Laura Benedict's Blog, page 16
June 17, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Saturday Serendipity, 17 June 17
Serendipity makes a life worth living.
Random Bits and Bobs
We burn more fat if we exercise on an empty stomach. Sounds logical, but ugh.
Gymboree was one of my number one choices for adorable kids’ clothing. How sad that they’re filing for bankruptcy.
Gwyneth Paltrow and a day with Goop. In a galaxy far, far away.
I can’t bear bittersweet dog stories, but this one touched me so deeply I had to share.
Olivia de Havilland is finally a Dame at the age of 100. What took the Queen so long, I wo...
June 16, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Bingeing on Hulu’s National Treasure
Andrea Riseborough, Robbie Coltrane, and Julie Walters in National Treasure
Thursday was a bit of a down day. Our girl and her fiancé left for their summer gigs up east, and I simply crashed. I started out the day with good intentions, but by the time I finished my healthy yogurt, blueberry, and Udi’s granola breakfast, and found that I also ate my entire dark chocolate 
June 15, 2017
Daily Handbasket: In Which I Get Eyebrows
Oh, frabjous day.
I haven’t been a girly-girl since I had my first child. In fact, I don’t think I was ever issued a girly-girl card. Manicures and pedicures have never been a regular part of my life. At my last pedicure, the guy who was cleansing and lotioning my legs (is that even a thing at a pedicure?) acted very creepy. He kept staring into my eyes as he massaged my calf, and wiggled his eyebrows and hips. I was mortified for us both, and haven’t gone back. That was three years ago....
June 13, 2017
Daily Handbasket: After the Jump
I didn’t have a pic of an actual white rose, so I cheated a little. Still dewy, though. 
June 12, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Tiger Lilies on the Moon
Every year I take many pictures of the gorgeous orange tiger lilies as good friend gave me years ago. This year I wondered what they would look like if they grew on the moon.
A likely pair
Drama queen with lovely veins
Lonely girl
June 12th Words
Journal: 77 words
Long fiction: Revising
Short fiction: 0 words
Non-fiction: 0 words
Blogging: 61 words
Exercise: 61 minutes treadmill
The post Daily Handbasket: Tiger Lilies on the Moon appeared first on Laura Benedict.
Daily Handbasket: Why Must We Have Favorites?!
Decisions, decisions. Favorites feel impossible.
“I don’t have a favorite color, because I’m not a four-year-old.” Where did I hear that? A film, perhaps? As I recall, the delivery was pretty snarky, but it still made a huge impression on me. I felt so…liberated.
Why do we have to have favorite things? Maybe someone first asked that question as a conversation starter, and a thousand Kindergarten teachers and meme-quiz writers picked it up. I sometimes will ask about favorite things when I...
June 11, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Sunday, 11 June 17 –Emotions
All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you. —Rainer Maria Rilke
Emotion may be truthful, but it’s not necessarily the best measure of reality. Wishing you lots of discernment and clarity this week…
June 10, 2017
Daily Handbasket: 10 June 17
Random Bits and Bobs
Can this quiz guess where you’re from by your vocabulary? This has been around a while, but my family is obsessed with this NYT Quiz. My three most significant cities were Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The Kentucky part is dead-on for me. Don’t know where the Little Rock comes in.
Everyone else I know discovered Yoga With Adriane before I did. Love her gentle instructions. Here’s how I sometimes start my morning.
June 8, 2017
Daily Handbasket: A Testing Kind of Day
Thursday started early, and is ending a bit late. Long days make me grouchy, even when they end with my favorite local pizza restaurant, and chocolate soft serve from Dairy Queen. (Available ONLY on Thursday, which I don’t quite understand.) The electrician arrived at 7:00 a.m. to repair some squirrel-chewed wires and a bad socket. I would tell you how many weeks I’ve been without an oven, but it would embarrass us both. We also no longer have to plug in the microwave a long counter away.
“I’...
Daily Handbasket: Strangers at My Door
Intrepid, sweet Charlie doesn’t know any strangers.
If you hang out with me on social media, i.e. Facebook or Instagram, you know Tuesday afternoon and much of Wednesday was spent with stranger dogs. Strangers, as in not my dogs.
When Walt and Charlie (I only found out their names later) first showed up, I tried to chase them out of the yard. We get quite a number of strays out here in the country, and a few live pretty hard. These two hung around for a long while before we approached the...
