Somethin' else, I have always looked forward to getting older. I'll be 70 on my next birthday and can barely wait for it to come... I had a rough time as a teenager and young adult, and a palm reader told me (and showed me on my hand) that life would get better as I got older. As soon as she said it I knew she was right. I knew in my core that getting older would be good for me. Sometimes I've used this thinking as a crutch to avoid things, but not too often...

And this isn't to imply in any way that the connection to younger or certain ages/eras is worse or better than what I experience, it just seems foreign to me and I think it's because my thoughts are on getting older.

Just wonderin', has anyone had a palm reading that's come true?

Yes :)

So much so, too, that I actually came across a red leather model of a hand with lines on it -- explaining how one can read your palm. I keep my red leather palm thingy in the visor of my tiny car (for good luck). :bow:

https://www.psychicsight.com/blog/wp...12/08/Palm.jpg

Not a palm reading, but a one-hour tarot reading, yes. She told me about my whole life. She was very specific, with time lines and everything. She told me about major events that have all come true, even some surprising ones that, at the time, I told her could not possibly come true. She warned me about my crazy 7-year girlfriend and warned me not to hook up with her (and I should have followed that advice). She told me about Dixon. She even told me I would end up living with a man for a long time, and I told her, "You know I'm a lesbian, right?" and she said of course, but nonetheless, that was the case, and that it would be a good relationship. And look, here I am, living with the boy. She recorded the entire reading on a cassette tape, and I keep meaning to listen to it again.

Nutrafol, ladies. I lose hair with stress. It works but it's expensive and it takes a couple months before I saw anything at all. With all the stress I'm going through now, I've noticed that I've started to lose more again. I'm considering bumping my usage up until I can breathe a little better. Seriously, check it out.

I don't necessarily "assign" an age to anyone but, yes, unless I know differently, I read posts as if they were written by someone with the same life references as me and I do feel younger than my chronological age, especially as I creep towards 50 (just a meager 7 months now).

There are certain things I've looked forward to since childhood, like the big pause, but no one told me anything about dry cycles. Rude!!!

This is soooo PNW. I miss it a lot.

Sleeping Pods in Stations at Tokyo 😪 & Fantastic Robot Cafe 🤖 ☕️
 

DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE ROBOT CAFES IN JAPAN?
 

Randomly Posting Stuff cause you feel like it.
 

I saw a young woman in the apt building hall with a tshirt on and it said.

"I READ BOOKS AND I DRINK TEA and I KNOW STUFF"

I smiled when I saw it as I thought it was cute. Then I gained a grin when I thought how nice that would have been on an older woman. I know I could not stop myself from saying, "I bet you do honey". Went back in my apt grinning.

Sweater Weather
 

Today was windy and rain drizzled all afternoon.

“I hated every minute of training. But I said to myself, Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a Champion.”

The greatest of all time, Muhammad Ali.

“Float like a butterfly,
Sting like a bee.”
Cassius Clay
(Muhammad Ali).

The trees lining the basalt canyons in our area are just gorgeous: yellows, oranges, burnt reds. It’s so beautiful here, lately.

Randomly Posting Stuff Cause you feel like it.
 

I just watched ceremony on our Canadian Rememberance day for all the men and women who over the years have helped defend our country of Canada and joined with other countries to keep freedom for us all. My grandfather was a pow in ww 1 and my father was a naval sailor in ww2. I am glad they both came out alive .

Is It a Crush or Have You Fallen Into Limerence?
 

Is It a Crush or Have You Fallen Into Limerence?

How an intense longing for a romantic connection can lead to a serious addiction.

By Amanda McCracken

For most people, crushes come and go.

But for others, the longing can last years and become addictive. A spark of interest turns into obsessive rumination sustained by a pernicious cocktail of hope and doubt. This is not a crush. This is limerence.

Limerence is a state of overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocation from another human, known as a limerent object (LO), who is often perceived as perfect but unavailable.

This may sound similar to the lyrics of a Taylor Swift love song, a scene in “The Great Gatsby,” or the lines in a Shakespeare sonnet. The experience of limerence is timeless, but the term is relatively new.

In 1979, Dorothy Tennov, an experimental psychologist and professor at the University of Bridgeport, coined the term limerence in her book “Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love,” based on a decade of research and several hundred case studies on romantic attachment.

What differentiates limerence from a crush or love is the intensity, an emotional roller coaster that fluctuates from euphoria to despair. Giulia Poerio, a psychologist and mind-wandering researcher at the University of Sussex in England, said, “Any sign of rejection can make somebody hit a low, and any sign of interest can make somebody hit a high.” It’s an endless mind game of, “She loves me, she loves me not.”

Limerents, deeply fearful of rejection, allow their self-esteem to rest in the hands of an LO who may not even know they exist. The LO is most often a friend, colleague, or stranger met in passing. It can also be someone with whom you’ve had a brief romantic encounter that feels unresolved, explains Dr. Poerio, especially if the LO continues to leave breadcrumbs.

Sue Crump, a 67-year-old volunteer at a mental health charity shop in Sheffield, England, said for 18 months, she obsessively watched YouTube videos featuring her LO, a much younger, married singer she’d briefly met a handful of times. “I fantasized about a relationship with him and read things into texts and online messages he sent in reply to my own.” She turned to a limerence support group on Facebook soon after the isolation of the pandemic lockdown made her longing worse. “It made me realize I was not alone, and I was not going mad,” said Ms. Crump.

Limerence is nourished by replaying memories and rehearsing future interactions. “There’s a fair amount of mental time travel,” said Dr. Poerio, who asked survey respondents to write descriptions of these fantasies. “It’s often not romantic or sexual in nature. It is very much about wanting to feel loved and cared for.”

Chris Gregory, 53, a certified yoga instructor in Denver, recalls first experiencing limerence in high school. “I would develop insanely obsessive crushes on women and then not pursue them. Then I would be crushed by them not responding the way the scene had played out in my own head and heart. I felt unworthy,” he said. Gregory continued to experience limerence throughout his adult life, he said, but mistook it for love.

Limerence toward one person can last many years, even while you’re in a relationship with someone else, explains Dr. Poerio. However, most people are serially limerent, having one LO after another, stuck chasing the same dopamine high felt in the initial stages of love.

The Brain’s Reward Cycle

Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author of “Unwinding Anxiety,” describes limerence as an addiction. “When somebody’s on a diet, all they obsess over is food. So you can think of this as a person diet,” said Dr. Brewer. “They get stuck in the fantasies that are future-oriented and regrets that are past-oriented.”

If the trigger is loneliness or boredom, for example, the resulting behavior is anticipating reciprocity from the LO, added Dr. Brewer. That reciprocity never comes, but the anticipation yields the reward, dopamine.

Dr. Brewer added, “Dopamine is jet fuel. It’s what gets us motivated to do something” — even if doing something only means anticipating. The uncertainty, or intermittent reinforcement, of the occasional message from the LO keeps our brains hooked. “It’s gasoline poured on the fire,” said Dr. Brewer. We begin to mistake anxiety for excitement and excitement for joy.

Culture as a Catalyst

There are a growing number of online limerence support groups and informational blogs. Psychologists and social scientists aren’t surprised.

Alexandra Solomon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago and host of the “Reimagining Love” podcast, said, “There’s a whole cultural element here about the way online dating and hookup culture create a climate of low accountability and foster insecure attachment. There’s a kind of collective insecurity.”

The American Perspectives Survey found that almost a third of single Americans (roughly equal between men and women) have been ghosted by someone they were dating. The lack of communication common after physical intimacy is enough to drive many people to feel anxious, if not limerent.

With a dating pool that seems infinite, people feel expendable. Being ghosted can create an open tab inside your brain. “It’s easy to feel like there’s no obligation to close a loop,” Dr. Solomon said. “You can start to project onto that person a whole bunch of what ifs. It’s easy to idealize somebody you’ve just met.”

While people experiencing limerence often put their LO on a pedestal, social media further encourages idealization. Individuals who exchange Instagram profiles in a bar instantly have access to years of curated data they can use to build up the other person in their minds, explains Prof. Jennifer Douglas, a psychologist and a clinical professor at Stanford.

When is it a problem?

Most people experience some degree of limerence, said Dr. Poerio, but it’s problematic when it’s uncontrollable. Dr. Poerio uses the analogy of a person whose mind has been hijacked. “It interferes with your ability to have meaningful, real-world relationships because you are sustaining a relationship in your mind. It’s a normal process that’s gone slightly wrong.”

Vincent Harris, 49, a freelance writer in Greenville, S.C., said he lost his first marriage and a job because of the presence of a limerent object he considered his soul mate. Mr. Harris met his latest limerent object through social media during the pandemic.

“For three years, I felt like I was living under a cloud. I had no motivation other than to hear from her,” Mr. Harris said. “I was paralyzed with fear that if I reached out to her, I would say the wrong thing. As she lessened contact with me, I became more desperate and unbalanced.” In May 2023, he was medically treated for a second mental breakdown.

How do you stop intense longing?

Cultivate self-compassion and a more purposeful life: Dr. Brewer recommends practicing Loving Kindness Meditation to develop self-compassion and create connections with others who don’t require anything in return. Brain scans show doing this meditation deactivates the part of the brain active during longing or worrying, according to Dr. Brewer.

You can also get involved in grounding activities with people that bring you joy and fulfillment. For Mr. Gregory, becoming more present helped him manage his limerence. Mr. Gregory attributes working in yoga education and becoming sober to helping him cultivate honest, open relationships with people.

Disrupt the fantasy: Brandy Wyant, a psychotherapist in Arlington, Mass., who specializes in helping patients with O.C.D., describes her lifelong history with limerence and the ten-week treatment that diminished her ruminating in a published case study on limerence.

One of the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques that worked for Ms. Wyant was listing all the ways she was trying to seek physical or emotional closeness to her LO. That might be daydreaming, re-listening to voice mail messages or playlists, rereading texts, rehearsing messages, or looking at pics. She said to rank what’s easiest to hardest to stop, and then start with the easiest.

One strategy she uses with her clients to de-idolize their LO is listing reasons the LO is not perfect. Another list includes ways in which the LO and the patient are not compatible.

Name it to tame it: You can deliberately interrupt the habit by calling it out — “Hello, limerence” — and paying attention (for example, through journaling) to what it feels like when you’re in that state of longing. Recognizing the feelings of self-denigration, anxiousness, and depression will lead to disenchantment, said Dr. Brewer.

You should also believe you deserve more. As Dr. Tennov wrote, “Limerence can live a long life sustained by crumbs.” Don’t let it starve you of time, energy and self-esteem. It may distract you from the emotionally available loving partner right in front of you.

Amanda McCracken is a freelance journalist and essayist writing a book about limerence based on her research and personal experience, which she discussed in her TEDx talk, “How longing keeps us from healthy relationships” and podcast “The Longing Lab.”

@Orema 😃
 

Thanks for posting that article about limerence! I was just reading about that a few weeks ago. I personally feel that Valentine’s Day plays a role in limerence, lol.


**************

And, I think The Detroit Lions play today. I’m a big fan of the Detroit Lions: been reading a bunch of excellent articles written about your football club, Orema. Sure hope THE LIONS win their game today. If they do, they will be one step closer to winning the Vince Lombardi Trophy!!!

GOOOOOOO LIONS! :cheerleader: :cheer:

Thanks, Kätzchen! Yes, we're very excited for the home team. Everybody and their mama is having a watch party today. We're hoping to make it to the bowl and hopefully against the Chiefs (that's what people tell me, though I have no idea), but we're thrilled just to make it this far. I may go out and do some shopping and get a hair cut during the game.

:cheerleader: :cheer:

Overall all 4 games were well played! Honestly I was all in for the Lions vs Chiefs!

Congrat’s to you!

It would have been fun going up against the Chiefs. We’re in a bit of a funk from losing but we’re so proud of our Lions. What a year!

I’m rooting for the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Here’s hoping y’all win!

Bluebird Botanicals (fabulous hemp products)
 

I just found a better brand of CBD today, in the health and beauty aid section of my favorite grocery store. I thought I’d leave a link here for others to check out. I like this company (ethical & responsible ). I actually paid $44 for a bottle of the cbd-cbg tincture blend and will probably order from the company because it’s cheaper, to me, to buy it directly from the Bluebird Botanical company. I love how hemp products help me to feel better. :bow:

https://bluebirdbotanicals.com/

Caitlin Clark Big Ten All-Time Leading Scorer
 

Caitlin Clark moves into second on NCAA all-time scoring list, becomes Big Ten all-time leading scorer.

https://i.postimg.cc/8chwPBTd/USATSI...5-1024x683.jpg

A glimpse into Clark’s historic day

Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan had a famous bit of logic: scoring 32 points a game was easy because it was just eight points a quarter. With just a little offensive aggression — only five shot attempts — Clark outdid that math by two points Wednesday.

Clark scored 10 in the first quarter with a pair of deep threes and four free throws to get her close to the Big Ten scoring record. After a brief rest to start the second quarter, she immediately scored on a layup. And with just under 5 minutes to go in the first half, she broke the Big Ten scoring record on a layup.

But with all the attention and build-up to her game Wednesday, there was no mention of it happening and no reaction at Welsh-Ryan Arena, despite it being mostly made up Iowa fans.

Iowa fans started waiting in line for general admission seats at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Nearly three hours before the 7 p.m. CT tipoff, the line to get in stretched down the street. Northwestern only has two sections with assigned seating for women’s games, with one being the upscale Wilson Club — so it created a bit of a logjam for a massive crowd. (Northwestern’s women’s team averages 1,671 fans a game.)

When Clark arrived to warm up, she was met with a nearly full house and fans were shrieking as she was announced with the starters and walked to the bench at the game’s end.

Clark carries with her the vibe of a barnstorming basketball hero, but she didn’t have a particularly memorable first half, despite scoring 18 points. She went 4-for-11 from the field, missing 5 of 7 3-point shots. She did go 8-for-8 from the line, though people weren’t lining up for the better part of a chilly day to watch her hit free throws. It wasn’t Clark’s best shooting performance, but she did a good job of getting her teammates involved early and leading Iowa to the big win.

“I didn’t shoot it very well from 3 tonight,” Clark said, “and I’ve been shooting the ball pretty well, so you’re due for one of those nights here and there. I was just a little short. So, you know, that happens. But I got to the free-throw line and hit all 10 of my free throws. That’s just kind of what you have to do.” — Jon Greenberg, Chicago sports columnist

This excerpt is from the The Athletic.

The Attachment Project
 

https://www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-theory/

****************
****************
****************

So, on the podcast for Dating, there is an episode about attachment styles and do they matter, in dating.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000552969114

————————————————————.

So, I did a google search on attachment theory and came up with the link at the top of this post. The Attachment Project is a community of social scientists who study attachment processes and on their website you can take their test to find out your attachment style.

I’m doing my own type of research into my own attachment style and trying to help myself as my guy and I weather our first relationship issue, which involves us both and our attachment styles.

I thought leaving the Dating episode link on attachment styles and if it matters, and the link to The Attachment Project might help others who are curious about their own attachment style and what steps you might could take to improve your attachment style and life.

:bow:

Nikki Giovanni, Poet
 

“If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand anybody else.”

https://i.postimg.cc/dtkVFbYs/IMG-0017.webp

"When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain."
-Andrea Gibson

Things change
 

There used to be a time when I’d do an image search for “lesbians” and the results would be mostly pornographic material. I’d have to do deep searches to find the kind of images I wanted.

I did a search today looking for some BF images, and this link with free images was one of the first ones to pop up. The only requirement to use this photo is to include the link with the photo.

https://i.postimg.cc/N03TG0R1/portra...g-ceremony.jpg
https://www.freepik.com/photos/lesbian

Randomly Posting Stuff
 

Early this morning they showed "Lady Sings the Blues" after years of only seeing it once it made my night. Diana Ross is amazing as Billie Holiday. Noone else could have done that part as well as Miss Ross. Her voice was always captivating but her acting is untouchable. Happy to see this wonderful movie again.

Randomly Posting Stuff Cause you feel Like it.
 

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO ALL THE LADIES WHO HAVENT BEEN TOLD YET!!!

The Remarkable Power of Holding Hands with Someone You love
 

The remarkable power of holding hands with someone you love
Studies show that holding hands can reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. But its impact on brain activity suggests something more profound is going on.

Advice by Trisha Pasricha, MD

https://i.postimg.cc/ZYLhKKfh/AV754-...3-OFW6-GR4.gif
(Washington Post illustration; iStock)

Q: I’m curious why humans hold hands. Is there a biological reason it’s such a common part of relationships across so many cultures?

A: Holding hands exerts striking effects on our emotional state, especially when it’s with a romantic partner: It can help lower blood pressure, reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. A 2021 experiment confirmed the soothing effect of holding a spouse’s hand while watching scenes from horror films such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” The simple gesture can limit the impact stress has on our autonomic nervous system, which regulates unconscious bodily functions such as pupil dilation. When people feel they are under threat, holding the hands of a loved one calms parts of the brain responsible for vigilance and emotional response.

But the research also suggests something far more profound about our need for connection.

“If you really understand hand-holding — what it is and how it has its effects — you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being,” said James Coan, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. “It expresses all the things that we are for each other.”

The hand-holding experiments

Coan and his team have conducted several experiments on the effects of holding hands. The first set involved 16 married women who were placed in an MRI brain scan and confronted with the threat of an electric shock. The brain scans showed that when these women held a stranger’s hand, it lowered the stress of being shocked.

But the effect was even more pronounced when they held their husbands’ hands. Notably, the quality of the relationship mattered too. The benefit of holding hands was strongest among women with the highest scores on marital quality tests. Later studies showed reduced stress in other kinds of relationships, including people who were dating or were just friends.

According to Coan, the findings suggest that holding hands actually helps the brain offload the work of confronting stress. So when you reach out to hold a loved one’s hand in a difficult time, it’s like you’re sharing the burden with them.

Why do people hold hands?

During the experiments, Coan and his team kept bumping into an odd finding. Emotional regulation had been established by many in the field to be managed by the prefrontal cortex. It’s the part of the brain that helps us control our instincts and see reason — telling you, “Relax, it’s only a movie!” when you’re watching a horror film, Coan explained.

Coan hypothesized that holding the hand of someone close to them would cause an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex as the participant relaxed and felt more secure. With more activity in the prefrontal cortex, he thought, less emotional activity — like those involved in fear or anxiety — would occur elsewhere in the brain.

But that’s not what happened.

When couples held hands, Coan did observe a decrease in all the emotional regions of the brain as he had expected. However, in experiment after experiment, there was no associated increase in prefrontal cortex activity — instead, there was a decrease.

What was going on?

At first, Coan couldn’t account for what part of the brain was responsible for the participants’ stress relief when they held hands. It was as if people were getting snacks out of the vending machine without paying any money.

Finally, he arrived at a new conclusion: What if he had gotten the baseline and experimental states backward? Maybe the brain didn’t perceive holding hands as something new he was adding to a baseline of being alone. What if our neuropsychological baseline was feeling connected to someone? Perhaps feeling alone was the deviation all along — one that would require the metabolically expensive activation of our prefrontal cortex to cope.

“To the human brain, the world presents a series of problems to solve,” Coan said. “And it turns out being alone is a problem.”

He called this phenomenon social baseline theory: It’s the idea that the human brain expects access to relationships and interdependence because without them, the world’s problems are mammoth and we need to expend so much more physiological and psychological effort. But when we know we’re not alone — as is conveyed through holding hands — it’s as if we can access snacks freely with no vending machine at all.

The complexities of the human hand

Hands are a key part of how we explore the world from the moment we’re born — and for good reason. Newborn babies are nearsighted (they can’t see beyond a few inches from their faces) and also can’t process colors. But our hands — even before we develop any motor skills — can process sensory information when they brush against the objects around us. Our palms are a tiny fraction of our skin’s total surface area, yet they hold about 15 percent of our tactile nerve fibers. Because of that incredibly high nerve density, our hands can discern between the myriad stimuli the world offers: a warm muffin, a soft puppy’s fur or cold raindrops.

Also, the palms and especially fingertips contain special nerve endings called Meissner corpuscles. These give palms the power to react to the finest of touch even at a depth of less than 10 micrometers — or about the width of a strand of a spider’s web. They allow our hands to process Braille and are the reason we immediately sense if something is slipping so we can tighten our grasp.

We use touch to communicate our feelings as well. A 2009 study observed 124 pairs of strangers: one was blindfolded and the second was asked to convey an emotion to the other simply using touch. Participants were able to recognize — without ever hearing or seeing the other person — emotions such as gratitude, disgust, happiness and fear. In a recent study from the University of London, participants were able to correctly identify another person’s emotion just by looking at their hands without seeing their face.

What I want my patients to know

During the pandemic, when I was caring for hospitalized patients in the days when even shaking hands was unfathomable, many confided in me a deeply felt void from the lack of physical touch with other humans. One morning, I held an elderly woman’s hand in the emergency room as my resident prepared to do an exam, and the woman said, “It feels like you’re the first person I’ve touched in months.” I still think of that encounter and of that visceral hunger for contact many of us didn’t know existed until it was taken away.

Don’t be afraid to offer a hand to someone who is struggling — we’re clearly wired for it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/welln...ands-benefits/

Love is in the air (spring is nearly here) 🎉🎉🎉🎉
 

For the first time since I was seriously hurt back in November of 2016, I booked out my first vacation. My first vacation from work in over 8 years. I’m turning 65 in May and will take time off to get Medicare up and operational for my medical needs, then I’m staying home to jump start my summer by spending every day at the gym to establish a good workout and kick start my way to better health.

My sweetie and I are going to disappear for a bit too. ☺️😁🥰😍❤️❤️❤️❤️

https://i.postimg.cc/8PgxtbyK/IMG-0034.jpg

I love abstract line art.

Everything else is icing on the cake
 

Don’t think it can’t happen again.

https://i.postimg.cc/PfmZFZsm/IMG-0047.webp

Buddhist Chinthe Lions | *** Om ***
 

https://images1.bonhams.com/image?sr...&autosizefit=1


A very rare pair of monumental fahua Buddhist lions on stands
Late Ming Dynasty, 16th/17th century

From Bonham's website:


To read more about Chinthe Buddhist Lions (LINK)

Randomly Posting Stuff
 

A VERY HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMANS DAY TO ALL WOMEN.