Happiness cannot be bought, but you can steam clean your carpets with a rented Rug Doctor and that's worth it in the end.

From 500 Writing Prompts: 

I would love to jump into a pile of...hm, well my knee-jerk reaction is money, who wouldn't love to jump into a pile of money, because that would mean I own a pile of money, but the prompt says nothing about the contents of the pile belonging to me. 

"Money doesn't buy you happiness, but at least you'll have nice things to wear while you're depressed." That's from a Dolly Parton movie, I'm not going to look up which one because I'm trying to stick to my one hour of writing and blog entry-ing every day and I don't think it truly counts as a full hour of writing if I'm looking up Dolly Parton movies and trying to find amusing pictures.

Of course the pile of money is only useful for me if it's USD.
If it's Weimar Republic papiermarks or something of that ilk, it's pretty useless.

Yes, money doesn't buy you happiness. I think a more realistic statement is happiness cannot be bought. What money can bring is relative peace of mind. When you don't have to worry about paying the bills, when you're not constantly plagued by a varying level of anxiety over the possibility of your car breaking down or your furnace dying in November or developing gall stones severe enough to need surgery--all things that have happened in our family... if you don't have to be anxious about an emergency wiping out your savings... if you get to know that you can retire and not have to eat cat food and freeze to death... it's a hell of a lot easier to rest at night.

We've gotten off track. A bit. So, honestly I don't know that I'd LOVE to jump into a pile of anything, if it wasn't a pile of money that I'd earned. What's a thing that I like? Kittens, kittens are lovely, but I'm not going to jump into a pile of kittens. First of all, it would injure the kittens. But how do make a big enough pile of kittens for there to be a possibility of jumping into? Wouldn't the kittens at the bottom get smothered? And kittens are squirmy. So squirmy. So, not kittens.

Do not jump in the kittens, you monster.

Kids usually like jumping into a pile of leaves, in fact I have fond memories and pictures even, of my own children in piles of leaves. But as a grown up....rolling around in scratchy leaves that possibly have bugs in them and which I'd then have to rake up myself...no. Not leaves.

How about silk? How about jumping into a pile of silk, just a pile of silk fabric? Silk is lovely, it feels delicious on skin. I was going to say silk and fur, but I don't need animals to die just so I can roll around on their skins. But silk, yes. 

Aaaannnd....I still have thirty-four minutes left to go. You know, I think this would be better if I wrote my actual stories for an hour. I still want to do a daily blog entry, but I don't want to just keep thrashing away at the keys to make sure I get an entire hour in. That would make a really boring blog entry, I feel. Really long and boring.

I'm going to make the executive decision to end this entry ahead of the timer. I did my three long hand Morning Pages this morning. I have an online course on creating a bullet journal I'm in the middle of and I just collected all my materials. I need to make my inspiration dashboard.

The emptiness of the title line bothers me.

 

This is Toby. He has a chonk heart. 

Yesterday I was cleaning out my email and found one from Starbucks, telling me that the application I had submitted (two freaking years ago) was over sixty days old...yeah, it would be. That's what happens when you wait two years to contact someone. Wow, they must be desperate. But I am not. 

It (they?) requested that if I still wished to be considered I should resubmit my application. No freaking way, not now. 

Today I cleaned the bathroom rugs and floors and the kitchen rug and floor. I cleaned and was happy with what and how I cleaned and then I sat down for a little break and realized how much of the house is still so dirty. Like, I only cleaned the rugs and floors, there's still more floors and more things above the floors. This is what happens when one is depressed for a long time. When you finally come out of that depression there is so much to do. There is ALL THE THINGS to do. And then people say, "hey, that's great! It looks good! I'm glad to see you feel better!" 

And then proceed to do zero to help it stay that way. Fuck all. 

Get the hell out of my kitchen.

This is why Moms feel like servants. Because not only do they often do a lion's share of the cleaning, people don't help KEEP things clean. They'll leave they're dirty dishes and uncleaned lunchboxes in the kitchen (I peeked inside...and I'm pissed about him leaving a good container in there. I refuse to take it out and it's our lunch salad container and he'd better actually WASH it because if he leaves it for me I'll throw it away.) Dirty shoes by the dozen in the door way. Dirty socks. Food wrappers. For Christ's sake, there is a trash can in every room, USE THEM.

I don't think this is going well. I can't find the patience today. I don't want to be boring and complaining is boring. But I need to do my hour a day. Sometimes you have to push through a lot of dreck to get to the good stuff. Set a habit, set a habit, set a habit. I did do my morning pages today. I'm getting hungry and I kind of want to make loaded baked potatoes for dinner but we don't have any sour cream. I wonder if the Dollar General has any sour cream.

Change is the only constant

Moss roses in my front yard. Also called portulaca.

Here is a picture of my moss roses. Aren't they lovely? They just bloom and bloom and bloom. I'm so pleased with them.

This picture is HERE instead of being posted to Facebook or Instagram because I turned fifty and decided I'm going to make some changes because my life is not what I want it to be. The first thing I did was downgrade to a flip phone. Know what you can't do with a flip phone? Browse the internet.

Not entirely correct, the flip phones they make now are smart flips, you can technically get on the internet with them but the phone screen is so tiny it's useless.

I had too much input at my fingertips all the time. So I fixed that. Now I have a phone that is mostly just a phone. I can text on it but it's old school texting and a pain in the ass for anything but short messages. 

And on July 18, 2021 I swore off Facebook and Instagram for a year and a day. Those are the only two social media platforms I use. Tik Tok annoyed the hell out of me, and I know I would loathe Twitter. 

On that fateful day...It was a Sunday! I had my daughter change my Facebook password and hide it from me. We didn't have to change the Instagram password, apparently someone in Russia (no fooling, the notice said the attempt was from St. Petersburg, Russia this past May) and Instagram shut that shit down and said I needed to change my password. So I can't even get in to that. I only used it on my phone anyway (my old phone) although I guess it's possible to use in on my laptop too. I deleted the app off the device...it's not a phone anymore because we switched the SIM card, but you can still use it to play games and access the internet. And take photos. I really like taking photos with it. The new flip phone camera is...utilitarian shall we say. Does not take great pictures and no front facing camera, so no selfie temptations.

So my current short term goals are...organize my office (in progress, looking much better, I can use my desk now) and write EVERY DAY. That's it, that's my two hard and fast goals to concentrate on. There is definitely a lot more I want to accomplish, but that's it for now.

I feel like this is a wall of text and I need to break it up with another picture. So...here!

I made these bubbles all by myself! I took the picture too.

I can't figure out how to import the pictures from my (old phone) device to my laptop. You used to be able to connect the phone to the laptop with the USB cable and just access the phone's picture gallery. But now anymore. It can be done, it's just confusing for me now. I'll figure it out. But the point of all this IS....

 This picture is here, because it's not there and I was getting anxious about not being able to share my pretty picture. Will anyone actually see it here? I doubt it. But it has the POTENTIAL to be seen.