Tag: humor

Celebrate Friday

Happy Friday Quotes | Best Motivational Quotes For Weekend

I like the perspective of the above meme. Friday isn’t just about anticipating the frivolity of the weekend, it is also about celebrating all that you have experienced and you have accomplished during a week in your life. When I have a day that I wonder where the time went, or I am feeling unaccomplished, I look for the “wins”. I look for just three things that I completed or I experienced that day, and I always am surprised by the fact that more happened in any one particular day, than I realized. With that in mind, by each Friday, you have at least fifteen “wins” by the end of the work week.

My regular readers know that Friday, being my favorite day of the week, is devoted to “favorites”. On Favorite Things Friday, I list three favorite things, or songs, or products, or places, etc. that have made my life experience even better. I strongly encourage you to list some of your favorites in my Comments section, so we all have some fun things to try and out and experience over the weekend. Anticipation is delicious. Here are my favorites for today:

DEVS – This Hulu series is fascinating. It is just eight episodes, and that is it. DEVS is all wrapped up in one season, which is comforting for me, a person who tends to want to binge on any TV series, which I find to be super intriguing and thought provoking. DEVS is an eerie science fiction show made by the creator of the fascinating thriller movie, Ex Machina. The only negative thing I have to say about this series, is that you are forced to watch intermittent advertisements throughout each episode. Interestingly, last night when my husband and I were watching the last episode of DEVS, we got to choose which Hills Science Diet commercial we wanted to watch – dog or cat. We’re dog people. It was kind of like, “Pick your punishment” but at least we felt like we had some sort of say in the matter.

Nestle Tollhouse Disco Chips – My local grocery store hasn’t gotten these in yet, but I can’t wait until they do. I look for them on my every trip to the store. (which is almost daily) Disco chips are chocolate chips with edible sparkles/glitter in them. How do you spell fun and delicious?! D-I-S-C-O-C-H-I-P-S I’m not sure if the chips are actually fun and delicious, because I haven’t even seen or eaten them yet, but as I repeat from above, anticipation is often the most delicious part of any kind of adventure, epicurean and beyond . . .

Ball Sort Puzzle – This is my new favorite phone game. I see that I have a theme going with phone games. I really enjoy the sorting games, mostly because I am pretty damn good at them. (It must be from all of those years of sorting laundry for a large family.) In this game you have to get four matching colored balls into each “test tube” which are filled with multi-colored balls, all mixed up. It’s sort of like a rubik’s cube in test tubes. It is a simple game, but not necessarily an easy one.

Okay, I am going to have to insist that you, my beloved and appreciated readers, have an amazing weekend! Anticipate, experience, devour, reflect, rest, enjoy.

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

It’s That Time of the Year

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It is Girl Scout cookie time! I showed my support for my local Girl Scouts, by eating a box of Tagalongs last night. My dinner plans for tonight, involve at least one sleeve of Thin Mints. I was walking out of the store yesterday, and a sweet little girl, with a sash of hard-earned badges, waved for me to come towards her (but not too close, it’s still Covid season . . . .sigh). Under her little green mask, I knew that she was smiling, and her muffled words said, “Come here, lady. I’ll lead you to where the pile of heavenly cookies lay, and you can choose from the rainbow of choices.” It was like seeing an angel on Earth. I followed her, like she was the Pied Piper, followed by a trail of desperately hungry, always-on-a-diet, middle-aged women.

Don’t praise me. It was my duty to support the young ladies. I was a Girl Scout myself, at one time. It was the least that I could do, for my community. In fact, our current stash of Girl Scout cookies, purchased just last night, has become alarmingly low, already. I may have to look for my little green friend again today, and I pray that her stash hasn’t been sold out, purchased by other community supporters.

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

Modern Day Doctor’s Visit

So, I went through a modern day scare yesterday. The backstory is this: Saturday morning I woke up with laryngitis and not even a bad case of it. My voice was just a little raspy. I had been swimming in our pool the night before and I had slept deeply, so I assumed the cocktail of chlorine activated lungs, mixed with some likely mouth-breathing during my deep sleep, helped to create my hoarse, gravelly sounding voice. I had plans to meet four of my dearest friends at a local park shelter (socially distanced, of course) on Saturday morning, so in a text prior to our planned meet-up, I mentioned my laryngitis, and I also mentioned that I had no other symptoms of sickness. No one seemed too concerned and we all had a wonderful visit, keeping our chairs a good distance apart from each other. The rest of Saturday, I felt fine. However, by Sunday, a cough had developed and by Sunday night, I was coughing up a storm, and I was very tired. On Monday, I knew that it was time to call a doctor.

I had my first telemedicine call of my lifetime, late yesterday morning. My doctor is always a bit late for my appointments, and she remained consistent in her ways, but this time, I could go about my business in my house, and I received a text when she was ready to meet with me. In the beginning of quarantine, in a whirlwind of hypochondria induced panic, I purchased a high-tech thermometer, an automated blood pressure cuff and an oximeter, so I was able to give her all of my readings. Everything was good. I could smell and taste anything and everything, and I know this, because I was checking out my scent and taste senses, every five minutes. I had a normal temperature, and my other readings were all normal, but my major symptom was this annoying, persistent dry cough and a tightness in my chest. Before COVID, I would have just written this off as a chest cold and not even a particularly bad chest cold, but in the throws of COVID, I was starting to think about my will, and if my will was updated. I started panicking about my family members, and my friends who I had just met with on Saturday, and an overwhelming feeling of responsibility and shame, washed over me. Did I really need to go shopping last week, just for the hell of it? Was it worth my health, and the health of my family and of my friends, to check out the Steinmart liquidation sale? Yes, I had worn a mask, but are masks really full-proof??? What’s the latest science on masks say today?! Why did the FEDEX delivery man not wear a mask, when he needed me to sign for a package, and more so, why didn’t I insist on him wearing a mask before I did sign for it?? What was even in that stupid package?!? Oh yeah, it was a ridiculously overpriced, pretentious perfume sample that smelled bad. Was anyone’s death worth me trying out a stinky perfume??? Why do I even need perfume right now? The only regular outings I really go to now, are cursory trips to the grocery store, and occasionally to places like Steinmart. Before COVID, it would never have even crossed my mind to go to the doctor with my minor, pedestrian symptoms. I would have felt silly and hysterical. But yesterday, I was inches short of an anxiety meltdown, on top of my annoying, persistent cough.

As expected, my doctor ordered up a COVID test for me. I think by her witnessing my wild eyes and sensing through the computer screen and our wi-fi connection, my high intensity worry over exposing my family and my friends (all middle-aged women with families of their own, including husbands with pre-existing conditions, and one gorgeous, little grandbaby), she felt it necessary to order a rapid test for me. I had to jam a mile long q-tip up my own nose, which caused my eyes to water incessantly, but that was a good release for the tears that had been building for hours in my eyes, as my wild imagination had already conjured up images of hospital rooms, and plastic tubes all over the place, and funerals, and sadness, and shame, shame, shame.

Fifteen minutes later, the results were texted to me. Negative for coronavirus. Thank you for answering my prayers, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. These are crazy times, indeed, bringing my own unique brand of crazy out, in all of its shining glory. Now, at least I can cough in peace.

Have You Heard the News Today?

Fortune for the day – “Tend to your vital heart, and all you worry about will be solved.” – Rumi

I will not look at the news today.

I will not look at the news today.

I will not look at the news today.

I will not touch my face today.

I will not touch my face today. (You have no idea about how much you touch your face, until some entity tells you not to do it. I was literally resting my head in my hands, reading the warnings about not touching your face, due to this %$#^&**^ coronavirus.)

I will not touch my face today.

Today, I will do my best to heed Rumi’s above-mentioned advice. My two middle sons are home for their spring break from college. Due to studying needs and lack of money issues, home for spring break became their best option for this year. Staycation, home sweet home. Can I get a whoop, whoop?

“What can I do to make this break at home for you guys, “special?”, I asked them yesterday, as I took a brief pause from Twitter’s CoronavirusFlorida2020 and threw a frozen pizza into the oven.

“Oh don’t worry about it, Mom,” my second son said, earnestly. “I already knew that it was going to suck.”

Now, in all fairness, this son has spent this break, so far, taking practice MCATs, which are eight hour long tests, a pop. That does suck. This is the same child who once told me that he didn’t like to have get-togethers with his soccer team at our house, because I act too “homely.” He doesn’t mince words. In drawing that conversation out a little bit more, while trying not to get hysterical, it seems he meant that I behaved a bit too down-home friendly and welcoming to the soccer boys, not ugly. From then on, I knew to be much bitchier when his soccer mates came around. Ha!

I will end today’s ridiculous, pointless blog post (give me a break, I spent all day yesterday obsessing about the coronavirus and had little time to read or to watch anything actually more interesting and worthwhile, than every three minute coronavirus updates) with an idea my friend texted earlier. We middle-aged women should really be renamed, “Queenagers.” I love it! My Queenager-ness trumps all teenagers, living at the house and otherwise. Today I am a Queenager who will not watch the news nor touch my queenly (not homely) face.

Going to Extremes

If you want a clean looking coronavirus map, with the numbers readily available to you, I have found this Johns Hopkins version to be the one to be very reliable and easy to understand, as I check it up to 183 times a day:

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

I have turned this whole coronavirus thing into an interesting self study on my multi-faceted personality. I realize that I am sort of “flip/floppy.” I go from opportunist zeal of “let’s buy downtrodden stocks!”, to wanting to run to the bank, pull out all of our money and stuff it in our mattress. We made plans in a couple of weeks to celebrate my daughter’s birthday at one of the Orlando theme parks. I go from, “Oh awesome! We won’t have to wait in line for anything!” to giving my daughter mature mommy lectures on life’s disappointments, and the realization that we can’t always get what we want, and we will likely have to cancel, if Mickey doesn’t cancel on us first, as I stuff yet another Vitamin C in her mouth before dropping her off at school, while desperately looking for anyone who is coughing, and not into their elbows. I admittedly have a couple of boxes of things that I have ordered online with “Made In China” stamped on the boxes. Despite having sprayed the boxes heavily with Lysol, and leaving them out on the back porch for days, I haven’t found the need to open them up just yet. I tell myself that this is a good lesson in delayed gratification, which I think is important lesson to exercise, in these days of being spoiled by Amazon Prime. I have also kept the shipment of our favorite Illy coffee (made in Italy) in our garage, as I have driven to Starbucks for my daily caffeine hit, the last couple of days. But my face burns in shame, when my kids tell me I’m being xenophobic. But then I get uplifted in pride, thinking, “At least this health scare is teaching my kids big words – words that aren’t slang words! The upside of all of this, is an expanded vocabulary.”

I’m a mess. I’m an out of control see-saw. If I don’t get myself back to center, I’m going to fall hard on my butt. I know this too shall pass. I know that most people who get the coronavirus experience it as nothing more than a bad cold or a flu. I pray for a quick and easy recovery, for anyone who is unfortunately, infected. At this point, my own body is probably mostly made out of Zinc, Vitamin C and echinacea, with an outer layer of Purell coating. Even though I am not a crafty person, I’ve learned from Pinterest, and with much practice, I am now an expert on how to make homemade surgical masks out of paper towels and rubber bands. And I have always purchased expensive, thick paper towels. (Viva – the ones that are like washcloth material – worthy to be a Friday Favorite) I’m iron clad. The logical side of me says, “Lady, you’ve taken all of the necessary precautions. Keep calm and carry on. No more excuses to not do bills and laundry.” The hysterical side of me says, “Quit writing, fool, and check the Johns Hopkins page again – NOW!” Here’s the link again (I’ll see you there):

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Fortune for the day – “A wise man seeks wisdom. A madman thinks that he has found it.” – Persian proverb

Fear and Excitement

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The above is from my favorite Twitter feed, Think Smarter. I live in Florida. We get a lot of visitors from other states, and even other countries, particularly at this time of year. People who are retired, or people who are on fun, relaxing vacations, are definitely operating at a much different speed and mindset, than the rest of us full-time, every day Floridians. I guess that it all comes down to thoughtfulness and awareness that none of us are the Center of the Universe and thus, please act kindly and accordingly. At the same time, we full-time Floridians truly appreciate, and we are entirely grateful for the tax revenues that our Snowbirds and our Sight-Seers bring to us, and for that, we add a few seconds of patience and restraint, in the grocery stores, before we start sighing loudly, glaring sharply, and then go stark raving mad, ramming shopping carts into fully stocked shelves of juice and wine. Consider yourself warned.

On the subject of warnings, I allowed myself to get caught up in the COVID-19 frenzy last night and actually contemplated spending $689 for a couple of surgical masks. (but then my husband reminded me that we have some kind of protective painters’ masks in a dusty container in our garage, probably from 1999, and our fishing gaiters actually look way cooler and more fashionable than surgical masks, so I put my credit card away) Still, even though I don’t ever get the flu shot, and I spend a sizable amount of money on immune system related supplements every month, and I mostly stay at home by myself every day, by last night, I was scoping out crematoriums, as I had myself convinced that I had the symptoms of COVID-19, and I was hopelessly doomed to a breathless death. In all seriousness, I do hope that all of this panic and alarm calms itself down, and that we can find a quick and reasonable way to contain the virus, heal the sick, and soothe all of our collective fears.

Along those lines of thought, I read something recently that stated that the emotions that we feel when we are excited and the emotions that we feel when we are fearful, are remarkably the same. Perhaps when we feel ourselves getting out of control, feeling darkening fear, we should shut off our computers, shut off our phones, and our TVS, wash our hands (for 20 seconds – sing “Happy Birthday” twice – quietly, and to yourself, if you have a lousy singing voice), and instead think about something that we are excited about. Notice that the feelings of fear and excitement are remarkably identical. To stay on the positive side of the identical feelings, stick with the positive thoughts of elation and happy anticipation, knowing that COVID-19 will soon become ho-hum news of the past, and it will be readily replaced with something else horrible in the news, which we can terrorize ourselves about.

Happy Friday Eve, friends and readers!!!

Fortune for the day – “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” – Aristotle

I’m A Sloth

There’s a dead sloth lying in my pool area. (Either that or he is sunbathing) My dogs are brutal to their toys. I’m kind of feeling like their sloth toy right now. As you can see, I’m a little late with my blog post today. The taskmaster in me said, “Lady, you are not allowed to open up your blog page until you do those damn planks and sit-ups! And I mean it! Don’t you test me!” So the rebellious child in me, smiled sweetly and then meandered around and did everything else she could think of instead of exercises – tried on a new lipstick, looked for a replacement door latch on Amazon, sent funny, snarky texts to friends and relatives, and then, she even started doing not such fun things, such as bringing in the garbage cans, doing dishes, picking up soggy, germ-y dog toys (hence the picture) and even picking up dog do, to boot.

Why do I find it so hard to get back to my groove, after a trip?? It’s not like I was gone for a three week safari, six time zones away. It was just a long weekend away, in the same time zone. It was a long weekend of eating and drinking whatever I wanted (on a pretty much constant basis) without one mere glimmer of a thought about doing planks and sit-ups. It was just a four day hiatus from healthy living, and yet, trying to get back to my healthy norm has been nothing short of torturous.

My youngest son texted this morning that he has started doing a “prison workout.” I texted him back, asking him “WHY?!?” and meaning the question, at so many different levels. My son explained that one, he is not actually in prison (phew), or even preparing for prison (sigh of relief). He explained that the prison workout just works with your own body weight. Hmmmm. No wonder why I didn’t want to get back to my planks (at so many different levels). I had definitely added a few more pounds of weight to the workout, after the weekend that I just enjoyed and I just don’t feel ready for more weight to work with, in my current exercise regime. It’s the ultimate Catch-22.

Here’s the fortune for the day – “When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage. When a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man. – Zen saying

The Toenail Dialogs

If you ever want to find out what the real priorities are, on your to-do list during the holiday season, give yourself about 30 minutes less time than everything will actually take to do, and don’t figure in the unexpecteds, such as a daughter having to go to the doctor to get a strep throat swab (it was negative, thank goodness), and eldest son’s flight arriving 20 minutes early. Let’s just say, pedicure was one of the first items crossed off the list. It was interesting to watch my mind, trying to spin how to handle the chipped, grown out, faded sparkly blue polish now only about half on, my nasty toenails:

Pollyanna voice in my head – Hmmm, well, you could do your own pedicure really quick. Saves time and money! 🙂

Bitchyanna other voice in my head – Are you kidding?!? That will look even worse than how trashy it looks right now, you slobby fool. Why don’t you french braid your hair while you’re at it – ha!

Pollyanna voice in my head – Well, you can just make it a point to only wear boots, clogs and sneakers for the entire Thanksgiving break, therefore no one will know, that you aren’t so perfectly coiffed.

Bitchyanna – Sure, the kids won’t think that it is strange (and secretly start worrying about your mental health) when you are donning boots with your robe, at breakfast, and what are going to do, wear cowboy boots to the beach? You live in Florida, for goodness sake! You used to make fun of the Floridians who wear Uggs. Now YOU look like an Alaskan Inuit any time the thermometer drops below 63 degrees. Ridiculous!!

Pollyanna – Well, your priorities are in the right place. It’s good to show the kids that it is not necessary to be the picture of perfection. Love, family, turkey (and definitely stuffing) – that’s what matters.

Bitchyanna – You know dumbass, you are almost 50 right now. Learn to manage your time better. Maybe start by spending less time in your head, having a wacky dialog between two fake personas, about your damn toenails. Just a thought . . . .

Me (with my personalities, all integrated back into the reality of the moment) – OMG! I have to get to the airport now. Stat. What’s the next, non-necessity thing that I can take off of the list?!? Can I cover up the mildew smell with Febreeze on the damp clothes in the washer if I don’t put them into the dryer until I get back?!

Pollyanna and Bitchyanna – Well, here we go again . . . .

Back This Up

I want to be a back-up singer. I can’t really sing. At all. Or dance. At all. But damn, back-up singers are so incredibly cool. I just really want to be one. Maybe in a future life . . . .

My husband and I attended Elvis Costello’s concert on Sunday night. It was really, really good. After getting over the shock of seeing all of the “old people” there (much like my grandmother-in-law who didn’t particularly like her Senior Living home because everyone there was “so old” – never mind the fact that she was one of the oldest people there), we really enjoyed ourselves. Elvis is still an amazing crooner. His keyboardist, bass player and drummer were all totally on point. The modern art flashing up on the screens behind the band, was a cool, thought-provoking touch. And despite being old, most of the concert goers were really fun and energetic. Most of them stood and danced and sang-shouted for almost all of the concert. But do you know who really stole the show? I’ll tell you who stole the show. The back-up singers stole the show. In particular, the back-up singer dressed in a gold lame jumpsuit with rainbow colored hair extensions that were so long, Crystal Gayle would have been impressed. She looked like a super-hero and when Elvis gave her the spotlight, and she belted out her solo, that back-up singer didn’t just look like a Guardian of the Galaxy, she WAS The Galaxy. That woman could sing like no other I have heard before her!!

I think that being a back-up singer is probably the best part of any gig there is, because the pressure is off. You get to go along for the ride, wear really cool, far out clothes and make-up (very loose work attire policy), stay on stage just as long as the main act, and your primary job is to keep the audience happy, engaged and to keep their clapping in rhythm (or as close to rhythm as the audience can manage, which depends on how cool and coordinated your audience is, but every job has its drawbacks). The superstars always seem incredibly appreciative of their back-up singers and dancers, as they should be. As a back-up singer, you have a super star genius fawning all over you in gratitude, but you don’t let it go to your head.

After the show, as a back-up singer, you can remain anonymous. You have the freedom to run into Walgreens for some water or ibuprofen or go out to eat where you want to after the show and if you can “lose” the superstar who hired you, you can eat in relative, pleasant obscurity, while still charging your meal to the Super Star. You are very secure in your talents, your freedom, and realization of how much you are needed by the genius who hired you.

Yep, back-up singer is where it’s at, in this day and age. It’s like being in The Secret Service, without all of the risk. I love back-up singers. I want to be one. In my next life I will be one, in the life where I actually have some musical talent to capitalize on . . . .

Whole Paycheck

They say that you should never go to the grocery store with an empty stomach. I have oft heard this wise wisdom repeated throughout my life and I absolutely believe in its truth, in totality. I actually overheard that proverb said three times over, in a grocery store, just yesterday, as I steered my “filled to the brim, with things toppling over the top of it” cart towards the cashier.

It all started when I realized that we needed more gut shots, beet flavored. Costco got us hooked on this ridiculously expensive juice which is rather awful tasting, but decidedly helpful in the digestion arena. Like many things that Costco has gotten us hooked on, over the years, just when we are at the point of “I can’t ever live without this stuff”, Costco puts up one of its asterisk warning symbols on the price sign, and then quickly discontinues the item, leaving me, the desperate shopper, fumbling, all alone, in the dark, with no direction to go. Costco can be cruel.

Now, to order the said beet shots online, Amazon would charge $25 a bottle because they have to be delivered, cold, in a refrigerated delivery truck. (the beet juice is good, but it isn’t THAT good) So, the closest place that I could find, which regularly stocks 1-3 bottles of this stuff at any given time at a price more reasonable than $25 a bottle, is a local health foods store, similar to a smaller Whole Foods. I mentioned to my husband and to my daughter that I was going to get some more beet juice, if they wanted to ride along. Much to my surprise, both decided to come. It was a beautiful, cool, crisp, fall day and I did have the convertible top down, so I was figuring they just wanted an outing and some fresh air. Nope, not really. It turns out that they were starving. So was I.

Now these types of grocery stores are not the types of stores where people typically “load up”. People typically walk around in these stores with small, eco-friendly, sparsely filled baskets. These stores don’t even have “normal sized” carts. I think that the workers and the shoppers in these types of stores secretly hold the belief that eating is really rather kind of a nasty, gauche thing that you have to do, to stay alive. They all look at each other serenely, knowingly, and with an air of superiority that seems to say, “Yes, we have to eat to stay alive. But WE will only fill our bodies with small, expensive, tasteless nuggets of nothingness to keep ourselves alive and alert for one more day. WE are in the know of the correct ratio of just enough sensible calories to sustain the CORRECT level of alertness. Wink to you, fellow smart, healthy consumer.”

Further, there are absolutely no bargains in these types of stores. There are no BOGOS as far as the eye can see. Sales are gauche in these parts, too. The “Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck” absolutely applies to Whole Foods and to every knock-off store like it. But, since the three of us didn’t bother to fill our tummies before we headed off for a couple of bottles of beet juice, instead we decided that instead of going out for dinner, we would “eat in” last night and our dinner would consist of everything that looked good to all three of us, in every single aisle of the store. By the time that we got home and laid everything out that we had bought, our counter top looked like it was helicoptered in from The Old Country Buffet, minus the chocolate fountain. (but we had at least six different desserts to make up for that loss.) We had managed to buy out the store, of everything they had on the low end of health and the high end of sugar and calories (but hey, it was natural cane sugar – no chemicals). I purposely threw the receipt right into the garbage before giving it another look. I didn’t want to get sick, as my stomach was gorged. Luckily, the beet shot which I just took this morning, has me all straightened out and back to even keel, and in good senses. There will be no more impromptu family trips to ANY type of grocery store, except for right after a large dinner.