Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Okay — here’s the challenge I’m trying today. It’s called “What Do You See?” The question is, does this picture inspire you to write something. I wrote a poem.
Yo, buddy, can you give me a lift?
It seems the whole world’s gone adrift
Rusted cars kinda wrecked off the road
I’m worried this whole place will explode
So, buddy, shoot that ray thing o’er here
You know, just make me – *POOF* – disappear
I’m game for wherever you’re going
Half the fun is the really not knowing
I’m not sure when I’ve had such a full week.
For those who don’t know my schedule — which hopefully is the vast majority of you because it would be kind of creepy if you did know — on most days, I start work at 5 AM. Yes, you read that right — 5 AM.
Since I NEED to start my day with reading, I get up between 3:30 and 3:45 AM. I journal. I read. I sit and sip my coffee. Then it’s rush-rush-rush to go to work.
Honestly, I don’t mind that schedule. In fact, I pretty much LOVE that schedule. I love the early morning people — like me — that I get to see when they arrive to work out at the gym where I work.
Like an idiot, however, I signed up to take a lifeguarding class. A class that went from 5 – 9 PM Monday through Wednesday this past week and next.
“Whose dumb idea was this?” I asked myself more than once.
“Oh yeah, mine,” I answered myself.
So — up at 3:30, to bed at 9:30 (at best) and repeat X3.
The first night of lifeguarding class, two of the six students failed the swim test.
The second night of lifeguarding class, I excused myself at one point to go cry in the locker room. The class was physically taxing on me. If you added up the ages of the other students in the class, I still had ten years on them. I didn’t cry though. I just pulled myself together and pushed through.
By the third night I was finally in the groove and class went well.
Then it was Thursday. On Thursday night, one of my sons was arriving with his wife for a short visit. I had offered them my newly created guest room.
Of course, because they were my first guests, I still had a lot to do in the room. I mean, A LOT to do.
I’m living in the house in which I grew up. It contains all my parents’ stuff. It contains grandparent stuff from both sides of the family. It contains stuff from my brother who predeceased my parents. It contains a lot of MY stuff, my kids’ stuff. So basically, there is stuff and more stuff in this house.
The new guest room still had a lot of stuff in it. It still HAS a lot of stuff in it. Putting clean sheets on the bed and cleaning the bathroom was the easy part of getting the room ready. Dealing with the stuff was … umm… not so much.
I kept working away at it, afraid to sit down because I was afraid I would fall asleep because I was still tired from lifeguarding class. Finally, it was 7 or 7:30 and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I called it good, and went to bed.
Friday was a blur. Work and going for a walk with my visiting son are the two things that stand out.
The last thing I filled — and actually I mean OVERfilled — was my week.
Will next week be better? I don’t know. I’ve got three more days of lifeguarding class. Whose dumb idea was that?
This is in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: the last thing you filled.
Reynoutria Japonica, you’re cruel –
Hand-pulling up your stem, I miss the root.
I think I need to find a better tool
Hey, dandelion digger — maybe you’ll
Dig deeper in the soil… Ah, shoot!
Reynoutria Japonica, you’re cruel!
A trowel – yes – and sitting on my stool
Still doesn’t do the job. There’s no dispute –
I think I need to find a better tool.
The things they never teach us while in school
That even shovels fail to execute —
Reynoutria Japonica, you’re cruel.
Get the backhoe! Fill it up with fuel!
Destroy the entire garden in pursuit!
I think I need to find a better tool.
No — I’ll study you and find what makes you cool.
Whoa! You fight plaque? And gingivitis to boot?!
Reynoutria Japonica, you rule!
I think I finally found my better tool.
This is such a work of fiction and not even a true villanelle. (I didn’t verbatim repeat lines A and B in the final couplet.)
Let it be said that I hate Japanese knotweed whose scientific name is Reynoutria Japonica. I do yearly battle with it and never win. I don’t even feel like I make any progress.
I do believe that leaning in and looking for positives is the best way to deal with difficult situations.
But I still hate Japanese knotweed. But, trust me — I’m not going to use knotweed to fight gingivitis. I would much rather give Oral B my money.
This is my submission for this week’s W3 prompt: Write: A) a sonnet, OR: B) a villanelle on the theme of: an animal, plant, or object, describing its qualities or what can be learned from it.
On my way to work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about an incandescent light bulb that was lit in 1901 and is still burning.
In 1901, my maternal grandmother was 5 years old. My paternal grandfather hadn’t been born, and wouldn’t be for another 2 years.
However, here’s something contemporaneous with that 1901 light bulb: Walt Disney was born.
Can’t you picture a cartoon light bulb appearing over Walt Disney’s head time and time and time and time again over the course of his life as he had one idea after another? I think that light bulb would look remarkably like this light bulb that was born the same time he was.
Come fly with me!
(a leery look)
Come fly with me!
(nose in book)
Come fly with me!
(a heavy sigh)
We’ll go up high
And see the town from the sky!
I’m dubious.
I’ll keep you safe,
I’m dubious.
My darling waif.
I’m dubious.
Come now! Make haste!
Your hope is quite displaced.
My feet on earth are firmly based.
We’re going up!
I’m not a bird!
We’re going up!
This is absurd!
We’re going up!
Cannot look down.
Oh! Look around!
You’ll see our lovely little town.
Oh me! Oh my!
Look at the trees!
Oh me! Oh my!
Feel that breeze!
Oh me! Oh my!
It’s charming, yes?
And you would never guess!
I was blinded by my stress.
This is in response to this week’s W3 prompt — a choice of two Marc Chagall paintings for inspiration. Initially I was going to use the other painting — The Big Wheel — and try to write something about my trip to Paris in 2017, but I kept going back to the other painting, Over the Town, which I ultimately used.
I’ve never written a poem in two voices before. I wanted to tell a story. This is what came out.
Ah, world —
Are you quite safe
Or not? I know where to
Find sanctuary — It is deep
Inside
Syllable count by line: 2-4-6-8-2
True story: A little over a week ago, I did the high ropes course with my daughter Mary. I had done it two years ago with friend/co-worker and had a lot of fun. This go-round, I was definitely weaker. My upper body muscle soreness in the days that followed bore witness to that.
Anyway, I had this one little serendipitous moment while on the course the other night. Mary and I were unclipping and clipping our carabineers from one cable to another after we had completed one element and were getting ready to start another. Suddenly I realized that my necklace was gone.
Now this necklace had been given to me over 8 years ago by one of my daughters. I have worn it nearly every day since. To say that it’s a favorite piece of jewelry would be a gross understatement. Stamped on those discs are the names of all my children.
So Mary and I are standing I-don’t-know-how-many feet above the ground and I realized my necklace was gone. I held my hand against my chest, just below my throat, right about where the pendant would have rested and tried to calm myself.
Breathe…. Breathe…. It’s okay…. it’s just a necklace….. it’s okay….. breathe…..
Then I looked down. See that kind of flat surface with cables and stuff screwed into it?
Yeah, well, my necklace was there. All neat and tidy like someone had gently placed it on the wooden “shelf”. The chain wasn’t broken. The clasp wasn’t broken it. It was just waiting for me.
I can’t explain it and I’m not even going to try to. I’m just grateful.
I found an art challenge today called Tic-Tac-Toe. The idea is that one of the artists sets up a grid with nine art elements and over the course of a week, you create a piece using three of those elements that appear in a row.
Here’s this week’s grid:
I decided to give it a try using Green-Metallic Elements-Use Shapes.
Thus I created a riff on the story of losing a necklace in a precarious place.
What do you think?
Saturday has become my favorite day for blogging. Last week, one of my readers told me that reading the Saturday post was “like we were sitting together having a chat and a cuppa.” That’s such a huge compliment!
On Saturdays I’ve given myself permission to blather using the Stream of Consciousness prompt given by Linda Hill. This week that prompt is: sink/sank/sunk
So let me update you on my kitchen sink. I called the plumber a few months ago. He came. He saw. He fixed. Sort of. A slow drip still exists. It’s not leaking behind or under the sink. It’s just drip…………………….drip………………………….dripping. Should I call the plumber again? Let’s just say it isn’t annoying enough for me to do that. Yet.
My heart sank one day at work this week when I learned of a mistake I had made. It wasn’t a clerical error or something that involved money or something silly like that. It involved feelings. I had hurt someone’s feelings in a terrible way. I apologized — twice — but the damage is done. As unfeeling as some people may think I am — I mean, I DO operate in a logic brain most of the time, and hold my feelings pretty close to me — I also care INTENSELY about feelings.
AND, as unfeeling as some people may think I am, on this occasion, I turned to a co-worker and literally cried on her shoulder. When I first went to her office and started crying, she said, “I can’t tell if you are kidding or if these are real tears.” I don’t think she had seen me cry before.
I assured her the tears were real.
After about half an hour of listening to me, she grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s take a walk outside.”
It’s amazing what fresh air and sunshine can do for the soul — especially the hurting soul.
While I was apologizing to the person I had hurt, she said to me, “I don’t even want to come to work anymore.”
Same, sister, same.
But I have a co-worker who has my back. She understands what happened and why. That’s worth a WHOLE LOT.
And I have tulips at my desk at work.
So when I walk through the door going through the sink-sank-sunk emotions of I-don’t-want-to-be-here, I see the tulips and they lift my heart.
Dive into coolness
Catch, pull, release, recover
Stroke, flutter kick, stroke
Exhale into the water
Turn my head to catch a breath
The W3 prompt for this week is:
The more I read about haikus and tankas, the more I realize that something is lost in translation. A tanka is more than 5-7-5-7-7 syllable counts. It’s actually not syllable counts, it’s kana.
What’s a kana, you ask? I’m not 100% sure because it’s something in Japanese. And Japanese “uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.” (according to Wikipedia) English is phonetic. These two language systems aren’t the same. How can we adapt something like poetry from system to the other. I don’t know.
But I know how I relax. A pool is my happy place and swimming laps helps me unwind.
So here’s my tanka-ish whatever.
Underneath the sparkles and glitter —
No — lose that shiny excess litter —
I see strength — such strength that must be chained
Chained, crown around its neck, constrained,
Or is it? No, no — not a quitter–
Rugged, royal, powerful, proud,
Not subdued. No knee is bowed.
Unicorn was one of the prompt words for Tanka Tuesday. The challenge was to write an acrostic poem.
Honestly, I looked at the list of words and none of them struck me. I’m not a sparkly, glittery sort of person — especially in this chapter of my life. But, man oh man oh man, do I love that Scotland has the unicorn as its national animal. Fiercely independent and untamable, he is the heart of Scotland.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 