Life in progress


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Nov. 14/15

It’s Friday the thirteenth and it’s your lucky day. Why? Because I’m here with your prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday! This will be my last prompt for a few weeks since I’ll be in Japan, but don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. You’ll have two exciting guest posters to create your prompt for the next two weeks. They’ll be posting before Friday to say hi; make sure you give them a warm welcome! In the meantime, here’s this week’s prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “indescribable.”  Use the actual word in your post or just base your post on something that defies description. My suggestion on this one; think about something that you’re passionate about and just start writing. Have fun!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

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Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!


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NanoPoblano Day 12 – Picture Perfect

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NanoPoblano


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NanoPoblano Day 11 – A Bucket of Sludge

If exhaustion was a bucket, mine would be filled with the sludge from the bottom of Loch Ness, where the monster has been pooping for centuries.

If exhaustion was Lego, mine would be a minefield on the floor between me and the bed and not a shoe in sight.

If exhaustion was light, mine would have the intensity of the sun. The sun four feet away from my living room window and me without my sunglasses.

If exhaustion was a beverage, mine would be lemon juice. A pure, squeezed, warm bottomless cup.

If exhaustion was a calculator, mine would be the internet. Google, in particular.

If exhaustion was a blog post, maybe this would actually make sense.

Did I mention I’m tired? I’ll catch up on all the one-liners and comments tomorrow. G’night, WordPress friends. 🙂

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This less-than-energetic post is brought to you by the good folks at NanoPoblano. Click and enjoy!


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One-Liner Wednesday – A Cup of Cheer

Went into Starbucks last night – no one asked the cashier to write “Merry Christmas” on their cup instead of their name. I’m wondering if I can go back and say my name is “Snowflake” without cracking a smile.

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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. 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:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Have fun!


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NanoPoblano Day 10 – The “To or Not To Tuesday” Edition

I discovered a fantastic new prompt from Deborah of Container Chronicles, and it fit in so well with my NanoPoblano post for today, I thought I’d combine the two. I’ll leave the links for both at the end of this post – don’t forget to click on them.

So I’m thinking about what I should do about NanoPoblano when I’m on holiday. I haven’t scheduled any posts at all so far (which is what I figured would happen) and I’m thinking that even if I do, am I going to be able to reply to the comments? Probably not.

To do it or not to do it? Perhaps I’ll just schedule a post for the three days I’ll actually be traveling and leave the ones in between to chance. I know from experience that I’ll have equally good internet access there as I do here, and I don’t go out very much at night, so I’ll be sitting in my hotel rooms on the computer anyway. BUT, I could be doing something productive with that time, like reading, writing, or editing… Perhaps I’ll play it by ear.

What would you do?

After you leave me your valued advice in the comments, please check out Deborah’s prompt at: https://myriad234.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/to-or-not-to-tuesday-week-2/ and join in today!

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And don’t forget NanoPoblano, where you can find lots of great blogs to read and follow. 😀


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Tuesday Use It In a Sentence – Banish

If I ease myself away from the temptation to eat Hallowe’en candy, I can usually resist. If I banish the idea of eating it completely, the temptation becomes greater. Strange…

This post is part of Tuesday Use It In a Sentence! You can find the prompt this week here: https://fortyandfantastique.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/tuesday-use-it-in-a-sentence-banish/ Please join in! It’s lots of fun!


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NanoPoblano Day 9 – Please ignore this post

This is a post to say that I won’t be posting today. Please ignore this.

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https://rarasaur.wordpress.com/nanopoblano-2015/


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NanoPoblano Day 8 – A Scary Throwback

Tell me, what does domo arigato remind you of? For me, apart from being Japanese for “thank you very much,” there’s this frightening little bit of nostalgia, complete with Dennis DeYoung in a lavender suit.

If you really want to say it with a Japanese accent, elongate the first “o” (both are long “o”s as in the word “toe”) in domo and the “o” at the end of arigato (a-ree-ga-to). Seriously, try it. You’ll surprise yourself.

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This short yet sickly 80s-style sweet post was brought to you by Nano Poblano!


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NanoPoblano Day 7 – The Tour Guide

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.

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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.


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Cat Pictures – #SoCS

Have you ever seen so many cat pictures in your life as you’ve seen since Facebook came into being?

What?

What?

Of course not. They seem to be the world’s favourite animal now. When I was growing up I loved horses; I still do, I suppose. But they’re not all I think about the way I did before I had kids. I suppose my kids are my new horses… Yeah, stream of consciousness.

I still notice many little girls are saying horses are their favourite animal. But let’s face it, horses are something you’ve got to get off Facebook to spend time with, unlike cats. Horses don’t sit on your keyboard when you’re trying to type, so that’s a plus. And you can’t ride a cat. At least not a house cat. You could ride a lion, and you’d have something to hold onto. A mane. Hey, horses have manes. Did you know horses and cats have something in common? They both lay their ears back when they’re mad. They’ll both bite when you get them upset enough… but horses don’t scratch. They both need their nails trimmed though.

This is getting out of hand. Catapult me outta here.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. You can join in too!

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