Life in progress

Category Archives: Random


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#JusJoJan 10/20 – My dogs

As always, to start off, I’d like to say thank you to our guest-prompter! Today it’s Di with her word, “dogs.” You can find her Just Jot it January post here. Go visit her and say hi, and follow her while you’re there!

Being the grammar and word nerd I am, I had to look up the word “dogs” as they relate to feet. Did you know the expression comes from 1913, from the rhyming slang for “dog’s meat”? No? Me neither. I’m assuming it’s Cockney, but I could be wrong.

This is an excellent site for looking up where words come from: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=dogs If you’re anything like me, you’ll be fascinated.

On real dogs, I’m terribly glad my kids are no longer afraid of them. Most of them, I should say. They’ll still give a dog walking on the sidewalk with its owner a wide berth, but at least they won’t run into traffic, screaming, if a dog comes near.

It was kinda touch and go when I brought this guy home

Winston

He’s quite a bit bigger than a shoe now, but I imagine it was his smallness that convinced the kids to allow him in the house.

I wish, sometimes, they could stay puppies. It’s almost as hard as having your kids grow up.

 

This doggedly not-on-point post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/10/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-10th-2020/

Love quickens beneath the moonlight …

Get your free copy of The Magician’s Sire: A Paranormal Romance → Click here


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#JusJoJan 9/20 – Num-num-num

First off, thank you to Maggie for our prompt word, “scrumptious,” today! You can find her Just Jot it January post here. Go have a read, say hi, and give her a follow!

There’s always loads of scrumptious food at my house over the holiday season. From Halloween all the way up to the end of the year, for that matter. If I were to draw a graph of my weight over the period of a year, I’m sure the line would go up steadily from the first of November and peak around now.

And it’s the same thing every year: buckle down as soon as the warmer weather comes and it’s safe to drive every day, and get out for walks to shed some of the weight.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I need someone to ration me–to feed me the way I feed the dog. He would eat all day every day if he could. I’m sure of it. He’ll do anything for his tastebuds. Or his stomach, since I’m sure the garbage he gets into does nothing for the former.

I love my tastebuds, but I curse them sometimes. Think how skinny we’d all be if food tasted like tissues …

I’m not convinced that dogs don’t eat tissues because they want their poop to be gift-wrapped when we have to pick it up.

This post moved a bit out of the realm of scrumptious, didn’t it?

 

This less than yummy post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/09/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-9th-2020/

Love quickens beneath the moonlight …

Get your free copy of The Magician’s Sire: A Paranormal Romance → Click here


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#JusJoJan 7/20 – Toss it into the Mix

Much appreciation to John Holton for our prompt word today! You can find his Just Jot it January post here. Check it out, say hi, and go ahead and follow him!

I really need to apologize for not showing up for my own prompts in a timely manner.

I’m doing a paid edit on someone’s novel and I’m on a deadline, so that has to take precedence over everything else. In a close second are the writing of my own book, the editing of two of my other books, my blog, the kids, the animals, the housework, the groceries, exchanging Christmas gifts that don’t fit, paying bills, dealing with everything that Alex being in the school play next week entails, and appeasing my mother who will perish if she doesn’t get a pack of cigarettes soon.

Is it any wonder that I just got distracted by the cat who’s laying beside me on the couch snoring?

Better than Facebook, I suppose.

Oh hell, why not just toss that into the mix too. It’s always good for a few lost hours.

 

This sorry post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/07/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-7th-2020/

Love quickens beneath the moonlight …

Get your free copy of The Magician’s Sire: A Paranormal Romance → Click here


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#JusJoJan 6/20 – Possibilities

Thanks so much to Jill for the prompt word today! You can find her own Just Jot it January post here! Check it out, say hi, and give her a follow!

Ah, possibilities. As much as the idea that all the possibilities out there can give us hope, and they often do for me, too many of them can stop us dead in our tracks.

I’m pretty decisive, but my son Alex is terrible at making decisions. Even when he’s only faced with two. I don’t know if it comes from making the wrong one at some point in his life–I don’t know where it comes from. But his indecision, faced with possibilities, has often led to him deciding to be punished rather than doing one of two things he’d actually enjoy doing. He gets punished because he’ll make a “final” decision that I’ll say okay to, and then he’ll immediately change his mind and when I put my foot down, he’ll have a tantrum.

I love having kids. They can be such a joy. But on the other hand …

 

This post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/06/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-6th-2020/

Love quickens beneath the moonlight …

Get your free copy of The Magician’s Sire: A Paranormal Romance → Click here


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#JusJoJan 5/20 – Goals and Intentions

First off, thanks again to Faye Therborne for the prompt! You can find her last post here! Go say hi!

Warning: Rambling ahead.

I’ve figured out that Goals x Intentions = Results, at least most of the time. But where does procrastination fit into the equation? Does it come before Intentions, making them negative, resulting in zero Results? Or does it come after Intentions, i.e. Goals x Intentions + Procrastination = Fewer Results? (I added Procrastination since it’s already negative, in the grand scheme of things.)

I suppose where it comes in depends on how much procrastination one commits oneself to.

Which is an interesting statement in and of itself, I realize now that I’ve written it. If I commit myself to procrastinate, isn’t that an intention? But that would be essentially deciding to fail at my goals. So why have them at all?

In case I lost you with the math (which, I admit, probably doesn’t make any sense anyway), I’ll put it another way. Goals are useless without intentions to back them up. For instance, if my goal is to win a million dollars but I have no intention of buying a lottery ticket, chances are I’m not going to magically win a million bucks. If I do follow through with my intention, I may get results. But if I procrastinate so long that I don’t get to the store in time to get my ticket, I’m back to square one, which is NOT a million dollars richer.

But hey, I’m probably preaching to the choir on the procrastination thing, am I right?

It’s an age-old question: why do we sabotage our goals with procrastination. Are strong, solid intentions enough to stave it off? Sometimes.

Definitely worth pondering.

This rambling post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/05/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-5th-2020/

Love quickens beneath the moonlight …

Get your free copy of The Magician’s Sire: A Paranormal Romance → Click here


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#JusJoJan 3/20 – Nosehair is a Cannibal

“Poke” is the word of the day today. I had no idea what I was going to write for the prompt until I went out for a walk with Alex earlier. The answer to my conundrum was Nosehair.

If you’ve been around for forever, you might remember a tree I dubbed “Nosehair” for the branch it had growing out of its face. Yes, the tree has a face. I’m sure the only person who won’t be able to see it is Guy Thair.

Nosehair had a few posts dedicated to him–here’s one, and here’s another. You should check them out. They’re quite amusing if I do say so myself.

Today, though, getting back to my post, I found that someone had poked Nosehair with stick, sticking it in his mouth.

Do you see the face? He’s facing to the right, with a Roman nose and a dark spot for a mouth below.

You really have to zoom in to see the stick in his mouth (close to the blue car) in the picture above, but here’s a closeup:

Does this mean Nosehair is eating himself? Has he been turned into some sort of Ouroboros?

Something to ponder …

This slightly totally crazy post is brought to you by Just Jot it January! Click the following link and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/03/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-3rd-2020/


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#JusJoJan 2/20 – UFO

It’s not the first time I’ve seen strange lights in the sky. I had a stationary light, too bright to be a star but too far away to be anything but celestial, shining in my bedroom window for weeks.

But this is the first time I’ve actually managed to get a picture of one.

Click and expand to get a better look.

It’s about 11 o’clock from the moon, which is right in the middle of the photo. To describe what it looked like with the naked eye, it was like a giant bird with two halves that looked like wings, and it was just as bright as the moon.

It didn’t move from its position in relation to the moon, even when I drove. I watched it for a good five minutes.

Did anyone else see it? Has anyone else seen such a thing?

Or are they just watching me …? (Heehee.)

This weird post is part of Just Jot it January 2020! Today’s prompt was “a picture you’ve taken in the last week.” If you’d like to join in, just click the following link to see how. It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/02/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-2nd-2020/

 


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#SoCS – The Key

I’ve finally figured out that the key to getting stuff done is being organized. Who knew?

All week I’ve been trying to organize my time into blocks–from this point to then, I do that. From then to then, I do this. And so on. And I’ve actually been productive!

I call it the productivity key.

Yes, I just came up with that.

So now that I have my productivity key, what do I need next?

Oh yes, my endless riches key.

Somehow I think that one might take a bit more work. But hey, productivity is probably the first step. Right?

But what would I do with endless riches? End world hunger for a start. Then maybe get a haircut. I haven’t had one of those in four years. Because it’s been, like, really? What’s the point? It only grows back. And it’s not like anyone ever sees me.

I really need a key to getting out of the house.

Which is weird, because most people want a key to get into the house.

But I think a key to getting out is almost as important.

Of course you want to get in … especially when it’s raining or snowing. But getting out? That can be priceless.

I went Christmas shopping with Alex today. He’s decided he’s not afraid of Santa anymore, so this is the first time he’s been in a mall at the same time as Santa. And it was great!

My point (read: where I was going with this) is that I actually got to do some people watching today, and I realized it’s been a REALLY long time since I did that. I forgot what people looked like!

Okay, not really. But it was like a refresher course in society living. There’s not much society in my house.

Just family.

And family’s not really society.

Are they?

So the key to society?

Running away from home.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Productivity, endless riches, and running away from home.

Not necessarily in that order.

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

This escape-artist post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the following link to find all the other posts in the comments and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2019/12/06/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-7-19/


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#SoCS – Oh Hey, a Vacation!

No, I’m not going on one. I wish! Nah, I just saw an ad on the Weather Network telling me to visit Orlando. Apparently the temperature there is a pleasant 21°C. That was actually in the ad. But what else might you expect from the Weather Network, I suppose.

The other ad on the site tonight was for Lotto 649. For non-Canadians, that’s our biggest national lottery. Winning that would definitely get me to a warmer climate in a hurry.

I used to buy lottery tickets every week. What a pipe dream that is. Although there was a stretch where I was winning enough to buy a ticket every week for a while. I think it lasted a couple of months. That was a really strange time.

It was back when I lived in Gatineau, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa provincial border. I wandered into an angel shop one day. They sold all kinds of products with angels on them, as well as stones, incense … you get the picture, I’m sure. I saw a sign on the door that said the owner gave angel readings. I asked her about them–she didn’t do them in English, so I was out of luck.

But she told me I have a beautiful aura, and that I have a man who follows me around. Not a real one–someone who was close to me who died. Then she told me to look in my car and spend the money I found there on a lottery ticket. Funny thing was, I’d already found a dollar in my car and spent it on a ticket just before I visited the shop.

And that was the dollar that won me enough to buy tickets for a couple of months.

I always thought that maybe it wasn’t as much that I was supposed to win the lottery as it was a sign that what the woman told me was right.

Well that took a turn, didn’t it?

Yeah, I still need that vacation.

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

This rambling post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday! Click the following link and find all the other posts in the comment section, and join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2019/11/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-23-19/


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#SoCS – Dreaming Through

It’s been a tiring year, 2019 has. Aside from the fact that I had so many great plans that got knocked to the ground, partially because I’ve been tired, I’ve slept in a lot this year. More than any other year, I think.

I used to be able to wake up to the music on my phone. It was a nice way to wake up. To a song I liked. But then, because I was tired, I started not only sleeping through my alarm, I’d dream that I was at a concert, watching the song played live.

That wouldn’t do–I had to keep driving Alex to school because I wasn’t getting up in time to feed him (before 5am) so he could catch the bus. So I added an alarm. One with a tune I didn’t like. One that came with the phone.

For a while that worked, until my tired brain figured out how to turn off the alarm I didn’t like and leave the song on.

Fine.

I added an even more obnoxious tune. That got me up.

But then I figured, okay, I can sleep while Alex is feeding (he’s tube-fed), and just set another alarm to get me up when his feed’s finished so I can get him off to school.

Except guess what I did?

Yep, I chose another song.

And started dreaming through it.

FINE, then.

I switched that for another obnoxious noise to get me out of bed before the bus comes.

Which worked …

For a while.

Last week I slept through that a total of THREE mornings. Out of FOUR! Monday was a holiday!

I think I just need for it to be 2020 already.

Surely I won’t be as tired.

Right?

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

This dreamy post was brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the following link to find all the other dreamy posts in the comments, and see how you, too, can join in! It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2019/11/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-16-19/