Category Archives: Blogging Community

Moonstruck

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 “Mentally deranged by the influence of the moon…dreamily romantic or bemused.”–Dictionary.com

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I. (Rodgers & Hart)

When he talks he is seeking
Words to get off his chest.
Horizontally speaking
He’s at his very best.

I love the film Moonstruck starring Nicolas Cage, Cher, and Olympia Dukakis and written by John Patrick Shanley. It is a romantic comedy where the main character Loretta ,(Cher), is afraid to get involved with Ronnie, (Nick Cage) ,the brother of her fiancé, because it goes against the rules. When she married her first husband she felt she did not follow the expectations of society and waited to have a baby. When her husband was killed she felt it was because she broke the rules. So Ronnie says to her in response:

” Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice-it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die! The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!”

” We aren’t here to make things perfect…we are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!” I love that quote.

In the movie Loretta goes through a physical transformation from a dowdy looking woman to glamorous as she readies herself to meet Ronnie at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for a performance of La Boheme. A  beautiful opera by Puccini.

I don’t think we are here to make things perfect either or to be perfect. We struggle and suffer and flail about a lot and try to do our best many times but we are not perfect.

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

This is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday with the prompt “sick”. It made me feel a little qualmish to write about “sick” so I decided to pick a synonym.

Kat Got Your Tongue Challenge-Sleep

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“Also, I could finally sleep. And this was the real gift, because when you cannot sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch–there’s not a chance.”   –Elizabeth Gilbert

The Greek god of sleep is Hypnos. It was said that near his cave were poppies and other hypnotic plants. His mother was Nyx the goddess of the night. Do you remember in the Wizard of Oz when the wicked witch put Dorothy and her friends to sleep with a field of poppies? Opium is a narcotic made from the Opium poppy.

Poppy Field of poppies by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii 1912 via wikipedia

I am a “light” sleeper and I am easily disturbed by my husband if he has a restless night or is stressed over something and not sleeping well. When my children were little I slept with my senses on alert to any disturbance coming from their rooms. I wake up if there is an earthquake. My husband, once he was asleep, could sleep through the kids crying and earthquakes.

Menopause made me more sensitive to stress and insomnia. For many years I think I had a sleep disorder and seldom got a good night’s sleep.  There were periods where I would go through cycles of insomnia with a few nights of normal in between.

Thankfully, I have been improving in this area lately. I attribute it to the fact that my hormones are stable and I am no longer under a lot of stress with my work or life. My children are grown and out of the house. I am sleeping better.

I have not gotten to the stage of taking my improved sleeping pattern for granted. I can still feel gratitude for sleeping well.

It can be a vicious cycle if I have poor quality sleep. It leads to decreased ability to cope with stress. Then the increase stress leads to another night of poor sleep. I have read that not getting adequate sleep can cause us to have trouble maintaining a healthy weight. It can lead to obesity. I have had trouble with losing weight as well.

So I will have to see if this theory holds true. If I continue to sleep well and lose weight that would be great.

Now when I occasionally have difficulty staying asleep I do not fight it but get up or turn on a light and read for a while. Eventually I become drowsy again and can get back to sleep.

Do you have a remedy for insomnia? What do you do if you have trouble sleeping?

 

|KatGotYourTongue|

katgotyourtongue

One Liner Wednesday

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“When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.”

—John Muir

I love John Muir. He was a wonderful naturalist who co-founded the Sierra Club in California and influenced congress to pass a bill making Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. He is called the father of the National Park Service.

Here is a bit via PBS on you tube:

And a biography of John Muir by the National Park Service via America Sings:

258px-Sequoia_National_Park_-_Sentinal_Tree

 

|LindaGHill|

Writer’s Quote Wednesday-Creativity

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“Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago? ”

–Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Being creative is taking materials already available and putting them together in a new way. What do you think?

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon (1894-1982) was a retail advertising executive for stores like Marshall Field and Macys. She eventually had her own agency and was named to the Advertising Hall of Fame. She was very forward thinking for her era.

 

|Writer’s Quote Wednesday|

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Tangerines are from Tangiers

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For Stream of Consciousness Saturday we are given the prompt to write something that includes the letter “t.”  I am reminded of tangerines.

Every year at Christmas we hung up our special decorated Christmas stocking that our mother had made for us and labeled with our names. On Christmas morning we found our stockings filled with tangerines, whole walnuts and candy canes. I carried on this tradition when my kids were little and would include chocolate and small toys. I left out the whole walnuts for my kids.

Tangerines got their name from Tangiers, Morocco where they originated. The season of tangerines is from autumn to spring. Citrus fruit would have been considered a delicacy for many people in the world. After better transport became available citrus in winter was more common.

I remember growing up that citrus from California was considered a special gift along with dried fruit and dates. There was a company called  Mission Pak which shipped gift packs of oranges, dried fruit, dates and nuts to people in other parts of the country. We used to hear their jingle all the time  around the holidays. It went “Say the magic words, say Mission Pak and it’s on its merry way! No gift so bright, so gay, so light, give the Mission Pak magic way!”

Later in my life, after I had moved to LA, I would see gift packs like these at the Farmers Market on Fairfax. Tourists would buy them or have them shipped as gifts.

Did you get tangerines or oranges in your Christmas stocking? Do you remember Mission Pak? I really like the little Clementines that are seedless. They are a nice size for kids to have for snacks and no worry about spitting out or swallowing seeds.

6831078913_f7bd5c6893_z Photo courtesy of Orange County Archives

 

|LindaGHill|

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My Excuse with a Few Synonyms Added

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images Origin of the domestic dog via wikipedia

I can’t submit my post about the word “excuse”

because my dog ate my lap top.

And I don’t have a dog.

Can you let that slide?

It is not a cop out.

Will you let me off the hook?

I am really having trouble with this prompt.

This is my apology.

For not having a post.

Can you hear my plea?

This is my plea bargain.

I promise to write something better after New Years.

|LindaGHill|

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A Few Favorite Things for the Holidays

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untitled Unknown Children, probably Carolers by Louisa Anne Marchioness via wikimedia

The best thing about the holidays for me is getting together with my kids. I do not get into a lot of shopping, decorating, sending out holiday cards, knitting, baking or making eggnogs. My husband sometimes will make the eggnog. I try not to drink more than one serving because it is a bit fattening but very tasty. I did have a pint of eggnog ice cream in the freezer and now somehow it is gone.

I appreciate all the yummy things Trader Joes  has on sale this time of year like Honey Walnut Fig Cream Cheese. Another great invention of theirs is Slicing Brie which is a little log of brie that you can slice for crackers. Great for entertaining or snacking. Guaranteed to add several more inches and pounds.

I do contact friends and family at least by email or Facebook to wish them happy which ever holiday they are celebrating. I give money to the Santa ringing the bell in front of the Salvation Army kettle. I like to buy a toy for Toys for Tots.

There is something else I like about the holidays. It is listening to the Christmas music on the radio. At least at the beginning of the season. They start playing it right after Thanksgiving. By the time Christmas rolls around I have had enough.

Many of the songs or carols take me back to when I was in Catholic school. They still raise my spirits when I first hear them. Like Come All Ye Faithful, The First Noel, Little Town of Bethlehem, Joy to the World, Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High. We used to sing some of them in Latin. Angels We Have Heard on High has the phrase ” Gloria, in excelsis Deo” ( Glory to God in the Highest)  and O Come all Ye Faithful in Latin is Adeste Fideles and here in part:

Adeste Fideles laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte, Regem Angelorum;

Refrain:

Venite adoremus,
venite adoremus,
venite adoremus
Dominum!

I have a memory of singing that carol in a choir with my classmates. I don’t think we sounded like this via You Tube by Julio Fernanadez:

Others I like are Hark the Herald Angels Sing, We Three Kings of Orient Are, and Deck the Halls. There are others that I have learned later in life The Holly and the Ivy and O Come Emmanuel. I think O Come Emmanuel is beautiful. I first heard The Holly and the Ivy in an old  British film of the same title.

Of course we all sang Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

Do you have any favorite holiday songs?

My Writing Space

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Guilty Pleasure

My Writing Space

At present I do not have a separate room where I do my writing. I sit at our kitchen table and write on my laptop. I do have a couple of open rooms in the house that I could convert to a physical space for myself to write. These were my kids bedrooms. One still contains some of my daughters furniture and other belongings.  At some point in the near future I envision setting up one of these bedrooms for myself.

For so many years when my kids were growing up I did not have a space for myself in the house. I often thought how nice it would be to have a room to use as an office or just for my own space. Maybe it is because I have gotten so used to not having a room of my own that I haven’t set one of our bedrooms up for myself yet.

The environment can be less than ideal in a shared space like the kitchen. My husband often works at home. He can be going in and out of the room and talking to me. There have been many times when I get pretty irritable about being interrupted when I am on my blog. Especially when I am writing and organizing my thoughts. If the radio is on with music or news this can be another irritation. On my own I work in the quiet.

Space for writing is not just physical. It is psychological as well. It is taking the time out of the day to sit down, ponder and allow the creative process to begin. I need to carve out the time every day for myself to be creative in this way. To make a writing space in my day and in my life.

katgotyourtongueThis post is for the writing event on Kat’s blog Dandelion Fuzz. The event is open to all interested bloggers. Click on the link for more info.