My Good Vibrations

Jazz tagged me with the "5 things that raise your vibrations" meme so I thought it would be fun to do and here it is:

1. Coming up with a fun creative solution to something. I recently posted about my old black wicker shelf that I wanted to re-use in my new foresty green bathroom and how I thought I was going to have a big to-do about figuring out what color to paint it. I had picked bronze as the frames for my mirrors and pictures in there and happened to have some bronze acrylic paint and dry-brushed right over the black paint. It looks great. One of my favorites was this frame below:

This picture has a great story behind it. I posted about it before, but it's such a minor part of the other post, instead of linking I'll just paste the pertinent part here:

That painting is a painting of my Dad that his friend Henrik Ravn (a Dane) painted when they were working in the Dominican Republic together back in '72. Dad said they would hang out every night and drink and talk. Dad imagined that canvas must be about 1/4 inch thick because Henrik just kept painting over and over it.

What I didn't mention in that other post was that after my Dad died, this picture was one of the things I shipped to Texas. When I pulled it out of the box (its original box - Dad had never taken it out of the box except to show someone every once in a blue moon) the upper left corner of the frame was missing. There was just a bright white square there. I just assumed something had happened during shipping and shook the box but nothing came out. If you look at the picture again you will see that the corner is different. At least it's not a bright white square. I used my exacto knife on some packing peanuts like this one:

I then glued them on and painted them with some gold acrylic paint. I was quite proud of myself and no one has ever noticed until I pointed it out. I really get a kick out of stuff like that.

2. When the music is perfect. I really, really love when the music is just right for the situation. I wish I could program all the background music for my life, but I can't. That's why it's SO GREAT when it just happens. I can be playing pool and the perfect song comes on and it just gives me a boost. It improves my mood and my game. I love it when I'm in a posh hotel bar and someone unexpectedly starts playing great standards on a grand piano. It's hard to explain, but if I'm doing something and the just right song comes on, it's as though a sense of euphoria washes over me. Yeah, it IS hard to explain. I give up.

3. The ocean. I love the sight, sound and smell of the ocean. My absolute favorite way to enjoy the ocean is to sit on a nice hotel balcony with a cooler full of beer on ice and my binoculars. I can spend hours and hours sitting there and looking. And I have - in Hawaii, Virginia, North Carolina and Mexico. And I loved it. Those Corona commercials? I totally get them. And I don't even like Corona.

4. Vacationing with my bestest buddy Lolo. When Lo and I vacation together everything is SO relaxing and fun. We have some sort of perfect vacation rapport. We do stuff together and do stuff apart. After we do stuff apart, we meet back up and regale each other with crazy stories. We laugh about everything and never get on each other's nerves. If one of us starts to tire, the other will infuse them with energy. We look so odd together people always ask, "How do you two know each other?" Then we always look at each other and burst out laughing. It's a goofy story. We have such a good time together. We e-mail all the time and talk on the phone a lot, but our visits are the best. We only saw each other twice last year and I won't see her until October this year (unless...). But I sure love our visits.

5. My Sweetie. After many tries, I finally found the perfect person to spend my life with. We have so much fun together. We turn the mundanity of day-to-day life into a goofy fun adventure. We love to make each other laugh and are both pretty good at it. We have been together for 12 years and married for 6 1/2. Every day seems to be better than the day before. We are alike in the ways that matter and very un-alike in the ways that matter too. In most ways one of us will have a strength to counterbalance the weakness in the other. When we do find something that we BOTH suck at, it's just funny.

So those are the 5 things that top my list for raising my vibrations. I also love a good cream sauce. If a menu says something like "...in a sherry garlic cream sauce," I will order it. And bisques. Mmmmmm, bisques. Especially Lobster bisque. Speaking of food, today I had a fancy version of "the perfect lunch." I had a leftover KFC chicken leg, some havarti with dill and two black plums. Yummy!