Ten Duck Eggs
Ten Members of a Happy Family
Look Carefully. Ten Trees!
Ten Blooms.
Ten Toes.
Ten Manuscripts. The End!
The Sunday Stills prompt is “10.”
“Groups of Ten” for Sunday Stills
5 Replies
Monthly Archives: January 2026
Happy Diner, For Cellpic Sunday
I love this photo of my friend Phyllis displaying her delicious meal that was a work of art as well.
It was a stuffed avocado and she declared it a hit in both respects.
For Cellpic Sunday.
Canine Church
Canine Church
Two dogs to my right and one dog o’er my head
As I lie on the edge of my doggie-filled bed.
Now one moves to my legs to anchor me down,
fearing my desertion for kitchen or town,
banishing canines to cushions or yard––
beds they find chilly and lonely and hard.
Better this bed warmed by blanket and sheet
and a mattress pad heater to thaw out their feet.
A mom they can cuddle or lie on, or heck––
tunnel into her armpit or under her neck.
These Sunday mornings, they insist that Judy’s
meditations with dogs are her spiritual duties.
Divided We Fall for Sadje’s “Deciding” Prompt
For Sadje’s prompt, “Deciding,” I am rerunning a poem from 2018 that is even more relevant seven years later:
Divided We Fall
As we bicker on the web, as we snipe and snooze,
soothing our hurt feelings with doobies or with booze,
our rulers are sequestered, each pondering on his throne,
deciding what new property to seize and make their own.
A chunk from social security, another bit from schools.
So long as we’re not educated, we’ll remain their fools.
Cut taxes for their cronies and let them drill for oil
in our nature preserves until we start to boil.
Record heat in one spot and fires in another.
Record snow and hurricanes. We drown or freeze or smother.
They are not going to notice these travesties and glitches,
for they’re busy in their counting rooms, counting out their riches.
What percentage earned today? What yachts to buy tomorrow?
The fortune that they earn today is mankind’s future sorrow.
If we stay divided, we play into their plans.
We keep each other busy as they work on their tans!
DCIM100MEDIADJI_0002.JPG
In Answer to Sadje’s Sunday Poser 269 :Deciding
“Sabor de Mexico” for Word of the Day “Volume”
Village Traffic
\
Young men dressed as senoritas
Click on photos to enlarge and view gallery.
Sabor de México
The weaving of the inside of the palapa roof forms an exotic herringbone––in places its pattern interrupted by a patch of pale blue sky where the palm fronds have been eaten away by wind and rain. We are nine gathered around the table: eight women and one man. We sit writing in theme books, on typing paper, small notebooks or computers. Three of the four computers are Apples, a testament to my firm belief that this is the best computer for the artistic mind. Something about it is instinctual—which is right up my alley.
Alleys are something lacking in this town of small palapas and concrete houses. Neighbors back onto neighbors. Chickens have no dirt pathway to cross between properties, but jump from one shared fencepost into either yard: the one they belong in or the one they choose to go into. More often than not, no fence separates the spaces between houses. Here, privacy is not a big issue. The sounds of life float at full volume from street through window, uniting the visitor unwise enough to live in a house fronting on the main street in town with a night full of ATV’s, motorcycles, loud bands and tape players, air brakes, raucous shouts of those vacating bars at closing time.
The time between the night’s last departures and the next morning’s first arrivals is but an hour or two. Every morning I am awakened by the blasting of radios shared via rolled-down windows of pickup trucks and cars. It is a harsher form of the church bells that serve the same function in my village in the interior of Mexico. Who would need to be asleep later than 6:30? Who could be complained to if I were so foolish as to register any complaint?
Senses in Mexico are there to be stimulated. The patterns of shadows thrown by palms, bright colors, the bite of salsa and tequila, sounds formerly mentioned, the grit of sand underfoot, the sting of saltwater on sunburned arms and backs, the smell of tamarind and lime and the rotting blowfish on the beach. All senses mingle in a salad that we all taste from the common bowl. Whether we live here or visit here for months or weeks or hours, we take our few bites or many according to the time we have to digest them.
The Word of the Day challenge is Volume.
Crossings for One Word Sunday Challenge
Crossings
A river between us, each high on a ridge.
If we’re ever to meet, we must build a bridge.
But it’s hard to accomplish unless we take hand
to collect the cement, the gravel and sand.
So those of us tired of manual labors—
not given to chitchatting much with our neighbors—
can go on our blogs to find our own kind,
constructing bridges purely of mind.
Blogging is great to bring folks together
on separate continents, in any weather.
We can be lazy, me here and you there,
building our bridges with ease, through the air.
“Crossing” is the prompt for One Word Sunday.
For SOCS, “Journeys.”
“Everyone you meet knows something you don’t know but need to know” –C.G. Jung
Journeys
Every conversation is a quest two people enter
from opposite directions to converge at its center.
The first part of the journey commences with their greeting—
an intricate endeavor completed with first meeting.
With each new associate, we visit a new land.
With each conversation, our horizons expand
into lands exotic, tragic or entertaining.
Perhaps enemy territory—often with no training.
Do we take umbrage with their words or enter, unprotesting,
the world that they offer—experimenting, testing
new mental mountains, jungles where vivid birds might call,
beckoning us onwards, or do we meet a wall
that offers us no access—sealed up, rigid, cold—
closed to all explorers, nearly obscured with mold?
What journeys do we offer ourselves to those we meet?
Do we offer easy access or promise sure defeat?
Life was designed for journeying. Daily, new vacations.
Some conversations novels and others mere quotations.
Even that experience you wouldn’t choose again
is just another whistle stop on life’s commuter train.
For SOCS the prompt is “A favorite saying.”
Fibbing Friday
For Fibbing Friday, the task at hand is:
1. Who were Lennon and McCartney? A Russian Revolutionary and a man in a wheelchair
3. Who were Tom and Jerry? A fictional boy the size of a thumb and Dean Martin’s partner
4. Who were Dumb and Dumber? Dumbo’s twin sons
5. Who were Little and Large? Tinker Bell and Peter Pan
6. Who were Hinge and Bracket? Two singers in The Doors
7. Who were Rodgers and Hammerstein? A cowboy singer/actor of the fifties and sixties and someone demanding another beer
8. Who were Laurel and Hardy? Olympic gold medal winners
9. Who were Calvin and Hobbes? A non-diet merlot and favorite activities one does in one’s spare time
10. Who were Barbie and Ken? A cowgirl famous for her fence-stringing skills and her family
R.I.P. Marilyn
Marilyn Armstrong, a long-time WordPress blogger and friend to many of us, finally succumbed to cancer. Some of you who know Marilyn have asked me if I know how you could reach her husband Garry and son Owen and/or donate to her cremation and funeral expenses. Here is the information and a link to spotfund: http://spot.fund/86w7f27sc
Her friends will continue her blog in her memory, posting her posts from the past. R.I.P. dear Marilyn. –Judy
Alluring, for RDP
An Aging Siren’s Lament
I once was alluring, bewitching and busty,
but now I’m decrepit, doddering and fusty,
making mountains of molehills and blocks out of chips
and adding them onto my thighs, calves and hips.
As I fall apart, I become more voluminous,
my eyes less dewy, my skin much less luminous.
I’m developing poorly, my aging less fine
than mellow old cheeses and whiskies and wine.
As my memory fades and becomes much less credible,
I’m less appealing and for sure less beddable.
I’m held together by trusses and braces,
Spanx and Ace bandages, spandex and laces.
Someone should just shoot me. (Botox, not a gun.)
I’d be more beguiling and have much more fun.
But diets are tedious. Shots must be painful.
Of all of these cures, I’m purely disdainful.
I guess I’ll age gracefully, sip from its cup
greedily, admitting I’m giving up.
I’ll simply sit here inert on my fanny
and trade in the title of sexpot for granny!
The RDP prompt today is “Alluring.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 