Friday Thoughts for 1/8/16

Hooray for the week's BEST day.

The weather here is supposed to be cold and possibly snowy for the next couple days (it is Minnesota in January, after all), and that just makes me think about hunkering down in front of the TV (like normal) and eating my way through the weekend (like normal). If someone doesn't pay me to stop putting food in my mouth, I'm afraid I'll explode here....

Last weekend it was Downton Abbey reruns leading up to the first episode of this year's final season. This weekend? Not sure, exactly, but there are so many possibilities! And I'm open to suggestions for anyone who cares to share.

That being said, here we go with today's musings. And have a happy Weekend Eve!

FIVE THINGS TO BE HAPPY ABOUT (from The HappyBook by Barbara Ann Kipfer):

1.      Old political cartoons. (And old favorite comic strips.)

2.      Grandmothers. (YES! They are so important, aren’t they? Dear God/dess, please make me an important one. Thank you.)

3.      Flash Gordon. (I’ll admit I’m not at all familiar with him, Buck Rogers, or any of the other space adventurers. Except ‘Spaceman Spiff.’ LOVE Spaceman Spiff….)

4.      Talking to yourself. (If this were an Olympic event, I’d be its record-holding gold medalist. Forever.)

5.      Baby bunting. (I can’t see the word ‘bunting’ now without immediately thinking of the delightful swags I saw in every cute English shop in Derbyshire. So ‘baby bunting’, to me, paints pictures of a fairytown with garlands of little triangles arching from one tiny mushroom tea shop to the next.)

My FIVE THINGS TO BE HAPPY ABOUT:

1.      A snack of seasoned almonds.

2.      ModPodge™ and the ideas it sparks….

3.      A robe so soft it must be made of clouds and angel hair.

4.      Pigeon tracks in the new-fallen snow.

5.      A package in the mail.

Your FIVE THINGS TO BE HAPPY ABOUT:

            (Don’t hold back. Knock yourself out!)

SOMETHING (I think is) COOL:

Today’s cool item is courtesy of online free spirit Rob Brezsny:

Slate has created a compendium of the best things that happened each day in 2015. Here are ten of the best:

1. Nigeria bans female genital mutilation.
2. HIV protection is effective in African women.
3. Hunger has become much less severe in the past 15 years.
4. States' juvenile prison populations drop.
5. Homelessness declined 11 percent in the U.S. from 2010 to 2015.
6. Reforestation effort in Ecuador breaks world record.
7. Africa has its first polio-free year.
8. New Ebola vaccine is highly effective.
9. Energy storage technology, which is crucial for solar power, is making great progress.
10. People taking pre-exposure prophylaxis are staying HIV-free.

(See the best events of the other 355 days at this link.)

Because sometimes we need some good news, right?

A LITTLE SOMETHING:

I noticed that some ‘interesting’ books have been left recently in my Little Free Library. Books with covers featuring glowering women in tight corsets and shirtless men with sculpted abs…. James and I checked them out and determined that even though they feature some suggestive art on the covers they are written for high-school aged kids. What the heck?? My library gets frequent visitors, and on New Year’s Eve alone we noticed children checking it out no less than half-a-dozen times. Were they there because of these suggestive books? Has one teen taken it upon themselves to teach me the lesson that young people nowadays aren’t at all interested in National Velvet or Where the Red Fern Grows or A Wrinkle in Time? Hmmmmm. Well! The little monkeys SHOULD be because they have no idea what they're missing. So there....

LIFE AT TUMBLEDOWN:

I finished my first ever decoupage project recently and I like it. And yesterday was tea and talk with the recipient of the decoupage project. She likes it, too. Whew!

CLOSING THOUGHTS:

Enjoy your weekend, my friend. Mix up a batch of garlicky hummus, or oniony salmon dip, or creamy guacamole. Then open the crackers and binge-watch something fun. What will you be queuing up? Please tell me all about it. :)

See you Moonday,

…me.