Monthly Archives: May 2025

Last on the Card (And Close to Last), May 31, 2025

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Last on the card: cheese on Blue’s Azteca Sopa
Last of the week: Eduardo at his English lesson
Isidro looking intellectual
Pasiano doing fan repairs and cleaning
Do you see a resemblance?
Luis working on book cover
Kristina and Isidro after Mexican Train
At friend Nancy’s house
Favorite nap locale

For Brian’s Last on the Card prompt. The very last photo on the card is the first photo above of Blue’s cheese. The rest of the photos were other photos taken the last week of the month. Busy week.

Quality Control, for Weekend Writing Prompt 418, May 31, 2025

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Quality Control

As neighbors you are irreplaceable.
The prospect of your loss? Unfaceable 
What if the  folks  you sell it to 
turn out to be ones we will rue? 
Replacing you? 
We no can do! 
We’ll annex your house and then 
 use it as our adjunct den. 

The Weekend Writing Prompt 418 is to write a 44 word poem or story on the theme “annex.” (Image from the Irish Times)

“International Cheffery” , for Word of the Day, May 31, 2025

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“International Cheffery”

In the garden or on the hoof,
in the lake or on the roof,
we grow it, herd it, shoot it, hook it.
Pick it, wash it, chop it, cook it.

Wherever we see food, we take it.
Stir it, spit it, fry or bake it.
In Japan is the exception.
Some ancient chef had a conception

that he would not cook the fish–
just serve it raw upon the dish.
It is a strange way to be fed–
to eat a fish that’s merely dead!

In African countries, I have found,
they build a fire on the ground
and cook their food in cauldrons there
flavored with spices hot and rare.

In Sicily, the mafia bosses
favor rich tomato sauces.
First they’re fed by wife or mother,
then they go out and kill each other.

Mexicans use corn instead
of wheat to make their daily bread.
They fold it around beans or meat
and chilis to turn up the heat!

America’s a country where
there’s food from every country there.
What’s unique in our repast
is that we want our food here fast!

The word of the day prompt is chef.

Immobility, for SOCS, May 31, 2025

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Immobility

What once passed for vigor, I fear has turned into a case of fine acting. If I walk with energy, it is a forced energy expressed in spurts in situations where once I ran. I hope this can be attributed to the dignity of my age; but when I see others my age outpacing me, the jig is up and I am revealed for what I am—someone who, in spite of what I have always believed would happen, is wearing out and falling into that part of the life cycle that includes wrinkling up and slowing down. Ugh. I hate to admit it, but perhaps if I do it will be a type of therapy and in confronting it, it will go away—or at least it will lessen in its effect.

The truth is that I fear acting old more than I fear looking old. I hate it that I struggle to get up from a kneeling position and that I can in no way do it gracefully. I put both hands against the floor in front of me, raise my butt in the air and walk up to my hands—only way it seems possible without a lot of grunting and straining. In animal behavior, I would probably appear sexy as I do so, but I do not delude myself that any human being would find it so.

An additional truth to face now that I am older is that I am turning into my mother. Having to do more than one thing at once befuddles me and sometimes even one thing at a time is a bit confusing. Numbers don’t behave as they once did. I add and subtract and multiply and divide just fine. I grew up in a time before computers and handheld devices, so I’m used to doing functions mentally that youth finds better relegated to machines. The problem is in the interrelation of functions––just how to convert dimensions expressed in feet and tenths of feet to feet and inches, to enable me to equate it to the past when all dimensions were expressed as such. Why describe in tenths of feet which are traditionally divided into twelve parts, not ten? Why not just convert to a decimal system entirely, which I could then translate easily to inches and then to feet and inches?

The world is no longer my oyster. Devices get smaller and smaller as my eyes get worse and worse. I can’t wait for all of today’s young programmers and systems designers to get to be 60 and to try to make use of the apps they’ve designed primarily for phones so tiny that you can barely find the phone, let alone make out pages as small as playing cards. And don’t even get me started on the designers of medicine labels!!! If it isn’t bad enough that they are in size 2 font, they then make them white on yellow or gray on blue so it is impossible to read them no matter what size they are. What are they thinking? The clincher was my optometrist’s card that was primarily empty space with the writing squeezed into one corner, so small that I doubt it could be read by anyone­­–glasses or no glasses, and remember, people come to optometrists primarily because they can’t see in the first place! In addition, it was one of those cards impossible to look at because the two colors used not only made it difficult to read, but tended to affect one’s astigmatism, or at the very least one’s sense of good taste.

I must admit that I have never been an athletic person. Zumba, yoga and pool aerobics have been my most successful and enduring modes of exercise. But what I have done, I have always done with great vigor. I work hard, in the past did all my own housework and gardening and have been a bit of a workaholic. But very recently, I find myself wearing out faster, sneaking off to a hidden corner to huff and puff a bit or lie down for a ten-minute rest. I find myself getting a bit testier and less patient when things go wrong, but blessedly usually express my frustration (aloud) primarily to myself.

It occurred to me earlier this year, however, that passing neighbors can probably hear me when I shout “Idiot” to myself—or worse. Or, when I yell at the dogs to stop barking or stop jumping up. “Judy, you’re worse than the dogs!” a friend sputtered, shaking his head one day as I roared “Frida, Diego, Morrie–stop!!!” as they executed a deafening chorus of deep barks when I arrived home and opened the garage door. So I guess that is one place where my energy remains unabated. When it comes to expressing myself, I have great vocal cords. You could even say I’m still capable of a vigorous rejoinder!!!

The prompt for SOCS is “Walk.”

Another Friday, Another Flock of Fibs, May 30, 2025

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Photo by Elias Null on Unsplash                  

\for Fibbing Friday, the questions refer to movie quotes, but who could have said this?

1. “Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!” Noah
2. “Shut up – you had me at ‘hello.’” Ms.Parton, the first time she heard Louis Armstrong sing “Hello Dolly”
3. “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” Medusa’s hairstylist
4. “I’ll have what she’s having.” Adam
5. “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Eve, after Adam ate the apple.
6. “No man is a failure who has friends”. William Penn
7. “If you build it, he will come.” Hugh Hefner’s architect for the Playboy Mansion, to his carpenter, greatly overstating the matter.
8. “I feel the need, the need for speed.” Andy Warhol
9. “On Wednesdays, we wear pink.” Harvey Milk, in reference to his dress code
10. “Florals? For spring. Groundbreaking.” Johnny Appleseed, referring to his sideline.

Tell Me A Story, May 28, 2025

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Silly Girls, 1958

This is the “Tell Me A Story” prompt #3.  I know the true story of this photo. Can you make one up that is more interesting and put a link to it  in comments below? Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.

Second Round, Two Saves for RDP

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1956, Johnssen’s Dam

Since the prompt for RDP is “Second,” I wrote the word into my search bar for my blog and this was the earliest  hit that came up. I guess it was because it somehow detected that it was about the second time something happened in my life. At any rate, it was written over ten years ago about two events I had since totally forgotten about,  so I decided I’d give it a second chance at publication. At the time I wrote it, I’d been at the beach for 7 weeks and early in that period, I’d spilled a Coke over my Mac computer, and in spite of attempts to rescue it, it had been declared unsaveable by a local tech guy. I was trying to write on a different computer which obviously I didn’t understand how to use, thus the notes below:

Two Saves

Okay, this is a reblog of a blog from January, 2015. The day’s WordPress Daily Prompt was Daring Do – Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?)

This was my response:

The prompt today, which I cannot copy here because I don’t know how to do it on the pc I have been using for the first time, or trying to, over these past two days since I murdered my (sob) Mac Air laptop, has something to do with some time when you have saved someone.  After thinking long and hard, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to use the document software on the pc and then realizing I had no way to transfer it to my blog, anyway, I just decided that some power in either me or the universe (which is really the same thing) has decided that it is time for me to back away from technology for a time. If you don’t believe this, take into account that after both my Mac and my Kindle stopped working, then my phone did so also.  Thinking it was probably that I needed to buy more time, I resolved to do so only to find that its charger has absolutely vanished from my life.  I’ve turned the house upside down and it is nowhere.  Ah well, I’ll concentrate on photography, thought I, then realized I had no place to put the photographs.  After stumbling around for about 4 hours, I almost by mistake got them downloaded to this (devil) Acer pc, which promptly told me none had been downloaded.  A few hours later, I stumbled upon them but have no idea how to get them onto my blog…and, deciding to just give up on writing or talking to anyone I know outside of my immediate proximity, I took camera in hand…only to discover that my camera, also, is absolutely unoperational.  I think I wrote about this last night and sent it to a friend to post for me, but it was never received, so I won’t bore you with the details, other than that my camera has become a little turtle, constantly extending its head and neck only to withdraw them again, forever, until the battery wears out. Slip in a new battery and the same happens. I put it out of its misery, removed the battery and stuck it in a bag of rice, where it is keeping company with my Mac. Countless people tell me this is a remedy for waterlogged nonhuman entitites. I don’t know what is wrong with the camera, but that big bag of rice was sitting there handy, so why not? Anyway, this is why I am incommunicado and not posting .  Instead, I made a salad and chicken soup for a dinner I’m giving for departing friends tonight and got in the hammock with a good book, dozing a bit just in time for a friend to come by, jar me awake and ask if I was sleeping, then depart (her, not me) for a walk up the beach. So, what does this have to do with saving anyone?  Nothing.  Just a chance to unload on someone other than Forgottenman, who has been bearing the brunt of my frustration.  I do, however, have an answer to the question.

I have, in fact, saved two babies from drowning.  One was at a housewarming party given by my boyfriend’s son in California in 1984.  We’d all been given the tour, including the garden and hot tub, which was up on a raised patio out of view of the house.  One of the couples had a two-year-old child and I noticed he was not with his mother. Looking in the other room, I saw he wasn’t with his father, either, and I suddenly had a strong feeling that something was wrong. I ran out of the house and into the garden just in time to see him at the top of the stairs leading to the hot tub.  He walked over to the side, fell in and sank like a stone.  I ran up the stairs, jumped in the hot tub and fished him from the bottom before he ever bobbed to the surface.  I remember the entire thing in slow motion and have a very clear memory of the fact that it seemed as though his body had no tendency to float at all, but would have remained at the bottom of the deep hot tub.  The parents reaction was shock.  I can’t remember if they left the party or if they really realized how serious it was.  I know they didn’t thank me, which is of no importance other than a measure of either their inability to face the fact that their child had been within seconds of drowning or simply their shock and the fact they were thinking only of their child.

Strangely enough, this had happened before, at a stock pond just outside of the little South Dakota town where I grew up. (I have found a photo of me swimming with friends in that pond, taken a few years before the described even,  that I included above.) Everyone went swimming there, as there was no pool in town.  When I was still in jr. high, I’d just arrived when I saw a very tiny girl—really just a baby—fall into the dam (which is what we called a pond) and sink straight down under the very heavy moss that grew on the top of the water.  Her mother had her back turned, talking to a friend, and no one else noticed.  I jumped in and fished her out, returning her to her mother, who quickly collected her other children and left.  Again, no word of thanks.  It is not that it was required, and I mention it here only because it happened twice and, having not thought about this for so many years, I am wondering if it wasn’t embarrassment and guilt on the part of the parents that made them both react so matter-of-factly.

For RDP the prompt is second.

Class Reunion, for dVerse Poets, May 27, 2025

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Class Reunion

I wish I’d set the truth aside.
I wish instead that I had lied
when you asked the reason why
I didn’t choose the other guy.
I wish I’d said you’d won my heart
quickly, from the very start.

But, alas, I told the truth.
Blame it on my careless youth.
It was, perhaps, naïveté
that made me answer you that way.
I said you were my second choice,
then heard that quaver in your voice.

For all those years forever after,
I’ve recalled your bitter laughter
as you said you guessed you’d wait
for the type of girl who’d rate
you first when making her selection,
and thus began your swift defection.

After all these years, I’ll tell
that I remember very well
regrets I suffered at your leaving—
all those nights of futile grieving.
Watching as you met your wife,
had your kids and built your life.

Every few years at class reunions
as we all share our fond communions,
I’ll catch your eye and feel the spark
that goes unnoticed in the dark.
And every day, until I die,
I’ll wish I’d told that little lie.

for dVerse Poets the prompt is to write a poem about any pivotal moment in your life that left you with gnawing regrets or you could cover the entire gamut from anger to forgiveness and reconciliation. In short, you will be writing about a krisis in your personal life. Image by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash.

Ghost Stories for dVerse Poets Memento Mori Prompt, May 26, 2025

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Ghost Stories

     I look at hubcaps of police cars at the late-night coffee shop. Inside, stool pigeons could be telling on me–fearful secrets from my childhood I’ve been waiting for years for someone to tell and get it over with. The man eating donuts at the counter is my father, spilling wheat out of his pants cuffs after driving fast over dangerous unpaved roads in a pickup that carries stories of his life all over it, but he disappears before I can reach him. The lady with her head in the sack is my sister. I pull it off to find it filled with salt, her eyes hard water oceans washing us away––the family that has ended too soon, lost again in her memory, trying too hard to get out. We are a wasted story.  Over.

No stories survived.
Some folks died away from them,
then the rest forgot.

 

For dVerse Poets, Momento Mori, haibun prompt.

Keyboard Athlete, for Word of the Day, May 26, 2025

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jdb photo

Keyboard Athlete

Not a great sportswoman—champion of none.
I sport a camera when having my fun.
My skill is not measured in baskets or bases.
I score my points while clicking at faces.

Though I’m not the most physical person you’ll meet,
I do exercise caution when crossing the street.
My main lack of muscle tone’s merely because
My pushup experience is mainly in bras.

As you vault over hurdles and excel at tennis,
the extensions I do are less of a menace.
Though I’m not an expert at sprinting or jogging,
my fingers are well-toned through everyday blogging.

For the Word of the Day Challenge, the prompt word is everyday.