Category Archives: family

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twilight

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crepuscule.

Honestly, my brain wants to mix it up with corpuscle. The poet part of my brain wants to play with both words and is thinking about creepy twilight stories more appropriate to next month. With characters wearing crepe, creeping around, carping about corpses. This is sounding more and more like a Charles Addams cartoon.

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Mundane Monday #176: bones

For Mundane Monday #176: bones.

This is from the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, in the Port of Debuque, Iowa. We had eight people in two vans, age range from 8 to 75, and drove there from Wisconsin. It was really excellent and something for everyone. A DiVinci exhibition, live alligators, this alligator snapping turtle skeleton, river boats and history.

What bones inspire you? The snapper was about four feet long, beak to tail, and the jaws and beak is very impressive. I’ve seen a pair of live ones in the wild on the outer banks of Virginia.

Link or message your Mundane Monday bone contribution and I will list them next week.

From Mundane Monday 175: line up:

KL Allendorfer finds lines in nature and …. frogs.

 

 

 

 

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cat worries

My cat is turning 17 soon. She and I visited a friend yesterday. The friend and I went off to the farmer’s market and returned. I called and the cat didn’t come. I looked under the bed, where she usually hides but she wasn’t there. I search the house and stand staring at the bed…. She couldn’t have gotten out, could she?

Unfathomable….

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fathom.

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full fathom five

“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them,β€”ding-dong, bell.”

Ariel in Act 1 Scene 2 of the Tempest

For Ragtag Daily Prompt: fathom.

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truck with doors

For Norm2.0’s Thursday doors.

Two weeks ago I was visiting family in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. This is an art installation in town and the multitude of doors made me think of Thursday doors! Hoods, too. What day would we choose for hoods? I am afraid that many of the hoods I think of are grim, but these hoods are fine…

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Container dream

I dream I am at a concert in a park. Or some very big event. With my significant other. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the grass is green, there are rolling hills and trees. People are arriving.

There is a gasp of horror. There is a large box, like the hold of a ship. We hurry to look in: there are three open containers down inside, tops removed. They are full of children. Smuggled? Immigrants? The containers are surrounded by water. My significant other and I drop our things and climb down the long hold ladder into the water, which is cold, filthy, and comes up to my thighs. I’ve kicked off my sandals. We are wading to the containers. An ICE agent in a black uniform, bullet proof vest, belt with tools and guns, and riot helmet, blocks me and says, “You have to be wearing shoes to help.” He is handing out plastic stretchers. He can’t see my feet. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and my feet could get cut, but this is probably sewage and dangerous even with shoes. We should really be in hazmat gear but the kids could be dying. I just look at him, silent, and he hands me a stretcher.

Enough people have come forward, into the water, that all the kids have been placed in one of the containers. None of them are dead. They are being lifted out one by one, to ambulances. Now the hold is surrounded by rubberneckers. I climb out and find my purse and camera and shoes. I am grateful no opportunist has stolen them. The ICE agents are telling people to back off and give them room to work. The news crews are there and a Washington State politician says, “This is Washington State, we will take care of these children, we will not see them separated and incarcerated, I will see that they are returned to their parents.” Good luck, I think, but at least there are tons of witnesses and cameras and news crews.

I need to find somewhere to scrub my legs down with soap and to find my significant other. It’s getting more crowded.

I wake up.

And what I notice is that the water did not stink and was not full of lumps of floating excrement. As I wake I hope that I won’t catch something horrible and die….usually my dreams have full sound, color and smells too. I wonder where the children were from, and why, and whether they had some sort of sanitation….

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the funny pine

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bark.

Oh, I don’t think tree bark is the bark the prompt is asking for, but…. well, dogs like trees too.

I have grown with this tree, meeting it first when I was 5 months old. The white pine fell or was hit by lightning, in the past, and the main trunk is in the water. Dead and ghostly, but the Lake Matinenda fishing community visits the dead tree. Not just humans, but I have also seen three otters fishing there and a snapping turtle the size of a platter. Meanwhile, a branch of the tree took over trunk duty and the tree held on.

This is the Canadian Shield, in Ontario. Imagine growing on that rock. The roots travel into the woods searching for whatever soil they can find. The root/trunk that sticks up is higher than ever this year. Three branches have matured and all stick up like a row of trunks.

From the other side:

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When I was a kid, we played sardines. Once when I was “it”, I climbed out the trunk a little and settled shielded by the branches. It took forever for my cousins to find me, my best hiding place ever. We finally started doing loon calls as hints, to get the last few people in.

I love this tree, bark, branches, survival in adverse circumstances, holding on and the lovely soft white pine needles.