Petitions and One-Clicks

More gray skies here in Upstate New York and more blahs here in my little house. Angel and Tara Grace don't have the blahs, though. We just played a rousing game of run and jump and bat the mouse on the string. I have to hide the darn thing and Angel torments me for it almost constantly. Even Tara Grace is addicted to it... a huge step for Tara. Anyway, it's carefully hidden away again.

I'm a big fan of care2.com. They do a lot of good and it doesn't take much effort. One of my favorite things is their daily one-click section where you can click through a series of posts to help stop global warming, save the rain forest, buy habitat for big cats, save baby seals, the ocean, help primate research, rescue children, help pets, prevent violence against women and contribute to breast cancer research. And all it takes is about 3-5 minutes of your day depending on how fast your computer works. They also have a petition site where you can sign petitions for a variety of good causes like this one urging Congress to take action to stop global warming. I've posted the link below.

Here's the link for the NRDC Action Fund.

And here's a link to Care2.com's Petition Site where you can sign a petition to Congress asking them to take action to Stop Global Warming.

If this gets you in the spirit of clicking, you can always head over to The Hunger Site and the other GreaterGood.com one-clicks. You can give 1.1 cups of food to the hungry each day and it only takes a second. Associated links also donate to cancer research, child health, child literacy, the rainforest and animal welfare. You can also do some Christmas shopping here if you like. Most purchases also provide 25 cups of food for the hungry or food for animals or... Worth checking out.

So that's my thoughts for the day... at least for the moment. Photos today are of indoor wildlife.

One Single Impression: Distractions

This week's prompt for One Single Impression was "distractions."

I meant to write more
But so many distractions
This is all I have

Although some say no
I think distractions are good
Not always maybe
But sometimes the unplanned road
Leads to amazing wonders

~~~~~~~~~~~

I procrastinate
And few things delight me more
Than good distractions

~~~~~~~~~~~

Distraction's two-faced
It can steal needed focus
But sometimes it helps
To numb the edges of pain
So we can bear to go on

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 43

This is week 43 of the Saturday Wordzzle Challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works. Despite how difficult this week's words were, I had a lot of fun doing it this week. This may be because I did it on Wednesday morning instead of waiting until late Friday afternoon when the pressure to get them posted feels overwhelming. Hope you all had fun.

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: Horny as a toad, Frankenstein’s sister, Greeks bearing gifts, Holiday, Cheese grater, Gridlock, Drip dry, Coffin maker, movie mogul, Turkish coffee Mini Challenge: prenuptial agreement, The purple cow just hated the orange cat, potato chips, sari, Hammer and nails

Here's my ten-word offering for this week:

Being a coffin maker was not exactly the most alluring profession in the world. Unlike being a movie mogul or some other romantic profession, it did not make you a chick magnet. Magnus Gridlock was bored, depressed and horny as a toad. He was tired of measuring bodies and wearing drip dry shirts and being polite and careful. So when his cousin Dimitri suggested an all expense paid holiday in Istanbul, he completely forgot the old adage to beware of Greeks bearing gifts (to which his mother had always added the codicil, “especially if they are your cousin Dimitri”). You would think that by now he would have learned. One minute he had been eating Backlava and sipping some very fine Turkish coffee and then suddenly his cousin was nowhere to be seen and a woman who could only be described as Frankenstein’s sister was coming after him waving something that looked like a cheese grater. She seemed to be under impression that he was going to marry her as did a collection of equally large and menacing family members and a small trembling person who appeared to be a priest. As he unhappily became the groom of Frankenstein, Magnus knew whose coffin he would be making next. Dimitri’s days were numbered.

And here's my mini challenge:

“Hammers and nails, hammers and nails… I will thump the bastard on the head with hammers and nails” Chandra muttered angrily as she read through the prenuptial agreement her once beloved fiancé had presented her with only a day earlier. Cramming a handful of potato chips into her mouth without tasting them, she neither noticed nor cared about the large grease stain on her beautiful sari. “Pah!” she muttered angrily. “He is not the man I thought he was. And his mother… that woman – I call her the purple cow - just hated the orange cat, but who would have thought he would let her make getting rid of my beloved Mandrake part of the wedding agreement. Anything else, I could have forgiven, but not that. He can have that mean-spirited purple cow of a mother. I will find love elsewhere. Husbands come and go, but the love of a good kitty is irreplaceable.”

And for the mega challenge:

On holiday in Crete, Frankenstein’s sister (Pasha knew that was what her beloved Gridkins called her, but she didn’t care since while it had initially been intended pejoratively, he now said it with deep love and affection) sat sipping a cup of Turkish coffee and nibbling some greasy potato chips. She was thinking longingly of her beloved Magnus Gridlock, the former coffin maker. He had married her against his will, muttering under his breath something about Greeks bearing gifts and cheese graters. After the initial shock, things had gone well, though, and they had even grown to love each other. It had helped that they had both been (as Americans put it) as horny as toads, and, as it turned out very sexually compatible. From the very start, she had loved watching him work on the coffins, loved the way his hands held the hammer and nails and created beautiful wooden boxes in which to put the dead. Coffin making had seemed a waste of his talents and she knew he was bored and unfulfilled, so she had spoken to a movie mogul friend of her family and had gotten him a job working as a set designer in Hollywood. He had never been happier and had taken to it like a duck to water. He had been nominated for an Oscar for sets he created for his first film which had the odd name The Purple Cow Just Hated the Orange Cat. It was the story of a poor young Indian woman who had foregone marriage to a wealthy man because she loved her cat but who had then met and fallen in love with a veterinarian from and even wealthier family and had lived happily ever after. Chandra, the author and star of the film had taken to Magnus and Pasha and had shown them the wonders of her native India, even teaching Pasha to wear a sari and weaning Magnus of his addiction to drip dry shirts. Unfortunately, while in India Magnus fallen under the sway of a guru there and between movie assignments, spent much of his time at the ashram. Pasha had no desire to follow this path and deeply missed the simpler days when Magnus was a poor and not so happy coffin maker. It was too late, she sighed, for a prenuptial agreement… and probably this turn of events could not have been predicted in any case.

~~~~~~~~~~~

This week's vanity wordzzle used the words: beads, shadow, magazine, guard, memory, heart, poultice, half moon, sound of surf, tummy

Sitting in shadow under the canopy of her cottage's small porch, Melinda rocked quietly, lulled by the sound of the surf and the beauty of gulls silhouetted against the rich blue sky, floating between the white half moon and the dark, diamond-studded waves. She fingered the small beads of her necklace as though it were a rosary. She must not let the beauty lull her too far. She must guard her heart and mind against memory. She had thought coming here would help, but it had not. She held an unread magazine against her empty, childless tummy like a poultice. Why had God done this to her, taken both Evan and their unborn child? The loss was too much to bear and all this beauty seemed an insult to her grief.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: When pigs have wings, Moonlight, Mystery, Tower of Babel, Butterflies, Bread and butter, Beef barley soup, Charley horse, Novelty, Cold shoulder

Mini Challenge: Software, Lottery, Newspaper, Mailman, Ringo Starr’s drum

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

Skywatch Friday

It's Skywatch Friday (Thursday, actually) again. Not my usual gazillion photos this week, just 5... There are gazillions out there, though. Just check out all the other skywatchers at the link above and you'll see lots of glorious sunsets and sunrises and clouds and other wonderful sky scenes. The first people to visit have commented on the shots of the moon... that is actually the sun. That's how gloomy it has been around here this week. Looks pretty, though, doesn't it?

I know they look like moon shots, but these last two shots are the sun.

Happy Skywatch Thurdsay/Friday!

Just Some Pictures

Don't much feel like writing anything today. It is the third or 4th day of gray gloomy skies. Not as cold as it has been. In fact it's raining and the snow is all melted and washed away. But it is still gray and gloomy and damp and I want some sunshine. So anyway, I have the blahs. Here are a few photos I took over the past few days. Not doing WW because it feels like too much work.

Ruby Tuesday

It's Ruby Tuesday ( hosted by Mary/ the Teach at Work of the Poet) . Probably I should hold back on Christmasy things. It's only December 9th and there's not much left and two more Tuesdays before Christmas, but I seem to be all Christmas driven very early for me. Alas, Christmas in my little house is kind of limited to my little tree which remains undecorated because of Angel's penchant for destruction and the fact that 7 moves pretty much finished off the few ornaments I had left. So... we are kind of stretching for holiday reds. But here we go anyway. Posting this late and trying to keep to my new sleep schedule. I'll visit everyone tomorrow.


I asked a couple of the reiki bears to pose with the Christmas Moose. Angel, of course, felt a need to stick her nose into things - literally. Unlike his flamboyant friend Pierre who posed for my second Ruby Tuesday post ages back, Raphael (the gray bear) is pretty reserved. It was not easy persuading him to put the Santa hat on or to pose for the more introspective photo below this one. Raph is really pretty special, so I'm glad he agreed to participate. He's full of reiki and pretty much everyone who meets him wants to hold him and not let go.

Raphael Emmamuel Bear, Pierre le Bear, and the Christmas Moose...
with she who must put herself into every photo.

Raphael Emmanuel Bear

This angel is blue, but she was a gift from my friend Dan
for the top of my tree. Since I'm keeping her grounded (see yesterday's post),
I thought I'd give her some extra publicity. Notice the red of my first
Christmas card of the year - hand delivered by Shannon.

An effort to catch the lights on my little tree being red and glowy.
I'm desperate for reds. What can I say?

My neighbor's Christmas lights. The first two years I was here they had a
big sleigh thing that they put out as well. I miss it.

Dan is working very hard to make me Christmasy. He gave me this sweet
sign for my front door... and made me hang it even before Thanksgiving
(by the way - the gray lump on the right... Angel who refused to move).

Happy Ruby Tuesday! And to all a good day!

Brrrrrrrrrr

Poor little guy.... I think he's feeling the cold.

Bitterly cold here - 19 degrees F. - and not an original thought in my head, so I thought I'd borrow the Christmas Meme from Linda at These are the Days. So... here goes... The original had 23 questions, which just seems like an odd number of questions, so I added two extras at the end to bring it to 25.


1.Wrapping paper or gift bags? Mostly gift bags these days, though my financial situation means I don't give many gifts and what I do are often sent from the source so they come neither wrapped nor in gift bags. This really stinks because I LOVE buying/giving gifts. I just love it.


2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial. I really miss the smell of the real thing. When I still went out in the city in my last years, even though I didn't put up a tree because of the cats, I hit the tree sellers up for the branches they cut off other trees. I could usually make them look pretty good and they gave the smell of Christmas. Then I harvested the needles for incense. This year Nate gave me a new cyber optic tree. I don't decorate it because you-know-who would feel compelled to undo it anyway. Makes Christmas easy.... plug and unplug.


3. When do you put up the tree? Traditionally, I've been one of those people who puts her tree up a week or days before Christmas. This year - I plugged her in on Thanksgiving and am enjoying the twinkling lights every evening.


4. When do you take the tree down? Well, I tend to leave it up through Orthodox Christmas on January 6th. Since my new tradition has me plugging in earlier, maybe I'll unplug earlier. Or not.


5. Do you like eggnog? Alas, as with all things that are fattening and not good for me, I love egg nog, spiked or unspiked.


6. Favorite gift received as a child? My memory of my childhood is pretty fragmented. I don't really know if I had a favorite gift. I remember getting a doll one year that I named Leslie but I don't remember much else about her. As an adult, my favorite gift would probably have been my first kitty - Katrina. She was a gift that kept on giving and brought me joy beyond measure.


7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes. I keep it up all year just because I like it. It's not very traditional. When I worked for the Lutheran Church in America, one of my co-workers was a former missionary to Liberia. She gave me my little hand carved set. They got kind of disrespectfully pushed to one side during the book give-away and are currently in a huddle on the corner of the shelf. Maybe they are planning something.


8. Hardest person to buy for? I used to be REALLY good at gift buying. I was the source for ideas in my family and I was brilliant at it (if I do say so myself). (Sorry, that was immodest, but I was.) Alas, lack of funds and distance make me not so good at it any more, though I have my moments. Probably my nephew is hardest because I can't afford any of the things I'd like to give him...


9. Easiest person to buy for? These questions are making me feel all Grinchy. Everyone would be easy to buy for if I had some funds. And it isn't that I'd necessarily spend a fortune, I just don't have anything much to spend. What I do buy, I try to buy from places like the Hunger Site at Greater Good.com, so that what I spend also gives 25 cups of food to people who are truly in need. That doesn't answer the question, but... Maybe the answer is "myself." (How awful and Scroogy is that?)


10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? No such thing. (Well, there probably is, but I don't remember it and I love that someone even thinks of me. That's the real gift, isn't it?)


11. Mail or email Christmas cards? Email these days with a few snail mail cards for those I can't email.


12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Well, hard to say. The old Alistair Sim "A Christmas Carol," is one... and of course "It's a Wonderful Life." And I have to admit that I like "The Santa Claus" with Tim Allen.


13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? varies


14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? I may have passed things on, but I don't think I've ever given something as though it was anythong but passed on. I think it's better to give something to someone else if you think they'd like it, than to stick it in a closet, though.


15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? cookies... especially the kind my mother made, though since she is long gone, I don't get those any more and am not ambitious enough to make them on my own. I should add that my niece Cindy bakes very fine cookies - as good or almost as good (subjective emotion here - I helped my mother make her cookies) my mother's. Some years she even sends me some.


16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored... and blinking if I get my way, though I like a mix of flashing and solid so there's always something lit.


17. Favorite Christmas song? I always have a hard time with favorite anythings. There are so many. Among my favorites are some lesser known carols... "Rise Up Shepherd and Foller," is beautiful. "Oh Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel," "Angels We Have Heard on High,"... heck... most all of them...


18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? home, obviously, since I never leave.


19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen, Dancer, Dasher, Comet... guess not... is there one called Vixen? (probably not).


20. Angel on the tree top or a star? To be honest, I'm not that big on tree toppers. My friend Dan just brought me a pretty angel for the top of my tiny tree. I hope I don't hurt Dan's feelings, but I think I'm just going to have her stand in front of it and keep the Christmas moose company. She looks pretty there and Moose gets lonely fending off the 4-legged Angel. Although, guess who knocked the tree off the desk last night. Not Angel, not Tara Grace. Me. Sigh.


21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Well, it's kind of a non-issue these days since I am all there is for Christmas and I usually know what I've given myself, but traditionally, growing up we opened one on Christmas Eve and the rest Christmas morning.
.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Commercialism.


23. What I love most about Christmas? I love the music. I love giving gifts. I love the smells and colors and the general spirit of good cheer attached to the idea of Christmas, if not it's execution. But most of all, I love the music.


and my two added questions...


24. What do YOU most want for Christmas this year? Well, I could say world peace and financial well-being for all people throughout the world and joy and peaceful well-being for all my real and cyber-friends (and I do wish those things)... But... on the more crass and venal side... Besides a big check from Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, I really want a new TV.


25. Any last thoughts? Yes... I wish you all Peace and Joy in the holiday season and always. Thank you for visiting my blog, for your encouragement and support.

Nothing Much

Don't have anything much to say today and the doodles prompt from OSI has left me doodle-less and idealess, so... here is a little video of our president-elect and some pictures. Anybody who is really bored can read my serial short story which starts here.

Guess I do have one thing to say. My friend Ellie Sarty is a really gifted singer/songwriter. She just released a new album called Constant as the Sun. Her first album - Top of the Food Chain - is available at Amazon.com. You can hear clips there and the separate songs can be downloaded for MP3. A couple of her songs were featured in a Documentary called Peaceable Kingdom along with songs by Moby and others. Everything Ellie does is geared towards animal rescue and education about humane living and the procedes from both of her albums go towards that end. Great holiday gift.... I wish I had access to a good graphic of her new CD's cover. My friend Rosalie did it and it's beautiful.

Shannon Dermody took this picture of Tara Grace

I took this one of Angel pretending not to be chewing the tree.

Have a great day!

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 42

This is week 42 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works. I do apologize for the "rhubarb" thing. I tried not put it onto the list but I just couldn't stop myself. I have no idea what the actual history of it is, but my brother and I used to walk around saying that when we were kids and for some reason I have always thought it extremely funny. But still, I'm sorry you all had to deal with it this week. My apologies.

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: think the rain’ll hurt the rhubarb?, B Vitamins, credit card, jolly, angels, mouse, three ring circus, haiku, sponge, copper Mini Challenge: compulsive, trunk, African violets, curiosity, UFO

Here's my ten-word offering for this week:

Though it wasn’t a word commonly used except in regard to Santa Claus, Amanda Jones was, simply put, jolly. She loved life and she loved laughing. She had curly copper red hair, laughing green eyes and a smile that flashed easily and often. Sitting at the computer, she thought about the three ring circus of her daily life and rejoiced in it. Her children were by no means angels, but she took her B vitamins regularly, didn’t worry too much about keeping the house tidy and found ways to keep her creative juices going while the kids were at school. Thank god for her computer and the blogosphere. She quickly logged on and paid her credit card bill and then moved on to a haiku challenge. Use the two assigned words in a poem or poems. She’d already taken care of rhubarb:

Childhood silliness

Think the rain’ll hurt the rhubarb?

Who knows what it means

The second word was proving to be a challenge… She sat absent-mindedly spinning the mouse with her right hand waiting for inspiration. And then it came:

Choose the life you want

Some focus on grief and pain

I will sponge up joy

Life is good, she thought, posting her poems. Maybe I’ll even do some cleaning today.

And here's my mini challenge:

As she watered her African Violets, Sandy compulsively peered out the window, curiosity overcoming whatever fear she had. She could no longer pretend that the UFO had been a figment of her imagination. It was sitting in her yard and the strange being heading towards her front door – he or she looked rather like a tree trunk on legs - was certainly not a Jehovah’s Witness. “Oh my,” she thought, “It’s going to be an interesting day.”

And for the mega challenge:

Harvard J. Mouse nibbled on a B-Vitamin and pondered the wisdom of working for a travelling three ring circus. Compulsive curiosity had gotten him into this mess… that and the fact that he had been born looking like something that came off a UFO, but he wondered some days if it hadn’t been a mistake. Looking at his massive credit card bill, he felt seriously depressed. He would not so much mind paying for the exquisite porcelain statue of Santa and his 10 jolly elves, had Copper his beloved cat, not felt the need to smash them to smithereens within seconds of their arrival in their little RV. “Stay away from those African Violets,” he screamed as the aforementioned cat – no angel ( indeed he was prone to destroy everything within reach and reach everything no matter how hard Harvard tried to secure its safety) - was making an effort to do some pruning. The only way anything was safe was if he put it in the big trunk which rather defeated the joy of having it. But when he wasn’t being naughty (it did happen), Copper was a master hugger and his deep rumbling purr was a comfort against the loneliness of moving from one strange place to another. Without thinking about it, Harvard picked up a sponge and efficiently cleaned up the cat’s latest mess. Today, gloom and loneliness seemed to be overwhelming him. And then his eye fell upon a gift he had received from a friend from the blogosphere. It was a small self-illustrated book of haiku entitled, THINK THE RAIN’LL HURT THE RHUBARB. Just looking at it and thinking about Amanda Jones lifted his gloom. He was looking forward to meeting her when the circus got to LA in a few months.

~~~~~~~~~~~

This week's vanity wordzzle used the words: technology, moonbeam, cork, light switch, birdcage, geisha, museum, alert

"I call it Moonbeam Technology," Fred Feldspar exclaimed ecstatically, his pride of inventorship literally glowing from him. Only the beautiful young Geisha standing beside him showed any signs of alertness. "Ah," she intoned earnestly, "and what does it do, Feldspar-san?" "Why, it doesn't do anything, Kyoko honey, it just is. That's why it's moonbeam; it's unconscious technology, like, say, the way the sound of a cork popping might invoke memories of your drunken father or fancy bird cage could mean any one of a number of things. In a museum, it could be a work of art, but even there if it were empty it could symbolize or invoke feelings of freedom or death or captivity depending on what you bring to it. So, Moonbeam Technology is anything which acts as a kind of a light switch into the subtler regions of the mind, into the unconscious. Get it?" Kyoko nodded sweetly and reminded herself that not all her days would be like this. "Ah so, Feldspar-san. Moonbeam Technology. Very unusual." Feldspar beamed joyfully. He had been heard.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: Horny as a toad, Frankenstein’s sister, Greeks bearing gifts, Holiday, Cheese grater, Gridlock, Drip dry, Coffin maker, movie mogul, Turkish coffee

Mini Challenge: prenuptial agreement, The purple cow just hated the orange cat, potato chips, sari, Hammer and nails

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

Skywatch Friday

It's been quite a while since I participated in Skywatch Friday: Between politics and other things, I just didn't feel I could do my part visiting others. I didn't stop taking pictures of the sky, just posting them. Die hard cloud/sky lovers can see all the ones I didn't post here. For today, I probably should have just posted the December 1st shots which are at the lower half of the post, but I had so many old November shots too... This is only late November. And I could have posted all of September. Count yourselves lucky I stopped here. Looking forward to everyone else's skies from around the world.




















On December 1st, the sky just would not stop giving and my camera finally agreed to pick up the color behind my neighbor's trees something it has been refusing to do most days.