Wednesday Words ~ a day late

This makes me smile.  What fun words!  I totally get it, but in case you don't, here are the definitions I found online for you.

• Hoedown = a social gathering at which lively folk dancing takes place.
• Shindig = a large, lively party, especially one celebrating something.
• Hootenanny = an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing.
• Cattywampus = not lined up, or not arranged correctly.

Are any of these words new to you?

Friendly February calendar

Click on calendar to enlarge it.

I found this month's calendar by searching for "calendar" on the Action for Happiness (AfH) web site.  Here are February's first seven days.

February 1
~ Send someone a message to say how much they mean to you.
February 2
~ Ask a friend what good things have happened to them recently.
February 3
~ Get in touch with an old friend you have not seen for a while.
February 4
~ Do something supportive and friendly for your colleagues.
February 5
~ Notice the good qualities of everyone you meet today.
February 6
~ Thank someone and tell them how they made a difference for you.
February 7
~ Show an active interest by asking questions when talking to others.

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to

cheer somebody else up." ~ Mark Twain

Beginning ~ with mortality

I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. ... Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying.  How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point.  The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End ~ by Atul Gawande, 2014

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable.  But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.  Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced.  Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make.  Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.  He shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death, but a good life ― all the way to the very end.

As the author says in the quote shown above, I think well-being is what really matters.  I don't want to spend my dying days in a nursing home in a bed with rails that hold me in or tied into a wheelchair.  All that does is prolong my dying, not help me really live as I want to live.  Quality of life is (or should be) the desired goal.  I borrowed this book from the library three years ago, but I never got it read.  Now it's on my Kindle, and I'm ready to read it.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click this link for other book beginnings.

National Wear Red Day ~ tomorrow

Coronary Heart Disease is the #1 killer of women in the United States.  Since 2002, the first Friday of February has been designated as National Wear Red Day® in the United States.  Men and women are encouraged to wear red as a symbol of their support of women’s heart health.  I plan to wear a bright red shirt like this one.  Will you join me?

Ya gotta have heart

If you're interested in why I'm supporting this Wear Red Day, take a look at what was happening in my life ten years ago, in February of 2009, by clicking on either of these two
Ya gotta have heart links.

Blogiversary ~ twelve years

Nancy bought this cake for her twelfth blogiversary in June, and I saved the picture to use today.  I've been blogging since January 30, 2007.  Sometimes I've even managed to post about it on the right date.

• 2007 ... My first post was about Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake.
• 2008 ... Missed my "end of January" blogiversary by a day.
• 2009 ... Completely missed the day because I was sick.
• 2010 ... Nailed the day with a blogiversary post.
• 2011 ... Went to church and remembered my blogiversary.
• 2012 ... Scheduled post for "1:30 AM" to match the 1-30 date.
• 2013 ... Forgot it again, maybe because I was healing from this.
• 2014 ... Remembered on my seventh blogiversary
• 2015 ... and on my eighth blogiversary.
• 2016 ... Nothing.  On 2-2-16 I posted about hippos and children.
• 2017 ... Remembered my tenth blogiversary, an important year.
• 2018 ... Posted TWOsday without once thinking "blogiversary."
• 2019 ... Today's post was scheduled back on Nancy's blogiversary.

And that, dear hearts, is how I managed to post on the right day this year.  I planned ahead, way ahead, months ahead.  And once again, I scheduled it to post at 1:30 AM to coincide with the 1-30 date.  Having composed this in early June of last year, I have no idea what will be happening on this date more than seven months later.  We shall see.

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

In my case, blogging is more like:

I blog, therefore I am.

Does that sound familiar?  The "comments" part of this cartoon is only correct for social media like Facebook and Twitter.  I have found comments from other book bloggers to be mostly positive.

Friday Five ~ thin places

"Friday Five:  I spent about 24 hours at one of my holy places last weekend," wrote Monica Thompson Smith of RevGalsBlogPals.  "That leads me to ask: what are five of your 'holy places,' aka 'thin places'?"

1.  The bend in the mountain stream where bedrock poked through the grass in my backyard (1965-1984).  My stream was a bit smaller than the one shown above, but similar.  Even sitting at my kitchen window facing that direction felt like being in a thin place.

2.  The tiny labyrinth at the foot of Lookout Mountain where I took this photo on a warm September day in 2009.

3.  Meditating in my green chair at home.  I'm sitting in it now, as I type up this blog post and remember thin places.

4.  Sitting quietly or rambling around the lake at Lake Junaluska, NC.  I went there every summer for many years until I retired.

5.  Almost anywhere I'm relaxed enough to be still and fully immerse myself in the moment.

Wednesday Word ~ seenager

Seenager ~ a new word for today.  "Seen" may come partly from "senior," but mostly I think (for me, at least) it comes from having "seen it all" over my almost eight decades.

Even though I have all these things (some of which I may have wanted as a teenager), most are now beside the point.   I'm not interested in bars or the whisky store, for starters.  And the best part of being old and retired is getting to stay up reading as late as I like, since I can also sleep as late the next morning as I please.