Everyday Canvas

Toenails and Clouds

For "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" 

Prompt: Take any specific part of your body (hands, arms, heart, liver, brain, etc.) Think of it as more than or different from a view of anatomy in the scientific sense, and then write whatever you want about it.

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See, it is like the joke with the elephants painting their toenails red so they wouldn’t be seen in a strawberry patch. What the…? You might exclaim.

Don’t. Just don’t. I know how that poor elephant feels. I know why he stood in a strawberry patch. He felt like the once-upon-a-time me. To hide his polished toenails.

I used to have perfect toenails; so perfect that while I was in my teens, my mom used to wonder why I polished them, at all. I did, and in see-through-pink, and I thought I was in touch with those days’ fashion and, by a long stretch, with my own polished self, or in other words, ego.

But it was then. So many waters under the bridge, and the camaraderie between my toenails and me have soured. I should say thickened, but the thickening is on their part, not mine. The last pedicurist I saw, eons ago, told me, no they weren’t misbehaving at all. It wasn’t fungus either. It was just aging.

Thank you very much. It was the last time I saw the pedicurist, and the last time my toenails had a bright red polish on them to hide their hardened, striated surfaces. After leaving the shop, I didn’t know where to hide my toenails. There wasn’t a strawberry patch around, so I wore socks and sneakers for a while, until the polish chipped.

You know, all polish chips eventually, no matter where you apply it. Just be careful with your large surfaces, like the ego. The ego can’t handle that applied-later-polish thing. Too fancy! It gives itself away.

Nowadays, I wear sandals, and my toenails have been warming up to me, mellowing, and flaunting not their polish but the petroleum jelly, which softens them while allowing them to be themselves.

A happy ending, wouldn’t you say?

For: "Space Blog" 

Prompt: From Jeannie Cheering for Martel ”s "Invalid Item" 
“I look out and see the sunshine chase the clouds away. I no longer want to hide in the dark but survive.”
Use this line in your Blog entry today.

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Yesterday, we had a tropical storm. It was supposed to be a category one hurricane, but it ended up as an any-day, Florida storm.

My shutters were up and the garden hoses and pots of plants plus the outdoor furniture were stashed away. I felt both sad and bad. I don’t like the annoying preparations and darkened days, and especially the aftermaths of hurricanes.

Then, yesterday evening, when the whole thing fizzled out, we had this late sunset with a gorgeous orange sky, while the hidden rays of the sun fought through the storm clouds.

This morning, the dark clouds have drifted away, as all darkness eventually does. In their place came fluffy white clouds with a few dark streaks among them; yet the sunbeams are emerging to do their usual dance; We’ve made it through another possible hurricane.

The sun is always there behind the clouds, higher up, if we could only remember from where it rules, on its lofty throne, when the clouds darken our days.

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Note: (Sorry, I have difficulty using another writer's exact sentences for several reasons, but I tried to stay loyal to their essence)