Another Lick
The prompt today is: 32 Flavors–Vanilla, chocolate or something else entirely?
“Lick for Lick”–is a poem that I wrote to that prompt last June. If you didn’t read it then or want to read it again for old time’s sake, go here:
https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/lick-for-lick-2/
Meanwhile, I’m trying to find a new prompt to write for today, so check back later for another poem, please.
Like a kid kept prisoner in the house due to the rain, I’ve run out of toys, so I just keep pumping out new blog entries. This will be the last, I promise. This is an answer to Cee’s Share Your Week Challenge.
List 2 things you have to be happy about.
I am happy that I have a MacBook Air again to make writing and posting effortless. But, I am also happy that fate forced me to learn how to operate an Acer PC so now I have both backup and an extra computer to do research on, receive videos and take to the pool to watch movies on while I do my aerobic exercise. I’d do so right now, but I see it is still raining! 48 hours without a letup now.
Last time this happened, we had a major landslide through my fraccionamiento and the village below. It took over a year to repair the damage. So nonstop rain does create a bit of worry, but the other 4 day nonstop rain was during the rainy season when there had been a few months of rain leading up to it, so why worry? Also, this post is supposed to have a happy theme by the looks of it.
Do you prefer ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise?
Mustard. (Why do you want to know, Cee? Is a lunch invitation in my immediate future?)
If you were to paint a picture of your childhood, what colors would you use?
Yellow and Green.
Green because my main toy was our big yard that stretched around our house. Lawnmowing day meant huge grass piles we could make into nests. My older sister was the mamma bird, feeding worms to her baby bird (me.) The worms, in case you were going to ask, were bologna (we called it minced ham) cut into long strips. Right, Patti? Or do I have it wrong? It might have been cooked spaghetti.
Yellow because the two times (prior to age 11) that I got to choose what color I wanted my room to be, I chose yellow both times. I chose, predictably, green for the linoleum and the first time my much older sister painted the dormer wall of my room red. The rest was yellow, as per my request.
Do you prefer a bath or shower?
Shower, now that I have an outside hot tub that fills with natural thermal hot water 4 times a week.
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am grateful that my friend Dianne came to stay with me for the week while she was a presenter at the local writers conference and for the conference itself and all the new friends I met there.
In the week coming up, I’m looking forward to a jazz improv/ poetry reading (Entitled “Dangerous Intersections”) that I’m giving with six other members of my poetry group, “The Not Yet Dead Poets.” I’ll post a flyer later this week.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/03/16/share-your-world-2015-week-11/
Urn, archeological museum, Lima, Peru
Umbrellas, La Manzanilla Beach, Jalisco, Mexico
Underside of roof overhang (with wasp nest). Is this cheating?
https://sundaystills.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/sunday-stills-the-next-challenge-the-letter-u/
How ironic that a few days ago I had to write an essay or poem that did not contain the letter “U” and now here is a challenge where I need to try to find a photo of something that begins with a “U”. How the world turns! But I, being ever obedient, shall comply.
Fair or Fowl
They probably think we can’t do it,
and they are right. Most will eschew it.
Tho I am going to get an “A”
for I have letters here to say,
even tho this prompt is fowl,
I don’t need that extra vowel.
Yes, it’s a fact that I can’t spell.
Otherwise, have I done well?
The prompt was to write a post that did not make use of one of the vowels in the alphabet. I am rushing off to the Lake Chapala Writers’ Conference so only time for a quickie…Judy
Three new friends came home with me from the Ajijic Writers’ Conference and we spent the late afternoon and evening drinking wine, eating potstickers and asparagus and having an even greater feast of words. In the course of the evening’s conversation, someone asked why I had stayed for a year and a half in Ethiopia, and if you’ve read my earlier blog entries about my African experiences, you will know the tale I told.
They are all three successful and much-published writers and enthusiastically encouraged me to write a book about those years. Everyone had organizational ideas and it got me to thinking again. Could I do this? It would mean much research, and so I think if I were offered a year abroad that I would choose Ethiopia so I could revisit old locales and do research in the place that would be the setting for the book. Will I do it? We’ll see. (Write the book, I mean. I fear the research will be conducted at my desk at home.)
The Prompt: If you were asked to spend a year abroad, where would you choose?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/study-abroad/
Tax Time is Most Taxing
I don’t like doing taxes. I’d rather eat a rat.
I saved all my receipts for sure but don’t know where they’re at.
I should have printed up reports and put them on a spindle,
for now I cannot find out what I’ve taken in from Kindle
or Amazon. Their tax sites are really just a maze.
After roaming them for hours, I fear I’m in a haze.
Money spent for doctors and dentists must be here.
I’ve even asked a Ouija Board that says I’m getting near
to where they remain hidden under piles of other papers.
If I lived in another age, I know I’d have the vapors.
The time that I have left is surely waning and not waxing.
And things just keep on getting worse–for tax time is most taxing.
Next year I will do better. I’ll start out nice and early
and tax time will be easier and I will be less surly.
I’ll pat myself upon the back for files filled with slips
alphabetical and neat–no coffee spills or rips.
I will know to the penny what I spent on medicine.
I’ll save up all my dentist bills, fastened with a pin.
All my insurance payments and social security
will be neatly filed–correct from A to Z.
But as to this year’s taxes, I fear I’m out of luck.
I shake my head over the forms and murmur “What the – – – -?
I do not want to do this. I fear I’m in a mess.
I want to write a letter to the I.R.S.
giving them my bank account and telling them my pin,
for I fear my patience is growing rather thin.
“Just take whatever cash you need and leave enough for me
to live upon ’til I expire in two thousand-five-three.”
Instead, I go back to my desk to sort another pile.
Please don’t e-mail, phone or text. I’m busy for awhile!!
The Prompt: Set It To Rights–Think of a time you let something slide, only for it to eat away at you later. Tell us how you’d fix it today.
Chapter 5
All she can hear are the sighs of cars and the rumble of trains and the sounds of everyone hurrying through the cold. Peter calls out to her from his study, but she is immersed in her book–hurrying to keep step with Hercule Poirot. His stumpy little legs move him curiously fast over the buckled pavement of a seedy street and she isn’t sure yet where they are going, but she hurries after him, as much for a means of escape from Peter as curiosity over where he is going and what he will find once he gets there. The lives depicted in the book she is reading are a way to avoid her everyday life with Peter as surely as hanging around bars where she would know, if she thought it out, that she will never really meet anyone to replace him with.
This man she chose for her husband calls out again, this time louder. “Susan! There’s a gun missing from your case. Did you forget and leave it in the car?”
Damn. She had forgotten to take it out of the tool box. Peter is in the doorway now. No way can she get it out of the garden bin and back into its locked case in his den tonight without him seeing her. Her mind spins as she tries to come up with a plausible excuse for the missing gun.
“The action jammed at the range today. Luckily, Randy from the gun shop was there and he said he’d take it in for repairs for me.”
He didn’t answer, but she could hear him shuffling down the hall, rattling papers in front of his nose as he walked, again restored to his potential fortunes. As she returned to her book, she looked down and realized she was wearing her flouncy skirt. Not appropriate. Why hadn’t Peter mentioned it? Her arms were bare, which meant she was in one of her tight spaghetti strap tops. But actually, she didn’t have to worry on Peter’s account, because she realized now she wasn’t at home. She was on a dance floor, dancing close with a man who was missing two teeth. He dipped her, pulling her close against his chest and bending over with her as she bent back. His breath was not unpleasant and with the exception of the missing front teeth, he was a handsome man. But although the coloring and features were right and the body mass in all the right places, there was some lack–of intelligence, perhaps–in his face. Or maybe what was missing was integrity–something that had to be there for her to be attracted to a man. Peter had had it once.
Susan snapped to attention, aware that she’d nodded off. She looked for the gap-grin man, confused for a few seconds between dreams and reality. She missed him, a little, when she became fully awake. She wondered how she would have gotten out of that last dip. Would he have pulled her up again? Surely he’d have to. What kind of dance partner drops his partner after the dip? She laughed then, aware that she seemed to be caught up in her dreams more than reality.
Her few little adventures. Where did they get her, really? She recognized that most of it was revenge against Peter. But of what good was revenge that he did not know about and that did nothing to change her life in any meaningful manner? She decided then and there that there would be changes. Her next sojourn would not be to any of the dives she had visited in the past. Nor would she wear her usual tacky disguise. From now on, at least for awhile, her rare escapes would be conducted strictly in first class. She’d go shopping tomorrow. Drop her emergency clothes from the trunk off at some Goodwill store and up her ante.
When she again picked up her book, she no longer felt the cold chill of London. She strode arm and arm with Hercule, the shoreline exposed by half-moonlight. The hydrofoil loomed up before them. They crossed the channel at midnight.
Beginning and final lines from Anthony Doerr, “All the Light We Cannot See.” Thanks to Candace Spence for furnishing the first and last lines in this chapter.
Does someone have tomorrow’s lines for me? Just choose a favorite book and tell me the title, author and first and last lines in a comment. If I don’t receive one, the book is finished!!!!
Version 1: This is the picture as I first show it, with no edits. The sky is washed of its actual vivid colors.
Version 2: Hoping to recapture the actual colors of the sunset that were washed out in my original picture, I increased the saturation to 100. This looks exaggerated, but it is much closer to the actual vibrancy of sunset than the original had captured. It has been suggested that I should have used a sunset setting, which I will try next time.
Version 3: This version is just like version 2 except i increased the sharpness to 100 percent.
I didn’t realize until after I posted that week 1 was supposed to show the first edit of the photo, so I have shown both first and second edits in week 2.
To read about this photo challenge, go here:
https://robynsfineart.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/one-four-challenge-march-week-2/
Every time my big sister’s friend Karen came to spend the night with her, she would bring her Bonnie Braids dolls to sleep with me. I recently visited both of them in Minneapolis! 60 years after they both moved away!!!
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/03/05/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-things-made-out-of-plastic/
Time for another multi-photo challenge! Wow us with punchy pops of orange.
