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. 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 for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
Well! I got a nice surprise yesterday when I opened up an envelope that I received in the mail in, ohh, mid-July. I knew it contained the forms I had to fill out to send with Alex to school on the first day, and being who I am, I waited until the very last minute to have a gander. As it turns out, it wasn’t the last minute after all! Guess who had a “day off” on the very first day of school?
You guessed it!
So to celebrate, we went to the mall to buy shoes. … and rubber boots … and a baseball cap – all in Alex’s favourite, Spiderman!
Today is one of those rare days when I have no idea what I’m going to type. So I’ve decided to type into my thoughts rather than type what I’m already thinking.
The coffee is hot, the morning is pleasant as I sit at my kitchen table, watching the squirrels in my back yard search for places to hide their nuts. One, I see, has been in my flower pot. Ah well, the flower’s already dead.
I’m supposed to me talking about age. I remember a time when there was no way I’d have been content to just sit at the table and watch the squirrels. But we go through phases, don’t we? So energetic when we’re young. I consider myself lucky to still have energy – to be able to move with close to the ease I was able ten years ago, though the aches and pains seem to linger longer… linger longer. That’s just weird. Anyway, where was I?
Fred, as crazy old Maurice from Beauty and the Beast
In four short days I’ll no longer have three teenagers – my eldest, Fred, turns twenty years old on the 2nd of September. That tiny little baby I used to hold and rock to sleep to the beat of heavy metal (he LOVED The Offspring’s Keep ‘Em Separated. With Chris it was anything Metallica, and Alex, well, he’s Deaf. As long as it had a beat…) now drags himself through the door at all hours of the morning after partying with his friends. Has much changed? Nah.
I realize many of my current followers weren’t around for the introduction of Nosehair–or actually The Tree Formerly Known As Nosehair–so I’ll provide a little background.
It all started with a tree that I walk past daily on my paper route who has a face. This is Nosehair when he actually had a nosehair:
Since that time the neighbourhood has been mostly quiet. I have a little chat with The Tree Formerly Known As Nosehair most days as I walk by. I’m sure the people who live in the house he stands in front of think I’m a little nuts, but the squirrels like me.
So where is this all leading to? The news! The Tree Formerly Known As Nosehair has his first tooth!
His first tooth!
Doesn’t he look handsome? *sniff sniff* My baby’s growing up!
I’ve been inspired by something in particular this week for the Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday. I hope to write a post about it later. In the meantime, here is your prompt. Drumroll please…
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: young, old, or anything to do with age. That’s it! Have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
Try out our new, handy dandy SoCS badge. 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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
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!
“…it is delusion to assume that the creator controls his creations and that an attempt to exert such control while ignoring the true nature of those creations is doomed to failure.”
~ Diana Gabaldon, as William on page 470 of An Echo in the Bone, in reference to writing fictional characters in a play.
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. 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 for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
What’s the best (or rather, worst) backhanded compliment you’ve ever received? If you can’t think of any — when’s the last time someone paid you a compliment you didn’t actually deserve?
I love to inspire people. There are many ways to do so, however. I’m told that my prompts inspire writing, which is great – it would be wonderful to inspire a painting, but I don’t know that I have the face for it. I’m afraid any painting I’m in would have to include a broomstick. Haha.
But I also get a lot of satisfaction out of inspiring people to live better lives, be happier, be grateful for what they have… the list is endless.
I want to ask you this: if you could inspire people to do one or two things just by doing them yourself, what would they be? Please answer in the comments or, if you’re inspired to blog about it either link back here or comment with a link to your post so everyone can read.
As I worked on sorting things out yesterday–things I haven’t seen in years that were in boxes around my house–I got to thinking about how good it feels just to get rid of stuff. It wasn’t until I had a thought-provoking conversation with my best friend, John, this morning that I understood why.
When we throw out or otherwise get rid of things we don’t need in our lives, it not only creates physical space for us to live, but it relieves the untidiness it occupies in our minds. For instance, every time I think about getting rid of a game I have already played, I think to myself, “Maybe I’ll play it again one day,” and so it stays. I realize a game isn’t that big a deal – it doesn’t take up must physical space in my house. But if I think about getting rid of it ten times in the space of a month, it adds up to nothing less than stress. Now if I think about ALL the things I have in my house that I don’t need… it really adds up. If I just get rid of it I no longer have the choice, and so I can stop thinking about it.
It’s like procrastination. As long as there is something to do, my mind is cluttered with it. And the more I think about all the projects I have on the go, the more I realize that they are just things which are occupying space in my life. I need to purge them by getting them done already.
As Lao Tzu was wise to point out,
We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.
It’s not only the pot: it works equally for our homes and our minds.
Over the course of my day today, I will be going through boxes in my basement to find things I want to get rid of sell in a garage sale next week. First, I could use the extra space, second, I want to declutter, and third, I need the money for a trip I’m going to take in December.
I feel fortunate to live in a place where I can stand on my front lawn and sell things I no longer need. Garage sales are big here – I don’t know if they are in other places in North America. People spend their entire weekends out driving around town looking for bargains, and bartering around prices until they get what they want for next to nothing. Even if I get next to nothing, I figure I’ll be up a little bit from what I had when my stuff was sitting in the basement just growing older.
It’s amazing the things we accumulate, isn’t it? I have boxes of things I haven’t looked at since I moved them here almost five years ago from my house in Gatineau, and most of THAT stuff was already in boxes there and hadn’t been used in the fifteen years I was there. I would love to live light, with few possessions. But when you have a six bedroom house with a basement it’s difficult to justify getting rid of anything – I have the room. I have rooms I rarely go into so the mess gets ignored.
I was very lucky to find this house when I first moved here. It was originally a two bedroom bungalow, but the previous owners built three bedrooms and a half bath into the attic. When I moved in I kept one of the two original bedrooms as a guest room and turned the other bedroom into a computer room. The final room my eldest son moved into – he was happy to have the entire basement to himself and, as teenagers are wont to do, came out only for meals, showers, and to go out with his friends. He was as white as a ghost before he moved out.
Ragweed season is here and both Alex and I are sneezing. That was a left turn out of nowhere!
Wish me luck with my sorting and selling, if you please.
