(2025) Come On In…

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite thing to cook?

This may be a repost of last year, but it’ll do. Plus, we’re no longer in that hotel room, so don’t panic!

Since I’m too lazy to look back and find my answer from last year’s prompt, you’ll get a fresh answer, though it won’t be a so called “favorite”… but it’ll still probably make you hungry.

Our room only comes with a microwave, countertop range (two spots to boil or fry something), a glass mixing bowl, one frying pan with a lid that belongs to a smaller pan, and a handful of kitchen utensils, and there’s no cooking going on in here, unless I want every single item we own to smell like our last meal. For everyone’s benefit, I’ll write about what I used to cook, instead.

There was my mother’s homemade chili, hamburger/cornbread casserole, or her lasagna… that lasagna was to die for!

During my children’s young years was the proving ground for my culinary skills, which were quite undervalued and appreciated, in my opinion. While they may offer mixed reviews, I feel quite accomplished in both cooking and baking. In truth, due to the creation of the Easy Bake Oven, my baking is probably the better of the two.

Meal wise, a sure fire winner would be my Brown Sugar Burgers. But only use the good buns, because the cheap kind always fall apart like wet paper! I think that I may have written about a Chicken, Mushroom, and Artichoke Fettuccini Alfredo, with fresh Sourdough Garlic Bread. Oh well, I won’t bore you with the details, but it was really good!

Dessert wise, I’ve been told that my Snickers Cheesecake was better than ‘you know what’, but my personal favorite desert would have to be in the cake department. It’s a homemade pound cake with French Vanilla Cream Cheese frosting, covered in fresh strawberries. The strawberries were sliced and covered in a sprinkling of sugar overnight. I always used the syrupy juice to drizzle across the top of the cake, right before it was sliced!

Hands down, cookies will always be my prize winner, but sometimes we have to remember the rest of all that yummy food. With that being said, I’ve done my part in offering a sincere answer to the prompt, but there are other things I wish to spend my time doing this morning, so I’m off for now…

You didn’t think I would forget the cookies, did you?

Thursday Thoughts…

Thought #1 – What if everyone bought bags of wildflower mix, and just threw them out the window on their way to work every day?

Thought #2 – Why is it so adorable when a baby toots, but when I do it, everyone at the checkout counter gets mad?

Thought #3 – I want to take a sharpie, park myself in the doorway of my local grocery store, and demand all the employees offer up their pay stubs for me to verify. I don’t think that would last long, at all!

Thought #4 – What if all medical professionals had to provide proof of qualification, skillsets, bedside manners, and personal recommendations for each patient they cared for, before we paid our bill?

Thought #5 – If everyone on earth decided to run in the opposite direction of the earths natural rotation, all at the same time, would the earth start spinning the other way? (This was a joke, so don’t start thinking I believe the earth is flat, or anything like that nonsense.)

Thought #6 – If I were to ever have a kitty again, I would want one of those huge Maine Coons, I think. And, I’d teach him to talk so that he could explain why I only get to snuggle him when he feels like it. Why are cats sometimes so rude?

Thought #7 – I can remember dreams from all the way back when I was a small child, and yet, I can’t seem to remember where I last saw the fingernail clippers.

Well, I guess I’m all out of thoughts. But in my defense, it is only 10 in the morning… and I really do want some oatmeal… with raisins… and brown sugar… mmmmmmmm…

Ok, one last thought for this morning… Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, so make sure you enjoy it!

Hugs

Nocturnal Olympics…

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite sports to watch and play?

There are so many activities to choose from when it comes to the Olympics, right?!

Just add a bit of honey to a cup of chamomile tea, and put on your favorite pair of night goggles, and then let the games begin!

There’s Snore Skiing, Dream Car Driving, or Powder Puff Pfootball… ok, that one was reaching a bit.

Well, what about 40 Wink Figure Skating? Or Siesta Skating? No?

Ok, ok… how about Dozing Dragon Dancing? That’s a tough sport to enter though, just saying…

I don’t like to brag, but I’ve actually earned my wings in this sport, so to speak.

If you’ve never tried Catnapping, you really should. It’s the rage, right now!

(I wouldn’t recommend this if you’ve an allergy to the little furballs, though. No worries, because they’ve a competition that’s adjustable for those with kitty boo sensitivities…

There’s even a Bedtime Baking category…

How’d you think I was able to keep up with all these cookies that I bake for you each morning? You better grab one before I roll on them.

Wednesday Words…

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)
Calories41
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 0.47g1%
Saturated Fat 0.08g0%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg0%
Sodium 126mg5%
Total Carbohydrate 6.8g2%
Dietary Fiber 4.3g15%
Total Sugars 0.77g2%
Includes –g Added Sugars–%
Protein 5.3g11%
Vitamin C 17.6mg20%
Vitamin D 0mcg0%
Iron 6.4mg36%
Calcium 244.8mg19%
Potassium 838.8mg18%
Phosphorus 100.8mg8%
*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.

No wonder Popeye was so strong!

Depends on what’s being lottered…

Daily writing prompt
What would you do if you won the lottery?

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…

Yep! If it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it!

Uh Oh! They want another list…

Daily writing prompt
What books do you want to read?

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:

  1. Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
  2. Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
  3. Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hannard
  4. All of C.S. Lewis’s work
  5. All of the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke
  6. The entire Redwall series by Brian Jacques
  7. 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?

Monday Messages…

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).

Common exceptions (memorize these!)

  • weird, seize, leisure, height, science, glacier, caffeine, protein.

Why it’s not a perfect rule

  • 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…

Oatmeal cookies, of course!

(2024) Hoomans Don’t Make No Sense At All…

Bloganuary writing prompt
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

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 Pugalini
Ghost and Ash

Here, I need a cookie, so you better have one too…

Wednesday Words…

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.

God Bless you, Eustace, my valiant steed!

Let this leg of our journey begin…

His name is my name too…

Daily writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

First things first…

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!

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