Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “alarm.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb or an adverb or an adjective, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Alarms are ringing in my head. The night most people feel as exciting fright for Halloween, is my deadline for prep for the night of writing dangerously. Midnight after the trick or treaters have counted and downed much of their bounty, I’m drinking tea and hoping for words to count. But I have to wait for that moment. Five more days! (Only 5!)
This last week my reality was so much better than playing with my imaginary friends, but that time away made these characters as flimsy as paper dolls.
Well, my stream just found an idea! Maybe I’m playing with my new friends this next few days. That is IF I can put down the yarn long enough to create a yarn. By the way, NaNo2.org is the new site, thanks, Yvensong. Still checking it out.
I started out this morning with the best of intentions. I was going to draw my character Sunn fishing and catching something in her hook. I figured if I drew it it would make it up for not including the sweep, heavy prompts from #Inktober prompts I only mentioned. I did draw a crumbled up nurse but didn’t like it and so erased it.
But my allergies were unbearable today. I finally took Advil allergy meds. I couldn’t figure out how with 3 cups of coffee I still couldn’t stay awake. Oh! It causes drowsiness! There’s an opportunity to use the phrase ‘Hook, line, and sinker.’ But honestly I can’t think straight!
At the beginning of this month I had plans. I wanted to develop characters for my NaNoWriMo novel and maybe find a bit of plot to get me started.
Somehow life happened and I only felt one character standing up for himself. And at that he seems quite miserable.
I felt like a police sketch artist reading the random characteristics. But I finally had a sketch. Today I reviewed by using some colored pencils.
Yeah, he’s to be a minor antagonist. A wannabe cowboy/mountain man afraid of bridges and heights. Swollen feet fight cowboy boots. Straw hats allow sun as he never feels the sun enough in his life. He’s manic about being outside in the sun. His club foot gives him a limp. His name is Ervin Norbert Dorris.
I wanted to get involved with Inktober but day 1 for me will be when I introduce Viktor Tobias Olson. He has a mustache to start all kinds of trouble. But he’ll show up in a day or so with other Inky props.
I had a great idea for today’s blog. But first thing today, my husband decided to run utilities and updates for me. I hate doing that, so I’m always grateful when he wants to do that boring task. But that means I lost all my tabs.
Two projects have me challenged. Figuring out how to make the heel hole in my yoga socks. Especially, two at a time socks. No YouTubes seem to address my particular issues. But I had saved a couple that would have helped a bit. So issue one was finding the sites.
Problem number two: I have created three characters. I actually dreamed about them and wanted to draw and write stories to get better acquainted. But the socks got in the way.
I finally separated the socks and find it is working. Yay! But somewhere my muses are giggling about how best laid plans fall down the rabbit holes! The joke is on me!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “eek/eke.” Use one, use both (for bonus points), use ’em however you see fit. Enjoy!
Eek! My stream is rather a tiny creek, this week. But let’s keep eking it out. Or am I just a geek speaking tongue-in-cheek? Ewe, that reek is not fenugreek!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “hand.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
When I was 16 I was a Candy Striper. I was lucky to get to work in a lot of the hospital wards and even the pharmacy.
At one point they put me in the part of the hospital dealing with folks who needed long term care but not high risk.
I met a patient, Frank, who was quadriplegic. When I first met him he was painting the most marvelous pictures. He held the brush in his mouth, dipping into the color, then directed to the spot on the picture.
I was in charge of feeding him. Another lesson. He insisted I stir it all together. I’m a purist. I don’t like my foods to touch. But he loved it and in huge bites.
I got to take him on long walks about the hospital grounds. He would talk about his life. So cheerful. He never said anything about his lack of mobility or inability to use his hands.
Frank was one of those people who taught me lessons for life. I learned that I didn’t want inability to stop my life. Or pain. Even when fibromyalgia or whatever it really was that put me to bed, I didn’t want to just lie there. So I read, or crocheted. When I couldn’t see well enough to read I listened to books. When I didn’t have enough money for yarn, I made plarn. I refused living in the pain. The more distractions I could dive into the better. Creativity kept me free.
When arthritis grabs my hands I think of Frank. I make lists of things I want to do when my hands feel better and picture my projects.
Now I’m better and handcrafts and piano fulfill those creative hands.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “starts with ‘ho.’” Find a word that begins with the letters “ho” and use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
Ho fame. Sounds like a stage-struck sailor. It means, I’m hungry. Or rather I have hunger. In Italian.
I love words and languages. I find them fascinating.
Why do we personalize that growling noise in our tummies? I am not Hungry. But then I don’t have it in my hands. What would that look like.
Take all the gendered items in the world. Can you imagine a roomful of people deciding if the table is feminine or masculine. And sometimes the appearance of an object might imply one or the other, but when you get it wrong you learn shape or personal use doesn’t genderize.
And don’t get me started on word order. Spanish, Italian, etc. go one way but step over to German and the hole I fall into is of my own making.
The only saving grace I have is listening to the brave souls learning English. I can hear their mistakes in our word order and now get it right in theirs.
However lessor-heard languages like Navajo, Gaelic, Latin, Esperanzo are even more difficult.
Who decided how each language goes?
Now I’ve given myself a headache. I can think of nothing else to say but Ho, ho, ho. But let’s get through Halloween Eve, first.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “toast.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
What can one say about lowly toast? It can sometimes be the only satisfying food substance, even when trying to avoid gluten or carbs. There are times that nothing else will foot the bill. What? That’s a strange saying! Hold on, I need to look that up.
Okay. Not a good use of the idiom. But neither does ‘fit the bill.’
And what does that have to do with toast?
This might have been a fun topic to discuss after a round of toasts.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “pad.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
Right air mattresses, not my body!
But for the pad beneath my well padded body I could have slept so much better.
~~~~
A couple of years ago I bought my family enough air mattresses, tents, and sleeping bags that we could have gone camping a few times. But I seemed to be the only one trying. So I was glad my friend was brave and invited me on her camping adventures.
When my brother and I were kids, our parents took us on 3 weeks of camping every year. We didn’t realize then what a sacrifice it was for them. Dad never took a day off work saving up the time. Mom scraped every penny, and then her sacrificed her health as she packed and stored camp foods then directed the Tetris of car packing. All of that had her nervous tummy upset and dying between gas station restrooms.
Speaking of penny pinching… Mom never let us have much sugar. As much as she could be in the 50s and 60s she was health minded. So a way to control both money spent on junk food, she’d allow us to gather empty coke bottles to turn in at the general store near camp and with that money we could buy candy bars or chips
Anyway, we had air mattresses at first. Just those kinds you can paddle around the lake to float on. They held up to the fun, but invariably all the air was gone by morning cold and I’d be sleeping on rocks. My padding was not thick enough then, either.
So this was my second camping trip with my friend. The air mattresses and blowing up process didn’t coordinate properly for me, so I couldn’t close off the escape of air on time. So I little enjoyed the rocky sea of a half inflated mattress, falling off, or finding it impossible to get up to standing. Finally, I emptied it. I assumed flat on the ground would be better.
But with a Target 10 minutes away, we looked for other necessities. I found a mattress topper that could later be used by my husband on his home hospital bed to keep him from slipping when sitting up in the bed.
This proved the perfect pad. I slept well–except the new campers kept us awake until 3. Our previous camping neighbors were a family group far larger and were fun and minded the 10 pm quiet time rules.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
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