Watermelon
For the Pick a Word Challenge: Arranged
November Pick a Word Challenge: Arranged
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Author Archives: lifelessons
For CBWC, Nov 24, 2022: Long Items
My nephew Ryan is certainly a long item ! He can remedy that a bit with a sideways curve, but not much! Click on photos to make him even taller!!!
For CBWC, Long Items
Wallflowers and Friends: FOTD, Nov 24, 2022
A Packapoo Thanksgiving
A *Packapoo Thanksgiving
A steward of the somber in other respects, when it came to Thanksgiving, she had more colorful and grandiose dreams. Cranberries, succulent turkey stuffed with cornbread and sage dressing, another baked and crustily-topped casserole of the same stuffing pulled from a hot oven along with butter-pooled mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, sweet potatoes and green bean casserole wherein mere green beans were adorned and mixed with cream of mushroom soup, water chestnuts and crispy fried onion rings were what her palate expected and her heart hoped for.
But this year, for the first time in memory, she herself was not in control of the menu. In spite of her arguments that she actually loved all the fuss and bother of making the Thanksgiving meal, her husband had insisted that they go to his friend’s house where his new bride would prepare the meal, and knowing the young, fit yoga instructor his friend had married, she knew she had drawn a packapoo ticket on this one. What were the chances that out of the five or six items the menu would be likely to offer, that even one of her own choices would be revealed?
She had visions of a tofu turkey, watercress salad, grapefruit wedges and perhaps the wild excitement of pita bread and tahini. Fresh fruit for the dessert was a probability, sulfite-free wine the only nearly titillating item on the menu, a poor substitute for a pre-meal dry martini with double olives.
She screwed on her earring backs, adjusted the curl of hair behind one ear, slipped into the posture-destructive heels that she knew the bride would have to bite her cheek to refrain from commenting on. Then, as she heard her husband start up the car in the driveway and toot the horn, she moved to the fridge for a peek at the two pies nestled on the second shelf: one pumpkin, one pecan. She opened the freezer door and saw the half gallon of Kirkland vanilla ice cream, then slammed both doors shut. Her reward would come later that night, when they got home. There were simply some traditions no one should have to give up on!!!!
*Note: A Packapoo ticket is a mess, something in a state of chaos or things randomly thrown together. Sources may be a pakapoo ticket which could be bought and that contained rows of characters from the Thousand Character Classic, an ancient poem in which no two words were repeated or the Chinese Pakapoo game where betters choose 10 numbers. If they existed on a random drawn list of 100, they won money according to how many were correct.
Prompt words for today are packapoo ticket, somber, steward, argument, banquet. The photos of the turkey and two pies were downloaded from Unsplash. All other photos are mine.
Pink Lemonade for CFFC
Speed Dating
Speed Dating
Leaning on the table, you taste your glass of wine,
enact acts of seduction that in truth should have been mine.
Your fingers on my elbow tap a light tattoo.
High on wine and romance, I lean over to kiss you,
but this invigorating juncture ends before we’re able
as the bell sounds and each of us is off to a new table.
Prompt words are leaning, wine, invigorating, enact, tattoo, high. Image by Jiawei Zhao on Unsplash.
FOTD Nov 23, 2022
Creeping Charlie. (In Mexico, they just call it “Charlie.”) And they are blooming! Look closely.
For Cee’s FOTD
Repurposed: FOTD, Nov 22, 2022
Here are better shots of my new plantings in the flowerpots I made out of the two large statues the kitties pushed off their pedestals on either side of my front gate.
Here are the original sculptures we purchased the day we bought the house. R.I.P.
For Cee’s FOTD
The Proposal
The Proposal
He’s economically trustworthy, but has a humdrum mind.
He’ll never write a sonnet, for he’s more the right-brain kind.
He’ll never sculpt a fountain or create a work of art,
but he’s brilliant at accounting, numerically smart.
So he won’t paint your masterpiece, but if you ever spy it,
if he’s the one you married, you can bet that he can buy it!!
Prompt words are sonnet, fountain, humdrum, economic, trustworthy. Image by Andra Jackson on Unsplash.
Coco’s Tale
Coco’s Tale
This frisky little mongrel, rescued off the street,
jumped up at once to greet me and wove around my feet.
We were meant to be together, I thought. What better proof
than her goofy antics—her lick and growl and woof?
I didn’t need another dog. My friends would all concur.
In my home there was no lack of yowl and bark and purr.
Would a new arrival agree with dog and cat?
Would my spectacular surprise fizzle and fall flat?
Would Morrie accept her? Would Zoe object?
Would the cats say “That’s enough!” and finally defect?
I had no proof that she’d fit in, and yet part of the weaving
together of a family is in the believing.
That potent pull of heartstrings exchanged at the first glance
somehow won over reason, so I thought I’d take the chance.
When we got into the car, she jumped up on my lap,
curled herself into a ball and took a little nap.
Cats hissed at her arrival and approached her fully armed,
so her feline siblings clearly were not charmed!
But to Zoe and to Morrie, she is a long-lost friend,
and though our story is not over, for now this is “The End!”
I’ve had a terrible bronchial infection for the past two weeks and indications are that I’m allergic to Coco. I tried making Zoe and Coco sleep out in the doggie domain with Morrie, but they cried for two hours, so they are back inside but somehow, Coco seems to realize my problem and she has shifted from sleeping right beside my neck to getting as far away from my face as possible while still touching me, so she sleeps pressed up against my leg, knee to ankle, or with her chin over my foot. Zoe has switched down to sleep in her own little bed right next to the bed. Fingers crossed that this will work. They are so dear. Zoe and Coco are constant companions and Morrie sometimes joins in the chase. I feel bad, knowing he is missing Diego, so I’ve been putting the girls out all day to keep him company and sometimes he sleeps on a comfy lawn chair right outside my bedroom door that I leave cracked a bit so the dogs can get out if they need to. Peaceable kingdom. The cats still don’t like the new intruder, but they have their own safe area out in front that is not accessible to the dogs.
Prompt words today are spectacular, concur, believing, potent, proof and exchange.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 