Tag: SoCS

Life

I Thought I Knew

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Yesterday, when I went into work at 5 AM and entered the building, I thought I smelled something.

What’s that smell? I thought.

Smells niggle, don’t they — tickling some unreachable place in the brain.

Oh — I knew the smell, or at least thought that I did.

Cannabis.

I shook my head. I certainly was not going to be the one who turned in someone on the night cleaning crew, but sheesh, they should know better. What you do on your time is your business, but what you do when you’re on the clock — not so much.

It was about an hour later that one of my early morning co-workers came by to see me.

“Did you see that this morning?” he asked.

“What?” I replied, somewhat confused. I had seen nothing unusual on the way into work and we both drive the same route.

“Right by the side door,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the door he uses. I actually use a different door when I come in.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything,” I said.

“You must have smelled it then,” he said.

I shook my head again.

“That huge skunk?!” he said. “It had obviously just sprayed, but I was worried it might try to get me too! We were that close.” He indicated a spot about 5 yards away.

I shook my head now for a different reason. Do skunk and cannabis smell similar? A quick google search affirmed that they, indeed, DO smell somewhat alike.

I thought I knew what I was smelling.

Guess I was wrong.

Sorry, night guys!

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: What’s that smell?

I haven’t done SoC writing in a while — too busy, too tired, life too full, all the excuses. When I read her prompt this week, though, I had just had my cannabis-skunk experience so I wrote it out.

Life · photography

Visiting British Columbia

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It even says it on their license plates, Beautiful British Columbia, as if our eyes are deceiving us. Yes, this is a beautiful place.

I had to fight the urge of pulling over on my drive up from Seattle to take some pictures. The mountains are breathtaking. The trees stand tall, erect, pointy and somehow brave.

It’s so very different from the Northeastern US, where the mountains are lovely, but older. The trees are also lovely, but more are deciduous; they seem to go with the flow of life instead of the unmoving strength of those giant pines.

Ah, I know, I’m probably way off base. The oaks and maples have deeper roots, right? And I’ve seen tall pines toppled with their root system, shallow and broad, turned on edge like a wall.

But this is my submission for Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday — a day late — and I’m not going to go back and correct what may need correction. When I saw that the prompt was “Photograph,” I thought, Yup, I’ve taken a few photographs over the past few days.

We’ve gone walking every day. Two days ago, my son and his wife wanted to take me to see some glorious vista — which I’m sure would have led to not a few photographs. However, we started up the logging road and it got steeper and steeper and steeper.

“Are we there yet?” I quipped two minutes into the hike.

Twenty minutes in, after a couple of rests, I asked them to guesstimate if we had gone a quarter of the way yet. He studied the map on his phone. “Umm…. maybe just under a quarter,” he said.

We turned back at my request. I walk A LOT, just not straight uphill.

Instead we walked along the Fraser River which was lovely. The only photograph from that walk was of an immature eagle who stared down on us as we passed.

Yesterday, we walked along the Vedder River, a river which changes its name to Chilliwack once it passes under a bridge, so I saw the Chilliwack River, too. In fact, I only photographed the Chilliwack.

Chilliwack River

But my favorite picture of the day was one I took immediately as we started on the path. It made me laugh — and it still makes me laugh.

I love when people have a sense of humor.

I really want to know who thought of the poop fairy.

In Beautiful British Columbia.

Blather · poetry

Customer Service

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Alternate title: Smile

Customer Service isn’t that hard
Some people think that
It’s easy to smile and say hello
I understand
Your complaints — I listen and say
I’ll see what I can do about
Your situation.You’re not alone
I’ve been there. I’ve been in
Pain. I still smile
Even though I’m feeling that
The weight of life is heavy. I smile
What else can I do when
All these things hurt.

A less than stellar reverse poem — but I really wanted to do the W3 Challenge for this week which was to write a reverse poem. A reverse poem is one read forwards and backwards, line by line.

My struggle this week has been dealing with this darn shingles pain.

“Listen to your body. It’s trying to tell you something,” a friend said to me. “You’re dealing with a lot of stress.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. But I don’t know how to fix it.

The thing is that there are aspects of my job that I love. I do love greeting people — by NAME — I can’t believe how many people’s names I know now.

They stop and tell me about their lives. I LOVE that. I really do. I think I could listen to people’s stories all day every day. I heard stories about Maine and Nova Scotia, about Ireland and surprising relatives there, about knee surgeries and hip surgeries from older people who are DETERMINED not to let this hold them back but continue to live life fully.

My problem is that I am experiencing this nagging pain in my side and back from the Shingles.

And I feel like a wimp.

I don’t want anyone to come close up and hear ME complain.

So you, here, my blog-readers from afar, get to hear about it. SO SORRY!

Really close up, I’m fairly miserable. And I’m making mistakes.

I made a mistake early in the week, and my supervisor said, “But I showed you how to do that.”

Yes, she had — the previous Friday afternoon, after a full week of work and pain, she showed me this thing, which I totally forgot by Monday.

Dang.

I don’t like when I make mistakes.

I finally called my Primary Care Provider this week. I told her about this pain and she prescribed something for it. I’ve actually had two full of nights of sleep since starting it. The pain has subsided to a dull ache and I’ll live with it.

Or I’ll figure out a way to de-stress.

Any suggestions?

family · poetry

Bruce the Spruce

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I asked myself, Is it possible to write a rhyming poem in stream-of-consciousness?

Hmm… First I chose a structure: a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire, an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Then I opened a tab in Rhymezone and typed in “spruce” — the Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt for this week.

Here goes:

Christmas tree
Little spruce
I hereby
Name you “Bruce”

Quite a name
For a tree
Many folks
Would agree

Bruce the Spruce
Tall and green
Sparkling lights
Lovely scene

You may come
See my tree
Or this pic


Or these three –

family · Life

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

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Strawberry-rhubarb crisp for breakfast.

I can easily rationalize it. There’s oatmeal in the topping, fruit (strawberries) as a mainstay, and rhubarb — whatever food category that fits into — in there too. Surely it’s healthy, right?

The truth is my appetite has been off. My whole everything has been off. When my son’s girlfriend made peanut butter blossoms — those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss pressed in the top — I politely declined. Oh, I eventually ate a few, trust me — later. They are hard to resist. But I didn’t woof down six at a time which I might have done had things been different.

Last weekend, or maybe it was last Friday, I started feeling achy. My back hurt. I thought I had slept on it wrong. It was my left scapula, and it was weird. Not the ordinary I-slept-on-something-wrong feeling.

Before the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, I left for a flight to Roanoke. I was picking up one of my daughters from school. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a small rash just below my left breast. That’s weird, I thought.

Got to Roanoke. Got the rental car. Got together with my daughter, but I was exhausted. I left her mid-afternoon to go nap in my hotel room. The rash had grown, too, and was itchy-painful.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.

It was either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning that it hit me that I had shingles. No, I hadn’t gotten the vaccine.

I contacted my primary care provider, but, as it turns out, they can’t do a tele-health visit with me if I’m out of state at the time. Ridiculous, right?

Initially, shingles was (were?) just annoying. “I don’t have time for this,” I said more than once to more than one person. I mean, it’s the holidays. Sheesh.

But, by Thursday, I felt like excrement. You know what I mean, right? I did a tele-health appointment, was prescribed an antiviral, and stayed in my room all day. Mostly.

The next day, same thing.

My appetite has been way off with this.

Last night, my son’s girlfriend was making strawberry-rhubarb crisp. “Do you want some?” they both asked.

I politely declined. I didn’t like strawberry-rhubarb crisp on a good day. My mom used to make it and it was not my favorite.

However, this morning when I went down for coffee, there was the baked crisp on the counter. I could see the oatmeal in the topping. Breakfast food, for sure.

I dished out a small bowl, and it was, literally, just what the doctor ordered. (She’s a doctor.)

It was so good that I went back for more.

Maybe rhubarb has healing qualities.

One can always hope, right?

Life

The Color of Peace

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“What are you struggling with?” my friend/spiritual director asked me.

I didn’t have to think hard on that one. “Peace,” I said. “It’s always hard to find peace this time of year.”

She nodded knowingly, then asked, “What does peace look like?”

I stared at the candle’s flame and the assortment of little knick-knacks she had placed on the table. I thought and thought, but couldn’t come up with an answer. One of the things that I love about her is that she allows silence.

What does peace look like? I rolled the words around and around in my head.

She interrupted the silence with another question. “What color is peace?” she asked.

Immediately, I went to watery colors, my absolute favorite. Water is my go-to. For me, water is place that allows me to be supported, and held, and still move and exercise and be me.

What color is peace?

I thought of a night not long ago when I had gone for a walk with a friend. We had walked and walked in the cemetery. Now, there’s a peaceful place for you.

As the sun set, and the temperature dropped, we walked down toward the lake to a bench that overlooked the water.

The water was dark and still, with a crescent moon reflecting on it.

Occasional ripples appeared from who-knows-what. The tiny breath of a breeze? A fish beneath the surface who didn’t know winter was approaching? A night bird I hadn’t noticed?

Suddenly, I knew exactly what color peace is — it’s the color of a moonlight lake. Dark and light at the same time. Calm and rippled at the same time. A friend next to me. Crisp air around me.

Is that a color?

To me it is.

Moon photo reflecting on the road — but not from that night and certainly not the same as the moon reflecting on water:

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Prompt: “To me“

Blather · fiction

Feeling Uncreative ~ or ~ How would you finish this story?

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Sometimes the creative juices flow and sometimes they don’t. Am I right?

The Stream of Consciousness prompt for this week is create and, doggone-it, I am struggling to create.

I wrote myself into a hole with my first stab at the Unicorn Challenge. I’ll put my half-written attempt at the bottom here in case anyone has ideas on how to finish it. For those who aren’t familiar with the Unicorn Challenge, it involves a photo prompt and 250 word (or less) story. That’s it.

But seriously, I wrote myself into a tight spot. What do you think would happen next? You only have 125 words to finish the story.

Create that!

Here’s the unfinished story:

“oh god… Oh God…. OH GOD!!! Please let this damn thing work!”

He frantically flipped the receiver lever up and down on the phone. “HELLO?! HELLO?!… DAMN!”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Think, think,” he muttered. “9-1-1 is US… 9-9-9?!” He punched the buttons.

“What is your emergency?” A woman’s voice came through the receiver.

“MY WIFE IS HAVING A BABY!”

“Okay,” she replied calmly. “What is your location?”

“I DON’T KNOW!! I LOST THE CELL SIGNAL! I TOOK A WRONG TURN! I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM!!”

“Where is your wife right now?”

“SHE’S IN THE CAR!”

As if on cue, a loud moan crescendoed into scream from the car. He dropped the receiver, leaving it dangling in the phone box.

Blather · poetry

The Broon Coo (and other cow blather)

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Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “oo.” Find a word with “oo” in it or just use “oo” because why not?

When my granddaughter was littler (she’s now a big 4 years old), I wasn’t working full-time and would go babysit once a week. So. Much. Fun.

Anyhoo — she was just a wee little thing, and I would put on music to play in the background while we played. I had a whole playlist for her.

I pulled it up the other day because I (obviously) hadn’t played it in a long time. It was a lot of Scottish songs. My granddaughter loved Ally Bally Bee and “danced” to it — which involved running around the couch.

I loved The Broon Coo, a song about a mischievous cow that breaks oot and eats all the hay and neaps (turnips) and chases the ducks.

Cows are near and dear to my heart. The cow population is our area has significantly declined over the 50+ years since my parents bought the house I am now living in. When we first moved here, though, there was a working dairy farm next door.

I wrote a poem about it some years ago and thought that I had posted it. Maybe I had and then took it down. Who knows? It happened to be in my overfull WordPress draft folder and I’ll put it at the bottom of this post. It’s not really stream-of-consciousness, you know.

If you’ve ever experienced feeding a cow something from your hand, you’ll know that it’s an unforgettable thing. The smoothness of their nose. The tongue pulling whatever it is off your hand. The slow patient chewing that ensues.

So many people are just in a hurry when they eat. They could learn a lesson from cows.

A horse’s muzzle is dry and it will use its lips to take whatever you’re holding. A cow’s nose is slimy — but in the best of ways, if there can be a best of ways for slime.

I used to walk down the road and play music for the cows. They would walk alongside me on their side of the fence.

Then there was the year the cows stampeded up our road when the guy was trying to load them in a truck. He eventually rounded them all up, save one — and there were feral cow sightings over the winter that year as it wandered the back hills. I don’t know whatever happened to it.

But the Broon Coo song is about a cow that breaks out and gets into trouble — which is what my poem is also about (kind of) except our cow was a black-and-white Holstein.

So I’ll leave you here with a few cow pictures and a poem. 🙂

When my parents bought the farm
(literally)
Pa Jackson was over the hill
(euphemistically and literally)

He milked the cows by hand
While the barn cats tumbled in the hay
(euphemistically and literally)
I watched with wide eyes
(the milking, not the euphemistic tumbling)

The Jacksons had a bull
To do the job of the artificial inseminator
And when our pet heifer,
Sock-it-to-me-Sunshine,
Wandered over
To visit the Jacksons’ cows
The bull also got to know her
(euphemistically)

Then, our heifer
Was in the family way
(euphemistically)
She was loaded on a truck
And sent to a home
For unwed cows

The next summer
The Jackson’s cows
Were also loaded onto trucks
And sent to auction
Because Pa Jackson was
Extremely
Over the hill
(euphemistically)

A few years later
We read in the newspaper
That he had bought the farm.
(euphemistically)

Blather

Saturday Blather that dips into controversy

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In case anyone wonders, I took down the Dormasha I had written for the W3 prompt. Even though it was based on a front desk conversation, it was too dark. I often process hard things through writing, but I’m learning that I don’t necessarily need to share them here 🙂

The truth is that most of the material I get for any of my writing is from front desk conversations. I have met some of the most interesting people just through the slow building of relationship by daily greeting people and asking how they’re doing.

Yesterday, a young man who comes to swim, and who has been telling me bits of tidbits about his family and job, leaned on the counter and asked me if I had read the news about where he works. I had not. So he told me why his place of employment had made the front pages.

I told him that I often avoid the news. “Depending on what news source I go to, I feel like I’m in two totally different countries,” I said.

“It’s the politics of teams,” he replied. “Politicians used to be the people who could work out compromises, but now it’s sport. It’s the Yankees vs the Red Sox.”

He couldn’t have picked a better rivalry. The Yankees and Red Sox have spent the better part of a century vilifying each other.

“We don’t look for common ground anymore,” he continued. “Take gun control…” and my mind immediately wandered off to Wyoming.

Honestly, I don’t remember what he said next. I had lived for a time in Wyoming, though, and people there take their gun rights pretty seriously.

I thought about them. I thought about the time we house-sat for a guy who had a ranch, and he had told us about the gun in the hall closet, in case … I don’t remember … coyotes? He failed to tell us, however, about the arsenal in the spare room, or the loaded handgun in the nightstand of the room we had put our young son to sleep in — thank God, I checked that drawer!

In upstate New York, the gun owners that I know are responsible and safe. Primarily, they hunt deer.

I don’t personally own a gun or want to own a gun — and I actually don’t want to enter the whole debate.

After talking with the guy who brought it up — and he had headed off for the pool — one of the custodial staff walked by. I knew he was really big into gun rights with tattoos that bear witness to his strong beliefs.

“How do you feel about background checks?” I asked him, and was surprised to hear that he really wasn’t that far off from the other man. And he was very knowledgeable and well-spoken on the topic.

Can I just stop here and say — this is why stream-of-consciousness writing produces blather in me. I write myself into a hole. I wanted to tell you that I get my material for posts from conversations I have — and now I’ve just stepped into controversy — but I’m going to leave it here because Stream of Consciousness.

Here’s some safer blather — three times a week, this little guy comes in wearing a backpack that’s bigger than his torso. He was chattering up a storm yesterday about school.

“How old is he?” I asked the mom.

“He’ll be three in a few weeks,” she said. “He’s very excited about school because he watches his brother get on the bus every day.”

It made me smile.

I think I’ll just leave you with that.

Life

The Water Softener

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Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “last thing that broke/you had to fix.” Think about the word that best describes the last thing that stopped working for you and use that word any way you’d like. Enjoy!

Linda G. Hill, The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Oct. 14, 2023

One of my children mentioned that the water smelled: sulfur-y, iron-y, not good. “Have you been adding salt to the water softener?” he asked.

I had, but the last time I had added salt, I was surprised to see salt still in the tank. “I’m not sure it’s working,” I said, and went down to our damp, dirt-floor basement to check.

Verdict: the water softener is not working.

The water softening system has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I don’t understand how it works. I dump salt in. It disappears, but I don’t hear anything that tells me something is kicking on and actually doing something.

Like the furnace, which did kick on this week as the temperatures dropped.

Everyone that walked through the door where I worked commented on the cold weather like it was a surprise. Seriously, this happens every year. Every. Single. Year. It’s hot in the summer, cold in the winter. This is not something new.

But I digress — the plague of Stream-of-Consciousness writing.

Water softener. I have no idea how old the system is, but it has worked its magic for many years.

I poked around at the mysterious water softener. Cobwebs. Corrosion. Dirt. They were all present. Probably not good for it. Tank with water and salt.

To be honest, I avoid the basement. It’s creepy.

I open the door once a year to let the furnace guy down to service the furnace — an appliance that makes far more sense to me. I go down periodically with bags of salt for the water softener. That’s about it.

One time I heard a noise in the basement and there were woodchucks. Seriously.

I can clean the dirt and the cobwebs, but the corrosion looks pretty unpromising. I think I need a whole new system.

Of course, I have to make a metaphor out this and ask the question(s) — where in my life do I have dirt and cobwebs that need to be cleaned? and, where is there so much corrosion that I just need to start new?