32 Responses

1. That meme is great!

   A friend of mine writes a Substack about maintaining wonder and creativity during these dumpster-fire times. A recent post was about being in the moment with neutrality. It’s obviously hard, especially with all the terrible things the current administration is doing, but it helped me understand why I find time with my characters so peaceful and restorative: when I’m writing fiction, I have that neutrality. (Small Wonders: An Offering of Brilliant Playground: https://open.substack.com/pub/brilliantplayground/p/coming-home-to-peace-the-transformative?r=3hjzz&utm_medium=ios)

   1. Nice, Llewella.

   2. Lovely

2. Love it!

   1. I just got an email notifying me that Walmart has delivered the $89 recliner loveseat I ordered.

      Except, I didn’t order that. And, I’m at the doctor’s office, so I can’t verify, but there wasn’t a huge box on my front porch when I left.

      Also, just how much loveseat/recliner do you figure you could get for $89?

      Off to look at the meme website.

      1. Are you sure it’s a real Walmart notification and not phishing? Advice I’ve gotten elsewhere is to hit Forward, which will reveal the real sending address.

      2. Yes, please make sure it’s real. At least hover your mouse over the address to see where it actually came from. You shouldn’t have to click on anything. DO NOT REPLY TI THE EMAIL OR CLICK ANY LINKS.

         Look up contact information for Walmart independently and use those. Like Patrick says, this has scam written all over it.

         1. And let us know!

            1. It was real (and this is really embarrassing) because it wasn’t a recliner, it was a recliner slipcover, which I definitely did order and forgot in the flurry of gift-buying for my horde of grandkids and great-grandkids.

               On the other hand, it was not delivered, at least not here. And, weirdly, they said the delivery occurred at 11:25 a.m. but the email was time-stamped 7:35 a.m. So there’s that.

               Sorry for the false alarm!

            2. Jeanne, It’s still annoying that it was misdelivered or reported as delivered when it wasn’t. I hope that gets resolved with minimal grief.

      3. Oh, darn. I was imagining an $89 recliner love seat. The possibilities were endless.

         1. If it gave you a chuckle, it was worth it. 😀

3. I love those memes!

   Also I now have a beautiful cherry graphic as my Jennifer Crusie website place holder on my phone. (It used to be a logo of one of your support partners).

4. I’m not ready for today either, Susan.

5. Breathe in, breathe out. Some days, that’s all we can ask of ourselves.

6. I spent three hours last night calming my daughter . Those would be the three hours from 4 am to 7 am.

   After three hours discussion with foster daughter yesterday that while we like everything we have seen of new boyfriend it’s too soon to say oh yes they will live happily ever after. And that this is not measured in months or years but in seeing how they handle conflicting goal/difficult choices and how they handle crises. (FD grew up in shelters and streets and our marriage is the first she ever saw in action and that started when she was 25 and our marriage was over 30 and we had worked things out so she has a lot to learn first serious boyfriend at 35).

   And this is on top of trying to calm DS after the shooting.

   Let me say 1)parenting never ends 2) I need this website 3) naps are always a good idea 4) apparently I still have those parenting skills so yay. 5) may I also recommend the chats fam mom chats and dad chats which I see in Facebook but I assume are also on ticktock and which made me giggle hysterically at 7 am after all this . They are sharing stories from raising their four young children and really funny and I needed them badly.

   1. Here’s an example
      https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1C5pgyxQVu/?mibextid=wwXIfr

      1. Debbie, maybe he deserves that? My kids never said stuff like that in the car.

      2. Ok maybe this one will get your funny bone …
         https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BzSMf9iSA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

         1. Debbie, that family is nuts!!

            1. Yes. But they are really enjoying their kids and doing a nice job of team parenting.
               Also they routinely use the older two kids two figure out what the third one is trying to say and I have to say I would need the big kids too…

7. Hee, hee, Jenny! Humor helps.

8. My approach for getting ready for today turned out to be pulling an all-nighter last night for no real reason. Yeah, that’s gonna help me get through the week! I have errands to do, and then I’m seeing a nap in my future.

   1. I was going to get up at four-thirty for work. I woke up at three, and could not go back to sleep. I wasn’t wide awake, I was drowsy, but we all know that drowsiness doesn’t count for hours of sleep. Today will be ending Really Early.

9. I am used to having the last two weeks of December off, not having Management Panic Time Must Come To Work. I got told to put in for 4 hours off on Xmas Eve “just in case,” but who the hell knows. My brain isn’t giving a crap today!

10. I’m not ready for Christmas, either. But growing up with an extended family for whom the concepts of Christmas and DISASTER (all caps, trust me) were joined at the hip, I don’t expect to be. Oddly enough, the experience significantly reduces the holiday stress level. There’s no way I can be ready, so it’s easier to go with the flow.
    Wishing everyone on Argh a holiday where you find your zen, the needful things get done, and you find many joys in things big and small. <3

11. I guess Christmas will happen whether I am ready or not so I’ll just go with the flow.

    Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season no matter which ones you celebrate.

12. When people ask me if I’m ready for Christmas, I usually say cheerfully, ‘Yes!’ If I’m feeling kind, I then go on to to explain that I don’t actually do anything for Christmas. My niece and I go for a walk on the mountain and have a picnic while we knit. So getting ready for Christmas involves buying a punnet of strawberries, some cherries and some biscuits, packing my trangia, green tea, teapot and cups into a bag, and making sure I’ve got my knitting. Occasionally we give each other presents, but it’s always something we’ve made during the year, like soap or jam.

    It’s really very restful.

    1. Oh, thanks for reminding me to pack my knitting in the bag of stuff to bring with me to my Christmas gathering! I started a hat weeks ago (for myself!) and at this rate, it won’t be done before July, but I could get a good bit done, maybe the whole thing, on Christmas!

13. I started an afghan. Just a repeating shell pattern that I don’t have to think about. That will keep me in a ‘zen’ frame of mind.

    Enjoy the good moments and try to ignore the rest. Time will move on.

14. My dad has a cold. We may not have people for Christmas, which is okay. The house is really torn up, I can’t find things, like plugs for charges. My sister left today, and I bless her name, she has a lion’s heart. Also, I’m so glad she went home. We had three condolence calls today, which was nice.
    Yesterday was the Christmas Pageant, and then I sang in a beautiful Lessons and Carols service in the summer Episcopal church. Summer, as in, no heating system. Everyone from priests to congregation came in the their long johns and parkas. It’s the only thing that claims my Christmas heart anymore, to sing beautiful music with other good musicians. It’s the first performance I’ve sung in decades that my mom hasn’t attended, but my sister was there and we embraced. Came home and snoozed before going to bed.

    1. Sending more pocket hugs. To you, to Jessie , to Nancy, to Carol, to everyone in this community who has lost family recently.