What happens when you look at a bunch of different prompts for the day? You end up with some dumb jokes and an overcrowded collage.
Doodlewash art prompt: Boots What do you do with someone who can’t learn to tie their shoelaces? Send them to boot camp.
Your Daily Word Prompt: Restore I read about a temple for a giant sea cow. My faith in huge manatee has been restored.
Word of the Day Challenge: Accumulate When women reach a certain age, they start accumulating cats. This is known as many-paws.
I went to work at 6 AM. Sometime in the afternoon, I noticed I had two different shoes on. Same shoe brand, but one is leather and one isn’t. I wore them all day. Still have them on. It’s been that kind of day.
I don’t care who you are, the pressure is on to go to the next task immediately. What happened to the days of hanging out in the hammock all afternoon?
Last night I went with one of my sons and his wife and daughter to a concert by Le Vent du Nord, a French-Canadian folk music group from Quebec. It now ranks among the few times I wished I had stuck with French instead of switching to Latin in high school.
Side note: our French teacher taught us by having us memorize dialogues in French. To date, I have yet to say to ANYBODY, “Regarde cette belle neige com el tombe,” whereas Latin words seem to commonly crop up/creep in. Caveat emptor, cogito ergo sum, and all that.
Such joy on that stage! Oh my goodness! Laughter doesn’t need a language any more than music does.
When one of the band members first pulled out his accordion, I was transported back to Bosnia 2017, when one of men there had started playing his accordion after dinner and soon everyone was singing along. I told my daughter-in-law about that experience and she had had a similar one in Switzerland. I have yet to go to dinner at anyone’s house in the USA, have someone start playing the accordion and people start singing along.
When I saw Linda Hill Stream of Consciousness prompt for this week — “a song from your childhood” — I immediately thought of an album, not a single song. If I had to choose a single song, it would be The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” which is the first song I distinctly remember hearing and wanting to hear over and over. I was four years old when that came out.
The album from my childhood that I thought of was an album of folk music my father gave me when I was in 5th grade. It was assorted artists and assorted songs. Do I distinctly remember any of the songs? No. Well, I do remember “Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder” but it certainly wasn’t my favorite song on the album. It’s kind of a strange song, if you know it. When they listed the ingredients of the chowder, it went something like, “Ice cream, cold cream, benzene, gasoline, soup beans, string beans, floating all around. Sponge cake, beef steak, mistake, stomach ache, egg puffs, ear muffs, begging to be found…” Clearly I listened to it waaaay too many times. And, like I said, it wasn’t my favorite song.
I think that album was like a packet of assorted wildflower seeds that was sown in my heart and took root. Goodness, I love folk music. It is my absolute favorite.
These days, I listen to Scottish folk music all the time. If you walk into my office, you may hear a little skirl of bagpipes playing softly in the background or some sad homesick song about Scotland.
I loved the Québécois music I heard last night. In fact, let me end my blather with a song from Le Vent du Nord, “Ma Louise.”
Check out the foot-tapping guy in the background. I could have listened to that all night.
All I understood was “Au revoir, ma Louise.” I looked up the translation of all the lyrics. Of course, it’s a sad song with happy music.
There once was a Bird-of-Paradise Its purple-orange-yellow was very nice It wasn’t a bird Which was kind of absurd But you might catch a birdwatcher looking twice
The multi-event races are probably a better depiction of my month of April.
So. Many. Things.
I chose to participate in the A-to-Z Challenge — which involved posting through the month of April using a different letter of the alphabet for each day. April 1 was A. Today, April 29 is Y. For the challenge, I chose to write four lines of a limerick and ask my readers to finish the limerick.
Like an idiot, I thought, I’ll collage every day, too. A collage to go with each unfinished limerick I post.
Each collage takes time.
And they started to feel forced.
For me, art needs to kind of happen.
When I sit down to intentionally create something, it generally looks like crap. BUT, when I sit down and start to play with the various images I’ve already cut out, something different happens. I suppose, it could still look like crap, but the process is definitely more satisfying.
The letter X. I searched for names that begin with X. When I saw Xaviera, I thought of a tiara. That was the seed.
I looked through what I had with princesses and tiaras, but all those darn tiaras were sitting firmly entrenched on the princesses’ heads —
SUPER GLUE! — Actually, I thought of Ramona Quimby making a crown for herself out of burdocks. I remember reading that to my kids and KNOWING that had I thought of that at age 8, I would most certainly have done it.
From there, I went to the idea of princess whose crown kept slipping, and like Ramona, didn’t think through the consequences of her solution.
Where would the princess be after that? I suppose she would have gone to see the royal physician to get it removed. I found a picture that I could use as background for a doctor’s office.
I labeled the blank tube “Super Glue.” Sure she would have brought the tube with her to show the doctor.
I labeled the book Stupid Things We Do. I wanted to write Stupid Things People Do but didn’t have enough space. Surely the royal physician would have had to pull out a book like that for a reference before he tackled the problem at hand.
Today’s limerick proved to be a problem because once I settle on Yoda, I wanted to use Yoda-speak, but my mind couldn’t twist the words around appropriately. I felt like I was in a yoga class with pretzel people.
So anyway — this month I had those two things going on — limericks and collages — and then life kept happening, too.
Work — busy, busy, busy.
Church — must write the minutes to a meeting that happened two weeks ago!
Taxes were in the middle of the month — yes, I procrastinated.
The grass is growing — must figure out my mowing dilemma.
Life keeps chugging along.
The good news is that two things will finish up tomorrow — limericks and collages.
This blather has been brought to you by Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 