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The weight and the heft, the lightness and the light, the beauty of language. I want my words and thoughts, my writing and photography, my laughter, my being, what I strive for and what I strive to be to ooze with the power, the magic, the intuition of words. Those that are written, those that are sung and spoken, words that are thought and felt and inspired. To appreciate the glory and cleverness of others’ words and to instill words of my own with simplicity and grandness.

I am on a mission.

Daily Prompt: Ooze

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I woke yesterday morning to the stirring, welcome sounds of a late summer storm. My trees and grass and flowers were, I’m sure, quite grateful as it’s been a rather hot, dry season here in the Heartland. Added bonus: I didn’t have to water my container plants as Mother Nature gloriously provided sustenance for the day! Thanking her for that…

We watched CBS Sunday Morning with hot drinks at hand (coffee for Bill, tea for me), always a soothing combination. After showering and making ourselves presentable, we drove to The Jordan House, a local historical site I’ve been wanting to visit for some time now. We were not disappointed. The home and its furnishings, its ode to the history of both the Valley Junction area of West Des Moines and the role it played in the Underground Railroad and our lively and engaging tour guide satisfied my eagerness to see this place, finally, for myself.

After a brief Starbucks pit stop – yes, more hot beverages – we returned home. I threw in a load of laundry while Bill resumed self-tutorials on learning Lightroom, a new tool I think I will need to employ as well. With just a few clicks and minor adjustments, photos really POP and without some of that overdone post-processing I see far too often with some photos on Facebook and elsewhere. A little sure goes a long way!

My sister texted me to say she had some sweet corn and zucchini if I was interested so I drove over and spent some time visiting with her and her husband. She has several chickens – love this handsome fella! – and they are always fun to watch.

In addition to the zucchini and corn, she gifted me with okra and green beans. I’ve never had okra before and welcome recipe suggestions. Someone on Facebook strongly advised against steaming it. Duly noted!

I was pleased to discover when I got home that the books I’d ordered from Amazon had arrived. The package was sitting in the chair by the front door. It seems strange to me that deliveries are made on Sundays – this is the second time this has happened – but I’m not complaining. More books to read – my winter will runneth over!

We rounded out our day catching up on the results of last week’s America’s Got Talent, our annual summer TV fare, but not before enjoying sissy’s sweet corn for supper and cranberry-oatmeal cookies I’d baked – fresh from the oven!

Yes. It was a good day. Nothing fancy, nothing ‘wow’. Just – nice. Weekends and life, just the way I like it.

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There’s a knack to drying sheets on the line predicated on the immediate assumption that the wet clothes have been removed from the washing machine post haste. If you’ve allowed them to sit there too long upon the completion of the wash cycle, well, let’s just say that does not bode well for crisp, flat, smooth sheets. Not fussy about wrinkled, crinkly sheets on your bed? Then by all means, proceed. Otherwise, I’d run them through the wash one more time if I were you and then – so you don’t have to do this again – I’d grab them quickly this time around.

Empty the sheets into the laundry basket. Nudge open the screen door leading to the backyard and deposit the sheets on the ground in the center of the clothesline. Unless you’ve been remiss in storing your clothespins in one of those handy holders that loop over the line allowing for easy reaching into and retrieving of said pins, you’ll have to finagle handling the sheets and grabbing these necessary accoutrements as best you can.

I like to begin with the flat sheet. Now, one can attach it so the folded crease is affixed to the line, leaving the fabric to unfurl and billow in the breeze or reverse the process and leave the fold to hang at the bottom. Depending on the ferocity of the wind (and your supply of pins), stagger the pin attachments to the line in even increments allowing enough of them to firmly secure the sheet and keep it from breaking loose and ending up in the neighbors yard.

Next up the pesky fitted sheet. Admittedly, I just wing it with these guys although I do tend to opt for the fold-at-the-bottom method of deployment. The pillow cases, so easily managed, are the best part of hanging wet sheets outdoors to dry. For these babies, I prefer to attach them so they are open at the bottom. When you are finished, hang any other sets of sheets in the same manner unless you’ve determined a better way to do so from your experience with the first load.

Now stand back and admire your work. Don’t they look lovely swaying softly in the breeze? If the winds have picked up a bit since you hung them to dry, make sure your pin coverage is adequate and make adjustments accordingly. Oh. You did check the weather forecast, did you not? Or at least allow yourself a quick glance skyward before deciding to go au natural as opposed to throwing them into the dryer? You sure as heck don’t want them to get rained on. So make note of that for the next go-round if you’ve failed to take the appropriate precautions.

So. Everything went swimmingly. The sun was shining, the breeze was delightful and now your sheets are dry.

Lucky you. You get to make the bed. Always a ‘fun’ chore, amiright? No matter. For your reward, you’ll have fresh-smelling sheets to look forward to when you crawl into bed tonight, the captivating sensory enchantment of which lasts about five minutes. I hope it was worth it.

Daily Prompt: Unfurl

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I came. I saw. I journalled. And I continue to do so, joyfully.

Actually, ever since I retired earlier this year – March 15th, the Ides of March in case you’d like to tuck that date away to commemorate my one-year-anniversary come 2018 – I’ve been doing a lot more writing in my journal. Or journals, rather. I keep a small one in my purse, one in the wicker tray I use to house all my reading materials for bedtime perusal, one in the car, one in my going-to-Barnes-and-Noble backpack and a spiral-bound notebook that I originally started for writing Morning Pages. I’ve applied my own twist to the practice, however, writing whenever the heck I feel like it during the day – I call it my Daily Pages – and writing anywhere from just a paragraph, maybe a page or two or even the prescribed three pages (or more), in longhand, to explore whatever it is I want to say or express or document as to what’s going on in my life.

Recently, I purchased a set of multi-color fine-tip markers to jazz up, enliven, highlight and otherwise amplify my reading and writing experiences. Yellow highlighters are also quite useful, maybe not so much for journaling but certainly for noting key passages in the books and magazines I collect (not unlike the typewriters I once accumulated over the years but that’s another story). If the written word is part of the equation, so too are these brown laser-enhanced optical wonders located mere inches from my hairline and any colorful means possible to capture and celebrate the beauty and inspiration and joy I so delight in when I am both reading and writing.

Some may chafe at the suggestion but I enjoy looking back every now and then, re-reading the journals I’ve written, gleaning clues sometimes as to what year we went to Mackinac Island (2012) or whether we hosted Thanksgiving in 2015 (we did). It is often amusing to read about how annoyed I’d been over something that had happened at work but my self-righteous indignation provides no clues whatsoever as to what the offending situation actually was and I’m left to guess as to what I was even referring to. Must have been really important, eh?

As much as I enjoy keeping a journal now as an adult, I’m surprised I never kept a diary as a young girl. I do recall owning one and I’m sure I wrote a few entries here and there. Some women (perhaps men too but I can’t speak to that) still have every diary and journal they’ve written in since they were kids. I think that’s nice. While that’s not an option for me, I’ll do the next best thing and save (and cherish) the ones that I do have and will continue to write – and read! – as long as those two brown apertures of mine are still blessedly able to do so. Write on, peoples!

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I saw a rabbit.

It was curled into a tight little mound of gray fur and protruding ears: quiet, unmoving, lifeless. As I looked down where it lay on the grass, I felt a twinge of loss and sadness for this small animal that was now no more. Standing on our deck, I looked out at the hayfields and sloping hills in the distance, contemplating the cycle of life of all living creatures. We’re born helpless and defenseless, utterly dependent on others to survive. We struggle to master even such basic functions as eating, grasping and clasping objects (and others) for aid and for comfort. We scoot then crawl then hold ourselves upright, learning to walk, to talk, to communicate our needs, wants and emotions. Our lives have meaning through the passion of our pursuits. We must strive to make the best of what we have been given, if we’re lucky and if we’re paying attention to what is important, for one day it – and we – will be gone.

Rabbits, like this little fellow, follow a life cycle of their own, not so similar but not so different either, this one’s apparently cut short by any number of predators. His day had come. Whether animal or human, history or achievement, knowledge or nature, tradition or bounty, the passing of anything beautiful is to be mourned.

I lowered my gaze and was surprised to discover that he had not expired after all. His swiveled head was tilted upward and huge bunny eyes, wide and questioning, looked into mine. An unbroken alliance was formed at that moment for I believe we both realized the day of completion for each of our life cycles was yet to come. There was still time for dance and love and learning and laughter. And the promise of joy, always joy. Dangers and pitfalls do exist. They are all around us. However, we must take care and navigate our paths wisely. But if we are cautiously optimistic there is no reason why we can’t continue to enjoy green grasses of contentment no matter the view, no matter the barriers, no matter the skies.

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Not long after my retirement in March of 2017, I made a short-lived attempt at what Julia Cameron recommends vis-à-vis her best-selling books, The Artist’s Way and The Right to Write, that being a Morning Pages routine which involves writing, in longhand, three pages each day, every day, preferably first thing each morning.

PSA ~ A Google search of the term ‘longhand’ provides the following description: Ordinary handwriting (as opposed to shorthand, typing, or printing).

Writing, with a pen (or, horrors, a pencil), using one’s own hand on the surface of a clean 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper: What a concept, amiright?

Cursive writing, when your stream of consciousness is babbling at an incoherent rate, makes for some pretty messy scribblings on the page. The anal retentive component of my psychological make-up balks mightily along the way when my thoughts become an erratic composite of loops, lumps and dribbles: virtual screeches against the white, lined notebook paper I’m writing on. My journals over the years, originally all written in longhand, eventually gave way to a neater, tighter script of the printed word so now to revert to cursive has been a bit of a challenge.

But I get it. Printing tidily on the page (remember: anal retentive, here) does lend itself to losing that flash of inspiration that drives someone to preserve their thoughts on paper. In contrast, however, writing in longhand (quickly, so quickly!) helps to scoop it all up (er, down) but where’s the advantage if, upon later inspection, one cannot decipher what one has written?

Hmmmm. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, I’m going to give it another go. Julia recommends a 90-day commitment of Morning Pages, um, paging. With that in mind, I’d best get back to it. Best to strike when the iron, I mean the pen, is hot…

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Today is Fathers Day and I sure do miss my Daddy. He was a wonderful man in many respects: his was a kind and generous heart, he was a hard worker, he had a fertile imagination and a fantastic sense of humor. While he certainly was not cut from the same mold as many of my girlfriends’ fathers, he was oh, so special to me and my sisters.

One of the ways in which he differed from all those other Dads escorting their girls to Father/Daughter Teas was that my dad enjoyed drinking, and quite often, to excess. I am conflicted as to whether my dad was an alcoholic. I don’t believe that he was although he was by no means just a social drinker. Dad drank with one purpose and one purpose only: to get drunk. This was a revelation I had in my late 20’s or early 30’s as I observed how quickly he consumed his alcohol. He downed his drinks with the swiftness of an apple falling from a tree and then, with gusto and that wonderful laugh of his, he would grab another and yet another after that.

He was an often hilariously funny drunk but sometimes, he would turn mean and nasty. He owned and operated Clark’s Sawmill for fifty years and for most of his tenure running the controls that guided those walnut logs through the big blade, quitting time usually meant drinking time. It made for a sometimes nightmarish, always frustrating existence for my mother and the dysfunctional nature of our childhoods left its mark on all six of his daughters.

There were so many times when he disappointed us, both Mom and us girls, and he was quite adept at embarrassing us too, sometimes excruciatingly so. Sometimes my sisters and I believed divorce would be a far better alternative to all the drinking and fighting we had to live with. However, even though he wasn’t a hands on, Father Knows Best kind of Dad he was, all the same, affectionate with us. We knew we were loved. We were Daddy’s Little Girls. Fortunately, he began to mellow as the years wore on. He and Mom began to travel, to spend more time together. Some of Mom’s favorite memories are those of the two of them drinking tea in the morning, watching the birds and squirrels at the many feeders outside their sunroom window.

Watching him succumb to prostate cancer, seven years of increasing debilitation, was difficult. Losing my dad was something I’d feared much of my later adult years and when it became a reality, it was a bittersweet experience. My mom and one of my sisters and I sat with him that last night – a fiercely awful yet somehow beautiful event. Seeing him draw his last was both horrifying and satisfying, in a way that is hard to describe. It was incredibly difficult but it was an experience I will always cherish. I am glad I was there with him that night.

Toward the end, I believe he felt some anguish for the time he’d lost as both a father and a husband due to the drinking he’d done over the years. I hope he didn’t suffer too much for it, though. He was a good man. I had a girlfriend who lived a couple of miles down the road from us when I was growing up. Her family suffered some staggering losses when their barn and other structures on their farm were destroyed in a fire. She told me how the other neighbors stopped by to gawk and peer through the rubbish, asking her father if he still wanted to keep this or that. My father, she said, was the only one to offer assistance after the disaster. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more proud of my Daddy than at that moment. Drinking or no, he was indeed a very good man.

Daily Prompt: Bottle

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The fat man trudged down Monroe Street, a long, disintegrating strip of toilet paper stuck to the heel of his left boot. He moved slowly, his large girth hindering any swift or sprightly movements. The rain fell, hard, while thunder echoed from dark clouds and bursts of lightning electrified the otherwise somber late day setting. In the distance, sirens from multiple sources wailed long and low, their respective vehicles advancing in outer directions, away from the heart of the city.

Shades were drawn on the tenement windows and the glow from overhead lights could be seen from some of the third floor apartments. Otherwise, accentuated by the angry storm, the streets were quiet and empty. Forlorn. Duane, the cluelessly obese man, crossed the street against a red light, unconcerned. There was no traffic to warrant either caution or care. His lightweight jacket, soaked through from the rain, clung to his large frame like Saran Wrap enveloping a roasted chicken. He simply did not care.

Before long, the wind started to pick up and Duane felt a chill as the temperature began to fall. The storm’s fury intensified and soon a blast of cold air nearly knocked him off his feet. Duane continued on, moving forward against the fierce gale, sadly determined to see this through. He owed her that much at least.

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Another challenge! Several fun writing and photo challenges are scattered throughout The Land of Blog and on occasion, I’m inspired to participate. Today is one of those days.

This Six Word Story Challenge, hosted by Nicola on the Sometimes Stellar Storytelling blog, can be found here and the prompt is the word Wicked. Here is the entry I submitted:

Scathing innuendos never really hurt anyone.