3 questions and an F word

As regular readers know, I have an older sister. Not much older, just over a year, but older is older, right? Deb, my slightly older sister, is a blogger over at Deb’s World and the other day she wrote a post, which led me to writing one in the same format. It felt strange and strangely uncomfortable because it isn’t the kind of writing I generally do, but I did it anyway, because … well, because boundary pushing is sometimes a good thing to do.

So here I am, about to start writing another post copying another format she sometimes uses – the 3 questions and an F word of the title of this post.

The three questions are:

1. What’s made you happy (I’m not sure if that’s ever, or this week, but I’ll work that out as I write).
2. What’s made you sad (ditto)
3. What’s made a difference (again, I could go back to her post and check out what this is supposed to mean, or I could do what I’m going to do and that is make up my own mind about it. It’s my blog after all!)
4. The fourth thing is to find an F word that has some meaning to me (possibly mis-remembering this bit of the prompt … but, my blog and all that).

Deb has all the details on her most recent post: Friday Feels: 3 questions and an F word. Not sure what the Friday Feels bit is about, but it’s Friday, so I’ll go with that.

So, what’s made me happy?

Family. My eldest son came to stay and we drove a few hours to spend a few days with my mother and sister and it was fabulous to be together. We laughed, and we cried, and we watched my granddaughter’s footy grandfinal on the telly and heard her mother yelling from Tasmania. One of the best bits was getting my photography studio properly sorted and getting to try out the new lighting set up on my son (who did all the sorting).

And what’s made me sad?

Goodbyes. Not, I hasten to add, that I’ve had to say any permanent goodbyes of late, but there’s always a twinge of sadness when we have to say ‘see ya’.

What’s made a difference?

Wallpaper and paint. We bought a house just over a year ago and have been taking our time in working out how we want it to look. We had the loungeroom painted earlier in the year. Clouded Sky. That’s the name of the paint colour. A few months ago, we added some wallpaper to the family room, and yesterday we had the little sitting room painted. Bean Counter. That’s the name of the paint colour. It’s made such a difference!

An F-word

Face-mask. I had never used a face-mask before the weekend, but Deb said we needed a ‘glow up’ and so bought us both one to apply. It was slimy and cold and felt disgusting for the fifteen minutes it was on my face. I was distinctly uncomfortable and I think Deb was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the relaxing experience she had imagined it would be.

After peeling the slimy wet thing from my face and gingerly rubbing the leftover gloop in with my fingertips, I have to admit that my face was glowing. It has continued to glow in the days since. So much so, that I’m considering doing it again sometime in the next 60 years.

So there you have it: 3 questions and an f-word. And no mention of my newly published book Enacting a pedagogy of kindness, available now from the Routledge site (as well as loads of other sites that sell good books). I did well not to mention that, didn’t I?