Nothing Lasts Forever

image from weheartit.com

Good things and bad things – they all come to an end eventually.  How profound was that, hey?  Don’t worry, there’s no deep and philosophical hidden message here.  More like a whining complaining mini rant about things over which I have no control.  Because I suck at endings and goodbyes.

Somebody told me I won’t be able to get my favourite erasable ink retractable pen anymore because they’re no longer being made.  WHAT??  That was shock number one.  I’m kidding, that wasn’t too horrible.  Shock number one is that Trifecta is ending and will not be issuing amazing challenges any more!  I know, I can’t believe it either.  I love Trifecta. This is like when great bloggers just wander off into the sunset and don’t keep up their amazing blogs and you wonder whatever happened to them and hope they didn’t die or something.  So all you bloggers out there who decided to just up and quit, please drop me a line that says hello, I’m not dead, if you’re not actually dead.

Our second year contact lens student who will be double licensed in June told me yesterday that she is going to apply for a management position that is coming available soon.  When these opportunities present themselves it’s best to make it known that you’re interested and available.  I know this, and mostly I applaud her ambition and wish her well.  But another selfish little part of me hopes she won’t get it and she’ll stay where she is working with me.  Because how is this not way better than anything else you could possibly imagine.  Anyway, that’s potential upset number two.

And now, the third shoe drops, (there are always three shoes)  I have just received an e-mail from my Avon lady telling me she is quitting Avon and doing something else instead and this week will be the last time she takes and delivers orders.  She breaks up our relationship with an e-mail!  I want to look her in the face and tell her how incredibly disappointed I am in her, because I was one of those customers who always ordered stuff, even when I didn’t need anything in particular because not ordering made me feel guilty.  Okay, I’ve just convinced myself that this ending isn’t such a bad thing after all and I don’t really need to get in her face.

Other endings that are not bad ones:

1.  Daylight Savings Time  (Who decided that taking an hour off the beginning of the day and tacking it on to the end of the day made the day longer?  Some jerk, obviously.)

2.  Trilogies.  After a long beginning and an equally long middle, I just want the story to get over itself and end already.

3.  Illnesses like flu and skin rashes and indigestion and hangovers. Yes, hangovers are an illness.  If you’ve ever had one, you know this.

4. Winter

5.  Bad relationships

6.  Good hair cuts, because that means the bad ones also go away.

7.  Candy Crush levels that cause serious fits of anxiety and temporary pattern baldness.

8.  Crazy work days and work weeks and all work of any kind.

9.  Headaches

10.  Monopoly at McDonald’s so we can go back to coffee cups with stickers you collect to get a free cup of coffee.  That way everybody wins.

So there are good endings.  And I know when something wonderful ends it simply means there will be a new beginning of some other wonderful thing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wallow in misery for a bit and feel sorry for myself and pout and whine about it.  It’s my way of accepting whatever happens.  Nobody said it was pretty.

Hippie Speak

Dad, I’m leaving town for a few days, remember?  We talked about this last night.  You going to be okay here on your own while I’m gone?

Yeah, that’s copasetic.  Far out.  Righteous, babe.

So you’re telling me you understand what I’m saying to you? Or we can go over it again if you want.

Hey, don’t freak out. Chill. I ain’t trippin’. Lay it on me.

It’s just a short business trip. I’ll be back on Friday.  I’ve left the name of the hotel where I’m staying and the phone number if you need to reach me. It’s all here on the counter.

Wicked. I’m cool. I dig it.  I can hang loose.  Nice threads, by the way.  You are all decked out.

Thanks – I didn’t think you’d notice. It’s a little more colour than I’m used to. You’re serious, I look good?

You look bitchin’.  Right on!  Boss!  Groovy! Clean outa sight!

Good Gawd.  Too much weed Dad.  You are so stuck in the sixties.  It’s just weird.

I’m a fascinating dude, a real gone cat.  I cannot lie.  Blitzed or not I am always hep.

Okay, whatever.  I’ve got a plane to catch.  There’s lots of food in the fridge. Make sure you eat.  Millie next door says she can pick up anything you need, you just have to ask. She’ll be by to check on you.  Please don’t burn the house down while I’m gone.

No sweat. Don’t get hacked.  You can split.  Go ape.  Have a blast.

Right. The cab is here, I’m off. Catch you on the flip side, daddy-o.

Oh man, hey, that’s my girl!  Later baby.  Peace, out.

Trifecta Challenge Week 109: It was interesting to look at all the new words that officially came into
existence during the last year. Unfortunately, they are so new they haven’t had
chance to get a third definition yet. But after delving into a list of new words
and meanings which have come into English over the last fifty years, you can see
many old words have changed their meaning. There are some crackers. And one of
them is your Trifecta 109 prompt.  Enjoy!

WHATEVER
1.   (pronoun)
a: anything or everything that
b: no matter what : regardless of
what
Used in questions that
express surprise or
confusion
2.   (adjective) a: all
the
b: any ; any … that
Used to refer to something that is not
known
3.   (adverb) Used to show that something is not important

My Three Word New Years Resolution

Trifextra Week Ninety Nine:

Michael Hess inspired us with his three word New Year’s resolution – just be nice.  We’re asking
for your own resolutions in just three words.

I made a long list for inspiration.  Carry a pen, stop and look, have some fun, ride the waves, laugh like hell, find what matters, write it down, tell your story.  I aspire to do all these things, plus use more glitter and shoot the moon.  Why?  Because ultimately I want to do this:

Leave Something Behind

It finally came down to those three words when I realized it’s why we do it all and why we write – so that some small part of us will live on after we’re gone.  If you can’t make your words earth shatteringly memorable , don’t worry.  Glitter is almost impossible to get rid of and will keep people thinking about you for a very long time.

Happy New Year to everyone at Trifecta and everyone who participates in these delightful challenges.  Keep making memories.

Dear Breathing Space

 

My Dear Breathing Space, Blog of My Life, Disturber of my Good Nights Sleep:

So sorry for blatantly ignoring you lately and being a bad blogging friend so that no one wants to read you because you have nothing to say.  I have lots of great reasons and excuses, but you’ve heard them all before so we’ll just skip that tedious part of this letter and get right to the point, which is my ingenious Plan To Do Better.

1.  Every Monday I will write a poem, giving all of us just one more good reason to hate Mondays.  I will incorporate whatever the Wordnik word of the day happens to be.  I apologize in advance, and will find nice pictures that may or may not be relevant to take your mind off the fact that it’s poetry.

2.  I will do a Just Jazzy 24 Day Advent Calendar from the first of December to Christmas Eve.  It will involve more creativity than putting the numbers from one to twenty-four on twenty-four bottles of red wine.  Although that might also be fun, involving a Christmas I wouldn’t be able to remember…..

3.  I will answer at least one Daily Prompt a week, no matter how hard the topic makes me roll my eyes.  It’s time to stop being such a critic and just answer the damned questions.

4.  Trifecta is brilliant, the writers are brilliant, and it would be brilliant of me to take every one of their challenges.  I will try.  I cannot promise brilliance, but it would be brilliant to have that aim.

5.  I will also try to respond to comments because I love getting them and it’s horrible bad manners not to.  I’m basically a really nice person, albeit a ridiculously lazy one, but being rude is never acceptable.  Why do I keep forgetting that?  It’s not okay.  Smarten up, you inconsiderate moron.

Okay, that’s it.  It’s worth a try.  November was a write-off for a post a day for me.  There was too much to read.  On line and off.  Here’s to a better December 2013 book of days.

Love from your Omnipotent Creator

(who will sleep better tonight, unless she starts worrying about breaking these promises, in which case we can both disregard all of the above nonsense.)

Just kidding.  I love you.

Round Prompt (Photo credit: creativelenna)

 

Goddess Number Thirty Three

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I AM

The ALL POWERFUL

Chaser of Blues

Painting your world

With bright glitter glues.

You would be wise

to choose ME as your muse;

I AM

 The GODDESS

Of Wearing Red Shoes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trifecta Challenge, Week 93:  Buddhist cosmology tells of Trāyastriṃśa, or the Heaven of Thirty-Three gods, which rule over the human realm.  This weekend we’re asking for exactly 33 of your own words about a god of your own devising that shares heaven with the other thirty-two gods.  Make it yours and have fun with it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(I promise, cross my heart, this is my last post about red shoes.)

Flying

WestJet, you’ve done it again.  Whisked me from one side of the country to the other and back again, thousands of feet in the air.

Wish I could tell you it was magical.

**********

Weekend Trifecta Prompt:  Apostrophe – “A figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or
thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding.”  Give us your best 33-word example of an apostrophe.

Sleepy Baby

Sleepy baby close your eyes

Stars are singing lullabies

Moon is shining magic beams

Night is sending happy dreams

Sleep is a boat in a moonlit bay

Close your eyes and sail away

♥♥♥

Trifecta Writing Challenge Week 82:   a children’s bedtime story in exactly 33 words.

Just Get It Off Your Chest

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicts the Comtesse d’Haussonville, wearing a dress. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I won’t digress. 

 I won’t suppress.

I’ll  express – tonight’s a mess!

With my finesse to hide duress

He’ll never guess

the cause of my distress.

Unless –

I confess.

I hate this stupid dress!

Trifecta Challenge:  This weekend we are asking for a thirty-three word confession.

Breakfast Blues

Mesmerized

by the slow flowing honey

he fashions one golden loop

on buttered toast.

Its impotence makes him weep.

His eyes close.

The wand slips from his fingers

and topples to the floor.

This weekend Trifecta asked for exactly 33 words, 30 of your own and three of the
following:

topple     paradigm     underneath

nerve     honey   loop

If You Build it They Will Come

Diary (Photo credit: benleto)

Daily Prompt:  Personal Space.  To what extent is your blog a place for your own self-expression and creativity vs. a site designed to attract readers? How do you balance that? If sticking to certain topics and types of posts meant your readership would triple, would you do it?

This blog has always been a hundred percent self-expression (because aren’t all bloggers by definition raging egomaniacs?) with a bit of creativity thrown in.  The only readers I expected to attract were family members and close friends and maybe one or two morbid curiosity seekers after my death.  You know, if anyone happened to be looking for eulogy material.  I have no idea who those people might be and it’s possible they don’t exist.

I have been writing all my life.  Stories, poems, notes on cards, letters, diaries, journals, lists. I have also been reading everything that’s readable for as long as I can remember. The greatest lesson I’ve learned from both of these activities is that a person never ever stops learning.

With a head chock full of information (useless or not) and in danger of exploding, I find writing down my own scrambled version of things helps to relieve the pressure.  So really and truly, the bottom line is,  I do this for myself.  If I sound like a pompous lecturing ass, it’s just me talking to myself, trying to convince myself, whipping myself into shape, trying to become a better person, stay relatively sane, and ultimately not bore myself to tears.

In order to never run out of things to say (like I need help with that) I do things like this daily prompt challenge, trifecta challenges, blogging for peace, prompts for the promptless, even some photography challenges, although my photos would do best in the category of photography for the challenged.  I link my posts to Facebook and Twitter.  Still trying to get attention from my family.  Doing these things means that I am attracting readers, and it would be a giant lie to say I’m not happy with that.  Some days I am deliriously happy because someone I don’t even know has said something nice to me.

SCD (Photo credit: WarzauWynn)

Having my readership suddenly triple because I stuck to certain topics or post types would probably just shut me up completely for a  bit, it would be that scary.  All I ever wanted was to just blather away happily here about my life and maybe make the odd person laugh or smile or feel sorry for me along the way.

I want some of our family stories to be remembered and the people who were part of them to live on in our hearts.

I love the blogging friends I’ve made and the people I’ve “met” who inspire me every day. This is fun.  I feel like one tiny link in an enormous chain.  I don’t need to stand out or be bigger or more important or have some huge readership fan club cheering me on.  I’ll keep writing until there’s not another coherent thought in my head.  That might have happened yesterday, but what I don’t know can’t hurt me.

I will continue to write, because I don’t know how to stop.  Having people read what I’ve written and sometimes actually get something good out of something I’ve said – that’s a sweet bonus.  An unexpected perk.  You encourage my scribbles, and I am grateful.