Day 1376: What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have ____?

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have my readers and my blog to write every day?

What do you have to look forward to if I don’t have a good enough explanation for the inspiration behind today’s post title?

When I was a little girl, there was nothing I looked forward to more than my mother finally saying “yes” to my repeated requests that we get a cat. One thing I did NOT look forward to, back then,  were all the hospitalizations I needed because of my congenital heart condition. After my first major heart surgery, when I was 10 years old, I woke up from the anesthesia and said to my mother:

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have a cat?

After I fell back asleep, I woke up again and said to my mother:

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have a cat?

My mother looked forward and told me I could look forward to getting a cat after I came home from the hospital.

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have a photo of me and my first cat Tuffy to share with you all?

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have my iPhone to capture images I find interesting, while I am recovering from recent heart valve replacement surgery?

 

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have music to enjoy, like “Morph the Cat” by Donald Fagen?

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have comments about this post?

What do I have to look forward to if I don’t have gratitude for all those who helped me create this post and for you — of course! — no matter what you have to look forward to, here and now.

Day 292: A good word for repetitiveness

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a fear of repeating myself.

Why? I’m wondering this morning.

What’s so bad about repeating things?

Especially since I talk to people, repetitively — in this blog and elsewhere — about how we humans tend to repeat and relearn important lessons, as we grow. (See my first post about that,  here.)

Here’s an example of “good” repetitiveness:

When I really love a song, I want to play it, over and over again.

When I was a kid, I didn’t have the control to make that happen.  When  I loved a song,  I would listen to the radio for days, wishing that it would play.

Yearning for that song. Waiting to hear it.

I first remember doing that, when I was very young, with this song:

I remember doing that, when I was about 13 years old, with this song:

Nowadays,  if I want to listen to a song over and over again, I can!  And yesterday, I did just that, with this tune:

At this point in this post, I wanted to tell you about another instance of helpful repetitiveness, but here’s what I’m thinking:

Geesh!  “Repetitiveness” is such a difficult word to say and type.  What’s another good word for that concept?

So, I just I looked for another word, and here’s something interesting, people! Most of the synonyms for “repetitiveness” are negative:

Here’s the list I found:

• tedium
• colorlessness
• continuance
• continuity
• dreariness
• dryness
• dullness
• ennui
• evenness
• flatness
• humdrum
• identicalness
• invariability
• likeness
• monotone
• oneness
• repetitiousness
• repetitiveness
• routine
• similarity
• tediousness
• tiresomeness
• unchangeableness
• uniformity
• equability
• levelness
• monotonousness
• same old thing
• wearisomeness

(Thanks to thesaurus.com.)

However, (as usual) when I look at that list again, I see things differently.

Some of those words probably are negative to everybody (“wearisomeness,” “tediousness”).

Some of those words seem negative to me (“routine,” “”unchangeableness”), but not to others, I’m sure.

And some of those words are very positive, to me, right now (“oneness”).

However, I haven’t found a word I like, to replace “repetitiveness.”  I guess that’s a good enough word, today, for this blog post.

So where was I?

Oh, yes. I wanted to include another example of repetitiveness in this post, before I end it.

But first let me say this:  Repetitiveness, like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder.

Okay!

This is a photo of the first cat I got, when I was 10 years old:

 

Here’s what’s written on the back of that photo:

Here’s a photo of our new cat, Harley:

 

That concludes our blog post for today, everybody.

Thanks to Frank Sinatra, Norma Tanega, Donald Fagen, tough cats of all kinds,  repeaters everywhere, and to you, especially, for visiting today.