late night poster

sonar

she's going down!  i heard him scream through the radio.  sad, and so glad i wasn't the one on sonar duty.  how much money had been spent to rehabilitate this whale, and now it dove for the deepest trench about in some sort of frenzied fit.

science

science class drags everyday because all we ever do is read and write.  i thought that was what language arts class was for, not this.  please, let me blow something up.  that would be a great science class!

disregard

the complete disregard she emotes as she walks through the room sends shivers through me.  how can someone be so completely absorbed with never a thought to the rest of the world?  what kind of life is that?

Worth of a Woman

A virtuous woman, who can find?  She is worth more than rubies…did she have that Proverb right?  Well, close enough.  She scanned the kitchen.  Dishes, dinner remains, jug of ruby red grapefruit juice fallen from the trash.  She glanced into the TV room where the kids watched “The Wizard of Oz” yet again because easier to just give in than find something else for them to do.

Her earrings were rubies…eight dollars and fifty-two cents off Ebay, shipping cost more than purchase cost.

Today she felt all of that eight dollars and fifty-two cents:  the worth of a woman, indeed.

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The 100 Word Challenge for Grown-ups has hit the 40th Prompt…to celebrate, the task is to incorporate RUBY into the 100 words.  You can read more entries  here.

This Blog is Changing

My purpose for this blog was a place for the oneworddotcom entries that I thought I'd challenge myself to do daily

Life gets in the way.  The only thing I do daily is change diapers.  Nothing else is guaranteed.

So instead of looking at this poor blog, I'll just use it for my flash fiction, as well.  I'm in Julia's 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups and have been posting on our school blog as a model, but now school is almost out.  I'll post here, instead.

Maybe I need a new name to the blog, a new beginning to keep it from stalling.  Staling.  Stealing away.

Easy enough, right?

alibi

She needs a better alibi than her brother because he sells her out every time.  Just like me and Facebook.
'What did you do today?'
'Worked on finances.'
'You sure were on Facebook a lot.'
'Ummmm...."

swan

Did you know that the first real exotic bird I saw in Alaska was a swan? Well, two of them anyhow. In a little pond on the way to Denali Park. That was a CRAZY 24 hours landing in Anchorage and then driving north. I was thinking, WHAT HAVE I DONE? 17 years later, I know I did something good.

earring

another earring i find on the floor. this makes 6, i think. i put it back on my desk with the others and wonder, how do they get off the desk? do they jump? do they push each other ala king of the mountain? my 3 year old sticks his head in my room. ‘hi mom’ he says, and now i think i know.

loss

hair loss
weight loss
loss of sight
loss of love
valley of loss
secret loss
loss, the game
l.o.s.s.
the word is starting to look weird to me
in fact the word
i am now at a
loss
for
loss

shelter

under the branches i huddle, my shelter from the weather. a pot of soup simmers on the fire, miraculously dry in the storm. soup? really water, leaves and twigs mixed in a bucket. my tree, the redbud tree out back.

track

i track the words per minute, the correct word sequences, the correct digits, track them all in the hope that in those numbers is an answer to why a brain works differently.

ants

the ants go marching one by one
hurray!
hurray!
and johnny will march home again
hurray!
hurray!
will johnny bring ants?
boo!
boo!
will ants bring johnny?
ooh!
ooh!

flirt

"don't waste your time on that one, reynolds.  i've been flirting with her for years with no avail."
flirting with me?  for years?
i tired of realizing how completely oblivious to life i'd been the past few years.

walls

if his feet would stick, he would climb the walls. already he has been redirected from the table, the chairs, the couch, the counter. i look outside at the snow berm by the house and know some winter i will have to redirect him off the roof. the boy can move, and move he does.

orbit

she spins her life around his, slowly from a distance but quicker up close.  an orbit of love is what she wants, yet she is never quite close enough...and she can never build up enough force to get away.

camera

how sad the camera he searched for, saved for, spent more money than he wanted to on.  how sad that that camera sits now on a shelf worth only a fraction of the expense, old technology that no one wants anymore, no one cares for anymore.  how sad, that camera, how sad.

sacred

The labyrinth represents a journey to the sacred. One way in, one way out…it isn’t a maze of confusion, it is a journey to the love of God. I want one. Not sure how to make that happen without bulldozing a bunch of trees, though, and that doesn’t seem too meditative now, does it.

chief

Just in time, the chief pulled up in his squad car. “What is this I hear about police brutality?” he said and proceeded to pummel his rookie.

epic

my epic fail of the day was writing about an epic fail because i’m sure no one else on this site wrote those words together for the minute. but what can i say? it is automatic, just like the way i said EPIC in a big movie voice-over when the word popped up.

wagon

the station wagon had a back seat we called the way back. sometimes we’d wave at the driver behind us during a traffic jam. cheesy, for sure!

festival

A festival of poop! The baby loves sweet potatoes, peas, bananas, applesauce, and any other thing that mixes together into a fragrant festival in her drawers. It’s a party every time, and I wish others were invited.

function

the function of f over x is b squared, isn’t it? (i know. it isn’t.)

who wants to be squared? better to be spherical, well-rounded in all the right ways. then you can also roll with it, no matter which direction the push comes from.

odds

single woman?
looking for love?

tired of the

bar scene
match.com
blind dates
church socials?

come to alaska!

the odds are good….
but the goods are odd!

hoop

a college degree is a hoop, i tell my students. that piece of paper that says you’ve accomplished what they asked you to do. is that a good way to look at learning? no. but it isn’t a bad way to look at life…accomplish what you’ve been asked to do:

live.
love.
help.
sing.
give thanks.

cabin

when i was young, i dreamed of a cabin in the mountains where i could retreat to and write my heart out.  now i have the woods near the mountains, but no cabin...yet.  will it happen?  i don't know.  it is a lot of work to make a little cabin in the woods.

collar

he seldom wears his collar when he travels, he wants to blend in with the less pious of the world. he wonders if his very walk sets him apart, if they know who he is without the label. does anyone know who we are without our labels?

beehive

the mormons have something to do with beehives.  i'm not sure if it is because they hauled bees with them as they trekked across the country, looking for somewhere they could live their idea of humanity out in peace.  i wonder if that was the case, how did the bees know to come back to the hives when it traveled however many miles a day?

plans

"for i know the plans i have for you" says my God.  it comforts me knowing that He has my back, and my future is nothing that He can't help me accomplish.

hinge

creeeeak went the hinge in my knee. the doctors said i would never notice it, but there it was again. my grandkids thought it a funny noise, but it drove my dog to the ground in sheer madness. oh, to have my screw-less knees again.

fences

give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above…don’t fence me in. i love that song. it speaks to the long line of land unbroken by humanity. sounds good to me.

scarce

yes, treats are scarce in this house.  something to do with a 3 year old.  and an 8 year old.  and a 37 year old,  and a 46 year old.  thank goodness the 7 month old hasn't found the snack drawer yet.

runway

my aneroid key board.will runaway with autocorrdct since I’m too lazy to go and fire ipbthe computer to do today’s word. 360 words this year means a few are going to be from the kindle fire. oh bagatelle.

liberty

let freedom ring! 
let me run across fields of amber grains with my star-spangled banner 
let me stand on the street corner that says ‘i am the 1%’ 
let me read what i want to read 
let the only censorship be what i won’t let my children read until they are older
let me bear my arms and worship my God
and do not take my liberty away.

down

oneword.com is down to protest SOPA.

Protect my words
My ideas
My stories
The beautiful things created by my mind.

But do not shut me down
Do not stifle my voice
Do not hide my thoughts behind a flag

Let me be who I am.
Let me create.
Let me.

below

Below the deep blue sea lies
a mermaid
a trunk
a chest of junk
a wreck
a reef
a thrown-over side of beef
a gem
a bowl
the wreckage of a thousand souls

bellow

He bellowed down the ski slope, “I CAN’T STOP!” I laughed at him, because he was right, he couldn’t. He was this close to tumbling head over snowboard and the best I could do was get out of his way.

accordion

She played him like an accordion...pulling on him to hear him squeal, then compressing him back to shut him up. Why stay with a woman like that, who wants nothing more than to push buttons and control even the air you breathe?

bench

I live on the bench, they say. Not quite a hill, not quite a plain...the space in between the ocean and the bluff. Funny, if I lifted weights, how much would I bench on the bench?

snow

There snow way I want to drive in all this. It reduces visibility and then the moose are trying not to hit ME.

conceal

I approached the figure in the road, slowing my vehicle figuring it was a stranded traveler stuck out of luck in the blizzard. Not a man did the snow conceal, though, but a moose which turned toward us as if to say, get out of *my* way.

sparkling

The days when the bay is sparkling I ask myself, is there a more beautiful spot in the whole entire world? The gray days, though, I know that there is beauty elsewhere…and here, too, if I just wait for the sun to come out and reignite the sparkles.

bland

like rice in a pot
like chicken, not hot
like baby food
like muzak at the doc’s
like a novel with no good man
this is what it is to be bland

savage

The Savage Nation warns you of ‘psychological nudity’…what is that? Ripping away all that covers our thoughts, all the vestiges of humanity that makes us tick? I wonder that every night I hear that phrase, then think to flip the channel because I’m not into being nude driving around in the car.

oil

Stink, I step over the spill and shake my head. My husband is going to kill me. The Tahoe, flipped. The tires, spinning. The tree, gone. The oil, spilled. The baby…the baby? Where is the baby? Stink!

apron

My mom had a special apron she wore when she spanked us. It had a lot of pockets that fit a variety of cooking utensils. You knew you were in trouble when she pulled out the spatula, the metal one with lots of holes in it. Things were going to be fine if it was the mini whisk.