My boss was very happy when I presented her with my project plan for the week last Monday. I was very excited to get to work, all was good. But then disaster struck. Don’t you hate technology sometimes?   All this week I  have been unable to upload photos to my blog. Many, many bad words were spoken about WordPress which I now need to take  back. Yesterday in desperation I updated my software and oh joy, I can now upload photos. Yay!!

I had a couple of projects in mind which I was going to show you  during the week but never mind, flexibility and all that!  I will merely reschedule.

Project 1: 99 Things to Do

When I retired a dear friend gave me book called 99 Things to Do When You Have the Time. I have added a subtitle!

I absolutely love books like this. I have one called 365 in which you are supposed to record something every day for a year, like a diary or what you did in the garden, free writing….whatever you fancy. I think I got to page 15. I also have a lovely book that D2 gave me for Mother’s Day in Spain in 2014 – A Sentence a Day. Pretty self-explanatory, answer a simple question every day, repeat for three years   I have done this on and off over the years.  Maybe I’ll cheat and just fill in for the first three months of 2020!!

So the question  about books like 99 Things is “In what order do I do the 99 things?”

Do I start at number one and work through methodically?

Do I choose things that take my fancy at the time?

Do I open a page at random and do what ever activity is on that page?

I have decided to go with the first option. If I chose either of the other two options it would make me anxious that I could have chosen a different one, a better one!  I worry I will do all the ones that I like the look of, or are easy, and then not do the rest! History says this is the most likely thing to happen.

So here we go! I was quite excited to get started, not so excited when I saw the first three activities. An artist I am not!!I made a good decision on the order of doing the activities though, I would never do these first three  by choice. And I have to say it was fun and I was pretty happy with my results.

1. Draw a picture with your eyes closed

2. Make a self-portrait

3. Draw a picture of a friend (very happy with this picture of the lovely Mrs L)

4. Look up a word or phrase you have never used before and try using it.

This was fun! I posted it on my Facebook Reading group, asking for suggestions of words and phrases that are no longer in use. I got lots of great replies and had an interesting day looking up the meaning and origins of many of them. In times PSO (Pre-Self Isolation) I wouldn’t have had time to do that or if I had I would have had the niggling “I should be doing…..” in the back of mind.

I used some of them to write this little piece (suggested words in bold)

Forsooth, the sun is high in the sky and quafftide is fair upon us. Pray good folk, come join in much boisterous merrymaking! We may become gigglemugs and laugh and dance ‘til we are fair puckled!
But I beseech thee, do do not partake overmuch of Mistress Meg’s honey mead, lest thee become a valetry of common riff-raff!”

I am loving quafftide (when the sun is over the yard arm and it’s time for a drink!) and  fair puckled which means very tired. The self-auto kept changing puckled  to pickled which is a different thing altogether but would still work!

5. Look up the words to a song you half remember

My Dad had a beautiful tenor singing voice and I grew up to the songs of musicals – Carousel, My Fair Lady, South Pacific, Hans Christian Andersen. The song I loved hearing him sing most of all was Younger Than Springtime, Lieutenant Cable’s love song to Liat, a local girl. The depiction of interracial love  caused a big stir in the 50’s when the musical was released.

I could sing all of the songs of South Pacific off by heart as a child, but just recently I found myself humming Younger Than Springtime and I realised I couldn’t remember all the words .