SoCS: Happy Places and Change on Planet Home Sweet Home

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “happy place.” Write the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “happy place.” Have fun!

When someone says, “Go to your happy place,” it could mean a real place, or a place you imagine in your mind. It’s nice if we have a happy place in our home. Mama Cat is sitting on my lap as I type this, watching Return of the Jedi on TNT. I don’t think Mama Cat is really watching, but my lap seems to be her happy place. In the evening, when Marley is in the back bedroom with David, Mama Cat goes between the couch and her catio. It’s her free time to wander the eastern side of the house.

Sometimes, our happy places can change. The ocean used to be one of my happy places, and I still love it, but not quite as much lately. Maybe it was the jelly fish sting from last year or the tiny organisms sometimes called “sea lice” that get caught in my swimsuit and make me itch for days. Still, the ocean is powerfully refreshing – just breathing the ocean air helps.

Here are some ocean photos. The last one is a painting I did many years ago:

Me and the ocean years ago

Walking donuts

Fully Moon Over the Ocean

Spheres on the Ocean

Now, my happy place is likely to have a lot of trees. Even if I’m in the house, I want trees around the house, you know, outside. Not necessarily growing IN the house, though that is possible. A tree house would be nice, like the ewoks have, as long as I can build it without hurting the trees….

I went to look at videos of ewok village trees, like in the ending of Jedi, but the ending has fireworks. My happy place does not include fireworks unless they are quiet. Fireflies would definitely make me happy. Fireflies make me want to dance.

Speaking of happy place and sci fi, I read something surprising about William Shatner’s reaction to going into space for real. Stopping the stream to go find it. It came from FB. I hope it’s really true that he said this. FB didn’t sensor it, so maybe it is. If so, I admire his honesty.

Okay, so I started looking this up which took me way out of the stream of consciousness. Let me just mention that I have read elsewhere that he still has hope. I think the quote above came from his new book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder. Sounds like a great title.

Quotes taken out of context can be misleading. I guess the main point for this post is that your happy place can change. That’s a good thing. If we have plenty of imagination, our happy place can always be with us. Still, I hope we can create more happy places on the real planet Earth. Because right now, there is no planet B. And even if there was, Earth is our home sweet home.

Fireflies still exist somewhere… Next time I see them, I will dance.

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For more streams of consciousness about happy places,

visit our host, Linda Hill by clicking HERE.

SoCS: A Missing Cat Mystery, SciFi Distractions and NaNoWriMo

Today’s prompt is the word, “trick.”

The first thing that came to my mind was that I don’t like tricks. Not right now anyway. Mama Cat, the feral one, has disappeared. I could say she’s playing a trick on me, but that would be making light of something that is heavy on my heart.

Wednesday, I let her explore the rest of the house outside of her room. I didn’t follow her because then she would go right back to her room and hide. I figured after twenty something days, it would be okay for her to explore more of the house. I fed her at 9:30 am and saw her walking cautiously in and out of rooms while I was on the computer. Then I did some work on a bookcase on the side porch being careful to close the sliding glass door after I went through it. Around 11 am, I could not find Mama Cat.

My neighbor who has had a lot of experience with feral cat adoption thinks she could still be in the house. I’ve looked under every bed and piece of furniture, in every closet and cranny. I looked into the crawlspace and even up the chimney. I’ve set out food and put her used kitty litter in the front and back yard. I wonder if I had a momentary lapse and left the sliding glass door open for a few seconds and turned my back and she slipped out and then pushed her way through the screen porch door which doesn’t latch well. And I feel lousy. Awful. Terrible. I’m sorry I tricked her into the carrier to bring her to my house.

But I can’t change the past.

Is this another lesson to leave things alone? I thought she would be safer in my home than at the church her daughter roamed from and got trapped and carried away. If Mama shows back up at the church, I’ll probably let her stay there and go feed her every day if necessary.

I have resorted to distracting myself with science fiction in book and movie form. Star Trek, Star Wars, a couple of scary movies, sleep… And going out into the back yard at night calling “kitty kitty kitty, Mama Cat,” and praying.

This has been a year of bad luck for many people. I certainly have had bad luck with my feral cats. But it’s not over. I know things can work out when we think they won’t. I know we can find good things in this year.

Another distraction as we lean toward the end of the year will be NaNoWriMo. I’ve threatened so do it for a few years and now I have no excuse. So I signed up and will be writing a draft of a novel in the month of November. Will I add 50,000 words? Who knows? But I haven’t been writing much beyond this blog, so it will be an improvement. My novel which I’ve barely begun with 13,000 words is based on my parents, Betty and Jim. I’m taking a 99% break from Facebook until the end of November. It’s a big relief to be out of that fray as I refocus my attention on something I have some control over. I voted already. I’ve voiced my opinions, I try to live a good life.

When life gets to be too much,

please pass the scifi.

No Jedi mind tricks.

Beam me up Scotty.

I vant to be a Vulcan.

BREAKING NEWS!

I was finishing up this post on Friday night, wondering about a video, when David came out of his “den” and said,

“Mama Cat just ran out of our bedroom!

She went straight to her room. I grabbed a can of food and gave her some. She wouldn’t stop rubbing on my legs. She ate some, used the litter box and then started getting hyper. She had been hiding for over two days or she was stuck somewhere, so must have a lot of pent up energy, but seems to be okay.

WHAT A RELIEF!

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For more streams of consciousness, rules, and tricks, visit our host, Linda Hill at:

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Oct. 31/2020

SoCS: The Medium is the Message from Journalism, to Psychics, SciFi, and Faith

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is… “medium.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

When I read the prompt, I remembered something we learned in journalism class in the community college I went to before I decided to major in psychology. This was in the late 70s and I flirted with the idea of being a journalist. We went on a field trip to the newspaper and I was told that they better not hear of any of their journalists having their name on a petition, let alone, starting a petition, which I was known to do in my little community college where I got to be a big fish in a little pond. So I decided not to major in journalism because I might want to start a petition some time.

But back to the message which was, “The medium is the message.” That was a famous quote by Marshal McLuhan, probably in the early 70s or late 60s. When I saw the prompt and remembered the quote, I became curious and looked it up. That was at least an hour ago so I’m writing from memory in SoCS style and not breaking the rules. Not this time, anyway.

I now understand the quote, “The medium is the message,” a little better having read a brief summary that refreshed my memory. The message is made up of content and character. The medium of mainstream TV news, or even on-line news, has a sensationalizing character which affects the choice of words and content. Too much news can make us crazy. But we have a lot more control if we read the news, than if we watch one of the major networks at 6:30 PM. Oh, we can turn it off or change the channel, but reading or browsing gives us more choice about what we focus on. That’s why I try not to scroll on Facebook. Facebook is a medium which is part of media. Social media is plural. My FB page is a social medium.

Medium can refer to what type of substances I use to make art. I usually do acrylics, but have experimented with alcohol ink. Collage can be fun, then there’s mixed media.

Medium can be comfortable, an in between place on the thermostat or a setting on the stove. It’s the safest bet in most cases, unless you’re talking with a psychic medium.

I went to a psychic once. She said I had been imprisoned as a witch in a far ago past life, but that I was not a witch and never had been. I got this image of brick walls. I’d forgotten about that. It was like 15 years ago. There was a time when I thought I might become a Christian psychic. I bought this book about becoming a Christian psychic on my kindle but I seem to have lost it when I got my new phone. Never read it, but I’m still interested. I bet they (as in Christian psychics) recommend lots of preliminary prayers for protection. It’s not something I’d want to jump into without protection.

Maybe psychic ability is something science will be able to explain some day. There’s a reason why I can find a lost item (sometimes) when I shut my brain off and just tell my body to take me to it. We know stuff that we don’t know we know. Science feels safe when it can explain things. But some things do require faith. That reminds me of the movie, Contact, which is one of my very favorite movies.

In Contact, Jodie Foster plays a scientist who is an atheist. She has an experience with extraterrestrials but has no proof. Her friend and love interest is Palmer, a man of faith played by Matthew McConaughey. I love Ellie’s speech at 2 minutes into this clip. The movie (one medium) is based on a novel (another medium) written by Carl Sagan. Early in the story, they get a message from the extraterrestrials in another medium.

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For more takes on medium, and the rules, visit our SoCS host, Linda Hill at:

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Oct. 10/2020