I love looking at clouds, yet I’ve never been very good at seeing things in them unless the shape made it really apparent. Like this for instance:
Click on it. Do you see it?
The cloud low on the horizon, right behind the cruise ship looks like a giant head of a dragon, facing left. Tell me you see it. Go on. Please.
Sometimes the clouds balance things out:
Sometimes they’re the focus:
Never mind the Boston Pizza
Don’t you love clouds too?
The “Cloud” prompt is brought to you by Geoff Lepard at TanGental. If you don’t already know him, check out his blog!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 6th post here!
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Usually, and this year is no exception, we Canadians are sitting around waiting to be clobbered by the freezing cold that comes with January. The year is exceptional however for the fact that we haven’t yet been clobbered by a load of snow. We are (many of us) snowless. Decidedly unclobbered.
This was taken November 4th.
This was taken yesterday in the same stretch of park.
See how green it is? It’s neither red nor white. It’s green.
Waiting to be clobbered by the cold is similar to sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, knowing you’re about to get a needle. Only the needle lasts for several months rather than several seconds. Because it really is painful. -40 degrees on your face feels like a whole face full of needles. When it reaches the fingers it burns. Even your nose hairs revolt and freeze into teensy icicles that close up your nostrils… which could actually be a natural response to prevent brain freeze.
But with all this green going on, maybe I’m just working myself into a frenzy of fear for nothing. Hey, maybe I won’t have to pull my clodhopping boots out of the closet this winter at all.
Yes, I’ve posted every day this month so far. No, I haven’t linked every day to NanoPoblano. Coz you know what? It feels like the first thing that goes when I’m stressed is the enthusiasm for anything that’s not deathly necessary. And a lot of things right now are deathly necessary. On top of that, it seems the world is in turmoil and there’s nothing I can do about it. So I offer you a picture. I’ve been waiting for the right time to post it and this feels like it. It’s not a dove, but they are white birds.
May you have peace this evening, where ever you are.
Perhaps because of my Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt this week, I thought of an interesting way to connect today’s Japanese lesson with a fascinating story. Please keep reading after school’s out… don’t worry, the lesson’s a quick one.
Neko (ne-ko). Translation: cat.
That’s that. On with the story.
Now I know I’ve written this story out before, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where. I can’t find it on my blog which leads me to believe that I wrote it in the comments. Anyway, if you’ve heard it before, I apologize.
It was ten years ago, the first time I visited Japan. I stayed in a little town called Onomichi. My hotel was right at the top of the mountain.
See the white building on the right at the top? That was me. When I arrived in town I took a taxi up. (Note: I had to point. Luckily I knew from the internet what the place looked like because even in a tiny little place like Onomichi, unless you have GPS coordinates, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.) Once I was settled in, I decided to walk back down into town. And you got it – I got lost. The stairs down the mountain looked a little like this.
Actually, they look a lot like this. These are the actual stairs. So I was walking along, minding my own business when I realized I had been walking “along” and not “down” for quite some time. I stopped when I came across a cat, sitting on a waist-high wall. I stared at him and he stared at me, and I said to him, “I’m lost.” I figured he didn’t speak English but I thought what the hell. He’s just a cat. He regarded me for a few seconds more and then he got up and started walking along the top of the wall, back the way I’d come. So I did what any rational human being would do: I followed him. We took a few turns and a couple of times he stopped and looked back to make sure I was still behaving myself and I hadn’t turned and gone back the other way. He didn’t stop and sit down, however, until he got to the stairs. He stared at me, and then down the hill and back at me. I said, “Thank you,” and went on my way… sure enough, I went straight down to the town.
What I found really funny was this:
There’s a Cat Street View of Onomichi. Watch the video – you’ll see the stairs I walked up and down ten years ago. Apparently the neko know best.
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Strangely enough, I’m still tired after sleeping until 10am (thanks, Alex for letting me lay in) and so I’m writing this while I wait for my tea to steep. I’m a bit picky about how I make my tea. I used to have a teapot, but it broke and I haven’t bothered to get another one. So I have this cup that came with a lid and a plastic basket for the tea bag that I use all the time. I still always put the milk in first, even though I’m pouring boiling water over the tea bag in the cup. (I can hear all you teaophiles gasping. But I’m halfway there, aren’t I?) It makes a pretty decent cup of tea.
I find it strange how things work out sometimes too. For instance, as I already noted, I woke up at 10, which means I didn’t start Alex’s first feed on his feeding pump until 10:20. The feed takes about 2 hours to go through, so he finished his breakfast at 12 or so. He’s having his lunch now, at 3:46pm, which means it’s going to be a late night for me as he’ll want to go out trick or treating before he has his dinner. BUT. I’m hanging on to the fact that we have an extra hour tonight. It’s like a gift from the g-tube god. Or the clock god. Or maybe it’s some sort of spooky Halloween god-type-vampire who goes around giving rest instead of taking blood. Or something. Did I mention I’m tired?
I went for a walk with, Alex, my best friend John, and his two young granddaughters today. There was an elderly gentleman walking a little dog (we were on the path that runs along the water) and the two girls ran up to the man and asked if they could pet the dog. It both amazes and scares me how easy it is for little children to run up and talk to strangers. I do say hello to people I pass on the trail all the time, but at least I’m more than two and a half feet tall and weigh more than 40 pounds.
Anyway, now I’m rambling and my tea is ready. I’ll leave you with a pretty picture of the water though, that I took a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!