runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Friday, January 24, 2014

Odds and Ends


I am a reading fool.  I have been plowing through books like a mad woman and enjoying most of them.  I have also been knitting like a maniac and will soon post some pictures of some really great socks I've been working on.  Turns out that practice really does make perfect.  I used to be terrible and give gifts that were super terrible but I've gotten really good - if you are grading on a curve - and can follow most patterns unless I buy them from the UK or New Zealand.  They have interesting abbreviations in those countries that take me a really long time to translate for some reason.

I am kicking off a sugar fast today that is supposed to last for 21 days but we will see.  I already had bread for breakfast from Whole Foods.  And while it was whole grain with tons and tons of seeds in it, after I ate it I looked at the ingredients list and realized it did have 2 grams of sugar per slice.  Bummer.  3 hours in and I already screwed up.

We have had some brutally cold weather lately, it has been so cold that I've struggled to go into the garage and get on the treadmill.  Any suggestions?  I'm too vain to bring it into the house. 

As of yesterday we are no longer renters.  We are now home owners only!  I would celebrate by having a glass of wine or some champs but I can't because of the sugar fast I'm currently on.  I am going to check the sugar content of liquor because maybe I can celebrate with something else.

A friend of mine had a baby last weekend and I got to hold him and watch his little face cloud over and cry every time I held him or tried to rock him.   It was by far the smallest baby I have ever held - he was just 5 lbs but totally perfect except for not wanting me to hold him.  Only 5 lbs and already he wanted just his Mom - nature is perfection.

And finally in political news - the girls and I have posted several video clips to Google Plus so that when Obama gives his State of the Union address next week - maybe he will answer us on our questions.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about click on www.google.com and then click on Ask the President a Question.)   And as a teaser - I'm posting one of them here.  Hard to imagine someone as trendy and good looking as me as not having aged one bit right?  Don't those little girls look more like sisters and less like my kids?






Sunday, January 19, 2014

Happy Birthday!

Last night we hosted a kiddie birthday party for a little lady who is turning 7 tomorrow.  She had a bunch of girls here to run around and scream and eat cake and scream more and do a craft and watch a movie and scream and run around.  In the course of 2 and a half hours there was a lot of pizza consumed, popcorn was made and eaten, beads were spilled all over the floor which Marcko tried to eat and some little fingers were smashed in a door.  But all in all it was a good party and I had a great time but even more important, the young ladies had a great time.

At one point I went to see how the movie was going - if the girls needed more drinks or popcorn and there were 3 new little girls that had arrived late.  One of them I knew and two of them I'd never seen before.  These are 6 and 7 year olds so I thought it was weird that someone had just dropped some kids off - without me really knowing who they were or what their kids names were but I guess their rationale was that it was a kiddie party, what better place for kids to go on a Saturday night than a kiddie party and since they were dropping off one kid, why not drop them all off?  And just for the record, I don't even know if these kids were related.

So at the end of the night after the 3 girls were picked up by 2 ladies that I've never seen in my whole life, I went back in the kitchen where the grownups were hanging out and I said, "who drops their kid off at a party where they don't know anyone and drops off 2 other kids that I've never seen before?" to which our new friend Dave says, "people in Chatham County do that" and I realized that he was probably right.


Saturday, January 18, 2014

Waka Waka

We came back to the United States when I was 14 years old, landed in Florida and my Mom and Grandma bought a pop up camper and a Caprice Classic Station Wagon, Burgundy, and we travelled across the US until we got to California where we stayed put.  On this trip across the United States we camped in many KOA campgrounds and we discovered arcades.  I cannot tell you how many quarters were squandered between Florida and California on Centipede, Millipede, PacMan, Star Wars, DigDug, Frogger, and my absolute favorite Ms. Pac Man. 

And so I offer to you, the arcade style game which I play to unwind and I will tell you that I can get to level 15 without breaking a sweat.  If you can get higher - I want to hear from you.  I want to worship at your feet.  I want to drink staring into your eyes, I want to study your every move.  And then I want to challenge you and beat you!

http://wallofgame.com/free-online-games/arcade-fullscreen/523/Ms_Pacman.html

Waka Waka

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Gross!

People do funny things when they sleep.  I do this thing sometimes where I take my nose ring out - completely out and I am completely alseep and then when I wake up I have to find it.  It isn't an easy thing to do because it has a twist at the end of it, the part that is inside my nose so that when I sneeze or when I blow my nose it doesn't fly out of my nose.  So in order to take it out, I have to turn in ever so carefully and then at a certain point I have to tilt it at an angle and then it slides out.

Sounds gross right?  Not really - no different than earrings - because if you think about it, your ears produce weird stuff too - just like your nose.  But back to the nose ring - when I wake up I will find it imbedded in my leg or in my arm or stuck to my cheek.  Once I had to strip the bed because it was really gone only to find it under the bed.  Once I had taken it out of my nose and I woke up and I was holding it clutched in my fist.  Another time I had taken it out asleep and laid it on my bed side table and then gone back to sleep.  It doesn't get too far though - I usually have no problem finding it the next morning.  But I've often wondered what would happen should I accidentally swallow it . . . while sleeping.

Anyway - this morning I woke up without my ring on.  In all fairness it is a silver band I bought in Mexico last summer so it isn't really that valuable, only that I've been wearing a ring for over 10 years so I feel kind of naked without it.  So I stripped the bed of all bedding and crawled around under the bed and then I cleaned under the bed because I realized how gross that part of the house gets but I still couldn't find it.  I hope I haven't swallowed it, because finding it - now that IS gross!

Monday, January 6, 2014

Maybe.

I like to write.  I like it a lot and I like to write about all sorts of things but most especially about the things that happen to me.  Since I run into people and I have relationships with people and I have conversations with people and I interact with people all the time and  I like to include those things in my blog but people get weird when they know you are going to write about them, when they read something that you've written about them or when they feel like they've been exposed for everyone to read about and that now everyone has the potential to know their business, because lets face it, hardly anyone reads this blog except for my faithful followers and even then many of those have dropped off.  I do however have a small UK following which makes me proud.  (thank you Yolanda)

I have had people say to me, "do not blog about me EVER" and while I know they are mostly joking I wonder about famous writers and what they had to go through to turn their scribblings and thoughts into prose and literature.  Did James Joyce's parents tell him to write and write and write but only write about flowers and lace? Did Ernest Hemingway's parents send him off to war and hope he would someday write about it but only as it pertained to others?  Did Henry Miller's parents tell him to write but not about anything dirty?  Ok, well I guess that one doesn't work but I have had a person say to me that I was to "never write about them, EVER!" and I have granted them their request until now but I wonder what writers have to do to cross that line of keeping things anonymous until the day that the cat scrambles out of the bag?  How many fights do they have when they get home and their spouse realizes that they've written yet again about something intensely personal that he or she didn't want the whole world to read about?

I doubt that when the kids are headed off to college they say, "I want you to become the best lawyer you can become but do not defend murderers EVER" or "I want you to be a good doctor but you can never misdiagnose anyone EVER" or "I hope that you learn how to be a good paramedic but no one must ever die in your ambulance EVER."  I feel like the writer gets to write about what they write about and at some point people have to get over it. And those people include but are not limited to:  family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, bosses, landlords, tenants, pets, stuffed animals and pillow pets.

Maybe I will hire Kitty Kelly to write about the stuff I really want to write about - and then it will become a best seller.  Or maybe I'll just write about the things and the people I want to write about in the third person and change the names and you all can lay claim to everything I write. 

Maybe.