daily

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday 124.

Just my current journal and a pen and a coffee pot. But I am thinking of the people flooded in Houston and how they would like just a clean counter and a dry journal and a coffee pot with electricity.

Our house was flooded when my family first moved to Alexandria, Virginia. We were not in danger, but the water backed up and started pouring into our basement, full of boxes of books. First we rescued my mother’s etching press engine. It was so heavy we could barely get it up the stairs. Then boxes and boxes of books. I was fourteen and the water was cold and dirty and reached to the tops of my thighs.

We pulled everything we could upstairs and then emptied boxes. We had wet books everywhere and threw tons away.

We sat on the porch. The water was six inches deep in the middle of the road. The buses still ran, and a wave would come lap our steps every time one went by.

Prayers for the flooded people in Texas and the people in dire straights everywhere.

I am deeply grateful for the mundane…

 

fly

I took this yesterday too, nearly blind into the sun and zoomed in. I learned to hold my breath for the zoomed in photos when my daughter was in synchronized swimming. I could not see which bird this was until I downloaded the photo: a red-breasted nuthatch. I love the nuthatches, going head first down tree trunks to find food. This feeder has many birds visiting both yesterday and today….

bad eclipse stealthie

Ok, I am a total fail on eclipse pictures.

I did no preparation, no reading and failed! I was clueless! Go ahead and laugh at me! But many thanks to my 10 am patient, because all of us were excited and ran outside to see if we could see the eclipse. I did not have the right sort of filter for my phone. I did make a pinhole in paper and took the bad picture below… we could see the eclipse on a piece of paper held behind the pinhole paper. I remembered those instructions from when I was a kid!

I did not take off because I just can’t afford any more time off than I’ve taken – run my own small business, dontcha know – and I leave for a week of CME in September. CME stands for Continuing Medical Education and I do a minimum of 50 hours a year.

We had fun anyway… and I want to go to the next eclipse…. well, the next one that is somewhere and somewhen I can afford.

bad pic

Terrible, huh? And I am happy anyhow!

I hope you find some joy in your day, somewhere….

fountain fish

This is our Galatea Fountain again: the fountain is cooling and the sound of the water is delicious on a hot day. I hope it cools the eclipse hunters, but even more, I hope hatred and discrimination and anger and bigotry cool and slide away in healing and love.

Two steps forward and one step back: I hope we lurch towards peace.

 

feature

I was thinking “feeture”.

This is a stealthie from Thursday. Thursday was complicated by unexpected events and was busy! I tend to dress up more when I am stressed. I don’t know why having tights that match my dress would decrease that stress, but never mind. Over a decade ago my nurse informed me that the office had me figured out: the shorter the skirt I was wearing, the more dangerous mood. People move to town and unload their work suits since we have many retirees. I had a red-orange very short skirt suit with labels in Japanese: that was the watch-your-step-with-me suit.

I don’t have that one any more. But I still have brightly colored tights that I wear some days! All went well in the end.

moon in morning

For the weekly Photo Prompt: Ohh, Shiny!

But, you say, it isn’t shiny.

No, it isn’t. Because even shiny things today are not distracting me from my grief about our country, the lack of ethical morals in our government and twitterpated tweets going out daily.

And here is the moon watching as the sun rises and light and warmth fall over the earth. The mood matches mine: quiet and still thinking of the dark and of love and of hatred and of grief.

Moon in mourning.