Something in the Air

Woman sneezing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have good news and bad news.  The good news is:

1.  There’s green grass here.  Really!  I saw some.

2.  The snow has all but disappeared where I live.  All that’s left is what remains of our backyard snow mountain.  And it’s looking pretty pathetic.

3.  Today it rained!  You might even say poured!  For roughly  45 seconds.  Hey, it’s a start.

4.  The wind picked up and blew stuff everywhere.  Sorry,  I can’t remember why I think that’s good news.

5. I now have two days off in a row.  Be still my heart.

Spring-ing (Photo credit: mountain_doo2)

 

 

The bad news is:

1.  My eyes are itchy and weepy.

2.  My sinuses are giving me grief and we will soon be out of kleenex if this keeps up.

3.  I am trying to sneeze my face off.

4.  My throat feels all scratchy.

5.  Snow mold is brutal.

It seems like such a shame to have to close all the windows when the weather is finally getting nice.  I go through this to some degree every spring.  I look a mess for several days and then suddenly, as fast as it comes, it goes.

Allergic rhinitis – harbinger of spring.  I would prefer birds, actually.  But whatever heralds spring this year is fine with me - I’ll take it and be glad.

 

 

 

Bear Has A Bad Day

Trifextra challenge - We are giving you three words and asking that you add another 33 to them to make a complete 36-word response.  You may use the words in any order you choose. Our three words are

remember, rain, rebellion

 

Teddy bear (Photo credit: macieklew)

 

No toys at the table, remember?

Please put Bear away.

No baby, wait -

What are you doing?

Hey!  What’s this?

A three year olds fierce rebellion,

Flinging Bear out the patio door

Into the pouring rain.

<<<<<>>>>>

 

Assoil Us From Rainforest Homebrew

Rainforest pool ferns. Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt   Free Association

Write down the first words that come to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

I’m totally cheating on this one, because the first thing I thought of was ‘ what happens when it rains on insects who make their home in the soil?”  But I couldn’t really make myself care enough about that to take it any further. They get wet and wallow around in the mud for a while.  And that’s that.

My second choice could be beautiful words taken from a prayer.  Assoil is archaic and kind of biblical sounding, meaning to absolve or free.  And people pray for the rainforests while at the same time frowning on excessive alcohol consumption.  So who could not totally elaborate on all that?

 

Not the Lords Prayer

Our male person who dwells in Utopia

(What was your name again?)

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

In paradise and our own backyards.

May we all have what we need to survive today,

May we all forgive and be forgiven

(especially for blasphemous nonsense which ultimately means no harm)

Please don’t mess with our minds making us do even stupider things than we can dream up on our own to do,

Assoil us from rainforest homebrew and similar evils,

Because we are all small parts of the big picture and the power and the glory

And would not like to be responsible for messing things up,

Now and forever and ever,

Amen.

(Ummm….no, I haven’t been into the wine yet today.  Why would you ask me that?)

 

Rainy Sunday

This was taken from a country road close to the farm where we grew up. The colors are gorgeous here this time of year. Today we’ve had nothing but rain which has continued on from yesterday but a rainy Sunday fits our mood for the moment I guess. Not that it can stop the smiles and the laughter when we remember all the good times.
One more day with my Ontario family and tomorrow we head home to carry on as if we’re normal.
Happy October Sunday – I know the sun is shining somewhere. Thanks to everyone for their lovely comments.

 

Once Upon a Time, Twenty Years Ago….

Today I am suffering from a serious lack of ambition.  It’s a cold and rainy day.  I’ve been to see my doctor, and I’ve shopped for yoga pants. I ate lunch.  I drank some coffee.

I’ve flipped through some photo albums to see if anything would scream “pick me!” for one of the photo challenges, and this is what I came up with.  It didn’t make a sound and it doesn’t go with anything.  But I thought all the individual stunned expressions were kind of interesting so I’m sharing it.  Plus now I get to sit down at the computer and pretend I’m doing important and amazing writing related historical family memoir type incredibleness.  Feel free to add your own big words here.

Making a wild guess I’d say this was taken in 1992.  My handsome son, yours truly wearing some kind of bizarre cowboy inspired shirt, my beautiful daughter, and W, needing a haircut. Or more sleep.  Ugliest couch in the universe.  Picture courtesy of W’s parents who could make posing for a picture into a face breaking kind of torture, where you’re all sitting there gritting your teeth thinking ‘just press the button, for the love of God.”

And of course there was no little digital screen to look at immediately – you had to wait and take your chances, hoping if you looked a complete mess the photographer would have the decency to destroy the evidence.

As we all know, that rarely happened.  But the good news is, the older you get, the better you think you looked way back when.  So you just have to say to yourself, wow – compared to a ninety-six year old, I look pretty hot!

That’s what I did.  I don’t think I’ll get any arguments.

 

Ten Things You Should Set On Fire

1.  Your bra.  You know the one I’m talking about.

2.  All notes and letters in your possession containing dangerous secrets.  It’s faster and more effective than eating them.

3.  Your mortgage, once it’s paid.

4.  Zombies.  I don’t know about this one from personal experience, but it sounds like good advice to me.

ADELE – Set Fire To The Rain (Photo credit: [ captivated ])

5.  The rain, if your name is Adele.

6. Those incense sticks and the aromatic decorative candles that are just sitting around collecting dust.

7.  Your imagination.

8.  Your passion.

9.  Someones heart.

10.  The world.

For numbers seven through ten, don’t use real matches.  But do say something cool like ‘burn, baby, burn.”

Does anyone burn autumn leaves anymore?  We pay yard people to clean them up and cart them away.  We used to rake them up and put them in clear plastic bags to be picked up and composted.  Well, I never did any raking, W did it all.  I’m very opposed to the whole idea, feeling strongly that leaves are meant to cover the grass and protect it from the ravishments of winter.  And then we can all be doubly annoyed with them in the spring.  Plus raking is hard work and I’ve never been a strong advocate of that, ever.

I remember when we were kids jumping into a gigantic pile of leaves and then having to clean up the mess all over again so we could light them on fire.  The smell of burning, smouldering leaves is something so wound up in the whole concept of fall that it’s hard to think proper autumn thoughts without it.

But I guess there’s enough things being set on fire these days.  No need for any more smoke getting in our eyes.

 

R is for Rhythm of the Rain on the Roof

Summer this year has been a study in extremes.  Scorching hot sunshine one minute,  black skies and pouring rain in a wild thunderstorm the next.  Hail gets thrown in once in a while just to keep us interested.  Last night there was yet another storm, followed by a cool overcast morning, custom-made for sleeping in.

Next door (and close to my bedroom window) the neighbors have a tin roofed storage shed.  When the rain is pounding down on that it’s easy to imagine I’m safe and warm and living inside a giant steel drum.  The sounds are musical.

Of all the songs written about rain, these two are my favourites.  I guess deep down I will always and forever be a child of the ’60′s.

You and me and rain on the roof
Caught up in a summer shower
Drying while it soaks the flowers
Maybe we’ll be caught for hours
Waiting out the sun
You and me were gabbing away
Dreamy conversation sitting in the hay
Honey, how long was I laughing in the rain with you
‘Cause I didn’t feel a drop ’til the thunder brought us to
You and me underneath a roof of tin
Pretty comfy feeling how the rain ain’t leaking in
We can sit and dry just as long as it can pour
‘Cause the way it makes you look makes me hope it rains some more

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I’ve  been
I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone  again

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand new  start
But little does she know that when she left that day
Along with her she took my heart

Rain please tell me now does that seem fair
For her to  steal my heart away when she don’t care
I can’t love another when my heart’s  somewhere far away
Rain won’t you tell her that I love her so
Please ask the sun to set her heart aglow
Rain in her heart and let the love we knew start to grow

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

With pretty weeds all in a row?  Picture number (what?) of my bucket of random plants over which I exercise no control.  I promise this will be the last one.  But look how interesting it’s all become!  Weeds bloom!

Blooming weeds close up.

Blooming weeds not so close up.

Okay, THAT is the last one, I swear.   To me it’s breathtaking, all things considered, covered in raindrops and growing tall.  Also my bush in the background is now covered in strange little yellow flowers which make it look slightly less bush-ugly.

And at last the tiger lilies have started to bloom.  Finally, something beautiful that I actually meant to have growing in my backyard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rain has been falling continuously since the storm and it’s still overcast and drizzling this morning.  Temperatures inside and out are back to something much closer to normal.  So now we can all stop complaining about the heat and start moaning about the rain instead.

 

Adventitious Halations in a Sizzard

We’re a little short-staffed at work for the next couple of weeks and yesterday we had one of those manic days where I couldn’t get one thing finished before I had to start something else.  The hurrieder I went the behinder I got.  OMG I miss you Laura!!  Waaaaaah!!

There – that made me feel MUCH better.

A drop of 4 degrees in temperature inside my house and a day off to enjoy it is also contributing to my mood up-swing.  I’m not sure when the thunderstorm started last night, but it didn’t grumble away off into the distance until around 5 a.m.  I watched the sheet lightning for awhile through my eyelids and then gave up the fight to go back to sleep and watched it with my eyes open from my living room couch instead.

Lightning #2 (Photo credit: dmolsen)

 

 

 

 

This was not one of those storms where there’s a bolt of lightning followed by silent counting (one one-thousand, two one-thousand three one-thou…) and then a crazy crack of thunder that scares the shit out of you.  Lightning lit up the entire sky in rapid flashes – like some kind of demented strobe light show, and the thunder rumbled and roared and rolled across the heavens non stop.  And beautiful beautiful rain poured down on my scorched and crispy lawn.

I knew there was a good reason to ignore the suggestion from the weed people to water my grass.  If you wait long enough a good reason always turns up for everything.  Like my title today.

The word of the day at Wordnik  is halation – In photography, the effect of excess of light, or of adventitious (casual, chance random – I looked it up)  reflected light, on some part of a negative……from ‘halo,’ which comes from the Greek ‘halos,’ disk or ring of light around the sun or moon.

A couple of days ago the word of choice was sizzard – A very uncomfortably hot, moist atmosphere in which one ‘sizzles’ – a blend of the words  ‘sizzle’ and ‘blizzard.’

And that of course brings us to hatchetation - a violent protest against the drinking of alcohol in which the protester attacks the bar with a hatchet – proving that you can make up a word for just about anything that pops into your little thunder addled brain.

See, this is why I never get anything done.  One thing leads to another until I reach some adventitious spot where I just stop what I’m doing and hit “publish” even though there’s SO much more to say about so many fascinating and yet totally unrelated things.

I need more coffee.  It was a long night.

 

Wordy Wednesday

For anyone who cares, and also anyone who doesn’t with no idea what I’m talking about, I’m up to page 199 in my daunting 1000 plus page brick of a book.  I wish I could say I can’t put it down, but it’s all too easy to do that with a little help from gravity and hands that have fallen asleep. 

Last night the sky went ominously dark and the temperature dropped and the thunder rolled and the rain came down.  And that’s the end of that story, because in spite of how threatening the weather appeared to be, it seemed to suddenly lose interest in being nasty and wandered off somewhere else.  I might have stayed awake longer if it had been more entertaining.  Instead I slept for ten hours straight.  There’s something about the rain that induces this kind of tranquility and calm.

A Wednesday! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This morning I woke up in the middle of some inscrutably foggy dream feeling lazy, lethargic, just this side of comatose.  Brought the paper in, didn’t feel like looking beyond the front page, made coffee, tuned in listlessly to Facebook.  Damned exciting day so far.   Checked out my astrological forecasts – note the plural there, because I’d hate to put all my trust in just one opinion.  And this way I get to choose the one I like the best.  Or in this case, dislike the most.

Your confidence gets a very nice boost right now, and this enables you to feel like you can do just about anything — which you can. Enjoy your extra social zip and go out and have a great time at whatever you choose to do.

You have a strong and compelling presence today, especially if you are doing any kind of political or public speaking. People are interested in learning what you have to say. But in personal relationships, your passions come across a little too strongly.

You will have a powerful idea that dramatically improves your social and career prospects. You will find a way to bring two groups together in a way that heals an old rift and makes new progress possible. Other people will notice, and you will benefit from the attention.

Who the hell are they talking about?  Obviously the storm went high and rearranged the heavens last night.  I’d go so far as to say it scrambled them.  That is not me.  Social zip, compelling presence, powerful ideas – get out of here.  Even if I finish this whole pot of coffee there’s not a chance.

Right now I’m just trying to drum up the ambition to shower and get dressed and ready for work.  Maybe there will be more lightning today and I’ll get struck by it and thus jump started on the development of my strong and compelling presence where people pay rapt attention to what I have to say.  HAHA!  I must still be dreaming.