Kindness

It's Poetry Monday, and this week's suggested theme is "kindness."

Don't forget to check out Diane's and Delores' blogs for their poems; and feel free to leave a poem of any kind on any topic in the comments section at their blogs or at mine, or on your own (in which case, please leave us a link to your blog in the comments).

Kindness is a wonderful theme, dear to my heart, and I thought I would have no problem coming up with an original piece of writing on the topic.

Hoo boy. I was so very, very wrong. I just couldn't seem to do justice to what I feel is the most important quality - bar none - in a person. My words felt inadequate and weak for such an important concept.

I felt like I had the vocabulary of a five-year-old, when I need the vocabulary of an ancient, wizened, wise person. I admit to being wizened, but one out of three wasn't enough.

I felt like anything I could say was inadequate and repetitious and shallow.

So I did what I generally do when I can't write my own poem; I go looking for what other people have written, using Google search.

I struck it lucky with the following poem. The author is the daughter of an American mother and a Palestinian father. You can read more about her HERE. In the video below the poem, the author explains how she came to write it, which helps to put the piece in context. Even before I heard her story, though, the rich imagery she used appealed to me.
  

Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

*****
Thanks for reading, my kind friends.

*****
Notes on the video, added August 1, 2017:
The author explains that she wrote the poem after she and her husband - one week into their honeymoon, travelling by bus in South America - were robbed of everything, and one person on that bus was murdered. She was understandably upset, but in the midst of those feelings, the poem came to her "from a female voice" and she wrote it down in pencil in a small notebook, one of the few things she had left. By the time she was finished, she had gathered herself enough to plan how to proceed with no money, passport or belongings. She also says that sometimes a person can write something they believe to be true, and grow into it - that we can write things that we may not understand fully but they can guide us in the future when we go back and read them again. Several times she stresses that she was only a conduit - "a secretary" for the poem - she felt it came to her from somewhere outside of herself.

Q & A With P. Donkey

Let the fireworks begin!

I have a new award to add to my collection. It joins my prize from the Red Cross for a picture I drew in Grade 3, and the lapel pin I received as yearbook editor in Grade 12. I thought I had accomplished more than that so far in life, and I'm giving myself frown lines trying to remember anything else I've received as recognition, but that's all I can come up with.

Until now, that is. I have been nominated for the Mystery Blogger award by baili, a lovely lady from Pakistan who writes at her thoughtful and interesting spot in the blogospere called Baili And I, which you can find HERE. Thank you, baili! I enjoyed reading your answers to the award questions, and I'm happy to take part, albeit in my donkey-ish, stubbornly different way.

 

The Mystery Blogger award was created by Okoto Enigma (found HERE), a young fashion blogger. She wanted a way to introduce lots of people to lots of other people in blogland, because she felt there were so many good blogs out there that were not being discovered. I think it is a worthy goal, but I also think that many bloggers have already found that they discover new blogs through the comments on the blogs they currently read, and then discover more blogs through the comments on those blogs, and so on, branching out and out and out ... until they get to a maximum of blogs they can comfortably read and respond to on a regular basis.

Therefore, I am going to take the liberty of not following all of the rules, although I will post them here for the record:
1. Put the award/image on your blog.
2. List the rules.
3. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
4. Also mention the creator of the award and provide a link.
5. Tell your readers three things about yourself.
6. Nominate 10-20 other bloggers for the award.
7. Let them know with a comment on their blog.
8. Ask your nominees 5 questions, with one being weird or funny.
9. Share a link to your best post.

Whew! That's a lot of things to do.

But I've already done 1 through 4.

Onward to number 5 - three things about myself.
 
It was a challenge to come up with three things I'm willing to share publicly that I haven't already mentioned at one time or another. For someone who writes under a fake name because I want to stay relatively anonymous, I'm finding myself putting a lot of personal things on my blog. However, one has come to mind that I might not post about in the ordinary course of things.

I have a "thing" for clothing. That sounds the same as "I like fashion" but that's not exactly it. I just like fabric and colours and pretty things. I can clearly remember as a young child looking through the mail-order catalogue and being captivated by the clothing, especially those mix-and-match spreads where you could buy three bottoms and three tops and two jackets and have, I don't know, I'm not great in math, something like 900 different outfits?? And I recall my diary entries as a slightly older child; I had no social life to speak of, so my diary entries were all the same, a description of what I wore, including the colour of my socks. I always wore coordinating clothing, although I can assure you I was no fashion plate. Ah, yes, good times, and really, truly cringe-worthy.

There's more. Not only do I like to look at clothing, I like to look at thrift store clothing in particular. I like to sort through things in bins, never knowing what the next item will be, what it will look like, if it will magically be my size and shape. It's soothing to me to do this. When my dad was in the hospital during his final illness, I spent every afternoon during his rest hour at the thrift store sorting ... sorting ... sorting. I also bought a lot of things with the thought that I would probably soon have time to alter them. The alterations still haven't happened, two years later. Many of those things have been donated to charity. In hindsight, I think of it as my therapy for my impending grief. It wasn't free, but in total it cost only about the same as an hour or two of actual therapy.

In real life (as opposed to my fantasy life where I am slim, beautiful and well-dressed), I usually wear the same few things over and over, because (a) I don't live a lifestyle that requires a big variety of clothing (b) I am a dumpy little thing with wrong proportions and it's hard to find clothing to fit (c) I value comfort highly, and many clothes aren't comfortable, at least for me (see HERE for the reason).

Eek. They say confession is good for the soul, but I'm not sure if I feel all that good right now.

However.

Carrying on.

Bravely, I might add.

Because I'm about to break more of the rules of the award. I am not going to nominate ANY bloggers. But if anyone reading this would like to carry on with the intent of this award, please leave a link to your blog in the comments, or you can just tell us about yourself directly in the comments. Please do consider telling us something quirky so we (me) can feel less alone.

The last thing I'm going to do is answer one of baili's five questions she posed to the bloggers she nominated. I chose the one that made me think hard; I also liked it because there is a bit of the control freak in me that loves this fantasy.

Baili's question was : If you were president of a whole, united world for one week, what changes would you like to make?

My mother and I play this game quite often, to be honest. We'll get talking about the health care system, or the educational system (she was a teacher from the age of 18 until retirement), or the political parties, or some other topic, and discuss it and dissect it for an hour or so, and conclude by saying, "if we could just run the world for ONE DAY!" and laugh together. So I feel uniquely and totally qualified to put in writing what I'd actually do if I ran the world. (Would someone please invent a sarcasm emoticon? I need it right there at the end of that sentence.)

Anyway, here's the Donkey plan.

I'd put most - if not all - of the current leaders of the world in time out. I know, I know - that would take a gigantic naughty step to squeeze them all on, but it would be so worth it. And no desserts for them for the next year, plus extra chores to help put right what they've messed up so far.

Then I'd take all the good and compassionate and smart ordinary people working as scientists, health care workers, teachers of all kinds, religious leaders who have shown good judgement, open minds and critical thinking, people in all different jobs, or none, as long as they had good minds and kind spirits, and all the older folks who have learned life's lessons the hard way, and all the youth who have energy to spare, and all the dreamers and artists and writers who sustain us with beauty and imagination, and I'd put them all in a big room (I know, I know, it would be a gigantic room) and ask them to work together to solve the problems of world overpopulation, hunger, poverty, strife, environmental degradation, and general evil in the world.

Personally, I can make a strong case for the first one of those issues - overpopulation - being the underpinning for most or all of the ones following it, but that's a post for another day.

I really think that without the dual stresses of a rapidly increasing world population plus the jockeying for power that consumes so many people in this world we could solve every problem we've created so far, and a few problems we haven't thought of yet. I do. I have faith in the goodness and intelligence of regular people. And I have faith in removing the bad ones from the discussion. NO INPUT AND NO DESSERTS FOR A YEAR, GUYS.

Have a good weekend, folks.

And, by the way, YOU are the kind of people I'd want in that gigantic room. Together, we could do it

But who's going to listen to a donkey? And why, oh why, is this donkey clean-shaven on the bottom half of his muzzle??

P. S. I'm not going to share a link to my best post because I don't know what constitutes "best" ... is it the most reads? the one I like best? the one with the most comments? So confusing!! Also, this post is already too long :)

Photos courtesy of Pixabay.

Summer Vacation Blues

It's Monday, so it's time to get our fingers into some poetry again! Poetry Monday was started by Diane, then Delores jumped in, and I did too. There are a few other people contributing poems here, some regularly, some occasionally, some original, some not -- and you can, too. Leave yours in the comments or on your blog (and leave your address in the comments so we can find you).

The theme this week, as suggested by Diane, is VACATION.

What can I write about vacations? I haven't had what most people would call a vacation in years. Don't feel sorry for me, though. I work only part-time, there are quieter times at work when I can take a week or more to myself, and we no longer have children at home. So my life isn't hard by any means.

Still, sometimes all I want to do is have someone else look after the cats and be on call in case any of my elderly (or young) relatives need me, order takeout food for a whole week, and read all day except when I take a leisurely walk along our local trail, camera in hand. That is my idea of vacation. Not for me the trips to warmer places, the cruise ships, the cottage on a beach, or the city shopping. I'd be happy just to be free of responsibility for a whole week. Or two weeks, since this is my fantasy vacation ...

Even though I don't have a regular full-time job and therefore a regular vacation time, my husband does, and I understand how he -- and most working folks -- feel about their precious weeks off. They wait all year, and then vacation flies past, and before they know it, they're facing going back to work, with another entire year looming ahead of them. And for those, like my husband, who have had to change jobs from time to time, leaving them with no vacation at all in the annual cycle -- it's even harder.

That's what prompted this poem. (The title is courtesy of my dad, who would often wind up a discussion of something less than satisfactory with these words: "Oh well, it's better than a kick in the seat of the pants."

Actually, he usually substituted a short, descriptive word for "seat of the pants" that happens to be a synonym for "donkey" ...)

Better Than A Kick In The Seat Of The Pants 

Vacation ...

Is never long enough

Restful enough

Cheap enough

Sunny enough

Memorable enough --

But ...

It will have to do.

Because

No-Vacation

Is too long

Too tiring

Too insanity-inducing

Too depressing

And too frustrating

To bear.

Let us be thankful

For whatever vacation we get

Whenever we get it.

*****

Not exactly a poem filled with joy, I'm realizing. But ya gotta write what moves ya.

However, the word "vacation" also brings to mind this upbeat song from my childhood. Enjoy!

(Ms. Francis doesn't look very happy in that photo, does she? I wonder if she ever had a vacation. I hope so.)

*****

Let me ask you this: What would be your ideal vacation, if you could go right now, and if money, time, health, etc. were not a problem? I'd love to hear your answers to that, as well as any poetry you have up your sleeve for this week's Poetry Monday theme.

Some of the books I bought at the used-book fair last fall ... long since read and enjoyed. Most have gone on to new homes with other book lovers. Now I'm waiting (impatiently) for this year's book fair, which is still three months away ...

And stay tuned for Friday's post, which will be all about the Mystery Blogger Award for which baili nominated me. Thank you, baili! (baili's blog is HERE) There will be questions, there will be answers, there will be speeches made and glitter tossed in the air and cameras flashing! Well, maybe not those last things :)

May you have a restful, peaceful, vacation kind of week, even if you're not actually on vacation, my friends. Or take ten minutes for yourself, if that's all you can spare. Close your eyes and be in your happy place. Mmmmm....

Bits Of Fluff

You could be forgiven for thinking I'm about to lament the cat hair in our house again -- but, no, the bits of fluff are the random things floating around my head.

THE FRIDGE
I have learned that water pooling inside the fridge is better than water pooling under the fridge, and is likely to be caused by a clogged drain. The first trick is to find the drain. Ours is located JUST out of the line of sight of any human being unless that human is down on his or her knees, praying to find the drain, and happens to look up. The next trick is to figure out what is clogging the drain: ice or bits of gunk. We still haven't figured this out yet, although I'm guessing it's ice because I keep the fridge very cold. Now that we've vacuumed five pounds of cat hair (oops! I said cat hair!) off the coils at the back, hopefully all the other problems will solve themselves. (Wishful thinking is the solution most relied upon by procrastinators and un-handypeople. Sometimes it even works. I guess we'll see.)

MUSICAL EARWORMS
Technically, "musical earworms" is redundant -- the term is just "earworms" -- but I didn't want to make you think I was going to talk about earwigs or something equally shuddery. I have had an earworm for over a week now. EVERY SINGLE TIME I find myself humming (which is a lot; humming is my expression of happiness, boredom, anxiety and just about every other emotion) I am humming the SAME TUNE. It's a great tune, by talented singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran, with a surprisingly intricate melody, the kind that sticks in my head until I learn it, no matter what the lyrics are, but I need to pass it on to someone else and get myself a fresh tune to hum. Here it is and don't say I didn't warn you:

And if you want the official lyric version instead, here it is:

PLEASE SOMEBODY TAKE THIS EARWORM OFF MY HANDS!

A week is a looooooooooooooong time. Sob.

EARWIGS
I know, I know -- I made you think I wasn't going to talk about those critters, didn't I? I lied. I used to despise earwigs. I've been pinched by them: I've had them crawl out of bed when I was crawling in; I've had them holding a parade in the basement; I've poured them out of a box along with my cereal that year they were really bad. I used to stomp on them, squish them, swat them -- whatever it took to demolish their skeevy little bodies. I'm not a violent person but try telling that to the adrenaline in my veins. But then last year I read that earwigs are good for the garden. They eat garden pests. (What? Aren't THEY THEMSELVES garden pests?) And I decided they can't help what they look like, or how they crawl so creepily, or how they like to hide inside things and jump out when the things are disturbed. I took a deep breath and determined they would get the "cup and card" treatment and be picked up and put outside, just like the spiders and ladybugs and moths are, at our house. That was fine. I remembered my vow this year, and have dutifully been picking up baby earwigs and setting them free outside. The only ones I was finding on the floor were, seriously, babies. Aw! Look at the little baby earwig! Not really cute babies, but still. Then came the day (it was inevitable, really) that I went to the cupboard to get a square of chocolate, picked up the bar and BOO!!! an earwig the size of a small lobster hurried out of the package and waved, once, awkwardly ... because he probably had his mouth full of MY chocolate ... Yeah. I tossed the rest of that bar, which represents a week of chocolate because I ration it out ... Since then I've been on High Earwig Alert. Those grown-up earwigs are frightening.

SUMMER FESTIVALS
I could probably write a half a dozen posts on this topic, but I promise it will be just this one paragraph and then you won't hear about it again. We have a LOT of stuff going on in our area in the summer. It starts on Victoria Day weekend in May and keeps going until the end of August. I'm an introvert who does not like crowds, loud music, running marathons, listening to bagpipe music, or golfing, among other things, so these events do not appeal to me. Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind them taking place except that while they are on it's hard to get around town. Streets are closed off at random times and in random places. And the noise of outdoor events carries down the river to our house, filtering in through our windows (it's summer, the windows need to be open!). I am so happy when September comes and the town becomes quiet again. I feel like I am holding my breath all season and let it out when fall comes. Thank you for indulging my hermit-y rant. You are fine people.

Now that the fluff has been cleaned out, my brain is all nice and tidy :)


And since I would NEVER put a picture of an earwig on my blog, this will have to do instead:

Wishing you a nice and tidy weekend, free of bugs of all kinds. Unless you are a bug-lover, in which case -- can I interest you in a shipment of earwigs??



 

My English Teachers Would Be Wincing Right About Now

It's Poetry Monday ... with a twist! We have the option of using a suggested theme now, and this week's theme is NONSENSE. Don't forget to head over to Diane's and Delores' blogs to see what they've come up with, and feel free to leave a poem of any kind, using the theme or not, in the comments at any of our blogs, or on your own blog (just leave us a link so we can find you).

*****

When my mother used to tell my brother and I to "Stop that nonsense!" she meant that we were being naughty, misbehaving, or otherwise getting on her nerves and we'd better settle down.

But when I looked up the definition of the word "nonsense" I found that there is another meaning directly related to poetry: verse or other writing intended to be amusing by virtue of its absurd or whimsical language ("nonsense poetry").

Because I spent the weekend (1) recovering from last week's work and travel and (2) cleaning out the fridge and attached freezer, a job that has apparently not been completely done since 2008, because, yes, I found a couple of things in there with that date on them, and to be completely and embarrassingly honest the only reason I was now emptying it was because great quantities of water have been pooling in the bottom and we needed to move it out of its snug little hole in the wall in order to clean the coils at the back in the vague hope that it would do some good, and it's also been freezing food in the refrigerator section which is very inconvenient if you've got, say, raw carrots for snacking on since you're trying to lose weight and have you ever tried to eat a frozen raw carrot? well it's not all that delicious and when you have sensitive teeth it's not all that comfortable either.

I see that sentence fragment has gotten away from me in a way that entire paragraphs have not gotten away from me in a long time.

So, to make a long story shorter (because it can't be made "short" now, no matter what), I was tied up this weekend and although I kept thinking about our Poetry Monday theme (thinking consisting of putting the word up in front of my mind's eye and letting random thoughts float past), I didn't get any flashes of inspiration, and when I sat down to try to make inspiration behave with hard work instead, I came up dry as well.

The only reasonable thing to do at that point was to Google "nonsense poetry" and ...

BINGO.

There I found a poem that I can dimly recall my brother reciting to me when we were young. He was four years my senior, so perhaps I should say *I* was young, while he was old enough to teach me a few things, both good and bad, that I probably wouldn't have stumbled into on my own. But that's a story (or a bunch of them) for another time.

Anyway, I now bring you this nonsense poem, not from my fertile mind or the sweat of my brow, but from the mists of history, of verses passed down from generation to generation, with many variants (which you can read HERE if you wish). I chose the following version, because it encompasses the best of the variants, in my opinion, and also because the authors of the website where it came from (HERE) explained their reasoning for editing it as they did.

I expect that many or maybe all of you have heard some version of this while growing up.

One Fine Day

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight, 

Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind and the other couldn’t see,
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”

A paralyzed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don’t believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man - he saw it too!

*****
Footnote 1: After I wrote all of those words up there ^^^ I read the introduction on the BC Folklore website cited above, and discovered that the authors don't consider this poem to be true nonsense poetry ... but you can read more about that at the link.

Footnote 2: I think there are some words in this poem that are not politically correct.

Footnote 3: I feel like I've just written a very badly done term paper for English class because I've spent the weekend doing the wrong things (leisure and home chores), but the time has come to pass it in and this is it, folks ...

Footnote 4: I did manage to remember the elusive post topic mentioned in Friday's post, and have come up with another as well. If I write them on a piece of paper, the paper will probably get lost in the flotsam from the freezer that is sitting thawing on the kitchen counter, so instead, I'll write them here! (1) earworm (music), and (2) summer festivals. There. I'm so proud of myself.

If only I can remember where I wrote the ideas down when I need them.

There's nothing else to add, really.

Have a good week, folks!





 

Facebook Is Not Entirely Useless

As readers know (or can find out from my profile), I post on Mondays and Fridays, which are Tuesdays and Saturdays for some of you, depending on which side of the globe you call home.

This week, after Monday's post was published, my mind turned toward Friday's post. I immediately thought of something to write about. I'll remember that, I thought. How could I forget it?

On Tuesday, I reminded myself of the thing I was going to write about for Friday. AHA! I thought; I had NO trouble remembering that! I'll do the post later in the week when I'm not so busy.

On Wednesday, I didn't think about it at all because I already knew I could remember it at will when I finally got time to write my Friday post.

On Thursday, I drove two hours to the city to have lunch with a friend and then drove two hours back home, with another visit to a relative and some shopping along the way. All the way there and all the way home I tried to remember what I was going to write about.

You know where this is going, do you not?

Yeah.

So, instead of my excellent yet somehow absent post, here are a few funnies that were delivered to my Facebook account. Most of the things that show up on Facebook are, in my opinion, not worth reading (although you no doubt see the irony that I must have read quite a few of them in order to establish that fact), but I had to admit that I enjoyed these, so I stole rescued them for "recycling."

They are actual notes written by apartment dwellers and home owners.

In one of my apartments, my upstairs neighbours never clomped around, but there were a lot of squeaky springs almost every night. Sheesh, people, get a room ... Er, yes, I guess you did. I just wish it wasn't right over MY room.

I bet Bob is SUPER HAPPY about that, especially with the smiley face :)

You'll need to click on this to make it big enough to read (or use "Control +"), but it's worth the effort. I'm especially impressed by Max's drawings.

I hope they plan to get a nicotine patch for the cat's withdrawal symptoms.

Now, some of you already know my thoughts on Facebook (i.e., that it doesn't interest me) so why, then, you ask, do I have a Facebook account?

Here's why: so I can keep in touch with my niece and nephew, whom I see only once every year or five. And to see adorable pictures of my little grand-nieces posted by said niece and nephew.

One final comment on the value of Facebook (hmmm ... could apply to Twitter also):

An isolated incident, I am sure!

If you have cats I hope they are not smokers. If you are painting your fence, have fun with it. If you are wearing cement flip-flops, you're probably pretty tired by now. If you have to share laundry facilities with other, unrelated people, good luck. (I remember those days well.)

Wishing you all a happy weekend!

The Smiling Goat

Welcome back to Poetry Monday!

Read a poem, write a poem, leave a poem, have fun! Check out Diane's and Delores' blogs for more poetic goodness.

Last week seemed awfully busy for a four-day work week (we had Monday off in lieu of Saturday, July 1st, our country's birthday). I'm not sure how a day off makes life more busy instead of less busy, but it seems to do that.

As a result, my poem-making brain cells are dry as a bone. Therefore, I offer this verse I learned from my mother, who learned it from her father. On doing some internet checking, I discovered that it has been around for a long time, in a number of variations, and has been attributed to a number of sources. You can read more at the Wikiquote entry, HERE, for the author Stephen Grellet, who seems to be the most favoured source. 

I shall pass through this world but once.
Any good, therefore, that I can do
Or any kindness I can show to any human being,
Let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it,
For I shall not pass this way again.

The only change I'd make to this would be to substitute "living thing" in place of "human being," because critters of all kinds, not just people, need to be treated with respect and thoughtfulness.

This might be my shortest post ever.

Now, we can't have that, can we???

We need some padding to give this post some self-respect.

A picture and a question should do it.

Here's the picture:

Kindness can be as easy as showing a little smile.

And here is my question for anyone who'd like to weigh in. Random acts of kindness seem to be popular right now, and a very common one is to buy coffee or a fast food order for the next person in line. I keep wondering why. I doubt it's because people in the lineup are impoverished. And if it's to make a stranger feel good, can we do the same thing with a kind word, a smile, or a bit of conversation? Would the money we spend on coffee or fast food do more good at the food bank, the homeless shelter, or elsewhere? This is such a universally accepted form of random act of kindness that I feel I must be missing something here. Any ideas? Thank you for your time and thoughts.

Have a good week, all :)

The smiling goat picture is from our friends at Pixabay.

Random Pictures ... And Hair

I thought this would be a short post today, using a few pictures that have been hanging around in my files since May.

As my mother always used to tell us, You know what THOUGHT did ...

First I found that half of the pictures I wanted to use didn't show up very well in the small format I need to use here. So I was inserting pictures, and deleting pictures, over and over.

Then I thought something was wrong with Blogger because suddenly none of the pictures, good OR bad, could be inserted into the body of the post.

Then I thought the internet connection was dropping, which is a common thing here because we have a wireless router and the signal is a bit sketchy.

Then I did the only other thing I know how to do, which is click on "Troubleshooting" for the internet connection. And it told me our modem was having problems connecting. I was advised to turn it off, wait for all the lights on it to go out, and then turn it back on.

At this point I should just tell you all upfront that my husband always does this stuff when it's necessary. But he wasn't available to do it just then. He is an early riser, and also an early retirer. I wasn't about to waken him to fix the modem so I could write a post.

So down I went to the basement where the modem is located, and tried to turn it off. There was no on/off switch. So I turned off the first of two power bars that looked like it might be the right one. I know I should have followed the cords to see if it was really the right one, but there were an awful lot of cords and I'm not really that patient. Nothing happened. So then I turned off the furthest power bar. Nothing happened. Then I unplugged everything I could see from the wall outlet. Nothing bloody happened! It was like a zombie modem; it wouldn't die.

So I got the broom and started sweeping the cat hair up because at least that was something I knew how to do. I was getting a little rattled at this point, and physical work helps me calm down.

After I finished sweeping, I plugged everything back in, and turned off the furthest power bar again. Suddenly all the lights went out on the modem and the router, and something started beeping. What??!! How can anything be beeping when the lights are out??

Cripes. I counted eight beeps, and then ... nothing.

So then I turned the power bar back on AND VOILA ALL THE LIGHTS CAME BACK ON AND EVERYTHING WORKED.

Who says I'm bad with technology, eh? *preens*

An evening sky in mid-May, caught on my way home from work. My camera couldn't capture the full glory of the whole sky overhead, but the colours in this little rectangle are true to what I saw.

Mary and Joseph in the garden in early June. The blossoms start out pink and turn blue, and the leaves are dappled with white spots. They multiply dependably and flourish in shade. This plant is a good choice for a lazy gardener like me. Its other name is lungwort. What the ...? Whoever thought that was a good name for such a lovely, reliable plant?

Flowering trees by the river, with the church steeple in the background. I have no idea what this tree is called. Any ideas? In the meantime, being a better namer of things than whoever named the lungwort, I shall call this a Frothy Fluffy tree.

A towering cloud formation in early evening of late June, captured on my way home from work ...

... and the same clouds a few minutes later, from a vantage point near the river, facing the same direction. I didn't realize until I looked back at the pictures how much the formation had changed in such a short time. There were no other clouds in the sky at all. My husband said it reminded him of a mushroom cloud after a nuclear explosion.

Speaking of mushrooms ... time to update you on my latest haircut. Fun, right? Here's me when I saw the back of my head in the mirror at the end of yesterday's appointment:

My poor hairdresser. She had worked from a picture I brought with me. I kept telling her the picture was just for the silhouette (i.e., flat, not mushroom-shaped!!) but ... it ended up quite short in the back. Not as short as I had it once about ten years ago (that one was next thing to a buzz cut) but too short for my liking. And the front was long; so long I felt like this:

Sad doggie has long ears. Sad Donkey had long hair-ears. Not ear hairs; HAIR-EARS.

Anyway, she took me back for a second try today (at the end of her long day, bless her), and at least the front of it matches the back now. Oh yes that's right people, more hair is on the floor at the salon and less is on my head.

It will be easier to take care of, though. So there's that.

I'm not sure what the next move is in this chess game, but I have five weeks to think about it. I really appreciate her ability to give me a precision cut, something that's difficult to do with my fine, heavy hair. So I want to keep trying to work this out. Heavens to Betsy; it's almost like marriage. Stay tuned! There will likely be more instalments in this harrowing saga. Harrowing. Get it? Hair-owing? ... Never mind.

Wishing you all a week-end without hairy situations :) And hopefully with a minimum of long-winded people ...

They Should Be Bald By Now

Here it is, Poetry Monday once again! Every Monday, you can find new poems--delicious, freshly grown, organic, and pesticide-free--here, and at Diane's and Delores' blogs. Leave a poem in the comments if the spirit moves you, or tell us where to find your blog if you've posted one there. Have fun!

Here in Donkeyland, it's been a very short weekend. I know there are supposedly twenty-four hours in every day, sixty minutes in every hour, blah blah blah, but I can tell you for a fact that some days are shorter then others and some are longer ... when you are measuring not in real time but in feel-time.

We've all experienced feel-time, right? Feel-time is what makes a dental appointment last forever, and it's what makes a vacation fly by uncommonly fast. Feel-time stretches out to the horizon when we are sad or lonely, and snaps back like an elastic band to less than nothing when we want a magic moment to last longer.

The effects of feel-time also kick in when we desperately need to get more done than we have time in which to do it.

That was the case this weekend when we had family scheduled to visit for supper on Saturday. The previous three weeks were busy at work for both my husband and I, and many household chores were put off during that time. So when Saturday came, we had to cram a whole lot of cleaning into a few measly hours. In feel-time, those few hours seemed awfully short.

There are only two people in our household now, but there are three cats, and despite daily brushing they are somehow still able to stroll through a room and shed hair with every step. We gave up years ago trying to keep them off the soft, cushy furniture, so there is a constant battle with cat hair on the upholstery. And I have even found cat hair stuck to the walls at times. It's a good thing they are cute and lovable, because no one would put up with their hairy mess otherwise.

And that's the inspiration for today's poem.



I'd Really Rather Sit And Eat A Chocolate Eclair

Cat hair
Everywhere.
Didn't I just
Sweep there?
It's not fair!
They don't care!
Makes me swear
And despair.
They stare
Past my glare,
Quite aware
That they share.

Still, they dare.

Cats have flair.
And so much freakin' HAIR. 

*****

Have a chocolate-elair kind of week, people :)

This is why we can't have nice things.

Well, except for the cats. THEY are nice things.

Disclaimer #1: this cat does not live at our house.

Disclaimer #2: we do not have a polka-dot couch.

But thank you, Pixabay, for this awesome picture.