UGH! For some reason, electricity here is not a given today! We obviously have it in some rooms but not all...my office is dark and cold! My trusty kitchen PC is up and purring, but my main one is not....I guess the pull of our new $10.00 heater was too much for the circuit. It puts out amazing warmth for $10.00, but is obviously too much for something! Ah well....c'est la vie! Or, in American vernacular, s--t happens!
 

I have been remiss at writing for the last few weeks. I have written thousands of words for my freelancing, but have recorded very few thoughts of my own.

Rick's new job has gone temporarily full time. As in 12-hours-a-day-full-time! It is making me nuts. Slowly and steadily . I am just grateful that I have this refuge in here to work in. It is probably not overly healthy to spend so much time in one room, but it is what it is.

Perciville, my dear car, is too sick to fix. She is fixable but it will cost $2900 to fix. So, we are car-less. And looking. I would like to know that I can leave the house at least once per month. It makes me sad because we have just found a neat church and now can't go. . . .
 

LINE COUNT: 10

NEW PROMPT: "They" say that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. Today's economic climate can be seen as one big lemon, and I was just reading that some recent college graduates are stuck working at lemonade stands. http://www.projo.com/news/content/COLLEGE_GRADS_JOBS_09-18-09_9RFOS5L_v25.3b3d44...

Write a story or poem about making lemonade from lemons - and hating every minute of it.

MY LEMONADE DANCE!

In all my life's experiences, this ranks among the toughest!
And living here with all these folks makes me shine with the gruffest!!
I can't honestly say that I hate every minute of it,
but living here in this mess makes me wish that they would SHOVE IT!!
I'd tell them so; that only means that they'd take sore offense
and then view my affection as merely sweet pretense!
So, I plan and cook and wash dishes as though this were my home,
but when I'm crying late at night, only you can hear me moan!
I dance my lemonade dance, hoping I can keep it going
and that I'll play at "happy" without anybody knowing!!
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I have been grousing about the samd damn stuff for far too long! I am going to
quit and start intentionally having fun. :O}



 

I am deriving great inspiration from the class "From the Ground Up" to learn about poeming and to take my poetry to the next level. My original goal before I was derailed by our move was to self-publish a book by our 30th college reunion next month, and to sell them at the alumnni book signing event. I am now having to put that off until a later year, but that doesn't mean that I can't begin to assemble my self-published book now anyway. I can plan it now and then publish it when I can. So, I am indeed making progress. Sometimes, despite my best efforts. . . .
 

Today is the first day I have been awakened by a poem in a long time. If there had not been a cat on top of me, I could have captured the poem as it hurtled through my consciousness toward the light of day. I will keep listening; maybe it (the poem) will return when she (the cat) is away on her daytime perch. I am her nighttime perch, for sure.!
 

As a new student anxious to impress my new instructor, I would write a note describing my prior writing experience and my current writing goals. I would invite that instructor to visit my port and point out a few of my favorite poems. The ones I would point out are "Pulp, or the Absence of Pulp,"

ID: 1577152   (Rated: E) THE CHOICE OF PULP  A POEM ABOUT LIFE'S GRINDINGS: A pre-move poem by Jennyj

ID: 1786903   (Rated: E) The Choice, or Non-Choice, of Pulp  a do-over of a special poem from 2008 by Jennyj

ID: 1554854   (Rated: E) COUNTRY PEACE  A poem about the country and its beauty. by Jennyj

ID: 1699249   (Rated: E) BRING ON THE GLUE!!  don't thnk this is in here yet! by Jennyj

I have become seized with an unfortunate bout of writer's block; the deadly disease that all freelance writers catch from time to time! My creative prose writing isn't silenced; just my poetry and profitable-but-boring freelance work, my livelihood! (That spelling looks suspect, but so did the rest of my choices!) I am sure that the cause is all of the fru-fra that has gone on around me since Rick has begun to work from home. Suddenly, this tiny house has contracted even further. I am having to share my precious, rationed soltitude with someone I love and can't easily say no to. Also in the sharing que are my equipment, my supper decisions, and even my cats and coffee! Having him working here IS great fun for me, and a great opportunity for him. He was able to land a super job within a month of his job change, and is now working happily at his little homemade cubbyhole as I write in the bedroom office. Gone, unfortunately, is my little kitchen workstation, as he needed to use a monitor in his little cubby. This will maybe allow me to merge the madness that has been my computer life for the last 30 months!

He gets his first paycheck this week; he has been in paid training for two weeks already. So, I am not complaining, just shifting gears that I was not intending to shift. I have been cluelessly begging to do away with the kitchen office aspect of my life for ages. Now that it has happened unexpectedly, I am having to get used to working in just one location. That should be delightfully easy, to have all of my work in one place. It has been uncomfortably normal for me; the cluttered part of my psyche has missed the uncertainty. Just goes to reinforce the old mantra of "you'd better watch what you ask for--you just might get it!" And, I did.

I really have miniscule income goals for my freelancing--but I am not even able to meet them right now. It is sort of causing me a small self-image crisis, even as I find myself more settled down and content than I have ever been here up til now. It is great to have a friend here full time; I am just not used to the unexpected, uncalculable stress it brings with it! I will cope, though. It may just take a little while to adjust to working on just one computer and to shift those other, unascertainable gears . . !
 

QUOTE FROM "FROM THE GROUND UP" MATERIALS from Karen

The audience for social poetry is here and waiting on poetry speaking to the new evolving political rhythms of our existence, divorced of obscure references, mythic Greek figures and greeting card mush. Mark Antony Rossi Quote / Quotation

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I think this wonderful quote is saying that poetry must be real, in the here and now, and not confined just to old forms or sentimentality, but must reflect instead life and things around us in the real time of our lives, reflecting the current state of our world today.
 

Fresh Water Journal/Blog Prompt #3: Reward for Participation

“There was an old woman, who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.”

What did she look like? What was her name? How old was she?
Why did she live in a shoe? What color was it? Did she have any neighbors?
How many children is “so many?” Were they both boys and girls?
Why was her thinking limited and she didn’t know what to do?
Why did she whip them? Was this a nightly affair?
Did they share beds or each have one?

On Saturday, August 27th, write about her in a journal/blog entry. It will interesting to see the different takes on this well known person. Your reward for participating in this prompt and on this day will be 233 gift points.

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My response for 8/27 is running a little late! Sorry!

My dear great aunt Hortense lived in a shoe-shaped building (which was originally built for advertising purposes) because it was nicely padded and decorated and she “couldn’t find a NICER space” (her words). It was robin’s egg blue on the outside, with white trim; during its advertising life, I think it was intended to be a trendy tennis shoe. She had 6 kids, 3 boys and 3 girls; she meant to stop at a total of 4, but just couldn’t. Having 6 really overwhelmed her, because they were never in the same school at the same time due to the age spread. When she spoke of whipping them, she was referring to serving them brownies with whipped cream. The broth plus that snack filled them up and consequently, they often went to bed without a nourishing meal under their little belts. There was no bread with the broth because she determined that they were getting enough starch from the brownies. This nursery rhyme actually started as family lore, and became popularized because of its catchy rhythm!

Great aunt Hortense was a writer just like me. She had sort of a withered, pinched face; it was hard to tell whether she was smiling or trying not to sneeze or swear. Any of those options was equally likely at any given time! She sneezed a WHOLE lot; her husband used to tease her about having “sneezures”, rhyming with seizures, she made such a racket!







 

From my small desk, I look out on an old plant rack and an old van, Von's, both of which gleam in the sun and hurt my eyes! The old brown rack is made of worn wood and serves to aid my words with its still gleam of age. I love it though it is a sight; good to look at but of no use to us! Von drives the van like it is a truck, to haul what he needs hauled at the time. The best thing I can say about it is that its shine is too bright and it sears my eyes as I peer out at the yard. It is not much to look at!

Our street is old, and my Rick grew up in this house, so it is not new to him as it is to me. I like a large town but not this small one as much. It is old, though, and has a neat old train yard, now a slow place though they serve foods at night to guests who stop in to eat and talk. We like to park there, watch trains, and have lunch in the shade for fun and to get out of the house.

The train track is about 3 miles from the house; there is a small town park up our road--we have gone there to sit and talk and have snacks, as well. The day they sprayed for our cats' fleas, we went there early in the day at eight and ate fast food. We sound like we eat a lot, and we do!