I am a work in progress, disclaimers out the wazoo, and few that I can truly call ones who love me for me. Don't know why and I am done trying to figure it out or care...I am flawed, loud, a force of nature, but underneath there is a soul...I hope you take the time to see her.
According to Eustace, I should be eating more spinach. In truth, I think we all should!
Lately I’ve been craving it something fierce. I suppose that I probably look and feel a great deal like Olive Oil did, from that old Saturday morning cartoon!
Out of curiosity over my severe cravings, Eustace and I got to reading some things about natural foods.
Check this out! I clipped this off a nutrition calculator:
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size
1 cup (180g)
Calories
41
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 0.47g
1%
Saturated Fat 0.08g
0%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg
0%
Sodium 126mg
5%
Total Carbohydrate 6.8g
2%
Dietary Fiber 4.3g
15%
Total Sugars 0.77g
2%
Includes –g Added Sugars
–%
Protein 5.3g
11%
Vitamin C 17.6mg
20%
Vitamin D 0mcg
0%
Iron 6.4mg
36%
Calcium 244.8mg
19%
Potassium 838.8mg
18%
Phosphorus 100.8mg
8%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
While most may assume the lottery to mean cash money, there are a number of other possibilities…
Such as peanuts! Why can’t there be a lottery for a lifetime supply of peanuts?
Or flowers, perhaps…
What about a lifetime supply of all the most beautiful spring blooms? Wouldn’t that be heavenly? Well, at least the fragrance would seem sent from above, in my humble opinion.
Then there’s babies…
Ok, so maybe that’s going a bit too far… but you can’t blame a girl for trying!
Now, books as a lottery?
SOLD!!!
Since the likelihood of an All-You-Can-Read book lottery isn’t that high for me, at this moment, how about we settle on a Cookie Lottery…
Honestly, I can come up with a much bigger list of books that I’d like to read again. From what’s currently being published willy nilly, I can’t say that I’ve any list at all!
Why do they ask these kinds of questions, anyway? Personally, I think it feels like they’re just trolling once more, in search of more information to sell to the highest bidder on the market.
However, in keeping with my earlier commitment to make honest efforts in my answers to these repeat prompts, I will leave you with a short, and probably repetitive answer…
Books I’ve read that are worth another go:
Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hannard
All of C.S. Lewis’s work
All of the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke
The entire Redwall series by Brian Jacques
The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien
I’m sure if I thought about it long enough, I could make that list go on for a good while. But, since my tummy is growling for some oatmeal, I shall cut this off, here. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day…
Cookies can be considered a breakfast item, can’t they?
What’s the deal with the whole i before e except after c, song and dance? And, am I the only one who thinks that there’s not a big difference in the word’s pronunciation and meaning if you flippy the little letters around?
So, why did they make that rule, then? I’m going to find out!
Simply because a rule doesn’t make sense doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. Although I think it’s a rather silly rule of the English language, rather than something that makes any real sense, maybe we should just ask Google…
According to the ai generator,
“I before e, except after c, or when sounding like ‘a’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh'” is a popular English spelling mnemonic: use IE (like believe, thief) unless the letters follow a C, where you use EI (receive, ceiling), or when they sound like a long ‘A’ (neighbor, weigh). It’s a useful guideline but has exceptions, so memorizing tricky words like weird, seize, and height is also key.
How it works
IE: In most words with a long ‘e’ sound, ‘i’ comes before ‘e’ (e.g., believe, piece, thief).
CEI: After the letter ‘c’, the order reverses to ‘ei’ (e.g., receive, ceiling, deceit).
EIA: When the sound is like the ‘a’ in neighbor, use ‘ei’ (e.g., neighbor, weigh, vein).
English spelling is inconsistent due to influences from other languages, so this is a guideline, not a strict law.
Nope! I still think it’s more of a confusion than any help! Can’t we just keep things simple?
All this early morning research made me hungry. It’s off to share some oatmeal with Wiwohka. She makes it the best! Oh, don’t think I forgot about you, too…
I suppose if we were able to make our pets understand us, we’d have results landing on both sides of the proverbial coin! In one way it would be great if we could help our pets understand why we do some of the things we do, while on the other hand it might backfire, leading to animal world domination!
I personally don’t think it would be the best idea for us to give our pets any more information about us, as I’m not so sure that it would cause them to love us more than they already do… in fact, it might give them cause to rise up and put us in cages, just because WE pooped on the floor.
With that being said, if I could make animals understand deeper about anything humans have done, are doing, or will be doing sometime in the future… it would be to tell them we’re sorry!
Last year I had to rehome my pug of 4 years, as well as my two cats that I found under a shed when they were tiny. I waited for 3 years to get my pug, loving her ever so much… she was my baby! My sister-in-law found a batch of kittens under her porch, keeping one and handing the other two my way… I hand raised both boys from about 10 days old and I adored them! I had to make the most painful decision, last year, of rehoming all of them due to our situation… it was awful!
I guess that if it were possible, I would want to try to explain my actions, and say how sorry I am!
I pray that my choice was for the animals betterment, but it is still difficult to hold the last memories of letting go. Sometimes, doing the right thing does NOT feel good, yet it is still right! I cannot say for sure what they were feeling throughout the painful process, but if I could communicate with them, this would obviously be the conversation on the forefront of our discussion. What would they say… would they forgive me if they understood… maybe.
The best information to give our pets, in the effort of better understanding about us hoomans, would be the knowledge that we often behave in ways that don’t align with our feelings. Often times, we do the right thing for the wrong reason, while at other times, we do the wrong things for the right reasons… it’s what we do!
It’s not all bad, and I didn’t say ALL people, nor did I say ALL the time… it’s just that sometimes the numbers are stacked against us, that’s all!
There’s no way to know if I’ll ever have flurbies journeying with me again… perhaps, perhaps not! Just as our pets probably don’t plan ahead most of the time, thinking to build contingency plans for difficult situations… I would want them to know that often times, we hoomans don’t either!
Issabella PugaliniGhost and Ash
Here, I need a cookie, so you better have one too…
Eustace has taken it upon himself to watch over me, when it comes to health and nutrition. Watching me waste away has caused the camel to go full military on me!
He ensures that I eat my bowl of oatmeal, though I can no longer afford to put oat milk in, thanks for the good ole State of Washington to not only revoke my food stamps, but also demand that we pay back their overages, lol. Isn’t that a hoot!
Eustace also threw out both the Sucralfate and the Bentol I’d been prescribed to take, as the doctors never took the time to notice that the diagnosis they strapped onto my case (Gastroparesis), is exacerbated by those very medications… again, lol, isn’t that a hoot!!
They won’t even listen to my appeal until mid March, lol, and another hoot given!!!
I have been surviving since last June, on one bowl of oatmeal with a handful of raisins, two tsp of white sugar and one of brown, for my first of only two meals each day. My second is one serving of white rice, one cup frozen peas and carrots, and a 1/4 cup of peanuts if we don’t have 3 oz. of any boneless skinless chicken breast available (thank you again, Washington State). Chicken isn’t cheap anymore, nor is anything else, and my husband has to eat if he’s to finish his degree.
Wait for it, wait for it…. what a hoot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eustace refuses to let me carry on with all the bloody details of this exercise in futility that one calls Government Assistance… he wants to take me to the desert for the rest of this wild ride. I’ve been to the desert before, but this is one I’ve not traveled across.
Thankfully, I’m with my trusty camel. This time, I’ll not be walking through the deadlands without aid… My camel carries our water, our bags… and me! I fear that this is one journey where my own legs have given out. I hadn’t realized til this moment how valuable Eustace is, and has always been, for my survival.
No, this isn’t my baby, and I doubt we share the same name, so let’s not get stuck on the title I just pilfered from a children’s song.
My point is simply this…
They don’t name babies like they used to, if you know what I mean. If you don’t know, let me explain. In days of old, babies were named for family lines, generational connection to our predecessors, and/or strength and stature toward the child’s hopeful future.
Not so, these days…
Some name their babies after favorite anime characters, others choose their favorite cars, movie stars, and/or favorite foods. The best way to tell where we are as a society, is to do a search of popular names, using the phrase, “back in the”, and then fill in whatever generational years you want to see. I would suggest starting with something like “the 1600’s”, and then bump it forward in increments of say, 0ne or two hundred years at a time. It’s entertaining, if nothing else!
Hi, my name is Toni. My mom wanted a boy. She never even bothered to change my middle name… it’s Rae.
Now you understand why I ask to be called Wiwohka. If no one else cared enough for selecting my name, I wanted to make a bit more effort than they did. I think I’m worth it… even if no one else did!
If one wants to answer this prompt adequately, we must first come to a clear understanding of what we consider clutter.
Essentially, the word clutter refers to a bunch of things laying about in a mess. That means that it’s going to look different, depending on whose looking, and in my opinion, isn’t limited to one or two categories.
Since the word clutter is classed as a noun, it has the potential to represent anything from a person, a place, OR a thing! Bearing this in mind, I considered what my tidying up checklist might look like…
Clutter Clean-up Checklist!
Too many people cluttering my doorway… nope… Check!
An overfilled laundry room, with no available working machines… nope… Check!
A library of unread books… nope… check!
A closet full of unused dirty clothes… nope… check!
Cupboards full of old, unused household items, outdated cleaning supplies, and moldy hamburger buns from behind the cabinet… nope… check!
Expired food in the back of the refrigerator… nope… check!
Shelves filled with trinkets, toys, bits and bobs from over the years… nope… check!
The only clutter I’m really dealing with is that of the mind. Stacks of broken dreams, and painful memories, lay strewn along the roadside of the mind. That’s where the real clutter is for most, and it’s far more destructive that a pile of dirty old boots, or an overflowing Tupperware drawer in ones kitchen.
Whether one is referring to physical clutter, or that of the mind, I think that the bible speaks of both…
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21
Oddly enough, sometimes Google’s AI does a fairly decent job of explaining a thing, and today was one of those times…
“Store up treasures in heaven” means to focus on eternal, spiritual values rather than temporary earthly wealth, investing your life, resources, and heart in acts of generosity, faith, and love that have lasting significance, as taught by Jesus in Matthew 6:19-21. It involves shifting your priorities from material accumulation to spiritual riches, knowing that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
I’m a writer, and as a writer I tend to write… with my fingers. My fingers are attached to my hands, which are attached to my arms, which are connected to my body at the shoulders. And, my body holds my noggin, which tries with all it’s might to oversee what the fingers do… that is, write!
My writings are how I communicate with others, within in an online setting. My phone rings from only 4 sources… hubby… my chica… my longtime friend Christine… and the Doctor’s office! For the entire rest of the world out there, my fingers are the only form of communication, giving more light to the cause of why I right so darn much, these days.
In fact, the tougher life gets on me, the more I write! Did you know that while freezing my toenails off, I wrote another children’s book?! Go figure!
Online communications has actually been a Godsend for this ole girl… I used to have to write all this stuff down with a pen and paper, and quite frankly, my hands were really suffering for it. The keyboard has actually allowed me to write at a rate that seems unprecedented, compared to what I was capable of writing before modern technology intervened!
The only downside comes from mankind’s inability to create an autocorrect that functions properly… as many have seen from some of the text massages we’ve all been subjected two. See how I did that… hehe!
One of my favorite things about all this online communication stuff… virtual cookies!
Here is a cookie with zero calories… all the fun without any guilt or unhealthy side effects… perfection! I do love technology when it works in my fingers… I mean favor!
Journey With Me! 