Okay, bear with me for it seems that perhaps no one saw my angry rose quite the way I did.
I drew you a diagram.
Here’s the original:
and here it is again with my mad paint skillz added:
click to have a closer look… if you dare
Now look at the original and tell me you can’t see the crazy-assed disembodied-headed dead rose that’s still sitting on my kitchen counter waiting to eat me for dinner.
Seriously, you can’t expect me to deal with this insanity alone…
Apparently it wasn’t happy that I allowed it to die…
The stuff of nightmares is dying in my kitchen
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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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, 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.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
It wasn’t the perfect weather to go to the beach, but for me, living where the nearest large body of water is Lake Ontario, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit the Pacific Ocean. So off to the beach I went.
I wrote this about the day:
I could have spent much more than the two hours I was there had I been able to sit. The weather was cool but quite comfortable in my winter jacket. A group of adults were there with their children, one of which–a two year old boy–was completely naked. Not something you’d see in Canada.
Soft, deep sand and gentle waves… Again I was warned about the hawks, but the crows were in abundance. The highlights of what they were eating were a stingray and a small (2-2.5 ft. long?) shark.
The conch shells were many – giant clam shells and starfish as well.
The next day it rained, but nothing was going to keep me indoors. I walked with my umbrella to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, where there was a wedding going on. I didn’t get any pictures of the bride, but I did spend 500Yen to make a wish and write it on a wooden board. It’s probably still hanging there.
Some pictures:
Near the front gate
Autumn colours in December
A reflective pond
I wrote:
I want to go shopping in Yokohama, but I’m reluctant to leave the quiet of here. Five days in Tokyo will be busy enough.
And they were. To be continued.
This post is part of Just Jot It January!! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
From Yokohama Station I hopped on another train which took me to the little seaside town of Kamakura. I’d done my research online before I went – it’s a place with lots of Temples, a little shopping street (by little I mean narrow, not short) and had what I thought would be a nice, inexpensive place to stay. In a word, it was beautiful.
Villa Sacra in Kamakura is a little inn with several uniquely decorated rooms. A very old, traditional Japanese house, the floors creak, the ceilings are low, and the hospitality is fabulous.
The room, however, was quite small. I spent most of my time out wandering the shopping street, eating at Mister Donut – hey, it was cheap and free refills on the coffee! – and walking. Oh boy did I walk. I’d estimate about 4-6 hours a day, rain or shine.
I was in my room for the only earthquake I felt. At first I thought it was someone leaning against the wall behind me. The walls were thin enough that I could feel the people in the next room, but the rumbling sound and the extensive swaying of the entire room led me to believe otherwise. When I looked it up on the internet (I had excellent WiFi), sure enough I was on the outskirts of a quake. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it might have been, probably because if the house had been standing that long already, it wasn’t likely to fall down while I was there, right? Right.
Besides, I had other things to worry about. I wrote this in my notebook over coffee:
December 9th, 2014 – Mister Donut, Kamakura
I’ve been sitting by the window for about 20 minutes on this lovely bright sunny day and so far only one person has walked by in sunglasses. Okay, now it’s two. But that’s among hundreds. This must be a nation of people with eyesight issues.
Not that that’s the biggest danger here – every 3rd hydro pole has a sign that says “Be careful of tsunamis,” stating that here we are just a little more than 5 meters above sea level. Be careful – as though if you see one, just step around it.
I think I’ve been bitten by a mosquito. In December. Life is good.
After that I took a day trip to Enoshima. It is, apparently, the honeymoon capital of Japan. In a way this seems appropriate, like if you can handle the uphill climb here, you can handle being married.
December 9th, 2014, Enoshima (Island)
An island carved in rock and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, yet not too far from land that one can’t walk here across a bridge, it is populated by shrines and hawks. I’ve now seen my very first “Beware of the Hawks” sign.
I tried to get a few pictures of the hawks but they’re fast fliers.
I managed to nab this one in a tree.
The weather was gorgeous – in the tens to low teens, celsius the entire time I was in Kamakura. The food was fantastic and very inexpensive – I managed to eat for between 500-1000 yen ($5 to $10 Cdn.) most days. Lots of seafood, as you can well imagine.
I was going to write about my entire time in Kamakura in one shot, but there’s still so much to tell. I’ll try to write again soon!
This post is part of Just Jot It January: click the link and join in! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
Just a short jot today. One of my youngest son’s favourite past times, for reasons known only to him, is riding on the city bus. And so almost weekly we go on a rather useless trip in the car to the bus station, board a bus and for $8.40 take a return trip to the mall – a trip that if I were to drive my car would cost around 1/10th of that. But whatever. It occasionally gives me ideas for my “Second Seat on the Right” series (which you can find on my fiction blog), it amuses Alex, and once in a while I get an interesting picture.
I wrote a while back about the politeness of the people in my town and that even the graffiti is “nice.” Here’s the latest:
Much love
I swear I didn’t write (nor jot) this myself.
This post is part of Just Jot It January. Click here and add your own jottings today! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
After my horrotacular first evening in Tokyo which you can read about here, I rose early the next morning, got my shit together, and headed off to the train station. Fortunately it wasn’t the same station from which I’d wandered the night I arrived; it was much easier to find. You can bet I asked for detailed directions from the hotel staff when I checked out though.
I was on my way to Kamakura, but the plan was to stop at Yokohama Station to meet Jay Dee, most famous from here on WordPress at I Read Encyclopedias for Fun. Here’s a link to his latest post. Fortunately our meeting went as planned, and we had a lovely chat over coffee (for me) and cocoa (for Jay). After that I hung out at the station for a while. Here’s what I wrote afterward, and a picture I took from inside the station:
Having a couple of hours to kill before I was due at my next hotel, I found a nice pillar to lean against and I just stood there for about twenty minutes, enjoying the mild temperature blowing in from outside. In the air was the aroma of cocoa and as I watched the people walking by I felt as though I was floating comfortably in a sea of humanity. It struck me how incredibly safe it is here — children as young as perhaps seven years old, one with a four year-old trailing after her, passed by unaccompanied by an adult.
Yokohama Station, from my pillar
Eventually I left my post and went to speak to an information clerk who told me how to use one of the ghastly train ticket machines. I did so with no problem though. I wouldn’t have had any idea had I not been given instructions.
So off to Kamakura I went. It’s a wonderful little town south of Tokyo and I’m so glad I decided to spend the next four days there. I’ll write more about it next time.
This post is part of Just Jot It January. Please join in! You can find everything you need here: https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
Remember last week when I tripped over the suitcase in the dark? I have the weirdest injury from that. There’s a spot on the outside of my knee that’s numb except when I touch the front of my knee. If I touch it lightly it feels as though someone is rubbing their fingernail down the numb spot. If I forget about it and kneel on it, it hurts like hell. Nerve damage anyone?
I spent twenty minutes this afternoon looking for an excuse to have a glass of red wine. I finally found one. I shared it on my Facebook page, which, if you’re not following you should be. Here, I’ll make it easy for you to find it. https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction Cheers!
I’m absolutely dying to get to my notes from Japan and share them with the world. Alex is better today again, (yesterday was horrible but that seems to have passed) so with any luck he’ll be back at school tomorrow. 😀 I’m also hoping that the urge I’ve been feeling today to be more creatively sociable will remain with me. I want to start interacting more on Twitter and Facebook. It’ll be a challenge, but I think I’m up to it.
I have to admit I’m getting a little antsy over my novel’s beta readers. The only feedback I’ve had so far is that the first 20 or so pages weren’t that interesting. I know I can improve them. What I don’t know is if anyone got past them… *bites nails*
We haven’t had much snow here but it’s freakin’ cold. Here’s a picture of me in a 20km/hr, -26°C head wind:
In other news, we have a temporary cat. Actually, two of them. They go with the temporary cave dweller in my basement, also known as my eldest son. The good news is, the more sociable of the cats is keeping Alex busy. I’ll get pictures soon. Right now I believe Alex is trying to pry the cat out of a box…
Gotta go.
Join in! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ It’s never too late!
(meow, smash, ahhh!)
I’m sitting in bed with twenty minutes left to get my jotting done before today changes to tomorrow. I have a glass of wine by my side and the world at my very fingertips and I’m kind of marveling, as I sometimes do, at how much the world has changed since I learned to type.
I started on my mother’s 80lb cast iron Underwood. I remember being determined to learn to touchtype even as my fingers missed the keys (which had to be punched as hard as I could muster) and got jammed painfully between them and the hammers (is that what they were called?) got stuck together whenever I hit two keys too close together and the bell dinged when I reached the end of the line. My idea of a computer was the monster at my school which took up an entire room and ate punch cards by the hundreds every minute.
And how many years later? Thirty five very short ones when you consider how long the earth has been around – I’m sitting in bed with a computer on my lap, a tablet and a phone by my side which are all capable of reaching almost any given place on the planet in an instant. Think about it. Seriously, think about it.
Ten minutes to go.
An instant.
Me, 4 minutes to midnight
This post is part of Just Jot It January. Join in today! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
Of all the reasons I went to Japan when I did–because seriously, who goes on vacation just before Christmas when they’re a single parent with kids–this is probably the last thing my readers here can relate to. Yet, it’s an interesting story. An incredible story. So I’d like to share it with you, and perhaps you’ll enjoy it anyway. Perhaps it will inspire you to dream, and dream big.
Ever since I visited Japan nine years ago, I’ve wanted to go back. It’s a wonderful country, with kind, lovely, helpful people. But I wanted to go back in the spring, to see the cherry blossoms. Yet I went in December. Why?
It started out with a friend, Susie, who I met here at WordPress. (I’ll attach a link to her awesome Etsy store at the end of this post. Her jewelery is amazing.) She got tickets to a concert I would have given my right arm to see. But not only did she buy more than she needed, she won them. In a lottery. The band’s fan club does that sort of thing. To give you an idea of how incredible this is, the band in question plays to sold-out shows at Nippon Budokan, which has a seating capacity of 20,000. They played there yesterday. But the venue my friend got the tickets to? 2400 standing on the floor. And my ticket was number 252… almost within the first ten percent of the people to be let in. More about that later.
So the next thing was, whether or not to accept the ticket. Could I find someone to look after my kids? Their dad was busy with work – it’s his busiest time of year. No help there. Except I have a best friend who agreed to look after them. Yes. I could go. The flight was reasonably priced and, when I looked for places to stay I found some excellent deals for far less, in fact, than anywhere I could hope to stay on vacation in my own country. I was going to Japan to see my favourite band. It was now or never. Did I mention it was the final concert of the tour I really wanted to see?
Fast forward to the day before the concert. I was going to meet Susie the day of, but I decided to pop by the venue one day in advance when she planned to pick up our tickets. Good thing I did – she was detained on the day of the concert and I would have waited to see her and not made it to the front of the line where, as it turned out, I met a gal from Portugal who spoke English, who told me I needed 500 yen in cash to get in the door, even with my ticket. Can you imagine? Had I not known, I might have spent thousands of dollars to go to a concert and not gotten in for the sake of $5. So, with my 500 yen at the ready, I had to figure out when my number was being called. It was all in Japanese… except my new Portuguese friend introduced me to a lady who spoke both English and Japanese fluently… who just happened to hold ticket number 251… the one before mine. I followed her in. I’m shaking, writing this.
So I got in, as up front as I wanted to be, somewhere in the middle where I could see the lead singer – the one I’d come all that way to see.
Here’s my picture, taken by the lead guitarist.
Seriously, how often do you get your picture taken from the stage?
As I watched this awesome concert that I’d been so blessed with being able to attend, that so many stars had fallen into place for me to be in that spot, at that moment in time, I remember thinking to myself how important it was to fully be in that moment. The music, the crowd, the incredible … moment!
I walked back to my hotel that night feeling truly truly blessed.
It was a bittersweet walk. Alone, I felt a little lost. My real reason for being so far away from home was over and I still had a couple of days left to go. I almost felt as though I had nothing left to look forward to. But.
When I got back to the hotel that night I went online to find out the concert had been taped, which is why I’m writing this today. It was played back to me, live on a streaming website, this morning. I had the chance to relive that wonderful moment! How often does that happen?
Here’s a tiny little excerpt of the concert. I know you can’t possibly understand most of what’s being sung, nor may you know who these people are on stage. But I was there. During this song, the lead singer, Atsushi Sakurai, made eye contact with me. This alone means the world to me. He is my muse – the one who has lead me through my novel and kept me going. He is my inspiration, pure and simple.
(Click on the word “Post.” One of those hands in the air is mine.)
You may not understand, but perhaps it will inspire you to hope that one day all your stars may align as mine did two and a half short weeks ago in Tokyo, Japan.
Susie’s jewelery! https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/birdicatt (I didn’t realize her shop was closed up until she gets back – please be sure to visit her after January 9th!)
Merry Christmas! and a Happy New Year to everybody!! I hope you all enjoy your holiday!!!
Venus Fort, Palette Town, Tokyo December 17/14
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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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, 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.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
lindaghill.com 