Category Archives: beauty

Daily Prompt – Seven Days

3 Comments

The Daily Prompt today is this – You wake up tomorrow morning to find all your plans have been cancelled for the next seven days and $10,000 on your dresser. Tell us about your week.

This post would have been completely different had there been an extra zero in the dollar amount left on my dresser.  That scenario would have included a well drafted letter to my employer thanking the company for covering my bills for the last ten years.   Or perhaps just a postcard from a beach with a few expletives and a hastily drawn cartoon of me in a hammock with a Margarita in my hand.  I guess the resignation letter would depend on the amount of tequila I had consumed before the writing process began.

Having only $10,000.00 in cash and a week in which to spend it led me in one direction – my mom.  My mother has fallen victim to ill-health over the last few years and is slowly giving away her freedom, piece by piece.  She lost the vision in one of her eyes due to nothing more than simply aging and had to give up driving.  She sometimes feels like a prisoner in her own home until either my brother or I spring her from her cage for a few precious hours of escape.

She wants nothing more than to travel to Niagara Falls and visit the Butterfly Conservatory and that random pile of unlaundered cash on my dresser is just the thing needed to get her there.  Our week would be spent in the best hotel (maybe we’ll get to hook up with The Hook) pampering ourselves as much as possible.  We would tour the Conservatory at a leisurely pace, taking in the beauty that metamorphosis created and watching life breathe in three dimensions.

ButterflyPictureMagicWings(image courtesy of Google)

So…..if anyone has $10,000.00 to spare,  I’ll clear off my dresser and text you the address.

Daily Prompt – No o’s?

28 Comments

The Daily Prompt got me again!!  And I love the challenge of omitting a vowel.   I truly hope you won’t find an “o” in the below paragraph!

There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it. (Feeling really brave? Make it a vowel!)

camera 239

Every day we are ruled by nature.  Weather dictates activities and temperatures mandate apparel.  Climactic shifts are in the near future and spring is imminent.

Winter jackets will be put away, and in exchange, spring ensembles will appear.  Sandals will be the new sneakers.

The white blanket will melt and reveal the buds lying in wait.  Birds will sing their lyrical strains and creatures will saturate the nights with strained lullabies.

Cherished spring – we wait with prescience.

In like a Lion

19 Comments

With a little nudge from the Daily Prompt yesterday, I heeded their request but deviated slightly from their “rules”.  I’m crazy that way.  Remember when you wrote down the first thought you had this morning? Great. Now write a post about it.

Instead of a notebook, I kept my iPhone close and was happy it was readily available to take these shots.  I woke early this morning to take my mom to a doctor’s appointment and as my eyes adjusted on the view beyond my window, my first thought was “are you effing kidding me?” After several days of gloriously warming spring temperatures, the looming month of March morphed into that predictable “in-like-a-lion” and the feline giant roared and spilled its vengeance across the landscape.

morning

There were a few expletives that escaped my lips but as the caffeine began to course through my veins, I calmed down.  The sun struggled to free itself from the grasp of the horizon and cast whimsical hues into the clouds and the day became a little more beautiful.

morning2

Storm clouds have since saddled up and ridden in on that lion.  He is continuing to roar his introduction to the coming month of March and marking his territory with more snow.  After I say my ‘white rabbit’ three times tomorrow morning for the first of the month, I will be wishing for the March days that are more like the lamb.

Who else is ready for spring to arrive?

I get by with a little help from my friends

24 Comments

I have always been a very independent person. Even as a young child I would get angry when people tried to help me with things that were proving difficult for me. I seemed to get the sense, even at that tender stage of my life, that I was somehow failing if I couldn’t do it on my own.

Over the years I have been able to let some of that stubbornness go, not all of it, but enough to allow me to see how a helping hand can smooth the rough edges that I used to cut myself on repeatedly. As individuals, we are porous rocks. We are permeable and sometimes allow too many of the negative things in our life shape the person we become. We have bumps and impurities and we develop jagged edges to protect ourselves from unwanted encounters with anyone outside of our realm of comfort.

As we journey through life, we collect friends much like a beach collects grains of sand.  And akin to those grains of sand, our friends help smooth our rough edges.  They help transform that rough exterior and, with love and compassion, they help us to become more polished by eroding our jagged exterior and finding the beauty underneath.

smooth rock

(image courtesy of Google)

My beach stretches for miles.   The many grains of sand that comprise my shore come in all shapes and sizes and although some stay close to me and some remain on the periphery of my seascape they are all equally important parts of that beach.  I try to take as many long walks as possible along my shorelines and appreciate each grain of friendship in my life.  And though I may not make it to the outer boundaries very often, know that each of you, near or far, have contributed to the beauty of my shoreline.

Aurora Borealis – Trifecta Challenge

42 Comments

The night sky had begun to turn from cobalt blue to the midnight blue she loved so much.  The sun had given up fighting to keep the day alive and she sat on her darkened porch watching the stars dot the sky.  Quickly she slipped inside and began to doctor her martini with a bit of juice from the jar of olives.  She liked them dirty.

If the forecast was correct the bright dancing lights of the aurora would be lighting up the sky and the rippling curtains of greens and pinks would soon be undulating across the upper atmosphere.

She returned to the porch with her drink in hand and pulled a blanket around her legs.  She could see the sea-foam green colors beginning to emerge and the spectral portrait was phenomenal.  Colors intertwined like graceful ballet dancers in a black light theatre.

After only a few short minutes, the colors seemed to dissipate and the night sky lay bare, speckled with only a few stars and the memory of the illusory vision.  She finished her martini and closed her eyes, letting the night creatures lull her to sleep with their soulful songs.

northernlights

(image courtesy of Google)

This post was written for the Trifecta Challenge:  On to the weekly challenge.

DOCTOR (noun)
1

a : an eminent theologian declared a sound expounder of doctrine by the Roman Catholic Church —called also doctor of the church

b : a learned or authoritative teacher

c : a person who has earned one of the highest academic degrees (as a PhD) conferred by a university

d : a person awarded an honorary doctorate (as an LLD or Litt D) by a college or university

2
a : a person skilled or specializing in healing arts; especially :one (as a physician, dentist, or veterinarian) who holds an advanced degree and is licensed to practice

b : medicine man

Please remember:
  • Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.
  • You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.
  • The word itself needs to be included in your response.
  • You may not use a variation of the word; it needs to be exactly as stated above.
  • Only one entry per writer.
  • Trifecta is open to everyone.  Please join us.

Laying in Wait

21 Comments

iphone 019

Spring wanted to escape the clutches of winter,

it was waiting for its turn.

Through the clouds, touching the trees,

the sun had started to burn.

The opaque blue of the February sky

embraced the ball of heat.

Branches stretched to feel its warmth,

longing for a chance to meet.

Buried under mountains of snow,

blades of grass strained under its weight.

Buds of lilacs hidden in their shrouds

longed to achieve their beautiful fate.

But winter in its fit of rage

took hold of the sky again.

Suicidal snowflakes fell

and cloaked where spring had been.

Mercury fell and icicles formed,

the promise of warmth was gone.

Spring would have to lay in wait

to sing its beautiful song.

Draped in his fabric

20 Comments

Another post for Edward Hotspur’s Romantic Monday

blanket-logosmall

he covers me like a blanket

he wraps around my heart

as much as I pull and stretch his fabric

it never falls apart

he drapes over my shoulders

shielding me with his presence

warming every part of my being

comforting me with his essence

I fall into his softness

I feel safety in his shroud

I feel the heat beginning to burn

my murmurs breathed aloud

his touch rubs gently on my skin

every time is like the first

his voice falls like music on my ears

his groan a staccato burst

we lay together, wrapped again

his arms provide the veil

keeping me warm, keeping me safe

his blanket will never fail

 

The Watchers

45 Comments

As I child I would lie in the grass for hours, watching the clouds and their ever-changing patterns to see what images I could find in each collection of vapor that passed by.  It is still something I love to do, but sadly I don’t get to do it very often anymore.

Recently I have begun to notice patterns in the snow, especially the patterns created as that snow clings desperately to the bark of the trees.  The position of the snow and the melted remnants of snow around it created what I saw as a panda bear feeding himself.

panda

This is the image I saw this morning.  The snow pattern on the left made me think of Santa Claus.  It wasn’t until I looked more closely adding the image to this post that I saw the face on the right of what may be a youthful member of the chimpanzee family clinging to the tree.

face

If this was my Rorschach Test, I hope I passed!!  Do you see what I did, or do you see something entirely different?

What’s in a name?

16 Comments

Today’s Daily Prompt ~ brought to you by the makers of ‘what were you thinking’ ~ is this – Explain why you chose your blog’s title and what it means to you.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to choose something a little more mainstream, but when I sat myself down to create a name for my blog, the first person that spoke as a distant voice in my head was my friend Sandra.  She and I went to college together and although she was 10 years my senior, we became fast friends.  After two years of sharing great laughs and torturing our classmates, she moved back to Halifax and I remained in Ontario.

We spent countless hours on the phone and practically wore our fingerprints off spending so much time on our keyboards. When I would ask her what she had been up to, she would always reply, “pontificating on polysyllabic profundities”.  That silly statement that may not have been significant then took on new meaning when Sandra suddenly passed away in 2003 at the age of 43 after succumbing to the flesh-eating disease.   There would be no more pontificating with her.  The polysyllabic profundities were all I had left.

It made absolute sense when coming up with a name for this blog that I would somehow honor her for all of the support and encouragement she gave me in her too-short time on this earth.  I’m sure she still reads over my shoulder and I do hear that all-too-clever advise in my head on occasion.

Here’s lookin’ at you, Kid!!

Something feathered, something blue

15 Comments

It’s February – blah.  I shouldn’t complain too much about the weather since this past weekend was gorgeous, but now it’s Monday and the rain has been falling continually for a couple of hours.  Any of the beauty of yesterday has been washed away and the trees no longer seem to be stretching to reach the sun.  Their branches have resolved to reflect the mood of the weather and are hanging limply, not even attempting to fight the rain that saturates their bark.

I took these pictures on Saturday and wanted to post something uplifting to help me hold the memory of the sun that kissed my cheeks on the weekend and the canvas that the wind created in the sky by using soft bristles to paint the clouds.

camera 053

camera 052

camera 054

camera 055