On the Fix
She’s on the fix:
repairing hems,
cleaning the oven,
puttying cracks,
organizing drawers,
straightening picture frames
with no idea
of how to fix
a cracked heart.
She needs a breaking
of old habits
—a lesson
on letting be,
leaving her broken things
to heal themselves.
Here is the prompt: https://dversepoets.com/
and below is where you can go to read other responses:
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Fix
The murals being painted on the walls of my house, the wifi installation saga, the bee adventure, the water/plumbing saga–all are events now past, but further stories were waiting to be told. This is the story of a number of little mysteries down through the years that have been solved or are on their ways to being solved due to Jesus’s sleuthery. I here share that story with you because after all, what else have we all got to do?
Click on the photos to read the story and to enlarge the photos.
Unavoidable Photo Session
I refresh my makeup,
surrender to the camera,
and when I see the photographs,
force a quick acceptance.
I need to diet
and I am growing old.
Word prompts today are surrender, photograph, quick, refresh and acceptance.
Knave of Coins
Bored with all his yesterdays, needing a new tomorrow,
grown used to fickle intimacies, much to all our sorrow
he stood upon a precipice where the whole world looked back
and declared himself the ruler of the whole damn pack.
That anybody listened is a sort of modern miracle.
He wasn’t very smart and he surely was not lyrical.
Though he understood but little, what he knew just seemed to work.
One can capture much attention by being a dumb jerk.
He pulled the haters to him—the fearful and the jaded.
All his moneyed cronies supported him, elated.
He’d pull apart the world we knew and put it back again,
but I fear that what few plans he had turned out to be in vain.
For when he’d knocked everything down, he knew not what to do
except to blame the mess he’d made on everyone he knew.
The whole world knows that he’s a knave, his mind and soul both dim.
The thing that is distressing is those who supported him.
Word prompts today are overcome, fickle, intimacy, precipice and yesterday.
I ran a sharp knife around the side of the mug, so I actually didn’t have too much trouble getting my microwave muffin out of its mug, although the bottom 1/4 inch stuck and had to be removed with a spoon. The next time, I’ll oil the bottom of the cup a bit. The muffin isn’t bad and actually isn’t that sweet. I think a lot of the powdered sugar fizzed off onto the bottom of the oven during those initial 12 minutes of time spent in the oven. Once I put them in the microwave, they rose fine, although the mugfin is a bit heavy.
If you don’t know what in the heck I’m talking about, go HERE for an explanation.
I then decided to take a slice of the mugfin and add some of the bran concoction I made last night. It was very sweet and I think I prefer the muffin just by itself. I think the bran/banana/sugar concoction would be good on a blander white poundcake or shortbread cookie–or perhaps toast.
Okay.. I promise. No more banana bread/mugfin posts.
Invader
So, I was sleeping and awakened to something going on in the living room. I thought perhaps one of the cats had jumped down and knocked something over, but then I heard a voice speaking. I opened my eyes and it was still dark. It is Sunday and no one is slated to come today! I reached out for the small dispenser of pepper spray I keep by my bed. It is 19 years old. Will it still work?
I got up slowly and as I progressed down the hall, I wondered what I should do–lock myself in the bathroom or slip out the bedroom sliders to the outside? Then I recognized the voice. “Nine hours and 45 minutes. Time to take the banana bread out of the oven. Nine hours and 45 minutes. Time to take the banana bread out of the oven.”
“Alexa!” I shouted, “Turn off the reminder!” Last night when I was setting the timer for the banana bread from Hell, I had set two reminders, one for 40 minutes and one for 45 minutes, but as I did, Alexa had misunderstood one and set it for nine hours and 40 minutes so I had redone it.
In the rush of the excitement over discovering my mistake and dealing with the lava flow in the oven and the other after-effects, two of the reminders had gone off and been silenced, but I had forgotten about the ticking time-bomb of the third.
Six-thirty in the morning and she was as dependable as ever. “Nine hours and 45 minutes. Time to take the banana bread out of the oven.”
“Alexa! Turn off the alarm!!” She finally heard me from two rooms away. I imagine the neighbors did, too.
And this is what, along with caked-on sugar all over the bottom of the oven and a sink full of other dishes associated with the great fiasco, is what awaits me in the kitchen this morning. 
An hour later, oven cleaned. Now on to the next round.
Well, almost. The oven light is burned out, so the oven looked great when I finished, but the flash of the photo has perhaps revealed a bit too much. Guess I have farther to go before getting this mess cleaned up. So this is how i have spent my 9th Sunday of “Shelter in Place” so far.
The Banana Bread Boo Boo II
When last you had word of our bungling baker, she had substituted 1½ cups of powdered sugar for the flour in her banana bread. (Read about this HERE.) When she discovered it 12 minutes into its baking, a disaster had already occurred. She’ll clean up the oven tomorrow.
Dolly at Kool Kosher Kitchen, who really knows what she’s doing when baking as well as cooking, advised “Take it out! Now! Throw it away.” I had already, in a flash of precognition, heeded half of this advice, but I just could not throw all those ingredients away, so I decided to perform a little experiment.
I put a half cup of the now deflated and runny banana, sugar, egg, butter, baking powder, salt, soda, walnut concoction (which at this point tasted a bit like runny banana jam) into a soup bowl and mixed an equal amount of stick-type bran cereal into it and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. When it came out it was a bit sticky and very sweet. It would make a good ice cream topping I thought, but wouldn’t want to make a meal of it.
Instead, I mixed about a cup and a half of whole wheat flour into the rest of the banana disaster in the pan and divided it into two bowls and a coffee mug. Each one went into the microwave for 2 minutes and I must say the result is not bad. Never say die, say I, hoping 2 minutes in the microwave and 12 minutes in the oven was enough to cook those eggs!
I wonder if I have sufficient courage to give one of the bowls to my next door neighbors–and if I do, if I should tell them about this fiasco ahead of time. We’ll see tomorrow. Perhaps by then I will be so enamored of my new concoction that I won’t give any of it away. Bet you are dying to see pictures, right?
Click on the photos to enlarge them and see the captions.
Postscript: If you try to do this at home, kids, one warning–remember to grease the bowls!!! Guess who didn’t.
Dolly, help me! I just spent an hour making banana bread from scratch, put it in the oven, and as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I discovered I’d used powdered sugar in place of flour!!!! Crushed.
Tempted to let it bake and see what happens, but will my loaf pan be permanently encrusted with it?
Your sympathies and reassurances requested. If I ever needed friends, it is now!!!! Below is how my disaster looked after twelve minutes in the oven. I took it out!! The second photo is how the oven looked after I took it out.
Go HERE to see what ultimately happened to this mess.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 