Monthly Archives: July 2015

An Open Letter to Panasonic, Apple and Ziplock

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An Open Letter to Panasonic, Apple and Ziplock

Since it is true, I must report–
my phone cord’s always two feet short
of reaching from the wall connection
towards my office desk’s direction.
And Apple power cords, for heaven’s sake.
Could they make one that doesn’t break?

Why don’t Ziplocks really zip?
Why can’t I ever find the lip
to pull the damn thing easily closed?
Nothing’s as simple as supposed.
So to the fellows who design,
please listen to these words of mine:

This customer is getting miffed.
Please don’t hold her in short shrift.
Assure me that the fault’s not mine
by bettering your weak design.
Just make your flipping phone cords longer!
Ziplocks zippier, Mac cords stronger!

In the interim, I’ll use
tape and rubber bands and glues.
My power cord’s life they will assure
and keep my plastic bags secure.
I’ll shove my desk over on my own
to try to reach the blooming phone.

But finally I’m sure I’ll snap
and cease to buy your ill-formed crap.
So get my drift and make some changes.
A thing like this is what deranges
and drives us to cell phones, PC’s,
and covered bowls to store our cheese!!!!

Note:Since today’s prompt is a repeat from a year ago, in my earlier post, I repeated my response from a year ago.  I felt, however, that I owed you a fresh poem as well.  A half hour’s struggle with finding and installing a longer connection cord between my desk phone and the phone connector in the wallbox six feet away–finding the right cords in a tangle that wandered from desk behind display case, sculpture, TV tray rack and side table–led me to the above tirade.

Stepparents Day

She’s the lady who married your father.
He’s the fellow who married your mom.
Not really your actual parent,
like a date that’s set-up for the prom.
In other words, you didn’t choose them;
and also, they didn’t choose you.
But you now have each other as family.
There’s really not much you can do.

Sometimes you wind up as real buddies,
becoming a sort of strange friend.
Other times you feel resentful,
like you wish that their marriage would end;
and your dad would go back to your real mom,
or your mom would go back with your dad.
Then you realize that’s not really happening,
but only a dream that you had.

Then you notice your mom is now smiling
and your dad seems happier, too.
So you think you’ll just go with the flow now
and you give in and finally do.
You now have two happier families—
two places that welcome you in—
and decide that liking stepparents
is really not much of a sin.

Then you wonder why there is no day for
stepparents and grandparents, too,
and decide that this brand-new tradition
might just as well start now with you.
You declare July 1 to be chosen
as National Stepparents Day.
So even though it’s not official,
and the powers that be might say, “Nay,”

you throw on some burgers or hot dogs
and cook up a fresh apple pie
and buy your particular “steppie”
a nice box of candy or tie.
You tell her you know your dad’s happy
and tell her that you’re happy, too;
or tell him you’re glad your mom’s “single”
has turned into a table for two!

Let’s start up a national movement
to honor our stepparents now;
and ask for our step moms and dads and our grands
to come center stage for a bow!
So children all over this nation
can welcome their stepparents in
and acknowledge they’re part of the family,
exactly like regular kin.

A rerun, in response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Familial Feasts.”

Once again, a repeat prompt.  I’ve actually answered this question twice before, so if you haven’t read what I think about this topic in the past, Please go HERE to hear what I have to say!
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Advantage of Foresight.”

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Sculpture, Statues, Carvings

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http://ceenphotography.com/2015/07/02/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-sculptures-statues-carvings/

3 Quotes Challenge: Day Three

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When the cop pulled me over, he said, “Your eyes are red, have you been drinking?” I replied “Your eyes are glazed. Have you been eating donuts?” We laughed and laughed . . . I need bail money.
–Aunty Acid

Kalanchoe: Cee’s Flower A Day Challenge

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Version 2This vibrant kalanchoe shares planter space with hen and chicks in my garden.

See more flowers HERE

Three Quotations, Day 2

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In honor of my today’s reblog of Jan Wilberg’s hilarious essay on caring for her twin grandsons, I’m choosing Erma Bombeck as my quotable quoter today.  I don’t think my mother and two sisters and I missed one of her columns or books as I grew up and many a quip was read back and forth between us:

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen.  When they’re finished, I climb out.
–Erma Bombeck

When humor goes, there goes civilization!
–Erma Bombeck

My First Three Days as an Au Pair

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Jan could be the new Erma Bombeck. Who is Erma Bombeck? She was a humor columnist with a wicked wit who never wrote anything better than Jan’s essay on dealing with twin grandbabies that I am reblogging here.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

woman holding baby

After a three-day apprenticeship, my twin infant grandsons were left in my care. I would say ‘our care’ but my husband was asleep on the couch for the duration so it seems unnecessarily inclusive and gratuitous to allow much credit to flow his way. He was mostly inert; but still at the ready should all hell break loose. For definition purposes: two babies crying in a loud, insistent way constitutes all hell breaking loose. Just so you know.

My beautiful daughter, clad in a long, brilliant blue, summer dress and gold sandals, held the car keys in her hand, looked at me and gave me the final instructions.

“Just keep them alive.”

I like a low bar.

To give me a leg up, she had swaddled each just-fed boy in little Velcro contraptions that, when you are charged with untangling them in the pile of clean clothes and folding them…

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

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Yes, you are right. These are chairs made out of books.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Going Obsolete.” Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

A Quote A Day

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The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
–Attributed to Dorothy Parker

This Quotation is number one.  As I was typing this, I remembered that I wrote a poem entitled  “Dorothy Parker and Picasso at the Beach” last year.  If you’d like to read it, go HERE

I was nominated by  Jane Basil to participate in the Three Quotation Challenge. You can see Jane’s wonderful blog site HERE. Thanks for thinking of me, Jane.