June 16, 2019 – Inadvertence.

         I was carrying around a note pad and pen to make a list of what I need at the hardware store this morning.  I am fond of blue Pilot Precise V5 fine point pens. 

         This morning I pulled my hair back in a Scrunchie – yes – many of you may remember that Sex And The City series:

         “No self-respecting New York City woman would be caught dead running around Manhattan in a Scrunchie.”   

         Probably you, like me, think twice about going out in public in one. I break the rules often when I am in the middle of a gardening project, with my sweaty hair up in a Scrunchie, along with dirty pant knees, I trot off to my favorite Horn’s Home and Garden for needed supplies. [No one seems to care.] However, this morning was something different.

         I was about to wash my face when I grabbed a Scrunchie and pulled my chin length hair into a double knotted bun.  Then I leaned in toward the mirror.  Sure, I felt awful, dealing with the residual effects of the Spring flu and the pollen that was giving me sinus drip and sniffles – but two blue streaks on my left temple made me announce to my mirrored image,

         “Maybe I need to see a doctor – why do I have blue veins bulging over my left eye?”

         I grabbed my bar of Ivory soap, plunged it under the running water, and started to lather up – I had blue suds.  WHAT?  Then I turned my hands over and saw blue on both hands intermittently.

         I took a washcloth and scrubbed at the blue streaks on my forehead and they came off .  Thank Goodness, at least I am not having a serious health issue.

         But, where was this mysterious blue coming from? 

         It didn’t take but a moment to figure out what happened.  I had put my pen and note pad down between my double bathroom sinks, while I pulled out clothes to wear.  By inadvertence, I didn’t realize that the tip of the open pen had touched a Scrunchie I had on my sink vanity and it had sucked up enough ink to convey blue onto my hands and also my forehead as I pulled my hair back.

         I doubt anyone will notice the dark blue streak I now have in my hair which could be accepted as a new fashion trend.  Possibly people will consider me edgy now instead of being close to going over the edge.

                              

June 2, 2019 – Joie de vivre

         Occasionally, I even surprise myself.

         My Mom had a life-long passion of wanting to learn French.  WHY?  Well I know part of it is my grandmother on my Father’s side was from the outskirts of Paris.  Grandmother was brought over at the end of World War I by my Grandfather – through Ellis Island, and she didn’t speak much English.   She learned to speak English through her husband, her neighbors, and the French butcher.  It helped that my Grandfather was Canadian French – so communication wasn’t that much of a mystery.

         All her life Grandmother had that soft French accent, like her creamy skin.  As a child, I tried my best to ask her “How do you say ____ in French?”  She would have none of it.  Her pat answer was, “I am American now, I speak English now.” 

         What she didn’t understand was us grandchildren were forced to take French classes as part of the basic curriculum in grammar school and high school.  I wanted to hear how she pronounced it, maybe it would be easier to mimic.

         I always hoped she’d reach out, cup my face, and squeeze my lips a certain way to improve my pronunciation as instruction to a better sound.  Sadly, that never happened.

         It was the era that French was the international language at the time.  In high school, we had a choice of German or French.   I, of course, chose French due to my heritage. Spanish wasn’t introduced until many years after I left public school.

         I had a grasp of a handful of phrases and thankfully the classes I participated in were mostly a “verbal” rendition of  the language.  If I’d had to write something on paper, I’d have been sunk.

         Over the years I have been exposed to French in books -
Agatha Christie drops phrases often and I had to look them up to figure out what they were.  And, many words in the everyday vocabulary come directly from the French language, and many are pronounced the same.

         One year, a dear friend sent me a French phrase-a-day desk calendar as a Christmas gift.  I read it daily. But without someone who knew how the words actually pronounced, I was handicapped.   [I still have that silly desk calendar and when I run across it, I flip through it to see if I can master any of it.]

         One time, on a visit back home, after my Mom had retired, I discovered her hand written notes all through the house with a French word or two and below an English translation.  While I was there on vacation, I practiced those words the same way my Mom did, daily.

         Less than two years ago, while cleaning out my Mom’s house just a week before her death, I ran up on a boxed collection of 33 LPs.  It was a 20-week French course.  I paused and flipped through all the records and the accompanying paperwork.  I didn’t have a stereo system that could play the old vinyl records and I knew I would never have time to work my way through the process.  I had a desire – no, more like a dreamlike wish – not a real desire.  The French course found the exit door with the rest of the unwanted items.

         We are back to the title of this little essay. Joie de vivre – noun – exuberant enjoyment of life.

         One day my husband came in the house and said,

         “That cat, you know the one I call ‘Tubby’ he barreled across the lawn and ran up the China tree, right to the top.  He has such boundless energy.  He does that all the time when he sees me out in the yard.”

         I pulled the phrase out of nowhere and replied, “Joie de vivre!”

         “What,” he cocked his head to look at me with a quizzical look.

         “Joie de vivre – love of life – a certain attitude about enjoying life to the fullest – it’s French – I am not sure I am pronouncing it correctly . . .” and put my nose back in the book I was reading.

         “You sure?”

         “I am pretty sure, would make a lovely name for that cat other than Tubby - Joie de vivre.”  It sounded good to me for a cat name.

         I snapped my book closed and padded to the computer – a wonderful tool for everyday life questions – a computer hooked to the internet.

         I put in my poor spelling of joie de vivre and up popped the definition.  I printed it off after I listened to the pronunciation several times.

         I padded back to the living room and dropped a copy of the below definition into my husband’s lap at the same time I pronounced it correctly two or three times.

         He read it and asked,

         “How did you do get this?”

         “The computer – a very valuable tool, isn’t it?”  It shocks me that he is so naïve sometimes.

         Meanwhile I was thinking – Gosh, I wonder if someone has bottled the essence of joie de vivre and it’s for sale – I could use a double dose of it right now.

         How about that, some French has actually sunk into my thick skull after all these years.  I wonder if it like laying bricks: “one brick at a time” –  rather learning one phrase at a time.

NOTE: Definition obtained from: Google search

joie de vi·vre

/ˌZHwä də ˈvēvrə/

noun

1.    exuberant enjoyment of life.

"they seem to be filled with joie de vivre"

synonyms:

gaiety, cheerfulness, cheeriness, merriment, light-heartedness, happiness, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, delight, pleasure, high spirits, spiritedness, jollity, jolliness, joviality, exuberance, ebullience, liveliness, vivacity, enthusiasm, enjoyment, verve, gusto, relish, animation, effervescence, sparkle, buoyancy, sprightliness, jauntiness, zest, zestfulness;  informalpep, zing, get-up-and-go, being full of the joys of spring, perkiness;  literarygladsomeness, blitheness, blithesomeness "Mediterranean joie de vivre is not a quality found in the typical Briton"

June 1, 2019 – Cat magazine – should I?

         I own a cat alarm clock.  No, it is not a Big Ben with pointy ears and painted on whiskers – it is a real cat, with pointy ears, whiskers, and a  fluffy tail who kneads my chest at just about the same time every morning – just before 6 a.m.

         Jasmine is my alarm clock. I think she wants to watch Steve Doocey and Brian Kilmeade on Fox News – no – just kidding.  She wants a bowl of crunchy cat food and a perch on her table in front of the front window in order to watch dawn break.

         Yesterday, in my junk mail – you can tell how darn hot it is that I am reading junk mail instead of being out in the garden doing something . . . oops I digress.

         I received an advertisement for Catster Magazine.  A newsletter with fascinating feline facts. 

         Why do I read these?  A few years ago I signed up for a “copywriter” writing course and since then – I read my junk mail.  I just couldn’t get into the mindset of the copywriting writing product.  I put in about two months and then let it slide because I really wasn’t into it.  So, I am impressed when I see good copywriting.

         I couldn’t help but notice the bolded question:

         Why does my cat wake me at the same time every day?

         Most mornings my eyes simply pop open at 5:45 a.m. even though the dawn isn’t breaking and there is no alarm clock ringing.  Knowing my cat’s early a.m. routine of walking up my body from toe to chest – the amount of single paw weight is magnified and often makes me wince - I try not to alert my cat that I am actually awake. Once she settles on my chest she licks me with her extra course sandpaper tongue and I have to move my arm to pat her as I don’t want my forearm to be sanded smooth.

         I’ve always wondered how does she know I am awake if I’ve only opened my eyelids and not moved my body or head.

         The answer was in the Catster literature trying to sell me on buying their magazine.  They say:

         It’s not just your routine that has her batting you awake at the crack of dawn.  Thanks to a cat’s internal hardwiring she can actually sense when you’re about to wake up and hasten things along with her paws!

         I’ve played possum on a few occasions and Jasmine has actually tapped my face with her paw as if to say – Are you dead or playing possum?

         So, I’ve said my cat is my alarm clock – now I know she really is.

         Among other items of interest were: 

         Why do cats love people who don’t like cats – or are allergic to them.  I now know the answer to tell my friend Becky.  She is allergic to cats, and doesn’t my Jasmine just jump into her lap with glee at every one of her visits.  Becky pats her lovingly and then pays the price later.  Reason:  The cat sees her as nonthreatening and becomes curious and feels safe approaching her.

       Another answer to my wondering: That sandpaper licking – a sign of great affection and paying you a huge compliment.

         Fun facts about your cat’s tail – confirmed my suspicions of what my cat is thinking or feeling.

         And lastly, “How your cat says, “I love you.”

         When your cat looks at you and slowly blinks her eyes, it’s her way of blowing you a kiss and showing you some love.  Funny that, when she wants up on my lap she sits at the foot of my chair and does the slow eye squeeze and I do it back to her and she jumps up for her long pat and comb out.

         I didn’t know I could “talk” cat.  This magazine might be of interest after all.

         Well, the last two made up my mind – I will bite for a sample issue.

  

         Free issue, no obligation.  I tore out the coupon and sealed it in the accompanying envelope then smiled to myself . . . darn good copywriter – I hope he or she made a good paycheck on this advertisement.     

        

        

May 31, 2019 – “That was clever . . . .”

         My husband commented.

         I am on the 4-step of the stepladder handing down a blown out recessed bulb to my husband.  I am thinking darn right I am clever, who lost the suction cup that came with the original recessed bulbs and the light fixture, not me.

         I had to improvise with something so I could manage to unscrew the bulb because my small fingers can’t get into the socket area.  Fat chance of my husband doing this, with his big fingers.

         I now realized I wasted my time and treasure tying a one-foot length of burgundy, picot edged ribbon to the suction cup and wrapping it around the partially used package of new bulbs.  I’ve used that suction cup many times over the 6 or 8 years we’ve owned this light fixture. The ribbon has been on it since the beginning for a reason – so I can find it.

         Who dug in the china cabinet and found the package of bulbs?  Of course, my husband, and what happened to the picot ribbon with the suction cup that was wrapped around it?  The fairies must have taken it as it has simply vanished.  I have looked everywhere, even in the stupidest places - places a man’s mind would put something.

         My husband hands me up a new bulb, I adhere the wedge of packing tape I used on the blown out bulb onto the face of the new bulb, and I adeptly put the bulb into the prong slot and tighten it using the wedge of packing tape as the leverage, then I peel off the tape.

         “Viola!” I announce and proceed to do a second bulb.

         I climb down the ladder and still wonder where that suction cup is.  I notice my husband heading to the trashcan.

         “Don’t throw that empty package out – I have to get the same kind of bulbs and I need to know what I am buying . . .” I snatch it out of his hand.

         “Men and their logic,” I mutter.

         Why am I telling you this little vignette of typical domesticated married life?  I noticed something in an advertisement for BottomLine personal – a publication that was marked “Don’t get mad, get even!”

         I am one of those people that occasionally reads their junk mail when it is too hot outside to do anything productive in the gardens.  How could I resist a front cover that reads, “It’s OK to get mad says Harvard psychologist, but we say it’s even better to get even.”

         On page 11 of Volume 40, Number 9, is a picture of a roll of duct tape with a blurb:

         “Don’t get mad when a recessed bulb goes out . . . get duct tape!”

         It made me smile, about my packing tape cleverness of yesterday morning. Here is what they say to do.

Recessed bulbs can be so frustrating to replace. But here’s a trick that makes it easy.  Fold the ends of a piece of duct tape back over themselves, leaving a sticky section in the middle.  After putting the sticky section on the bulb, grab the ends of the duct tape and twist.

         It was nice to see that some other clever person came up with the same idea I had when I used packing tape.  [I’ve already bought new bulbs and two, yes, two suction cups to be hidden in two different places so they don’t disappear.]

         When writing this blog I decided to check the definition of clever to see if another word might describe how I feel.

         The internet gave me a cornucopia of adjectives:

          quick to understand, learn, and devise or apply ideas; 

             intelligent.

             skilled at doing or achieving something; talented

             showing intelligence or skill; ingenious

intelligent, gifted, precocious; capable, able, competent, apt, proficient; educated, learned, erudite, academic, bookish, knowledgeable, wise, sagacious, brainy, genius, skillful, dexterous, adroit, deft, nimble, nimble-fingered, handy, adept; skilled, talented, shrewd, astute, sharp, acute, quick, sharp-witted, quick-witted; resourceful, canny, cunning, crafty, artful, wily, slick, neat; foxy, savvy, fly, pawky, as sharp as a tack.

         Now I feel clever doesn’t seem to cover my impromptu packing-tape-light-bulb-change.

         Morale of the story:  Celebrate your accomplishments – no matter how large or small.

         The next time you do something resourceful know that you are more than clever, you are intelligent, talented and ingenious, or possibly most of the above synonyms.

May 22, 2019 – Old, re-furbished, now new

         This was a simple project.  I have a tin frog that I bought at one of those dollar stores.  He was a florescent lime green and he made me smile.  He lives out on the brick patio – as a salute to my finishing that project.

         As you can see, he isn’t lime green anymore.  The weather has done it’s damage.

         Recently I noticed that the red nail polish that I painted my house key – the actual door key – not the bolt key had worn off and I went to a dollar store with the intention of buying a shocking color to repaint it. I found cobalt blue and painted my house key cobalt blue – it’s me – I love it – I am a simpleton.

         That got me to thinking.  My new frog color would be green with touches of blue around the edges.  Now, I’ve never seen such a frog – but my imagination would put such a colored frog in the Amazon jungle.

         I used hardly any of the cobalt blue for the key.  I wondered how much 0.5 fluid ounces would paint, [the amount in a typical fingernail polish bottle].  Well, as you know the internet is a wonderful tool which advised me  8 ounces of paint will cover 16 square feet, which is 2 square feet per ounce or 1 square foot per half ounce.

         All I needed to do was to find frog green nail polish.  In the old days, that would be an impossibility - but not these days.

         After my brick laying stint, I repainted my frog and this morning I returned him to the patio.

         It’s not a bad paint job for the price of a cheap bottle of nail polish.  Now I wonder how long it will last.  I will report if it is short term, but something tells me, I might get a season out of this.

         Now I wonder where that old metal butterfly is – it needs a do-over.

May 21, 2019 – Little secret – No-see-ums

         You know those pesky No-see-ums, Certopogonidae, flying insects that you can hardly see.  They are tiny and they do bite . . . they were hassling me yesterday.

         I read all kinds of ideas from magazines, newspapers, gardening books.  If it is a tip or trick and has been in any media format that I’ve had in my hands in the last 40 years . . . I’ve read it and sometimes I’ve filed it away in my grey cells.

         I am still laying brick pavers for my “million-dollar-looking” driveway.  Yesterday I felt like I spent more time swatting at the No-see-ums than laying brick.

         Last night in bed, I thought about those miserable bugs.  I am allergic to traditional bug spray – it sets me into an asthma attack, so I don’t use it.

         Last year, I bought a bottle of herbal insect repellant spray, [all natural oils] from a Farmer’s market that is a mixture of water, alcohol, lavender, lemongrass and eucalyptus essential oils.  I used it sparingly because it too was a bit strong and I was afraid of an asthma attack.

         Just as I was falling off to sleep, I remembered a suggestion that you should spray your hat with insect repellant as an alternative as it is above where you breath in air.

         This morning I sprayed the top of my straw hat and let it dry while I was having my morning coffee.  Yesterday I was plagued with No-see-ums; today, not even one.

         Finally, a solution.  After a day of work, I gave my hat a sniff. I was surprised that I couldn’t smell the spray as it must have soaked into the straw enough that it doesn’t give off too much violate oil smell. I guess it’s just enough to keep the bugs at bay.  Even in the sun, in the heat of the day, my head sweating up the hatband – I was surprised I didn’t get a whiff of the spray.

        

May 13, 2019 – Lovely day – Mother’s Day weather wise

         My brother called late in the day and told me about his day. It is an understatement when I say it is difficult for him losing his wife of 40 something years in March. I sometimes don’t know what to say.

         He mentioned something he did – no he corrected himself half way through the beginning of telling me and worded it as that he should make a suggestion that I send out in one of my blog’s.  A suggestion everyone should do – before it is too late.

         I listened.  He said,

         “I dialed Peggy’s cell phone . . . just to hear her voice.”

         Part of me was surprised that he still had her phone active – I have no clue how these phone plans work – but I also know how my phone will go dead if I don’t keep it charged.

         “You should have Russ record a message before it is too late,” was his suggestion.  Since we, my husband and I have been sick since Tuesday with the Spring flu – I am certain it was not a cold – we are snarling at each other both sniffling, coughing, aching, and feeling miserable – together in sickness!  I couldn’t help but jest with my brother.

         “Yeah, like when I want to take a nice picture and he makes an awful face – I can imagine what sort of message I’d get when I’d ask for a message to remember him by just in case he goes off to the grocery store and doesn’t happen to return with us both sick with the flu.”

         I shouldn’t have rebuffed him so cruelly . . . what was I thinking?  I wasn’t – I was hardly breathing due to a sinus, killer head ache and coughing.  I did back down a bit and admitted I still had a message from Mom. I’d not admitted that to anyone – until that moment.

More about my old phone:

           I was talked into a blackberry when they were the “thing” for business and mine didn’t do what it was supposed to do.  Over the years and after two more transitions to other type phones - I don’t remember brands or types but, I opted for huge numbers on a flip phone because I was aggravated.

         I only needed to make a call when I needed to make a call and went the cheap route that was simplistic.

         I had the flip phone for many of years before it died and during that time, I kept one telephone message from my Mom.

         The message is 10 seconds long, she is calling and asking me to call her, and then she says, “It’s Mom . . . Mom St. John.”  What a curious thing for her to say . . . I never had a mother-in-law.  But, then, I guessed it was that she left that clarification of  “Mom St. John” as she would often leave messages for my sister-in-law Carol as her Mom was alive and well.

         I retired from business a few years ago, and kept the last business phone I owned.  Once in a while, I needed to hear a loving voice [during difficult or stressful times] and I’d dial my saved Mom-message and then I knew all was right with the world.  That message was the two o’clock in the morning – can’t sleep type fix-it that would help me sleep once I’d listened to it.

         Then, when my flip phone died, my heart sank because my Mom had died and I’d never get another phone message from her.

         All I can say is – it was a miracle - I was more than shocked that my new, smartphone replacement, was brought on line and surprisingly – all prior phone numbers and a couple of undeleted phone messages had made the transfer.  I hadn’t sent anything off to a cloud or anything.  I hadn’t signed up for any special “backup” plan.  I was mystified.

         Opening my new phone to the voicemail section, I listened to two current messages and deleted them, and then I held my breath when I pressed the button to listen to the last one – her familiar telephone number in the screen – August 15, 2015.

         “Hi, it’s Mom . . . give me a ring . . . it’s Mom St. John.”

         It is as clear and as cheerful as the day she recorded it.  I haven’t worn it out yet – that is a good thing.