Noury's Creative World…

What a good life I have…this is my breathtaking-so-Southern- view when I go for my daily walk around 7:30 am every day…well…except Sundays.

Today was laundry, languages, and then I decided to learn how to make a movie with pictures in my files.  The movie so far is only around 17 seconds…with music added, yes, music…I remember my precious daughter made a movie with some pictures and then she spend a few good hours adding music to it, to have it ready for me before I went back home, then North Carolina.   The movie was about our visit to  Paris a few years ago, so I decided that we somehow share our DNA, so if she can do this kind of things, so can I.  The roles have somehow reversed on some things.  Now I look up to her.  If she can do it…so can I.  Cool!

After a while, I put the whole project in the circular file until I feel aggressive enough to tackle the beast again.  It has not hit the recycle bin, as of right now.

Other than that nothing much to report, except that I already prep my cantaloupe, lettuce, apple, etc for my ever healthy lunch.

Some of you probably are thinking…really, are you thinking?  Just a joke!

Have a happy day!

Your Happy Contessa

“Finding what degree of happiness is enough for oneself is an exhilarating experience.”  La Contessa

Talking with one of my best friends recently,  we were conversing, again, about becoming Medicare babes. For those of you that are not inhabitants of the United States, the Medicare word is associated with having reached the tender, lovely and mature age of 65.  There is plenty to talk about, analyze, etc.  You get the drift.

I was telling her about my new beautiful pink shoes. Loved these shoes, but after I purchased them and brought them home, I tried to walk with them on, to have a better feel and to get used to this new daring and darling pair of high heel pumps. After a few steps,  I started to question my mindset when I purchased these beautiful shoes. Loved them…but I pictured that around  the end of the evening, someone will have to pick me up me with a spatula from the dancing floor.

Yes, I do dance and did the wobble at my daughter’s wedding. I am worthy of dancing with the smallest shinning speck in the sky.  But, after my first attempt at being a celebrity in the Randy to the Rescue, Washington, D.C. episode, I really don’t want to deal with paparazzi. Go figure.

As a Medicare-Babe-to-be, my mind thinks mid-thirties, my body acts anyway it feels like, but not necessarily in agreement with my mind.

Getting in the vintage stage of our lives can be fun, interesting and a royal pain on my feet. Loved those pink pumps, but…they went back to the store to torture another pair of feet. I must clarify that they were half a size too big, otherwise they would be torturing mine, with controlled pleasure.

With that very profound pondering, I must leave now.

Your Happy Contessa

“It is not how old you are, but how young you think.” …yeah, right…tell it to the Marines.

This morning while taking my now sweaty-and warm-walk, I met a neighbor who happened to be taking her morning walk also.

Inevitably, we started talking about our issues and challenges…and then at the end of our casual meeting, she said…”I feel better about my life after having met you.”

Wow! You pray for moments like this, and then bang! it happens. I never know what the Lord has in mind for my days, but I am finding out that if I let my Creator take over, my life becomes peaceful, joyful and meaningful. Very meaningful.

I guess I am in one of those days that I am in alignment with my Creator…feeling very good about my journey.

I read recently somewhere that when I focus on the goodness of situations and people, everything looks and feels better.

With that profound wisdom…I wish you all a beautiful continuation in your journey.

Your Happy Contessa

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics. 26 July, 1856 – 2 November, 1950.

Needed to change picture and posting, so I decided to show all of you my worldwide fans how I look on a recent photo taken at the Eastern Market, in Washington D.C.

Hair looks decent, compared to another recent picture of me, that looks as if I just rolled out of bed.  I don’t know if it also happens to some of you.  You think you look so hot, and then there comes a picture that shows you looking like you went through the doo-doo- tunnel and the image is there for eternity for all to see.  That just happened to me.

So, to make myself feel better, I found a photo that makes my hair look somewhat the way it usually is.  Not so hot, but there is hair.  Thanks God for hair color!

Life has been hectic, daughter getting married, commuting between Washington D.C. and Florida.  One good thing though has come from all of this.  At the security gates at the airports, we are kind of on a first name basis…well…not that far yet.  Faces look familiar and my taking off my shoes, belt, scarf, and jacket has become a routine I just don’t think about any longer.  It still amazes me what has become of us as a society.

Well, I don’t want to get on the serious side.  We have the networks for that.  Scaring the stuff out of us.

Hope all of you like the picture…or not.  I do like it.

So…it was today…another beautiful day in paradise.  All is well and all are happy.

Your Happy Contessa

“I am only responsible for what I say; I am not responsible for what you hear.”  Don Miguel Ruiz, Mexican author of “The Four Agreements.”  Born 1952.

Let explain…my sister and brother-in-law, Raylene and Richard,  were visiting Florida just a day ago, and we went on an adventure to the Gulf Coast.   We had a fabulous fun time…ate greasy food, lots of eggs, scrambled and sunny side up…home fries, pancakes, fruits (only Raylene ate the healthy stuff),  and a coffee that smelled just like the best coffee they serve at any good truck-stop.

Also, went to the beach, oh…the sand so beautifully white and the water of the Gulf this beautiful tone of emerald green…a little bit lighter in shade.  The wind was so fierce that it lifted the sand off the surface and the tiny grains were going straight to our eyes and any other space they could find to deposit themselves.

The “beach” experience lasted around five minutes or so, while we snapped a few pictures and pretended that we were not that cold.  I WAS FREEZING!!

Then we got into the mobile and drove around Ana Maria Island, where we spotted The Tortuga Inn, where my belated husband and I spent a few lovely days back in the days of early 2000.

Then, after going around downtown Sarasota and looking from our mobile’s windows all the snowbirds (people who come to Florida for the winter), we decided that really…we needed nothing to purchase and went back north on Tamiami Trail.  Got gas at $3.93 a gallon and went our merry way.

Drove finally into I-4 East and Richard, my brother-in-law, a frustrated pilot, was happily driving or may I say flying.  In a moment, some manuever that he did, that would have meant a probable close encounter of the third kind,  prompted my sister-in-law, Raylene,  to call all the angels, Jesus, and saints to be with us.  In the back seat of the mobile, I mentally got ready for a crash and going to heaven, when suddenly this thought assaulted me…”Oh my gosh, I am going to meet Jesus in this outfit in my skinny jeans, and dirty hair from the sand, and looking at myself, I said, well I guess ready or not here I come.”

Just like that I was going to the most important meeting in my life.  I closed my eyes and expected the big BAM.  It never came…I think my Creator did not like the idea of our meeting yet and not in the outfit I was wearing.

There was a profound silence most of the way to my digs.  I guess the three of us were making our own conclusions as to what almost happened.  No yet, said the Creator, and not so fast.

Another day in Paradise…

Your Happy Contessa

“It was not our final day.”  Happy Contessa on 7 March, 2013.

Get ready!  I just purchased this used, but new to me, book about writing.  I am getting oh, so ready to create my next masterpiece.  Maybe by the end of 2020.  That number sounds good.  I think I will be seventy-something.  Just the perfect age to write a Pulitzer-Prize-piece-of-work.

Just noticed while taking the picture that this is the “Instructor’s Edition.”  Meaning what, I yet don’t get it.  Yes, I did get it!  It is meant to be for a teacher.  That much I get.  I have just been elevated to that level.  Something is going to stick in my ever glowing brain.

Last week I attended a creative writing workshop, and the main speaker was an old-good-fellow who happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winner.  And he said: ” Anyone can write a book that makes you feel happy.”  According to him it was a quote from Kafka.  Another oh so good writer.  Sorry to disappoint my now very famous audience, but I have only seen a picture of Mr. Kafka.  So much for my credibility.  But I don’t feel so bad, because last year, that is, 2012, this humble blog was read in 59 countries around our beautiful Planet Earth.  No Martians yet.  Sometime soon, by 2020, that’s why I am getting ready.

Make what you want of all of this.  I am just chillin and having a good time doing some serious reading and hoping to jump from mediocre to at least decent writings.

Thanks God for hope.

Until my next masterpiece…no…I will be writing before 2020.

Your Happy Contessa

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”  Franz Kafka, German-language writer of novels and short stories.  3 July, 1883 – 3 June 1924.

There certain numbers of fears we have, I think, as we get older. Some of them are,  feeling that we are not relevant any more, that what we have to say is not appreciated or totally ignored, but mostly for women is the one of getting wrinkles and those marionette lines.  If I could come up with something to inflate that area, the lines around my mouth,  I could be 110% gorgeous.  I am now 100%, but like the probabilities of being a tiny bit better.  I have never been known to be modest.  Why change at this stage?

I have to laugh when I read some comments being made anywhere about us, the “older, dumb, don’t get it, don’t understand, senile, deaf, (this one I use at my convenience), little old lady, she doesn’t know”, and a myriad of adjectives, nouns and other fancies used to describe us all, the baby boomer generation and the generation before us.  What are they called, I wonder…

What are we to do?  Speaking for myself…let them think whatever they want…I am having it my way and dancing all the way to my daily life of happiness.  When “they” get to this stage in life, only the good Lord knows how these much younger generations, that have their eyes glued to a tv screen, a smart tablet or phone, that cannot have a conversation without checking their “smart” thing, will make it.  May the Lord have mercy on those of “them” that are putting labels on us now.

One of my fantasies is that by that time, the time when these younger things get older, the production of hair-coloring-products would be non-existent…that will teach them all the lessons in one bottle.  It would be close to the end of the world…talking for myself.  Can you imagine a whole population of people with white or gray hair?  Horror of horrors.

Remember, we’ve been there, done that and are coming back, twice, from where you are headed to.

Good luck, or as the French say…Bon Courage!

Loving my life as it is…very happy with my monthly hair coloring session.  Cannot imagine my life without it.  Color 4G, because I am worth it.

Your Happy Contessa

“Life couldn’t be better.”  Moi

Sunglasses for lizards!

I think this is a marvelous business idea…but first need to get a manufacturer in the United States, because it needs to be an American product.  Only buy things made in the good old U.S.A.  Sorry China, maybe some other time.

Now, back to the mini-tiny sunglasses.  I like the idea of all black, like the very world-famous Ray Bans.  These will be called Liz Ban.  Cool.  Maybe in the future I will add some color.  What about a case for the sunglasses?  All fake leather, because do not want to hurt these prospective customers’ feelings.  Oh yes, need to develop glass cleaner to be handled with tiny little toes.

What do you think?  I really think I have too much time in my hands, and frankly, I just had my first great laugh of the year.

Not so hot an idea…right!  I need to continue searching for another big-business-bam- idea.  Suggestions need not to apply.  Thank you very much.

Well…another sunny day in Florida watching the little lizards sunbathe themselves.

Your Happy Contessa

“It is not what happens to you, but what you do with it that matters.”  Someone very smart.

Now, finally I am back in cold, rainy, Florida. Hello sunshine, where are thou?

Had a fantastic time while in the land of Oz, where the biggest collection of clowns reside in what we call the United States Capitol.  Sarcasm was not my intention to start the new year with.

Happy 2013!!!!!

That’s better.  I had a happy, happy again and more happy time with my lovely daughter, her fiance, my grand-doggie, Baxter Brown, and my very good friend Miss Lucy.

Good food, good times, good cheer, but good to be back on my own bed and plenty of time to watch my ever missed Hispanic soap operas.  Have watched at least fifteen episodes.  I recorded four of them, times number of days I was away…whole weekend to catch up.  I have such a great life.

That’s it!  Needed to change all the glitter and poinsettia.

My best wishes for a healthy, happy, prosperous New Year.

Your Happy Contessa

From the sunny, kind of warm State of Florida, I want to wish you my friends from all over the world, a very Merry Christmas, or a very Happy Your Holiday, and a peaceful, joyful New Year.  For the citizens in my age bracket…let’s add a year full of good health and no visits to any doctors whatsoever.

This orange tree is one of many in “my gardens.”  Oranges are somehow related to Christmas, because they used to be a favorite to receive when you were a child.

So…I will be away for a little while…going to visit my lovely, gorgeous daughter, her fiance and my grand-doggie, Baxter Brown.  Most adorable puppy ever.  Let’s see how we get along.  I am hoping for a love fest between that puppy and me.  Miracles do happen.

Well…so long, and I never get tired of thanking all of you for being curious about my life and my do-abouts.

Love is in the air…Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!!!!

Your Happy Contessa