Lucky Day

I’ve been away too long. There is no excuse (Facebook) but I’ll try this cover story. I really have been writing, only for publication and competition. And then there’s Facebook.  Both are true, but let me jump in with both feet to describe my lucky day.

My grocery store, Publix, advertises “Where Shopping is a Pleasure.” Picking unblemished tomatoes, comparing ingredients and having to choose protein from refrigerated animal parts is not my idea of  pleasure. Publix truly has found a way to elevate the experience. Mostly it’s the employees. They own the company with their stock purchases, so perhaps that’s part of the reason. Anyway, props to one of my favorite stores.

Last week I intended to buy a $1 scratch-off ticket, but the smallest in the machine was $2, so I sprung for another dollar. Won $4, and today bought two of those tickets, so perhaps the luck started last week. It continued today. Gallon jugs of tea were BOGO (buy one get one free) so I bought two though I needed only one. At the checkout a beautiful young woman had only one jug. She told the checker that’s all she needed. I said, “Me, too, but I got two anyway.” She put one of mine with hers and paid then gave mine back. A bagger returned the one I didn’t need. Free tea! $2.49 in the pocket along with the $10 in coupons I brought. I promised the random-act-of-kindness lady I would pay it forward.

Before I left, the checker offered me a $10 coupon to use on a product later. Someone left it with him.

Leaving the store I remember where I’m parked, right in front of the store, the first space. There are two handicapped spaces there, but this ones comes first. Has it always, or was that just for today? You know what I’m going to do now? Grab my lucky penny and scratch off those two tickets. Now what will I do with $30,000? Ummmmm

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Dick & Jane & the New Year

I advance my calendar every day, but none is so satisfying as when we go from December 31^st to January 1^st. I swing that magnetic ball on a string slowly back to the beginning – January, and place the other ball on “1.”  It begins its 365 day trek all over again.

I gave away the operating method of the calendar above, I’m sure, but you would be surprised how many look at it and ask, “How does it operate?” In a technological world this calendar is the lowest of low tech. Perhaps its futuristic design tricks you into believing there must be some mysterious way it moves through the year. No. Just me.

At this lame attempt at a New Year’s blog, I’ll add one story that always comes to mind this time each year. “Dick & Jane” readers were how I learned to read many years ago. The only story I remember was about a character named Nancy. She was one of the gang in her neighborhood and I was as upset as her friends when Nancy announced she was moving. The friends were upset to see her go and threw a beautiful going away party for her. The following day the moving truck backs up to Nancy’s house and loads everything as her friends watch with sad faces. Then it drives two doors down on the same block and carries it all into her new home.

I’ll never forget the feeling of relief, though I realized Nancy had taken advantage of her friends a little. Everyone had enjoyed a wonderful party and good wishes among friends, the move had come and gone, and nothing important was going to change all that much—kind of like the new year. Have a happy one and visit me often in the same old neighborhood.

Read Full Post »

Five Days of Christmas Prayers

I urge you to read the Five Days of Christmas Prayers from a favorite blogger. If these don’t capture your feelings, you are out of the mainstream.  Prayer #4 brings you down to earth, while #5 puts it all in prospective. (I realize there are two #4’s. I am referring to the one on Dec. 25th.)

http://cheles.wordpress.com/

Read Full Post »

The Real Thing

I’m beginning to feel I am frittering (or twittering) my life away and missing the real parts, like this blog. Yes, real! This page is my anchor and never far from my heart, but don’t we all slight the important things and people sometimes? Recently I’ve been taking part in actual physical interaction with three-dimensional human beings, yet feeling the guilt of slighting the also-real connections here at my fingertips. You know what I mean. I know you do. You are the ones who don’t dismiss the crazy thoughts that pop into my head during the day. You have them too. You don’t blow me off as the crazy lady with the cats. We are all digging for those special thoughts and being patient with each other as we try the lesser ones on for size.

We are American Idol without Simon Cowell. We deal not in music, but words and we all hold them dear and respect each others’ forays into new arrangements that bring out our spirits. I suspect you feel this way or you wouldn’t be here. And I hope you’ll keep coming because I may not have been writing a lot here lately, but I’m filling a notebook with fragments. Some have promise, some belong in the trash, others are lost to my illegible hand. Somewhere in there, though, I hope is a thought worthy of expansion and worthy of your time. Thanks for hanging in there and sharing your thoughts with me. Even in the winter funk many of you are tickling my funny bone and touching my heart. This is a good, real place to be. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Read Full Post »

Plagiarism

When someone searches for “story on magic carpet – about 2,000 words” I must suspect the possibility that they intend to pilfer another’s words for a class assignment. Not my words, please. I reserve all rights to everything written on this blog and all pictures posted. Kindly do your own work and learn something.

Read Full Post »

Honest Scrap – Trust Me

Amurin over at Stop & Wander tagged me with an Honest Scrap award. I am honored. Of course, maybe I fooled her. Maybe I am really a deranged young man living in a cabin in the north woods, accumulating fertilizer and poetry, and bumping into Bigfoot every once in a while. Ah well. Here goes.

When you get the Honest Scrap award for your honest crap, you are meant to grace your readers with 10 honest things about yourself, and then pass on the award to other blog friends who write honestly and truly about themselves and events in their life.

At this point the blank white screen is imprinting itself on my brain, but I’ll try.

1. In my family honesty was the Holy Grail. Lies were not permitted and the word “liar” hurled at anyone or even spoken quietly evoked a stern look or smack. There was nothing worse you could say of a person.
2. It is unbelievably freeing to no longer be a sex symbol.  Just a hint to the C.I.A.: In my invisible woman phase I could be unfailingly helpful to you. Just sayin.
3. I’m not a one-friend person, always ran in groups (not cliques, we weren’t that important) in school.
4. When a child, I hoarded all my nickels and pennies and counted them over and over, loving the sound of them flowing back and forth from one hand to the other. I still try to keep most in my hands.
5. In school avoided reading and science. As an adult read constantly and am fascinated by science. What happened to “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree?”
6. My grands are the most amazing four people on the planet, followed closely by their parents plus two, my daughter and her husband.
7. I can live without a lot of things, but not cats. (Well maybe this one blocking the computer screen.)
8. I love, love, love guns. So shoot me.
9. My motto is: Old is not a four-letter word. Senior is what I was in high school.
10. But I refuse to wear “granny panties.” If bikinis were good enough for my pregnant body, they are good enough now.

Now watch out! I’m getting ready to tag someone, and it’s: Corina @Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, C\hele, OmbudsBen, & anyone else who would like to join in.

Read Full Post »

Third Anniversary for Anhinga

Can it be I have been writing this blog since September 3, 2006? Doesn’t seem like it, but the evidence is there. I started not know where or when it would end and I still don’t. It would be hard to pull away from the wonderful, eclectic group of blogger buddies I’ve met through this post, Amuirin, Corina, Ben, Chris, Robin, Lea, Tabbie, Carson, and on an on. I hesitated to begin naming because I know I will delete some of my favorites, but you know who you are. If only my brain were as sharp as it had to be in the picture above from 1957 — not 2006. Don’t want anyone to  think I descended the mountain in Shangri La sometime in the last three years.  By the way, that’s a Burroughs bookkeeping machine. Thank God for tiny computers with electric keyboards.

What I am really trying to say (badly) is thank all of you who read, encourage and challenge me for sticking around. You make it all worthwhile.

Read Full Post »

Prehistoric Bloggers

I began blogging in the early sixties. You read that right. That revelation occurred to me only today. It is amazing how a word, name or place will pop out of a page and events will come wafting back. The words today were “Lynn, Massachusetts” on Mark Sardella’s blog.

 

I suddenly remembered someone who lives (or lived) there. The Boston Strangler stalked somewhere in that vicinity. She used to talk about it. Her name is lost to the years and this is the first time I had thought of her in over four decades. The mystery person from Lynn was only a voice to me on a tape recorder. An 8-track? I don’t remember, but it is possible. Soon after another nameless voice came to me. This one a woman from Long Beach, California – then another from some western state where he was a radio personality. I was a young mother living in Richmond, Virginia. What did all of us have in common? Writing—entering contests to be precise where we finished jingles, wrote 25-word statements and named things.

 

The early sixties was a fertile time for contests and sweepstakes, which we considered poor stepchildren to what we called “skill contests.” I belonged to the Gold Dominion Contest Club which met at the Richmond Public Library once a month. In my early twenties at the time, the next youngest member was at least twenty years older than I, the oldest in her seventies, but we shared a love of creativity and writing. All had won a lot of prizes. Tempa Blanton had taken advantage of rampant contests after World War II ended and won everything in her kitchen—including the kitchen sink. She said in her youth she was told she looked like Judy Garland. If you squinted your eyes just right, she still did.

 

Oh, back to the early blog——  From a national contest newsletter, I hooked up with contesters from across the country. Soon a tape arrived in the mail. I listened to each tell of their lives and contesting experiences, then added my story and mailed on to the next in line. The tape continued to make its circle for several years with long gaps between arrivals. One day it no longer arrived and I never heard from them again.

 

Could they still be out there? Still contesting, or gone on to other writing, as I have? More important, do they know they might be among the first bloggers on earth? Okay, so it was a round robin tape, but a forerunner of coast to coast communication with strangers, don’t you think?

Read Full Post »

Where I am…

This blog has been neglected and it pains me. Just as remodeling hit a place not quite so frantic my computer crashed. Sharing a computer with my generous husband is not the same as total access where thoughts can travel through my fingers anytime of the day. I am so addicted to this mode of communication. I don’t know whether to apologize or rejoice. Please hang in there and keep checking back. The Calvary in the form of a Computer geek is due tomorrow.

Read Full Post »

Bloggers Call

 I feel as if I am the last one on the end of a telephone game, where we whispered a secret to the person on the left. When the final person announced what he had heard it had no resemblance to the original thought. Through the miracle of the web that should not happen here. A post on Kat’s random thoughts blog told us about a project that will publish a book of blogs with proceeds going to WarChild. WarChild is a UK based charity that helps children from all over the world.This from the blog <a href=”http://peacharse.blogspot.com/2008/02/youre-not-only-one10.html“>Peach</a> should get you going. Remember you have only until February 29^th. Good thing it’s Leap Year. 

Peach gives the following guidelines.

We would like you to submit (to us at bloggersforcharity@yahoo.co.uk) a written piece about something you’ve been through from any aspect of your life that you want to share. It can literally be about anything: your relationships, your past, a road not taken, being a parent, an illness or your regrets etc. We’ve called it “You’re Not The Only One” to reflect the camaraderie of blogging To summarise:

• You must be a blogger with a live blog
• It must be about something you’ve been through, amusing or serious or any style you like.
• You can submit in your blogname and remain anonymous, or not, up to you.
• It can’t be something previously published outside the blogworld, but anything from your blog, or something entirely new, is fine.
• Try to keep below 1500 words.
• You must pimp the book on your site and buy it if you make a submission to be in it!
• Please LINK BACK TO THIS POST to spread the word!
• DEADLINE IS 29th FEBRUARY 2008 for submissions.
• Send your submissions to us at bloggersforcharity@yahoo.co.uk

Read Full Post »