Prompt Writes: love


A simple drop in a still pond,

unfurling ripples in satin slips

scattering water bugs

and bringing disorder to what was so orderly prior.


This drop,

this sudden onslaught,

welcomed and cherished, ripples ever onward.


I stop.
I consider.
I remember a time before,

way back before,

when it was only water bugs and stillness.


This drop you brought,

tender in its path but often disturbing of the surface -

joyful drop,
painful drop,
heavenly drop,
comforting drop,
adventurous drop.


I watch the pattern unfold.
My heart is glad.
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Living Room Update

I haven't had time to blog. I barely had time to take photographs this week (and I won't have time to sort the pictures and post them.)

The new furniture arrived this week. It's very comfortable, fills the living room, and creates a cozy atmosphere. I finished painting the walls in the nick of time. Sadly, my flash turns the wall color into a strange pea-green haze.

We've had our fill of snow. It's still snowing. It will continue to snow into next week. We are willing to sell our snow to BC, if they would be so kind as to come pick it up. The Olympics desperately needs it.

I'm much too tired to post an in-depth blog entry. Here are some pictures for the family:

Painting like mad on Superbowl Sunday.
It's wet and rather Kermit the Frog in colour.




The furniture goes in.
(Note the dog toy. Truffle wanted to help decorate.)





Truffle.





The flash has turned the carpet pink and the walls a different shade.




This is much darker, but truer to the actual shade.




Yes, the shades are dark. I love colour. I hate bland. The living room is a deep olive. The hall is a complimentary golden tan. The dining is a stern red. The kitchen is horrid, with apple wallpaper and tacky bead board - we will eventually remedy that. The ceiling is bright white in all the rooms. I have picked a softer off-white colour that will tie things together more smoothly. Of course, I'm in no position to work on ceilings at this point.
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More Snow

Water melting from the upper branches of the maple tree:
it froze during a sudden drop in temperature, making this lovely sculpture.




Deep drifts. We've run out of places to put the snow.
Getting in and out of our drive is difficult.





More deep snow. Note the downstairs windows on the neighbor's brick house.




Deadly icicles! These hang from the gutter above the bathroom window.


Pictures taken 11 Feb 2010.
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Prompt Writes: Bud

Crocus bud
Nubile wisp
Seeking light
Finding cold mantle
And hesitating
Just below
Before bursting
Past snow
Past ice
As courage
softly leads
Sweet elegance
To wilting,
Bitter death.
Alas! Mourn
This crocus
A spring
Harbinger wasted

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Snow Weasels

A glimpse of the snow weasels:








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Back East Ohio Snow | Day One

It is the kind of winter where clear and snowless days are a rarity to be marveled at. The most recent round of snow rolled in hours ago and every last thing outside my windows has been obscured by heavy silver and blue drapery carelessly tossed to the ground by an irresponsible giantess cloth monger.

The conquering flakes have invaded as swiftly and silently as a mythical army; even the tree branches bows towards the earth in humble protest of their combined weight. It is a siege and we are the hapless townsfolk.

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Captured images of my Weather Channel desktop.




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Nutmeg is far too big to be bothered by the light stuff. She runs into trouble around 10:30 PM, when the snow becomes think and difficult to transverse.





These views are important. The first is a glimpse out of the bathroom window. It is the beginning of the siege.





The freshly shoveled driveway





The same view, two hours later.






The snow is almost too deep for the small dogs. They bound around in it, looking like fuzzy snow weasels. Truffle, the Pomeranian, collect snow balls on her underside. She does not like them removed - she saves them for later, and snacks on them as they melt. Piper, the Chihuahua mix, loves the cold.





The bird feeder, groaning under the weight.

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Smelting!

Smelts: sweet and succulent Osmeridae that gaily don their egg-and-flour bathing suits before easing into a Jacuzzi of hot oil; in the hands of a Greek or Southern person, they are utterly orgasmic to the palate.

What is smelt? They are popular little fish found in the Great Lakes region and a staple here.

Of course, they are best when they are served at festivals: This is Piper when she was eight weeks old, in my small camera bag. The smelts are in the container next to her.


Fish does not last long in this house. Jeff (my fearless Better Half) had them dipped, cooked and patted dry in record time tonight; the Fish Prowler of Pembroke, made short work of them. (Okay, not all of them. A huge container beckons to me from the refrigerator but I am ignoring it.)


Getting onto a new (yet smelt-related) tangent:

Jeff and I worked in animal husbandry at the Colorado Ocean Journey Aquarium years ago (before they were taken over and reorganized into the Downtown Aquarium – and before they went wickedly commercial with Landry’s.) Smelts were a staple for the otters.

There is nothing quite like hauling yourself down the back passageways of an aquarium at 4 AM, the heavy smell of fish mixing with Clorox bleach (kitchen cleaning) as you shuffle towards your department. We had a variety of shore and tropical birds, reptiles and amphibians, two tigers and two different species of otter.

Squid and smelts are otter food, as I said. I can not eat a smelt without thinking of Gunny (my favorite northern river otter) and Gracie (the sea otter.) The tigers preferred horse meat, which has a distinctly pungent smell. I always brought in coffee and sipped it throughout the morning, and so I still associate the beverage with horseflesh and Sumatran tigers.

The animals learned to distinguish our polo shirts from those of the tour guides and tourists. We’d stroll down the paths (the aquarium was divided up differently back then) and the animals would see us and surmise that a meal was on the way (which is was not!) They became lively, which pleased the visitors. (They were fed away from public view, using a target method that allowed for routine examination and behavior reinforcement. Small bits of food were placed in their enclosures as enrichment.)

Blah blah, yadda blah. The snow outside had coupled with the smelts, spawning a senseless desire to reminisce.



Meanwhile, this poor woman contemplates the empty plate in front of her. What a pity that she arrived late to dinner. Had she but known that I was ravenous after rearranging my living room (new couches arrive on Monday), she would have come early and avoided the carnage.
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