Pretty hilarious

Most of our lives we are told that we have to look a certain way. Men are supposed to be stoic and show little emotion. Women (at least from my experience) are told that a smile is their daily required mask. As a child anything less than simple grins and you'll have men and women yelling at you from their backyards about how a smile doesn't cost anything or how you're going to look so much prettier if you smile.  I find it so odd having complete strangers insisting that they get a smile out of me.  I have no emotional connection to them and yet they feel they are personally put out that I'm not giving them the comfort of a smile.  I'm not a very confrontational person (for the most part), so I tend to give in and smile. I've had people come out of their yards and talk to me about how I need to smile because "it isn't as bad as it seems"... as if they know how a stranger's life can go from day to day. Let's keep in mind this is when I was a kid walking to and from school so I had to be in front of a lot of monitoring busybodies the whole way.

 The only expression should be of a pleasant disposition without being overly emotional.  To this day I find my default emotion is a smile. This has been a problem at times when a grin isn't really appropriate but it is my go to facial expression. The only time that I would feel free would be making funny faces.   I would stand in front of the mirror and make funny faces at myself. I would crack myself up laughing for as long as I could. So let me tell you how excited I was to find a group of women exactly like me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrettyGirlsUglyFaces

These women understand how fun manipulating your face can be. The standards of beauty are tossed  aside for a while to make something of pure joy. It reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously and we get to see the spectacularly different ways our facial muscles can move.

I highly recommend this to anyone that is feeling down about themselves or how they look.  You can always make yourself look like you're happy. Or you can make a funny face and be happy.  Good luck finding a new way to move your face today.

Closing tabs

My main source of mess in my life is paper clutter. My main source of online clutter is open tabs.  I have a to do list a mile long (if not longer). I use Chrome and they don't even tell you how many tabs you have when you push over 100. They just give you a smile :)

Which frankly I love. But I'm giving up my smiley face in favour of a streamlined life. Most of my tabs come from a place of distraction. I'm looking around for interesting things in life and find out about 13 new ones.  So rather than loose track of any of these new experiences I start delving into the minutia. Today I was doing 'A' which reminded me of 'B', so I had to make a note of 'C' because it is directly related to 'A'.... and so on until you find yourself at 'F' and feeling really pleased to have finished 'D' and 'E' today because you were going to need to do that before doing 'C' to change your 'A'. 

Right now I'm pleased to say I'm down to 79 tabs from my 81 earlier today. Everyday a little more by having a little less. 

Reunited roommates

I'm so glad to have everyone home. Yesterday, after spending a month visiting family, my roommate Maddy returned home to Nova Scotia. During her absence the house has felt a bit out of whack, awaiting the reemergence of her bombastic shouts. 

We started out as 5 strangers thrown together by fate to rent a house, and have become a family. A great place to find all sorts of wonderful people visiting, supporting and encouraging each other through life, and chatting about a variety of topics.  

You know it is a good day when laughter and music increases in the house 10 fold. 

My living arrangement sounds terrible to some people but works for me.  I love the noise, shared ideas, and all the new and exciting distractions that come with this many roommates. And yet there is still time to find a quiet moment alone with your thoughts.  Somehow our schedules just work out to give us enough time apart that we don't get sick of each other. 

We all have a common goal of making every dollar count so we join forces when buying food and house supplies. The house doesn't need much restocking because we will buy most things in bulk to last. Often we set aside money at the beginning of a month and then see how long we can go without collecting again. Longest run so far was 8 months, February-September.  By pooling money everything is equal.  We have a similar approach to food. We discuss some possible meal ideas and pool money every week-2weeks to pick up supplies. We not only save by sharing expenses, we also ensure we have no waste of spoiled food.  When buying fresh fruits and vegetables we can buy a variety and quantity that would go bad if left to one person. Humans tend to get tired of the same thing (or thrive on routine so who knows) so by getting a wide range we ensure that everyone is getting an assortment of nutrients and manageable proportions. A lot of us have tight work schedules, so when we have a bunch of left overs we make up ready to grab lunches for the morning rush (whenever our "morning" happens to be).