Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50

I’m going to be nosy today:

What do you keep in your nightstand?

I admit, this post was inspired by my watching Sex and the City, but for the purposes of this blog, keep the TMI rule in your mind…insert wink here…

On the surface of my nightstand I have:

1. lamp
2. picture of my daughter
3. a mug that my daughter painted which holds: hand cream, sephora lip mask, and nail file
4. coaster
5. small wooden cat in sleeping pose
6. diffuser bottle

I have three drawers in my nightstand:

In the top drawer:

1. a power strip because I charge my phone and ipad overnight. I have a long cord so I can read and charge before I go to bed.
2. box of tissues
3. lavender room spray
4. Carmex
5. cough drops (ricola sugar free lemon mint)
6. pen and notepad
7. book light

Middle drawer”

1. fuzzy socks
2. moisturizing gloves
3. foot lotion
4. eye mask (the kind that can be cooled or heated)
5. flashlight
6. wooden sticks for essential oil diffuser
7. essential oil (lavender)
8. advil
9. benedryl
10. nasal spray
11. thing that gets rough calluses off feet

bottom drawer:

1. pajamas

Now it’s your turn: what are the things that you think are essential to keep next to your bed? Do you use a nightstand or a table? Tell me how you set up the bed area.

• Flowers! And I thought that birdhouse was so cool!!
• The Kimonos exhibit at the Met is just beautiful!! I can’t say I paid much attention to the facts/history though…
• Gallery 304 at the Met is filled with so much art and artifacts- I could not just show you one thing. These are the things that sparked my interest.
• Love going to Tribeca Film Festival- didn’t love the movie. Hard pass…

My daughter spent three weeks in Cape Town as part of study abroad for her minor with her university. She had an amazing experience, most notably going to the beach and seeing penguins! and seeing lions and zebra’s at a nature preserve. I am grateful that she did not get COVID on the trip and got the full experience. I am grateful that her flights were not delayed or cancelled. I am grateful that she had an amazing time! I am grateful for the university to offer such a wonderful experience, and for the professors who organized the learning experiences.

My prompt for the week is BALANCE. Here’s how it was used in the books I’m reading:

1. I read a book about how to sustain friendships through the long haul…which I hated FYI. The word “balance” doesn’t appear in the book at all. How can you have a book about relationships and not have the word balance. I know this is a thought not a quote, but I thought it belonged in both sections.
2. But did that balance out the thoughtlessness of leaving it unsaid for so long? Annabel Monaghan
3. Unwashed, without his glasses, starving, and knowing his life was in the balance, he had broken down after six months in solitary confinement and having regularly been beaten unconscious. Sonia Purnell
4. The clubhouse is both spartan and lavish- the tricky balance required by the hardy rich. Jennifer Egan
5. This past summer had been so fraught, so off balance and distressing that I hadn’t been able to enjoy it. Krista Higgins
6. “And Finbarr taught him to catch a football and balance it on his nose.” Nina de Gramont
7. “Well, you’re in for a treat. They’re set on this planet that’s balanced on four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.” Freya Sampson.
8. Leah likes to balance the checkbook, whereas I assume that the bank will contact me if there is a problem. Charles Wheelan
9. She will talk about sustainability. About the need to hold on to some sort of balance in nature. Charmaine Wilkerson
10. For all of us, the challenge is how to balance work and family and do a decent job at both. Caroline Kennedy
11. Without the delicate balance of a sustainable rhythm in our day-to-day lives, little things pile up becoming big things that overwhelm us. Melissa Michaels

Here’s how I’m going to think about balance:

1. Can you talk about relationships and never mention balance?
2. Is balance the key to life?
3. When I read about balance, it often seems like a circus trick- is that because balance is sort of a novelty that doesn’t really exist
4. How do we make balance in our lives?
5. Do people still balance their checkbooks?

September, 1918
BY AMY LOWELL

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.

Amy Lowell, “September, 1918” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Copyright © 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © renewed 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Brinton P. Roberts, and G. D'Andelot, Esquire. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Source: Selected Poems of Amy Lowell (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002)

One of my blogging buddies wrote a very thought provoking post yesterday:

https://robbyrobinsjourney.wordpress.com/2022/06/17/did-a-google-chatbot-just-come-to-life/

Give it a look if you have a chance.

I was walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A woman stopped me and pointed to her phone, and I ascertained that this woman didn’t speak English, and was going to try to ask me a question via her phone. She had earbuds in, and it looked like she would say something and then the phone would show the English translation.

Sounds good, right?

Well…almost…

The first thing that came up was roughly:

“Do you know the Mother’s coin.”

then

“The pond is the woman.”

then

“It’s the big ugly person”

followed by

“Oh shit no”

The woman proceeded to turn fifty shades of red, and just walked off, actually ran off, as she tried to bow to me. I never did figure out what work she was trying to locate.

So score 1 for the theory of technology and being able to further communication with one another, but for now, we will just have to muddle through the trial and error!