Author Archives: lifelessons

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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.

The Numbers Game #102. Please Play Along! Dec 8, 2025

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #102”. Today’s number is 224 (posted by Forgottenman for Judy). To play along, go to your photos file folder 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 put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.

**Click on  Photos to Enlarge and View as Gallery.**

Merry Xmas favor for my brother-in-law Jim

Hoarding Pennies, For The Sunday Whirl Wordle (Wordless?) 734

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The rain lies hidden in the clouds, ready to rinse from this day my guilt for all of those words I imagined I would finally foster––drawing them out from that thick thicket of memory where they have hung for fifty years, waiting to explode. Sorted  one-by-one into piles, each lies like a single undetonated bomb, barely ticking after all these years, ready for me to sink into them to stage that final act by which they will earn their freedom. I am a criminal of omission––that fake author of the lessons they might teach. Fearing their truth or perhaps their half-truths, I hoard them  now like worthless pennies in their stacks. Too late, too late I fear, to spend them.

Below is a photo of the manuscript I started 50 years ago, at its present stage. Behind are piled the research, letters, notes and timelines I have assembled to attempt to bring the manuscript up to the present. I have come to an isolated spot in Quintana Roo for a month to do so, but I fear the daunting deed might go undone! Laziness or an inability to face the truths and to deal with them again, after all these years? Three weeks to go. Time will tell.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 734, the  prompts are: rinse days still thicket bomb fake criminal imagine foster lies sky sink First two images done aided by AI, third photo my own.

“Abundance” for dVerse Poets

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Abundance

How can we approach “abundant”
without resorting to “redundant?”
We must simply have the gall
to search for the original
instead of coming in the door
with something we have bought before––
like “Beanie Babies” by the score.

What if, everywhere we went,
we looked for something different?
So when we chose a friend anew,
they had a different point of view?
From countryside or town or city,
be it huge or itty-bity––
just choose someone you find witty

and mine their mind for something new
that can grow a part of you
that’s different from what came before––
that can open up a door
within your heart, within your mind
of that place where you can find
beliefs of a matching kind.

For dVerse Poets prompt: Abundant

( I know I’m not supposed to be blogging. The dVerse Devil made me do it…_

Time for Friday Fibs

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That time of the week again – Fibbing Friday!

1. What does HG represent on the Periodic Table? A Hemorrhaging Girl.
2. Which actress said “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”? Ann-Margret in Stagecoach.
3. What is the coloured part of your eye called? A Black Eye.
4. Which is the currency of Laos? Laotian Loot.
5. Which book was about a band of rabbits? Bugs Bunny at the Symphony
6. Which mountain range separates France from Spain? The Great Divide or Divisadero
7. Which African country was once called Abyssinia? Actually, it was not a country.This is what Karen Blixen said when she moved “Out of Africa”
8. Which song did Paul McCartney write for John Lennon’s son? “Seanny Boy”
9. Which 1960s film finds an astronaut making his way through a strange and hostile environment? Moonstruck
10. Who wrote the Little Mermaid? Her Merman penpal.

The Numbers Game #101. Please Play Along! Dec 1, 2025

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #101”. Today’s number is 223 (posted by Forgottenman for Judy). To play along, go to your photos file folder 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 put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.

**Click on  Photos to Enlarge and View as Gallery.***

Someone contributed a number of swatches of different material.. and a bottle full of buttons. Someone else gave us all google eyes. Here’s a closeup of Candace’s clever use of all of these elements.

Buenavista, Quintana Roo, for Bushboy’s Last on the Card

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Fence in Buenavista, Quintana Roo
Busy street in Buenavista, Quintana Roo

for Bushboy’s Last on the Card prompt.

For JohnBo’s Cellpic Sunday

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Chachalaca bird in Buenavista, Quintana Roo

(Posted for Judy by Forgottenman.) Judy & Xill finally arrived at their casa rental in Buenavista late last night after some issues getting their rental car for the 2-hour drive from the Tulum airport. Photo is a This  a Plain Chacalaca bird––noisiest bird in the world at least in La Manzanilla, but here they don’t seem to be making the same ruckus.

For JohnBo’s Cellpic Sunday

TTFN

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Today I am off to Quintana Roo to try to finish (crossed fingers) my book on my Ethiopian experience…now 50 years in the making. Since friends claim a big reason I haven’t is that I’m so distracted both by events here and by my blogging, I’m going to see if they are right and if total isolation will bring on that geriatric muse that is still limping about somewhere in my memory, perhaps I’ll accomplish my task.

Please don’t desert me entirely. I have over 112,000 past blogs to be reconnoitered and I’ll be back in January.  Merry Christmas to all. I might occasionally cheat and take a look at your blogs, but it is a bit like chocolate. Hard not to guzzle the whole box.

Forgottenman has asked me if I’d like him to publish some of my old blogs on my blog while I’m gone, and I would love it so hope he does.  See you in January!!!   oxoxoox Judy

Update from ForgottenMan. After some issues getting their rental car in Tulum for the 2-hour drive south to Bacalar, Judy & Xill are finally at their destination. While she’s cloistering there, I hope to repost some of her earlier blogs and any updates she may provide.
Um, do y’all know “TTFN” is a 90s expression for “Tata for now”?

Birthday Debacle for Stream of Consciousness

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Birthday Debacle

The rumors are untrue. He is a scurrilous liar.
I did not eat the birthday cake. I did not start the fire.

My serenity is not a ruse. I’m innocent of error.
I swear I had no hand in your recent birthday terror.

The dog has done his utmost to brand me as the thief,
but the fool is barely lucid. Could you not see his relief

when you started to upbraid me as he chased me, headed south,
crumbs falling from his chest hair, frosting around his mouth?

Oh that I knew your language and I could tell you that,
but instead, for ever after, you’ll be blaming “that damn cat!!”

The Stream of Consciousness prompt is “Crumb.” Yes, guilty. I had AI make the photos.

Thanksgiving, for dVerse Poets

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Thanksgiving

Speeding toward the old year’s end,
we express our thanks for the past year’s treasures––
pathways that we chose to wend.
And each friend whose love endures,
we invite to share in our table’s pleasures.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a Lire poem: 7, 11, 7, 7, and 11  syllables.
Rhyme Scemer: aBabB. Suggested topic is November or Thanksgiving.