Wordzzle on dreams Part IV

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (early morning light, Pinocchio, mist, leaves, sandy, coffee, walking, traffic, pray, stomach ) with a mini challenge of (train, art, admirable, cotton, fluffy).

This wordzzle is a continuation of my earlier story.

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"How did we get here?" I've asked myself this so many times in the last few days. I thought I was never going to escape this place. I had given up praying and had resigned myself to a lifetime of just making it work and yet...

It's a surreal feeling today. We're walking in the early morning light, watching the mist rise from the freezing ground. The leaves that had been falling just a few short weeks ago are now glued with ice to the sandy sidewalks as we crunch along. My stomach is in knots. It's not because of food, I haven't been able to eat today. I did manage a little coffee this morning but I just couldn't manage a bite of actual food. I'm excited but I can't believe it's really happening.

We cross the street while the traffic waits as we head for the train. The train. Was it only a month ago I was staring longingly at it? And now I'm getting on it. I feel like I'm high, on white fluffy cotton clouds, floating along down the road.

Somehow my mother knew. She knew without me saying that I had to get away from here and she did it. She found a relative in the city for me to stay with and bought me a ticket and I'm getting out of here. She's trying not to cry as she helps me check in. She's turned being stoic into an art, trying to never show that anything gets to her. It's admirable but I can't manage it myself and I start to tear up. I hug her and kiss her cheek and tell her how much I love her and then I get onto the train. I find my seat as the train starts to pull out. As I sit looking out the window and watching the trees fly by I laugh and think, "I'm like Pinocchio. I've got no strings on me".

Wordzzle on dreams Part III

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (family, cheese cake, 20 years ago, refrigerator, laugh and the world laughs with you, bath brush, zombies, African violets, butterflies, holding hands) with a mini challenge of (monsters in the closet, roughly, bowling, menu, Pennsylvania).

For dreams parts I and II go here and here.

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Lizzy, her daughter, thought that she didn't understand dreams. Lizzy was wrong. Almost 20 years ago, before Eleanor had a family, she'd had her own dreams. He had been so charming...

As they walked through the African violets, watching the butterflies and holding hands, she had dreamed of their wedding. He would marry her and take her away from this place to live near his family in Pennsylvania. There would be a beautiful wedding and she would put the violets in her bouquet to remember this day. The menu would be perfect and they would serve cheesecake to their guests and it would be beautiful.

Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to. The man she thought he was turned out to be just a fairy tale and he became the monster in the closet. He'd gotten what he wanted and all dreams of a wedding and a life together were proven to be just that. Dreams. She had taken it rather roughly at first. She had walked around like a zombie, so wrapped up in herself. Then she'd found out... For all he had taken from her, he had left something behind.

It changed her world to know that there was a life growing inside of her and it was then she knew that it was time to grow up. This was not the life she had planned on but it was hers nonetheless. She felt she owed it to her baby, her Lizzy, to live that life as best she could. She got a job as a housekeeper. She scrubbed floors and refrigerators. She picked up the bath brushes and put away the laundry. She took on a new attitude towards life. No, she hadn't planned on the highlight of her weeks being bowling night with the PTA. But every morning she told herself that, though she hadn't known it, this was the life she was meant to live. She would look in the mirror and say something like, 'tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet' or 'laugh and the world laughs with you'. Or, more often than not, 'Life goes on'.

The thought had never occurred to her that, despite giving up everything for her child, Lizzy would resent her and want to get away. But she did. It was obvious she was looking for her own way out. And rather than let her try to get out the way her mother had, Eleanor decided to help.

Wordzzle on dreams continued

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (Tibetan sky, symbols, won’t you come home Bill Baily, shadow figures, brain cortex, practice makes perfect, life, start of school, lavender, chow down) with a mini challenge of (mental hospital, falling leaves, apple cider, packing crates, clues).

My way of doing this is to read all the words and look for a few things I can tie together and then just start writing. The more difficult words I then go back and find places to insert. This week happened to turn into a continuation of last week's wordzzle.

Leaving this town to make a life for herself was out. So she would just have find the clues to making a life here. No, she hadn't managed it yet but practice makes perfect, right? You can't fail until you stop trying... But how would she do it? The people in this town depressed her and she was pretty sure half of them didn't have a brain cortex. There were more than a few people here that had to have been in the mental hospital at some point (and only one had a good excuse, having been witness to a Tibetan Sky burial which is only not traumatizing if you're Tibetan or at least IN Tibet at the time). Still, as hard as it was to like them, she felt there must be one among them she could talk to. If only she could find the one.

She walked home from the restaurant, picking a little lavender along the way and turning it in her hand. Fall was definitely in the air now and the tourists were arriving to watch the leaves turn. On Cedar Street the laborers were packing crates with apple cider. She stood under the falling leaves watching them for a few minutes. It occurred to her that it was almost time for the start of school but, being so far ahead anyway, she wasn't sure yet that she'd go this year.

A few streets away on Pine she could here the music starting for Fall Festival. What was that song? Won't you come home Bill Bailey? Hmm... Maybe that was it. She never really joined in the festival much. There would be the inevitable bad palm reader who turned every funny curve of the lines in your hand into symbols representing hokey futures of fortune and fame (which are not much fun when you already know you can't have them). There would be street performers making shadow figures and every kind of fried food you could chow down on. Today she would skip it, being unable to pretend she saw anything in that life. Maybe tomorrow...

Wordzzle on dreams

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (dangerous, engine, sullenly, bespoke, evergreen, bauble, medicine, freight, destined, tinsel) with a mini challenge of (carbon, feelers, outright, ballet, fizzing).

She watched the freight train pulling away, the engine gaining speed, and she thought about running after it and catching a ride. Sure, it could be dangerous, but that carbon-burner was headed to Tinsel Town. Even the thought of it bespoke of lights, dazzling lights, and sounds of a town always alive. Of trinkets and baubles. She had always thought that she was destined for the ballet. It felt like the right path to her. She'd mentioned it casually to her mother once, nothing too outright or anything, putting out feelers to see how she'd take it. She hadn't taken it well at all, saying that they could barely afford medicine and there was no way they were taking a risk like that. And so here she was, still stuck among the evergreens in some no-name town. As she sullenly watched the last cars of the train rounding the corner out of sight she felt her dreams fizzing again.

Wordle

How fun! I found this on Spudballoo's blog and made a Wordle with my own website. This site will make a word cloud from any website you give it and the most used words will be the largest. Hmmm, do I really mention julochka that much? (I guess that means I have a blog crush.) You can play with all of the fonts and colors and try different arrangements of the words. Try it out!

As Spud pointed out you can find some great phrases in there when it's done.
'think like kids' ~ 'call sisters' ~ 'crap gap' (heehee)

Wordzzle on dating tragedies

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (translation, crunchy, cat’s paw, trunk, I love raspberry tarts, global warming, star struck, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, fragile, spring fever) with a mini challenge of (pancakes and syrup, flat tire, mongoose, this place looks like a bordello, first dance).

And before you read this, no, I'm not actually this much of a cynic but I got the idea for redefining "Rasberry Tart" and it ran away with me.

***

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, buddy. We all do. "I love Rasberry Tarts" is what you're thinking. Translation: Redheaded barbies with skirts up to *there* who say they concerned with global warming but really only care about spring fever, finals and getting all star struck. On the other hand, I can't exactly expect you to be all that noble and interesting and everything. I mean, what did I honestly expect from another internet dating site? "The midnight ride of Paul Revere" kind of guy or something? I should have known better. The guys out there seem to be one of two kinds: "end the night in their trunk" creepy or so nasty you'd rather lick a cat's paw right after it climbed out of the sand box (and you KNOW where that's been) than so much as shake their hand.

Still, I suppose it's a little better than the bar scene. There you walk in and your first thought is "this place looks like a bordello" because, seriously, could they be wearing any less? And then there's the classic guy who comes up to you and says something like "I bet you're the kind of girl who likes pancakes and syrup. You know, for breakfast tomorrow morning?" all the while leering at me from a face shaped like a mongoose. *Shudder* My reply is generally something like "Yeah, you're not even getting a first dance, my friend, much less a good night or morning anything." That tends to take the hot air out of them like a flat tire.

Ah, well. I'm still an optimist and I can't help but hope that there's a guy with substance somewhere out there. Something a little more crunchy than this bland soup of a dating pool. I'm not fragile and I think I'll hold out for a while. But thanks for the invite all the same.

Wordzzle

On a recent blog of note, Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here. I like to write something but this will be my first shared contribution. This week's words are (partition, imagination, salvation, mirror image, green power, highway, roasting marshmallows, serial killer, autograph, cartography) with a mini challenge of (cell phone, Big Mac, panther, legendary, poets corner).



I love my little girl. It's amazing that so much wisdom and freedom could be contained in one so small. It's as if, somehow, the partition in her brain that seperates true memories from her imagination has yet to form and, for her, anything really IS possible. In the little poet's corner of her brain, the part that sees everything in a quixotic kind of way, there really are fairies in the garden, green power will be the salvation of the earth in her lifetime, butterflies live forever, Big Macs are yummy AND healthy, and mommy is always beautiful. I really hope she's right about the green power thing. Somehow she's my miniature mirror image in every photograph of my childhood (you should see the charming cell phone pictures) but she absolutely cannot be constrained to the same limitations I allow myself to be bound by. Before her stretches this immutable highway of possibilities and I really admire that (perhaps I should get the autograph of this unstoppable force while I still can?). No, she isn't focused on any one thing right now but she is only 5 after all. And anyway, you know what they say: 'Not all who wander are lost'. To which I reply: 'No, many of those who wander picked cartography for a profession'. Haha, I'm so funny! Yes, I know, this kind of corny joke is just the kind of thing to make serial killers out of the nicest folks. I'll stop now. But to be serious, when I'm feeling like I don't know what to do next with my life and I catch myself worrying too much about all of the big things, I watch her total abandon at play and focus and drive in everything she does (even something so simple as roasting marshmallows or pretending to be a panther) and she reminds me that it's all of the little things that matter. This little life force is legendary and I'm eternally grateful for the way she's touched my life.