Oops! Probably Not 50!

A while back, I read Dale’s blog about 50 Happy Things. It’s a blog hop thingy hosted by Tales From the Motherland. The idea is to take just fifteen minutes and quickly jot down fifty things that make you happy. I really wanted to do it and I started a list but I lost it when the boys came to stay for awhile and ended up watching TV on my bed. That’s where the list was, in long hand. Oops!  Then I started a list in my Memo app on my smartphone but the phone rang and I exited the app so I could pick up the phone because I’m strange that way. Well, when I went back to the list, it wasn’t there. I forgot to click on SAVE before exiting! Oops!

So here I am, two weeks after they were supposed to be posted and at the end of the first month of the year and no list of fifty things! So I decided to give it a try after I read Ra’s list. Only I’m realistic. It’s after ten at night. I’m exhausted and can barely keep my eyes open and my mind is zapped. So I am going to give it a try but I will be happy if I can get to eighteen happy things because it goes with the year 2018! So I’m crossing my fingers (not really or I can’t write/type) and jumping in.

1. Spencer who keeps me company most days these days.
2. Anderson who says he wants to live with me forever.
3. Maya who is turning one in a week and loves me so much she practically jumps on top of me when I go over there!
4. Mati, even though I rarely get to see him. He makes me smile every time I go into the living room because I have a photo frame with lots of his pictures and it comes to life with motion and his pictures start streaming (it’s a cloud based photo album).
5. Tony because he is the perfect son. No explanation needed.
6. Tina because she is a thoughtful daughter, sometimes only to others but more and more so to my needs.
7. Susie because she makes me smile and gives me hope! She is the daughter I had for me and names for me.
8. My house. Even though it is always messier than messy, it’s mine and I can come here and just be. Even if that is by myself.
9. TV because it fills the silence when I need it to.
10. Technology because it makes our lives richer, mostly.
11. Streaming capabilities because I can watch a lot of things without having to buy them!
12. The West Wing because, well because it’s the perfect show. Then. Now. Tomorrow.
13. Heaters. Because it was awfully cold in here when the heat went out. I ended up buying room heaters and now I can have any room as cozy as I need to.
14. My Samsung Galaxy s7 because it is constantly with me and I do everything on it. Everything. Hhm. Maybe I should give it a name.
15. Lularoe clothing because after gaining 100 pounds, it is the only thing that fits!
16. Coffee because it keeps me going when I have to keep going.
17. Chocolate. Well because…CHOCOLATE!
18. My car because it gets me places when I have to go, even when I don’t want to but have to.

Okay, I got to 18. I owe another 32!

 

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School Stuff

I just Anderson off to kindergarten and I am feeling a little conflicted about it.  It’s an end but also a beginning and he was happy, all smiles as they drove off to school.  Next week he takes the bus!  Lots of changes for all of us.  It got me to thinking about school and first days so here’s a list of the things I used to love about going back to school.

New clothes–it was one of the few times we got new clothes when I was growing up.  We could count on a new outfit for the first day of school, Christmas, and Easter.

Friends–We didn’t live in the same neighborhood as my school friends so I didn’t get to see them during school breaks.  The first day of school meant I got to see my friends again.

Books–I loved books but we didn’t have them at home and my parents didn’t believe in borrowing from the library so going back to school meant I got to be around books!

Teachers–I liked teachers (at least most of the time) because they helped me to learn things so going back to school meant I got a new teacher and I would also get to know my siblings’  teachers because they were older and when school was over, I got to go wait for them to get out of their class and sometimes their teachers would let me go into the classroom to wait.

Those were the givens.  There were other bonuses like hopscotch and dodge ball and jump rope but the ones above were the ones I really looked forward to!

What about YOU?  What did you like about going back to school?  What did you not like?

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Home Is…

This morning, while reading through the blogs I check out every day, I came across this entry on Behind the White Coat,  a blog that has quickly become a favorite since I discovered it in March.  In this one, she writes about negative memories of home, or of one home she had.  It made me think about what makes a home.

I’ve lived in a lot of places.  Most of them have felt like home, some not so much.  Here’s sort of a summary of them.  At some point, I’ll write more about each one, I think.

1.  My childhood home remains a place of magic.  It’s where I played with my siblings, late into the summer nights.  It’s where my parents were young and I felt their sense of wanting a better future.  The place where that better future was still possible for them, and for us, their seven children.

2.  Then the move in 4th grade that took us to the home where I really grew up, perhaps more quickly than I should have in some ways.  It was the home where my brothers grew up and ran away from home then came back.  It was the home that although had held so much promise for a better future, we all ended up wanting to run away from there, even my parents.

3.  And we all did run away from it.  My brothers to their own lives with wives and kids.  Me off to college.  My sisters weren’t so lucky because their move was with my parents as they loaded up cars and trucks and headed for southern California.  That home quickly fell apart, my parents splitting up and everyone going in their own direction.

4.  The dorm where I spent four years was home.  Although there are some negative memories there, when I think of that dorm, Casa Zapata, it does feel like home with a family made of dorm mates, some of whom are still my friends, even now almost 40 years later.

5.  Let me backtrack to high school.  That was a home for me too…everything that involved school was home to me.  I not only felt at home in the physical school but I also felt a sense of family there.  I still am in touch with teachers from that school and it has been over 40 years since I graduated from there.  It was a place where I felt I had value.  A place where I belonged.

6.  Then I married and for the most part, the three “homes” we shared were home.  I looked up to my husband and cherished every word he said.  I did as I was told.  We were happy.  We thrived.  Our three children were born and they thrived.  Then BOOM!  It all changed when one person decided to move on.

7.  My kids, and wherever we were at together became my “home”.  It didn’t matter where we were, physically.  It just mattered that we were together.  And that’s still true.  We don’t have to be in any one physical home.  It can be a hotel room or a park or someone else’s home.  As long as we are all together, it’s home.

I guess home is really where the heart is, as cliché as that is.  Sometimes it’s a physical building; sometimes an entire neighborhood or city; or where you hang your hat; but most of the time, it’s where the heart is.

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Ten Things About Me #2

1. My all time favorite movie is The Godfather. I love all three in the trilogy but if I had to pick just one, it would be the original one with Marlon Brando as Don Corleone. I’ve loved it since I was in tenth grade when it was released and one of my favorite teachers spent two class periods talking about it.
2. My all time favorite novel is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I saw the movie when it came out. I was about 6 years old and identified with Scout. Then later on, in middle school, I picked up the book and read it for the first of many times.
3. I was born on Christmas day.
4. My middle name is Joy (as in Joy To the World, says my mom).
5. I love to laugh but I don’t do it often enough. I’ll have to work on that.
6. I worked at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, California during the summer of 1976 which was our bicentennial year in the U.S.A. It was a very busy tourist season that year.
7. I met my (ex) husband as part of my work-study in college. He was president of one of the law student organizations and I was one of their part time secretaries.
8. My first job out of college was working for Prudential Insurance at their big historic building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was on a team that wrote the brochures describing the benefits (and restrictions) in each policy (known as the Benefits Description Unit).
9. I worked as a teacher aid in a first grade classroom in Santa Monica, California. It was a job that I fell into by accident when I called the school district to volunteer to help in a school and they put me to work as a paid employee!
10. One of the last jobs I had that I truly enjoyed was teaching English to adult non-English speakers in night school. They were there because they wanted to learn so it made it fun. I had some of my own daytime classroom students’ parents and grandparents in my night time class. I wish all students were as willing to learn as those adults were!

To read Ten Things About Me #1, go here.

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Ten Movies I Watch Over And Over Again

The Godfather–This is my favorite movie.  I can watch it every week and not tire of it.
The Godfather 2–Then when I am done with the original, I start on this one.
The Godfather 3–And we might as well make it a marathon, besides, it has Andy Garcia in it!
Under The Tuscan Sun–I like the sense of adventure and unknown in this one
Mona Lisa Smile–A movie about a strong women is a winner in my book every tiime
Chocolat–Another movie about a strong woman…love it!
You’ve Got Mail–This one is an interesting and totally possible look at internet use, fun and funny
Sleepless In Seattle–I really like the storyline
Practical Magic–Magic and magical.  Funny.
Dirty Dancing–Who would not like this one?  Love the music in it.

There are others but these are the staples.  I’ve always owned a copy of these in various forms.  Now I own them on Amazon cloud!  They’re always with me that way.

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Thirteen Things That Crossed My Mind This Week

1. I really hate pets right now. I want to get rid of all the ones in this house but they aren’t mine. If I had my way, I would get rid of them all.
2. I need a new laptop. This one is three years old and it keeps freezing on me. It heats up and shuts off on me, too. And I got it when 60 GB was a lot but now it isn’t. I’d like to have a larger hard drive so I don’t have to keep carrying an external drive with me. One day.
3. California. I really like it here. It has it’s drawbacks: it’s crowded; it’s very expensive; it’s too far from the east coast; and on and on. BUT, I like it. If I could find a nice spot where it wasn’t as crowded and a lot less expensive to live, I would go there. I really like this coast.
4. I should read more. I have a lot of books that I’ve gotten and have not read. There is also a long list of books that I would like to go out and get but it’s so expensive to buy books. I did discover a used book store last week so I think it’s time to head over there with a list of books I’d like to have and a $ limit on what I will spend. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
5. Email forwards are such crap! I really dislike them. (I’m trying not to use the word hate today.) I wish people would not send them. I especially dislike the ones that end with that little nagging threat that even though I know it’s not true, I kind of feel like I have to forward the dumb thing so that a herd of elephants does not run through my bedroom or so that my daughters aren’t horribly injured because I didn’t send it on. Yeah. You know the ones.
6. Family is family. We can’t pick them. Sometimes I wish I could pick my family but then I realize that if I did that, I would have no one to blame but myself when the whole clan revolts against me or becomes revolting to me.
7. Blogging is fun but it sometimes feels like a responsibility. I guess it is–a responsibility to myself.
8. Writing long hand fills a different need than writing on the laptop or on the desktop. Long hand lets the thoughts flow from my mind to my hand to my pen to the ink to the paper and to my eye. Somehow it is quite different from writing/composing on a word processor. I should write long hand more often.
9. Reality shows suck.
10. I should listen to music more often. I guess that means I should listen to a radio so that I can get newer music. It doesn’t do a lot of good to listen to my own music on CD or on my iPod because the point is to get exposure to different music—music that is new to me.
11. I wish I could be mean to the cats. I can’t. It would be like being mean to an innocent child and I can’t ever do that, either. I’d rather be mean to me.
12. I want flowers. I think I will go buy some for myself soon. I haven’t gotten any in a long, long time. The kids (well mostly Tina) used to get them for me on Mother’s Day and on my birthday but I haven’t gotten any since my birthday in 2006. Yeah. I think I’m going to get a yellow bouquet of something cheap. Maybe on the weekend.

13.  I like salad. Some people hate it but I really like it. I like salads as entrees. One of my favorites is a Greek salad.     I               haven’t had one in a long time, though. Hhmmm. I think I’ll have one tomorrow. I have to go to the grocery store                  later. I’ll get salad stuff.

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