Smile, It’s Friday

Happy Friday!!! I am not going to spend a lot of time with my favorites today because I am enjoying my time with some of my longtime favorite people. My favorite for today is my mouth guard which I resisted for years and thus paid to repair many a cracked tooth. My biggest fear, that as a claustrophobic person, I was concerned about anything that felt to big and clunky and “choke-y” in my mouth. And I certainly didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for it. And so my practical, kind, hygienist suggested this inexpensive, no frills, no-need-to-boil, dainty nightly mouthguard. It works. I love it. I no longer wake up with sore teeth or a sore jaw. I’m grateful to have finally broken down, and to have tried it, and at a $20 pricepoint, there is no reason not to try it. You can get this at any local drugstore or Walgreens: SleepRight Select-Comfort Dental Guard

Have a wonderful weekend!! See you tomorrow.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Journal Prompts

I have quite a few errands to do in the next couple of days, so my writing is likely to be sparse. Maybe I will just throw out various thoughts that I have pondered this week, and you may use them as your own journal prompts, if you are so inclined.

“How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life.” – Louise Hay (This is why I start my every day, communing with you all, writing on the blog. It’s good for me and it is good for my life. Thank you for enhancing my life. Ty. Ty. Ty.)

“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”– Barbara Kingsolver I have witnessed this fact in my own life, and in so many other people’s lives, too. Where are you feeling a constant agitation or resistance in your own life? Are there changes that need to be made? Are you in the way of your own salvation?

“Life is made of two dots and a dash. Make the most of the dash.” – Anonymous

Dash away, dash away, dash away all!!!! See you tomorrow. Please leave your answers to the journal prompts in my Comments, if you are so inclined.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

I love our dogs. I mean, I adore our dogs. But Josie, our collie causes more fur-formed tumbleweeds than a major storm in the Mojave Desert. And our dogs can’t look out our glass sliders (which form most of the back of our house) without making absolutely sure to having their sloppy wet noses touch the glass. (And of course, our dogs are all three different heights: small, medium, and large) The bottom half of our sliders are translucent to opaque, on a regular basis.

My youngest son questions everything in life. (I wonder where he gets that from. Hmmm.) He once said, “I love our dogs as much as any of us do, but don’t you think it is kind of weird that humankind has evolved to have animals living with us, in our houses? I mean, does it seem a little strange?” (Despite agreeing with him, we all kissed the dogs and ignored our son the rest of the day. 😉 )

Bottom line is, I love my dogs and I love Oreos. They are worth the never-ending cycle of cleaning up after them. Have a great week!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Hangin’ Around Friday

Happy Friday!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!! Before I get to my favorite for today (hint: see above), I wanted to share two interesting things. One, I just read that the reason why Redwood trees are the tallest living thing on Earth is because they intertwine their roots and they share their water. Isn’t that beautiful? What’s your “water”? (i.e. special gift or talent that was meant to be shared to make our world a more beautiful place) Share your water today, and stand taller for doing it.

And two, I had a really interesting, kind of hilarious conversation yesterday. I was doing quite a few returns at a local department store. I was being waited on by quite the colorful lady. She and I both agreed that we especially enjoy the thrill of getting quality items, at discounted prices. The lady, a quirky, jumpy, constantly smiling, slim, elfin type of a person told me, “My talents aren’t limited to bargain hunting. I’m just the kind of person who knows people. I get what a want.”

“What are you, a mobster?” her coworker quipped and we all three nervously giggled.

“No,” the confident lady replied. “For example, I get reservations where no one can get reservations. I get to the best seats at games, and I get backstage passes when I want them.”

My curiosity overcame me. “Okay, so how do you do that? What’s your trick?” I said, half-believing her.

“I just call ’em up, or I show up and I say I’m with Senator So and So’s party and then I march right to wherever I want to go.”

“Do you ever get called out?” I asked.

“Only one or two times, but then they still let me go on through, and I think it’s because they admired my pluck. The key is to have total confidence. Know that you belong in the place where you want to be, and act on it. Never show doubt.” And then she smiled like a self-pleased Cheshire cat, who was already dreaming about her next stunt to pull off.

Okay, back to the moment that you have been waiting for: today’s favorite. (See above) Another Studio’s plant animals are like jewelry for your plant babies. They are adorable and light and rest easily on even the lightest of leaves. They come in many different varieties (I personally purchased the bee and the gecko). They run around $7-$8 a piece. I got mine at a local store but you can go to their website and purchase them from there. For those plain plants of yours who don’t naturally flower, why not give them a cute little bling of their own with an A-S plant animal?

Have a great weekend, friends. Find the small things/experiences that bring a smile to your face, and buy them, and relish them and act on them (and share your water). See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Stratagem

Do you remember when you were in high school or in college, and you looked around, and you found yourself super stressed by all the people around you who seemed to have their whole lives already mapped out with carefully crafted, detailed precision? Do you remember those times when it felt like everyone around you was walking around with their vital mission plans in their backpacks and they were just chomping at the bits to get to graduation, and to get on with it? And you were thinking to yourself, “Oh my gosh, do I even have a backpack?” Maybe you were one of those people who came out of the womb holding your solid lifetime plan in your hand, but I was not. I was an achiever, yes. I did well in school. When I fell in love with my husband, I knew that I wanted to share my life with him. I knew that I wanted a big family, but all of the rest of it, seemed more like a hazy outline. (and honestly, sometimes it still does) When I was young, I was caught up in “the shoulds” and people pleasing and towing the line and “achieving”. I followed the script.

I bring this up because lately I feel like I am back in that scene with the backpacks, except now it’s all a bunch of middle-aged empty nesters, carrying weathered, higher quality backpacks, and it appears as if they all have been given their next ironclad missions. They can’t get their For Sale signs out fast enough. The moving trucks pull up, right after the graduation parties. And here I am, back to, “Oh my gosh, do I even have a backpack?” I had a text conversation with my sister-in-law the other day that looked something like this (and for context, our youngest child graduated from high school last year, her youngest child graduated last week):

Me (thinking she would need comfort and reassurance): Congratulations!! Don’t worry, empty nest is really nice and simple and peaceful. You do less dishes and less laundry.

SIL: Yay!! We are putting our house up in the spring, moving across the country to our dream town in our favorite state, we’re going to rent first and then we are going to buy. We’ve been dreaming about this very moment for years, and . . . . . . (on and on and on with precision detail and excitement). And then she asked, What are your plans for empty nest?

Me: Well, um, we don’t have our plans quite sewn down just yet. We’re still figuring it out, but we are having fun doing the figuring out part.

SIL: As long as you are having fun, you are doing it right.

My sister-in-law is correct. Having fun with the process is important, but I still feel envious of my fellow empty nesters, purposefully walking around (sometimes running around) with their seemingly long thought-out, highly anticipated master plans. The one thing that I know for sure, during this next stage of my life, is that I won’t be stuck on “the shoulds” nor “the script.” When I reflect back on my life, the decisions that I made when I followed my heart and my intuition, have brought me to my favorite people, and my most memorable places, and my most treasured activities (such as starting this blog). Perhaps, my own master plans are never meant to be in step-by-step form, held in a handy backpack. Perhaps the compass in my heart is really all that I have ever needed, and it will take me everywhere that I need to go. I just need to trust this fact, let go of my comparison anxiety, and let the needle steady and point me in the direction which always seems to lead to my most authentic, deepest self and my most profound experiences, often in the most spontaneous of ways.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ Today’s beautiful Google Search Doodle is the 2023 winner of the annual Google Doodle contest. When my daughter was younger, she always submitted her artwork to Google every year (and when she didn’t win, our whole family always agreed with her – Google got it terribly wrong 😉 ). This is the wonderful thing about these types of contests. They encourage and they spur on and they award children’s creativity. This year’s prompt was “I’m grateful for . . .” The winner, Rebecca, drew a picture of she and her two sisters, and she said that her Google Doodle represents all of their happiest memories together. What are your happiest memories? What if you drew a depiction (even just a doodle) of your happiest memories? I wonder what that would like . . . . don’t you? Let’s try it.

+ I read that there is a sign at a local nursery that says this: “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now.” What have you been putting off/meaning to get to/regretting not doing? The next best time is now.

+ If you can keep an open mind, and suspend all your own personal spiritual and religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) for just a moment (and if you can’t do that, then just skip this tidbit), I think that you will get a lot out of a series of tweets I recently read, by Valencia (@SayItValencia). I know that I did:

“My love, Your peace doesn’t have to be protected and no one can drain your energy, we’ve been rehearsing those thoughts for too long. Once you find bliss, you understand it’s a gift and perspective that you give to you at every moment. You end up gifting it to others by default. Does it mean you can’t think your energy can be drained? No. The mind is vast, you can perceive anything you want and then experience it. When ready, if you find that thinking your energy can be drained no longer serves, you can let go of that perspective and find infinite bliss. . . . You awaken multiple times, not just once. Every time, you will have a clearer understanding of what is the ego, what are false fears and what you truly are. . . .The ego is the self we go to, every time we forget we’re part of Source. It’s the self we know in the visible realm. It’s the self that makes us believe we are separated from each other. Love that self! Love what you created so far! But don’t make mistake it as all that you are. . . . Spiritually, the ego is no longer an enemy when you realize that it’s the self you created. There’s nothing to dislike about it, it’s a byproduct of being human and your environment. Which means that you can change the ego, ad infinitum. You are the awareness behind the change.For a long time, I’d think the ego as something separated to myself, until it clicked that “No! The ego IS Valencia! It’s the personality I created based on my experiences, it’s when I believe I’m “me” instead of awareness.” I no longer try to fix the ego, there’s nothing to fix. . . .Instead, I stay in awareness, in Spirit’s presence as much as I can. I guide my ego from there. Without harsh judgment on me. Just discernment, love and patience. . . . Seek your intuition, seek your inner-guidance, seek Spirit with all you got. There’s a kingdom pre installed in your mind, find it. It’s underneath all the false thoughts this world taught us. Underneath the conditioning. It’s your job to seek it, everything else follows.. . . .Intuition never wants anything to be difficult for you. It wants to guide you in the best and easiest way possible. It doesn’t test you nor try to teach you anything that way. Why would it, when it knows the way? The ego on the other hand…I said it yesterday, your ego only knows this world and the rules of the visible realm. It has been taught to measure its understanding of things through tests. It can’t help but believe the universe does the same to you. . . . Ego tests intuition all the time! Intuition or Spirit doesn’t need to test anything, it just wants to guide you effortlessly and fulfill its function. Ego stops testing things when it accepts that inner-guidance leads to longevity and peace, and it wants that for itself as well.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Argle-Bargle (AKA Tuesday’s Tidbits)

+ My Word-of-the-Day daily email taught me “argle-bargle”, today. This is what the meaning is of argle-bargle: “Copious but meaningless talk or writing; nonsense.” It’s a great word. I’ve honestly never seen the word, “argle-bargle”, nor heard the word, “argle-bargle” other than today (honestly, sometimes the Word-of-the-Day tends to get a little “out there” and obscure when it comes to their word choices, in my opinion, but I’m hooked. I read the words daily and I even sometimes try to incorporate some of these words into my own argle-bargle, as I am doing so today.) Admit it. Argle-bargle is a fun word. Try saying it three times fast: Argle-bargle. Argle-bargle. Argle-bargle.

+ The best quote I have read this week (and you know that I love me some great quotes) is this one: “The future has an ancient heart.” – Carlo Levi (Incidentally one of my most kind and loyal, longtime readers, Gail, recommended a book in my Comments recently, and I immediately downloaded it. It is an excellent book and this is where I read the quote. The book is called Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, who also wrote Wild, which was made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon) Anyway, “The future has an ancient heart” speaks to me. It is so true and so comforting. It suggests that whatever we are meant to do, and to learn, and to become, is already imprinted in our most primal, wisest DNA. It will find its way out, through many channels, in our lifetimes, individually and collectively. If you ever need to just “let go”, use this quote as your mantra. It’s now going to become one of my own regular mantras. Thank you, Gail, for your most excellent recommendation. This line from the book, alone, is life-changing.

+ I had an experience over the weekend that I’m sure could have probably made a viral Tik-Tok (although I’m honestly not a Tik-Tok fan, so I don’t really know. I’ve always preferred words over video.) We were visiting our son in a major city in our country, and while he was doing his schoolwork, my husband and I visited a swanky section of town for some lunch and some shopping. I found a delightful boutique full of unusual artsy stuff (my favorite kind of shopping) and I decided to purchase a bracelet in the shop. My husband was doing his own thing outside (small artsy boutiques are not his favorite kind of shopping. I’m not sure that my husband actually has a favorite kind of shopping.) The cashier was perhaps a few years older than me (probably in her late 50s) and she mentioned that this boutique was not actually her store, but it was her daughter’s store, and she was just trying to help her daughter out for the afternoon. What ensued next became two technologically challenged middle-aged women trying to figure out how to pay for my item, with the daughter on a Facetime call, trying to guide us through the whole process (“I think that we press this button” . . . “No! No! No! Don’t press that button!” . . . .”The green one!! Green!!”) and then for the cherry on top, add-in the shop-owner’s father, also a technologically challenged middle-ager, who did not have his readers on, and thus promptly pressed a “7” instead of a “1” which almost made me pay seven times what I was supposed to pay, if we hadn’t been saved by hearing his daughter screaming through the phone: “Abort! Cancel the transaction! RED button! RED!!” In the end we got “the system” to work correctly, and I paid the fair price for my lovely bracelet. And the whole time I was thinking, if my kids had been in the shop and had gotten this on video, I might be Tik-Tok famous right now.

+Congratulations, you made it to the end of today’s argle-bargle.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Credit: @thewitchbrmclst, Twitter

There is a funny thread trending on Twitter this morning. It starts with “#InThe80sNoOneSaid” and here are some chuckle-worthy, relatable answers:

“In the ’80s you never called someone on the phone and then asked “where are you”

“I’m going to sleep in on Saturdays and watch my cartoons on streaming later. You woke up for those Saturday morning cartoons or you didn’t see them!”

“Is this too much hairspray?”

“Put on a helmet.”

How safe are those jarts/lawn darts for kids really?

Damn, left my phone on the roof…

“I’ll have a Venti Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte, please.”

“what’s the WiFi password?”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Credit: @woofknight, Twitter

My adult kids and their friends were talking and laughing about their latest experiences with job recruiters the other day, so I thought that this meme was a good one to share for a Monday chortle.

I am having the same experience that I had many, many years ago, when my youngest child first went to kindergarten and I got used to a full school year of the house all to myself during the day . . . . and then summer arrived. My youngest two children are here, for this month, after many, many months of it being just my husband and I here at home. It goes without saying, that we adore our children and there are a lot of good things about having them back home with us again. But then there are sayings like “What I don’t know, can’t hurt me,” that ring true when your adult children come back to live with you.

Since starting our family, summer has always been the season of adjustment. Summer is the pausal season before autumn comes up and cranks up the regular routine once again. Some day, when all of our children are done with their secondary schooling and fully into their own adult lives, perhaps summer won’t be such a noticeable change in our lives. Despite getting a glimpse of that possibility, it turns out that my husband and I just aren’t quite ‘there’ yet. So we will soldier on . . .

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Highlights and Reflections

++++In my experience, what Europeans do best is that they linger, they savor, they relish . . . they absolutely luxuriate in their moments. The Europeans seem to realize that the flourishes and details are what makes life so delightful and meaningful. When my husband and I eagerly purchased several pastries from a bakery in Rome and I mentioned that I needed them to-go, I was so utterly amazed and enchanted, when we got back to our hotel room, to find out that our delicacies had been carefully wrapped up like a gift, tied up in bright red wrapping paper and a pretty gold ribbon. It was a poignant reminder that we can always give ourselves little gifts throughout our days, and that our every days carry so many precious gifts with them, if we take the time to unwrap our precious moments. Perhaps by carefully wrapping up our delicacies, the bakers were saying, “Slow down. Notice and savor what you are about to experience. Unwrap it intentionally and carefully. Appreciate the many parcels of beauty, and joy, and sensations that you get to partake in, every single day of your life. Be thankful for your many, many beautiful gifts, large and small.”

++++My husband and I are not typically “tour people.” We are both independent, stubborn, reluctant to take orders, and a tad manic when we are on our adventures. In this past trip to Italy, we averaged walking over 20,000 steps a day. (Our children have lamented to us, more than once, “Some people like to relax on their vacations.”) However, our well-experienced travel agent insisted that we had to take a few guided tours in order to get into the sites which we wanted to see, in an efficient, “inside scoop” sort of a way. And so we agreed to take a tour of the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, and the museum that houses Michelangelo’s masterpiece, “David”, and a few other short, “required” tours. (The statue of David was, surprisingly to me, enormous – in most regards. Ahem. “David” is almost 17 feet tall!!) Our tour guides were a colorful bunch and quite proud of their profession. They were all multi-lingual and apparently, tour guides in Italy are required to take six different tests in order to achieve their touring licenses. The “tour guides” were distinguished from our “tour leaders” and “drivers” whose main job was just to shuffle us along, and to make sure that no one got lost. Apparently “tour leaders” can get fined thousands of dollars if they offer up any information about different sites, as that is a job which is entirely devoted to the highly adept “tour guides.” Our first tour guide (in Rome, a tour of the Coliseum) was a lovely young woman, who unfortunately, I cannot remember her name. She was beautiful and proud of her Roman heritage and had one small tattoo of some artwork that her two children had created. She was enchanting and dedicated to giving us a thorough history lesson. Another tour guide was Larisa, in Florence, who was highly dramatic, artistically snobby, and animated in a Jessica Rabbit sort of a way. Larisa was utterly horrified when I touched the “lucky boar” in the center of the city. “Don’t touch it!” she exclaimed with her dramatic flair, nose up in the air. “It’s full of bacteria. A true Florentine would never touch it!”

“I’m not Florentine. I’m an American tourist. I’m touching it,” I said, staring back at her, like a defiant child. (Larisa didn’t know me well enough to know that I am willing to put my life at risk for anything considered “lucky”. I will, without hesitation, stop traffic in order to pick up a lucky penny.)

Our most interesting tour guide was in Sienna. He was “Uncle Paulo”, an older, elegantly dressed man (the theme of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, “Arrogantly Shabby” comes to mind when I think of Uncle Paulo) who made his opinions about everything and everyone be known. He didn’t care for modern buildings, modern art, scantily dressed women (“Practically naked, can you imagine?!), nor dancing children (“I hope that they are teaching those children to learn, and not to just dance!”). Everything that disgusted him, he would declare and then for extra flourish, add the question, “Can you imagine?!?” So, how the tour ended, was something that we will never forget, nor will Uncle Paolo. A proud man, Uncle Paulo wanted to keep the tour efficiently on time, so he decided to take us on a short cut through a park, which happened to be hosting a bike race. He had wrongly assumed that the bike race would be over, but it wasn’t. So Uncle Paulo had to shuffle us through a bike race, where only a couple of us at a time, would duck under the safety ribbon, run across the street, right after a motorcycle had passed, indicating the last racer of that particular racing heat. When we all finally and safely, yet a little ruffled and harried and full of nervous giggles, reconvened at our tour bus, Uncle Paulo was obviously deeply chagrined. “This is quite possibly the worst mistake of my life! Can you imagine?!?”

I felt sorry for him. We all did. We all reassured Uncle Paulo that these are the stories that make a vacation. These little “snafus” are the things that you remember with a smile on your face, once you’ve survived them, and they are happily in your past. (I’ll save the story for another blog post in which my husband purposely bought an unusually green colored piece of luggage, specifically for this particular trip, only to have accidentally picked up the wrong piece of luggage when we arrived in Rome. It turns out that my husband picked up the suitcase belonging to a young Texan, who had also purposefully purchased the same unusual green colored, piece of luggage for his trip to Italy. These are the stories that make our trips and experiences so memorable and amusing and idiosyncratic to each of us, for years to come. Can you imagine?!)

++++I am, I realize, unfortunately American-centric, and I noticed in myself, complete surprise when I noticed Italian people with Down Syndrome or other conditions. I had to giggle at myself, to notice that I seemed to think that somehow all human experiences were somehow limited to just us Americans. I was deeply moved when were sitting in an outdoor cafe in Rome, having dinner next to a beautiful Roman family, whom I won’t soon forget. They were a young couple, with a beautiful little girl. The husband was so attentive to his little child and also to his lovely wife, who was in a wheelchair and was making constant involuntary movements and sounds. I don’t know what her affliction was exactly, but it rendered her completely dependent on her loving husband and unable to care for her little girl, as I am sure she wished that she could. The husband affectionately fed his wife dessert, and gently wiped her mouth after each bite. I found myself praying for this lovely family, and being in awe of them, all at once, in a constant stream of emotion. They were so young to be dealing with what they were experiencing, and yet they were so brave, and resilient, and determined to make the most of the moment. It was one of the moments when the Universe was giving me a reminder lesson that “the human spirit” is a Universal thing which resides in all of our bodies, no matter the race, religion, ethnicity, or condition that our individual bodies are currently in.

++++We were picked up in a car outside of our hotel by the tour company who was going to take us through the Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica (which is also unbelievably enormous – it could house more than two American football fields). We were told that we had to pick up one other family on the way, and we arrived outside of a hotel where a lovely Chilean woman and her daughter jumped into the car, giggling at the husband/father who was running towards the car from the sidewalk. He was a lovably rumpled middle-aged man, whose glasses were missing one of their arms, making his glasses perch, perilously and crookedly, at the end of his nose. The Chilean family were delightful and I felt an instant kinship to them. The husband was a lawyer, the wife had raised their four children (just like me!), and their 19-year-old daughter, a graceful young woman, was the youngest of their four children and the only girl. (just like us!) The mother and I bonded easily. She had a no-nonsense, intelligent sense of humor and a twinkle in her eyes. So, I was taken off guard, when telling each other about our children, that she mentioned that one of her sons had died. That’s when the sparkle in her eyes faded, but the beauty of her vulnerable soul still glowed.

We met Mohammed, our guide for the Vatican experience (he was the first to admit the irony of it all, being a man of Middle Eastern descent, who reminded me of a younger version of the game show host, Bob Barker), at a cafe which was below ground. As we were shuffled down the stairs, my Chilean friend, giggled, grabbed my arm, and suggested that perhaps we were being kidnapped, and that’s when my stomach turned a little, considering the idea of that perhaps not-too-far-out-of-the-realm possibility. It turned out that Mohammed was an excellent guide, with a lot of connections, so we got to see quite a bit of everything, in all of the right places and at all of the right times. When we got to the Pietà, Michelangelo’s masterpiece of Mary, holding the body of Jesus, who had just been removed from the cross, I was instantly moved to tears and I was entirely entranced for a period which felt eternal and timeless. I have honestly never seen a more beautiful work of art in my lifetime. When I turned to exclaim and share my unbelievable flow of emotion and excitement to my newfound Chilean soul sister, I noticed that she was no longer nearby, nor with our group. She was far away in a corner, and she was sort of crumpled, and small, and dark, and sad. I walked back to her, and I put my arm around her. I had no words. But I purely understand the universalness of a mother’s heart. It is amazing to me that Michelangelo was able to capture the intensity and emotion of a mother’s broken heart, forever in a slab of marble. He captured the vulnerable, defenseless, yet still armored, resilient, purposeful heart of a mother, to the point that I have no doubts that the Pietà must be nothing but Divine.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.