Author Archives: lifelessons

Unknown's avatar

About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

Zoe, My Teenage Terror

11 Replies
Rearranging the rug
Editing mom’s latest manuscript
Eating the plants?
Mom’s? Zoe’s coasters
Fighting over the bone
ingesting Mom’s favorite Trahumara basket
Shredding the handmade basket Mom made
No respect for mone
Caught in the act
Discovering toilet paper. Guess who?
Distracting the Masseur
Waking up Mom
Attacking the cat
Stealing plastic bags
Tussling with Yolanda
Dragging the mop from the kitchen to where it belongs–her bed.
stealing Jesus’s socks
Turning on the tap?
Bye-bye Forgottenman’s childhood photo
Forgottenman restored

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/opinion/dogs-puppies-adolescence.html?smid=em-share

This brilliant article was sent to me by my friend Laurie. You may not be able to read it unless you subscribe to the NY Times, but if you can read it and have been reading about my puppy Zoe’s recent behavior, you’ll see it describes her to a “T.” 

I had more naughty photos, but WP thought it was appropriate to erase my entire blog after a half hour’s work collecting the photos, so I had to start all over again. Is anyone else having problems like this? I was updating and saving… then all vanished.

Stick-in-the-Muds

3 Replies

Stick-in-the-Muds

Obtuse folks with fondness for traditions of the past
consider a rendition that has a modern cast
as an indication that culture will not last,
confining their appreciation to their yesterdays,
designating mod designs as just another craze.
They sink into their easy chairs to mouth a loud “Ahem!”
not realizing  that their folks thought just the same of them.

Prompts for today are design, culture, fondness, obtuse, sink, rendition and indicative. IIlustration by Tim Kilby on Unsplash

Floral Alphabet Challenge and FOTD, The Letter “D” Sept. 18, 2022

16 Replies

It always astonishes me how beautiful dandelions can be when viewed close up. Here is one, along with a handful of the common daisy. Laid-back “D’s.”

Also for Cee’s FOTD

(Should handmade flowers count? You decide.)

Quilting Bee

14 Replies
Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.
Pieces ready to be joined
Broken thoughts
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
This is a lovely poem written by my friend Isidro and painted on my wall. It is his version of a story I’d earlier written entitled “In Mexico There is Always Music.” We all keep contributing to each others’ stories.

(Click on photos to enlarge and to read the rest of the story.)

Quilting Bee

I chop my life up into bits, incongruous and varied:
struggles, victories, tragic loves, the day that I got married.
Clashes create beauty as pains mix up with cheers,
making a lovely pattern as each new piece appears.

In stories as in patchwork quilts, all bits are not roses.
Part of the beauty comes from the pain that it exposes.
We put our art together, fragment after patch
and no pattern emerges if all the pieces match.

A convenient truth of works of art as well as that of life:
beauty’s found in perfection, but also found in strife.
Sweet berries come with brambles and each rose has its thorn.
Both great passion and great pain predate the time we’re born.

Perhaps pain is the awful price that we have to pay
to experience the pleasure of when it goes away.
So with the ugly fabric that finds a place to fit
when contrasting beauty is stitched in next to it.

Life is a lovely story, but not all of it is writ.
Why were we created if not to add to it?
In taking all the pieces we’re provided with,
We take part in creation by adding to the myth.

 

 

Prompts today are patterns, chop, clashes, cheer, incongruous, convenient and brambles.

The Floral Alphabet and FOTD, Sept 17, 2022, The Letter C

20 Replies
Canna Lilies
Canna Lily
Century Plant Buds
Cosmos

I got a bit carried away with the “C’s”.  Click on photos to enlarge and see names. Please play along and put a link to your posts in comments here as well as on Cee’s FOTD blog.

Family Secrets

11 Replies

Family Secrets

The mayor’s precious daughter has that certain glow,
but why the groom is deadpan, no one will ever know.
That he prefers the maid of honor is the murky truth,
but to show his real emotions he knows would be uncouth.

Hand-picked by her father to assure his re-election,
this young man of fine lineage was an obvious selection.
He should have put his foot down, but their fathers were best friends
and his marriage to another would not meet those families’ ends.

So when future generations question Grandpa’s look
as they rifle through the pages of the family photo book,
they’ll guess the bachelor party had gone on for too long,
affecting the groom’s fitness and his wedding get-along.

Only two will ever know the real truth of the tale.
First, the maid of honor who smoothed her best friend’s veil,
and secondly the groom, who when he kissed the bride
imagined he was kissing the one who stood beside.

 

Prompt words today are glow, deadpan, election, murky, mayor, prefer and precious. Image from Pinterest.

Floral Alphabet Challenge: The Letter “B” Sept 16, 2022

16 Replies
Bougainvillea
Black-Eyed Susans
Begonia

Please click on photos to enlarge. Thanks to Forgottenman for helping me to find the last two photos in my media file.

To link up to The Floral Alphabet Challenge, use this link: Floral Alphabet Challenge:The Letter B

Also posted  for Cee’s FOTD, Sept 16

Whirl

11 Replies

 

Whirl

The rumor is that I will fall for anything in pants,
but it’s a reputation I only gained by chance.
It really isn’t warranted, for I must feel a spark.
I’m not apt to woo anyone merely for a lark.

I’m just giving feedback, though it’s really no big deal,
of how I earned my reputation on a Ferris wheel.
I went up as a single, but after a spin or two,
another swinging single came into my view.

He was a mere acquaintance. I’d seen him once or twice
on a barstool at the tavern, and I thought him very nice.
I was a mere scrap of a girl, and he was big and burly.
He had a classic profile and his smile was wide and pearly.

My second spin around the wheel, I gave the smile of smiles,
hoping I could interest him with my girlish wiles.
It must have worked for on my very next time going round,
I saw that fellow standing on the boarding mound.

The spinning stopped while they removed my safety bar and he
climbed right in beside me and turned his smile on me.
I don’t know the legality. Is love a bonafide
excuse to board new people in the middle of a ride?

I do not know the answer, but I know for sure it worked,
and when the safety bar went on and that big wheel jerked
me up into the air again, I never rued the stop,
for we were locked in our first kiss before we reached the top.

Although I started solo, we came to earth a pair.
I had found my next true love way up there in the air,
proving it once and for all that romance may be found
even in a swinging cage fifty feet off the ground.

And while the whole experience prompted jubilation,
it had a negative effect on my reputation.
So though I still find rides upon the Ferris wheel are neato,
I arrive there fully masked and I ride incognito!

 

Prompts for the day are incognito, feedback, spark, acquaintance, scrap, Ferris wheel and legality. Image by Juliana Malta on Unsplash

Floral Alphabet Challenge. The Letter “A”

3 Replies

Janet at the Slmret blog has challenged me to post a photo of a flower for every letter in the alphabet. Just for the fun of it, I started out trying to see if I could do this and nine hours later, I’ve done it!!! Unfortunately, I can’t weed some of the letters down to one choice only, so instead of publishing them all today, I’m going to do one letter a day for 26 days, and some days I’ll publish more than one photo per letter.

Anyone want to play along? If so, please put a link to your post in my comments each day. HERE is my link for today. And also link to Cee’s blog, as she has decided to play along as well. HERE is her link for today.

So here we go with letter “A.” (I actually published this yesterday, but since Cee started publishing hers today, I’ll take a day’s vacation so we are on the same alphabetical page. 

“A” is for aloe bloom and anthurium.

This is the most unusual bloom on my aloe plant that I’ve ever seen.
Closeup
This anthurium has received an overlay from the high mineral content of our water. It makes for an interesting effect, though.
Here’s a more pristine set of blooms.

Floral Alphabet Challenge. The Letter “A”

17 Replies

Janet at the Slmret blog has challenged me to post a photo of a flower for every letter in the alphabet. Just for the fun of it, I started out trying to see if I could do this and nine hours later, I’ve done it!!! Unfortunately, I can’t weed some of the letters down to one choice only, so instead of publishing them all today, I’m going to do one letter a day for 26 days, and some days I’ll publish more than one photo per letter.

Anyone want to play along? If so, please put a link to your post in my comments each day. HERE is my link for today. and also a link to Cee’s blog, as she has decided to play along as well. HERE is her link for today.

So here we go with letter “A.” (I actually published this yesterday, but since Cee started publishing hers today, I’ll take a day’s vacation so we are on the same alphabetical page. 

“A” is for aloe bloom and anthurium.

This is the most unusual bloom on my aloe plant that I’ve ever seen.
Closeup
This anthurium has received an overlay from the high mineral content of our water. It makes for an interesting effect, though.
Here’s a more pristine set of blooms.