Category Archives: Joy

Fun, Humor, Intentionality, Joy, Playfulness

8 Bits of Joy

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Early on in 2025, I published a blog post about cultivating joy. I maintain this is a worthy pursuit for me AND for you. This, combined with a blogger I’ve followed for years, who, earlier this summer, published a post sharing pictures of herself in joyful moments, leads me to want to share the things that have been providing me with joy during these last gasps of summertime.

A recent picture of me in a moment of joy at the local Rutabaga Festival!

I didn’t catch his name, but one can assume it was “Rudy”, right?!

Please do me a solid and share in the comments what is bringing joy into your life right now. I think in these times, focusing on and sharing our joys could be quite beneficial, don’t you agree?

Off I go:

  1. The charcuterie board-making class that my SIL and I participated in back in July. This brought together three things I love: creative self-expression, food, and quality time with my slightly younger sister. Here’s what I created that night:

2. Ilena Tovia, who creates video content on Facebook (and no doubt other social media outlets) of herself cooking in her kitchen. I think she can best be described as “that goofy cooking lady on Facebook”, because she has an authentic goofiness to her and she never fails to crack me up.

3. Feeling uninspired by the offerings on any of the streaming apps we have on our t.v. the other night, I clicked on an episode of “The Great British Baking Show”. After hearing about this show for years, I finally watched it. What an absolute delight! The contestants and judges were kind to each other and clearly having a ball using their creative spirits to come up with often beautiful, edible works of art. I’m not big on reality/competition shows in general, so this surprised me. I think I found my new happy show!

4. At work last month, one of our awesome volunteers randomly called to ask if we all wanted some free sweet corn. He had just picked it. We took him up on his offer, and he arrived within a couple of hours with several bags of the most delicious sweet corn I’d had all summer.

5. When I’m futzing around in the kitchen, I often want to listen to music. Lately, I’ve been telling Google to play the music of the band Lake Street Dive. The main singer, Rachel, has a voice that is just something else. She and her band do a phenomenal job of covering other artists songs as well, bringing their own twist to it. Here’s a prime example:

6. French fries. One of my all-time favorite foods. And I am quite talented at making them at home in my air fryer, if I do say so myself. I wash up two or three Russets, slice them thin-nish, plop them in a mixing bowl, drizzle some good olive oil on them, and season liberally with Penzey’s Florida Seasoned Pepper, and a few shakes of corse sea salt. Let the air fryer do its magic for about 20 minutes, and it’s *chefs kiss* perfection for this french-fry enthusiast.

7. This video I saw online last week. In my opinion, Bohemian Rhapsody is high on the list of “Best Rock Songs Ever”. If you agree and want to experience a bit of joy, I hope you watch it.

8. This song. Do yourself a favor today and take a few minutes to enjoy this video!

My hope is that each one of you reading this today will make time to ponder what is bringing you pure, unadulterated joy!

Blogging, Celebrate, gardening, Granparenting, Gratitude, Intentionality, Joy, Lifestyle, Minnesconsin, Motherhood, Simplicity

I Used To Do This Thing

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Specifically, on this blog. When it was younger.

It was a personal life update sorta deal that I would do periodically. I leaned in on words like “current” (which is a state I prefer to live in and write about) and “rocking” or “rolling”.

Anyway, for today, I’m going to just revive that if you please.

Thanks to the support of Mr. NOA, my sister, and my daughter’s “bonus moms”, our daughter and future son-in-law’s baby shower went off without a hitch. We had plenty of room in our shed (which I’m now and forever referring to as the “we shed“) to hold the approximately 30 people that came to celebrate the imminent birth of baby Levi.

The food was a hit and there was plenty of it. It warmed my heart to see our daughter’s friends show up to support her. She and her fiance now have virtually everything they need to welcome baby Levi home this summer.

And the best part?

Just look at those happy faces!

How was everyone’s Memorial Day weekend?

Did you do anything fun?

Did you spend it with people you love? Did you go anywhere new?

Yesterday was our 35th wedding anniversary. Not that we didn’t feel this warranted a big, splashy celebration, but we chose to stay home together and have a simple weekend. As today is my regular day off from work, and yesterday was a paid holiday for us, we’re on day 4 of this little “staycation” here in Minnesconsin.

It’s been sweet.

The kids all came over yesterday afternoon and we had a little picnic lunch and a ride on the pontoon. Mr. NOA wore his “Call Me Captoon” t-shirt for the event, which I loved. Our 11-year-old grandson caught a fish (not quite a keeper, unlike this kid) using a bit from the cherries I had packed in one of the coolers.

Mr. NOA and I, earlier in the weekend, drove over to one of our favorite stores for supplies we needed to start giving our yard and gardens some love. If you’re from the Upper Midwest like we are, you’ll know the name of the place by these words “Save Big Money at….”.

As the two of us are on a mission this summer to intentionally invest in and nurture the land we live on, we bought rose bushes, multiple bags of mulch, landscaping cloth, and blueberry bushes. Thankfully, we’ll get an 11% rebate! #iykyk.

Then we got to work.

Rose bushes were planted on either side of the garage door. Grass seed was sprinkled on some bare patches in the yard. Landscaping cloth was laid down, with mulch placed on top and then evened out. Blueberry bushes were planted in a special spot where I can see them from my kitchen window (a feature my dear father-in-law wisely noted three years ago, when we were house-hunting here in Minnesconsin, that I would personally most appreciate in any house we bought ).

So, as cheesy as it may sound, today I say “Life is Good”.

And because online this morning I read a beautifully written, heartfelt story written by the artist Michael Franti. It was about his two moms, who both recently passed away, just 6 weeks apart from each other. One was his adoptive mom, and the other, his birth mom. I’m going to share a song from him because I love his music.

This song, in particular, feels to me like a great choice for ushering in summer.

Friendships, GenX, Gratitude, Intentionality, Joy, Lifestyle, Music

Sometimes I Just Want to Yap about Music

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I’m currently obsessed with using my basement rec room more. That is where my turntable is situated and where my rocking chair lives. I have this vision that I will procure more albums along with a vessel to house them in. When I consider which albums I want, I think about the ones I had as a teenager in Northern Minnesota in the 80’s. The ones I played over and over again. The ones I donated long ago with the original turntable I got as a present for my birthday (12th or 13th?) from my parents.

Like these:

Mr. NOA’s best friend from college, Kevin (aka my soul brother) visited us last weekend and brought a large collection of albums. Some, he said, are “for keeps” (Hotel California by the Eagles is one of them) and others, he said, are “on loan”. Because he gave up his turntable years ago and isn’t sure when he’ll get another one. Kevin and his wife will be visiting us again soon and I look forward to spinning some vinyl with him then.

He and I joked the other night that if someday we happen to be in the same nursing home together, we would keep the place hopping with our excellent musical taste and deejaying skills. I reminded him of the fantasy I’ve long had of the two of us collaborating on a podcast about all things music. I think that must be put on my list of retirement goals.

Kevin “gifted” me an eclectic variety of albums. For instance, there’s two copies of the soundtrack for the musical “Hair” and two copies of Neil Young’s “Decade” album. There’s one from Kim Carnes and a couple of Glen Campbell and Kris Kristofferson albums in the mix.

I spent some time this afternoon, given it’s Tuesday and my day off from work, sitting on the floor in the rec room looking through all of these records. I’m mostly looking forward to listening to Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents”, all of the multiple Paul Simon and Simon & Garfunkel albums, the Neil Young albums, and the one from the “Traveling Willburys”. And “Hotel California” by the Eagles without a doubt!

The most remarkable thing to me, beyond my brother sharing his treasure trove of music with me, is the loving care he took with them. There are several albums in this collection where Kevin slipped into the clear sleeves newspaper clippings related to the artist. If there ever was someone who could make a living from being a rock and roll music historian, it’d be Kevin.

Photographic Evidence 🙂

Of course I couldn’t possibly end this post with no music clips, so here’s a favorite of mine from “The Firm” (did you know this band only had two albums and was fronted by none other than Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and Paul Rogers from Bad Company?). I love the swampiness of this tune…how about you?

Keep on rocking in the free world, folks (while it’s still free)!

Blogging, Blogging Community, Gratitude, Intentionality, Joy, Positivity, Self-Reflection, SNL fans, Valentine's Day

Blogaversary Number 8

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Saturday, February 8th, 2025 was a snow day for us here in Minnesconsin. We adjusted our plans and hunkered down inside.

As I was sitting at my dining room table, peering out at the snow falling down outside my window, I saw a WordPress notification congratulating me on 8 years of blogging.

With 8 being my guiding number, I can’t pass up the opportunity to share my thoughts about this blog-aversary.

First off, I’m in a different place than I was 8 years ago, physically and mentally. At that time, I was living a more free-wheeling life in Colorado with Mr. NOA. My responsibilities at the time were minimal and I had oodles of free time. Just for fun I decided to start this blog. My aim was to put myself out there and see if I could find like-minded souls who appreciated my ramblings.

Fortunately, I did. And I appreciate every one of you. And I miss the ones who wrote some of the funniest, righteous, and heartfelt writing I’ve ever read. The ones who, in some cases, for no known reason, stopped blogging (on WordPress anyway).

I wrote a lot of sub-par posts. I didn’t have any grand plan when I first started out. I still don’t.

I wrote about wins and losses. I wrote about what I think about the state of the world and the state of my life. I wrote about vacations I took and books I read. I wrote about interactions I had and my dreams for the future.

I shared in this space stories of my personal failures and misadventures and my passion for music and comedy. I wrote about work and I wrote about my friends and family.

I feel good about the fact that I’ve stuck with it.

But I don’t want to keep waxing nostalgic about this milestone today. That’s because I’m grounded in the present and, frankly, I’m boring myself. It only stands to reason that I’m probably boring you right now as well.

So here I go, switching gears.

*Cue the sound of a record being scratched*

8 Good Things To Share

Disclaimer before I proceed: I am in no way forgetting the fact that America is essentially on fire and the American people are suffering and by God I will do whatever it is I can to minimize the damage. But, on this day, I’m leaning into my Pollyanna-ish inclinations.

  1. My work hours have increased. Meaning instead of working M-W-F at my lovely local non-profit, I’m working M-W-Th-F. Tuesdays are all mine! She says greedily. The reality of working more hours, however, is that I’ve inadvertently challenged myself to ramp up the focus on that one little word I declared allegiance to when I was feeling slightly shinier about 2025. That would be “intentionality”. As in, how am I choosing to spend my downtime? Which gets to the heart of the word itself. Note to self: say a prayer of gratitude for the luxury of having downtime to begin with. You’re a lucky broad.

2. SNL 50 Homecoming Concert: the music, the laughs. What a surprising and terrific Valentine’s gift to me and all the other lifelong fans of the show. Kate McKinnon introducing Brandi Carlisle and THEN watching Brandi and her phenomenal band (even the sisters playing their strings!) perform perhaps her best song ever: “The Joke”, made my heart soar.

3. Speaking of Valentine’s gifts, Mr. NOA (for those new to this blog, it’s my nickname for my husband, Mr. None of the Above) surprised me with a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Yes, they smell as good as they look. I think this guy is a keeper.

4. Circling back to music: The Fire Aid concert, which was to benefit those who lost their homes in the recent California wildfires. Wow. Blew me away. Do yourself a favor, unless you hate music: find this online and watch it. Highlights? Let me test my memory here. Alanis Morissette traipsing her cool self all over the stage like a boss while reminding us all what a gift her voice is. Sheila E banging her drums. And, well, so much more. I’ll share a video of the best performance at the end of this post.

5. Our grandson turned 11 recently. He celebrated on Saturday with family and three of his friends snow-tubing and eating pizza. His Grandpa and I gave him an itinerary of the overnight we’re taking him on this Spring for his birthday. That is something for us all to look forward to.

I hope you all have something to look forward to these days. Or the motivation and ability to find something to look forward to, however small. It’s important.

6. The sight of Uncle Sam (as in L. Jackson) at Kendrick Lamar’s SuperBowl halftime show last Sunday. I loved the subversiveness of it. Good trouble.

7. The movie “A Real Pain”, on Hulu. It was the right combo, in my view, of sweet and sour. It did not have a convoluted or complicated storyline. It was very well-acted (Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg…and Jennifer Grey, my fellow Gen Xr’s). It was sweet and sad and funny at the right times. If you like sweet but not saccharine, relatable relationship stories with humor in your movies, you’ll agree this one is a winner.

8. The queen on her throne singing a most meaningful and bittersweet song at the FireAid concert. I’m not a big crier, but this performance brought tears to my eyes.

Aging, Blogging, Humor, Intentionality, Joy, Mindset

Cultivating Joy

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It’s my birthday week and part of me wants to give myself a pass and skip publishing a blog post. Part of me wants to go on and on about how it’s my birthday week and it’s so awesome because I’ve got fun plans and Gee Whiz I made it to 58 and I’ve still got all of my original parts (minus the tonsils).

But if I’ve learned nothing about my path as a blogger, it’s that skipping one week of publishing is often a slippery slope to going another week, then another, until I’m almost paralyzed by the thought of ever writing another thing within the blogosphere.

So, here’s my post this week.

Ha ha ha!

I’m actually trying really hard not to crack here, people.

While everything in this country appears to rapidly be going to hell in a handbasket, including Mr. NOA (a fed employee) being potentially on the brink of losing his status as a remote worker, I’m doing my best to remain intentional.

As in intentional about cultivating joy in my life. Cultivating joy through action is a healthy way to give myself a positive (if temporary) distraction from the horrors of it all. I think cultivating joy is a solid form of resistance.

It’s simple things, like the banana bread (with milk chocolate chips, no less) baking in my oven right now. Spending time in my rec room organizing old photos while listening to whatever is playing on The Current (MPR’s super cool radio station that I’ve spoken about in this space in the past). Writing short little blog posts to share with you and keeping our blogging connections going within this community. Geeking out about the SNL 50 docu-series streaming on Peacock.

For shits and giggles, here’s some photos I found commemorating my childhood birthday celebrations. Left to right: my 5th birthday, my 1st birthday (no hair, didn’t care), my 10th birthday, and my 7th birthday.

I hope that each one of you finds ways to cultivate joy in these challenging times. Please share in the comments if and how you are cultivating your own joy these days. I’m always open to suggestions from you, my friends!

As you well know by now, music is a crucial ingredient in the recipe of my life. On that note, here’s my new favorite song. It’s got a melody that I love to whistle along to and the video is just so very sweet.

Grandparenting, Happiness, Humor, Joy, Storytelling, Summer Fun

The Alphabet Game

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Over the 4th of July weekend, my daughter, 10 year-old grandson and I went on a road trip together to visit family and friends.

As we were making our way up to the “Northland”, my grandson was immersed in playing games on his tablet in the backseat. After a while, I could hear the voice of one of those young adult “gaming bros” on their YouTube channel going on in their annoyingly enthusiastic manner about whatever game they were playing.

The grandma in me decided I had enough of that business. I suggested, with no actual confidence that this suggestion was going to be embraced by the kid, that we could play the “alphabet game”.

You know this one, right? I can’t imagine it was just my family (actually, me and my Mom, Bonnie) that played this on long car rides.

Anyway. It’s a simple game. All you do is start with the letter “A”. You “spy with your little eye” that one simple letter. You might find it on a sign. Or on the license plate of the vehicle that just passed you. Then, of course, you loudly exclaim “I found an A!” and proceed onto the letter “B” and so on until you get to “Z”. The first person who gets all the way through the alphabet wins.

Thankfully (or perhaps not, as it became a bit of an obsession over the course of the weekend), the kiddo latched onto this suggestion of mine with gusto.

Playing this game with him on this road trip was a huge highlight of this grandma’s summer. The “Alphabet Game” did the following wonderful things: it gave this bright boy a mental challenge. It gave us an opportunity to interact with each other for a sustained period of time. It got him off that obnoxious “gamer boy/man” YouTube channel so my daughter and I didn’t have to suffer through it any longer. It gave me a great memory. My hope as this boy’s grandma is that he was imprinted with a great memory too.

Baby, this kid is a firework indeed.

Adult children, Anxiety, Baking, Christmas, Humor, Joy

Christmas Cookies and Not Sweating the Small Stuff

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As I write this, it’s 1 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon and I’m in the Christmas cookie zone, relaxing to instrumental Christmas music on my Google Nest.

But here’s where my head was the Sunday before last. Call it a little peek into my “Christmas brain”, if you will:

I need to start somewhere, so I’ll start with the cookie planning:

I would like to make:

  • Spritz
  • Cherry Almond cookies from last year
  • Santa’s whiskers
  • PB Truffles
  • Snickerdoodles
  • Chocolate covered pretzel rods

And maybe another kind of two. Oh, the cherry snowballs for sure! I’ve got six days designated on our calendar to get this done.

Then there’s the decorating. I am especially psyched for this endeavor.

But my beautiful daughter is on her way to pick me up for a spontaneous shopping trip and I’m still in my bathrobe. So I gotta split for now.

Same day, just p.m.

Today was great! I enjoyed eating a hearty lunch with my first-born at Barker’s in Hudson. We had fun shopping together. I love that she’s going as the rag doll from the Land of Misfit Toys from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for a work photo shoot next week. But it was hard to find the “costume”. She is not worried about it though.

There’s an important difference between the two of us. Good on her. She’s not like me in this way. Had I, at her age, been given a directive to come up with such a costume for a work situation, well..I’d be freaking out. I’d probably still be out there, searching to no avail for all the right pieces to bring that damn dolly to life.

Because it would have mattered to me, then. I would have fretted about the impression I was giving my employer by coming up short on this task, as I would have convinced myself that without a doubt, every one of my co-workers Christmas photo-shoot costume was going to be EPIC.

And it would have been such a misplacement of my mental energy and my time.

I’m glad she’s not like I was. She doesn’t sweat the small stuff, which I have done at a high level of proficiency for the majority of my adult life.

Readers, don’t be surprised if you see more posts than usual from me this month. I’ve got Christmas on the brain and my hope is that unloading it in this space will be a jolly little treat to go with your egg nog.

Fa-la-la-la-la folks!

***Header image courtesy of https://wjbq.com/why-is-dolly-on-the-island-of-misfit-toys-whats-wrong-with-her/***

Blogging, Gratitude, Joy, Live Concerts, Music, Wine

A Bottle of White, A Bottle of Red

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Who enjoys their wine?

I do. I mostly prefer a dry white, but OMG sipping a full bodied pinot noir or merlot is an exquisite experience.

I could happily talk more about wine here. When I first began blogging, there were topics of great interest in my mind, ones that I was certain I was going to write about all the live-long day. Food/Drink was one of those. Now, I certainly have written much in this space about my unbridled enthusiasm for cooking and baking, sometimes sharing my best recipes. But that’s not what this post is about, actually.

It’s about how I, along with my beautiful sister-in-law and Mr. None of the Above, got to see two icons-live!-in concert earlier this month: Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks (which I later learned entitled their concert “Two Icons One Night”).

You may (or may not) have read my little piece in this space where I expressed my enthusaism ahead of getting to experience this concert.

I figure “before I forget” (a common phrase for anyone who knows me IRL), especially since my brain right now is all about ChristmasChristmasChristmas, I figured I’d share my impressions of this concert.

It. Was. Awesome!

Stevie Nicks performed first. She sounded great, just like she does on the radio and her albums. She appeared quite dimunitive, and charmed us all with her chattiness between songs. She had such a fast way of speaking, though, I likely didn’t catch it all. She and Billy performed “Stop Draggin’ my Heart Around” as pictures of Tom Petty were displayed on the huge screens. She also performed a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”, prefacing it with something to the effect of “I don’t care how you vote, but we are in some very hard times in this world right now”.

Stevie performed many of her greatest hits as well, like “Gypsy” and “Gold Dust Woman”. I was amazed by how long they each performed. Her performance was about 1 1/2 hours and Billy’s was well over 2 hours.

I loved that when Billy Joel performed “Zanzibar”, everyone seemed to be singing and swaying along. I don’t believe this was a top 10 hit for him, but it’s always one I’ve loved. I felt such a sense of community, singing off-key alongside this massive crowd. It really fed my soul.

At one point, Billy stood at the microphone and shared that he was feeling anxious about performing the next song, because as he’s gotten older, his voice has gotten deeper. And this song, “An Innocent Man”, has some very important high notes. He nailed it!

I was, of course, along with everyone else in the crowd, ecstatic when Billy performed “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”. It was brilliant!

We also got treated to a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, performed by Billy’s bandmate, Mike DelGuidice. As a Zeppelin fan, I thought this was amazing.

This whole experience was thrilling for me. I’m so grateful I got to experience it. Cheers to these iconic American treasures!

Blogging, Celebrate, Dancing, Fun, Happiness, Joy, Laughter, Playlists, Positivity, Spontaneity

8 Things I do for Fun

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List five things you do for fun.

This was the daily prompt from WordPress and I’ve decided to go with it.

I am a fan of having fun. I think putting a pause on our adult responsibilities to be playful is good for our spirits.

Also at play here is that my birthday is coming up very soon and I’m excited to celebrate it with my family. My brain is in party mode!

I’m going to share not just 5, but 8 things that I do for fun. Because 8 is my lucky number, folks.

What do you like to do for fun?

Fun for me is:

  • Playing group board games like “Ransom Notes”, “Apples to Apples”, or “Scrabble” with family and/or friends. This is a guaranteed way to share laughs together. I love the feeling of relaxation in my whole body after some good old fashioned belly laughs.
  • Dance. Sometimes alone in my kitchen. Sometimes with my grandson when he challenges me to “dance-offs”. The more spontaneous the dancing is, the better. That’s where the joy is.
  • Creating music playlists. My method is to think of a mood I want to create or a genre I want to re-visit, then search online for songs under that category. While this is a more introverted way to have fun, often the end result is that I get to share these playlists with the special people in my life.
  • Thrift store shopping. It’s a surprising treasure hunt every time and freeing as well, as it’s guilt-free. I don’t come out of a thrift store with my purchases feeling bad about spending money, because I never spend that much. Even better, the money I spend often goes toward a cause that supports and lifts others up.
  • This. Blogging. Interacting with all of you in the comments.
  • Decorating my house. Using home decor I kept from our previous house in new ways. Finding just the right spot to put that cool piece of pottery I found at a thrift store. It’s a simple and creative activity that just tickles me.
  • Photography. Now, I don’t claim or even aim to be a professional photog necessarily. It’s just fun for me to capture shots in the day to day with my cell phone.
Karl the cat, when he came to visit last week
  • Spending time on the water. Trolling for fish in a boat while the sun warms my skin. Looking forward to doing this on our pontoon (the one we plan to buy in the next few months) this summer!

Changes, Grandparenting, Home, Joy, Lifestyle, Mantronyms

Simple Snapshots

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With the new life I’m living now, I embrace the acronym K.I.S.S. It’s quite the versatile “mantronym” for me personally as I mentioned long ago, but these days it really is just “Keep It Simple Sister”.

So, this post is an example of that for me. A simple blog post where I share pictures I’ve taken since our big move to Minnesconsin last summer. Ones I haven’t shared in this space before.

2022 Christmas window display
Cardinal perched on a tree on my Mom’s Birthday 2022
“My Toy!” Radar Christmastime 2022
Little flower garden Summer 2022
Mr. Pig at the County Fair snoozing away Summer 2022
Grandson doing his favorite thing Summer 2022
Taxidermied Critters Display Small town Wisconsin Bar Summer 2022
Selfie taken at Hotel Boulderado March 2022
Art in a drawer at a Rocky Mountain cabin Feb of 2022