Yikes! This is a tough one for someone who owns a lot of shoes. I think I can give Imelda Marcos a run for the money! I don’t have a shoe tick but I used to collect shoes and loved looking at them staring back at me safely nesting in their cubbyholes! Recently I did get rid of several pairs simply because I am decluttering and working towards a simpler lifestyle, one that doesn’t involve too many material things and a muddled mind!
However, there is a favorite pair and it doesn’t carry a designer label but it is an old pair of walking shoes that has seen better days but I refuse to give it up because the comfort factor is there even if looks like it has seen the expiry date many times over. It’s the one I reach for when I head out the door to go for a walk and sometimes it is caked with mud but none of that matters. It is like a friend or is that a battery which keeps on giving! So why do I need all those other pairs of shoes? There are no answers just that women are complicated creatures with a mind of our own and it’s just because!
Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
“The difference between real love and fake love is this. Real love is so quick to resume its original shape after being stretched and expanded always to recover no matter what it endures. Fake love is brittle, it breaks over even the simplest of things.” Unknown
If you are searching for love as I am, it is important to know the difference between the two. Real love takes time to cultivate, it’s not WHAM! BAM! and you’re in love. Some people may believe this is the case or rather they call it love at first sight. I had a few of those in my younger days but now that I’m older and wiser those butterflies in my stomach do not flutter like they used to.
These days I am a critic of the worst kind where love is concerned. If you thought Sherlock Holmes was good, I am better. I tell myself I am looking for true love, the kind that lasts a lifetime so playing detective to the hilt falls into the realm of weeding out the “fakes” to get at that one true love.
Fakes they are aplenty. They come out of the woodwork when you least expect it and in a blink of an eye, they’re in love and want to take it to the next level. The problem is if they winked at you once, they’ll wink twice at someone else. They’re prone to take it way past the winking stage if you know what I mean. They’ll love you so long as it is convenient for them but they’ll just as quickly run off to greener pastures when the opportunity presents itself. Dependable they are not and short-term is the name of the game. They’ll break your heart in a minute and move on without looking back and leave you holding the remnants of your heart in your hands and wondering what happened. Don’t bother questioning why? Just know you want better.
The “real” ones don’t come out to play, well not often anyway. They’re the ones with integrity, self-worth, honesty and they stand their ground when it comes to love. They’re not wishy-washy but unfortunately there are not many of them to go around unlike the other kind, they’re a dime a dozen.
Needless to say, I’m holding out for “real” love. If it takes time, so be it. However, universe if you are listening, I ask that you bring him sooner than later, at least before the butterflies are totally dead in my stomach!
I’m not going to say I hope because according to a certain life coach this has a negative connotation and will bring more of the same. I’m going to say, I KNOW it will happen. Fingers crossed!
This one makes me emotional. As gifts go this gift didn’t cost any money but it went straight to the heart and has stayed there through the years.
I remember my five-year-old son was late coming home from kindergarten. It was a short walk from there to the house but he was about an hour late and needless to say I was climbing walls! I was ready to give him a piece of my mind when he rang the doorbell. A sigh of relief rushed through me but there was anger still there or fear or both. I opened the door ready to let him know that it wasn’t ok when he looked at me with those big innocent eyes of his and handed me something he was holding in his hands. It was a small bouquet of wild flowers and they were crushed and there was no life left to be seen in them! “For you mommy,” he said. “I picked them on the way back from school.” He took the wind right out of my sails and I was left speechless which doesn’t happen often. I hugged him tightly and the smile he wore said it all. He was in love with his mommy and I was the most important person in his life at that point in time. I took those flowers carefully and put them in a small glass of water with tears in my eyes as he watched me with love in his.
It was the start of many more gifts to come. The next one came when he went on a school excursion to a zoo. I had given him some money to get an ice but instead he bought me a necklace. It was the ugliest necklace I had ever seen. Some wooden pieces were strung together and in the midst was a wooden turtle! He made me wear it for days on end and I DID. Even though I had received much more expensive gifts from others, that simple ugly piece still has a warm place in my heart and takes the place of best gift of all time, right up there with those crushed flowers.
The gifts have stopped coming , he is a young man now but once in a while he still surprises me. Sometimes it isn’t about how much money is spent on a gift to make it special, all it takes is thought and caring to show someone how much they mean to you. And those gifts did exactly that.
It’s the start of another brand new week and what better way to get it going than with a bit of laughter. I found the jokes below hilarious and it certainly tickled my funny bone! Hope it lightens the load.
When women fall ill:
“It’s ok. I’m just a little tired.”
When men fall ill:
“Listen to me carefully woman, these are my last words.”
I got all dewy-eyed when I saw my husband looking at our marriage certificate for half an hour. Then I found out he’s been searching for the expiry date!
A wise man was asked what is anger? He gave a beautiful answer. It is a punishment we give to ourself, for somebody else’s mistake.”
I know that anger has been a constant companion in my life for the last several years. It is a powerful emotion that comes easily when something doesn’t go right or when there is a feeling that someone has done you wrong. Sometimes it motivates you to do better, to let go and move on but at other times there is this other variety that grabs hold and refuses to let go. Fortunately, mine has been of the milder version, it grabs hold, I let it boil for a while and then it subsides and I find ways to deal with it. I have heard some people say that they don’t let anger get the best of them but I say, I DON’T believe you! It is a natural emotion and if you’re human, it is going to affect you one way or another.
A girlfriend once told me that when she gets angry, she gets totally bent out of shape. Her idea of letting out steam was to stick needles in a voodoo doll hoping that her ex-husband’s new girlfriend would feel it from here and to the heavens and back! Whatever floats your boat. Would you call that rage? Perhaps, it is also an emotion that needs reeling in before it becomes something else.
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” Mark Twain
Today has not been a good day. It is a beautiful almost spring-like day but the news I got was anything but. My first response was to feel angry and to ask WHY? It went downhill from there. I decided to take a walk to clear my mind and to come up with solutions to my problem. I walked out the front door, turned the corner to head to the open fields and lo and behold, the road was under construction and filled with cranes, men and noise! I felt the anger slowly rising not that it needed much help at this point. I was looking to vent and I just needed an excuse to let it all out.
I kept on walking and soon I was out in the open leaving the chaos behind me. The sky was a perfect blue, the grass a glorious green and to add to the serene picture several rabbits were out in the open and chasing each other and I felt myself deflate. The slow simmer was back to normal and I walked taking in nature’s antidote to anger. I was slowly returning to normal.
“When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.” Thomas Jefferson
Or take a walk as I did and let nature help you to see the bigger picture and get you out of the tunnel vision which has the tendency to draw you into the depths of despair.
Deep breathing, meditating, working out, getting into your Zen-Zone can all help to dissipate anger. However, anger is a natural emotion, let it play out or reel it in but don’t let it get out of hand. Know when to get off the anger mode, accept it for what it is, just a temporary obstacle that can be overcome.
Here are more quotes to help you do just that:
“ANGER doesn’t solve anything. It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything.” Lawrence Douglas Wilder
“You cannot see your reflection in boiling water, similarly you cannot see the truth in a state of anger. When the waters calm clarity comes.” Unknown
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha
Lastly,
Understanding Anger
“The goal isn’t to never feel ANGRY. The goal is to UNDERSTAND your anger and to choose HEALTHY ways to respond to it.” Unknown
I have one simple approach, put a certain amount in savings each month first then I pay the rest of the stuff.
Most of my budgeting is done from a journal meaning no fancy computer spreadsheets like my ex used to do. He could show you down to the penny where the money went and he loved looking at the colorful graphs which showed the ups and downs for the month. He was or rather is a physicist so everything is science-based and often a headache to the less complicated mind! I have a simpler approach. Pay what is due and don’t overspend. Make no debts is my other rule. Living debt-free is liberating so I stick to that whenever possible.
So far it is working out pretty well and since I live in a village where clothes don’t rule the person, I don’t fork out money like I used to. Just a few simple pieces, stylish but more appropriate for the life I lead currently and it works out perfectly fine for me. Having control of my own budget is a great feeling versus letting someone else control it for you and that is one of the perks of not being married!
He is now the 47th president and nothing much has changed except that the spin cycle has revved up and is now heading to Timbuktu with no stop in sight it seems! Only now he has a co-president who is the puppet master as well!
Trump was asked this question at the prestigious Economic Club of New York.
Question: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable and what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
It was a straightforward question coming from the founder of the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code. However, it was one flew over the cuckoo’s nest for Mr. Trump. It had nothing to do with Harris so that took away his power. God, this was a hard one so he went on a nearly two-minute response that made no sense and it did not answer the question either. It was a roundabout way of saying, “I don’t know!” Give me something simple like Kamala’s looks, I’m sure I can do a number on that one!
Trump’s answer: “Well, I would do that, and we’re one sitting down-you know I was, somebody we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that-because look, child care is childcare, it’s – couldn’t, you know, it’s something, you have to have it in this country you have to have it.”
That was just part of his answer but you get the drift. I had a hard time figuring out what ‘Grandpa Trump’ was trying to get across. His sentences, if you can call them that were half-cocked and made no sense but that is Trump tried and true. It was plain gibberish coming out of his mouth and to him, he had given the perfect answer, Trump fashion.
The only thing that was clear is that Trump has no policy commitments other than he wants to win the presidency on the sheer magnitude of his bigger than life persona but alas, that too is fading. How can you make sense out of something that makes no sense. You can’t.
Tomorrow, he’ll be facing his nemesis on the debate stage and it doesn’t bode well for him. Harris will step onstage, her wits about her, her 59-year-old self gleaming, her smile sparkling, hair perfectly coiffed and with answers ready to be shot off as she gets the questions thrown at her. Trump, well, the poor guy will be slaughtered even before he knows what hit him. He’ll claim she had the answers and there was something nefarious going on but if you can’t stand the heat, it’s time to get out of the kitchen!
You need a clear head and lots of commonsense to run a country but if you can’t even give a clear answer to a policy question than it’s time for you to hang up your political shoes. Let’s not forget, he couldn’t even complete his sentences so that they made some kind of sense was more than alarming. ‘Grandpa Trump’ it’s time for you to go.
I’ve got Norah Jones singing, “Sunrise, sunrise,” and the mellow sounds of a voice that is smooth as silk is helping to calm an overactive mind. If that doesn’t work, I have Katie Melua on standby!
“Sunday is a good day to save the world in one’s pyjamas.” Adrienne Posey
If you ask me, that concept works everyday! Sunday is a day to rest and relax and maybe do some of the things you’ve been neglecting to do during the week. I’ve got two loads of laundry to do, it’s a must because I’m running out of fresh PJs! You know how I love hanging around in them.
“Sunday. Take it slow and give your soul a chance to catch up with your body.” Unknown
I really need a facial so I’m going to give myself one today. The mask is out and in a little while I’ll be looking like the creature that walked out of the Black Lagoon. Conditioning the hair is next. Long hair needs care and mine is looking a little down in the dumps lately. Half an hour of the nourishing mask should do the trick to have it back to its shiny bouncy self! There are a few more things to do as far as self-care is concerned but I’ll keep them to myself!
“Sunday is the day to give yourself all the love and care you didn’t on weekdays.” Unknown
Right now, I’ve got my little guy, Chachi, the cat, or “Einstein” as he wants to be called cuddling up next to me and purring up a storm. I’ve turned up the volume and Norah is on to:
When I saw the break of day
I wished that I could fly away
Instead of kneeling in the sand
Catching tear-drops in my hand.
Hmm…..the lady has the smoothest voice and it makes me want to fly away as well!
I don’t love Sundays as I should because that “overactive” mind has time to reflect and when it does there is no stopping it! However, Ms. Jones is doing a great job of soothing the unruly beast!
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends. It’s going to cost you being liked, and understood. But it doesn’t matter. Because the people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. And you’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward.
And instead of liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead of understood, you’re going to be seen. All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are. Let it go.” Brianna West
Change is never-ending. It is scary but it brings you one step closer to who or what you want to be. It moves you out of your comfort zone and at times it will feel like you are being thrown into the deep end of the pool, sink or swim is your choice. I hope you swim.
Looking back at my life and the things that have held me back, I realize much of it was tied in with stupidity and emotions I could have done without. I could have learned the lessons in a shorter period of time instead of dragging it on but I didn’t.
This thing called love could have been easier on me. I could have made it easier but I wasn’t strong enough. I was in a vulnerable state and it seemed to attract the wrong types because vulnerability is often an invitation which says, “Here I am, come break me!” I should have walked when I saw that it was a foregone conclusion and my holding on would not change the outcome. It never did. I will do better I promise myself. I will let go when I see the truth staring me in the face and walk away with my dignity intact and with my heart back where it belongs. I will let go before it drags me down to where I often find myself, right down at ground zero but the changes took a long time coming.
I am stronger today than I was yesterday. My heart still speaks the language of love but it no longer speaks stupid. This journey I am on has changed me. The weak or vulnerable one has been replaced with someone who is confident, capable and someone who knows who she is and what she wants out of life. Something inside me screams, “I am woman, hear me roar!” Scary? Well, if you’re the type of man I am accustomed to, then you should be. I am looking to be loved but with eyes open this time. Working on myself is a mindful and daily affair and when I finally step out of my comfort zone, the journey will be complete but change is a lifelong journey and it will be a never-ending one. I can handle it I tell myself because I am no longer who I used to be.
“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” Abraham Maslow
AND
“Change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Roy T. Bennett
I don’t know and I haven’t given much thought to it. I care about what happens to my country, I take pride when it strives and there are achievements made but I also sit up and take notice when someone or a group of individuals try to bring it down.
I have a deep abiding love for my country and a sense of attachment to it so you can call that being patriotic I suppose. Unlike the friend who passed away, he took it one step further. He was a “hero” in every sense of the word and a true patriot to boot. His mission was to protect and serve the country he loved at any cost even if it meant laying his life down for it. I am in no way close to that.
So I think I am patriotic in one sense and in another perhaps not so much.
Daily writing prompt
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
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