Blog Jam

Sometimes I feel like a pretzel when I get out of bed.

I sit on the edge, waiting for everything to uncontort itself, to unwind. Sometimes it takes a while. I take the opportunity to reflect on the day ahead and tick off some internal boxes. Enough food? Enough books? Enough meds? Enough contact with those I love? Enough knitting? Enough writing ahead? Enough ideas? Enough games of delightful and amazing Scrabble with the 12 daily games I've been playing since the invention of the internet? Enough Zoom meetings? Enough money to pay the bills?

Not necessarily in that order. But you catch my drift. It keeps me in gratitude. Because there is enough. And sometimes, if I need to shop for essentials, I find the body rebels that particularly day so I take it easy on myself and look in the freezer or the cupboard and laugh out loud. So much food.

A breakfast I bake regularly.It's good hot or cold. And is one the healthiest ever as it is completely balanced. This has 4 servings.

I was thinking on kindred spirits. Some tell me they're my kindred spirits but I believe a kindred has to be an innie if we're "getting" each other at that level. I wrote about it here. Nothing has really changed since that post. I don't need lectures that I read too much or I write too much and I should get out and "shop" - retail therapy. An Innie would never do that. But the Outies do.

Most of my readers are kindreds, I can just tell, they are thoughtful and have dug deep into their inners and continue to do so judging from comments and their own posts. It is so delightful we find each other on the interwebz.

I picked up this from my mailbox yesterday. A postcard from Daughter. I absolutely love it.

Grandgirl is planning on coming for a month starting mid-July. She will self-quarantine. Her city, Toronto, is doing really poorly with Covid, we are doing remarkably well with no new cases now for a month.

But not everything is open yet. But "caution exhaustion" is setting in with its consequential carelessness. Only 1 in 10 are now wearing masks.

Innies and Outies

No I'm not talking belly buttons. Though I'd like to. Curious things, aren't they? All shapes and sizes. Connections to those who gave birth to us. I lost mine. Seriously. An emergency appendectomy of a slash and burn variety. I tell startled medical people now when I'm having a test that I'm from Venus. We do it differently there so I was hatched from an egg. It gets a chuckle. Or not. Depending on the personality of the technician.

Are you an innie or an outie person? I learned the terminology years ago when my romantic little heart set up a couple as being possible partners in love. They were both extraordinarly attractive and outgoing and to top it all off were both named Joanne. One was a client, the other was my tenant. They had their first date and tenant Joanne told me thanks but it would never go anywhere as client Joanne was an outie and she was an innie. Client Joanne was into motorbikes and extreme sports, tenant Joanne was into reading and theatre and playing her cello.

Well, this was all news to me. But I pay attention. As I do. And was startled to discover that my family and friends and relationships could be so classified. Now, before you start in on me, I do know that opposites attract. And I too have been smitten with the hell-raising fellows who never cut open a book from one end of the year to the other. But on the whole, my longest lasting friendships and relationships have been with innies. Those with an inner life, not predicated on the latest wevs* (fashion, car, star, mag, movie, TV show, cookery guru, etc.) but on their own dreams, aspirations and personal evolution.

And yes, I do know that there can be a mix of innie and outie in a lot of us. But I think most of us do lean one way or the other.

For instance, I find it is my innie friends and family who totally enjoy my haven in Newfoundland and are content to be with themselves without outer distraction and stimulation.





*whatevers