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Tag Archives: SoCS


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS May 20/17

It’s Friday, and time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I’m spending the day with my youngest son, as he has a day off from school. It’s been loud, it’s been distracting, and there have been tickles. All in all, not too bad.

Here’s your prompt for this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “all or nothing.” Use one, use both, use them any way you’d like. Bonus points if you start and end your post with one (or each) of them. Enjoy!

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 our 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!!

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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

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!


by 16 Comments

#SoCS – Language

I find the mechanics of language both fascinating and frustrating. The acrobatics your tongue needs to accomplish when making its way around different languages is something I’ve never really mastered. I know enough French to make my way around Quebec without getting arrested–in Japan… let’s just say if I was about to be arrested, I was totally oblivious. Yet in the case of speaking French, I barely do. I can read most of it, and I can understand a lot of it when someone is speaking to me, but actually forming the words myself? I trip over my tongue like it’s six feet long. When I lived on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, my local grocery store employees were used to me. They’d speak French, I spoke English, everything was understood and there was no gross salivation to worry about.

Japanese is a much easier language to speak. There’s very little tongue rolling going on, and most of the consonants sound the same as they do in English. Reading it? Pfft. Although I got to know the kanji for place names when I was there (because at the train stations they’re displayed in English, kana, and kanji), and obviously I learned the difference between “Men” and “Women” before I stepped off Canadian soil, much of the written language may as well be Greek. Or Japanese.

Lip reading, on the other hand, is a whole different subject when considering the tongue. Try it: say “dada” and “data.” Concentrate on what your lips look like when you say the two words. No difference. What changes is the position of the tongue. Even trying to say it with your mouth open, it’s impossible to show the difference to a deaf person. I was introduced to this difficulty when my Deaf son, Alex, was about four years old. The local children’s hospital (CHEO in Ottawa) had him in a program to see if he could ever learn to speak. He had hearing aids at the time, but they only allowed him to hear very loud noises. Speech wasn’t one of them. Eventually it was determined that because he never learned to suck as a baby (he’s tube fed to this day and he’s 16 years old) he’d never have the muscle control to speak. We gave up on the hearing aids when he started getting ear infections every other week. But back to the tongue. There are a few sounds that we make when we speak that are impossible to discern from our lips.

Holy spit balls, Batman! I just realized where the expression “mother tongue” came from! Sucking as a baby!!

…and, now I can’t concentrate on my stream of consciousness anymore.

This post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. To find the rules and join in, click the following link. Please do – it’s fun!! https://lindaghill.com/2017/05/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1317/


by 33 Comments

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS May 13/17

Gah! I’m late again. But it’s still Friday, and that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. It’s been a busy week for me, editing, proofreading, and finishing up yet another course. I’ve been totally immersed. So guess what? Here’s your prompt for this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “language.” Use it any way you’d like. 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 our 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!!

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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

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!


by 34 Comments

#SoCS – Interim

“In the interim” is when boredom happens. Between exciting times, when there’s nothing special going on and all you can think about is how much you wish something would drop in your lap: love, money, a new job, or the opportunity for a vacation, for instance. It’s the time where, when nothing is going on, you do something crazy like buy a cat or get addicted to a new game.

“In the interim” might be when creativity happens. Nothing to do but daydream… suddenly an idea pops up. Time to redecorate the house, take some pictures, paint, or write a book.

I haven’t been in the interim between books since 2011. I’ve been writing the same one — or the same series — for five-and-a-half years. I wonder what it would be like to be between books. Totally between them. Just thinking about it conjures thoughts of freedom. Running through meadows of wildflowers, climbing trees, swimming in rivers, and jumping on a trampoline. Time to allow my mind to wander, and not stress over how long it’s going to take to get something ready for publication.

I see authors handing their manuscripts to editors and I envy them. I imagine them bent over their keyboards and notepads, writing their next epic tale, unworried for a while what might be happening with their finished manuscript. I’d love to be able to write non-stop. With no interim.

Wait… wasn’t that what I just said I didn’t have? Gotta get writing.

This post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday, just in time to be published before Sunday. If you’d like to join in, you can find the rules and the prompt here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/05/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-617/


by 52 Comments

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS May 6/17

It’s the first Friday in May and time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I’m excited today, because I’ve finally come up with a name for my new freelance editing business. As soon as the site is verified and I have it looking pretty, I’ll write a post to announce it. Onward and upward!

Here’s your prompt for this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “inter-” Use the prefix “inter-” any way you’d like. Enjoy!

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 our 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!!

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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

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!


by 11 Comments

Yowling in the Yard – #AtoZChallenge

I always hated it when my neighbours (where ever I lived) let their dogs yap and yowl all day in their back yards. Now I have a dog who does it. Not that I let him do it all day mind you. If he starts barking, I call him to come in. I still worry that I’m disturbing people though.

I would never have got a dog if I wasn’t home all day. Having said that, I’ve had dogs before that I’ve left home alone while I’ve gone to work. I wonder if they were lonely.

My last dog was a Saint Bernard named George. I got him when I was first married to my first husband. He came from the Humane Society and he was very well trained. But, as I found out after I got him, he hated kids. Luckily, we didn’t have any. I wish I could find a picture of him. If I do someday, I’ll scan it and post it.

Other than dogs, I’ve had budgies and fish. My last two budgies died when I bought a new set of Teflon cookware. Had I opened the window–had I known new Teflon kills birds–they might have been with me many more years than they were. The last bunch of fish I owned were guppies. I brought them in a small container with me in the car when I moved. The guy at the pet store told me not to keep them in the small tank for more than a couple of weeks, or they’d die. They lasted in it for two years. Then again, I didn’t buy any new Teflon in that time, either… Maybe I should have kept the birds in water. … Nah.

This silly post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the link and see how you, too, can join in the fun! https://lindaghill.com/2017/04/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-apr-2917/


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Apr. 29/17

Friday is here, so that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. The month of April, as you might have heard, is time for many of us to participate in the A to Z Challenge. With this taken into consideration, I’ll start the prompt with the letter of the day, just to potentially help people along. Here’s your prompt for this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “yard.” Use it any way you’d like. You can even add letters to it to make a whole new word! 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 our 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!!

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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

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!


by 24 Comments

#SoCS – Spirited – #AtoZChallenge

I just looked up my thesaurus word for the A to Z Challenge and I have no idea how, off the top of my head, to use it with the word “spell,” which is the prompt for SoCS.

Now I have that out of the way (did I cheat?), I’ll say that when I hear the word “spirited,” my mind immediately goes to horses. I’ve known some spirited horses in my day. And I’ve known some lazy ones.

Through my 20s, I worked on a dude ranch, taking trails out. Some of the animals we used for the trails always had kids on them–they were the horses that were easy to handle, meaning they did nothing out of the ordinary, never moved any faster than they absolutely had to, and never strayed from following the bum of the horse in front of them. Until we got to the apple orchard. It was fine most of the year, but when the apples started growing, we’d constantly have a paying customer scraped off their horse by the low-hanging branches.

So why didn’t we put kids on smaller horses? Most of them were too rowdy. Or too easily spooked. And apparently people enjoyed being dragged under a tree better than they liked falling off.

I worked at that place for years. I loved it. I was paid $20 for an eight- or nine-hour day, which doesn’t sound like much, but as I often said to people — I was getting paid to do something I loved.

Me and Shadow, my horse
Riding bareback with a halter and lead rope
Shadow after a nice roll in the dirt

I never thought I’d give up riding, but I have. I don’t have the time or the money for it any more. I’ve been on a few trails, but after leading them myself, I can’t stand being told what to do. The last time I took a trail, I took my feet out of the stirrups to stretch my legs only to be told by the trail guide that I HAD to put them back in. I told her where to stick it (in so many words) but the trail wasn’t very pleasant after that.

I hope one day I’ll be able to start going again. My dream was to own a farm, but that’s never going to happen. Even if I could afford it, it would be necessarily too far away from the nearest hospital for Alex’s sake. But maybe, someday, I’ll take out trails again. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll come across the trail guide who told me to put my feet in the stirrups and I can get her back.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. To find out how to join in, click the link: https://lindaghill.com/2017/04/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-apr-2217/ It’s fun!


by 39 Comments

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Apr. 22/17

It’s Friday today and that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. The month of April, as you might have heard, is time for many of us to participate in the A to Z Challenge. With this taken into consideration, I’ll start the prompt with the letter of the day, just to potentially help people along. Here’s your prompt for this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “spell.” Use the word “spell” any way you’d like. Bonus points if you use it in the first sentence. Enjoy!

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 our 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!!

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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

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!


by 16 Comments

#SoCS – The Measurement of Moo – #AtoZChallenge

The word my thesaurus gave me today is “measurement.” The following is pure stream of consciousness writing. Unedited.  Enjoy.

The measurement of moo can vary. It might be simply moo, it may be moooo–I think it depends on the cow.

Or perhaps it relies on how hungry is the cow.

A cow who is famished may have a lengthy moooo, whereas a contented cow might have a moo. Does this mean an overstuffed cow gives out a mo?

Mo, the cow, lived in a meadow where the grass was very green. She was a lonely cow–all of her cow friends had gone off to less green pastures. Which meant they were shipped off to farms where they only served hay. Mo knew this because one of them, as she was going by in the back of a truck on her way from one hay-ish farm to another, yelled out, “YO! Mo! Thar’s hay in them thar hills!”

Mo was not a contented cow. She longed for a bull to call her own. She was fat from all the green, green grass she consumed on a daily basis, and she was very blue. Which was why she didn’t go with the other cows. No one wanted a blue cow named Mo.

The years passed, and Mo got fatter and fatter. Her only visitor was Flo, the lady farmer who looked after the farm. Every day Flo came to pat Mo on the head, and Mo would say “Mo,” and Flo would answer back, “Ho! Did you say ‘mo’? You’re supposed to say ‘moo,’ ya stupid blue cow!” and yes, Flo said this every day because she had no memory from one day to the next.

But then, one day, a bull showed up at the fence. It was a runaway bull from across the way, and he happened to be green.

“Mo,” said Mo when she saw him. She carefully approached the fence. She’d never seen a green bull before.

“Mooooo,” said the bull.

“Are you hungry?” asked Mo.

“I am,” replied the bull. “I’ve been walking up and down this road for days. My farmer doesn’t know I’m missing.”

“Oh dear,” said Mo. “Why don’t you hop over the fence and have some of my grass?”

So the bull did, and months later, they had a little brown calf whose name was Moo. And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Flo, who couldn’t figure out where the green bull came from and why all her cows were so stupid.

The End.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is fun! Click the link and join in today. https://lindaghill.com/2017/04/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-apr-1517/