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.

Gaaaaahrlic

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Gaaaahrlic

I hate dealing with garlic! So, I’ve devoted a bit of research and a few dollars to resolving the problem and would like to show you my process for dealing with those little cloves more efficiently.

Click on first photo to set up slide series with explanatory notes.  Continue hitting on the arrows to proceed through the series:

These two little devices have helped incredibly.
The other device is readily available in your kitchen no doubt. Put an entire bulb of garlic into a mixing bowl.
Put another bowl over the top and shake vigorously.
With larger juicier cloves, this process will separate the cloves and remove all the skin the skin, but with smaller cloves, the outer skin will detach
and leave you with cloves with the inner skin still attached
Put the cloves individually into the roller
and press down with the heel of your hand. Roll on hard surface, back and forth.
Cloves will be slipped out of their inner coats.
Roll the garlic mincer (available on the internet) over the clove.
Voila! minced garlic.

 

 

Boomerang Boy: New Syndrome Defined––Grown-up Kids Who Won’t Leave Home

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Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on unsplash. Used with permission.

“In many countries, the phenomenon is so widespread that new terms have developed to describe it: bamboccioni [literally, big babies] in Italy, “hotel mama” in Germany, boomerang children in Australia, parasaito shinguru [single parasite] in Japan. These young men and women don’t leave home and don’t get married, because they only want to buy brand names and enjoy themselves and to live, as an ideology, at their parents’ expense. It’s nothing less than a pandemic.” https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-new-syndrome-grown-up-kids-who-stay-home-1.5336944

Boomerang Boy

If more interest charges he wishes to defray,
he needs to find a paying job without further delay.
He should at once take heed of my excellent advice
and give up on his former full-time job of shooting dice.

He might become a rose vendor, a troubadour or chef
or become the famous author of a roman a clef.
if only he would get a job, his parents would rejoice,
but, alas, sheer laziness is his career of choice,

The prompts today were rose, delay  and sacrifice.

A Duck Tale

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Duck Tale

He sits there on his little tail
maintaining he does not inhale,
but every time he deigns to speak
the smoke that issues from his beak
is not all that he’s taken in.
We tell him it’s a double sin
to fill his lungs with acrid smoke
and then to lie to all the folk.
We all know Little Duck’s too young
to mess with trachea and lung.
Those who take gambles respiratory
wind up with a tragic story.
But no duck I have ever known
will listen to his parents’ drone.
We take his privileges away,
but still he chooses to puff away.
We hide his fags and hide his lighter,
now and then pull an all-nighter
making sure he doesn’t smoke,
but once we’re gone, he takes a toke.
No matter what our perturbation,
we cannot stem his inhalation!

 

(If you’re not familiar with Little Duck, HERE is some backstory.)

The prompt word today is inhale.

Gerbera Daisies: FOTD June 21, 2019

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I am crazy about these new Gerbera Daisies I just bought today. More to follow! These aren’t even planted yet.

For Cee’s FOTD

Mass Lynching of 237 Black Sharecroppers

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http://www.blackwestchester.com/never-forget-americas-forgotten-mass-lynching-when-237-black-sharecroppers-were-murdered-in-arkansas/?fbclid=IwAR1SLOveBDgU737AR_fyeI4liKlZwcFbMxHOfDEHZv3Cif4Wej5gc9GVQtQ

Why did we never hear of events like this in our history classes? I have never before heard of this massacre that makes me ashamed of a country that I thought was supposed to represent all races and economic levels equally. Our present government is not a joke.  It is a travesty.  And reports like this make me realize this is not the first time that monumental injustice was the status quo.  If we let the concentration camps at our borders and further expulsion of those long-time residents contributing to our society and their separation from their children, then we deserve what is going to happen. There are now more Americans deserting the U.S. and moving to Mexico than Mexicans moving to the states. When Bush was elected, I said I was never coming back to the states until he was out of office. Looking at the Republican Party today, I have to say he was a saint by comparison.  Shame on you on every front, Trump administration. If Karma is real, I can’t imagine your afterlife!!!

Door in the Making

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Click on Photo to enlarge.

I had to stop the car and back up to get this one. Loved everything that was going on.

 

For Norm’s Sunday Doors

Shaving Brush Tree, FOTD, June 20, 2019

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Once again, Bob saved the day by identifying this flower.  It is a pseudobombax ellipticum! (Commonly known as a shaving brush tree bloom.) If you have your own mystery flower of plant, try letting Bob come to the rescue. He is the pit bull of flower identification.  Find him here:  Love’s flower identification site. 

For Cee’s FOTD. See her gorgeous peony HERE.

Sinning

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Sinning

Out here at my grandpa’s farm, there isn’t any sinning.
We’re as innocent as Eve way back at the beginning
before original sin was born, decreed by the Almighty
and Eve was forced to don a fig leaf in lieu of a nightie.
As we kneel to milk the cows, we also kneel in prayer,
peeling all our sins away, layer after layer.
But I prefer to say Eve’s sin was merely hers alone.
I should get to do the sin for which I must atone!

 

Prompt words today are farm, kneel, almighty and original.

It’s a Gas

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Waaay back in June of 2014, when I had about ten followers–none of them followers of today–I wrote this poem. I just stumbled upon it, having totally forgotten it, but it seems so timely today as we become more and more aware of the mess that plastic has made of our world, that I decided to rerun it.

It’s a Gas

I know that I saw it on You Tube
(and I’m sure that it wasn’t a dream)—
a machine that shreds old soda bottles
and melts them to make gasoline.

The machine they were using to make it
was compact—and could possibly be
installed in each house or wherever
you think you might like it to be.

Grocery stores, motels or roadside—
(wherever these bottles collect)
instead of machines set for vending,
would have a machine to inject

with all of the plastic you brought there
and for it you’d get, I deduce,
credit for all of the petrol
the bottles you brought in produce.

Every gas station would honor
these chits that you’d get every day.
You’d make a big saving on gas bills
with bottles you once threw away.

You could save up your old plastic bottles
and toss them right into your trunk
right next to the tools and blankets and flares
and all of the usual junk.

And when you next went for refreshments,
for soda or candy or chips,
you could also deposit your bottles,
’cause your car also needs a few sips.

The process I describe here is not fictional. Google “pyrolysis” if you want more information.

Confessions of Hatface

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Confessions of Hatface

My father calls me hatface because of my addiction
for wearing things upon my head because of my conviction
that I look prettier in hats or hairdos most original
to make me look exotic––French or Greek or aboriginal.

Screen Shot 2019-06-19 at 7.05.48 PM.png

I wear my cat under my arm, my socks upon my head.
Rather than be ordinary, I’d rather be dead.

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Sometimes I walk my rabbit. When he walks on his hind feet,
for sure, we’ve the attention of everyone we meet.
My rabbit sheds his rabbit skin and wears a shirt instead,
and me? I change my head socks and put bows upon my head.

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Our skin is very pliable. It stretches like Band-aids,
so Sis and I just pull it up in pretty little braids.

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In sunlight, flowers surprise me by sprouting from my head.
I never know what to expect when rising from my bed.

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I have two patron blackbirds perched one upon each shoulder.
They’d be perching on my head if they were any bolder.

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A bluebird doubles as my kite, the string held in its mouth.
Sometimes he flies me east or west, and sometimes we fly south.
I’m a very special girl. I’m not at all predictable––
a miracle that Jackie Hurlbert found me this depictable!

 

Thanks to Charmed Chaos for thinking up this picture prompt for dVerse Poets and to jackie Hurlbert for letting her use her beautiful paintings as prompts.  We were to choose one to write about, but I chose all of them. Click on her name to see more of her work.