Noury's Creative World…

Je sais…the brain sometimes goes to Spanish by default…when it feels like it, to English and when I feel like it, to French!  The bull by the horns, but it made me laugh when it came out of the Je ne sais quoi neurons.  There it goes again!

I really was not feeling like going back to my guitar class.  I did not practice since our Christmas break and every time I looked at it, I felt like putting it under the bed in its case, so I won’t be feeling so guilty.  So this morning I had a long time before making up my mind about taking the horns by the bull…yeah, I know…the bull by the horns.  So there I went.  Everyone was happy to see me…I was so embarrassed, but I mustered my pretty smiley face, took my seat, took forever to take the guitar out, my books, the pen, put the case aside, took out my jacket, changed chairs and finally after all the “I feel so bad” ceremony, I sat.  Practiced two chords, the C and the G7…that’s when Mr. Instructor left the advanced group and said to them that he would be back in a while, and I thought, Yes!  he is going out!  What!  He came and sat by me and said that the C chord sounded really good.  My fingers started shaking, but within seconds I gained my composure, started playing those chords, and when I thought the waters were safe again, he added the A and A7 chords.  Thanks God those are not that difficult!

So went the class, and he went back to the more advanced group…they started playing some country music songs…I asked him if he knew “Friends in Low Places,”  sure he did, and with my limited ability to play along, there I was…”where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away…”  you know the rest.

I had a marvelous time!  Need to practice everyday, though, my luck only stretches so far.

Playing my chords and enjoying them too!

Hugs, Abrazos,

Upon returning today from my exercise class…every Friday morning I really so don’t want to go, but once I am there dancing and lifting 2 pound weights, I am so glad I made the trip.  I feel re-energized and up in tune with the world.

So after I had my lunch today, I started pondering about our human nature, inspired by an episode in one of my soap operas…It is so amazing that we humans are always looking at our neighbor’s “greener” grass, thinking that if I get a bigger house…a fancy car…the perfect closet with designers’ clothes…the people we love dearly back into our lives…the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend…just the right job…a warmer place in the Caribbean (that’s probably my brain being activated)…the perfect body…and so many other “perfect” things.  I think we get the idea.

But…that’s not the contract we signed before arriving at this destination.  What contract are you talking about?  That’s you saying to me…then I say…Oh yes, we did sign a contract before departing the heavenly Lo La Land where everything was perfect…but we were checking all our good fortunes against the neighbor’s and voila…here we are in this perfect…yes…perfect world.

There are a few things that if I had in my life…I think I could be happier, peppier and better looking.  I have a ginormous ego.  It’s ok, I can handle it.  But…when the humble, angelic little Noury takes over, I am the happiest person on the planet.  All it takes is my tiara to be straight on top of my head and my tutu ready for the dance…the dance of life.

Life is not easy, but then I don’t remember anyone telling me that it was going to be.  Some things are definitely for sure…There’s always going to be change…nothing is permanent…and that we certainly we are going to die…and that life will go on.  As long as I remember those principles, I breathe a little bit easier.  Oh yes, the most important…I am to be grateful for all that has been, is, and will be in my life.  Everything and everyone that has touched my life has been a blessing, either as a lesson or to give more significance to my walk on this journey.

We are supposed to be facing a winter storm with some snow…I would rather be in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands…but this is where I am supposed to be right now.  I fully don’t know why…but as for me and my house…we trust that my Creator knows the reasons, and that’s more than enough for me.

The muses have been very kind today, they called from Key West and re-arranged my neurons for a few minutes.  Grateful for that.

Hugs…Abrazos,

 

I was pondering while preparing my salad just a few minutes ago…I like to leave it alone until I get really hungry and it gets to be room temperature.

Back to the pondering…I do that a lot!  While slicing the cantaloupe I thought that when I depart this world, I want to leave with nothing left undone that I have always wanted to do.  Wow!  That’s a major thing to keep on pondering on…so now I made a list…and I was surprised that there are only three things, and one that I don’t have any control whatsoever…so I am leaving that one to the goddesses of my good fortune to help me accomplish that and…maybe get some answers to some questions…

The three things on that list are all doable…some of them I am already doing…like continue to study languages…French, German, Italian and Portuguese, and the history of art per se.

The other two I am going to keep to myself, because there’s one of you that will start putting deadlines on me, and then that’s when my rebellious spirit shows up and screws things up.  I have decided that surprising myself with what I say and what I do is a new style I am adopting…hey, when you get to be my age, you are the boss.

My neurons are being so sarcastic right now that I can’t even stand them myself.  One whole year…so many hours, minutes and seconds and so little to do…

I wish you all the best attitude, happiness and great health to accomplish your dreams and fantasies.

Yeah, that one wish is kind of a fantasy that keeps me smiling when I think of it.  I am old, not out of circulation!

Hugs…Abrazos…

This is a so much better picture than the last one, when I was all discombobulated.

Now I feel like I look in the picture…in balance, happy and a bit regal.  Yes, I feel like a princess most of the time.

I am stuck!  Nowhere to go…the annoying muses have left for Florida and all I have left here in my little castle is my disappearing neurons and my fingers typing anything, just for the sake of typing.

So…tomorrow I am going to my exercise class, went to my guitar lesson last Tuesday, went shopping today…wow! this is the worst it has ever been.  Not willing to take a nap, because I just had two 72% dark chocolate squares, so my eyes are popping out…have placed an emergency call to the muses down in South Beach, but they blocked me on their phones.  Up the creek and no paddle.  There goes the royal look and intention to have an elegant and balanced posting.

Now, now, this is totally not going they way I was envisioning this posting, but so is most of my life…back to being royal, with the Christmas Spirit and all of that.

My apologies…just enjoy the regal picture and let me save face right now and sign off.

Bad…really bad.  Maybe next time I should try sharing a Christmas cookie receipt, I meant recipe.  Everyone loves that!  Golly, it’s only downhill from here…what the heck happened to the jolly, happy beginning?   My gosh…it’s the weather’s fault!

Merry Christmas….Feliz Navidad…at least that saves the day!

 

Yeah!  This business of this time of the year is just becoming too much!  I saw snow falling on my website and then I realized I needed to change the picture because it had fall flowers…so even tired as I am, I needed to change the scenery.  Here I am!  Tired from shopping, putting a wreath on my car, putting lights around the front door, talking with friends, eating a whole, what do call it…yes, eating a whole baguette, uhum…the whole thing with extra virgin olive oil, first cold pressed, because there’s a difference you know…three slices of maple turkey breast, with some left over cranberry sauce, which I made myself, with an orange, an apple, orange rind, cinnamon and some sugar.  Delicioso!

Do I look like the cat that ate a whole cow?  Because that’s how I feel…let’s go back to the business of the holidays.  I love this time of the year, but for a little old lady like me, this is getting to be quite a journey.  I just threw lipstick on, a scarf, a Santa hat I found in a box and told myself to smile.  My lips were moving, but the face was just doing nothing.  Looking its best worst it has looked in ages.  Let’s not even go to the hair issue, I feel it has some issues with the way I comb it, because it just wants to be depressed.  Did you notice the sweatshirt?  I was hoping it won’t be showing on the picture, but there it is.

Again… it was snowing on the blog, and something had to be done.  I know I’ll regret this picture tomorrow, but in the meantime…it was snowing on the blog and I look I am with what’s going on in life.

Thanks God there’s always tomorrow…and all my body pieces and accessories will be rested and will cooperate with me and look halfway decent.

In the meantime, enjoy the snow flakes, they look kind of round little pellets…but pretend it’s snow!

I have checked off the list the snowing business.

Let’s all have a Merry Christmas!

 

 

Yes, I am ready to rent a shack in Florida or the Caribbean, but I must swallow my pride and bundle up…layers upon layers…

Now, back to the real deal…After you reach the sixth decade plus…what a difference does it make?  A whole lot!!

For once, the maintenance on the body and mind reaches an all time high.  Before I go to bed…it takes another 24 hours to get ready to just try to close my eyes…some nights I just wish the sunrise will happen right after I go to bed.

Cremes, potions, exercise, meditation, prayers, checking for old and new changes on the face, neck, body, etc.  I keep a record of ones getting deeper and the ones just peeking into the surface.  Kid you not!

Now I am super excited!  Bought some new décor for Christmas…can’t wait to get my tiny house even prettier.  Are you getting it or did it just hit you that I am making things as I go along…my life is pretty tame right now…learning to play the guitar, rehashing French, the language, asking permission from one leg to move the other, counting my gray hair…yes, it is super exciting!  I caved in today after the temperature inside the tiny castle hit 62…so I turned on the heat…more trivial stuff so the word counter feels good about doing its job.

Life as a blogger, a happinista, fashionista, writer, peacemaker, artist, photographer, and some other stuff I don’t remember right now,  keeps me super busy and super happy.  Remember, it is not the context that matter, it is how many more words I can squeeze into this space.  Enough!  Only 328 words.  Have mercy on my soul and my mind.

Have you ever read something so scattered all over the place before?  I must admit, it is pretty bad…but at least I am typing, producing some kind of heat for the fingers.

Thank you!

This photo shoot session surely didn’t last long.  This temperamental model/artist was very impatient and short-tempered today.  Who knows what’s going on in her life.  She is supposed to be a happy contessa, but it seems not all is golden in Happyville.

Well, now I am back in the first person singular…I have a new pal, one that gives me another thing to do in my already busy life.  Already some of my fingers are becoming desensitized, meaning, I cannot feel certain area of them because I have been told I have to grow calluses on them.  Gross!  Can you imagine if I were to decide to get a boyfriend…If I were to give him massages, it would be like running sand paper down his back…But I want to learn to play the guitar, to sing one Spanish song that I just so love.  Maybe if I sing him the song while sanding him down, he won’t notice the pain.  Ay Dios, what imagination I have.

One day back in the 1990’s Ron, my husband and his son Kevin showed up at the house with this guitar that has been exclusively used for decoration since then.  I even bought a guitar stand.  They told me they bought it in a used stuff store, meaning, it was cheap and used.  But I love Andrew…that’s the name I have given to my pal, the guitar.

Now I am learning music, the brain has to coordinate between fingers, memory and execution.  Can I handle all of this at once?  It is like learning a new language, never mind I am learning German, Portuguese, French and some Italian.  One of these days my neurons are just going to go on strike…maybe I should take sign language also, just in case.  By December I should be able to play the jingle thing and sing it all at once.  In English and Spanish!

Frankly, I was getting tired of seeing my previous post, so I had to make this one up to change the scenery of the blog, just in case my international followers are wondering if I am still around.  Yes, I am still in circulation…wondering what new path to take right now in my life.

Life is short… really…so live hard and play loud!

 

Yep!  I have invented a new word…Hipser, seniors-don’t-wanna-be!  That,  in other words, is me.

Let me explain…there are categories of seniority…real seniors, seniors, seniors that wanna be, and seniors-don’t-wanna be.  No insult or demeaning to anyone who has achieved this milestone.  Some of us are already resting in peace.  Not a bad thing either.  Life is a catch-22…nothing is good and nothing is bad…it depends how you interpret things.

I went to an informational party put together by the city where I live, for senior citizens.  I was late because I had my exercise class.  I had about 15 minutes left, so there I went in my super cool outfit.  The ladies were focusing more on my shoe laces than anything else.  So…there was food to clog your arteries and send you into the ER in a second.  But who cares, enjoy the good stuff life has to offer, right?  Not me.  I was seeking information.  There was some music and as I said before, arteries clogging food.  I found a lady and finally got some information and on my way out, that’s when I came up with the word “Hipser.”  The fellow seniors in that meeting, a whole bunch of them…were in their late seventies and eighties.  I am this sixty’s babe…not a real senior yet.  Again…don’t mean to insult anyone.  A very dear friend, in her eighties, is one of my role models, so I do appreciate everyone.

There you have it, the birth of a new word and you have the privilege to be the first ones to be exposed to it.

Living my wonderful senior life one beautiful moment at a time.

 

Someone told me recently that after you hit 80’s, all is downhill from there on.  But I have my own hypothesis…”After I hit my 60’s, my whole world is always colliding with the parallel world that is in my mind.”  Let me prove this…

I was in a store looking for warmer clothing to prepare for my trip to the tundra country of North Carolina.  I passed by a mirror and suddenly this “other older, much older” woman is looking at me, with the same outfit I am wearing, same cute shoes and same hair style.  I move, she moves…it took me a few nanoseconds to realize that was….ME!  OMG!  What happened to the young-looking chick that left my house with me?  Was it the light in the store, an apparition, the other evil she that pretends to be me, or was it really me?  I left that store at the speed of a space shuttle, by the way…I thought those things retired…is the universe trying to tell me something?  I was so confused that my left part of the brain could not at all communicate with the right side, which is the one that tells me all the time that I am a super good-looking chick, well…besides some other little older fellows, but this is not the time to go into that right now.

I am trying to figure out what happened at that store…I felt like a French pile of you know what, felt also like a woman probably doomed for life.

I came home after buying some bread, which is my special treat when I am depressed, went immediately to the mirror that had told me that I looked super good before I left the condo, and saw another woman yet.  What’s going on here?  Then, my left side of the brain said to me…”it’s all about the lighting,  dummy”!  So, now I am very concerned, there is one of me with good lighting and another one of me with mediocre lighting.

This is becoming too hard to look good and young and then… the real me.  The real me is winning, because that picture that I took when I came back home, is not really the way the real me looks like.  It is all about the lighting!

I am so glad this is off my chest…I couldn’t take the pressure any longer.  Next step, let my gray hair show, maybe in 2040.  That’s the first step.

This is my tomato-avocado-carrot with lots of extra virgin olive oil and sea salt sandwich.  Had two of them…frankly, I should have purchased that tempting piece of cake.  I feel full, but…let me put it this way…it is like when you make love, but there is no fire works after the fact.  Tough business.  Hopefully no child is reading this post.  Hopefully also I did not offend anyone also.  People are so sensitive these days…

Another day in paradise while confronting my own aging beast.

 

This is what happens to me every time I go through the car wash.  To start with, I am a control freak, so putting the car in Neutral and letting go off the wheel is a real matter of trust moment.  I think that all hell is going to break loose.

Now, once the process has started, I am in a panic mode.  I imagine that some steel beam is going to make a hole through the windshield, all that soap and water and the heavy pieces of material that wash the car, are going to come through and leave me faceless.  This is really a moment of total surrender.  Today was no different.  I closed my eyes, which makes it worse because my imagination, and I have one that will break all the charts of taking off, starts working in overdrive.  Air conditioner is off, music is off, so it is only me, the sound of monsters getting ready to get into action, perspiration going everywhere, and car totally out of my control and I am at the mercy of someone’s computer machine.

But today, two days older than the six decades plus I just had, I developed the guts and became fearless and thought, what the heck, faceless or not, I am going to take a picture to illustrate to my worldwide audience that I am a woman with no fears whatsoever!  It only lasted a few seconds, because then I thought, yeah, that will be something for the blog, “Faceless woman found in flooded car with lots of soap trying to take a picture.”  See, I told you, I am really endowed or gifted in the imagination department.  Thank you God, but show me how to control it too.

Have sparkling looking car, ready for the daughter’s approval.  I am so excited to show her a very clean car and a mom with a face still in place.

Having my birthday cake, still, and eating it too!