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Only Child

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Only Child

She wants to trade her parents for contemporary versions.
She cannot stand their constant recital of aversions.
When it comes to expectations, their rule list never ends.
They derogate her clothes choice and her makeup and her friends.

When she wants to go on overnights, they won’t give their consent.
They never understand her or hear what she really meant.
Her dating makes them nervous. They wait up ’til she gets in,
then interrogate her as to what she’s done and where she’s been.

When it comes to parents, she got the rawest deal.
The schism that’s between them it seems will never heal.
Would she had an older sister who was ill-behaved and wild
to detract attention from this wretched only-child!

Prompt words today are nervous, consent, schism, derogate and trade.

Rainy Weather

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I’m reblogging this blog from five years ago. It seems like an appropriate response to the “water leak” prompt.

For the Wednesday Challenge Prompt on Water Leaks.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

I think the rainy season has started with a vengeance.  Driving rain, lightning that lights up the entire sky, thunder that sounds like the end of the world and Mariah-like wind whistling in around the door cracks.  Frida has slunk in to be near enough to her mom for protection but just far enough away so I can’t easily reach her with the grooming brush.  And––that true indication––a leaky roof. As usual, it is around the skylight far up on the dome.  I had to move the couches and end tables and both the handmade paper spiral lamp you can see in the background and the handmade paper bowl I made are sopping wet.  That’s okay.. they were wet when I made them, so as long as they are undisturbed, they’ll dry out tomorrow.

The ceramic vase in the shape of a woman that my friend Julie made looks askance…

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Abstemious?

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Cat lover or not, you won’t want to miss this hilarious piece by Lou Carreras.

Lou Carreras's avatarLouis N. Carreras, Woodcarver

Clancy J. Bümps – The Grey Menace. This cat never met a chili con carne that he did not like. His taste in steak ran to filet mignon, and a favorite repast was a half of a roast beef sub with extra hots. Abstemious? Never. Moderation was for pussy cats, not a giant twenty-plus pound behemoth engaged in blood sports against weakling humans. If you refused to share with him, he’d label you an ingrate, censor you with a paw full of claws, lick off the blood, and assure you that his skillful intervention had improved the decor.
Attempts to mitigate his behavior by behavioral modification got met with disdain. My first wife, Georgia, sought to teach him not to claw with a squirt bottle. He sat there, let her squirt, and walked calmly away. Then, he seemed to say, “Ahhh, that was bracing. Let’s do that again…

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Da Judge Is Playin’ Doctor Now!

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Okay.. I thought it had gotten as crazy as it could get, but this story takes the cake.

jilldennison's avatarFilosofa's Word

This one came straight out of my local news channel and my jaw dropped to the floor.

A local man, Jeffrey Smith, is in the hospital fighting for his life against Covid.  He refused to be vaccinated, refused to wear a mask, and so this is where all his naysaying got him.  His wife, Julie, asked the hospital to treat him with Ivermectin, the horse de-worming medicine, the latest quack theory among the uneducated.  Doctors and the FDA have issued strong warnings against humans taking this drug, for it is made for animals who have a different system than ours and who often weigh more than five times as much as a human.  Needless to say, the docs at West Chester Hospital refused the woman’s request to give her hubby this unqualified drug.  Funny, he didn’t want the approved vaccine in his body, but he wants this crap that isn’t…

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Looking for Signs

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For Marsha’s PPAC#11: Signs

Bar Stool Bozos and the Predictable Come-on Line

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Bar Stool Bozos and the Predictable Come-on Line

A new potential conquest is seen falling from her stool
in bodily protection from contact with this fool.
He’s a denizen of single bars, a problem to avoid,
for he’s sure to leave you listless, if not, in fact, annoyed.

How many boring platitudes can one bromide spout?
How may time-worn come-on lines are vying to get out
of lips that move unceasingly, spilling into the night
all the obvious clichés that he’s driven to cite?

Of all the gin joints in the world, why did he enter in
into the one where you came to have a quiet gin?
There should be a law passed that you get to vote on who
gets to wander into bars and saunter up to you.

They should have to pass an I.Q. test, then be sorted and tagged,
from “interesting” to “boring,” and the worst should then be gagged
with a small hole for a soda straw so they could go on drinking
without the ones around them having to know what they’re thinking.

 

Notable come-on lines that are grounds for gagging:

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
“We gotta get you outa that wet dress and into a dry martini.”

 

Prompt words today are bromide, falling, denizen and problem.

Note: Bromide in literary usage means a phrase, cliché, or platitude that is trite or unoriginal. It can be intended to soothe or placate; it can suggest insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker. Bromide can also mean a commonplace or tiresome person, a bore (a person who speaks in bromides).

Eulogy for Artichokes

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Eulogy for Artichokes

Behold the bristly artichokes scattered through the field—
delicious little thistles when boiled, buttered, peeled.
With our taste buds wakened and when they’re salted slightly,
it takes a bit of discipline to try to eat politely.

Leaf by leaf, we peel them bare, scraping off their meat.
We like them better with each tiny bit of them we eat.
Then scraping off the “chokey” part, we gobble down the heart.
They told us all along that this would be our favorite part.

Who knew these fat green pinecones would turn out to be so tasty?
Now we wish consumption of them hadn’t been so hasty.
And even after plates are bare and not a morsel lingers,
we’d like to slurp the butter up and lick it from our fingers.

 

Prompts for the day are scattered, field, discipline, bristly and wake. Image by Margaret Jaszowski on Unsplash.

Stages, FOTD Aug 28, 2021

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For Cee’s FOTD

Hibiscus, Aug 28, 2021

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This brand new hibiscus was at the height of its beauty today. It seems to float above the brick pathway of the garden.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

The Human Race

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The Human Race

Our world keeps tripping over its own tangled shoelaces,
one generation tying them up, the next heedlessly
rushing ahead in wondrous greed until it trips, falls,
and stops again to tighten its laces.

Today goes for the throat of yesterday,
bemoaning its tardiness
in choking off the past
while rushing ahead in a blind race.

In a constant state of pregnancy,
one generation gives birth to the next,
standing and tripping and falling in turn
like an automaton marching ahead to its own destruction.

Prompt words are throat, tangled shoelaces, wondrous, tardy and pregnancy.