Sometimes a day is unstructured and we don’t know what to expect. I wondered what to do with myself for four hours today without any responsibilities or expectations. I dropped in on a support group, late, but still. Then I took myself out for lunch alone, a surprisingly authentic pastrami on rye. Next I parked by the beach and took a brief walk on the sand. As local residents, parking is always free for us. Here’s the video I took, which I sent to my granddaughter who just let us know she is engaged to be married. I am thrilled for her! He’s a Marine and she’ll be living closer to us soon. Then I went to my therapy office nearby and did some creative writing. The plot began to fall into place as my fingers flew across the keyboard. A character revealed the why and the how! When all was said and done, I resumed my busy life of caregiving, recharged and grateful.
Enjoy:
The goodness in me bows to the goodness in you, and to that in all living beings.
iPhone photo of a Southwest Florida sunset by Shielagh
Week 49 brings us to the sunset of the year 2017. Next week we will ring in the year 2018, alone or with family and friends, and it seems that many troubling financial changes will begin to take place. Whether or not we are blessed or cursed by those changes has a lot to do with our place on the income and asset continuum. I wish my diversions could overturn the damage it will do to those least able to manage it.
But diversions are needed, and here they are! Many of us meditate these days, perhaps more than ever. Whether you practice Zen, Transcendental Meditation, Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, walking meditation, or another of the many forms modern meditation can take, you may be part of a wonderful trend of reducing crime.
iPhone photo of the Waterside Shops Holiday display in 2016 by Shielagh
Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice and Happy Kwanzaa to all who celebrate this week. Since this is the Season of Giving, here is a powerful guided meditation from Saddhguru on giving.
Photo from gazelle.com
Now, have you ever worried about the danger of getting a brain tumor from holding a cellphone to your ear as often as you do? Good news! Dr. Michael Greger covers this in a recent video. He reports that we are more likely to be killed by a distracted driver looking at his phone than to die from a brain tumor.
I saw this video recently in the comments of a friend’s blog, and I loved it! Turn up your sound and enjoy!
Welcome to Week 26 of our circus.Our monkeys have been swinging wildly from tree to tree, spinning, obfuscating, flirting, lying, blaming, chattering about nonsense, and it all makes my eyes roll in my head.
I need diversions, and I’m sure you do as well so here we go. First, we need cake! Yes, we do, and we need confetti cake, with or without Elmo and friends.
Now that we’re drooling, I have good news and bad news for us. The bad news: Cheese is addicting. Dr. Neal Barnard has been exploding our craving with facts we don’t want to hear. Apparently certain aspects of cheese are transformed into a morphine-like chemical that reinforces our desire to have more cheese. The advertising world and restaurants know this. Witness the oozy, cheesy ads for pizza and other foods. As a vegan who began eating cheese again, and I feel guilty about it because I do know about the pseudomorphine stuff, and I know dairy is inherently cruel. A calf has to be taken from his mother so humans can have the milk. There’s a lot of suffering in that unnatural separation. The good news: Miyoko’s Kitchen. She’s making cultured Buffalo Style Mozzarella we need to try.
We can also enjoy Field Roast Chao cheeses that are produced in Greece from coconut milk and tofu. I know it sounds weird, but it’s the tastiest, meltiest, sliced vegan cheese available in most supermarkets. It makes great grilled cheese sandwiches, especially when the bread is slathered with Just Mayo egg-free mayonnaise before grilling. And I totally trust this product which we use exclusively at home.
Who knew this would be another food blog? Well, it is what it is, and food is a great diversion, isn’t it? Yummy food isn’t called comfort food for nothing. So, we have to eat, so why not eat healthy and eat happy, too!
This week we sold all the CDs that Decluttr.com would buy and donated the rest. We listen to satellite radio at home and in our cars, and Amazon Music via iPad and Bluetooth speaker, so they’ve just gathered dust. I saved one out to give a friend. It was “Shteyt Oyf (Rise Up)” by the Klezmatics, and I’m going to share now “I Ain’t Afraid” in English and Yiddish, originally written by Holly Near, that I’ve loved since I first heard it. Don’t you think the world needs to hear this? Please share!!!
On this, week 14, I’ve been on the move, literally. So I will just share the diversions as best I can.
Detroit Michigan Map Art Print by The Mighty Mitten, themightymitten.com
As you no doubt are aware, the iconic birthplace of the US auto industry, Detroit, Michigan has suffered a drastic and prolonged economic downturn that has led to a real estate crash and outmigration. So this story from the Guardian really is good news!
Spring is here and therefore it’s getting close to garden planting time up north. I still have a lot of the heirloom seeds I bought last year so I’m going to see how they do. Some people order seed catalogs and pore over them during the winter. Others think about tactics. If the idea of making trellises for tomatoes and beans and other climbers instead of buying tomato cages and bright green bamboo sticks from a big box store appeals to you, try this.
And here is your toe tapper for this week. It’s a doozie and I enjoyed it even more than the original Freddie Mercury composition we loved as Queen performed it.
Shielagh 