Monthly Archives: March 2025

For Cee, who brought a million flowers into our lives!!! xooxox

Here are just a few back, dear Cee!!!!!  You’ve brought a lot of joy into our lives during the years we’ve been following your Flower of the Day prompt (among others.)  I just checked, and discovered I’ve answered your FOTD prompt 2,156 times since I discovered it in 2018. These are just a few of the flowers formerly posted. oxoxoxo Judy

Sadly, Cee passed away earlier this month. To see Becky’s tribute, along with tributes from a number of her other friends and followers, go HERE.

For Cee’s FOTD

The Numbers Game #66, March 31, 2025

Welcome to “The Numbers Game #66”  Today’s number is 187. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and  post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please link your blog in comments below.

Affirmations, For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 700, Mar 30, 2025



Affirmations

Poems rush to mind in a barrage,
then fade away like a mirage.
Words light as petals fall like rain
into a beautiful terrain

that forms a sort of sanctuary
where as I age I choose to tarry,
pretending that I’m going to miss
encounter with that grim abyss.

Another verse escapes my breath,
as with flushed face, I confront death.
Such affirmations reveal as sham
all that threatens what I am.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 700, the prompt words are: grim abyss flush raised mirage sham whispers light petals breath beauty

Playing With Light (Please Share Yours)

I couldn’t resist sharing these photos of the pool that I snapped yesterday and then started finding  other studies of light/shadow and reflection captured earlier. Please share links to your own light reflection shots in comments below!

 

Also, for Cellpic Sunday

In First 3 Months in Office, Taxpayers Spend 26 Million Dollars to Send Trump to Florida to Play Golf!!!!

The $26 million dollars taxpayers have spent on sending him to Florida to play golf over the past three months doesn’t seem to have made him very happy, does it? How many people would that have supported on Social Security? According to my Social Security payments, it would have supported 1,300 people’s Social Security for a year!!! Yet we don’t deserve it, I guess.
May be an image of 2 people and people golfing
Today, on his 69th day in office, convicted felon Donald Trump played golf at the course he owns in West Palm Beach, Florida. Since his inauguration on January 20th, it’s his 14th day of golf at that particular property and the 18th time he has played at one of his golf courses.
That means he has played golf on more than a fourth of the days since he was sworn in.
Based on a 2019 Government Accountability Office report which detailed the cost to taxpayers for moving his motorcade equipment and security personnel around as well as the immense cost of flying Air Force 1 for each of Trump’s first term golf trips, the total cost to date for Trump’s second-term golf outings is now up to $26,127,531.
I’ll remind you that billionaire authoritarian oligarch Elon Musk, whom Trump appointed to ferret out “waste and fraud” in government, hasn’t said a word about it. He’s apparently too busy firing essential federal workers and veterans and destroying government services which Americans depend on to notice that the president’s devotion to his hobby instead of his nation has cost taxpayers more than $26 million in little more than two months.
Yet Musk, whose companies rake in an estimated $8 million PER DAY from government contracts, keeps complaining about how other Americans with government contracts and those who receive government benefits are the “parasitic class.”
Check yourself, Elon. Check your boss’ grifting, too.

Some Upbeat Thoughts, and Don’t We All Need Them?

I just discovered this blog, “Sea Dreams and Time Machines” by Meg Winikates and so far I love everything I’ve read.  This piece echoes my sentiments exactly: https://mwinikates.com/2024/11/07/a-billion-brilliant-stars/

And here are two poems I love as well:

Who Stole Santa’s Boot? (Contest Entry)

and one more poem by the same person.
https://mwinikates.com/2024/10/29/halloweensie-contest-entry/

Hope you enjoy her writing as much as I have.

Mother’s Pocket, For RDP “Oasis”, Mar 30, 2025

Mother’s Pocket

“Not your average peddler,” my mom was heard to say,
as she paid him for the prism that she promptly tucked away—
her pocket an oasis where my hand would go to play
when other things went wrong or on a sunless, rainy day.

In her pocket I found magic things—smooth stones that were magnetic.
Pulling them apart calmed hands otherwise frenetic.
Cherry-flavored Lifesavers and pretzels clothed in salt.
If they vanished from her pocket, it never seemed a fault.

Words written on grains of rice, hankies trimmed in lace
that I liked to hold against my lips and arms and face.
Tiny detached doll heads to put upon one’s fingers.
The memory of their spirited dialogues still lingers.

But that magic prism was the best of all her treasure.
Once I drew it from her pocket, I kept it for my pleasure.
Still it sits upon my shelf where it invites my gaze,
still transmitting mother’s light on sunless rainy days.

For RDP the prompt is Oasis

Goblins for RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe, Mar 29, 2025

Goblins

They steal into town to pillage and croon,
Invading on tiptoe, every third moon.
With fiery red hair and warts on their noses,
they cut all the tulips and pee on the roses.
Venting belches that reek of porter and scallions,
they chase all the ladies in randy battalions
and press scaly lips on unwilling misses
who scamper away to wipe off their kisses.
But still the next morning, their sickly taste lingers
on unlucky lips and unfortunate fingers
of girls who’ve attempted to purge these advances
that with lecherous hobgoblins pass for romances.
So all ye young maidens take heed of this warning.
Put off your wanderings until the morning!

For RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe

Awesome, For SOCS

Awesome

There was a time when awesome really meant ”inspiring awe”—
events like the moon landing that made one drop one’s jaw,
sights of numbing beauty or achievements of great skill,
art pieces by the masters or achievements of great will.

Yosemite is awesome and so is Everest.
Those climbing it are “awesome.” I admit they are the best.
But today the word has fallen into widespread use—
ubiquitous right to the point where it’s become abuse.

Rap music is awesome, as is that way-cool blouse.
You drive an awesome car and live inside an awesome house.
My neighbor’s beau is awesome. So are her dog and cat.
Her garden blooms are awesome, like her new purse and hat.

You might have guessed by now that awesome’s not my favorite word.
I think the overuse of it is frankly quite absurd.
This pizza is not awesome, though you may find me petty
for saying it is merely good, and so is the spaghetti.

Your child is lovely, so’s your dress, your silverware and smile.
But none of them are awesome—that word brings up my bile.
Please use some other word for it—some adjectival jaw full.
Because in my opinion, using awesome’s simply awwful!!

Not Awesome

Since the SOCS prompt is awe/aww! I believe it justifies running this poem by you one more time.

For Fibbing Friday, Mar 28, 2025

 

For Fibbing Friday the challenge is:

1. Verisimilitude: The tendency of adolescents to indulge in fads.
2. Grikes: Threatening squeals of astonishment.
3. Clints: What they will call cloned Eastwoods.
4. Kamenitza: What Russians call someone shooting a movie. 
5. Rillenkaren: An annoying female mountain climber.
6. Cockalorum: How a rooster keeps track of when to crow.
7. Dongle: The future tense of dingle.
8. Fartlek: A Hungarian who has just released gas from his/her body.
9. Folderol: What a female contortionist is able to do.
10. Furphy: A dog rental fee.