August 21 2017

Speak (Five Minute Friday)

This week the prompt is speak. I admit that I have had difficulty figuring out what to write on this one. Nothing immediately comes to mind. The thing that kept popping into my mind was Mom saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Yes, that is good advice and it stands the test of time, but it didn’t speak to me, you know?

Yesterday, Sunday, I attended the showing for the husband of a friend. I had never met her husband, but wanted to go to support my friend and be there for her if she needed me. I kept thinking, there, but by the Grace of God, go I. One day it probably will be me. I thought that if you knew your spouse had only a few days left to live or that you yourself had only a very limited time left, what would you say to your loved ones? We don’t always get the chance to speak to our loved ones “one last time” and that can leave us with questions and regret once they have passed on.

So my message today is that only God knows the number of our days and it is up to YOU to speak to those you care about and let them know how much you care. Tell them all the things you have been meaning to tell them. Don’t leave things unsaid assuming they know how you feel. Take the time to speak to them in person, tell them you love them because you never know if today will be their last day or maybe even your own. If you can’t speak to the ones you love for whatever reason, perhaps you could tell them how you feel in a letter instead. Speak your heart. Speak your mind. No matter what, just speak.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Speak
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 3 Comments on Speak (Five Minute Friday)
August 11 2017

Place (Five Minute Friday)

Do you know what or where your place in the world is? Do any of us really know our place? My place used to be at home, raising my kids. But the kids grew up, and it no longer seemed so important that they have a stay-at-home mom. So, where did that leave me? Well, hubby was tired of carrying the load alone so he wanted me to give up most of the unpaid volunteer activities that were filling my time and find something to do that would bring in an income. He wanted me to get a “real” job.

I worked on getting free of my many volunteer obligations and mentioned to the lady who owned the print shop where I took the quarterly journal I had been doing for the past 5 years to be printed, that I was giving it up. The owner of the print shop asked if I was good at computers. I shrugged and said something about how I had been doing the quarterly journal for the last five years, so I guessed I was decent enough. She mentioned that she might need some help doing data entry. She said would keep my number on file and let me know if she needed my help.

Four months later, just moments after getting my then 14-year-old back in school after getting hit by a car and breaking his leg to the point of it requiring a metal plate be surgically implanted, I got the call. She asked when I could start, and knowing I needed the rest of the day to catch my breath, I told her tomorrow, which, as it happened, was a Friday. I hadn’t gone looking for a job, but one found me. I had found a new place in the world, the working world. Nothing has been the same since. I have always felt that the job was God’s will for my life and that I should stay until he presented the next thing he wanted me to do. I’m sure he has put me here for a reason, and I still have yet to figure out what that reason is. I am starting to wonder if I had it all wrong somehow and maybe should have found a different job long ago. How do I know when my place has changed?

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Place
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 3 Comments on Place (Five Minute Friday)
August 5 2017

Try – Five Minute Friday

When I was growing up, we were expected to try to do our best in everything we did. This may sound like unbelievably high expectations to set for kids, but it was actually great. If we didn’t do very well at something, Mom would ask, “Did you try? Did you do the very best you could?” If we could honestly say we did the best we could at the given task, she would say, “You did your best, that is fine.”

There are so many sayings with the word TRY. If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again. As parents, we told the kids, “You have to try it before you can say you do like it.” As they got older, we got more creative and told them they had to try as many bites as they were years old. The four-year-old needed to try four bites of any new food before they could say they didn’t like it. “OK, you tried it. That’s good. Maybe you just aren’t old enough to like it yet. We will give it a try next time, maybe you’ll be old enough by then to like it.” See how that changes the outlook on trying new foods?

Now, there are certain foods, like liver and butter beans, that I am quite sure I will never be old enough to acquire a taste for, and I am fine with that. I can honestly say that there are some foods that I have learned to like and so I can appreciate the idea of trying things you think you don’t like multiple times over the course of your life. I have learned to like yogurt, broccoli, and even Brussels sprouts.

My older sister always says, “I’ll try anything once, except for food.” She is not an adventurous eater at all, but she really does go out on a limb and try new experiences. I have always admired that in her.
So don’t ever be afraid to try new things. You just might discover some new favorite things to eat or do.

Sorry, this was late, but the internet is down at home so I had to wait until I got to a place with WiFi to post.

I just had to include this video for the word try:
Colbie Caillat – Try

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Try
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 1 Comment on Try – Five Minute Friday
July 28 2017

Inspire (Five Minute Friday)

What does it take to inspire me? That is a tough one, or maybe it is really an easy one. The tough answer is I never know what will inspire me. The easy answer is anything and everything might inspire me.

Sometimes, it is seeing a picture. Other times, it is people watching in a park, or seeing some piece of junk on the side of the road, or maybe a billboard with some profound message on it.

I find inspiration in some unlikely places. I see textures in the blue and white speckled paint on a camping pot at a sporting goods store. I especially find inspiration in tile, specifically the tile on bathroom walls. Sometimes it is in the coolest patterns, and very colorful. Half the fun of writing these Five Minute Friday posts is the idea of making a new graphic to post with my musings using one of the colorful textures I have captured as I go about my business and live my life. Sometimes it isn’t what we see when we look at something that inspires us, it is what we see when we look a little closer and get a new perspective.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Inspire
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 4 Comments on Inspire (Five Minute Friday)
July 21 2017

Collect (Five Minute Friday)

What do you collect? As a child, I collected stamps. Used postage stamps from the United States. I remember combing through all the places Mom had stored old mail, looking for interesting postage stamps. Mom wouldn’t mind if I gently tore the stamp and the paper around it off the old envelopes. If she did, she never said anything. I tried to tidy the area I was digging through and make sure I left the papers and mail neater than they had been when I found them. Maybe this is the reason she never complained.

After collecting a decent number of stamps, all still on their little snips of paper, I would get a foil pan and put a layer of stamps in it and fill with tap water to soak the stamps off the paper. Eventually, some of the stamps would slide right off the paper. Others would need a little longer to soak. It was an enjoyable step in the process.

I had little glassine gummed hinges to attach the treasure trove of soaked off and dried stamps into the proper places in my album. My album was perfect bound and thus not expandable. It was nothing fancy, kind of like a workbook. It showed all the stamps in gray and black ink. My job as a collector was to cover each gray picture of the stamps with the real stamp to add color to the album.

I loved seeing how detailed some of those older stamps were. Any most cases, they had only a single color of ink, but the details were amazing! A magnifying glass showed all the tiny lines the artist had made to give the inch-square piece of art its details.

I still have my stamp collection though I probably stopped adding to it in the late seventies. Thinking back, the fact that the newer stamps weren’t included in my album may have had a bit to do with why I stopped adding to it. I still save the interesting and not overly heavily postmarked stamps from my incoming mail. I’ve noticed more and more things come with meter marks instead of postage stamps or if they do have postage stamps, they are bulk mail stamps. The designs are more colorful now and there are tons more stamps to collect, but the old ones with the single ink color are still my favorites, because of the details.

Life is in the details, it is up to you to notice them. What do YOU collect?

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Collect
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 4 Comments on Collect (Five Minute Friday)