Thankfulness Tea Party

Welcome, welcome!

Sorry for no pictures. my camera broke and has not been replaced yet.
(We can't have everything, so I won't sweat it.)

Come on in and join the fun.

The table is set with my best china, linens, and lace.

There are pretty papers, and pens for your lists in the basket with the purple bow on the handle.

We are having cucumber sandwiches, cheeses and fruit, and egg salad.

High end cookies, raspberry tarts, and spice cake.

Hot tea, herb tea, lemonade, or apple juice to drink.

I am thankful for good friends, near and far.
Good food, good health, house and home.
Sunny days, rainy days, cloudy days, all days.
Loved ones, friends, neighbors, and friends I've yet to meet.
Crafting fun, Ukulele playing, singing, dancing, walking in the woods.
Sitting with a good book, dreaming out the window, pleasant dreams.
Childrens laughter, funny jokes, happy memories, music that makes you want to dance.
Computer games, blogging, others blogs, communication.
And ever so much more.

Feel free to leave a comment with some of the things you are thankful for.

Enjoy your day.  I'm very happy you came to share your day with me.

On Comments:

To the many comments of late:

I know that most of you have been trying to help me, and I do appreciate that, I really do. But there are some people who have made fun of me or used my desperation to promote themselves or something they are selling.

I know most of you are only sharing a joke or cartoon to make me laugh, or a helpful email from a friend.

Still I will not and never do open any attachments unless I know what they are and who they are originally from. I’ve been burned by viruses from well meaning emails in the past and have learned my lesson.

I love most all of your comments and appreciate all the support and encouragement you have given me in the past. Even the corrections have been enlightening and therefore helpful so I loved them too.

I don’t have so many friends that I don’t appreciate any long distant, cyber friendship. And in some ways the cyber friendships have been better and more frank.

So please do keep commenting. But don’t expect me to open your attachments or post the trash that sometimes shows up in my in box.

Oh, I’m glad that you took the time to send it. But I just don’t have the money to keep on having my computer cleaned out from the few viruses that get through. I just can’t take the chance any longer.

So I whole heartedly thank you for your comments, both the ones I’ve gotten and the ones to come. I’ll keep on being grateful to all of them. Because even the bad ones mean I’m not alone.

Have a happy holiday season whether you partake or not. And thank you all very much for just being there.

On Small Uses for Tooth Picks:

Today is a gray day. I usually love a gray day, but this one is too cold and windy for me. You know, the kind that the cold goes right through you and stays stuck inside. Thus requiring hours of tea drinking wrapped in blankets by the wood stove with a book.

So, wanting to get something done, I hid in the house doing jigsaw puzzles and playing with the doll house.















I made some things for the doll house out of wooden tooth picks. I cut off the small ends of the flat kind of tooth picks and painted them blue for my ‘Ohio Blue Tip’ matches.


















And I used the round kind of tooth pick for my dolls knitting needles.

Yes, I did knit that bit of scarf for them using those small knitting needles. I just wanted to see if I could do it.

The dog needs walking so I’ll soon be shivering until properly tea-ed and blanketed, with a book. Agatha Christie, ‘The A.B.C. Murders’ I think. I am thankful for wood stoves on days like this.

On Just One Of Those Days:

On Just One Of Those Days:

I tripped. One of those little trips where you don’t fall down, but the things in your hands go flying and you kind of trip over them before you can stop yourself.

I did this with the spiral staircase for the doll house. It took hours to fix it. And I still have to replace a few parts, but it is in one piece and standing again.

And the toilet broke. It needs a new flusher valve and I have to wait until Mountain Man can get out for the part to fix it. So for now I have to use a bucket of water to flush.

And I got a wasp up my skirt while walking the dog. Seven stings later I managed to get it out. I had to limp home as they swelled. A baking soda poultice helped, but I still have red swollen bumps on my legs.

Tomorrow has to be a better day. And knowing that I can look forward to enjoying it, with no reservation, makes me smile.

On A Door to Convenience:

Life is great when the bad times are over. So I’m going with, If it weren’t for migraines, I wouldn’t know how good life could be.

Of course, I do get to have one little complaint. ‘Another week lost from my life!’ (Rant over.)

On the up side. Now that I’m feeling better, Mountain Man is replacing an old door that his father made with a much better one that doesn’t leak the heat out and the cold in.

It will be so nice not to have to pack insulation in between the screen door and the house door, rendering it unusable all winter long. And it is the door closer to the wood shed making it easier to get wood in the house in the winter.

I hated having to go the long way around to the wood shed when there was a door just feet away that we couldn’t use once the insulation was up for the season. And no more digging through the snow to get there and back either.

Why we didn’t do this years ago I’ll never know. We talked about it. But other things just got done first, second, third…

So, as I watch a little piece of family history (the door his father built) be tossed aside for convenience sake, I’ll be jumping for joy at the prospect of not having to dig a path through the snow and ice to the wood shed any longer.

Convenience is a wonderful thing.

On Breaking Three Figures:

Yes, I know that there are more of you reading my blog than it shows on my Blogger Follower List, but I have to say that it was a little thrilling to see that three digit ‘100’.

This is my 789’th posting here on ‘Thoughts from a Eclectic Goth Mind‘. For years I’ve blogged. I’ve written my dark stories for my other blog ‘Thrill or Shiver’ also as time went by.

I supported other bloggers. Jumped on to follow new bloggers so they didn’t have to wait for over a year to get that first follower or months for a first comment like I did.

I saw the numbers rise, fast and furious, for some younger bloggers and, yes I felt a little jealous.

No, I am not into popularity contests. I’m not on facebook or any other social network. (They scare me. And I don’t play well with others.)

But here I am with 100 followers on blogger.

So three cheers for the little guy. It took a long time, but I’ve made it to three digits. Another life goal met.

Now I have to put my black thinking cap on and step up to the plate. Bring my ‘A’ game more often. Because I have people waiting to hear from me. And I don’t like to disappoint.

I may even bring back my Epitaph give away. (You send in an Epitaph and I pick one to win a prize.) I still have some prizes left, if I’m remembering correctly. Let me know if you’d like that!

So thank you out there for reading my blog. Thank you for thinking it was worth following. Thank you for being a friend.

I thank you also my long time readers. You kept me going by hanging in there when my time and subject matter was getting thin.

Oh Happy Goth 100 Day!

On Beating that Bad Mood Back:

I beat the bad mood I woke with yesterday with the help of Miss Mousey from Knotty Mouse. She has a blog I read regularly.

She reminded me of our Thankfulness Tea Parties on the web every February. Maybe I should have them more often.

Being an Elder Goth can be a drag sometimes. Others (some vanilla’s I know.) keep wanting me to grow up and stop all this Goth stuff, and the younger generation of Goth’s have no use for me. ‘Old Fart’ being the kindest comment to me of late.

This leaves me without a local Goth community. So I find myself having to tone it down more often than I really want to or I find myself with no one to hang with.

And although Mountain Man tolerates my Gothiness for the most part, he would rather it was not a full tilt daily barrage of the stuff. And he is definitely not into spiders. Meaning, I can only wear my spider jewelry when he is not about. (Marriage is full of compromise on both fronts.)

Some days I don’t want to be all old lady and respectable in my black pants suit, top and shoes when I go out and about. I want to Goth it out like any Goth would. Part of being a Goth is that pushing the ‘limits’ thing.

I have lovely Victorian Mourning clothing that doesn’t see the light of day often enough. And frankly I’d love to be seen in public in it much more than I do.

I spent that vanilla six weeks taking care of that woman. I didn’t have to. But I feel that when I’m ill I don’t want to see nothing but vanilla, and that she didn’t want to see nothing but Goth. In fact she doesn’t like it at all. (But to each his or her own.)

So Miss Mousey helped me by reminding me that I am thankful for any day I have to be my Gothy silly self. Whether in my full Goth regalia or scrubbing the bathroom in some old sweats. The Goth I am can still shine (Or darkly radiate) through. And that makes me happy!

On Irene, Unwelcome Guest:

The flooding rain wasn’t bad enough. The high winds took an additional toll. The storm damage came further inland than first thought.

First, I am thankful that we are safe and unharmed. (At last count forty dead and countless injured.)

Second, We now have electricity after over a day and a half of none. And the phone is back now too. (Many others will have no electric for days to come. And then there are the ones who lost their homes.)

Third, Not one of all the trees that came down hit our house or car.

Fourth, the large pumpkins themselves are undamaged, but they will not be growing any further as their vines and leaves have been.

As to the over all damage:

We lost most of the garden. The corn is flat, the tomatoes all dropped from the plants. More than half of the apples and pears have dropped from the trees. A lot of the leaves left on the plants still alive, like the lettuce, have been shredded.















One of the two flattened corn crops.















Some of the many tomatoes we picked up off of the ground.

Most of the food that was in the refrigerator needed to be thrown out. In our 20+ cubic foot chest freezer, the top third of all in it started to thaw out. And some of that completely thawed.

It took almost two days for the birds to come back, but the amount of dead ones found after it was all over was a bit unsettling. (Broken necks, wings or both.) There were also an amount of drowned rodents. Pockets of the smell of death hang about in spots in the woods presumably drowned in their dens underground.

The house lost some shingles from the roof. The wind driven rain came in, under and around through the cracks around the windows and doors. The gutters and down spouts will have to be re-hung.

We are spending every moment we can processing and canning as much of the garden goods as possible to recoup what we can.

After that we have a lot of outside clean up to do.

On Checking Facts:

On further checking my facts it was Knit Yoga that meme-ed me.

Not that I don't like or find Darkside of Knitting a good blogger, because I do, but credit should go were credit is due.

And so please give Knit Yoga a look see.

She makes wonderful crafts besides her knitting.

And thanks for putting up with my memory troubles. I'd loose my head if it wasn't stuck on.

On It Got To Me:

Over the weekend I was going to show you pictures of the flowers blooming in my yard.

Every time I picked up the camera to get those pictures the phone rang or someone dropped by.

The pictures were never taken.

The same conversation kept on being repeated over and over. Tornado destruction, wars, flooding, earth quakes. Lucky it wasn’t us. So sad for those people.

By the end of Sunday I was in tears. I couldn’t listen any longer. Not that I didn’t care. It was that I did. I was feeling it too much and couldn’t fix it for them or myself.

I’m no stranger to bad times. I’ve had cancer, I‘ve lost a child, gone through a divorce. Bad times come and go.

I know good times also. I’m glad for even the bad days in my life. Life has its ups and downs. And I’m living my life in the best way I know how.

I laugh and groan at my happy puppy daily. But by Sunday evening even the puppy couldn’t get a smile out of me.

I’ll do what I can, donate, pray, help in my own way from where I am. But tonight it wasn’t enough. I just had to cry some of the pain away. Knowing that the losses some of those people suffered will have changed those people forever more.

I know that damage in my heart and my heart bleeds for them remembering my own losses and how deep they went for me.

They will smile and dance and sing again someday. But right now there is emptiness and tears, pain and loss. And it just got to me.

On Looking at Looks Part 2:

I didn’t realize that what I said yesterday would stir you. I thought I was talking in the dark again.

I do want to say I’m not one to hate beauty. I just don’t think that outward beauty is enough by itself. And that it shouldn’t be used to hide ill will.

I believe in inner beauty. Beauty of mind, heart and soul. A giving, helpful, loving person, no matter what they look like on the outside, is what I look for in a friend.

I try to practice being all of these things at all times.

Not that I’m perfect at it. Because I’m not. I get angry at injustice. I get discussed at prejudice. Small minds sadden me.

I look in the mirror each morning and take stock of myself. The outside is puffy and droopy and older. But my eyes still shine with love and laughter, with wrinkles to match them too. I’m thankful for one more day to do what improving I can on my inner self.

Daily I exercise my mind. And I also pray for everyone I know to be having trials. And those I do not know because not all people share their troubles with me.

I pray for people all over the world that live in war or disasters way. I pray for people who have personal trials that make them hard to live with even to themselves, and their family and friends. I pray for people in loss and grief.

I pray for comfort and help and peace and understanding for all.

I think about how to handle myself in assorted situations so I am less likely to fly off the handle.

The thing I work the hardest at is forgiveness. I tend to hold onto hurts. I pick at them until they are festering nicely if I let myself. Mostly I remind myself that when I’m the one in need of forgiveness it is often granted. I hold onto that feeling of love and care forgiveness brings to me and try to turn it around to use on others by forgiving them.

I want my heart to shine through my looks, no matter how old and tired I may look at times.

And the people who don’t want to see past my wrinkles will just be missing out on a wonderful relationship with me.

On Looking at Looks:

I am not beautiful. To look at that is. I am proud of the beauty I have within. I do look more like Grandma Addams then any other character in that wonderful show. I have a baby picture of myself looking so much like Uncle Fester that I thought it must be a mistake when I was younger and wanted to be a beautiful people too.

I did have a cute phase in which I looked some what like Shirley Temple, curly hair and all, enough to be asked by smiling strangers if I could dance and sing like her. But alas, I was only two years old and could not. The smiles went away from their faces.

Most of my life I was not skinny or fat, just middlin. The rest of my family are tall and I am short, being slightly dwarfed in my arms and legs. (When I sit next to my tallest brother we are the same height. But when we stand I am more than a head shorter, over a foot in fact.)

As a kid I was smart and had a good imagination. I was not good at book learning or in school work. I was interested in things that made others moan and groan. I liked what others shunned. I was a misfit.

I saw through their sham lives. The lies they told themselves so that they were not left behind the crowd. The hoops that they jumped through, the disguises that they hid behind with smiles so practiced that they didn’t look fake any longer. I distrust smiles.

I found faces with wrinkles and the people behind them far more interesting than the smooth faced ’pretty’ liars around me.

The wrinkled people didn’t lie nearly as much. They didn’t have to pretend that things were different than it really was. They were old and only the people that really loved them or were really interested in what they had to say paid them any attention.

My mother would say, “Don’t stare!” And I’d think to myself that I wasn’t. I was committing them to memory and that there was so much more to remember in an interesting wrinkled face.

Wrinkled faces are soft and comfortable. You can read their eyes so much better. They have a patchwork of interesting roads mapped out on their faces. Leading to questions about all that experience hidden beneath.

I was lucky to have lived as a child before all this accessible eternal youth. To have discovered this treasure before it was harder to find and it rarely disappoints me even now that I‘m a wrinkly too.

On Got a Little Lost Filling a Hole:

Well, I’ve been looking at puppies. Mostly on the web.

I doesn’t matter what kind they are. Any puppy will do. I’m not quite ready to bring one home just yet. But it does my heart good just to look.

I did discover a kind of dog new to me. A Chiweenie. It is a Chihuahua/Dachshund mix. Kind of like a mini, mini dachshund. (Of course there are some that are more Chihuahua, but I’ve found them to be more rare so far.)

Anyway, here is a video for your pleasure too.

On Inching Myself Back:

I had to just get away for a while. I was spending way too much time watching that what was going on in Japan. And feeling so inadequate for not being able to help more.

I needed perspective.

I took long walks in the newly wakening woods. I didn’t even take my camera. Just me, the powers that be, and nature. I needed to get my thankfulness back, too.

The crocuses are starting to push their heads up through the softer places in the still frozen earth.

Fresh air came into my lungs, revitalizing me.

It was slow going picking my way through the frozen leaves and underbrush, but that was all for the better.

More time to think, more time to breath, more time to find my way back to my place in this world.

I’m still hurting for the people of Japan, and doing what I can in my small ways. But it is enough for now.

On Hide and Seek:

I’ve been hiding from the cookie jar and seeking a snow free walkway.

Yes, I’m back on the exercise and eating less trail again after a party day.

One more pound off my short frame this last week. I got back into my largest dress this morning. Not that it helped me with clothing to wear to shovel the walkway.

Yes, we were some of the people who got caught in that snow storm on Sunday night. We got exactly eight inches. And just when we could see some bare ground the day before.

So I alternately shoveled and rested with my Sims 3 game to keep me from eating the exercise points away. (Yes, I used a cheat so that they didn’t have to eat either.) I just couldn’t watch them eat things like crepes or cookies, and even the mac and cheese looked good.

Mountain Man plowed for hours yesterday, both here and at the neighbors houses.

It was a cold night and it felt good to see the ice drip like rain from the roof edges this afternoon.

It feels good to get back to walking and using the stair stepper again. My knee is doing good. I’m not over doing it. But I am using it like normal once again.

And there is a added thing that I don’t have to work the upper body quite as much. My arms were getting just plain tired.

I’m still thankful for all the good in my life. When I see all those pages full of happy thoughts it makes me smile. I’ve had some bad times in my life, but I won’t let them out weigh the good. Not that I’m keeping score.

But bad stuff does come without you having to ask for it. Why not counter that with taking the time to practice looking at the good.

Those, ‘I know that there is good times in my life somewhere… Come out, come out where ever you are?’ days are fewer when you look at and for good times more often.

On Annual Internet Thankfulness Tea Party 2011:

Welcome to the Annual Internet Thankfulness Tea Party.

(Sorry I was missing in action yesterday. The wind took my electricity away via a downed tree.)

I hope that all of you who had your tea parties already had a good time. And those that are having your party today are having as much fun as we are.

We are having cucumber sandwiches, fancy cookies and carrot cake with our tea.

I am thankful for many things. And I won’t bore you with all of them so I will just name a few.

Grand babies
Massages from a loved ones
Chocolate
The play of sunshine and shadow
Raisins, natures candy

Interesting gray winter skies
Headache free days
Crayons
Stories that seem to write themselves
Video games that work properly

Smiles
Friends, near and far
People who really listen
Autumn leaves
Picnics in the cemetery

Mountain Man added a few of his:

Good health
Opportunity to be creative
Healthy pets
Warm weather
Ability to sleep soundly

I must add that Miss Mousie over at Knotty Mouse is my co-host for this year.

On An Invitation to a Tea Party:

Hi Everybody,

This is the weekend of the Annual Thankfulness Tea Party.

You are all invited. Saturday or Sunday, take your pick.

Get together some food, something to drink, paper and something to write with.

Put on some music and enjoy yourself while you write down everything you can think of that you are thankful for.

People, experiences, and/or just stuff.

Have a theme to it or not.

Have friends or family with you, or just go it alone so you can think.

It sounds overly simple, but it is not. It changes ones perspective as the seasons change around us.

It is a way to find happiness in ones own skin and not just from the toys we have around us.

Enjoy your life and comment on your experience.

Hugs to all, Lady Euphoria

On What is Up?:

1. The Annual Internet ‘Thankfulness Tea Party’ is coming up on Saturday or Sunday, (take your pick) of this up coming weekend. You are all invited. Just a reminder so you can have what you need on hand. Food, drink, music, paper and pen, and Time set aside to write the things you are thankful for. Theme, friends and family are optional, but always fun.

I go all out with a lace and linen table cloth and napkins, flowers and doilies, Victorian style tea party. But as I’ve been doing this for decades I would never expect anyone else to go that far.

2. I’ve gotten back on the exercise band wagon and worked off one of those 10 pounds already. Hard work using only my upper body.

3. My knee is still healing. I bumped it the other day and it swelled up again. I can walk carefully on it for a half an hour a day now. Still not up to exercise speed, but some is better then none.

Oh, and I have my sense of smell back. You don’t know how much you use it until it is gone.

4. Carl’s The Sims 3 Guide & Walkthrough http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com has given me my sanity and my Sims 3 game back. It was a Windows 7 problem I was having. Apparently the game was made before there was a Windows 7 so they are not as compatible as hoped. His guide helped me configure things so I can now play the game. Why couldn’t EA Games do that?

I’m still having trouble with it crashing when there is a mirror on the lot, but other then that I’m doing good. If I sneak up on them from behind and delete them I’m good to go. Some of the houses I need to go into when traveling have been a challenge but do-able if I keep the mirrors off screen as I play.

And there are Mummies! Lots of Mummies in Egyptian tombs. (Some in China and France.) And I now know how to have my Sims be turned into a mummy too.

Thank you Carl wherever in the world you may be. My frugal self was having a problem with spending any amount of money on a game that didn’t work and risked damaging my computer at the same time.

On Exhaustion:

I’m so tired from yesterdays scare.

Most of it was of my own making.

Mountain Man has a habit of coming in from working with the wood or stone with blood coming from some part of his anatomy.

I’ll ask him, “How did you hurt yourself?”

He answers, “I’m hurt?”

“Yes, your bleeding from your arm (or forehead, or some such place).” I say.

“I didn’t even know I did that.” He says.

So when he calls to say, “I’ve been in an accident and the car flipped over and slid down the highway, and is being towed away because it has been totaled and thank god for seat belts.”

I think, “What is bleeding on him, and does he even know how hurt he is?”

The crash on the ice was around 9:00 in the morning and he didn’t get home until around 5:00 in the evening.

So here I sit tired and fattened. (I nervously ate all the cookies and chocolate in the house while I waited yesterday.)

I’m happy he is fine and wishing I didn’t have to do all those extra exercises to work off the extra nervous eating I did yesterday.

Thanks for all the support from all of you out there. It meant so very much and still does.

On Managing My Stress:

I stole this picture off of The Rustic Goth’s blog today.

It just felt right for me somehow. I was stressed, I fell and hit my face, and now I’m not.

It works!

No, not really. But it did add a little perspective. Things can always be worse, and sometimes are.

I’m doing much better, thank you very much.

And thank you for the kind words of encouragement in those comments and emails I’ve been getting.

I’m not limping much at all now and the blacks and blues are starting to turn a yellow green at the edges.

My nose still hurts so I try not to have to blow it. I still can’t believe I didn’t break it, because my front teeth are still a little loose from my kissing the floor. I’m living on soft foods and shakes for that, until they tighten back up.

All things being equal I’d say I’m glad I was lucky. It could have been much worse. But I’m not done in by it. Slower, but not done in.