Poetry Monday: Socks

We're back, Delores and I, while Diane is away cavorting and restoring her pome-writing brain cells.

(Note: I know I promised not to use "pome" any more, but dang it, sometimes you need a one-syllable word and "poem" just doesn't fit. This is the case again today in my poem below.)

Join us if you dare for this week's topic:  SOCKS. Feel free to leave a poem on either of our blogs, or on your own blog, with a comment here to let us know where to find you.

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Now, I suspect that socks are not something our friends in the Southern Hemisphere want to even think about, with the extreme heat they have been experiencing.

Although I wonder if wearing wet socks would have a cooling effect. I hope I can remember to try this in July.

From October to April in my part of the world, socks are pretty much a necessity. I even have special bed socks I wear to fall asleep in. They are fluffy and somewhat loose. Somehow, by morning, the socks are off even though I don't wake up to remove them. I guess the sentence "sleep knocks my socks off" might apply here. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Anyhow, there are plenty of other uses for socks besides wearing them.

I think many people have seen or heard of a sock monkey:

And sock snowmen:

But have you ever seen a sock parrot?

Sock sheep?

A sock owl?

A sock koala?

Sock kangaroos, with little 'roos in their pockets?

A sock sloth?

\

I could go on and on; just Google "sock animals" if you'd like to find more. (Or go to Craft Passion; most of these photos are screen shots from her blog. She does exquisitely detailed pieces; they are amazing. I'm hoping against hope that she doesn't mind me showing her work, although, if she does, and contacts me, I will remove them.)

One last thought on socks: have you ever read Dr. Seuss's well-known children's book called Fox in Socks? Fortunately, Dr. Seuss didn't use up all the words that rhyme with fox and socks; he used only box and Knox, another character in the story. Then he moved on to a bunch of other rhymes. Whew. So there should still be some rhyming words left for me.

Here we go.

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Fashionable Raptors

I'd like to pen
A pome on socks
I can't use fox
Or box or Knox
They're all in use
By Dr. Seuss

Instead I'll write
Of hawks in socks
Who go for walks
In bright red crocs
And take abuse
For their sock use

I'd like to say
The hawks in socks
Don't mind the knocks
Are not flummox'd
By jeering moose
Or sneering goose

But I'd be wrong
The hawks in socks
Form up in flocks
And clean the clocks
Of moose and goose
. . . And kick caboose*


*otherwise known as "kick butt"

You want me to wear WHAT??? No. Just . . . NO. I can kick butt, including donkey butt, without any stinkin' socks or bright red crocs . . .  wait, do you have any yellow crocs instead? . . . you know, to match my handsome (if I do say so myself) yellow markings . . .

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This was a tough poem to complete, because once I finished the first verse I decided to challenge myself to stick with the same rhyme scheme for the rest of the verses: abbbdd. If you look closely you will see I managed all except the "a's" and I had to add a " 'd" on "flummox", but the storyline suffered. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing learned! I'm happy with it, considering it took thirty minutes to complete, including the final picture and caption. Hah. That's what happens when my "craft" side overpowers my "poetry" side and uses up all the writing time looking at pictures of things made of socks :)

Have a good week, people! Try to stay on the path you intend, instead of wandering off into the bushes at the side of the road like a certain donkey I know . . .

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 When Delores and I come up with a topic for next week, I'll be back with an update!

UPDATE:  Next week's topic is . . . SOUP . . . thank you, Delores!

And here is a picture provided by my son after he read this post:

Is that not awesome??? Yellow "socks" and red crocs :)

You Don't Have To Buy The Product To Appreciate The Marketing

Lately whenever I view a video on YouTube, this ad keeps popping up.

Have you seen it yet?

I find it captivating. Mesmerizing. Creative. Brilliant.

Disclaimer:  I have no Apple products in the house and do not intend to buy any.

A thousand years ago when I used to watch TV, I enjoyed some of the ads far more than the shows. It didn't make me buy any of the stuff being advertised, though.

But I say genius is genius, no matter what shape it comes in.

Wishing you something -- ANYTHING -- to be enthusiastic about!

Disregard the cat's opinion :)

Stupid Experiments 1 & 2

You know those ads you sometimes see with a disclaimer: "Do not try this at home," right?

This is your lucky day. Here's something daring but safe for you to try at home.

Put a 4-cup measuring cup of water in your freezer. Stir every half hour until it's slushy.

Put on a pair of knee high boots, if you have them. Regular footwear will do if you have no boots.

Pour the slushy ice water into the side of your boot (or other footwear).

This is how it feels to clean heavy, wet snow off my car.

I'm short (< 5 ft,), and when I pull the snow toward me with the snow brush, it lands right in my boots because my arm is not long enough to reach halfway across the car (even with the long-handled brush) unless I'm standing right next to it. Also, I can't push the snow away from me (off the other side of the car) for the same reason -- shortness.

Here's another experiment.

(What's that? You didn't like the last one?

It was safe, wasn't it?

Go on now, like a good little scientist.)

Make some ice cubes.

Put on some eye protection. (Remember, we must be safe!)

Crush the ice cubes into tiny, tiny bits.

Don't take off your eye protection just yet.

Get someone to throw the icy bits in your face. If no one will do this for you, throw them in your face yourself. It reduces the element of surprise, but it's almost as good.

This is how it feels to clean light, fluffy snow off my car when the winter wind is blowing.

Because I'm short . . . . . . . .

Ahhhh. Winter. Gotta love it.

This is not me. But I've looked like this a few times. (Photo: Pixabay)

I would wish you a shock-free week, my people, but if you tried these experiments, I'm afraid it's too late :)

Poetry Monday, Suddenly Resuscitated . . .

Delores, over at Mumblings, decided to give Poetry Monday some CPR while Diane is gone. She suggested the topic "ice and snow" for anyone who wants to have a go at a poem this week. Right now I've got plenty of both right outside the door.

But . . . as happens so often, my mind went wandering off by itself, and I didn't notice because I was too busy putting on extra socks to stay warm, and the poor feeble thing ended up in . . . THE FREEZER?? WHAT THE HECK . . .??

This one's for my friends in Australia, who are suffering from terrible heat right now. And anyone else, anywhere else, who is doing the same -- or will be, in six months from now, as the world turns some more.

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To Every Thing There Is A Season

Too many suppertimes
Pulling out the frozen veggies
Or the oven-baked French fries
From the freezer
And stuffing half-empty bags back in

Too many grocery days
Flinging the new frozen goods
Haphazardly
Into the same
Cold cave

Eventually
All I can see
In there
Is
A frozen icy mess

And then it's time to
Organize
Use up
And - alas -
Sometimes discard

It's a cold job
Not a good thing to do
In winter
When I'm already
Frozen stiff

The solution is obvious
Put the job off
Until summer

Store the food
In a picnic cooler
While slowly --
Very slowly --
Rummaging
And cleaning
And savouring the cold
On a miserably hot day

(I might even stick my whole head in)

But don't forget to wear your mittens in the freezer. It's hard to explain frostbite in mid-summer.

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MESSAGE FOR DELORES:

It must be my turn now!

Next Monday, your mission/topic (should you choose to accept it) is . . . SOCKS . . .

Heh heh heh

Have a great week, everyone :)

Heads Up, All You Poets

Delores, over at Mumblings, has thrown down the gauntlet! Otherwise known as a poetry challenge :)

Next Monday she and I are going to have a reduced-calorie, low-fat, two-thirds version of Poetry Monday, in Diane's absence.

The topic is "ice and snow" and you are welcome to join us.

Ready? Get writing! And check in on January 21 to see what we've come up with. At the same time, you can leave your own poem in the comments, or a note to let us know where your blog is so we can come along and cheer you on.

Hope to see you then :)

Is that a gauntlet in the distance? Or is it a hat? Let's pretend it's a gauntlet. A poetry gauntlet. . . . . . . . . Oh, never mind.

Even I Can Draw A Person Better Than That

In the pictures I'vebeen combing through from last fall is this:

I forget what the assembly instructions were for, but it occurred to me that two people with no arms was not only hard to find but also counter-productive if you were also going to need to use a screwdriver, a tape measure, a pencil, and a pair of scissors.

But what do I know? I'm lousy at putting stuff together.

Maybe this is also why people who are good at putting stuff together tend not to read the instructions. You'd never get anywhere if you tried to follow them to the letter!

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Well, I've made it back through most of my unpublished pictures for the last six months, and it's completely amazing to me that out of the hundreds and hundreds on the hard drive there are only a handful worth looking at. I remember when we all used actual film and had to pay for every print . . . were we more careful in those days, or did we experiment less? All I know is that I've got a lot of deleting to do at some point to get rid of the duds!

I hope you're having a good week, with nary a dud in it :)

Accidental Art, And Update On Pilling The Cat

As I continued to work my way back through my photos, I found some that I took while I was sewing for the craft sale in October.

When I finish sewing an item, there are always stray threads and lint (and sometimes cat hair) which need to be removed before the item is truly done. I use a sticky lint roller for this purpose.

I thought the used sticky sheets were kind of interesting. Here are closeups of a few of them.

Very abstract, aren't they? My first thought was that they are art, in a way, but finally I decided they aren't really art because there was no creativity involved -- I simply saw the colours and textures randomly captured on the sticky sheets and found them interesting/attractive.

So the question "is it art?" I think would be answered "no" . . . but I like them anyway :)


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Thank you for all your suggestions on how to get pills into our cat Lulu. It's going fairly well at the moment (knock on wood). After all the devious (and expensive!) ways I tried to get her to take them, I accidentally found that she'll eat them fairly reliably if I just put the whole pill into a small amount of her regular wet food. Who'd a thunk it?? *slaps forehead*

But if this method stops working, I now have a number of alternatives to try, thanks to your helpful hints.

It's funny, but so true

Monday But Not A Poem In Sight

Poetry Monday is on hiatus for a month while our fearless leader Diane is taking a break. I am too lazy to think up a topic for myself so I'm taking a poetry break, too. The magic will resume in February :)

For today I'm just going to do a bit of a catch up post.

We've just had our eighth, or ninth, or tenth (I'm losing track) snowstorm here. The trees are beautiful, all coated in white.

There's not much snow built up on the ground, though, because in between the snowstorms we've either had rain or mild weather that has melted most of the snow.

At other times it has been very cold. I feel sorry for the birds and animals, especially when the weather is wet and then turns bitterly cold.

The deer are still coming to our back yard. A couple of weeks ago, this young buck spent a few hours browsing, then chewing his cud, then resting.

Can you see the knobby little horns just sprouting on his forehead?

Resting

 It was a rainy day, and when he finally got up to leave, he shook like a dog to get the water out of his coat.

A few weeks before that (I'm working backward in my picture file), this smaller deer was nibbling at the shrubs right outside the basement window.

He or she hardly looks real, more like a stuffed version, but I can assure you -- as can one of our cats who happened to be on the other side of the window -- that he/she was very real. And also very comfortable with me and my camera.

Speaking of cats, our fierce cat (the one who has bitten me hard, twice; once requiring antibiotics) now requires two kinds of medication in pill form. Everything was fine when she was able to get her meds in shot form, but pills provide a steadier dosage as her asthma and nasal congestion get worse.

Now, I bet you can guess that a cat who will bite the hand that feeds it will not take kindly to being given a pill by mouth. I didn't even try, to be honest. I've pilled our other cats, three of them on a long-term basis, and am reasonably proficient doing it. I didn't like my odds with this cat, though.

So I resorted to hiding the pills in tuna (worked for awhile), then in Pill Pockets (a product sold in pet stores; it worked for awhile), then in Pill Pockets rolled in crushed cat treats (it worked for a lesser while); and once in a piece of turkey left over from Christmas dinner. I am running out of ideas. She doesn't like cheese or sardines, and I can't think of any other food that is sturdy enough that she has to eat it whole (i.e., not lick at it), yet soft enough to insert the pill, and not require much, if any, chewing. This is what happens when you try to be responsible and only feed your pet the recommended food and no table scraps -- they don't develop much of a taste for human food! If anyone has any suggestions, I'll gladly take them.


The guilty party . . .

Notice that all of her pointy bits are strategically placed in between the rest of her body and horrible me.

And it's been awhile since you've seen our other furry girl.

It may look like she's hiding from the camera, but she was just washing her face while sunbathing. The rest of the dozen shots I took were blurry because she kept moving. How rude not to pose for my blog!!

That's it for today. I see I have a lot of other photos to choose from for another post, so that will happen soon.

Wishing you a good week, all!