Floundering in the Deep End

Monday’s I was on call, Tuesday’s I hit the pool, Wednesday was errand or appointment day, Thursday’s found me back at the pool for round 2 and Friday after work was drink time with friends. And now…

Bittersweet supper

We had our first family supper last weekend. It was just as wonderful as one can imagine. The noise and motion that comes with 7 large dogs, 6 adults and 2 littles. It was so wonderful and yet, sadly, bittersweet.

Covid in the Rearview mirror

The names roll into my head long before the road sign shows what town is next. The new shingles here or the added grain bins there stand out in my mind. I’ve been on this same trip literally dozens of times. But not since the pandemic and that in itself is what makes it feel a bit like a foreign world.

It’s back

The end of May brought a serious change. I turned up the June calender and there are lots of activities scheduled. That seems so weird because other than my work it’s been empty for so long. Sports are now allowed here and so my other half resumed his soccer life. There are also meetings, vaccine dates (!) and a doctor’s appointment. Just like that it’s all back.

#SundayStills at home but away…

Getting on board again (pun intended) with this week’s blogging challenge which is about our favourite vacation spots.

Make Monday Meaningful

Something I read yesterday stuck with me and early early this am I created my own version. Then I coloured it and organized the side of the fridge around it. It takes me to “my happy”.

Fav Combo for #Sundaystills

This has to have been the easiest #Sundaystills post to pull together EVER! My kids (and their spouses) and all the pets. Now technically the cows in the second picture are not pets in the usual sense but we get a lot of enjoyment out of watching them. The dogs have changed over the years and the kids have left home while the grandchildren change all the time. But what doesn’t change is how this is it. The important things in my life distilled down into one post.

Head Down Blinders On

A mere few decade of months ago I read the words that Kitty O’Meara penned and wrote a post called Not at Peace. The original words would roll around in my head occasionally but now they don’t seem to ring true. Sadly those words were lost on far too many here and around the world. The change in the tone texture of these words have been rattling around in my head for a while.

But then I worried. Is this plagiarism? So I called up the services of an impartial outside editor to review what I wrote and get an honest opinion. We had a long phone conversation (in itself a wonderful delight) and in the end I felt that the artistic license with the words were honouring the original structure but changing the intent. Which is allowable, perhaps even encouraged? I even found a poetry site that the first lesson was to change a classic poem by switching out certain words and in those examples they put the revisions in bold as I have done below.

“Imitation, conscious imitation, is one of the great methods, perhaps the method of learning to write. The ancients, the Elizabethans, knew this, profited by it, and were not disturbed. As a son of Ben [Jonson], Herrick more than once rewrote Jonson, who, in turn, drew heavily on the classics. And so on.”—Theodore Roethke, “How to Write Like Somebody Else”

Visual on Violet

I am enjoying these #SundayStills blog prompts as it is a nice “light” post and a distraction from the real world which at this moment seems flipping scary. So here is my take on violet to add into the mix that Terry over at https://secondwindleisure.com/photography/sunday-stills-photo-challenge/ runs in her “spare time” amongst moving into a new house! I love that I have found this blogging community and appreciate the challenges as well as the encouragement received.

In Stark Contrast

The quiet is broken by a pair of geese who land on the grass. The road traffic noise is an intermittent rumble. The sun feels warm and a sense of peace should be present.