Category Archives: WP Challenges

Daily Prompt: Imagine all the People.

imagineToday’s WP daily prompt, Imagine all the People, was to observe people from a photo of a public place and imagine their lives.

I remember taking this photo my first afternoon in Madrid.  We were sitting at a table at a restaurant outside (you can see the chairs in the foreground). We found a quaint square which was much quieter than the other larger, more popular squares.  It felt like a little hideaway and a good place for our tired feet and hungry stomachs.

We were just getting into the routine of the whole tapas and late dinner timing, along with around the clock wine.  We were ready for dinner but it was the in-between time (I think it was around 7 pm) when most restaurants seemed to only have versions of ham (jamon) and bread plates available.

As we sat and drank our Albariño wine (lighter, white Spanish wine) and ate our jamon (think prosciutto) and bread, we loved watching these little boys play outside. Looking at this photo, I can hear them giggling and shouting now, and the way their voices bounced off of the walls of the square.  At one point their ball even landed in the middle of the tables, which caused even more contagious giggling.

I wondered if their parents were possibly eating at the same cafe?  Did these boys live in a nearby building?  Was this square their “backyard”?  Were any of them brothers? I also wondered about the little boy near the step — was he afraid to jump into the game perhaps because he didn’t know these boys? I could tell he really wanted to jump right in, but he was holding back.

I love this picture and it takes me right back to that exact moment.   Photos are marvelous little time machines.

What photo of yours comes to mind which makes you imagine all the people in it?

Balancing the edge.

IMG_4396 What keeps me on the right side of the edge?  Calms me when the apprehension of a new school year wrought with challenges starts gnawing away at me?  Helps me breathe more slowly and fully when I’m feeling worried, overwhelmed or frustrated with humanity?

Monkey Dog does all this for me.  If you’ve been reading my blog for long, this is no shocker.  She is my muse.  And her therapy abilities rival her monkey counter-surfing abilities, believe it or not.

Her office where this therapy takes place is in this little corner of my patio where I can listen to the sounds of the small song birds at my nearby feeder which hangs on my favorite tree, with her by my side.  Lucky for me, she requires no copay.

This is what keeps me from getting too close to the edge.

And why I am truly grateful.

Word Press Daily Prompt:  On the Edge. http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/daily-prompt-activity/

Open letter to a Barbecue Lay’s Potato Chip

chipsDear Barbecue Lays Potato Chip,

Tell me why, after all these years, have you found me again?  Now I’m afraid I won’t be able to forget you again for a while.

I have resisted your temptation for a few years now since my boys have become obsessed with you.  I have often stared at your bag in the pantry where you live with all of your relative chips.  Even though I try to store you out of my sight, I still see you.  You have just politely and quietly stared back, almost knowing that you were my forbidden fruit and having mercy on me.

Maybe it was the way that our grocery store has been recently remodeled so  beautifully, making that chip aisle damn near impossible not to stare dreamy-eyed down the aisle of shiny bags, with you now perfectly positioned at eye level upon approach.  I think I heard harps playing in the distance as I pushed my cart down that aisle the other day.

You made me buy a couple of bags of you for the kids.  I didn’t want them to run out, after all.  I brought you home, and tried to position you  in the pantry so that I couldn’t make eye contact.

But then the other night, as I was perfectly perched with my soft blanket and dimmed lights, ready to watch my trashy Sunday night Housewives TV series (that makes my life look ever so simple, which is a good thing), I heard you calling.

Maybe it was Clone’s fault for being so nice and asking me if I wanted him to get me anything after grinning at the TV screen, knowing how awful the TV show was that I was about to spend an hour with.  My household loves to make fun of me for this weekly vice.

Whatever it was, I gave in.  I ate way too many of you.   So many that I might even be able to forget you for a while since I satisfied my craving so sufficiently.  If it weren’t for the orange powdery residue you left under my nails.  That makes it harder to forget you.

You were good.  I thank you for that.

If I smoked I would have had a cigarette afterwards.

Thank you for the great Lays, my friend.

Something to help that ‘not so fresh’ feeling

FreshThere I was, sitting in the waiting room for my annual gynecological exam a few days ago.  (My puns are out of control here so don’t  worry – this isn’t going to be gross.)

At any rate, this visit is not my favorite of visits to make each year but something that feels good to check off the list.

But this visit seemed different than other visits before.  This time after I checked in with the perky but tired receptionist, I had to scan the very large waiting room for several minutes before finding the one, single empty chair surrounded by giddy and emotional pregnant 20- and 30-somethings staring at their ultrasound pics giggling.  I was literally surrounded.  And I was the only one taking advantage of the freshly brewed strong black coffee most likely because my days of having babies are a distant memory punctuated by the fact that next year I will have two kiddos in high school.

I sighed and texted a couple of friends to express how suddenly I felt like a yogurt in the fridge that had gone just past its expiration date.

When the nurse who I call Wonder Woman because she looks like Linda Carter (even though the waiting room full of preggos are too young to even know who that is) took my blood pressure, I asked her if I was the only non-pregnant person there.  She replied, “Yep, except for those of us who work here.”  I sighed and we giggled together as she assured me us ‘regular patients’ were still welcome.

So I was happily surprised to learn of something very fresh today. My last post,  “Recipe For: Life on Wry” has been Freshly Pressed!

To put this in perspective,  I tried to research a bit on Google about the odds of being Freshly Pressed, and VERY coincidentally found a conversation where someone was comparing the odds of being Freshly Pressed (the Holy Grail of Blogging, so to speak) to being the one sperm out of 200-600 million sperm that makes it to the egg.  Which I thought very appropriate given my not-so-fresh analogy.

To help me further grasp the odds, I discovered that there are currently 68,600,151 WordPress blog sites in the world. There are 37 million new blog posts each month. And WordPress editors select 8 of them each day to be Freshly Pressed. Being Freshly Pressed sends your blog visits and views through the roof and exposes your blog to oodles and oodles of other bloggers out there.

The odds of being Freshly Pressed are said to be about 12 per million on any given day.  And to have it happen for a second time in less than a year (my last one was “If you aren’t registered to vote, quit reading my blog and register”  last September – only published because I deleted the all caps DAMN IT at the end of the headline most likely – just kidding) … well that’s just math I don’t even know how to compute (I’m a Journalism major, after all).

So thank you WordPress,  and thank you patient and kind readers.

Remember, it’s all wry.  Otherwise life would be way too boring.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

awesome

This week’s photo challenge is about capturing a fleeting moment.  I had the perfect photo in mind.

I took this photo on a walk with a friend recently just as a group of dense, rain-filled clouds was quickly rolling in and seemed to almost circle our spot in the path and the pond before us. As if nature had been painting a picture for us and waiting for us to get there to see it.

If I hadn’t stopped right at that very second to capture this fleeting moment as these full and heavy clouds were preparing to open for us and as the simply awesome smell of the coming rain was saturating the air …  the moment would have been gone.

The photo challenge prompt mentioned an article, Photography 101: Introduction & Philosophy which kicks off a blogging photography series and interviews Danielle Hark who founded a collaborative photography site called the Broken Light Collective.  She talks about how photography helps her stay in the present and is her own form of meditation.

This spoke to me, since photography is one of the best ways to make myself slow down enough to be present in the moment. And most likely the closest I get to meditating as well.

Does photography help you stay in the moment?  What visual comes to mind when you think of the word Fleeting?  Such a simple word that floods my mind with so many visuals.  This was just one.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Illumination

light in The Kitchen

This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge was to post a photo which represents illumination to me.

This photo is of an uber chic chandelier at a restaurant downtown.  (This is how I embarrass friends and family on an ongoing basis – by taking pictures of random things like this which I love.)

So there you have it … my photo for the Illumination Challenge! I would love to have this in my dining room —  if only I had the thousands of dollars that would require.

I bet you feel illuminated just by seeing it.  Okay, maybe not, but I hope you enjoy the coolness of it.

Do you have a photo that represents illumination to you?

Weekly Photo Challange: Happy. Gratitude Experiment: Day 53

This week’s photo challenge is Happy.

Below are some things that make me happy: my pups at my feet, the mountains, the beach with a Corona, Muir Woods and chilled martini glasses.

Also my turquoise and gold Ainsley teacup collection, my curios from friends in my little mediation corner and 1984 911 headlights.

Of course family also makes me happy, and my friends, and the smell, sight and feel of anything horse, as well as nostalgia,  kitsch, painting and cool mountain air in the fall.  So many others but these are some good ones.
What makes you happy?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine. Gratitude Experiment: Day 52

The theme of last week’s WordPress weekly photo challenge was Mine — where you post a picture of something that is uniquely yours.

I’m a day late, but I selected this old GE photo cube that I got from my grandmother’s house after she passed away.  When I was little I was fascinated by this cube that she always had out.  It has photos on each side and a speaker on the top, with an AM/FM radio that doesn’t work anymore.  I thought the radio part was so very cool and I loved to play with it (hmmm…possibly why it doesn’t work anymore).  This was back in the days before Shutterfly and all of the sites that let you make photo gifts.  It was far ahead of its time.

The cube has a picture of a house I lived in during my early years one side, a photo of my grandmother, her sister and two of her friends on another side, a photo of me when I was probably four years old with my cat Rascal on one side, and my favorite side has a photo of my Dad carving a pumpkin with my sister and I.

This photo cube reminds me of my grandmother in all of her leopard print and gold lamay glory.  She made flashy work like no one else could ever pull off because she had a larger-than-life attitude that influenced her every moment. She could play the piano more beautifully than I’ve ever heard anyone play.  And she had a whistle that was so magnificent and strong I can hear it now.  My dad got her whistle and I love to hear it.  She was also a complete bridge-playing bad-ass and could remember numbers like nobody’s business.  I wish I had asked her to teach me bridge.

She also had a beautiful voice unlike any other. I loved the way she said my name and the way she talked. She called my Gypsy during the summers of my college years when I changed residences often.  She loved it when her Gypsy would pull up in her driveway to say hello.  She’d always offer me “Cokie Cola” and cookies and we would sit at her ice cream table and visit while the koo koo clock on her kitchen wall tick-tocked loudly behind us.  Then at certain intervals her antique clocks in the living room would chime in a series, making their own little familiar symphony.  I can hear those chimes and smell her house now.  The aroma of little scented soaps filled the house because it seemed like she had them everywhere in sweet little china dishes.

The picture of my dad and sister and I all together is my favorite side of the cube because it has us all together in it, which I love the thought of.  Also because I love carving pumpkins and Halloween is my favorite holiday.  And as you know, I have a special relationship with pumpkins as mentioned in a previous post (https://lifeonwry.com/2012/10/04/watch-out-for-flying-pumpkins-gratitude-experiment-day-50/).  And the yellow appliances, our outfits, our haircuts and the looks on all of our faces remind me of the innocence of my youth.

This photo cube is uniquely mine and I cherish it.  It sits not far from my computer where I write this blog each day, on a shelf with other things uniquely mine and sentimental.  For all this, I am grateful.  Thanks for reading!