Word Play - Simply For Love of Language

Created by self and other bloggers, thank you so much!

You are the cheese to my macaroni
You are the horizon to my sky
You are the bacon to my eggs
You are the laces to my sneakers
You are the jelly to my peanut butter
You are the Iams to my cat's dish
You are the muriatic acid to my pool
You are the smile to my face
You are the gravy to my mashed potatoes
You are the bubbles to my bath
You are the milk to my cookie
You are the ink to my pen
You are the ketchup to my French fries
You are the water to my ocean
You are the icing on my cupcake
You are the beans to my wiener
You are the comment to my blog post
You are the thread to my needle
You are the donut to my 7-11 case
You are the litter to my cat's box
You are the jewel to my piercing
You are the bookmark to my tome
You are the Garmin to my torturous trek
You are the sense in my sentence
You are the lens to my perception
You are the punchline to my joke
You are the mirror to my reflection
You are the phoenix to my hope
You are the cake to my ice cream
You are the hot fudge to my sundae
You are the sprinkles to my donut
You are the branches to my snowfall
You are the I to my loneliness
You are the island to my I
You are the spaces between the trees of my forest
You are the loveliness to my buttons
You are the underwiring to my bra
You are the canvas to my acrylic
You are the paper to my thought
You are the light to my shining
You are the glasses to my opera
ou're the Budweiser commercial to my Super Bowl
You're the Cinderella's castle to my Disneyland
You're the A-1 sauce to my steak
You're the iambic pentameter to my poem
You are the mouse to my pad
You are the Wite-Out to my typo (ask your grandparents about that one, kids)
You are the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building to my Lee Harvey Oswald
You are the Leo the lion to my Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
You are the George Martin to my Beatles
You are the neuroses to my Woody Allen
You are the bus to my another stranger
You are the shadow to my doubt

You are the sunshine of my life,
that's why I'll always be around

You're the tops
You're the colosseum
You're the top
You're the Louvre museum

What would you add, bloggers?

Created by self and paid $300 to send to relief efforts for Japan. (Below, a very early, primitive attempt at poetry. How's that, Rachel? I TOLD you it was modest and only a fan of me, personally, would pay for it!)
Some of you good ones have already e-mailed to ask what it is about, etc.
Please feel free to contact me in that way.

STEWARD OF THE HEART LAND

No more free right
of ingress and egress for you.
A toll booth was constructed,
your picture taped to the glass,
so you will be recognized
if you attempt to encroach.

You said you loved the landscape
but you plundered
irreplaceable artifacts,
smuggled out in your backpack and pouches.
Sand drifted from a hole in your pocket,
a sinuous trail like the track of a sidewinder.

You took brochures and attended lectures,
learning small things you could do
to help safeguard a precious resource.

The face is like a topo map,
revealing what there is to know.
Brow furrowed in apportioned concern,
yours inspires confidence and
hints at shared passion. You mislead.

You grasped the things that one can do,
for conservation and preservation,
citing by rote the steps you'd never take.
You are glib, though the sincere did not know
that for you to be spurred to
conserve or preserve, the words
must be preceded by "self".

Ten Things I Love (I've Been Tagged)

Latebreaking: There seems to be some question whether the assignment was "Ten Things I Love" or "Ten Things That Make Me Happy". I need to state I processed it as "Ten Things I Love". If I'd done it the other way, I'd have had a list of things that impact me far less than these. If I muffed the assignment, please give me credit for earnestness, sincerity and hard work both on myself and with myself.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My original post before I wondered if I'd muffed the assignment:

I am usually up for a challenge and I'm almost always up for fun and games. I like connecting with others and learning new things ~ these are major themes in my life and my writing. So when blogging friend Kass threw down the gauntlet, I was ready to rumble. I put two blog posts that were almost ready on the back burner. I grabbed a pencil, some scratch paper and I began to scratch.

I knew immediately that I would not list my family, my lover or my job. Of course, I love all of those. It goes without saying. They occupy a level above Ten Things I Love. Within two minutes I'd made a list of seventeen things I love (I may have to do this exercise twice!). I struggled to pare it down to the requisite ten. I quickly made an association: my ten subjects include some of the labels I use most frequently on my blog. Hmmmm . . . . so I write about what I love. And then something washed over me that made me feel sad. When I look at the list of ten, I realize I am not actively engaged in some of them. I am avoiding some of them. I'm doing some of them only half-way. A revelation: find happiness by jumping deeply into the things one loves.

In no particular order (in fact I thought to list them alphabetically to eliminate any perceived order) here are ten things I love.

I love my physical well-being. I make a pilgrimage every Sunday of life to Fresh & Easy to buy good food for myself. This is more than "grocery shopping". It is a celebration of self. I fuel myself with foods that support my well-being. I walk many miles every day, regardless of conditions. Sometimes it isn't very pleasant. But I never fail to feel grateful I can do this. I hike and climb in the desert for the pure joy of it. At my desk every day, I set a timer to remind me to get up and move my body. I use weights, a wobble board, a light-flashing hula hoop and resistance bands. I indulge myself with frequent massages that help ease my body from what life has done to it. It wasn't always this way. I have 215 specific, well-identified reasons to be grateful for how well my body serves me.

I love to write. I am a person compelled to tell things. I need to tell my stories, my history and my observations of the day. I have a strong urge to share the funny things that happened, to rant about the injustices and unkindnesses I observed. I love rich, colorful, plummy words and I like to make language art with them. I want to retell conversations, and sometimes the written version is better than the actual dialogue. Writing letters and journals, essays and post-hearing briefs have all been part of my tapestry. But writing a blog has been an epiphany to me. Imagine writing and having other human beings comment about it! For me, comments don't need to be false-positives. I've let nasty comments in, too. It's more important - to me - to simply have another human being react and interact. Blogging is the best new thing I took on in 2009.

I love music. I surround myself with it nearly constantly. I'm like millions of other people who would say music is important to them. I might say I take that up a notch. When I hear a song I know, I am quickly transported to the time and place I occupied when I first learned it. Say something (anything) to me and I can often pop out some snippet of lyrics to highlight what you've said. I'm not stupid, but I regard some song lyrics as a rallying cry for life ~ it's an appreciation of the songwriter's ability to weave words into images. I am tattooed with a short version of the most profound lyrics I know. So, from Pachelbel to Pure Prairie League, the Bangles to my Beatles, Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan, R.E.M. to the Rolling Stones and the Backstreet Boys to Beethoven, I have loved it all [except rap]. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one's hearing. Do you suppose the songs would play on in one's head?

I love my animals. I share life with two cats (Virginia Woolf and Dylan) and two birds (Bloomsbury and Benson). My father says I "over love" my animals, attributing to them qualities they do not possess. My father also says it would be a good life to live as one of Leslie's pets. It fulfills me to be the sole caretaker of another creature. I feed them and clean them and take them to the veterinarian when necessary. I brush the cats and clip their claws. I clean the spittle from the birds' mirror so they can continue to chirp while admiring themselves in its reflection. I buy good feed and palatial bird homes and the preferred type of cat litter. I provide toys and catnip that are mostly ignored and bird toys that are eagerly employed. It sounds like I have to do a lot and spend a little money, doesn't it? I talk to these beautiful fellow animals of the universe and each of the four looks at me as if I am brilliant when I speak. As if what I have to say matters. None of them has ever been cruel or done a thing to hurt me in any way. It's a dynamic that works beautifully. I provide the basic needs for their lives. They grace my presence with all their beauty and their trust in me.

I love venerable things. I call items with history "venerable things". These need not be priceless antiques. Ordinary household articles of long ago pull me more than a Renaissance painting. I like to handle venerable things and think about other human beings who may have handled them. I wonder if the venerable thing had special meaning to its owner, or was it simply "the potato masher"? I buy venerable things at estate sales and curiosity shops. I decorate my home and office with them. Sometimes I am fortunate to find some lovely vintage item I can wear as clothing or jewelry. Some of my favorite venerable things: my grandmother's 1917 high school graduation gift - a lavaliere that now belongs to me and will belong to Amber someday; my circa 1800 cut glass inkwell with tortoiseshell lid; a pair of eyeglass frames from about 1920. These frames are perfectly round and beautifully crafted. I want to wear them so badly it nearly makes me weep. I cannot find an eyeglass dispenser willing to try to put lenses in the frames. They fear what material the frames may be made from and whether it will hold up to today's methods of making glasses. I shall keep looking. I want those frames on my face. I want to think about the other human who wore them.

I love to be creative. This is one of the loves that makes me sad. For I am not doing it. OK, I'm writing. And I aimed my camera at some beautiful things. On one camp-out. But I am not using fabric in any way, even though I may own the lion's share of the world's stores of fabric. The sewing machine gathers dust and there are no pins sticking in the carpet. I haven't needle-pricked a fingertip for longer than I'd like to admit. The seashells used to fashion angel ornaments languish in closed bins among the shining ribbons and "jewels" meant to render them beautiful. The rubber stamps and archival ink containers lie idle and my embosser hasn't been plugged in for far too long. My cardstock and envelopes and embellishments are lined up neatly in their dustproof containers. Maybe forever, never to be touched again? Those I love enjoy receiving cards I've made. Why am I giving shitty store-bought cards to people I want to present with beauty and the creative part of my love?

I love to read. My mother, my daughter and I each began to read on our own, only nominally guided, at the age of 4. We are strong right-brainers who enjoy words and process information by reading. "Don't show me how to do it. Let me read the instructions!" I am surrounded by men who learn things by looking at a television. That doesn't work for me. When I look at a screen to learn something new, I take it in just like everyone else. Eyeball deep. When I read to learn something new, I absorb it into every part of me. I rabidly attack Prevention when it arrives every few weeks, completely reading it in one sitting. I have more self-help books than I can name, and I read and re-read them. I have many books that are old friends to me, some dating back to the 1960s. I try to give each of them a spin every year. I have virtually visited many places in the world I'll likely never actually see ~ by reading about them. Probably my favorite books are biographies. I'll read one about pretty much any person. This feeds the need not only to read, but it also puts me in the "connecting with others" mode that I love. the ability to read anything ever committed to writing, uncensored, is about as good as life gets. Whatever is intriguing, one can go find out about it.

I love learning new things. When I started my current job, I had a first-ever experience. It took me longer to catch on than I would have hoped or expected. I've always been a pretty quick study. I was about to turn 55 and I attributed the slight lag to my age. I am a bit kinder to myself now. I was entering a field I knew nothing about, managed by software I'd never used. I'd never held a sales position and had to learn that, too. Maybe I wasn't so slow! I was given a good, curious mind and I have many of the qualities of a terrier dog - some things may stump this chump, but I just keep digging until I find what I was going for. I'm afraid my learning process may not be pretty in its execution, rather like the making of sausages and law. It pleases me to learn new things. I wanted to know how to create a website and how html code works - I learned. I wanted to learn to blog. I've done so. I hope I never lose curiosity, even as I slow in my capacity to quickly grasp new things.

I love the desert. I will not be able to tell the reader why I love the desert. I've struggled for hours for those words that will not come. So I shall tell what I love about the desert. I love the loose sandy trails that make a hike feel torturous. I like the rocky hikes that scare me when the boulders shift beneath my feet. I like the drops so long I have to sit down and scoot myself down the rockface on my backside. I like to roast in my own juices in the sharp sun, eking out that one last camping trip in May before temperatures force the summer camping break. I like the snowflakes that fell and melted on my warm, bare skin as I struggled to help put the rainfly on the tent at 2:00 a.m. without my glasses. I love that I lay in 75 mph winds for hours, trying to sleep, weeping in fear, and surviving it. I love the way the coffee tastes differently out there. I love that I know how to pitch a tent, fuel and operate lanterns and a stove, make a safe campfire, follow a map. I like to poke around old mineshafts and find interesting treasures. I love that little creatures allow me to hold them and seem to enjoy my company. I love knowing how to identify animal tracks and desert flora. When I breathe in the presence of the petroglyphs, I feel like I'm in church. When I hike through a broad vista of cactus flowers, I know I have gone to a better place. It's an extreme environment. Harsh. One has to develop skills. I was a city girl. The desert opens its arms to anyone tough enough to survive in it. I thrive in it.

I love connecting with others. Human beings fascinate me. Almost all of them. I have felt like an alien visitor all of my life, however, because I don't feel as if I really understand other people. Therefore, I study them carefully. My friend and I laugh about something. If someone said, "Hey there's a great author from the 20th century named Hemingway", my friend would want to read Hemingway. I would want to read the biography so I'd know about the person Hemingway was. If my pink bus were an actual bus, I'd be the small woman at the back, surrounded by her bags of stuff, craning her neck to check out all the other passengers, taking notes. I study people and I try to find some place where I might make a connection with them. It excites me to find the fragile strand of commonality between me and another person. The electrical connection makes me feel alive and normal and . . . not so different from anyone else. Not alien.

CHALLENGE: I didn't think this exercise up. I was tagged. I'm officially tagging anyone who reads this to go do it for yourself. It's a good, introspective time spent with oneself. Tree, I'm specifically tagging you. Maybe you can't do it right now. But do it sometime. Do the short version. It might help you find your way. It helped me find mine.

In my ears right now: It runs long. It is worth listening to. It is like church music played on a pipe organ. She's got the pipes.

Some photo credits: J. D. Morehouse

Walls

I'd entitled the piece "Walls" and had been noodling at it - I was having fun. But before I could post it, I began to feel like I was running into brick walls, my head leading. I've had a little rough spot in which things got terribly out of balance. A little sad, a little angry, a little fearful . . .

I was right about something. I do not like to be on the back of an empty building in the dark where I can't be heard if I scream and I can't see out of my windows to see who might approach me. And that is what happened with the arrival of Pacific Standard Time. Yesterday by 3:00 p.m., the shadows on the deck were so long and dark, I had to give up my mood lighting in favor of the harsh fluorescents and I felt like I was in a police interrogation. The phones won't ring which means I'm not booking jobs. We're all over Google, coming up first, second and third in every search . . . where are the people?

But even I can't wallow in a hole indefinitely, so please - won't you join me in something lighthearted?

"You put funny shit on the walls, Limes. Here and at your place." "Define funny shit, Home Dude!" I wasn't all that amused. Carpet technician interior design critics? "Well, those tools in your dining room and fairies and old-timey looking stuff and some stuff I don't know what it is, and weird pictures and blankets." Oh! Home dude doesn't get sampler sized quilts on the wall and vintage, red-painted wood-handled kitchen implements and whimsical flying creatures posed to look as if they're actually fluttering around my rooms. Home dude probably doesn't get venerable things, either, but that's for a later post.

It might correctly be stated that I am a bit quirky and that I have strong attachments to certain items of decor. I have a deep need to be surrounded by things that are beautiful to me for some reason, and sometimes no one else can see the reason or the beauty. I also put up pictures and postcards that are hilarious to me, but maybe nobody else. I stick pretty much anything on the wall that won't tear the wall down. And then I admire my wonderful things, every time I pass them. My blog headline says I'd really like to invite EVERYONE over, so come on ~ take the mini-tour of my walls.

I am crazy for See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Say No Evil and have quite a collection of such images. Yes, it is true. I can go to the trashy, sleazy 80-year-old souvenir shop on Las Vegas Blvd. and find home decorator items. They also sell postcards of some of the Nevada Test Site detonations that I've picked up and fondled, but I've never brought one home.

I've not yet mentioned that each and every one of my much loved doodads has a story behind it. I can remember where I bought it or which friend gave me what as a gift.



Before you, observe the cherub shelf purchased for $1 at an estate sale - Mother Badger taught me well. Upon the shelf resides a glass perfume bottle I bought in Egypt, 7 nesting wooden dolls brought to me from Budapest, a beautiful old glass wasp trap and my beloved miniature mannequin whom I pose differently every Sunday. Beneath the shelf you will see cowboy offerings presented by the Badger. Yes, you do detect I have an affinity for all things cowboy. And the Badger has been known to indulge me in that area. Note to self: photograph some of the boots.

The angel wall is located right next to the front door. Although I am possibly the least religious person you could name, with virtually no faith, I am drawn to angels as I am to fairies, dragonflies and other beautiful creatures with wings. The angel and dove on the top are on the lid to a cookie tin I have dragged with me to many different homes. I think it is one of the most beautiful images I have ever seen. The little beauty below is a sea shell angel with a porcelain face, highly embellished. She hopped on my bus on one of many wonderful trips to Sanibel Island.

Above the computer fly the funky Florida fairies and the flapping pink quilt sampler has a story to it. Every day I secure the corners of that textile treasure to the wall. Every day Virginia Woolf engages in the catly activity of removing the fasteners, so the corner of the quilt flaps. She does this several times a day. I reattach the corner of the quilt several times a day. It is a good arrangement and keeps us active.

However, the wall that seemed to perplex home dude the most was the dining room wall with its burlap bag from Blue Mountain coffee beans brought to me from Jamaica and the 60-year-old kitchen implements. Although I took pains to explain the purpose of the clunky old potato ricer and why it charmed me, he couldn't catch onto why someone would first cook the potatoes, then change their consistency. What the heezy, they were already cooked - wouldn't you just eat them?

True story: He'd just finished a big meal with two pieces of birthday pumpkin pie and cocktails. I was clearing the dishes and not looking directly at him when he said, "This place looks just exactly like you, Limes." I snapped my head around pretty quickly, still stinging from the "Limes, you put funny shit on the walls" comment. I thought, "What, the place looks like me? Old? Small? Tattered? Dusty?" But the Badger was grinning widely - his statement was a tip of the hat to me and my decorating prowess.

And now I intend to end my personal pity party and rejoin the living. I've got some favored blogs to read and some comments to make on them. I've got blogs I peek at surreptitiously and don't comment at all. I've got to write another post. I've got a trip to pack for. I've got plans for this weekend. I've got to get on with it. ; ~}

In my ears right now: Benson and Bloomsbury chirping their empty heads off and I'm glad of it, for the phones are so quiet I'd begin pacing except for their birdly company.

Something that charmed me: The Blogger who jumped through quite a few hoops to land on a real e-mail address and then sent me a message saying "We miss reading you. You're too quiet. What's wrong?" Like Eeyore, I'd say, "Thanks for noticing me."

Something That Charmed Me

OK, so I am very easily charmed. I am charmed by things that may not charm many others, or even anyone else. But I am struck each and every day by things that are beautiful (they're beautiful to me) or awe-inspiring (to me), sweet (not necessarily babies or "country cute") or just damned odd (again, to me). I might be described as very sensuous, in that I use all five of my senses to take in the things around me. I am lucky to share my home and life with many of the things that charm me, and here are a few. Yes, it is also true that I'm easily entertained, picking up animal bones on walks, decorating with little bits of ephemera . . . . .

I am a sucker for a horned lizard (horned toad). In all of my life, I'd never touched a reptile until I was in my 50s and hiking with the Badger. He spotted a little specimen, who immediately shot into the shrubbery. Badgers are not known to tolerate nonsense, and we meant the little animal no harm, so the Badger plunged into the thick brush after him. Pulling his hand and arm out of the undergrowth, the Badger proffered the little guy to me. I was new to this camping and hiking stuff and I wasn't about to come across looking like a girl, so I put my hand out . . . and fell in love. It soon came to pass that no camping trip was considered a success by me unless there were numerous horned lizard sightings and fondling. I love to stroke the little spikes on the back of their heads, and - folks, I swear it's true - they like it, too! The Badger dubbed me the Queen of the Reptiles one spring day when I was 52 and handled 52 of them! For those conservationists who might read this, we are conservationists, too. We do not terrorize any animal and we do not take shoe boxes full of horned toads out of the desert. Instead we go to their back yard and enjoy playing with them like the elementary school kids we are. I am the happy owner of a horned lizard hand puppet, a pewter model that lives on my desk, and Sunday I received as a gift (from the Harvest Festival) a really lifelike one who now resides on my refrigerator. Love me some horned toad!

On the weekend we visited Prescott, we enjoyed a really fun artists' co-op where we perused paintings, photographs, jewelry, weaving, handmade clothing, decorative grouds, tin art, and just about every kind of creative item one could dream up. One particular artist had some pieces on display that played a couple of tunes in my hit parade. She painted a variety of scenes featuring primitive calavera (skull) art, often recognized as celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead - the Badger and I both love this art and have collected many examples of it. But she also had some of the dead flowers thing going on that the Badger has photographed all summer. I stood in front of her display and dropped my jaw. "Badger, get over here! What do you think?" "Ha! Hey, do you think she follows my blog?" "That could be the case, Badger."

There is an abandoned mine in the Mojave near a place we have camped often. We love to poke around this deserted excavation because across acres are abandoned vehicles and machinery, water tanks, furniture, semi-trucks and every manner of tool, equipment and appliance imaginable. It appears that the whistle blew in the mine one day and everyone dropped what was in his hand and they all floated off to another planet, leaving everything where it lay, never to return. Some of the piles of debris look as if a giant scooped up his industrial strength toys and then flung them petulantly to the ground. The metal items are covered with varying states of rust and decay and one must move around carefully as there are sharp objects, exposed metal cable, and other hazards. The material being mined was volcanic lava, so the ground and the hills are sharp, black or reddish and porous. It is a stark, silent, jumbled environment. "After the holocaust", one might think. However, in the spring, one can bend over and see an amazing array of tiny Mary Engelbreit flowers poking up through the lava. In the fall one is treated to the sight of coyote gourds spread across wide vistas in all stages of development: fresh, green and striped; mid-phase golden; dry and brittle. These gourds charm me. I can't not pick them. Many of them have been eaten almost completely by small rodents in the desert. The seeds spread, guaranteeing another crop in another year. Mother Badger creates decorative crafts from gourds, but found the coyote gourds too thin and brittle to use. But Limes didn't stop picking. I have been seen hiking in the desert with so many gourds stuffed into my clothes I appear to have ponderous tumors all over my body. Upon returning home from one outing, the Badger was filling the car with gas and I opened a side door . A gourd avalanche began. Badgers are not known to tolerate nonsense and he wasn't thrilled to see 20 or more of them rolling around with Limes in hot pursuit. A really nice woman helped me gather them up. "What are these things?" "Coyote gourds." "What do you do with them?" "Not much." However, as mentioned at the start of this post, I like to decorate with little bits of this and that. So in both my home and my office, I have made natural still life arrangements from the gourds, taking care not to puncture them, letting the seeds dry. And something that really, really charms me is my 50 or so coyote gourd "maracas". Sometimes I shake them at home dudes and they grin from ear to ear.

Some photo credits: J. D. Morehouse

In my ears right now: Something Carmen Miranda-like, with lots of maracas.

Something that charmed me: I already gave three examples in this post. I'm all charmed out for the moment.