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Tag Archives: a – z challenge


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H is for High-Spirited

I used to be very much a horse person. I loved horses as a kid – wanted to spend all my time with horses, so I talked my parents into sending me to horse camp where I learned how to ride. I remember being assigned my horse at the beginning of the week – the one I would ride twice a day. Oh how happy I was when I finally graduated to the more high-spirited horses!

I began of course with the ones that just plodded along. The ones that give the rider the illusion that he or she is in control but in fact there is nuthin’ that’s gonna change that beast’s mind about following the horse-bum in front of it. I swear sometimes those kinds of horses are sleep walking.

Years later as an adult I went back to farm where I had formerly gone to camp and got a job taking out trail rides. The number one rule for guiding a trail is to watch the customers, meaning that as a guide, I’d spend three quarters of my time twisted around in the saddle facing forward but looking back. This includes while trotting and galloping. I remember my first trail – my God was I nervous! Nervous as in I didn’t have a single drop of spit in my mouth nervous. Riding backwards while running turned out to be the least of my worries that day.

You see, every once in a while we’d get a real ass (and I’m not talking about a donkey) go out for a ride. It was normally a young guy who wanted to show off to his friends how skilled he was on horseback. Invariably the ass had no idea what he was doing. Normally we could spot them 100 miles off and stick them on one of the aforementioned plodders. No problem, right? I got one of these guys my very first trail ride ever. And somehow he managed to do the one thing that would get a plodder’s attention.

We had on the farm a thing we called “the gallop strip.” It was a stretch of trail facing away from the barn (because if you gallop a horse in the direction of the barn it ain’t gonna stop) that nine times out of ten the more high-spirited horses would behave themselves on, and the plodders would get up to a trot… which was hilarious when we got one of our macho men on one, because he’d be bouncing all over the place totally out of control. Not so much on my first time out.

My macho man managed to hold his horse back through sheer brutality when everyone else started to run. Me, not being experienced, tried but failed to slow everyone else down (a lesson I quickly learned). So when the plodder, freaked out that his horsey friends’ bums had left without him, he finally bolted. The horse passed the trail line, passed me and took off for the barn. There I was screaming at the guy as he’s getting farther and farther away (with not an ounce of spit which was difficult) to pull back on the reins and stop squeezing with his feet which was what was making the horse go faster, I couldn’t chase him because the rest of my trail would chase me…

Needless to say I ended my first trail ride as a guide in tears. But, as they say, you’ve just got to dust yourself off and get right back on, right? I loved that job; I did it for about five years. And I’ve got a million stories to go with it.

So much for my letter of the alphabet today, eh? Oh wait – one of the synonyms for “high-spirited” is “dashing.” That works. 😀

Me at 12 years old

Me, at 12 years old

 

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions


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E is for Easy

And… this is the hardest word I’ve had to deal with yet. How ironic.

Actually, you know what? If you’re EVER looking for inspiration for something to write on your blog and you have an actual, physical thesaurus (because it’s not going to work with an online one), challenge yourself to write whatever you turn to. Even if you have to close your eyes, open the book and point. Whichever root word your finger lands on, write the first thing that comes into your head. Not good enough? Look at the synonyms! Everything you need to write a post is there.

Like this one – “easy.” The entry for this is full of not only words that mean the same thing, but there are phrases as well. For example: “easy as pie.” How easy is a pie? Have you ever made a pie from scratch? I haven’t. Why? It’s too damned hard! The phrase makes absolutely no sense to me. Or how about “like taking candy from a baby”? That’s not friggin’ easy! It’s cruel! Who the hell wants to take candy from a baby? If nothing else it disturbs the peace!

So what have I learned from this post? From this little exercise? That apparently the easiest thing of all to do today is get me into rant mode. Odd that some of the synonyms further down on the list are serene, tranquil, and untroubled. That’ll teach me to read the whole entry before I start typing next time, won’t it?

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

 


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SoCS – D is for Dexterous

I’m doing a little happy dance. There are 26 left-hand pages in my thesaurus; only eleven of them have entries that start with “de.” I chose the eleventh, and so I’m able to combine the two posts (SoCS and A-Z) into one. Was it dexterity that allowed me to pick a good page? Nah. Blind luck.

Nimble-fingered – that’s me of late. With my shoulder problems (it’s now frozen, by the way. I’m waiting to get a call from the hospital to go for a combination ultrasound/steroid shot) I’ve had to learn ambidexterity. I can’t write with my left still, but I’m learning to eat with it. You think you can use your left hand to manoeuvre a fork but if you’re right handed it means you’ve got a knife in your right hand to help your left out. Without the knife, you use your right. Right? Try using your left hand next time you eat something like macaroni. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

I look to try to be dexterous in many aspects of my life. Some of its synonyms are clever, handy, neat and proficient. Proficiency is such a handy skill to have. (Is that redundant?) I attempt always to cut down on the steps it takes to do something. Tidiness depends on it. Never going up the stairs empty-handed is something I strive for.

And with writing too – less is more. Proficiency or dexterity in grammar makes the difference between something that’s easily readable and text that goes on forever, saying nothing or worse, repeating itself.

How do you strive to be dexterous?

 

This post is part of SoCS:

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Please join in today!! https://lindaghill.com/2015/04/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-415/

And the A-Z Challenge:

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions


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C is for Commit

As you probably know, my words for this A-Z Challenge are coming at random from my thesaurus. I’m absolutely committed to sticking to the rule I set for myself to take whatever word I open the book to that is the second from the bottom on the left-hand page. This will not, by the way, apply to the letters X and Y and Z- there aren’t enough pages for those letters. But I digress. My main concern today for the letter C was one particular entry that just happens to be the second-last letter in the left hand column on page 104:

CAM00650

Yes, this could have been the word of the day. It was with a grimace and a prayer to the word gods of the planet Thesauri that I gingerly parted the pages of my big red book and believe me, it was with a sigh of relief that I discovered I wouldn’t have to talk about cocks. Luck was on my side; I landed instead on page 108 and the word “commit.”

I think to a certain extent we all have things that we’re compulsive over. One of my biggest compulsions is that I must stick to a commitment. I may even be worse–more determined–with the commitments I make to myself, though I’m pretty fierce when it comes to doing whatever I promised someone else I’d do. Which is why it just about kills me when I can’t keep up with these challenges I set for myself.

One of the synonyms for “commit” is “imprison.” I do, in a way, imprison myself when I dedicate myself to something. I box myself in but that’s really not all that bad. For an unemployed (at least in a 9-5 sense) woman, structure isn’t something my days are filled with. Yes, I have to get up when the rooster crows (see what I did there?) for my kids, and I have to be here when they come home, but what of the space in between when they’re at school? A commitment to something consigns me to a task. In the case of this particular commitment–blogging–you, my friends, are my overseers.

I wouldn’t let us down unless under duress.

What, apart from your family and your job are you committed to? And how far would you go to honour your commitment? I’d love to know.

 


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B is for Bemused

Bemused… not to be confused with amused. I must admit, I used to think they meant the same thing but they don’t.

Bemused is what I am much of the time. As a writer, when I get caught up in something I’m working on, I often become absent-minded, dazed, distracted, and befuddled. (Don’t you just love a good thesaurus?)

Stress can cause a certain amount of bemusement. Once I have something stuck in my noggin that is causing me anxiety it’s like everything else around me ceases to matter. Stuff I’m actually physically doing gets done with the least amount of thought, much to the detriment of dry sleeves, clean floors, healthy toes, and undented fenders. No, I haven’t gone there yet, at least not because I’ve been distracted, but I’ve come close. What driver hasn’t? It’s a real eye-opener when it does almost happen though.

A good end to bemusement.

Being bemused is the cause of walking into a room and having no idea why I’m there. Or losing something I had in my hand only a second ago, making me wonder if I’m losing my mind… which I am, to bemusement.

According to this wonderful book I have sitting beside me, it’s also a synonym for tipsy and half-drunk. There’s something I can relate to, though not as often as I’m simply lost in my thoughts.

And so I try to focus; live in the moment, stay aware of my surroundings and what I’m doing. It’s harder than it seems and takes quite a bit of practice. We live inside our minds as much, if not more, than we live inside our bodies. Take reading, or watching a movie for instance. When we’re really into something, the rest of the world disappears. Ceases to exist. Until someone taps us on the shoulder or spills popcorn in our lap. But then that’s not bemusement. It’s concentration. Isn’t it?

No, I believe bemusement is more introverted. It’s self-absorption that can rise to a most dangerous level.

Which is not amusing in the slightest.


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A is for Aisle

Clean up in aisle two!

Don’t you hate it when you go into a store and the displays are set up so that the aisles are barely wide enough to get your cart through? And God forbid you should have a double stroller with two toddlers! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to back out of the narrow corridor that makes up the cereal section or worse, the cookies I just barely got my kids past in the first place.

I don’t understand why retailers can’t grasp the concept that shoppers are more likely to knock over their little cardboard shelving units than buy something off them. We don’t see the products on them – what we see are obstacles!

The above is my off-the-cuff response to my word of the day, found at random in my thesaurus on the left-hand, chosen-at-random page under “A”, second word from the bottom. I have, however, learned something new from this exercise.

One of the synonyms under the word “aisle” is the word “ambulatory.” As someone who has spent a great deal of time in hospitals, I’ve often heard the word in medical terms, as an adjective meaning to be able to walk or get around under one’s own steam. But apparently, used as a noun, it also means “a place to walk.”

Who knew?

Armed with this new knowledge, you can be sure the manager at my local grocery store will hear about it the next time he sticks an obstruction in the middle of the damned ambulatory.

Clean up in ambulatory two! Lady no longer ambulatory!


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The Countdown to A-Z is On!

Only five hours left, as I start writing this post, until April begins and I’m chomping at the bit to write my first A-Z. I don’t know if the fact that I have no idea what I’m going to write makes it harder – or easier for that matter – but a challenge is something I anticipate with glee pretty much all the time. I’m the same way as November 1st approaches when I’m getting ready to NaNo.

I’m so anxious to begin that I signed up my anonymous blog for the challenge too. I’ve assigned it an “Adult Content” classification and I’ve decided to write about controversial subjects in fiction. It will include articles on writing sex scenes, murder scenes, and the stuff that grosses people out among other things. If I’m brave enough I may even touch on topics like what is and isn’t considered child pornography, all with the greatest respect of course. Although I’ll have a set out theme, it may end up being more of a challenge than not knowing what I’m going to write at all.

So who’s with me? Are you ready? Are you dreading the next month? Are you anxious to read any particular A-Zs? Do you pronounce it “zee” or “zed”? There are quite a few April A-Zs I’m looking forward to. If you have one or two links to share, feel free. 🙂


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SoCS – Not Knowing

I’m such an idiot. I mean, you’d think I’d think about what I might want to write before I come up with the prompts for SoCS, or at least when I do, but what really inspires me is the words themselves. I don’t think ahead past that until I actually sit down to write the post. This one, for instance.

Someone (sorry, I can’t remember who at the moment, but I’ll look it up when I’m finished writing this – J.L. Campbell (@JL_Campbell) – that’s who it was) said to me the other day on my A-Z reveal that they couldn’t write posts not knowing what they were going to write about ahead of time. I said I thrive on it. And I do. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this year’s A-Z, finding a word minutes before I sit down to write a post. I think I may end up writing many of the posts largely in Stream of Consciousness style, though I will probably edit them before I publish. For me, once I get on a roll with my writing I can’t stop. It’s like those conversations you have in your head when you finally figure out, sometimes hours later, what you should have said. That witticism that escaped you that makes you, later, slap yourself for not thinking of it sooner. Or the eloquent explanation of how you feel about something that sounds so good in your head, but once the confrontation is upon you, you trip over. THAT’s exactly how being on a roll feels like to me. It’s that speech that’s impossible to reproduce. And that’s the real beauty of not knowing.

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/03/27/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-2815/ Please join in today! Just click on the link to find out how!

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions


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The Great A – Z April Challenge Theme Reveal!

atoz-theme-reveal-2015

I’m doin’ it! And my theme will be…

….

…..

(that’s a drumroll)

……

RANDOM!

In my effort to decide on a theme, I picked up my thesaurus and started leafing through it. Still not being able to decide, I decided to decide on the second-last entry word in the left hand column of the left hand page of whichever page I open the book to on that day, regardless of what the word is (keeping in alphabetical order of course), thus challenging myself beyond the challenge of writing twenty-six entries during the month of April.

Don’t be surprised if your SoCS prompts correspond with the letter of the day… *checks to see if “X” falls on a Saturday* … no it does not. Hooray for you!

If you’re announcing your theme today for the A – Z Challenge, please leave a link in the comments. Anyone reading this, check out the other participants. It’s a wonderful time of the year to connect!


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April’s almost here – who’s up for a challenge?

I suppose I have to decide soon whether or not to take on the challenge of A-Z April this year. Last year I did it twice – here on this blog I talked all about writing and on my fiction blog I wrote a serial A-Z story. That was a lot of fun, mostly because I had no idea what was going to happen from one day to the next.

This year – I haven’t a clue what I’d do, even if I do do it. Who knows – it might just come out like a steaming pile of do-do.

Have you decided to take the challenge this year? If so, what’s your planned topic/theme?

Here’s the link to the event for anyone who’s interested: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/