Category: Poetry

The journey is arduous, but rewarding!

I’m nearly at the end of my first edit run through, and am thrilled with how well things are going. With any luck, I’ll be starting my Audio recordings very soon.

While I realize that it will take substantially longer to work through the book that second run, I know it’s due to the effort it takes to make a perfect audio recording. Try having a full chapter read through, without the sound of either a garbage truck, rude driver, or loud mouth neighbors sharing the spotlight… sheesh!

No worries though…

I’m chomping at the bit, to get this first volume finished and buttoned up!

Volume two has already begun invading my dreams…

HR called Eustace in this morning… for a “Random” drug test!

Personally, I don’t think there was anything random about it, at all! Rumors have been circulating around the cubicles, if you know what I mean.

I heard mention of someone finding a shopping cart underneath the CEO’s Bentley, down in the car park. I was down there during that race, by the way… and, in fact, there were no cars damaged!

Then there was the incident in the elevator, with the hairbrush, but I highly doubt that Eustace would just smack someone with a brush… besides, there were far too many people in the elevator, than should have been, in the first place! Maybe, the someone who started the rumor, whose name starts with a L and ends with an A (*is*), shouldn’t have pushed her way to the front of the line!

What I think made Corporate step in, was the Hairy Hump Day Margarita debacle!

Someone ran to HR and tattled that Eustace had brought alcohol into the staff break room, which was a complete farce! First of all, they were Mocktails… I know this because I brought the ingredients, aside from the camel hair. Even if there had been alcohol in the drinks, Eustace would never have drank them.

Trust me… the test will come back just fine! Eustace wouldn’t think of drinking a beverage filled with his own hair… EWWW… Gross!!!

As many of my readers already know, I’ve made friends with the squirrels that inhabit my local park. I make a point to walk through it’s paths each day, on my way to and from the river.

Over the entire summer, I’ve had to play dodge ball with construction workers and machinery, in and around both my park and the river I walk along.

I’ll admit that it’s been rather intrusive and inconvenient, for me personally… but, I think it’s been much worse for the small woodland creatures that live in the park, and along the river.

Don’t get me wrong… The roadwork and piping have to be done! It will be for the betterment of the park and community, when the work is completed, which is nearly done. The thing that has been bothering me, for some time now is this… nearly all my squirrels are gone!!!

At the beginning of summer we bought a bag of peanuts for my friends at the park, but if it weren’t for the cheeky squirrel that has adopted my husband, that bag would still be sitting there full of nuts. Even on the rare occasion that I might encounter a squirrel, they are so frightened and distrustful that they won’t even accept the peanuts I offer.

When I sought answers from House Acorn, I discovered that the entire royal house had simply vanished! The entirety of all the Acorn Kingdom seemed to have moved away, in a hurry. I was shocked to find that their Royal Tree has been square in the middle of the massive pipe bridge, being placed across the river! No wonder they moved!

Aside from being saddened that the Royal Tree was standing empty of squirrels, I was shocked to think that the entire valley has apparently been evacuated. Like I said, what few squirrels that have remained in the valley, refuse to have anything to do with humans right now, so I can’t even enquire about the whereabouts of Squagon’s family.

You see, we’ve not had any word from Squagon’s parents for some time now, causing much confusion and hurt, within the heart of my tiny friend. Even if I try to say that I understand how he must feel, it would make the little one feel no better! All that Squagon knows is that his family never visits, never writes to him, and refuses to call him their own. Even with all that hurt inside his heart, the sweet babe keeps asking that I find out if THEY are alright! I swear, he’s the most compassionate little squirrel I’ve ever known… and I happen to know a good many squirrels, thank you very much!

So, on behalf of young Squagon, I shall do my due diligence in finding out any information about the whereabouts of his kin. While the few remaining squirrels in the park are of no help to me, there are others…

With the park being empty of squirrels, for the most part, a large community of Canadian Geese have been summering in one of the back fields. Also, for some time now, there’ve been a group of these Ravens that constantly follow behind me, as I head for the river.

Usually, I’ll keep my peanuts for the squirrels, until I reach the end of the park. If they haven’t claimed them by then, I’ll toss some of the peanuts into the grass for the Raven Boys, as I’ve dubbed them.

Aside from feeling like I’m being stalked all through the park, the boys are quite respectful, waiting patiently for me to reward them at the end of our walk together.

In the morning, I think I shall fill my pockets with some of my best peanuts and put on my journalist hat. I’m going to find out what happened, here within Acorn Valley… and discover what has become of House Acorn!

Wish me luck!

I got to thinking about words and how we use them, nowadays. Why would I be thinking about this? Well, I am Wiwohka the Woodsy Wordpecker… am I not?!

Anyway, I got to thinking about the word “Love”, from how we define it, to how we often employ its use. I decided to stay away from the “why” part of this, as it is a slippery slope… at best!

I went onto Google in search of the word’s definition, and it’s ridiculous how much fodder keeps being added into many of our dictionaries, these days.

Most of what I found were different examples of love, in sentence form. I ended up staying with Oxford’s actual breakdown.

The Oxford definition for the noun portion of the words meaning, is this: an intense feeling of deep affection.

The verb meaning is: to feel deep affection for (someone).

I’m not kidding, people, this is the first line for both forms of the words meaning, out of the Oxford Dictionary! The only difference is the word feel, which is supposed to satisfy us as an action… that’s it!

Ok, well then… let’s look up the word affection, which is in both descriptions.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, affection is defined as this:

a feeling of liking for a person or place: She felt no affection for the child. He had a deep affection for his aunt.

Again with that “feel” word!

There sure does seem to be a whole lot of emotions running around, but not much action to accompany them, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed.

Let’s try a different tack! What about the definition of friend, which is often associated with the word love.

Again, Oxford describes the word Friend as both a noun and a verb, just like it did for the word love.

The noun portion is this:

“a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.”

Here we go, right back to the word affection.

The verb form of friend:

“add (someone) to a list of contacts associated with a social networking website. “I am friended by 29 people who I have not friended back”

Really?! I’m not even making this stuff up!

I have come to believe that if we leave LOVE in the hands of scholars and media platform buttons, we are doomed!

In all of my crazy brain writing this morning, you might be asking yourselves “what’s love got to do with any of this?”

In my dictionary battles, I can clearly see Love being minimalized into nothing more than a feeling… how sad!

It seems that when we enact the verbal form of Love, first, we discover that the noun form of the word has become so so so much more than just feelings!

If it weren’t, the outcome of the world’s future would be quite unthinkable… in my opinion, that is.