Tag: dailyprompt

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Such a Leading Question

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?
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Who would I be talking to? Someone I just met, my boss, my doctor, or even my best friend? The answer, of course, depends on who I’m talking to and how much I trust them.

Since this blog is public, meaning anyone can read it (although my actual audience isn’t as broad as that statement would imply), I won’t share anything really private. And frankly, some, if not most, of my answers will come as no surprise to those who’ve been following my blog for any length of time. But here goes, in no particular order, some things that are important to me and some qualities I think I have.

We’ll start with some hobbies. I love classic movies, so much so that I have another blog dedicated to them. It’s called Classic for a Reason and while I haven’t posted anything in a couple of years, I’m proud to say I have around 200 posts dedicated to movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, with one or two more recent films as well. What’s my favorite movie from that era? It’s hard to pick. All About Eve stands out to me, as do the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But there are many others I can rave about.

Another hobby? I’m an avid knitter. I’ve posted a few things about that on this blog and I have another blog dedicated to my knitting projects called Designs and Words. I actually have yet to write about my latest projects but should get that done soon. I think the last things I wrote about were the scarves I made my brother’s family last Christmas. I loved knitting those, in part because the patterns were so much fun and in part because I was excited to give them as gifts.

Some of you know I’ve been working on a novel. Well, I finished the first draft and I’m getting geared up to go back and revise. I have massive notes from my writer’s group that I need to implement into my story. One chapter at a time…

But about me on a personal level. I’d like to think I have empathy. It’s something that’s come more naturally to me over the years as I’ve addressed the issues in my life, and it’s a characteristic I’ve tried to develop. It follows the teachings of Christ to have empathy, which makes it that much more important to me. These days I’m struggling to face a foe with feelings of support and understanding. It’s a test of this quality that I find so important.

Of course, I love my cats–and cats in general. If you follow my blog you see that all over, so I won’t expand on it here. If you don’t follow my blog you can take a peek at this post and it will give you an idea about my love of cats.

I’ve tried to think of other characteristics to describe myself and nothing comes to mind. Do I have a good sense of humor? Of course, but I think we all do, just different kinds. That last sentence answers a lot of questions you could ask about me.

But one thing I’ve been told about myself is that I’m hard to get to know. I keep things private. Well, I guess I’ve done that once again in this post. Just the way it is.

Image Credits: Circle of Friends © Thiraphat; film clapperboard © Royal studio; yarn and heart © Zen20; helping a friend © notivestudios. All, stock.adobe.com

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Silly Question…

Daily writing prompt
Dogs or cats?
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If you know me at all you don’t need to ask that question. It’s cats, of course, right now my precious Walter and Mimi. It goes back to when I was eleven and we got our first cat, Whittier. From the start, my dad tells me, I was drawn to that cat far more than the multitude of dogs we had.

Which is why it was devastating when, after only a few short weeks, Whittier was run over by a neighbor who didn’t see her when he drove his truck into our driveway. I mourned that sweet, pretty kitten for days. Then we found out the folks we’d gotten her from had two more kittens available, Hugo and Petunia. We ended up taking them both home. Petunia, like Whittier, was a calico, while Hugo was a tabby.

Okay, this isn’t Salem, but she was just as pretty–and long-haired.

As you might guess, Petunia had kittens when she was barely grown herself. But again, tragedy struck, and Hugo was mauled by another neighbor’s dog. (Turns out that dog had attacked other pets before and eventually tried attacking a child. The end of the dog.) We’d come to enjoy having two cats and kept one of the cats from that litter, an all-black cat we named Salem.

When my parents divorced, we had a dilemma: what to do with all the animals. My mom moved out of state while my dad got an apartment. My brother, sister, and I didn’t have the space or resources to care for our pets, so our broken family found new homes for them. Actually, the story behind the cats was a little different. My brother took them with him to college, where they eventually found new homes with other students’ families.

Fast forward to the time I moved to Nashville. I wanted a cat and after living there for a year finally adopted Paco, the cat of my heart. I’ve told the story of how Paco and I saved each other in my blog post Coming Home to Paco, so I won’t go into it again here. I lost him thirteen years ago, around the time Walter and Mimi were born.

However, I didn’t adopt Walter and Mimi until they were about six months old. They’d been abandoned by the folks in the apartment above me in the middle of January. It was cold and icy out, and their cries kept me up all night. Despite the fact that I had no job and was in debt to the Cat Clinic, I brought them in. One of the best decisions of my life. Today, as I write this, one is at my feet and the other is on the windowsill. We just celebrated their birthday.

I think I’ll always have a cat in my life, at least as long as it’s practical. So Cats or Dogs? Cats. Invariably cats.

Image Credits: Banner–cats looking down © emzee-stock.adobe.com; black cat © shchus-stock.adobe.com; group of cats sitting in rows © alexkich–stock.adobe.com

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Bologna and Cheeses

Daily writing prompt
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
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When I was young, a favorite meal of mine was something you’d likely never find in a cookbook. We called these sandwiches bologna and cheeses, and they were a kind of disgusting mixture of (you guessed it) ground bologna and ground cheese, with ketchup, onions, and probably some other stuff mixed in. My mom would grind the bologna and cheese in a meat grinder, nothing electric like you’d find today, all done by hand.

To make the sandwiches, you first broiled one side of the bread, just enough to toast it, then spread the gloppy mix on the other side and broiled that until it was blackened just a little. They were yummy. Today’s prompt asks me which food when I eat it instantly transports me to childhood, and I haven’t eaten any of these in years. But the thought of them brings back happy memories.

Remember these?

One of the happiest was from a fourth-grade project. Our student teacher was getting married, and we were all given a 4×6 recipe card and told to write instructions for our favorite meal on it. We were asked to remember that Miss Stone, the student teacher, was a novice cook and to bring simple, easy-to-make recipes.

Somehow, that last bit of instruction got lost in the homes of most of the students, and they brought in complex recipes that would intimidate the most experienced chefs. However, I dutifully wrote out instructions for Bologna and Cheeses and presented that recipe to Miss Stone, now Mrs. Lisle.

It was her husband’s favorite. In fact, she made it for his friends when they were over watching football, and ended up sending the recipe home with all of them, as well.

It’s nice when a gift is appreciated, and especially nice when you’re nine years old and your teacher compli ments you in front of the whole class.

I doubt I’ll ever eat Bologna and Cheeses again, but the memory is a strong one.

Image Credits: Cats Cooking © TopMedia; Meat Grinder © ~Bitter~; Recipe Cards ©  Noel; All-stock.adobe.come

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Olympic Potential

Daily writing prompt
What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?
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When I was twelve, my mom came home from work one day, quite excited. “You know my friend Donna Boitano?” she said. “Well, her son Brian has been figure skating, and his coach thinks he has Olympic potential!”

“How old is he?” I asked. I’d heard her mention Brian before, and I was pretty sure he was several years younger than me.

“Eight,” she replied triumphantly.

I was skeptical. He seemed pretty young to be displaying that kind of greatness. “What does Donna say?”

At this point, my mom laughed. “Well, you know Brian’s the youngest of four. She’s heard this sort of thing before. She wanted to know how much it was going to cost.”

Turns out, Brian DID have Olympic potential. In 1988, he won the Olympic gold medal for men’s singles figure skating. By that time, I was, as you might imagine, much less skeptical. The night he won I was at a church retreat, and I talked several men into changing the channel on the only TV near enough to watch to men’s figure skating. They couldn’t say no to my enthusiasm, even though there was something else they’d rather have been watching.

Watching Brian skate in the final leg (excuse the pun) of the competition, I knew he’d beaten his rival, Brian Orser. So did Brian Boitano. You could see it in his face, the pure joy of victory. It was, by far, the most exciting moment of any Olympic competition I’ve watched.

My mom remained friends with Donna and her husband, Brian’s dad, Lew, for most of Donna’s life. Donna and Lew travelled the world with Brian, but unlike many Olympic parents, asked that their privacy be respected and the cameras stay off of them. This led some to speculate that the family wasn’t behind Brian’s skating career, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

So, to answer the question posed by today’s prompt, figure skating, men’s and women’s, remains my favorite Olympic sport. Even though I can’t balance on skates to save my life.

Image Credit: © Vit Kovalcik–stock.adobe.com

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Getting to Know You–One Way or the Other

Daily writing prompt
In what ways do you communicate online?
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I have to admit, I haven’t really gotten into too much online communication other than this blog. Okay, I’m on Facebook, but I rarely post. WhatsApp is something I’d like to explore since my uncle, who now lives in Portugal, uses that. But Instagram, Tik Tok, all the rest hold no interest for me.

I work with a woman who uses Tik Tok excessively. She gets all her news from that app, and it’s often wrong. I’ve told her she should find her news from reputable sources, but she just shrugs. While I’m sure some of what she reads is accurate, I know a lot of it is not.

What’s interesting to me is she wasn’t aware of the looming Tik Tok ban. It’s possible, although no one is quite certain about this, that the app could go dark after January 19. I’m not sure what my colleague would do after that, given her reliance on Tik Tok for news, entertainment, makeup tips, and a dozen other things I don’t remember right now.

I hate the thought of relying so much on social media, although I’ll be the first to admit it’s the only way I stay in contact with many of my friends from college. I’ve found it interesting to see how much some of us have changed our world views from one end of the spectrum to the other. We bond together and support each other through Facebook (as I’ve said before, I rarely post, but I keep up with other’s posts). I also get really good book suggestions from my friend Sue.

I still favor more personal communication, such as meeting in person with my friends or phone calls. Okay, I rarely use the phone, but I do text. The one-on-one conversations are much more satisfying to me than anything I can get on social media.

Still, I’ve made some friends through this blog, and I care about all of them. I want to know what’s next in their lives. Through our posts I’ve gotten to know about how they relate to the world around them and some details that delight me, for example, a love of cats. If something happened to one of them, I would grieve.

Will my relationship with social media change? Who knows. My life is bound to be different in the next couple of years, so perhaps my dependence on social media will be, too.

Image Credits: Wooden Figurines © Valerii Evlakhov–stock.adobe.com; New View © muhammad–stock.adobe.com; Cat © Yana–stock.adobe.com