I am stricken tonight with a very severe case of mind bounce.  You have all seen how worthless my writing is when my mind is bouncing, so I think you’ll understand when I say that the serious piece I just spent 6 hours trying to focus on turned out to be … File #13 material.  Sigh.  So, I decided to try something different and rather than try to corral my bouncing mind, let it flow freely wherever (within reason) it wants to go.  Hopefully, that will clear the cobwebs, tame the wild brain, and allow me to work on something meaningful later today!  So … bear with me, if you will, and if you do, I promise a cartoon at the end!

I think the word ‘probably’ should be stricken from the English language.  The word has about as much meaning as a soggy piece of dough that absorbs whatever odours are near it.  “Will you be coming to dinner tomorrow night?”  “Probably.”  No show.  Strike it, Merriam-Webster!!!

I love flowers, but you know what my favourites are?  Dandelions and clover.  Yes, they are weeds, but I like them best because they are unstructured … they grow wherever they please, they are colourful and beautiful, and they follow no rules … just go where they want to go.  I currently have a back yard filled with dandelions and when I need to feel happy, all I have to do is look out my kitchen window. 

I stumbled across this quote today and it struck a chord:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover, acquire new friends and gain knowledge of yourself and the world.” — Mark Twain

This is so true.  The older we get, the more we realize how very short our time here on earth is and … there is always so much left to do.  I was explaining this concept to a friend via email earlier today, and it rather explains why, as we get older, we actually seem to need less sleep.  I think I see sleep as a waste of time, for there are books to read, things to write … closets to clean???  I don’t have grand dreams of travel and adventure, but there ARE things I would like to accomplish before I die.

Other people don’t make us unhappy … we make ourselves unhappy by allowing ourselves to place too much value on how others treat us, by setting our expectations too high.  When somebody lets us down, it is not fair to blame that person, but rather we need to look inward and remind ourselves that we cannot control others, but we can control our own reactions.  It took me more than six decades to figure this one out, and here I am giving it to you … for free!

I am a pretty tolerant person … I wasn’t always, but in my dotage, I find the philosophy of ‘live and let live’ to be a good one to live by.  However, the lady across the street goes to the grocery in her pajamas, and for some reason it drives me bonkers!

The never-ending winter finally killed my crocuses.  Sigh.

I was digging in my disaster of a walk-in closet one night recently and came across some very old photo albums.  Funny, I had forgotten the picture of my dad in a skirt and a bra, and the one of him in a bullfighter’s suit.  Miss Goose had some jaw-dropping moments over those, and I was at a loss to try to explain the former!

Why do cats like empty boxes so much?  Even our autistic moggie, Izzy (short for Isabella), will come out from under the sofa if there is an empty box in the living room floor that she can curl up in.  It is almost as if she feels safe and protected there.  We received an order from Amazon today (a set of plumber’s snakes) and I tossed the box on the floor to take to the dumpster later.  But Izzy has been in it all day long.  I guess the box can stay around for a while!  Typically, we don’t see her more than once or twice a day, but she has been out of hiding all day today!  She even let Miss Goose pet her for a while!

There is too bloomin’ much Easter candy in this house!  I indulged just a bit tonight, which is okay, but means an extra bit of insulin tonight.  Sigh.  Chocolate is nice.My old friend Linda was the first person to ever call me ‘Jilly-bean’, but several have done so since then.  I rather like it.  Sadly, Linda left my circle of friends in 2016, pre-election, as she tired of hearing me rant against Trump.  She is the one, though, who is responsible for my Jolly Monday posts, for she asked me to consider writing something completely non-political at least on Monday mornings.  So, I shall always remember Linda.

Well, folks, now you have an idea of what my mind bounce is like, and no doubt you are rolling your eyes and thinking, “Filosofa … PLEASE go to bed!!!”  Ah, so … I am going in just a few minutes.  Even though there is a load of laundry hanging out in the dryer getting wrinkled, but it does not matter, for it is only my clothes this time.

Thank you all for allowing my mind to bounce and bonk.  Hopefully I can get it back into the saddle by mid-day and come out with some relatively intelligent post.  Love to you all!