Ten Things of Thankful

After seeing Astrid’s post and thinking about my day today (it’s late afternoon), I wanted to write a post for Ten Things of Thankful (TToT). This is my first contribution to that link-up. 🙂

1. First of all, and probably most importantly, I am not feeling so depressed today, due to a few happy things that happened and also, probably, pure luck. Also, God must have decided not to actually let the depression get the better of me, although He tends to let me wallow in it. Sometimes I think God is a little sadistic, but that doesn’t ring true with what I know and am taught about God, so I try to believe what I know and not how I feel all the time.
2. I am thankful for the time spent with a friend today. This is a good friend from college whom I am still close with, and we see each other every few weeks or so.
3. I am thankful for what we decided to do this morning: take a walk in a big park. I hadn’t done that in quite a while, and the weather was perfect for it today.
4. The weather was cool enough to enjoy being outside, yet I did not need a jacket, and the sky was a bit gray but not too overcast. Now it is a nice blue. 😀
5. I am grateful for a new flavor of soda that I got to try today. Also, this soda is only 5 calories for the whole bottle. I’m not supposed to be concerning myself with calories and that stuff, but it does make me feel better to know that this soda is not bad for me.
6. I am grateful for all the cute little doggies and the fearless squirrel that we saw in the park.

Photo by Barnabas Davoti on Pexels.com

7. I am grateful for Youtube. There is good Catholic teaching on there, as well as rosaries and other prayers, and even a community in the form of live-streamed prayer groups.

8. I am grateful for my job. I like having money 🙂 and although I don’t always want to go in to work, I usually feel better once my workday starts, and by the time it is finished, I feel productive and like my life matters a little more. In general, I enjoy my job, even though I am technically overqualified.

9. This is where the gratitude list is getting tough, but I really want to reach 10 things…. I am grateful for my plushie kangaroo because it makes me smile every day.

Here is my kangaroo, pictured with my rosary and a one-decade rosary ring,
which it is “holding,” because apparently my kangaroo is Catholic too.

10. I am grateful for my brain, because even though it makes me feel depressed a LOT, it is pretty smart, and it likes to write. I like that I like to write, especially poetry! 😀

11. Oooh, I have an eleventh thing! I am grateful that the coffee stain came out of my white robe!

Moments of Awe

For Sadje’s WDYS prompt this week: Image credit; Robert Lukeman @ Unsplash
Also for today’s SoCS about silent letters.
It has been tough for me to write anything that is good enough lately. 

See and rejoice:
Verdant valley’s sunrise,
Such scenes’ breathtaking beauty — choice
To be thankful,
Give voice

Love and Compassion

Today my mood was up and down. I actually cried at work and spent an hour in the back taking inventory and washing dishes because I couldn’t help customers. The good news is I didn’t get fired! 😀 Lots of variables go into my mood, but sometimes there really is no reason for the crying; it just happens at the worst times sometimes!

One thing that is special about today is that the Catholic Church celebrates the Blessed Mother Mary’s birthday today. I thought about baking a cake to celebrate. How many candles would be on it? About 2,036 give or take? 🙂 Today also marks my parents’ 38th wedding anniversary — that’s a long time!

Photo by Nubia Navarro (nubikini) on Pexels.com

For today’s poem, I have a haiku in response to Ronovan Writes’s challenge:

Out of wells of woe
Comes water of deep knowing,
Compassion growing

Funny Functions and Double Derivatives

For this week’s One-Liner Wednesday, I have a “midweek meme.” I have shared “midweek music memes,” and today I have the equally-alliterative Midweek Math Memes.

Coffee is amazing.

Potatoes are also amazing.

Pineapple on pizza is debatable.

Waddle Waddle

Since it is National Photography Day, I figured I would  share these pictures from when a friend and I went to see ducks earlier today. I tried to upload a cute little video, but my WP site doesn’t allow it. No poems to share today. I’ve been writing a lot, but none of it is very good / shareable. Hoping my inspiration will rekindle soon.

 

I love it when the ducks do that thing it the water! It was the 57,636th time I’d seen it, but I still laughed.

Under a tree

I just love their little faces!!

Morning Light

A few of my brother’s cacti and plants. My favorite is the one in the little blue pot on the right.

This is my very late response to the Cosmic Photo Challenge, for which this week’s theme is In the Morning Light, so I took these photos in my back yard this morning at around 6:15.

Sometimes there are many clouds in the sky, but I only saw these little ones. Nevertheless, they were inspiring!

Psalm 103 inspired this cinquain:

Give thanks
For everything:
Morningtime is hopeful,
Looking up at sunrising sky
With clouds

Wanting to extend this theme, I wrote a Chaucerian stanza next:

The clouds of morning bring with them a hope:
A cotton-candy pink like sweetest blush
Colors their face, as languidly they lope
Across the sky, amidst the gentle hush
Of morning. Currently there is no rush.
I hear birds chirp and revel in the sound,
Hope beauty is unclouded, evening-gown’d.

An Achievement

My sijo for this week.

Little purple flower petals open from a tiny bud:
It is not much of an achievement to anything around,
But for the flower it opens a world — and also for the bee.

Inspired by the fact that I went to work and stayed today, despite really not feeling like it. Happy thing: a little boy waved at me, awww!

Bonus poem: because of FOWC: Mosquito, here is a haiku I wrote last week.

Summertime danger:
Itching ankles, bumps from bites
Mosquito magnet

(I am one)

Hummingbird

This haibun, inspired by something that just happened this morning (the haiku is more like zappai), also fits yesterday’s 3TC: flight, wing, and flap. 

Dive, Swim, or Waddle?

For the 3 Things Challenge today, the theme is still “ducks,” and the words are DIVE, SWIM, and WADDLE. My self-imposed challenge was to use all these words and not write about ducks. 🙂

This is barely a poem, but here is what I came up with:

Life is like a swimming pool
And I, an alleged swimmer:
Unable to dive, I am thrown into depths
Probably able to keep from completely
Drowning,
But my swimming is equivalent to waddling.

Yeah, I’m not good at this whole “life” thing. The good news is, I’ve been peaceful recently, and writing makes me feel alive in a good way. 

Fun fact: This poem does describe my actual swimming ability (or lack thereof).

Webbed Paddling Feet

Thanks to Leyde Ryan’s post, I rediscovered the “Three Things Challenge” (3TC). The three things were the title of this post. 🙂 The first thing I thought of was DUCKS!!! and that made me so happy that I had to try to write something for it, a poem or at least a few sentences.

Turns out, the duck theme was intentional, and also, those 3 words were from yesterday, not today. Nevertheless, here is my thing. It turned into a haibun:

Just yesterday a Facebook "memory" from a whole year ago popped up: A friend and I had gone to a nearby park to look at ducks, and I had taken a few photos and even a video of our adventure. How could that have been so long ago? Thinking too much about time passing makes me sad, but seeing those pictures again put a smile on my face. 

Today that same friend sent me a message, saying that it had been a while, that we should see the ducks together again. 

on land, in water
time flows quickly yet always
happiness waddles

A photo from that day — ducks walking with webbed feet

We saw ducklings paddling with their little feet in the water
AWWWWWW! ❤