Tag Archives: fun

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Alphabeasts

ambulating antelopes
bellies bearing beer
carrying cantelopes
deride damp deer

elegant elephants
feeling fitly fat
give generous gifts
handing hippos hats

ignorant iguanas
jealously jeer
keen kindly kites
lilting laughing leers

many merry meerkats
nearly never notice
one old orangutan’s
pompous pronouncements

querulous quail
reject reports regarding
shimmering snow snakes
tearing through tunnels

undulating ungulates
veer vivaciously
wondering why whales
xerox xylophones

yellow yaks yell
zip zap zoo!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zoo!

I wrote this sometime in the 1980s. My proof is the drawing by my mother. We had it in a show and hand colored with colored pencils. There is now a book with the same title by a Canadian author but it came later.

And hooray for the zoo! They are all asking for you!

Martha, what would the AI think of this poem? Heh. ChatGPT: “That’s a fantastic poem! I love how it captures the playful nature of alliteration and the whimsical imagery of animals. Each stanza has its own charm, and the ending with the “yellow yaks” is such a fun wrap-up! Did you create this as a fun project, or is it inspired by something specific?” Ok, so ChatGPT doesn’t get sonnets, but it likes nonsense poetry.

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Not blonde?

Ok, wait, green hair?

Also not blonde. This is the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. The fabulous parade and bribing of judges was Saturday morning, when I took these photographs. The costumes are wonderful. After the parade comes the brake test and the water portion of the race. The Kween was there and the Unexpected Brass Band. Then Sunday is the hilly portion and mud bog. The sculptures are all human powered.

Oh, look, blonde.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: blonde.

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Colorful

It has been horrible to have the zombies take over cities, but the surprise has been color. The zombies love color and it mesmerizes them. We all carried paints and spray paint and brushes for the zombies at first. Hand a zombie any paint and they won’t bite you! People quickly realized that the more brightly we color everything, the less chance of being bitten. Now our clothes are rainbows of riotous color, black suits gone forever. There are now well known zombie artists, hired to brighten and decorate nearly anything.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zombie.

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teen toys today

Um, you say, these don’t really look like toys.

I had friends visit last week. These are the thirteen year old’s toys: he enjoys fixing cell phones and computers and asked if we had any old game platforms. I talked to my son and the thirteen year old is taking the ones he wants. And what was he working on in the picture? Replacing the broken glass in my cell phone.

Now many of you are jealous and would like this teen to visit you. My cell phone has a lot of parts and many tiny screws. There was only one left over and the phone is working fine and the glass is unbroken! Wow! Toys of mine that were used in explorations and repairs included my vacuum and I provided the super glue.

I thanked him with a comic book subscription, since we share an enjoyment and appreciation of comic books.

One of the most useful toys I had growing up was a china doll. Useful you say? Yes. We sewed doll quilts and doll clothes and made our own furniture and hoped for the tiny books in the Cracker Jack boxes. How is this so helpful? Surgeons asked where I had learned my stitching techniques. It was quite delightful to reply, “Doll clothes.” It really did help. I made one old fashioned dress with miles of ruffle, all hemmed by hand. In the 1970s I was embroidering my jeans and adding studs and we dyed t-shirts with melted paraffin and crayons. My sister and I nearly burned down the kitchen once, but we did learn which techniques to use to stop wax fires.

I am not sure who made this dress for the doll. My grandmother Katy Burling sewed doll clothes for us and helped us make patterns and nine patch doll quilts. My other grandmother Evelyn Ottaway could knit the tiniest doll clothes on knitting needles: I still have some of those as well. A tiny stole knit out of a furry yarn and lined with brown satin. My mother was an artist and loved crafts as well but NOT sewing. Pottery yes, sewing no.

My daughter promptly illustrated her lack of the packrat gene by putting half the furniture and stuff away and having a spare and elegant doll house. She learned to sew but does not like it much to date.

What childhood toys and ideas contributed to your adult skills?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: toy.

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Stages of PEACE

We have stages of grief. Now if we are going to make peace, we need to break it down into the stages that we need to go through. I think this incorporates and embodies the stages of grief. We need to plan peace. We need a map to get there, and it is not a simple road. We can’t just say I am peaceful. We must do the work. Here are the stages I can think of and I have certainly gotten stuck in some of these stages. What about you? No…or are you in denial? And if not you, I would bet money that you can name someone who you think or feel is stuck in one of these. Takes one to know one though, right? No, maybe that’s wrong. Stop confusing me!

And maybe we don’t all go through all of these stages. Or go through them in the same order. When I watch families grieve after a death, they often fight. They fight about how to grieve. The family members may be in very different stages, or the family may have stages or roles assigned to certain people, who may or may not accept the assigned role. My maternal family has anger assigned to me. I don’t really care any more. Since I am not angry, presumably they can’t handle anger and need to outsource it. I got tired of saying “I am not angry” and being told that yes, you are angry until I would get angry… you see the problem, right? It got ridiculous. My sense of the absurd kicked in and then I would try to really enjoy being angry. You are supposed to give things your best effort, right? Snort.

Message me if you think of some stages that I’ve missed! Then we can all get to work, on working through these. MAKE PEACE, PEACE OUT, PEACE ME, PEACE YOU, PEACE THE WORLD! Might take a while. Get on it, get to work.

Twisting words

Confusion

Denial

Bargaining

Anger

Bitterness

Revenge

Acting Out

Oppositional Defiance

Acceptance

Forgiveness

Healing

Hope

Reconciliation

Peace

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What does the helmet have to do with this? Nothing… I just like the helmet. I keep thinking that it could be a breastplate instead of a helmet. And it is a clue to my May blogging… where am I? Where is this helmet?

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I don’t think I realized what I had gotten myself into, but it seemed like the potential for fun and insanity were there in equal parts

sometimes you know things
without knowing

sometimes you no things
without noing

sometimes you know things
without noing

sometimes you no things
without knowing

sometimes you koanow things
without knowing

sometimes you no things
without koanowing

sometimes you koanow
without koanowing

sometimes you koanow

snow

also published on another site today.

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Fair joy

I had Jefferson County Fair duty as part of the Port Townsend Sunrise Rotary, 2 hours yesterday morning and three at the Yellow Gate in the afternoon. I got to do the gate while it rained cats and dogs and that fairgate roof leaks like a sieve! It was a cold wet wood box with a door and two window holes wide open. I was dressed warmly enough barely.

But… back to the morning! Saturday started with a band parade!

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I have lived in Port Townsend since 2000 and I am a musician, so I know at least half the people in this parade. If the masks were off, I might know more.

This is one of those very local parades that you can be in if you want to, whether you have a costume or not. And here is the incomparable Joey Pipia, our magician and improv teacher, with a young horse….

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The fair is still going on, head on down today to enjoy!

I asked our Rotary Membership director the other day, how many of the adults in our town and county are in one or more local groups that help others: Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, American Association of University Women, the PTA groups, church groups, the Veterans Association, the shelter, the Band Boosters…. the list goes on and on and hooray for all of those people and a big thanks to them! The people who run the fair and who run the Rhody Parade! All of the many volunteers we have and donors.

 

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conversation

Mordechai, our clinic skeleton, had such a wonderful time out at dinner last month. As you can see, she is still conversing about it. We’ll have to take her out more.

For the Daily Prompt: inchoate. I’m not sure quite how inchoate relates to this. My ideas are unformed. Where to take Mordechai next?