Life in progress

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Just Jot It January 9th – Title #SoCS

To cheat or not to cheat? (I’d say, “that is the question,” but I’ve already gone the Shakespeare route this week, so I won’t. But it’s stuck in your head now, isn’t it? Ah ha!)

I was going to write about how hard it would be for me not to cheat on this prompt, since I have no idea what movie title popped into my head when I decided to make that the prompt. I was doomed to fail from the start. I missed out on the element of surprise because it’s hard to surprise yourself. BOO! Nope. Didn’t work. See? Try it at home. It’s safe.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. An earworm. Have any of you ended up with one due to this prompt? Because an earworm doesn’t have to just be a song played over and over in your head after hearing it once. It can be a line. A line that becomes a mantra. And then you get stuck on it and it’s like there’s a broken record playing in your head. You hear the line and then the little “blp” that means the needle has jumped the grove and then there’s that line again. I really love vinyl (I know I’ve mentioned it before – I even wrote a post on it) but it can be very fragile and can become unreliable. Not that CDs can’t. I remember being told when CDs first came out that even if you broke them, they’d still play. What a load of crap. My son ran a CD over with his lion (it was a little four-wheeler toddler scooter type thing that he sat on) and it completely destroyed my disc.

Where were we? Oh yeah. The Lion King. “It’s the circle of liiiife…”

You’re welcome.

 

The “title” prompt is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here to join in, and leave your link for everyone to see!

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To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here. Join in today! It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 9th post here at this post.

Note: If you combine SoCS and JusJoJan in one post, make sure you ping back to both this post and the Friday Reminder post.


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Just Jot It January 2nd – Pause/Paws #SoCS

Does a pregnant pause give birth to little pauses after nine months? And how did it get pregnant in the first place? Was it, perhaps, inseminated by a break? A comma? Probably wasn’t a period. … think about that one for a minute.

I probably don’t pause often enough to contemplate how grateful I am for the life I have. Great friends, a loving family, a roof over my head and a boiler in the basement that works, enough food on the table and laughter all over the house. True, it’s not always easy. But I’m pretty content with it. Of course a warm sunny beach in my back yard year round would make it perfect…

So when do I pause? In the shower for sure. It’s really the only place I’m not pulled away from by the needs of everyone else. It’s rare to sit down to a meal without having to get up half a dozen times. Same with doing the dishes, cooking, sitting at the computer writing a SoCS post.

I’m back. See? You didn’t even notice the pause. 😉

The “pause/paws” prompt is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here to join in today!

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To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 2nd post here!


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SoC’S Socks – #SoCS

I had an entire laundry basket full of odd socks. Can you imagine? Only a few of them matched. And I didn’t even have a dryer for them to get sucked into oblivion into! So I threw them all out except I didn’t have any bag tags. Here where I live it costs $2.50 to throw out a bag of garbage – you have to buy tags to stick to your bags. So my garbage bag of socks was sitting around the house when I got this guy

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Winston, sleeping on his back

and of course he found them. Two have been adopted by the pup.

So this is the first time I’ve been online (apart from a few minutes yesterday) since Thursday. And then it was only for a couple of minutes too. It’s been a crazy, mixed up Christmas this year with dinner happening (the big dinner that is) on Christmas Eve and not much sleep due to the festivities. But it’s been fun. I’m thankful for SoCS. It’s made me get on the computer long enough to say thank you… and that’s really what I want to do. Thank you to each and every one of you who have joined in, even once. I appreciate this community on WordPress more than I can express. You have kept me sane more times than I can count.

I hope everyone has had a happy holiday. Cheers to another year of SoCS!

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Stream of Consciousness Saturday can be found here: https://lindaghill.com/2015/12/25/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-2615/ Join in today!!


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What we make of things

They say some things in life only have as much significance as we give to them. I suppose you could say that about everything and everyone – the things and people we find dear to us are those that have a place in our hearts. A person can have significance to us because we relate to them, or because they’re family. An item can be meaningful for its monetary value (if money in general matters to us) or for the memories it conjures.

Then there are the things we make up meanings for; a recurring dream, the sighting of a black cat, or a ring around the moon for instance. For me, for the past twenty years or so, it’s a number sequence that keeps coming up. I think of it as maybe something that pops in once in a while to say, hey, I’m still here watching over you. The number sequence is 911. It doesn’t always have to be precisely in that order – sometimes it’s a whole jumble of 1s and 9s that gets my attention. Sometimes I even have to add up the numbers in a sequence to come up with it. Like this little gem I encountered the other day:

1111119999The 1s are obvious. But then 4+7=11 and for the 9s, 18 halved is two more. So out of this I got 1111119999. I think that’s pretty cool.

By now I predict you’re either you’re intrigued or your finger is hovering above the let’s-move-on button. But before you go, let me ask you; what have you invented a significance for? Is there anything? Or do you just stick to people, objects, or even places? Or hey, feel free to let me know if you think I’m just weird.


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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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NanoPoblano Day 5 – It’s not Alaska

It’s the fifth day of the nifty challenge, Nano Poblano, and we’re back on track with our next Japanese lesson. Today there will be greetings. But not just any greetings; today we will practice saying “Good morning.” Translated: “Ohayou gozaimasu.”

I’m going to do this kind of like one would play charades, in that we’ll start with the second word, only because I’m not sure quite what it means but it keeps showing up in polite conversation. “Gozaimasu” (go-za-i-mass) is also stuck on the end of “Thank you very much,” so it’s gotta be important, right? So with that out of the way…

The first word in the Japanese phrase for “Good morning” is “Ohayou” (o-ha-yo). It’s pronounced like “Ohio” in the good old U. S. of A. Ohayou gozaimasu is used obviously before lunchtime and can be uttered to anyone you wish to be friendly with or just in passing on the street.

Conclusion: if you can leave off the aforementioned politeness factor, all you have to do is remember which state you need to state, and you’re laughing. Note: I had actually thought of saying “Cincinnati” to people in the morning, but they may not get the joke.

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This farcical yet incredibly factual post is brought to you by Nano Poblano.


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Why Beef? #SoCS

I’m not sure what I was hoping for when I made “beef” the word of the week in my prompt. Was I looking for recipes? Perhaps. A bunch of rants on what people had complaints or “beefs” about? Maybe. A throwing up of hands from the vegetarians who follow me? Diatribes from people who can’t seem to put on weight? That might be fun. I actually wanted to wait until I had my own post written before I read anyone else’s, so that’s what I’ve done.

I rarely air my own “beefs” in public. Or even in private for that matter. When people or situations (but mostly people) get on my nerves I normally first try to determine why they’re getting on my nerves. Is it just me? Is there a reason behind it? It’s not until I’m pretty sure they (the people or the situations) are really out to get me that I’ll go off on my own little rant.

There are words that get my goat. And phrases too. Most of the phrases are made up of bad grammar, but words like “portion,” OH OH and when someone describes a certain aspect of a problem as a “piece” it really pisses me off. Inside. Because I don’t actually say anything.

I suppose it’s possible that I just have a problem with words that start with a “p.” Whatever. I just have to keep reminding myself, in the words of the great Bart Simpson, “Don’t have a cow!” Or a beef.

This strange and wondrous post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Please join in! Click here to find out how.

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Who Needs Glue When You Can Sniff Fruit Flies?

I’m completely and utterly discouraged tonight.

I had a weekend off but had very little sleep, but that’s not why I’m discouraged.

I got barely any work done on my novels, but that’s not why either.

I have a sink full of dishes that I haven’t the energy to do, but that’s not entirely what’s got me down.

I killed a fruit fly this afternoon by breathing it forcefully (by accident) up my nose and blowing it back out into a kleenex – that was actually the highlight of my day.

I want to go to bed but I have to wait for kids to go to sleep, but that’s not what’s really killing me.

I have so much to do that I don’t know where to start, but that’s not the worst of it.

What really has me discouraged? It’s all of the above combined. Except the fruit fly thing. That’s just funny.

How was your weekend? Please tell me it was better than mine.


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Cities In Dust

When The Mortal, the solo project of my favourite singer Sakurai Atsushi, released a sample of their new song on Youtube today I spent some time deciding whether or not to share it on Facebook. The song is a cover of “Cities In Dust,” by Siouxsie and the Banshees. This being the 11th of September, the very title of the tune stirs feelings of unease. I don’t know if the band released it today on purpose, or if they’ll realize belatedly the significance of the date and apologize for it. After much careful consideration, I think it’s a good idea to share it.

The lyrics of “Cities In Dust” you see, read to me more like a celebration of destruction than a lament over it. And while it might seem insensitive, in a way I find it helps. The images that were burned into my mind on that fateful day are all over social media, and with those images are messages that we should never forget, lest we somehow cause the tragedy to be repeated. That all wars should end is a vision many of us share. And yet how do we as individuals stop a war from happening? I return to the song.

In the lyrics I find a lesson; that no matter how much hate and ill-will we have for our enemies, none of us should ever wish for destruction. Understanding of opposing views by both parties, cooperation and learning to live together is the only way we will ever find peace. As I always say, we have to start small. With our own communities and most of all, in our own hearts.


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The Young and the Rested

I was inspired by the Daily Prompt here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-young-and-the-rested/ not as much by the actual prompt —

“When was the last time you felt truly rejuvenated and energized? What made you feel that way?”

–but by the title of it. The Young and the Rested.

The fact is, I’ve been at home with the young’uns for the last two weeks of the summer without much of a break. Consider my challenges: Sunday dawned bright and early and Alex, my youngest, wanted to go on a bus ride with his brother. First he had to feed, a process which takes about two hours via feeding pump. So we were sitting around the table, Alex and I and my BFF John, playing a rousing game of Life (the board game) while he fed, when Alex decided it was time for his brother to wake up. I said no, they couldn’t leave for another hour, let him sleep a bit more. Unplug me from my pump, Alex demanded. I don’t want to eat anymore, I want to go now. This was not an option; he turned the pump off anyway. I told him that if he wanted to continue to play his game he had to feed. No way, he said. So I walked away.

He proceeded to follow me around the house, digging his fingers into me to get my attention whilst screaming. Fine, I said, stop screaming and poking me or go to your room.

Okay, I’ll go to my room, he said. With the pump off (still) he went to his room. After a while I told him he could come out if he would turn on his pump. No way, he said. I want to go on the bus, to which I replied, You’re not going on the bus until your feed is finished.

The argument began at 9:30 am. It finished when I finally force-fed him by syringe at 1pm. The consequence, no bus.

This is a typical day for me at home with Alex. He gets something into his head that he wants to do and he will absolutely not consider the consequences of his actions. He’s an adolescent still going through his terrible twos. It takes him hours to give in – and I’m consistent! And as patient as anyone I have ever met. Of course there is the language barrier – he is Deaf and I am hearing. Although my sign language is limited, I still have to believe that after almost 15 years of living together I can at least get my point across on the most basic level.

He’s also sick with that awful summer cold that’s going around, which is really where all this ties in with the prompt. Last night he woke up coughing at 1:40 am. I gave him something that I thought might help (doctor prescribed codeine) but it didn’t. At 4 am I finally gave in and let him watch a movie in bed. So neither of us are rested… and I’m old.

When was the last time I felt truly rejuvenated and energized? The early nineties. Before I started having kids. Parenting is such fun, isn’t it?