Noury's Creative World…

So many, many reasons.  I can only think about mine…

Love to eat good tasting, healthy food…but it takes time to prep and cook, and by the time I seat to eat my pottage, I am  so tired and my back hurting from standing to peel the vegetables, that all I think is “then when I finish…just a few minutes from now, I have to wash the dish, yes, the dish and…the pan.  Yes again, one pan, one dish.  Because I clean as I go.  Very practical seasoned woman.

Hate to eat the crapola that abounds around all the eateries around me and probably around where you live also.  So much fat, sugar and then, the most important thing about this issue, is that it tastes just like cardboard.  You spend good dinero to eat cardboard that has been processed with sugars, fats, preservatives, colors and sometimes human hair, or the leftover organs of animals.  Then, all this is mixed up together to make it look like something we should be eating.

That’s not the end of it…then…”where the heck these five unwanted, undeserving pounds came from?”  Ahhh, it is the addition (had to drop some math here, as I was recently reminded that because I was not good at algebra, I cannot take one of the courses being taught by two MIT eminences), sorry…I went so off the tangent.  Where were we?  Yes, it is the addition of all that irreverent crapola that we so eagerly eat when feeling oh, so hungry.

What is there left to do?  Je ne sais pas.  In the meantime, I will continue to buy fresh, yeah, right…fresh from California, Peru, Guatemala and Mexico; and being held hostage by the powers that be at the food chains that I go to.  Sometimes I feel like a moving target…today they may  kill me…tomorrow they may not.

But, I will lose these five undeserving pounds…I am going back to my plantains in the mornings with the boiled egg, instead of the oatmeal with coconut milk…plus prunes.  No wonder the green blouse I wore yesterday to an outing looked a bit too provocative.  Do not like to show my assets too much.  A bit conservative in that department.

Well…I don’t know what your battle is against our source of survival, but now you know some more about mine.

We cannot live without eating, but eating what is available is what is killing us.

Have a good-food-tasting-day!

Your Happy Contessa

“We cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”  Virginia Woolf, English writer.  25 January 1882 – 28 March, 1941.

Well, enough of me and my bad-hair-moment.  Come to find out, I kind of like it now.  It could be better, maybe next time.

This photograph I took during my North Carolina experience back in the days.  Our daily walkabout.  Remember Miss Raylene?  Those were the good old days, but now my days, and I am sure everybody else’s are probably the even good or better days.  Why?  Because I am still around to fool around and write something about literally nothing.

I just got tired of looking at the picture of self and a bad hair moment.  Need to focus on the present.  Actually re-reading “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.  Great book!  It helps me to cool my thoughts whenever I get restless.  You know…me and my A+ personality.  Need to stay in the momento.

Really, had nothing much to say on this glorious occasion, just wanted to show you a beautiful moment in my life while visiting the unforgettable State of North Carolina.

I am very grateful for each person, each moment and each place that has graced me during my walk through this marvelous planet.

So…it was today…another day to think of beautiful things and of course, be very grateful.

Your Happy Contessa

“Never hating, never resisting, never contesting, she is simply always learning and being.”  Lao-Tzu, a philosopher of Ancient China.  Lived between the 4th – 6th Century BCE.

$90.  Moved from my assets column to the hair salon’s.  Think about it this way, it could have been $200+ or so, but I decided to go on the cheap side and yes, of course, that’s what I got.  Cheap results.

Let me explain…consultation with the “hair expert,” color, cut and style.  Did she use the brush that people use to fluff hair on dogs?  That’s what my hair looked like when I left the “salon.”  I felt like I was really the grandmother of Baxter Brown, my grand-doggie.  All fluff and no style.  Sorry, Baxter, you do have style.

I had to come home immediately to look at my “colored eyebrows,” now they look like the eyebrows from hell, my new short cut, dark, dark hair and a really bad mood with a topping of lousy attitude.  Where’s the Zen thing?  I am looking around, I really need a humongous dose of it.  How in the world am I going to camouflage this look for the next two months or so, until hair grows and eyebrows look somewhat normal?

I look like those women that I see sometimes on the streets, and then I think “do they have a mirror to see how bad they really look?”  That’s me right now.  Lots of mirrors to confirm how dreadful my new cheap and improved look looks like.

I am starting to save my dinero as I type because next time the hair-slaughter house I am going to try will be the swanky fancy $200+.  Hope that includes the tip, otherwise I may need to take a loan.  Yes…I know some of you may be thinking that even $90 is too much, but trust me, for this area, it is not.  That’s cheap for getting all the “works” I had done.  So…$200+ is about right for a good, happy-to-be-alive-with-hair-do that makes you feel like a million bucks.

Will I ever be pleased with my hair and whomever works with it?  Of course not!

Forgot to mention, my favorite yellow shirt received a somewhat touch of art in black.  There goes my favorite top.  Zen, and more Zen.  I am humming as I type along.  Next month, going back to my boxed hair color, only around $7 and my own self-taught coloring abilities.  Need three months or so to correct the cut, though.

After all, it is only hair, eyebrows, less dinero, and my favorite top.  All replaceable. C’est la vie!

Ta ta

Your Happy Contessa

The main Zen thing is to be in the moment…reminds me of Coach K.

Zen is all about being in the now.  If I am eating, walking, cooking, washing dishes, having an anger moment…fully enjoy each one of those things and be in the moment.  When I am a bit annoyed and feeling not so groovy, I analyze my thoughts and feelings at that moment and then puff…there goes the annoyance, because I realize nothing is really worth disturbing my inner beautiful peace.  It has taken me 63 3/4 years to realize that.

Going back to this beautiful picture I snapped this morning during my holy daily walk.  I was really lucky to capture this beautiful scene.  The sun rising on my right and the moon saying “good day” on my left.  If I would have been preoccupied with my petty little thoughts about moi, I would have missed Miss Moon trying to show me the beauty of our breathtaking nature.

Sharing is also being in the now and in the moment.  I feel good becoming an “in-the-moment person.”

Ta ta

Happy Contessa

“Peace Is Every Step”  Title of a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master.

I am a force to reckon with…going on my fourth language.  Chose German because I think this will be a tough nut to crack by my ever restless neurons.

I have all the time in the world, (that’s debatable on some days) but I must admit, discipline and structure are not easy things to tame.

Between supermarket, laundry, exercise, meetings, yes I do have those with people who in one way or another have crossed my path… let’s continue…meditation and more meditation, loving Zen, coloring my hair, watching my carb intake…yes, I gave up my ever delicious breakfast bread, full of walnuts, cranberries, raisins and apricots.  The ladies at the bakery department of my favorite hangout supermarket wave at me during each visit, but my ever protruding belly was more powerful than those nice waving.  No way I am going back to all that gluten.  On some days, the gluten was so obvious that I couldn’t take the slices apart.  Now imagine my tiny stomach with all that gluten stuff taking over.  I had it and now the little belly has gone down by 1/1,000,000 of an inch.  Yes siree, a lot!!

Oops!  Forgot to mention one of the most exciting moments of my day…my Spanish novelas (soap operas).  To die for, you know…the guys in those novelas…I mean, so ever irresistible.

Well…had to keep you updated on my ever busy days, yeah…right!

I will leave you all to have a very nice day and I will continue on my belly watch to see the continuous melting of the mount.

Your Happy Contessa

“There is not a spring of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”  Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father, author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and third President of the United States.  13 April, 1743 – 4 July, 1826.

Looking at that sun was making me feel hot and sweaty every time I log into the magic kingdom of blogosphere.

These pretty flowers I encounter every morning during my now becoming boring walks.  But I have to keep on doing this for my aging apparatus.

One day there was a wall of these flowers looking so very majestic and I decided then that the next day I was going to take a picture.  Voila, next day half of the wall was gone!

I had to wait a week or so until this day that I was able to capture some beauty again.  Here it is the result.  Nature is so ever breathtaking.

Lesson learned:  enjoy it while you have it, see it or it goes by.  Next second, it may be gone.  Come to think of it, I am missing a whole bunch of stuff that I should be appreciating while they are happening.

Training…or maybe adopt a new way of looking at things and capturing their meaning.

Every day is a new school day.  I am being promoted to kinder, having just completed pre-kinder as I go…

Another happy day in my paradise, this place south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or North of the Equator.

Your Happy Contessa

“You aren’t in charge of anyone or anything, and when you realize it, you will set yourself free to really live.”  From “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Zen Living.”

I knew something was odd…very hot in places where is supposed to be cooler than Florida…people’s tempers out of whack…me forgetting where I left my credit card, losing things in my own purse, getting short-tempered even with myself…my mother on the phone trying to pick up a fight with me…and then…

It occurred to me that something was not right with the universe.

This evening, in the news, finally everything fell into place.  The sun is having flare eruptions and is spitting really hot lava out there in space.  Of course, that explains all the extra meditation I have had to do just to keep my cool.

I am meditating so much…that I am starting to fall asleep at meditation times and now my body is thinking that I should be sleeping all the time.

Dear heavenly sun…stop your bad temper and stop spitting hell into the universe.  This has to stop…and like…NOW!!!!

I have said.

So…it was today…a very bad hot day in this part of the world, north of the Equator.

Your Happy Contessa

“I am still learning.”  Michelangelo, Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet and engineer.  6 March, 1475 – 18 February, 1564.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

What does independence means to you?  I think it means a lot of different things to different people.

Independence to say, do, love, be openly for or against something, and so many other things.

For me being able to say, think and do whatever it is I want to, is very meaningful.  I was born and raised for most of my early years under a dictatorship.  We were scared to even talk about worldwide events in fear of being taken away and disappearing in the middle of the night.  Being a female also was a stroke against you.  That makes me very appreciative of living as a citizen of a country that promotes and embraces freedoms.  I also know that with such freedoms, come much responsibilities.  It is all part of a beautiful equation.

Our forefathers were the bravest of the brave when they exposed themselves, their  families and friends to being persecuted and put to death for wanting to be independent from a system they felt was oppressive.  Too much taxation.  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for them.  And I am so ever thankful to them and their struggles, so today we, Americans, can enjoy our freedoms.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:  That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I salute all and each American citizen on this our Independence Day.  God bless the United States of America.

Your Happy Contessa

The paragraphs in quotation marks are from a Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything falls in the right place, people say the right things, and you find the perfect bargains.  Like buy one shirt and get two free.  Price was so dramatically lowered that I had to buy them because if I didn’t it would have been on my conscience until…I checked the balance in my credit card.  Just kidding.

The air is thinner, my hair is looking fabulous, after buying that kind of expensive shampoo my lovely daughter uses.  It is worth it.  Thanks Milagros!

Wrinkles look smoother, skin seems to be, what’s the word I am trying to come up with…radiant!  That’s it, radiant!!!!!!!!!!!  Lancome, baby…expensive but at 63 what gives.

What’s going on?  Nada, I may say.  Just feeling with it.  In total universal sync.

Full of gratitude for a wonderful and beautiful life.

Now…this is better than looking at that snake, isn’t it?

Ta ta

Your Happy Contessa

“Considering life’s brevity, we should travel abundantly, with great enthusiasm.”  Peter Megargee Brown, American author.  15 March, 1922 -.

Before even I begin…yes I just noticed I have to be a better housekeeper…noticed the stuff that needs to be wiped?  Probably by Christmas it will be done.    I am glad that’s out-of-the-way.

Indeed, it is a jungle down here…you can be reading the newspaper and all of a sudden, there they are, a baby snake grooming herself to become a menace during my walks…and one tiny froggie saved by the flash of my ccc…chic cheap camera.  Just a refresher.  Then just a few minutes ago, a longer, black snake…the friendly one running at around four feet, and she was really fast, couldn’t get  my ccc in time to capture her visit.

Yes, it has become part of my scenery during my morning walks.  Have to be extra noisy to chase away any intruder, other than Tarzan, for whom I am still waiting.  Probably Jane feeds him very early in the morning to get him fit for the day, so at the same time, she keeps him all for herself.  Tarzan…there are other Janes out there, you know.  I’ll keep on dreaming…

This is the tiny creature I saved from being Miss colorful snake’s breakfast.

Yes, I have had to battle ugly creatures to keep them away from my food, other creatures from leaving their marks on my legs and arms…and now I totally feel the way those inhabitants of the Amazon feel in their beautiful surroundings.

It is kind of interesting that now when I see these creatures, I don’t feel panicked or nervous, I just watch them and run for my camera.  Couldn’t get it in time for the much larger and fatter one by my door the other day.  Gone!

Oh well…another day in Paradise…as Ron used to say.

Your Happy Contessa

“Me Jane…them…just them…and still waiting for Tarzan.”