Tag: daily prompt

collage

Collage Card Caption Contest

Sally2 Comments

Last night I showed Sam my latest collage card —

He laughed at it.  “Donna and I were talking,” he said though, “and we love your cards, but they’re usually pretty dark.”

Mary agreed. “We tend to have a dark sense of humor.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

I’m working on memorizing verse about light. I’m attempting to memorize Isaiah 60 (Arise, shine, for your light has come…), but it isn’t coming easily. I think my head is crammed so full of new Croatian words that the Bible verses are struggling for a foothold.

“Get your elbows up! Push your way through!” I tell Isaiah, but God tends not to force Himself. I need to make the room.

But I digress.

Dark sense of humor. Dark cards. Yes, Sam, Donna, and Mary are right. Looking back over my collages, some do seem a little foreboding.

Maybe it’s my way of dealing with the darkness. Poke fun at it. Laugh at it. It’s better than becoming fearful or bitter.

Mary looked at the new card and said, “Between a rock and a hard place — that cat has a tough choice.”

“Between soap suds and a snake,” I said, agreeing.

So… in the spirit of snail mail and sharing and pushing back the darkness, I thought I’d have a little contest.

Do you have a caption for this picture?  If you do, submit it in the comments.

If you’re the only submission — you win!!

If I get multiple submissions, I’ll choose my favorite.

If I get no submissions, Sam wins!

The winner gets ….. drumroll, please …..  the card in the mail.

I’ll announce the winner on Friday, get an address, and pop it in the mail on Saturday morning.

Just comment below and I’ll figure out a way to get in touch with you. 🙂

Snake from The Mapmaker’s Daughter by M. C. Helldorfer, illustrated by Jonathan Hunt.

Cat from Owls from Mother Goose Treasury, 2009 Publications International — it has a long list of illustrators and I don’t know who drew The Kilkenny Cat.

Window — I don’t know.

Origami wallpaper.

If you win and are expecting perfection, trust me, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

If you win and simply love the thrill of receiving snail mail, you’ll be happy.

Life

Manure

Sally10 Comments

You city folks may not understand this
But I love the days when I step outside, and
With one breath I know they’re
Spreading manure down the road

The smell is rich and rank
Honest
No pretense about manure
That’s fer sure

City smells bother me
Exhaust and exhaustion
Mingled with too many people
And not enough sky

Rain on concrete
Smells like waste
But rain on manure
Smells like hope

Daily prompt: lifestyle

elderly · family

Wandering Words on Travel and Life

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This was a picture I thought about posting yesterday. Same trip — to Greece and Macedonia — but the look is one I recognize from later years.

As Alzheimer’s slowly took her from us, her face became less and less expressive.

We could still coax a smile out of her, but it wasn’t the same.

When she first held her great-grandson, she stared and stared. I didn’t think she would ever smile.

He was sleeping when we placed him in her arms. His mother and father hovered, hands ready to catch the precious cargo should she forget what she was doing.

We watched.

We told her over and over that this was her great-grandson.

Other women residents in the nursing home moved closer, wanting to see, wanting to touch this new life. Perhaps some youth would rub off on them.

But we tried to keep this as her moment. It was, after all, her lineage. Her family.

Finally, the baby squirmed — parent hands moved in closer to avert potential disaster — and turned his head toward her breast.

She smiled a real smile that reached her eyes.

So I look at that travel picture of my mother sitting on a bench, alone, slightly lost — and I know that trip was a milestone, but not in the good sense.

It’s almost like we were at the base of Heartbreak Hill — and we were about to tackle the toughest part of the course. But we didn’t fully comprehend it at the time.

And that’s the trouble. I DO comprehend it now. I’m not ready to do it again.

But my father forgot someone yesterday, a person that he had known well for many years but yesterday he had no recollection of her at all.

So, if I feel a little panicked about this trip to Normandy, it’s because I’m thinking of this other journey that I’m on.

What’s that cheesy saying?  “Each day is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” Sometimes cheesy is good and true.

I need to remember that.

elderly · family

The Cookie Rule

Sally13 Comments

One of my brothers attended Cornell  — ever heard of it? While he was there, my uncle visited to adjudicate at the law school’s moot court competition. My brother snuck up to the bench where my uncle would be hearing the arguments and left a little note at his spot on the dais —

The following case may be relevant to today’s proceedings —

P— vs State of New Jersey (1937) in which the “cookie rule” was established.

The Cookie Rule clearly states that cookies must be consumed in the following proportion:  two plain cookies for every filled one.

I remember my uncle telling my father the story and roaring with laughter. My grandfather, my father, my uncle — they all love to laugh.

And I love to hear it.

But the cookie rule was new to me at that point. My mother never instituted it, although my father had grown up with it. His mother had come up with a way to control cookie consumption — two plain cookies for every filled.

All this flashed through my mind yesterday when I brought my father his “sweet” to eat after lunch.

My father definitely has a sweet tooth, and every meal (except breakfast) is followed by something sweet. After lunch, it’s usually a cookie, and after dinner, it’s usually ice cream.

I had picked up a package of Oreos at the store because they were on sale. I know, I know — Oreos are basically death between two wafers — but he likes them so I buy them occasionally.

Okay, I confess — I like them, too.

So, I brought this brand-new package of Oreos to him and said, “Dad, would you like a cookie?”

His eyes lit up. “I think I would,” he said.

I peeled back the flap to reveal the treasure, and he reached in to take one.

“Could I have two?” he asked — and suddenly, I saw in front of me a little boy asking permission to break a rule. His eyes sparkled as he looked up at me hopefully.

“Yes, you can have two,” I said.

He smiled and pulled two cookies out of the package.

Douglas MacArthur said, “You are remembered for the rules you break.”

I’m sure my father will be remembered for much more than this, but I’ll treasure that look he had as he took two filled cookies.

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge

X is for “eXcuse me!”

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“Excuse me. Do you need a hand?”

Yesterday, the baby-faced checker turned around and offered his help to the woman at the register behind him. She was in one of those scooter carts and couldn’t reach the groceries in its basket.

Obviously people had helped her throughout the store. The eggs were safely placed at the back of the basket along with some produce.

“Be careful with those,” she said, as he put the eggs on the belt.

“Handle them gently,” she cautioned, as he picked up a bag with tomatoes in it.

He apologized to me when he finally turned to start scanning my groceries. He was a big boy, tall, broad, with round cheeks and curly hair. I’m sure this was his first job, and it was obvious that he had been raised right.

“No worries,” I said. “I’m glad you could help her.”

We are always surrounded by people who need help. Sometimes they ask — like the lady who asked me if I knew anything about clams, again at the grocery store.

“Umm, no, I really don’t,” I told her. “Sorry.”

She sighed a heavy sigh. “The recipe calls for littleneck clams and he doesn’t have any.” She nodded her head toward the man at the fish counter. “He has other kinds, but he admitted that he doesn’t know the difference between them.”

“Let’s ask Siri,” I said, pulling out my phone.

Siri and I are besties. My children groan when I ask her questions. I was glad none of them were with me.

Siri pulled up a webpage about clams — and, at the same time, the man at the fish counter had my order ready. I handed my phone to the lady so she could read the information and went to get my order.

“Wait –” Laurel said, when I was telling her the story. “You handed your phone to a total stranger?!”

“She had a little girl with her,” I said, “and I was standing right there.” I wasn’t terribly worried about my phone.

My friend Amy, the one organizing the trip to Bosnia, told me how her Bosnia connection had begun. Many years ago she and her husband had seen a family huddled together at one of the New York airports wearing colored tags that identified them as refugees. “Can we help you?” they asked — and thus began a lifelong friendship.

I have a friend traveling today to Haiti with her husband, one of many steps in their long road to adoption. I hope people help them along the way — as they themselves go to help.

Sometimes people need physical help. Sometimes they’re lost. Sometimes they’re just knackered and need a little encouragement.

The world is a better place when we look for ways to help.

The collage above is only two pictures — the little girl from Humpty Dumpty’s Holiday Stories illustrated by Kelly Oechsli, and the old man from A Boy Who Wants a Dinosaur by Hiawyn Oram and Satoshi Kitamura. They just seemed to belong together.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · elderly · family

V is for Vocabulary

Sally7 Comments

Even though they were very wise, the owls had a limited vocabulary.

I often walk into the living room these days and find my father with the dictionary in his lap.

He still does word puzzles — the daily Jumble and crossword — every day, although he comments often that they’re making them harder.

He needs help with them — sometimes (often) by asking me or anyone in the room, and sometimes by trying to look words up in the dictionary.

As a kid, I can remember asking how to spell a word, and he would say, “Look it up in the dictionary.” Of course, that didn’t make total sense to me because I needed to know how to spell it to look it up. Somehow it worked though.

Dictionaries have always been important to my father.

When he left for college, he was given a dictionary that he still has today. It’s tattered and worn and not the dictionary I find on his lap.

He gave me a dictionary when I went to college. I still have it.

I gave one of my sons a dictionary when he went to college — not an electronic one, but a heavy hardcover one, where he could feel the weight of all those words.

Dictionaries were a fertilizer that fed my roots.

Having a good vocabulary is a gift from my parents, one for which I am continually thankful.

Teacher from A Boy Who Wants a Dinosaur by Hiawyn Oram and Satoshi Kitamura
Fence from Catch Me, Catch Me! A Thomas the Tank Engine Story illustrated by Owain Bell
Owls from Mother Goose Treasury, 2009 Publications International — it has a long list of illustrators and I don’t know which one did the owls

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

U is for Unknown

Sally5 Comments

Sometimes I wish I knew what lay ahead —
What will each new tomorrow bring my way?
Why must I always feel so in the dark?
Or, at the very least, so in the gray?

But, if, one day walking, I should chance
To find a crystal ball that could reveal
My future with one touch, one glance –
Would I dare to look, its prophesies unseal?

Indeed my trembling hand would rise, extend —
Heart-pounding in my breast – loud, hard, fast —
And yet a greater force would apprehend
And stop me seeking this, my own forecast.

For the newness of each day and its unknowns
Are gifts. Yes, they are treasures, don’t you see?
Every day is its own celebration
Full of presents* to be unwrapped by me.

*presence?

Man is from Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall, illustrated by Barbara Cooney

Crystal ball from The Mapmaker’s Daughter by M. C. Helldorfer, illustrated by Jonathan Hunt

Background from The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda William, illustrated by Megan Lloyd

Not sure where the building is from

A to Z Blogging Challenge

T is for Thinking

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A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought.
There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

~Victor Hugo

I begin and end each day lost in thought, although I think Hugo more aptly describes is as “absorbed in thought.”

The busyness of the day comes too quickly upon me. Sometimes I have no time to think, just do, do, do.

But to gather my thoughts at the beginning of each day, and run them through the sieve of scripture and Pascal and, this morning, William Law, I can’t tell you how much that helps.

The Croatian word for fast or quick is “brz”. I laughed when I saw it. It made me think of a bee — zip-zip-zipping from flower to flower.

But even the bees pause on each flower, taking time to gather.

Woman from The Art of Lounging by Cooper Edens

Rabbit from The Easter Egg Artists by Adrienne Adams (I’m pretty sure)

Not sure where the window is from

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

S is for Surprise

Sally9 Comments

Uh-oh

Oh, no!

Surprise!

(1)Boy is from My Dad’s Job by Peter Glassman, illustrated by Timothy Bush

(2)Girl is from Misty: The Whirlpool (from Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry) excerpted and adapted by Joan Nichols, illustrated by Stephen Moore

(3)Rabbits are from The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry

“Rabbits have large families” (3)
“Maureen felt a stab of fear” (2)
“Dad talked about buying futures” (1)
In rabbits? That wasn’t clear…

Can three divergent books
Be joined in harmony?
Each must accept the others
— And a little absurdity.

Above is a partially “found” poem using lines from the pages from which I borrowed the pictures. Wikipedia says, “Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage)…

So two collages today!