am committed to driving it once a week to make sure that doesn’t happen again and it is one thing that will get me out.
Good job getting out of the house, and also getting things done inside!
The shade garden is almost done. Still some panting to do. Will be finished by weekâs end. Finally, finally getting some much needed jobs done.
Planting…. sheesh
The only requirement I have to fulfill for my course is writing my yoga teacher bio. I’m being careful with it because I don’t want a wordy, stilted one like the type I see most often. I feel like I need a marketing or ad copywriter! I finished my evaluation lesson last week. I’m close to certification!
This means that I had a weekend at home. No need to do anything extra or go out. I made two phonecalls and talked for ages yesterday. Today I did the recorded Qi gang video on YouTube. I lay in the sun getting vitamin D. I had nap inside afterwards. I did some mending and tidying up. I chilled out in the best way.
Short and snappy is critical for bios. Otherwise, no one reads them.
I was involved in a patient advocacy project a while back, and everyone else submitted 500-word bios, while mine was one sentence, maybe two printed lines (and I probably had the most experience of anyone involved). I ended up cutting the bejeebers out of the others, but they still ended up twice as long as mine.
I’ve had to do these for conferences (ugh) and in my industry, people seem to go for a 3-5 sentence pattern. 1-2 sentences about where you’re from and what you’re doing professionally. 1-2 sentences about your experience, background and any relevant certs. And one sentence about you as a person – hobbies, family, dogs or some such.
I don’t know if that’ll help, but thought I’d mention it just in case.
Everything helps. Thank you, both. đ
The last time I had to do a bio was 2015 about my professional experience only. I think I had 6 sentences max. This is more comprehensive.
Also, I wonder how I double posted?!
The only requirement I have to fulfill for my course is writing my yoga teacher bio. I’m being careful with it because I don’t want a wordy, stilted one like the type I see most often. I feel like I need a marketing or ad copywriter! I finished my evaluation lesson last week. I’m close to certification!
This means that I had a weekend at home. No need to do anything extra or go out. I made two phonecalls and talked for ages yesterday. Today I did the recorded Qi gang video on YouTube. I lay in the sun getting vitamin D. I had nap inside afterwards. I did some mending and tidying up. I chilled out in the best way.
I just completed an 8-week course of physical therapy (as part of a research study), and during the re-evaluation, it was clear that I was considerably more stable on my feet than at the beginning, so I’m less likely to fall over if someone brushes past me or I step on something uneven. Some of our other goals didn’t pan out, but they were probably too ambitious, and I’ll be doing homework for the next four weeks to see if at least one of them can be accomplished in time, using a prescribed routine but on my own, not supervised.
So, two good things in one: 1) I contributed to scientific understanding, and 2) I gained some benefit for myself.
I am struggling with life and other humans this week, plus a heat wave which just saps my energy. I just officially gave up trying to be productive today and started Alexis Hall’s newest book. Hopefully this shakes me out of my funk.
Iâve had a lovely day off: breakfast in the bath followed by a day in the garden, with lots of breaks sitting in the sun and reading Alexis Hallâs âBoyfriend Materialâ, like Lupe. Great fun.
Iâm enjoying the creativity involved in writing a new cv and updating my website. Not there yet, but getting clearer.
And the sunâs come back. And I harvested my first potatoes and tomatoes.
I drove thirty minutes to a local small business that just makes dumplings. I bought 20 for my daughter and 5 for me. My daughter is a dumpling fanatic and has been missing fresh like the ones she can get at college, so I researched and found this tiny little business that makes them in a nearby town.
I got out of the house, listened to a story there and back, and made my little girl happy – all in one blow.
Plus you got dumplings.
This may sound masochistic but I have enjoyed working outside, even in the high temperatures. For the first time in almost four years I am starting to feel strong and capable. Of course mostly what I am doing is running the tractor dumping limbs that my husband is cutting and mowing (we have about 4-5 acres that we keep as lawn) but I still feel I am contributing. Before the cancer and surgeries we were a team keeping this place up and he has carried it all by himself. I feel content for the first time in a long while.
Thatâs brilliant. Thoâ wouldnât sheep mow that enormous lawn for you?
My mother got a couple of ewes and a ram when I was a kid. We had just over an acre and she was tired of mowing. The problem was that she spoiled every animal we ever had and she fed them so much they would just hang around and wait for dinner instead of eating. We ended up with pasture ornaments. I have a suspicion that I inherited that tendency.
I think that’s fabulous!
I was thrilled to pieces to get a notification from my library system that they were reopening for touchless pickup of hold materials! The whole library system has been completely closed for four and a half months, and I’ve missed it dreadfully.
The four books I received yesterday morning turned out to be ones I didn’t want to read more than a few pages of — Even though I could have discerned that if I’d had a chance to leaf through them at an open library, it was still worth it to have the thrill of going there, seeing stacks of holds on a table outside by the doors, and then finding my books.
And when I got home from the library (and the grocery store and the gas station) SOMEbody in charge of trees and highways etc. had come by and removed 5 or 600 remaining pounds of tree trunk that they’d cut down on February 28th and never come to pick up.
So that made me REALLY happy. đ
I didn’t have to work for two days. Yay.
I have rehearsal tonight and did a play reading yesterday, so that was fun.
I ordered masks on Etsy and got three out of the five. They are very pretty.
I actually finished a book for the first time in months. I was hoping for a happy ending but it was more of a ‘hopefully they get together someday” ending, sigh.
Finished tacking up all of the insulation in the basment ceiling that was coming down. Yay. I shouldn’t have to bother with it for a few years. Yay.
Lots of stuff scheduled for the coming week but not a lot on any one day. My computer camera is working for online meetings (jury’s still out on the mic). Tech working always makes me happy.
I’m going to take a break from weeding and inside maintainance for a coule of weeks and that decision makes me happy.
Sitting on my window sill is a 40 ounce almond milk container – saved for its nice shape – with 30 ounces of water and 4 decaf teabags. It went up at 6 PM, so it won’t likely be drinkable today. That’s okay. I have no ice for it, yet. I’ve not made sun tea since the sixties, but the man cave is in the eighties (heh) so I needed something to do with the excess UV rays.
I am happified just by the tea color in this experiment. Pale, but darkening.
When my little brother and I were in our teens, our family lived in Eastern Washington: high desert, very hot summers. We had one of those two-gallon glass jugs with a spigot and he and I made sun tea at least two a day in it and slurped it all down.Then we made another one so our mom could have some when she got home from work. That is a very happy memory!
I made more progress on my hopefully-will-be-novel. I’ve got a rough outline now and figured out a fair bit of the world-building and how to make my heroine snarky. Having a snarky heroine makes me very happy, she’ll be fun to write.
I had two enjoyable days this weekend. Yesterday I picked nearly 9lbs of blueberries and today I picked another 4. That, plus getting my errands and weekend chores done in a timely enough that left me leisure to sit in my hammock swing and finish a couple of books I had started, made me feel very content.
I paid a teenager to spray paint my plastic patio furniture, which gets fresh paint in a different color every few years. She discovered she likes to spray paint, which is good to know.
Also, I heard from a mom I know that her son has stayed clean and sober for five years and is doing well.
My writing partner and I got Zoom meetings to work for us–she’s not going out or seeing people during the pandemic. So now we can critique our poems online together.
And someone should be coming to fix the a/c tomorrow; it went out yesterday–of course on a weekend.
And today I had lunch with a friend and ate Mexican, which makes me happy.
I got my hair cut on Thursday and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed that. I usually get my hair cut every 7 weeks and this was slightly more than 4 months. I had these great big curls in the back, which was lots of fun, but in the heat and humidity we’ve been having, it was also VERY HOT and SOGGY! I think the haircut did as much for my well being as the air conditioning. It is also very timely, because we’re due to return to the awful weather on Tuesday.
Another high point this week was when my library called to say that three books I had ordered were ready to pick up. It is such a treat to have the libraries open again! I can’t quite keep up with all the changes in hours from week to week, but I fell on my copy of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ latest like a person given water after crossing the desert.
I wasn’t able to put one over on my friend Dave this week. When I got ready to pay for my purchases yesterday, he was lurking at one end of the cash desk and Mario, the manager, was lurking at the other. My co-conspiritor who had helped me pull it off last week was off and I can see that I will have to enlist more of Dave’s employees into the cause. It takes a lot to fool someone who has been a close friend for decades, but I am not discouraged. My sister Kitty can be amazingly sneaky and I will ask her to tutor me. If I am no longer allowed to bake for Dave and his crew, I can at least remind them that I am on their side. And it wasn’t a total defeat; they gave me the smaller of the two discounts. I will have to cogitate about my next step.
I went into my office and cleaned it out. Brought 4 boxes and a bag home and only one box left to empty out. I have 4 HR tasks left to do for work and have decided to work on them this week so I won’t have to fret about finishing them. DH and I spent a long weekend at the cottage. It was very hot and this afternoon we watched a major thunderstorm roll in across the lake – always impressive. My vegetable garden continues to flourish – my tomato and cucumber plants are huge and second plantings of beets, radishes and swiss chard have sprouted. I have gardened for years but this is the first time I’ve grown vegetables from seed – it’s so much fun!
I’m eating a cucumber grown in my greenhouse right now. Just chopped up and mixed with a little pickle juice.
Today I finished quilting the last Customer quilt I have. This makes me extraordinarily happy because one, one of the quilts I had had for 15 months. Two, I cannot work on my ownâs quilts without guilt. đ In case I forget to post them on Wednesday, here is a link to photos the quilt that I finished today. https://www.instagram.com/p/CC2Kg8mJ_17/?igshid=1e8ekv8hrp8mt
I had my newest nonfiction book come out (from St. Martin’s Press instead of Llewellyn, so it is also my first mainstream witchcraft book…exciting, but with some extra pressure for it to do well). Modern Witchcraft: Goddess Empowerment for the Kick-Ass Woman. Always happy-making to have a book out, although the promo is a lot of extra work.
Plus I did a cover reveal for my first cozy mystery, Furbidden Fatality (oy, the titles for these things) and people seemed to really like it.
Today I scrubbed the bathroom sink and toilet. You wouldn’t think that would cause happiness, but I have horrible water and they’ve been looking ugly for ages while I worked up the energy to do a serious scrubbing. The whole rest of the day I’d walk in there and be happy because of how much better it looked. Sometimes it’s the little things.
It has been a rough week. My brother in Australia was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Then they found three tumors. They operated successfully yesterday.
So difficult dealing with this from the US. Damn Covid-19. No way I could travel from California the Aussies probably wouldnât have let me in, or if they did it would be under strict quarantine. But my siblings have all rushed to his side and have handled everything well. I just center my days around a daily phone call and numerous email updates.
Itâs such a relief to know heâs fine. Still some rehab to go but all in all heâs doing well. Modern surgery is amazing.
I’m so sorry to hear of your brother’s illness. I hope all will be well for him. When I hear of such situations, I remind myself that people are strong and think of the examples of Jimmy Carter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear about that. I hope he recovers really fast.
I’m so sorry, Roben. I hope your brother makes a full recovery.
Every year various seeds sprout in my compost bin, and every year we plant a couple just to see what they are. This year, we have a really healthy butternut squash plant (THREE good-size squash!) and another mysterious one that may be a kabocha or perhaps a pumpkin of some kind… it’s not immediately obvious even though the squash is the size of a softball. There should be more photos on the internet of intermediate stages of squash.
Plus the sungold tomatoes are ripening. And the beans are appearing. And my herb garden is spectacular.
I spent the weekend reading, continuing my Marvel rewatch, and doing a bit of cooking. Yesterday I made a very British egg and cress sandwich, except I didn’t have granary bread, so it wasn’t quite authentic. But the filling (homemade mayonnaise!) tasted just right. If I can’t visit the UK, at least I can eat like I’m there.
We had a cantaloupe sprout from our compost. We got one cantaloupe from it that was awesome, so next year we are going to plant on purpose. I had real pumpkins last year on my patio for decoration and when they started getting soft we took out to our burn pile. This spring my husband was going to burn and came back saying that we had huge gorgeous vines all over it. We ended up with 8 perfect pumpkins. We also had some tomato plants that were not what we have ever planted come up with strange tiny tomatoes. We are calling this the summer of the surprise garden đ.
I’m not sure whether to hold a wake (a tiny one) or do a quick Snoopy Happy Dance. The larger of the two remaining house plants, the one with a four foot runner and lots of dry, brown leaves, has been banished from my sight. No worries, there was a flag mount on the garage out front, and that’s where it dangles now. Ma nature can water it, and since it is supposed to thunderstorm all week, she’ll do a swell job.
That just leaves (leaves, heh) the one plant on the window sill next to the sun tea, and that ends the Sunday Naked Gardening tradition. I’m not getting nud for one plant. In the window. That would be silly.
I am tickled by the mental image of someone playing one-handed strip poker with the window plants!
You’re picturing me losing, aren’t you.
Celebrating my mother’s birthday by going to the cinema with the whole family made me happy: we watched a great documentary called “Besser Welt als nie” (roughly “better the world than never”) about a young guy taking to the road on his bike to travel the world for two years (starting in Germany, going East, until he reached Indonesia and Australie, then continuing further East to the US, going south to Latin America and back West to Morocco, Spain, France and back to Germany, going by plane only when he had to).
Great cinematography, with a great sense of humor and a very relaxed attitude. And all 5 of us loved it which was a bonus as well.
And we watched it in one of my favourite cinemas – a luxurious palace where nice food gets served to your reclining chair and you’ve got plenty of space. BLISS!
The day after, hubby and I spent the whole day outdoors, cycling and and relaxing at our favorite lake near Munich. Then I crossed the Ammersee by boat and took the metro home – and the train was almost empty, so again this was great (in the morning, the train was packed with bikes which was quite stressful).
I got sunburnt for the third time this summer – I don’t seem to learn my lesson…
So this weekend made me happy.
I was upstairs in the art room when I heard a kid on the sidewalk below say, “Hey, this is the house where they have a dragon every Halloween!”
And I realized I am what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I seem to have ended up in moderation, without even sharing a link!
With this week’s current news from Portland, Oregon, being so dire, I was made happy by “Athena of Portland,” of whose existence I learned on Sunday. She put herself between a row of protesters and a row of camo-swathed unidentified “federal” something-or-others . . . and stripped off and then began a series of yoga and ballet moves. Don’t know what I enjoyed more, the bug-eyed expressions of the “feds” or the fact that they dispersed when she got too close!
As I pointed out to my cousins, even guys who have been seizing people off the streets and whisking them off in unmarked cars to unidentified locations probably are REALLY averse to being filmed — as they knew they were — dragging a naked woman into an unmarked car and driving away. Guaranteed to go viral on social media instantly.