Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is โeek/eke.โ Use one, use both (for bonus points), use โem 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!
See you midweek!
Seven
Seventh Heaven
Seven bells from coffins that must have felt like seven —-
I’ve been running the prompt in my head all night and most of the day.
Seven dwarfs. That’s when I got stuck. Happy, Dopey, Doc– then I got stuck. My stream would quit and get distracted.
Finally, I looked it up.
Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy
Hi, ho. I got no more.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s just give a toast to Toast!
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.
Today I napped a lot, my own bed. Nap pad.๐ค
Let me put this plainly. Getting older isn’t simple. I used to rearrange the furniture quite often. Getting ready for company took hardly any effort. I haven’t even started packing. I do have a list. Hopefully, because it is for camping, it’ll be simple.
Even so…
When you dance toe-to-toe,
You could end with kids in tow.
I don’t dance, except alone,
Just me, ‘like a complete unknown.’
At first blush, when the sun colored the world in pinks and purples, I realized I was once again still walking around in that literary place of my latest read.
My physical realm made me aware the AC was cracking ice cubes. So I pulled up the covers and wrapped around the dog and cat taking up the bed real estate.
When I walked into the living room hours later, my husband asked, Another good book?”
I felt the blush and laughed. Then came the coffee.
Quiet.
Not my life. I don’t know quiet. Yet I live in the desert in a tiny frontier town.ย When the power went out it was silent for one minute. Then we all started talking. And as long as there was a long battery life, my stories continued. Well, the downloaded ones.
But it started me thinking. Let’s say there was a solar storm or whatever. How would life change?
I don’t have unlimited yarn, but I could knit and crochet for quite a while. And though it might seem noiseless, counting must happen. And the more sound around me, the more loudly I count.
I could draw or paint. I have a few diamond paintings ahead but after those are gone I might have to invent my own with all the leftovers from previous projects.
But the noise within me would start screaming. ADHD does not do quiet.
Though I might play my keyboards until the batteries go kaputt.
But look at my noise! Piano, recorders, violin, and uke. I can play and sing and read aloud forever! I’m no quitter!
And maybe we would spend a lot more time getting to know our neighbors. What’s stopping us? Well, that’s the question!
Congrats! You have completed your goal of reading 100 books for the 2013 Reading Challenge! 115 of 100 (115%)
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