weekendcoffeeshare

Weekend Coffee Share, 2021-03-05

daily walk
— smell of rain
flowers nod their heads
— robins call cheer-up
hidden paths
— two rainbows

Copyright © 2021-02-27, by Lizl Bennefeld.

The end of a long week. Last weekend and Monday, the first of March, I enjoyed my busy schedule. As I mentioned early last weekend, February is National Haiku Writing Month (nahaiwrimo), and I attended both the Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon haiku poetry readings via Zoom. Between the two sessions, I read seven haiku that I wrote during February 2021. I saw again several poets I know from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA, lifetime member). I think that I would like to meet online with them and others more often than I have in the past. While I do not feel equal to extensive involvement in organizations, anymore, the social interaction is something I believe I’m still up to.

On Monday evening, I enjoyed a celebration of Saint David’s Day held by Jo Walton and friends online that featured two sessions of musical performances and poetry readings by various participants. St. David is the Patron Saint of Wales. (My Owen ancestors left Wales to settle in upper New York, I think, in the mid-1600s.)

Since then, I have been relaxing. Catching up on sleep and solitude. Reading a lot and napping with the Scampers. The dogs enjoy curling up on the footrest of my recliner, but if I turn over too often, they get down from the chair and move under the footrest, and so I have to be careful, getting up.

The weather, here, has taken a turn toward the warm. The snow is rapidly melting, and the air quality has disimproved, again. Supposedly, it will clear up over the weekend. I should have grabbed one of my cotton face masks on my way back to my chair, Right now, Thaddeus has settled on my legs, again, and so I may just take another nap.

cocker spaniel dog walking away from the backyard gate
rabbit tracks outside wire fencing
blue sky, thin clouds, bare tree branches

I look forward to the coming weekend for more than improved air quality. Tomorrow afternoon, there is a social hour on Zoom, again, with Liz Danforth and patrons from across the globe. And I look forward to meeting for worship, which I did not attend, last weekend, in favor of the NaHaiWriMo poetry readings. I do hope there such gatherings at the end of next February, also. Enjoyed it.

This past week, I have reread books by Steven Gould that I have not looked at for a long time. That is, I had no electronic editions: Exo and Impulse. Also, I am rereading the last two books in L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s Imager Portfolio series. Al bought a set of headphones for me for my computer, and so I went online to listen again to more recent works of Tokio Myers on his YouTube channel. Lovely stuff, but I find I must turn off the pulsing lights added to some of the pieces. Aside from classics, my husband’s musical tastes and mine don’t match up. With the headset, I can turn up the volume.

I have made more space on this website and hope to do more of my blogging here, again, rather than on the WordPress blog.

I’m happy that you’ve stopped in. I look forward to looking in on many of the other Weekend Coffee Share posts, this weekend.

Best wishes,
Lizl

P.S. Natalie at Natalie the Explorer is our current host for weekend coffee share. Her post for this week may be found here,  https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/2021/03/05/doors-in-morocco/, along with the InLinkz link party link for this weekend.

Day 15 – If I were a garden | #NaPoWriMo2018

late-spring garden

Prompt-
Cayahoga library: Katerina Stoykova-Klemer has written, “Often I Wish I Were// a potato.// Eyes opened/ in all directions.” Begin a poem with “Often I wish I were” and complete the  stanza with…” and  see where that takes your poem.

“Wishes”

I sometimes wish I were a garden
filled with roots, berries and such
I would renew both dirt and harvest
sending seeds throughout the Earth

I always wished I had big shoulders
broad and strong to share life’s cares
I’d wrap my arms around the crying
help transform their tears to joy

I often wish I were a spirit
floating high above the world…
I’d watch closely for the hurting
act to foster hope’s rebirth

Copyright 2018-04-15, by Elizabeth Bennefeld.

Finding Everyday Inspiration, Day 11: A Cup of Coffee

Toddy coffee cold-brew system
Toddy: The Night Before the Morning’s Coffee

If we were having coffee together, today, I would share some fresh, cold-brew coffee with you. Hot, warm or cold, made with water or milk or some of each. There’s also a selection of black tea in the cupboard and cold water in the refrigerator. The puppies aren’t used to having company, but they’ll lie down, once they’ve said “Hello”, and go back to sleep while we visit.

If we were having coffee together, today, I would tell you that my day went well. My husband is building a woodworking shop in the back yard, and today he was able to finish his To-Do List without my help. Tomorrow I’ll be back up on a ladder, lifting boards and holding them in place while he measures them or nails them onto to the studs. The building is taking shape with windows, doors, and exterior walls done, but for the siding.

If we were having coffee together, I would show you some of the photographs that I took, today, in the back yard. The cool quiet shade of the cotoneaster bushes providing the perfect spot to pull up camp chairs, a step stool for a table between them. Do you remember when film was expensive, as was having the pictures developed, and so we would limit our picture-taking and not be able to look at the photographs for months? That was on my budget, anyway. My parents, with a true sense of history, hauled their cameras with them wherever they went. Even to the Philippine Islands and Hawaii, when they were stationed there during WW II. There are so many photo albums in the family home, which one of my brothers bought after their deaths, that we could never get through them even to label the subjects of the photos or where they were taken.

If we were having coffee together, I would remind you that I have been changing around my various blogs and domains and their content as life is changing, here. We are back to going through papers, books, clothes, and such, and tossing the excess. I hope to get the longer desk in my back sitting room moved out to the workshop, so that I have more room for bookshelves. I would like to move those out of the basement, just in case we also get heavy rainfall here. One must think of those things. I have replaced many books with e-editions, but I still have hardcover books that I cherish.

Anyway, I went through The Art of Disorder and set all of my posts before May to “Private”. Instead of using that blog for tracking my health numbers and nattering about how I feel tired, I plan to use it more for challenges. I am feeling well enough, now, to try keeping up with the weekly photo challenges and the daily prompts from WordPress. This blog will go back to poetry, short stories, and perhaps essays, that don’t fit in with my Quilted Poetry posts at WordPress. Do you compartmentalize your creative efforts? I think that my flower photographs and my recipes/cooking activities go together, so I am not changing that for now. This is the blog where I posted my “Poem a Day” for the 2017 NaPoWriMo challenge. I did that with a group, this year, which was a lot of fun.

Everything will get sorted out eventually. Or not.

I am glad that we were able to get together for coffee, this evening. I hope you will stop by again.

Best wishes!
Lizl

P.S. (Almost) every weekend, I take part in the #WeekendCoffeeShare on my Stray Coffee Breaks blog (also on WordPress). Please drop by if you’re in the neighborhood!

A month after Father’s death (Rev.)

Monday is so far in the past, I hardly remember it, now. My weekend has ended with a special treat. We went to Denny’s for supper, and I ordered the salmon skillet. Very good, but entirely too much food. I expect to get two or three more meals from it. With restaurants, I know, there may be a broad range experience within the same franchise, but the one here in town usually does pretty well.

My week has been a bit spotty, but I finally managed to brush my teeth without opening up the extraction site again. Still hasn’t hurt worth mentioning, though. I had a nice visit with my doctor to check up on the progress with the diabetes 2. Met the goal that she had set for the A1C when we met at the end of December, which was my ~2-week visit after the diagnosis. The numbers are going down (the A1C by more than 4 percentage points). As is the cholesterol and my weight: I now have lost 21 pounds since December 13th.

I find that I am extremely tired at the end of this week, however. Since getting through all of the rough stuff fairly well, with nothing on the schedule for the next two weeks except helping with the workshop construction in the back yard and getting to the dogs to the vet towards the end of the second week, I have found my thoughts turning back to my parents. I find that my sharpest memories of them are from when they were in their late seventies and going forward. That was, I think, when we spent a lot of quality time together as adults. Mom, more than Dad. When I think of them, I realize that as with myself, they probably thought of themselves as … ageless, or at least in their thirties or forties. I miss them a lot, although not as much as I did during the last years of their lives, when they turned inward and toward each other’s company and mutual support.

I wonder if this is the time to give the hospice organization a call and check on the grief support services available for the 13 months following Mom’s death, she being the one who was under hospice care during the last two months of her life, when she went into the nursing home.

(revised, omissions: 2021-09-02)