I know that you may call foul on this answer because my body could easily produce a baby free of charge, technically!
You may also argue that the price of a baby is spread out over the childs’ life, not actually having a singular price tag!
So!
It’s my answer anyway, because my children were more costly, and more valuable than anything I’ve ever purchased. They also have a much greater chance of getting to the gates of heaven than my car or bank account. I believe in solid investments in this regard…
I almost shared a teething biscuit for this mornings prompt… don’t judge… they tasted good!
Then I spied this Egg Cheese and Bacon Breakfast Biscuit and went for this instead…
For the first time, since I began writing on this site, I am stumped!
I am pretty sure I remarked just the other day that I mostly watch pre-recorded old time movies. Granted, I am well aware of what a Podcast is, in honesty, I am unable to jump to anything specifically that I regularly watch.
I do watch a game streaming channel, but I think that may be different.
If I am listening without watching, it is music that I am in tune with, not someone talking.
Back when my husband and I lived in our Tractor Trailer, we listened to Audio Books for hours at a time while driving across the states. That was a blast! We listened to everything from futuristic Sci Fi adventures, to going all the way back in imaginary time to The Clan of the Cave Bear and the rest of the series by Jean M. Auel.
I’ll be honest in saying that if I’m going to be involved regularly with any type of Podcast, it’s going to by my own. I already do my own Audio so naturally it may lead me to doing something on the good ole U Tooooooob. Like how I did that? Oh well, don’t judge! I’m only half way through my first cup of coffee.
If I’m all over the place with this one today, we’ll give all the credit to the Prompt! If they can’t even send everyone the same prompt question anymore… well then I can answer any question I want, really!
Here, I’m leaving several different selections of morning treats, as it may look different depending on if you are using your computer, tablet, or smart phone…
It has become painfully obvious that our friendly neighborhood prompt is waaaaayyyyy overdue for a vacation! It feels a bit like a Trifecta of fragmented questions.
I will once again tackle these odd, open ended, and multiple directional questions that leave us to guess what the heck the question actually is.
It makes for some interesting ideas about my favorite things… I now have to decide if I am supposed to pick a school, pick a time period in all of my 16 years of schooling, and/or pick a favorite subject in any one of a large number of educational establishments. Don’t forget that we also have to decide what can be construed as a subject… to an emotional middle schooler. Was it my favorite subject back then, or is it the way I feel now? See what I mean?
Perhaps this is the wise secret that is held by the Prompt Genie… designing questions made to entice the minds of many many writers… many many readers… and many many different lives and perspectives. I choose to think along these lines, so as to stretch my outside of the box way of thinking, and also my writing.
So, in only my fashion, I am going to dive in and give it a go… are ya with me? I know you are cause I always leave goodies at the end… not sorry!
Elementary School was not the easiest for me, as my family practiced a religion forbidding the celebrating of any holidays. Because of this, we were ostracized in every possible way so I spent most of my time at recess riding a pretend horse on the fence line with my jump rope. Being sent to another room for the flag ceremony each morning was no fun… being sent home from every party or celebration was no fun… and being bullied and beaten by other children who didn’t know better was no fun. BUT… I had one friend!
Her name was Autumn… and she had the prettiest long red hair and a blanket of freckles across her pretty face… she was my favorite subject in elementary. I cannot remember her face exactly any longer, but I do remember that she always came and sought me out during recess, to ride horses with me at the fence line and share lunch together. My favorite author back then was Louis Lamour and my hero was John Wayne.
Middle School was right about the time I lived either on the streets or in protective custody. From this time forward, my journey was rough and school was a place I rarely turned up, and when I did it would be in a new town, and/or county. The down side to moving me around for my own safety, was that the state never left me in one place long enough to take any quarterly exams and gather any credits towards completing my education. None of the foster homes I stayed in ever focused on my schooling at all! The only place I felt happy was in the schools libraries… they all smelled the same… books! My favorites came from Beverly Cleary, and I shall be forever brave thanks to ALL the Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys.
High School was quite literally 4 years of classes shoved into only 2… my Junior and Senior year. In order to graduate with my proper age class, I went before the school board with my foster mom, and they waived all my elective credits if I could fulfill all of my required credits before graduation. I did… though I was most often high… very into my current boyfriend… and by now, I was really really mad at the world. In honesty, all I can remember is MTV, getting hammered, hooking up, and getting high. I still graduated with an accumulated GPA of 3.94. I have no idea how I did that… lol!
College was more or less a basic Associate of Arts degree, but it did not come until after three children were born into my world. I guess I could claim that as an educational institution, and say that my three kids were my favorite subject… but that would be too easy. While in college, I found myself taking a series of Cultural Anthropology classes to fulfill my humanities section of required credits. I can say hands down that I could soooooooooooooo be an anthropologist if I was made of money or sponsors. But alas, it was not to be… too many babies along with all their toys, to stuff into my travel luggage.
Now that I have regaled you with all my educational travels, it seems pretty clear that my favorite subjects have been, are, and most likely, will continue to be reading and writing… anything and everything!
We all find ourselves in front of the fruit and vegetable department at the grocery store, at one time or another, and we want to gather our edible produce with as few blemishes as possible… as well as seeking the best flavor, smell, color and value. No one likes to get home and find a damaged apple in the bag, or maybe a damaged cantaloupe.
My point is, we take time to pick and sort until we find what we want to spend our hard earned money purchasing.
I guess I try to do this with my screen time. It is not as easy as said though, because sometimes it takes a good bit before I realize that what I am watching is wasting my time.
For those who are here reading, as well as myself, we all write blogs and spend a great deal of time in front of our screens, so our time is precious to us.
In all honesty, the biggest change I made was removing comercials from what I watch. When I want to watch a movie, I want my movie to play for an hour and a half, not 50 minutes of my show mixed with 40 minutes of suggested online shopping, therapy, or a new pill on the market… I am so glad my writing doesn’t come with some of the side effects of things like Potato Chips that may or may not make you leak!
I guess what I am saying is that I do my best to use my screen time for my benefit, get what I need done, and stay current on things without loosing hours watching things that waste my precious time …
Over the last year of my journey to healing, I discovered a very strong correlation between what I was spending my time watching, and my anxiety and/or panic attacks… strange, I know.
So I stopped watching most regular television, and chose to seriously police my time on most media platforms, aside from here at WordPress.
The only thing we have available for watching is Roku and YouTube, so for the most part I watch DIY things, and old ridiculously silly black and white movies. In honesty, I read more than watch things anymore these days… which is saying something since one eye barely works right at the moment.
Anyways, this was way more information than you really wanted to know about how this girl Screens…
God Bless you WordPress, for giving out a prompt that brought me right to this picture only moments after reading the question.
Without a doubt, if I could go back and relive any time in my past, it would be my Baby Days…
What I would give to go back and experience, once again, those times of bonding, nursing, caring for, and watching those first milestones of my baby girls.
It was the first two years of each baby that I wish I could bottle and save within an old worn Hope Chest. I always wanted one at the end of my bed, but it would need to be an old worn one, and not a newly made piece. It should look like it had seen some battles and tough times, but withstood it all just to sit and hold my treasures.
On rainy days I could sit and go back through all my favorite memories that were stashed away for safe keeping. Special baby blankets I had made while waiting for each of my girls birth, their first pair of baby booties, and even favorite first books or teething rings with chew marks still visible. All I have now is a blue plastic tote with the few remnants salvaged from things… it works!
If it were possible I would go back to a time when my babies needed me, loved everything about me, and couldn’t stand to be parted from my breast.
I know deep down in their hearts, my daughters love me… they just don’t really want or need me anymore… it is what it is… I get it!
That was why I wrote all of those Do You Remember letters… one day they will want to look back and remember… one day, and for that day I will trust in God.
Until we meet again, they and I, there will always be those Baby Days…
I find it amazing that even to this day, leopards have spots… they are born with them, just like they were in history long ago… spots are still there… fascinating!
Two of which is the fact that we just had a question that asked if what historical events we remembered. I noticed a very somber atmosphere the entire day out on the feed. We are all pretty friggin miserable with the way of things in our world right now… forget about rehashing historical blunders and kerfuffles, and not too many seemed overly eager to dive in and answer that prompt.
The word Fascinating can be interpreted loosely in the heart of a man… it just depends upon which man is looking at the history!
Thirdly, I find it rather sobering that even today, we really don’t change… not really. Maybe on the surface we act as if we have risen above our own ignorance of mind or heart… but inside, it is easy to hide things that linger… like hatred, jealousy, deceit, malice. Similar to a leopard, I think we will always keep our spots… they just blend in neatly beneath our fur!
WordPress could do better for us all perhaps, if they posed the prompt question as, “What historical events did we as humanity learn from and change for the better”? Maybe lead with that next time…
Here, have a cookie shaped like a Blueberry Muffin…
One would think that being able to give a simple sincere “I’m Sorry”, would be easy peezy! Not nowadays!
When I was growing up, I learned through grown ups and public school, how I was supposed to apologize when I gave offense. Just say you are sorry and try not to repeat the negative behavior.
Gone are those days, I fear…
Now, when someone offends another, they make every effort to give an extensive excuse as to why they did or said whatever it was that was so bad, and push the blame onto another… most often the one who was offended!
If anything comes out of our mouth after the words “I’m Sorry”, often it reflects that we are not really sorry for the offense, but rather, sorry that we have to say we are sorry… if you get my drift.
It would be so refreshing if we could begin, once again, teaching our children to just say I’m sorry when they err in some way. If they can see that making mistakes is human, and no one is perfect… perhaps they would grow up in a society where they can take ownership of their own actions… the good, the bad, and the ugly.
We grown adults need to step up and make a better effort to instill the things our young ones need to survive this life. When it comes to teaching the art of “I’m Sorry”, we simply have to practice it… in front of our kids! There is absolutely nothing better to do, as a grown adult parent, than to say we’re sorry when we mess up with our kids… show them that we too mess up, and can be brave enough to admit our error.
While I cannot say I wish to think back on my own childhood to answer this prompt, I will refer to my own children when they were little, as those are much happier examples.
One of the best things about being a child at heart, I think, is the ability to have such a vivid imagination… about everything… they were so gullible!
I had more fun playing tricks and practical jokes on my girls… hey, don’t judge! As a parent, we come to understand very early on that the job is a thankless one, and any form of good hearted fun that brings us pleasure, is worth the effort!
I did everything from planting fake Magic Christmas trees, to get them to clean their rooms, to convincing my youngest daughter that if she stood in front of the Christmas tree and sang “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”, she would get a very special visit from both Santa Mouse AND the Tooth Fairy… she actually sang it like three or four times before going to bed just to make sure she had done enough. When they got up the next morning to open stockings, there was a small ribbon on the front of the tree, and when she pulled it, a whole string of tiny toys and treats emerged from within the branches of the tree, where I had stashed them.
Priceless!!!
I guess that’s the sort of stuff that came to mind when I saw the prompt. It’ll have to do…
You’ll have to bake em real quick… and add your own m&ms… it was too early for all that effort, as I would rather just sit her and sip my coffee while giggling about the time we made the kids believe that the Easter Bunny had been in the house while we slept.
I have a toilet needs fixing, a car that won’t run, and currently no heat… so I am feeling pretty practical at the moment.
I am being fully serious, as a matter of fact, because I have a hard time dealing with an imaginary friend, when my toilet isn’t working well… this is not the Four Seasons we’re running here, it’s an RV!
Besides, there really isn’t anything that a Genie can do to really fix anything. Haven’t we all seen enough movies about these guys to know that it always ends up messy. What we thought we wanted didn’t end up with the ending we had first imagined.
You know I will end up talking about Jesus here… this IS me we are talking about. I will just say that He is the only one I have ever had the opportunity to read or hear about that did wondrous things… water into wine, feeding the five thousand, healing the sick, and bringing the dead back to life… it is hard for me to take anyone else serious in the magic department.
I am now preparing to get up and do the Blanket Burrito Shuffle over to my very magic bean processor and enjoy some very magic coffee, so I will share some… along with some warm accoutrements for us all to enjoy on this brisk Tuesday Mornin…
Journey With Me! 