You want to hear a weird coincidence?

(don’t get all that excited- it’s not the big a revelation)

My in-laws are divorced. My mother in law’s boyfriend and my father in law’s girlfriend share the same birthday…

See?

Isn’t that just a weird and random thing?

I mean, what are the chances? I know mathematically there’s a way to actually express the ratio, which I don’t feel like doing,  but isn’t that just odd?

But you know what I actually found odd when I typed out these sentences- as well as when I jotted this down as a blog idea?

Using the term boyfriend and girlfriend to talk about significant others of octogenarians.

By no means do I think that people in their 80’s can’t find love.

It’s more that, after you’re 22, is it silly to refer to someone as your boyfriend or girlfriend?

But….

If you are old enough to rent a AIRBNB without parental consent, what do you call that person in your life that makes your heart skip a beat either because you love them SOOO much or you’re thinking about a pillow over their head while they’re sleeping?

Partner sounds so western to me: Howdy there Partner…Do you want your relationship to resemble a Sergio Leone movie? Though…what is spaghetti western for partner?

What about when people add decoration to partner?

Life partner? That sounds like your bunkmate in Cell Block H.

Domestic partner? When I hear this, all I can think is- do you want someone in your life for love, or for dusting and repairing things?

Significant other?  How do we feel about that one? Significant is a nice strong word- shows a hint of sentiment…but is the use of the word other too insignificant?

Main squeeze? Too hippy?

Lover? Is that too boom chick a wow wow?

Sweetheart? Too Happy Days?

Suitor? Too transactional?

I just googled synonyms for boyfriend….worshipper comes up…

I think that would be a good one-

“So and so…come meet the person who worships me….” Yes…I would like to say that about someone. Though, I would never want to be referred to as the worshipper- only the worshipee…

Beloved? How does beloved work? Let’s try that out:

“So and so, meet my beloved?”

hmmmm

Nope…doesn’t work for me…

I’m seriously thinking that people get married just because it’s so much easier to say husband or wife…

Follower comes up…thanks wordhippo.com for that one…

Can you imagine introducing someone as your “follower”?

Where’s the kool aid?

Paramour?

Toy boy?

Companion?

Soul mate?

If you weren’t married but were in a situation, what would you want to be called? How would you want to be referred to?

There’s 141 suggestions on wordhippo.com…

What say you all?

How do you refer to the love of your life?

Guess what happened on Thursday?

I reached 1000 posts!

Huzzah!

Cue the confetti!

I am grateful for:

1. having 1000 opinions
2. knowing a lot many words
3. being just verbose enough to write 1000 posts
4. having a decent internet connection
5. people to share my thoughts with
6. coming up with 1000 titles
7. not ditching my blogging efforts because I was having trouble titling something
8. still not caring what a widget is
9. being able to come up with 1000 reasons why I blog
10. knowing that I should stop with ten reasons why I’m grateful for blogging

Blog friend, livingeveryday2017.wordpress.com nominated me for Outstanding Blogger award, but since I have all sorts of trouble adding links (I’ll blame WordPress or my computer instead of myself) I’m not actually doing the award.

However, for todays edition of Friday Favorites, I will answer the questions she posed. Feel free to play along!!

1. What have you learned about yourself during the pandemic? I really liked the pattern of my life before. I don’t like having people around 24/7. I now understand why people buy McMansions.
2. What is your favorite place to vacation? Somewhere that I have never been before. Perfect spot would be someplace where I can do/see/learn something in the morning, then at about 2 o’clock I could just sit on a nice lounge chair with a view of nature and read a book.
3. What is your favorite season? I love the spring. But right now I will say any season that does not contain a pandemic.
4. Why did you start blogging and is it the same reason you continue? I started blogging because I was approaching my 53rd birthday and feeling blah- I needed something to recharge my batteries. Luckily for me blogging worked, and now I continue because I can’t imagine a morning not spent writing and posting.
5. Do you come from a large family? Two parents, one sister. But, my Father is one of eight, so I had eighteen first cousins on that side of my family.
6. What was your best (maybe not favorite) subject in high school? I admit that I loved English and was decent at it. But I was a much better math student.
7. Which would you rather read, fiction or non fiction? I am fiction girl- though I did read an amazing book of essays recently, so every now and then non fiction gets a nod.

I know two things:

1. I have many opinions
2. I ask many questions

I almost used the term “a lot” instead of “many”. When I was a kid, if I chiseled out “a lot” in an essay, the teacher would ding me a point. We were not allowed to use the phrase “a lot”. This is an anecdote and a factual statement based on my specific life experience

Nowadays, it appears that the phrase “a lot” is acceptable and used by many people, including teachers. This is an observation.

Should we be using the term “a lot”? This is a question to ask what popular opinion is.

In the above statements, I commented on something in my life, made an observation, and asked a question…

I do this often. The great majority of my blogs follow this exact pattern:

1. I read or experience something
2. I get something out of the experience
3. I ask a question based on my observation and thoughts

When I do these things, it means that I am in the middle of opinion making- I might be leaning towards one side or another, but I’m really still gathering info. In the case of “should a lot be an acceptable phrase” I really don’t have an opinion. I’m really just wondering why what was once taboo is now common. When did this change occur? How has it affected language? How has it affected communication, written or otherwise? Does it matter at all that “a lot” is used a lot?

I am interested in everything around me.

I question everything.

I question so that I can form an opinion.

I like to gather the thoughts of all sorts of people to see all the different sides and aspects to any given thing.

But….

Sometimes when I write a post, some people think I’m giving an opinion. They ask me why X is my opinion because it’s wrong…

Perhaps this means I’m not getting my point across, which would bruise the part of my ego that thinks it’s a writer, but it’s something to work on for the future…

or (because we are still trying to put a Band-Aid on my hurt ego)

Maybe people have become accustomed to all things written and spoken being opinions set in stone, and no longer understand that sometimes things are conversational, or fact finding, or just tossing ideas into the interweb thingy…

A few months ago I wrote about how I’m noticing that no one is recycling and single use item usage is on the upswing. One commenter told me that I should be recycling and the single use thing was wrong, etc…I told the commenter that I agreed- but my blog wasn’t about what “I was doing”… the blog was about what I saw happening in front of me, and I wondered if others were having the same experience.

Sometimes a post is not about right or wrong, but just a post…

Sometimes I just want to get the conversation started…

Off we go:

1. What do you think about the phrase “a lot”?
2. When you read or listen to something do you automatically think it’s an opinion?
3. Do you enjoy thinking about whatever random topics float across my blog?
4. Are you willing to pad my ego by saying what a good writer I am?

I recently read an interesting article by Sarah Gaynes Levy “Learning to Love Yourself” Good Housekeeping July/August.

Ok- I’ll cut to the chase: the article was about how to love yourself.

Finer point- How do you learn to love yourself?

The suggestions in this article are simple. You need a journal and three different color pens. For my experiment I’m going with the two pen/two color method.

Say something is bothering you or you have a negative thought. In your journal you might write in BLUE:

“I stink at blogging”

in another color you would give a different spin,

RED- blogging isn’t about how well you write, it’s about getting something onto the page

you can let then say something else that is bothering you about blogging

BLUE- nothing happens in my life that is worth blogging about

RED- there is something to be learned in everything that we do. If you want to blog, just do it. The results might surprise you

Do you think this practice has any merit?

Do you think that changing your pen color to represent positive and negative emotions can really help you?

Pandemic has brought out the best and worst in people. I was texting my sister last night and she said that she has had way more time to focus on the past things in her life (especially the bad ones) and I think that many of us can understand exactly what my sister is saying. It’s very easy to be negative right now. It’s an easy trip down regret highway.

Is journaling the bad and the good, and being able to distinguish both sides, good for our mental health?

In theory, it’s like the whole look at the positive thing that the relentless positivity police have going on.

Look at how the glass is half full….

make lemonade…

remember, you could be dead…

Should we always try to balance out our negative thoughts with positive ones?

or

Should we allow ourselves an occasional pity party?

How introspective do we need to be?

Is it OK to be in a bad mood, or must we analyze it?

Is it healthier to admit that 2020 is a four letter word, or should we be trying to find that silver lining?

Discuss:

I’ve spent a lot of time decluttering the past few months. One of the downsides to a small place is the lack of places to store things. I’m constantly trying to get rid of the things that we manage to accumulate.

I am a ruthless declutterer….

Mainly…

We know how I have trouble with getting rid of cords….and I have a keychain in the cabinet that holds a few more keys than I have locks…

But you know what else I have trouble with?

Paper…

Over the past few years my family has gone to paperless billing. All bills, statements and such are online. So from 2015 onwards, the only thing I have in physical form are our tax returns.

But before that….

Ugh…

We have a file cabinet in our storage locker.

Out of sight, out of mind, Right?

I decided to tackle the file cabinet. I would go through the files one piece at a time…

I had utility bills from 2001….

Utility bills…

And they were all neatly filed by year….cable 2002….con ed 2005…verizon 2008….

But why did I have a record of all these paid utility bills that have absolutely no meaning?

Why I ask you…

Why was I saving all these things?

Well…laziness…

Who really wants to go through a file cabinet and throw out stuff?

Not I…

But this time…this time would be different…

So I went through the files piece by piece…

I loaded the unnecessary paper (which was the majority of the file cabinet) into several large bags…

And I began shredding…

and shredding…

and shredding

10 hours of shredding over two days…

I reorganized our tax returns and important papers….

hello brother P touch label maker…

It was a sense of accomplishment.

I felt so much better after the paper had been tossed, after the file cabinet had been cleaned…

I feel joy…

I am more cognizant of paper coming into the house. I set up new filing systems and scheduled a monthly day to go through what came in the previous month. My hope is that I’ve tamed the beast that is paper clutter…sort of cut it off from it’s head by going paperless with anything that can be paperless (think about it- my millennial neighbors don’t even check their mailboxes because they don’t expect to get things in paper form- they’ve grown up with online access- my Gen Z daughter looks at physical mail with a sense of distrust and is annoyed at the sheer environmental impact of a piece of paper)

How are you with paper clutter?

What do you do to keep it organized or at bay?

Do you wish you had a better paper system?

What are your paper secrets that I don’t know about?

Spill the beans on how you tame paper clutter…

I don’t like dating shows. Never seen any of the Bachelor franchise. Couldn’t even name another dating show if I tried.

Yet…

Indian Matchmaking on Netflix…

(there’s about to be spoilers if reality TV can have spoilers)

I may not like dating shows, but I am obsessed with how two people find one another. If there’s such a thing as soul mates. The whole two become one thing fascinates me. So how could I not watch a show about matchmaking?

Quick synopsis. Indian matchmaker is about an Indian Matchmaker- it’s all there in the title. She finds love for Indians in America as well as back in India. I know arranged marriages are still a thing in India. Which leads me to wonder:

What are the pros and cons of arranged marriage? (you can choose to write two paragraphs on this instead of answering all the questions)

Our Indian matchmaker uses a few different techniques when trying to unite lovers separated by sheer lack of meeting one another. One tool she uses is “Face Reading.” When I saw this I wanted to know what it was, and how one goes about getting their face read.

I did five second of research. According to PureWow in an interview with Lillian Bridges, the simple definition is: We are always reading faces, and our faces define who we are. It is said to help people understand themselves- “who you are, who you’ve been, who you will be. for example, a person with big eyebrows is said to have a bad temper.” disclaimer- this is just the example that Bridges sites- not a declaration

I totally want to know what my face says about me. Does my lack of lines around my eyes show that I never smile, or that I moisturize the eye area really well?

Do you think you can tell something about a person by looking at their face?

Sima from Mumbai (our matchmaker) also uses horoscopes.  Apparently, she often checks if two people’s horoscopes align before she even introduces them. Should dating websites contain an algorithm to see if the stars are in sync before you even go on a date with someone? Better question: is there a dating website out there that asks you just for your birth details and dispenses with the 500 question quiz? Am I missing out on a million dollar idea?

Do the stars predict who will be a good match? Does star sign matter when it comes to love?

Indian Matchmaking (the show) faced much criticism. Westerners scoff at many of the things that the show promotes. One woman looking for love was mocked because she was looking for someone who knew about the Bolivia Salt Flats. She was mocked for being too picky.

But:

Is it fair to mock someone because they have interests that are not mainstream?

Is it wrong to want to be with someone who is on the same intellectual level as you, or share the same interests?

As a Westerner, the other thing that was difficult for me to accept was the parental interference. One young man is 25 and works in his Father’s company. He is enjoying his life. His Mother tells him that he is ruining her life because he is still single and he is the cause of her high blood pressure. His mother said that her goal was to have her son marry between the ages of 23 and 25. She also tells her son that he is ruining his brothers life by not being married because his brother and sister in law will not have a child until he is married. Talk about guilt trip.

Should a parent ever guilt a child into getting married?

I know some Western parents that do a pretty good job of guilting their kids as well…

Did anyone else watch Indian Matchmaking? (I know Cindy did)

What do you think about the whole thing?

NY stated last week that gyms will be allowed to reopen (with provisions) starting next week. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anything from my gym at all since May when they apologized for charging us the monthly membership fee.

Nothing. No- aren’t you excited we can make plans. No, we are making plans. No sign on the door of the physical gym… I’m not particularly optimistic about my gym actually reopening…

But…

We bought an exercise bike a few weeks ago. (we have a sign up sheet in the kitchen if you want to schedule a slot)

I am really grateful that I finally decided to buy a piece of exercise equipment for the house. Grateful that the bike works well. Grateful that it has wheels and we can move it around fairly easily.

Grateful that I can get a little extra exercise that I like doing…

FYI…I realize there’s no comment section…thanks Claudette…but I can’t get it onto post….

Catch you in the comments tomorrow!

If you miss me wakinguponthewrongsideof50 @gmail.com