Hey there! We had a guest-prompter today, and I’d like to say thank you to her! Today’s prompt came to you courtesy of Zhenzhen with her word, “gravity.” Thank you, Zhenzhen! You can find her Just Jot it January post here. Go visit her and say hi, and follow her while you’re there!
I can’t believe it. I was so busy today, I forgot to post. I did manage to jot quite a few things out today, and the gravity of those things were such that they couldn’t be avoided.
And still I didn’t get as much accomplished as I’d hoped.
But I was totally gobsmacked when I realized I hadn’t written this post yet.
The fact that I’m really not saying much is testament to that fact: I’m writing off the top of my head.
Looking around for a book to find a quote for this post (it was actually “Looking around for”), the first book I came across was the dictionary. Figuring I didn’t have much of a chance of opening it to a random page and actually finding a sentence, I kept going. The book I finally settled on, which was actually the next one I found, was Transcendent, a book I have a short story in.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t read all the stories in it yet. But I will! It’ll take a while though. It’s a hefty volume!
There are so many ways to read a book these days. I’m quite taken with audiobooks, now that I’ve finally discovered them. But there’s nothing quite like reading a physical book. I might be more enamored of ebooks if I didn’t spend all day staring at a screen … although I do still read them.
It’s beginning to sound like reading a good old fashioned book will be the only thing to do tomorrow. The wind is gusting and the freezing rain is due to start any time, if it’s not already doing it now. I’m in my PJs–I ain’t going out there to check. Anyway, we might lose our power, so if I don’t show up tomorrow, you’ll know why. I have the entire week’s prompts scheduled already, except for Wednesday and Saturday, so you’ll be good for a few days at least.
Wish us luck, as I wish everyone who lives in this wet, frozen part of the world the same.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 …
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.
“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?
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?
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.
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