Category: Life

Life · Music

The Loneliness Inside

Sally11 Comments

Today’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt is to choose a song that reflects different types of behavior that people exhibit.

I never read the book or saw the film “Georgy Girl” but I’ve known the song by The Seekers for what seems like my whole life.

We all wear masks, don’t we? The inspiration for the prompt is that August 16 is Authenticity Day “which encourages people to show their true personalities. It emboldens people to embrace their true selves, do things their own way, and move beyond simply conforming to expectations.”

This song speaks to that behavior, the behavior of being inauthentic because we feel the need to hide who we really are.

Hey there, Georgy girl
Swinging down the street so fancy-free
Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there inside you
Hey there, Georgy girl
Why do all the boys just pass you by?
Could it be you just don’t try or is it the clothes you wear?

You’re always window shopping but never stopping to buy
So shed those dowdy feathers and fly a little bit

Hey there, Georgy girl
There’s another Georgy deep inside
Bring out all the love you hide and, oh, what a change there’d be
The world would see a new Georgy girl

Hey there, Georgy girl
Dreaming of the someone you could be
Life is a reality, you can’t always run away
Don’t be so scared of changing and rearranging yourself
It’s time for jumping down from the shelf a little bit

Hey there, Georgy girl
There’s another Georgy deep inside
Bring out all the love you hide and, oh, what a change there’d be
The world would see a new Georgy girl

Wake up, Georgy girl
(Hey there, Georgy girl)
Come on, Georgy girl
(Hey there, Georgy girl)
Wake up, Georgy girl

Songwriters: Jim Dale / Tom Springfield

Life · poetry

A Presidential Weave

Sally24 Comments

At 80 Mom “rested” her eyes
As did Joe Biden — no surprise
Trump “rests” his in many places
Meetings1, funerals2 — sans disguise

Trump weaves a lot (not string or laces)
Mixes lands for US bases3
Iceland? Greenland? Does it matter?
Pinky? PeeWee?4 Meh – same faces

Tic Tac, Tik Tok5 — chitter, chatter
Covfefe6 served on a platter
Would you drive down The Hormuz Street7?
Hormuz Strait all bombs and splatter8

Dumb has a “b”.9 Who knew? How neat!
Dumocrat10 — such a silly tweet
Islamic Republic — Japan11?!?
Defeat him? No! Obvious cheat!

Shithole countries12 we ought to ban
Not Norway, places African
Discuss terms telephonically13
Big nuclear button14. Oh man.

So rest your eyes; the world can see
We’ve become a hostile country
You’re all about making money
This is not who I want to be

Feel free to fact-check me —

1 – One example: at a cabinet meeting on December 2, 2025, Trump was photographed with his eyes closed while various cabinet members spoke. The cabinet members said that he just blinked.

2 – Trump was caught on camera with his eyes closed at Lindsey Graham’s funeral on July 28, 2026

3 – Trump confused Iceland and Greenland at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2026

4 – At a rally in Marietta, GA on July 24, 2026, Trump compared Jon Osoff to Pinky Herman.

5 – On July 28, 2026, Trump declared himself Number 1 on Tic Tac. I think that’s a pretty small platform. He might have meant Tik Tok.

6 – What exactly is covfefe? He has never told us since he coined the word May 31, 2017.

7 – On July 22, 2026, while addressing students in metro Atlanta, Trump refered to the Hormuz Street.

8 – On February 28, 2026 the Strait of Hormuz was closed by Iran after they were attacked by the USA

9 – On July 16, 2026 (and multiple other times), Trump explained, “Dumb. You take the the B out. Most people don’t know that dumb has a B.” I feel like this is a case of pots, kettles, and the color black.

10 — Trump first used this term in May 2026 at a speech in New York.

11 – Yes, on July 8, 2026, at a NATO summit, Trump refered to Japan in this way. He probably meant Iran.

12- January 11, 2018 in the Oval Office, thus spake the president, who is strongly backed by conservative evangelical Christians, in the beautiful language of noble world leaders.

13 – On April 30, 2026, Trump stated that negotiations regarding Iran were being conducted “telephonically,” noting that this approach eliminated the need for lengthy 18-hour flights for in-person meetings.

14 – On January 3, 2018, Trump tweeted that his “Nuclear Button” was “much bigger & more powerful” than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s.

This week, the W3 challenge is to write a funny roast or a strong complaint about a government leader or another person who has power. I don’t know how funny this is. I mostly feel angry.

The poem should use a form called an interlocking rubaiyat.

Here is how the form works:

  • Write between 4 and 8 stanzas.
  • Each stanza has 4 lines.
  • Each line should have 8 syllables.
  • The rhymes link one stanza to the next.

The rhyme pattern looks like this:
AABA / BBCB / CCDC / DDED

Life · Writing

A Trip to Maine

Sally2 Comments

This is my response to this week’s Writer’s Workshop prompts

12 things I learned and/or grew to appreciate this month week (because I’ve been in Maine for the week):

  1. I now know the difference between a tadpole, polywog, and froglet. This is a polywog:

          A tadpole doesn’t have any legs and a froglet has all four. This polywog, as you can see(maybe), only has two legs.

          2. Maine blueberries grow low to the ground and are tiny, compared to our New York blueberry bushes. They are harvested with special rakes. They have blueberry bushes in Maine, too, but those teeny berries from the ground plants are PACKED with flavor. Who knew?

          3. There is more than one Fort Knox. My dad was stationed in Fort Knox, KY, and it’s known for all the gold there. But before that Fort Knox, there was a Fort Knox in Maine built in the mid-1800s. It’s a massive granite fortress built on the edge of the Penobscot River.

          Fort Knox outside wall
          Fort Knox — the inside compound

          4. Perspective is always important. When you’re looking from the outside, you can’t see in very well (see top Ft. Knox photo). But when you’re looking from the inside out, the world just seems to open up.

          From inside Ft. Knox.

          5. The Penobscot Narrows Bridge is one of only five bridge observatories in the world. The other four are in China, Thailand, Slovakia, and South Korea.

          Looking up at the Penobscot Observatory from our car.

          6. Perspective is always important. (Yes, I already said that.) Looking down and looking up are totally different views.

          Looking down from the Penobscot Observatory at our car.

          7. Beaches hold amazing surprises.

          We found this crab shell on the beach full of… we didn’t know! It turns out they are Marine Springtails, a relative of the snow fleas I’ve seen at times in New York. They’re an important part of the beach ecosystem, part of nature’s clean-up crew.

          8. Museums are fun.

          We stopped at the Penobscot Maritime Museum, mostly because of this guy beckoning us in. I learned more about sardines than I thought possible.

          9. Sometimes kids don’t appreciate museums.

          “Boring who needs fishermen dont prezerve fishing”

          This was in a box of comments that I looked through. It made me laugh — and feel a little sad for the kid who wrote it.

          10. Museums can be very funny for kids (big and small) who engage with them.

          Captioned: Which animal is not stuffed?

          This photograph was hanging in the ladies room at the Penobscot Maritime Museum. It was taken by a turn of the 20th century photographer, Charles Coombs, who was also an undertaker and taxidermist. The picture made me laugh.

          11. Floating classrooms can be massive.

          The big ship in the back is called The State of Maine and recently came into Castine, home to the Maine Maritime Academy. Its primary purpose is for training Maine Maritime cadets while also being available for federal humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission. We went to see it but couldn’t get any closer than this.

          12. Sunsets are beautiful everywhere.

          Life

          Just A Trip to Walmart

          Sally2 Comments

          This post was originally written August 5, 2017 and has languished in my draft folder since then.

          The father bellowing at the little boy in the Walmart parking lot was a bad start.

          “JOHNNY,” he roared, “GIT YER A$$ OVER HERE.”

          The open tailgate made me think that the father had been putting his purchases into the car. The boy skulking back from the cart corral looked to be about 8 or 9 years old. He was scowling. I would scowl, too, if someone spoke to me like that.

          Walmart. I felt a snobbish “ugh” rising inside me.

          Inside, the store was a disorderly mess.

          “You can always tell when the students start coming back,” commented a woman looking at the same merchandise as me. “They trash the place.”

          “It is a mess in here,” I agreed.

          “I shop here every week,” she said. “Today is the worst I’ve seen it.”

          I gathered my items and found the shortest line to check out.

          The shortest line was not short.  When the elderly couple ahead of me finally got up to the register and the cashier was nearly finished scanning, their package of chicken needed a price-check.

          “I’m sorry,” the man said, turning to me. I could barely see his eyes under the brim of Carhartt cap.

          “No worries,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry.”

          “Me and my wife got a carful of groceries already,” he said, nodding toward a hunched-over woman with blue-gray hair. “Frozen stuff prolly meltin’ in the car… but she forgot a few things so we come back in.”

          A few things meant a cartful.

          “I hope you aren’t far from home,” I said.

          “Blenheim,” he said.

          I knew that was about an hour away. In the middle of nowhere. Near Breakabeen.

          “I’m sorry,” I told him.

          The Walmart supervisor came to check on the chicken. She called on the radio to the meat department. “Anyone there gimme a price on some chicken?” she asked. I couldn’t hear the response because of her earpiece, but I didn’t need to — she announced it. “I gotta walk this over to the chicken department to get a price,” and off she walked.

          I turned to the man behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, even though I knew I had nothing to be sorry for.

          “No problem,” he said. “I just moved here from Long Island. You should see the lines in their stores.”

          So we waited.

          “You could move over to a different line,” said the Carhartt man.

          I looked at the line next to ours. It was moving faster, but I’m not one to jump ship. A burly man helped unload an elderly woman’s cart on the belt, but when he left with his bag, I realized they weren’t together. It was just a nice move.

          The chicken department was on the far side of the store. I kept watching that direction to see if I saw the supervisor heading back.

          The blue-haired wife mouthed “I’m sorry” to me. I smiled at her.

          I made eye contact again with the man behind me. “I was in Europe this summer,” I told him. “Time doesn’t seem to matter as much there.”

          “I know,” he said. “We could learn a lesson or two from them.”

          The chicken was still MIA.

          In the line next to me, a man holding a plant — his only purchase — was let ahead of a customer with a full cart. “Thank you SO much,” he said, enthusiastically. The woman who had let him pass just smiled.

          I smiled, too.

          There were nice people all around me.

          In Walmart.

          Finally chicken lady returned.

          I told Long Island man, “Here she comes!”

          “Hooray!” he said.

          I felt like we should clap or something.

          By the time I got to the parking lot, I had nearly forgot the unpleasant father-son interaction because I had seen and talked to so many nice people in the store that day.

           I could guess why I never posted this — too wordy. It’s a problem I have.

          But the message to look for the nice people? Yes, I needed that today.

          Be not conformed to the impatience and nastiness of the world, but be transformed by the goodness that’s right in front of you if you look for it. (a bastardization of Romans 12:2, but nonetheless true.)

          Life · poetry

          Tumbleweed

          Sally2 Comments

          Roll that dry weed across an empty road
          Underscore my dry and empty feeling
          So this, this is Wyoming, new abode
          So far from home made this place appealing
          I couldn’t speak about my need for healing
          Although unbidden tears oft spoke for me
          No one could understand my need to flee

          Turning, turning, and running far away
          How do I put this awful thing behind
          I set my mind to one thing: learn to pray
          So as to focus my intents and mind
          To hold the world at arm’s length, yet be kind
          Laudably said, “Wrong number!” when he called
          Even as I hung up, shaking, I bawled

          Tumbleweed, today’s RDP prompt, brings up one very specific memory — 1983 crossing the state border between Nebraska and Wyoming as my (then) husband and I moved there to start a new life.

          This poem is a Rhyme Royal, which uses the scheme ababbcc, the lines having 10 syllables each i.e. (usually) iambic pentameter. Rhyme Royal is also sometimes known as the Troilus stanza.

          The poem is also an acrostic for RUSSIAN THISTLE. Russian thistle (Salsola tragus or Salsola kali): The classic plant seen rolling in Western movies.

          Alzheimer · Alzheimer's · dementia · elderly · family · Leaning In · Life · Writing

          The Feeder’s Table

          Sally2 Comments

          This is a draft written February 6, 2015, pulled from the draft folder because of the RDP prompt word: tame

          From across the room, I heard the man bellow, “NO!”

          I had no clue what this was in reference to — he was across the room, after all, and I was attending to my mother in the midst of her ritual folding and unfolding of her mealtime protector (aka – bib) while waiting for the food to arrive.

          A woman at his table shouted out, “SNOW!” It was snowing out.

          She laughed at her rhyme, a dry cackle-y laugh, not because she was a witch, although it did make me think of one, but because she was very old and shriveled, and even her laugh bore witness to that.

          “He said, ‘NO,’ and I said, ‘SNOW,'” she said gleefully, and it reminded me of the little “jokes” that first- or second-graders make, when the littlest thing sends them into gales of laughter.

          However, the jokesters were across the room, while my mother sat at the feeder’s table, a table set aside for residents who need assistance with eating. She dines with five other ladies with dementia.

          To my mother’s left is a dear lady that reminds me of a sparrow. Her voice is quiet and sing-songy. Sometimes she makes sense and sometimes she doesn’t, but I always have to listen very closely when she speaks. (Professor Trelawny)

          Next to Sparrow is a woman with a chiseled angular face. (Professor McGonigle) She never speaks. She sits erect and stern, like a statue of a school matron staring across her desk at a wayward student.  However, I had met her many years before, when she was an OB nurse. She had come into my room after I had given birth to somebody because she wanted to tell me about my father.

          “I remember your father’s first day at the hospital,” she said. “He came in toting a little black doctor’s bag. A little black bag!” She laughed when she told me the story, and her eyes twinkled with the delight of that memory. My father still has that black bag with its stethoscope, reflex hammer, otoscope, and other doctorly treasures.

          To her left sits a white-haired lady whose dementia has a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde effect on her.  (Quirinius Quirrell) One minute she is sweet and the next she is spewing venom.

          Next to Mrs. Hyde sits the newest diner at the feeder’s table. I’ll come back to her.

          To Newby’s left is Mrs. Tiggywinkle, so designated because of her hedgehog hairdo.  Teens pay a lot of money and use a lot of product to get hair like hers, sticking straight up all over her head. My father has to repeatedly request that my mother’s hair get combed. Some of us are just stuck with wayward hair that no amount of combing can tame, and I suspect that’s the case with Mrs. Tiggywinkle.

          The draft ended and I never finished it. I don’t remember who the person I called Newby is, so I can’t come back to her now. I don’t even remember the point of this story.

          My mother died 9 months later.

          Reading drafts and posts from that time in my life are interesting to me. I’m glad that I chronicled the journey.

          Advice to anyone going through a stressful time: Write down what you see and hear and feel. It’s a gift to your future self.

          gratitude · Life

          20 Things I Love

          Sally1 Comment

          The RDP prompt was “cardinal” which led me to a post I had written in 2015: “Quick — 20 things you love.” That was over 11 years ago. Without studying the old list (although I posted it down below), I thought I would post the first 20 things that came to mind today.

          1. Flowers in the asteracea family — you know, the ones with petals, like daisies. My Shasta daisies are blooming in abundance. The purple coneflower is starting to bloom
          2. Stories — personal stories. Oral histories. I love when someone sits in my office and shares a sliver of their life.
          3. Melty vanilla ice cream
          4. Cold crisp Chardonnay
          5. Calls for no reason other than to say hi
          6. Books that make me think
          7. Travel to other countries where English is not the first language
          8. New sneakers — especially from Xero shoes whose zero-drop shoes gave me a new lease on walking
          9. Homemade cinnamon rolls
          10. Kneading bread dough
          11. Dinner out
          12. Photos of my grandkids — especially those that are spontaneously sent to me on my phone. They brighten my day.
          13. Blue skies — you need a few smoke-obscured skies to appreciate the blue ones.
          14. Getting rid of boxes of stuff — so satisfying
          15. Birdsong at dawn
          16. Coyotes howling in the middle of the night
          17. The smell of vanilla
          18. Simon & Garfunkel
          19. Jumping in the lake
          20. Going for a long walk

           Quick – 20 Things You Love

          A friend posted this challenge: “Quick. Twenty things you love. (Not family, friends, or Jesus. We know that.)”

          1. Going for a walk
          2. My mother’s smile
          3. Biscotti
          4. A Military Tattoo — the kind with bagpipes, not ink on skin
          5. Old stained glass windows
          6. The smell of chlorine from a swimming pool
          7. Days when I have nowhere to go
          8. Bare trees of winter
          9. Bare trees of winter with cardinals adding color
          10. A good poem
          11. A handmade quilt
          12. Sunrise
          13. Losing weight
          14. A full tank of gas
          15. Sleeping in my own bed when I’ve been away
          16. Lilacs
          17. Getting real mail
          18. Warm feet
          19. A free hour to spend in a used bookstore
          20. A new song that catches my heart so I listen to it six times in a row.

          Life

          Song Lyric Sunday: Empowerment

          Sally10 Comments

          This is my second stab at the blogging challenge called Song Lyric Sunday. This week the theme is to find a song that carries a message of empowerment.

          The first song that came to mind was Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer. I won’t post all the lyrics but would encourage you to listen to the song. It’s the story of young man leaving and essentially being beat up by the world, squandering what little he had, longing to go home. The final verse is this picture of hope:

          In the clearing stands a boxer
          And a fighter by his trade
          And he carries the reminders
          Of every glove that laid him down
          Or cut him till he cried out
          In his anger and his shame
          “I am leaving, I am leaving”
          But the fighter still remains

          The fighter still remains.

          Perseverance. Grit. Sticktoittiveness. Tenacity. Call it what you want. It’s an empowering picture.

          Honestly, I’m not a fan of boxing. It seems a poor way to settle anything. I found this photo of my father the other day, though, boxing with his brother at a summer camp where they worked. I’m throwing it in just because.

          Life

          Temptation

          Sally3 Comments

          This post was in the draft folder and dated: 2016/05/06 at 1:14 pm. It came up when I searched my Draft Folder for the word “timing” — RDP’s prompt today.

          I got a phone call yesterday that has been rattling around inside.

          In a good way.

          Kind of also in a bad way.

          “Hi, Sally,” the voice said, “Do you have a minute to talk?”

          “Sure,” I said. I was just washing dishes. They could wait.

          It was the AD (Athletic Director) at Greene. I knew him. I had worked for him before, and, at one point, lived two doors away.

          “We’re looking for a varsity swim coach for both the boys and girls next year. Our contract requires that we do an internal search to fill coaching positions which we’ve done, but your name keeps coming up. We would love it if you would come back to coach,” he said.

          He went on to do some salesmanship, telling me how they’ve updated the timing system, put in a new heating system, refurbished the diving boards. “We’d really like you to come back. You did a great job before, and we’d love to have you as part of our swim program again.”

          Oh my goodness.

          The dangling carrot was so appealing.

          I love coaching. Oh, not every minute of it, as my children could tell you. But the overall reward of being involved with young people, especially of the teenage variety, is incredible.

          Several years ago I wrote a post during a time when I thought I was done coaching called “MomSwimCoach.”  It’s now up at Laura Brown’s Makes You Mom site [no longer active], and is about a one of the greatest gifts I ever received — a quilt with squares made by one team of swimmers.

          But this temptation — to have the whole swim program and run with it — so so tempting.

          I knew the answer.

          “Thank you so much for thinking of me,” I told the AD, “but my mother died in November and I’ve been taking care of my father since. I couldn’t commit to you the time needed.”

          We finished our conversation with pleasantries, but, as I said, it rattled around.

          I went for a walk, mulling it over.

          Temptation comes when something

          And there ends the draft.

          If my draft had shoulders, I would grab hold of them and shake them. “When something WHAT?” I would demand.

          It’s funny that the prompt word — timing — was triggered by my reference to timing systems for swim meets, but the bigger broader story has to do with the timing of an opportunity. I’m in the same boat today. I have an opportunity, and it’s a great opportunity — but I have to weigh it all out. The timing is questionable. I should write the details in a blog post and save it in the draft folder for 8 – 10 years.

          For the record, I have zero regret about not pursuing the swim coach job. In fact, I had totally forgotten about it until this showed up after searching my draft folder. I made the right choice back then. Now for a repeat performance.

          Life · swimming

          Swimming Lessons

          Sally4 Comments

          This is a post that I started in 2018 and never finished. It’s a draft folder find when I searched “lane way” because LANEWAY is the RDP prompt word today.

          M– drove me crazy.

          He was always late to practice — through no fault of his own. He lived in the next town over, so his mother had a longer drive to the pool. Plus he was only eight years old with the short attention span so many boys that age have.

          He usually walked out of the boys’ locker room twirling his goggles on one finger, carrying his cap in the other hand, and looking at the ceiling, or the other lanes, or out the window, while we were finishing up the warm-up in the lanes right in front of him.

          “Whaddawedoin’?” he asked while pulling on his cap. Then he jumped right in the pool without waiting for an answer.

          “I’m going first,” he said to one of the girls in his lane and planted his scrawny little body in front of hers.

          “You need to warm up,” I said to him.

          “Nah — I’m good,” he said.

          “You need to warm up,” I said again, and thus began the first argument of practice.

          M– argued with me about everything.

          “Every time you push off the wall, I want you to get your arms up into a streamline position,” I told my group at every practice, demonstrating with my arms extended over my head, squeezing my head, my hands overlapping to form a tight point. Then I stood at the end and watched as each swimmer pushed over the wall.

          Here endeth the draft.

          I remember M– well. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I was going with this story.

          M– was bratty kid, but a talented swimmer. He went on to set records on the age group team and the high school — none of which had to do with my coaching. I actually tried to get him moved down to the beginner group until he could behave himself better, but I was overruled.

          At the final meet that year, he swam fast, won races, set records, blah-blah-blah. He came to me and took me by the hand. “I want my picture with you,” he said. I dutifully smiled next to a scrawny kid on a starting block, but I still resented his disruptive ways.

          The next year, he moved to the next group, and I stopped coaching to take care of my father.

          Then there was a pandemic.

          I didn’t lose sight of him. This is a small town, and the swimming community is even smaller.

          I watched coaches pander to him and fuss over him. Team rules didn’t really apply to him. He was fast. Yes, he was fast.

          Here’s where I get on my soapbox. There are things that are far more important than athletics. Being nice ranks pretty high for me. As does being thoughtful and listening. Respect, moral character, leadership — I could go on.

          Hypothetically, if M– became an Olympic swimmer and got disqualified from an event at the Olympics, I would hope that he would take his lumps. If the disqualification call was a bad call, all the better. Those build even more character. The worse thing that could happen to him would be for the President of the United States to call the President of the Olympic International Committee to plead with them to reconsider — and then have the call reversed.

          But that’s just me. There are things I value more than gold medals, World Cups, or bragging rights.