Silence takes on new meaning after the death of a loved one. Perhaps it is in that silence that we can still hear our loved one in our hearts.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “silent/silence.” Learn more about SoCS here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/05/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-1-19/
I wanted to make a contribution to Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week, but I had another post that I needed to write.
And, yes, I am shamelessly using this post to promote this post from yesterday about my parents’ 65th anniversary and the follow-on post I just finished minutes ago.
So, yes, a sneaky SoCS contribution from me this week…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “rib” or a word with “rib” in it. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-20-19/
I am very fond of using ellipses.
(I resisted the urge to end the prior sentence/paragraph with one.)
I find myself using them quite a lot on comments on Facebook or here at WordPress. I like that they are more open-ended than periods, when I mean to be less conclusive or expect continuing discussion, although it doesn’t always work out that way.
I probably use them more often than is warranted for that purpose. I do sometimes still use them when I have left something out of a quote, as I was taught to do by Mrs. England in sophomore English class at Drury High School. And, yes, I did have an English teacher named Mrs. England…
(You know I had to put an ellipsis in this post!)
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was the word “lip” or a word that contained lip. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-13-19/
A while back, Linda’s prompt had to do with things that we had hanging on our walls – or art we owned or something like that…
At any rate, I didn’t share some things I have hung that are made of fabric.
In the living room, I have an art quilt of trees that I really love:
In the dining room, we have framed some piecework that my husband’s great-grandmother had done. She was planning to make them into a coverlet, but never got around to it. His mom had the top piece in her cedar chest, and we cut it into pieces that worked with frames. The cloth she used was very interesting. It came from sample books from Arnold Print Works, where B’s grandfather worked. I love to look at the different fabric prints of the time. It is a bit strange to see some swastikas, though. The fabric is so old that it was well before the time of Hitler when the symbol was called a Teutonic cross, among other names.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “fab”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-6-19/
Today, E and I took ABC to her first theater experience, a performance of Sesame Street Live. The theme was magic, but a lot of the story revolved around things that turned out to be science. One of those things was making cookie dough out of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar and adding heat to make it into cookies.
My other dough experience of the week was making pie dough for a birthday pie for Paco who turned 94 on Tuesday. I wanted to make him a prune-apricot pie. Unfortunately, it had been a loooong time since I had baked a pie from dried fruit. And I was super tired because I had been up at night with ABC and then had trouble getting back to sleep. I realized too late that I had forgotten the salt in the crust. D’oh! I also didn’t put as much water in the fruit when I stewed it as I should have, so the apricots didn’t soften as much as I would have liked and I didn’t have very much juice to thicken. Still, it all worked out okay as Paco enjoyed it very much.
I thought that doing an unsweetened pie might also appeal to Nana, who hasn’t had much appetite lately, but it didn’t sound good to her. She is still eating breakfast, but usually not much for lunch and supper and she doesn’t like things that are too sweet. One of the hospice rules is that she can eat whatever she wants and we are following that. We have gotten some coffee ice cream to keep on hand because it was always one of her favorites, the bitterness of the coffee cutting the sugar. We’ll see if she wants to try some someday soon.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “dough/d’oh”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-30-19/
Our news here in the US is filled with coverage of the historic floods in the Plains and Midwest. Floodwaters have breached levees and overflowed banks, causing flooding for several miles on either side of multiple rivers. Many roads and bridges have been washed out. Much of the affected land is farmland and many farmers have lost livestock and crops, as well as equipment and buildings.
I live near the Susquehanna River near the NY/PA border. We are lucky this year that we haven’t had much snow, so we will probably be spared the spring snowmelt plus storm flooding. However, we are not immune to floods, having suffered two record floods in recent years. With the changes in weather patterns brought about by our changing climate, we will certainly have another record flood or very severe flood in the future. We just don’t know when.
For many years, we have carried flood insurance on our home. We are not immediately near the Susquehanna, but live near a creek that feeds into it. There is a floodwall behind our house because when the Susquehanna floods, the water back up into the creek. In the 2011 flood, the water came within inches of overtopping the flood wall.
We are lucky that we have never had to collect on our flood insurance. If the worst happens, we may have to either sell out our property or raise our home above flood level.
I’m hoping it won’t come to that, but only time – and storms – will tell.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is to write about the subject of the last piece of (physical) mail we received. In my case, it was our flood insurance bill. To find out how to join in the fun, visit Linda’s site here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-23-19/
I feel as if all our souls have been touched by the shootings at Christchurch, New Zealand. So many dead and wounded. And so many victims had fled violence in the countries where they were born, seeking refuge in what should have been a safe place for them – and even more of a sanctuary as they were in a house of worship.
The alleged shooter claims to be a white supremacist. He claims to be inspired by some in the United States, which makes it even more appalling because I hate the thought that my country is exporting terrorism, racism, Islamophobia, and white supremacist ideologies.
I don’t know how our souls will heal from this attack. Maybe they won’t. Maybe we will all bear a little scar from this horror and maybe that will strengthen us to do everything we can to combat hate.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “soul/sole”. Find out how to join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-16-19/
One computer game that I like to play is Bingo Bash. I often play it on the weekends while watching TV.
Weekends are good because the game often has special features on weekends that give you extra chips. I am one of those players that only plays free games, so I save up the chips I get for logging in every day to use when there is a good weekend promotion.
Before I got my touchscreen computer and before our cable company finally fixed our connection, I sometimes wanted to bash my head against the wall when the game wouldn’t load or would lose contact halfway through. Now things run much more smoothly.
What mindless games do you play?
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “bash/a bash/abash”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-9-19/
Because the Oscars, the film Academy awards, are this weekend, yesterday on the radio I heard two film critics discussing the nominees. It was also a call-in show, so there was a host and callers offering opinions, too.
I usually do watch the Oscars, but this year I have seen very few movies, so I don’t have any basis to have an opinion about who should win.
Some years, I have seen more of the films, although some films are never shown in my area. We aren’t a big metropolitan area and our only arthouse movie theater closed, so we don’t get the opportunity to see some of the more limited release movies.
One thing that was interesting was that there was very little that both critics and callers agreed on. I remember especially the discussion of Roma. Two callers and one of the critics found it very moving and meaningful and the other critic thought it was boring. Being a critic, he had watched it three times, trying to see if there was something he was missing, but he never found it.
If even critics, who watch movies for a living, can’t agree on a film, there is no way I can predict anything about the Oscars. I will likely still watch. If nothing else, I will get to hear performances of the nominated songs and see lots of spiffy clothes.
Do you watch the Oscars or have any predictions to give?
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “critic(al).” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/02/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-23-19/
I have been yawning more than usual this past week.
Last Saturday night, daughter E was lying beside granddaughter ABC, reading her a bedtime story. ABC was having a drink of water from her covered tumbler and, in her excitement, hit her mom in the eye with the bottom of the tumbler.
E called for me and I rang into the room. Her eye was already swelling, so I got her an ice pack and calmed ABC down and got her to sleep.
E had been hit hard enough to see stars and lose her vision in that eye for a moment, so we weren’t surprised when she had a headache the next day. And the next. But then, she started to feel dizzy a lot and get nauseous. I was afraid she had a concussion, so we went into the doctors’ office. It turns out that the symptoms of concussion are very similar to the symptoms of bleeding in the orbital socket, which has a lot of nerves that are very sensitive.
The treatment is also similar to concussion: rest, quiet, avoiding activity and eye strain and loud noises, taking pain relievers, not lifting heavy things.
None of which is inherently easy with a toddler in the house.
It turned into everyone else in the house taking over as much of ABC’s care as possible.
Which brings us to yawning. I have been taking over the nighttime care, sleeping on the couch on the first floor rather than in my room on the second floor. ABC is a pretty restless sleeper, so I would go into her several times a night to cover her or sing her a song or read her a book to get her back to sleep. When my husband B would come down between 5:00 and 6:00, I would sneak back upstairs for another couple hours of sleep, but I admit that I have been tired and, thus, yawning a fair amount during the day.
Last night, ABC didn’t wake up at all, so I got to sleep for a long stretch myself, which was nice and resulted in much less yawning today.
Let’s hope it is the beginning of a trend.
(By the way, E is improving, so there is some hope that she will be able to be more active soon.)
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to write about the first thing we thought of after reading the word “yawn.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/02/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-16-19/
Joanne Corey 