In what ways do you communicate online?
Keyboard communicators
Trying to say something
Innocent or funny
Message not received
Lost in translation
From intent
To perception
Misunderstandings
Disagreements
Explaining
Begets
More misunderstandings
Text is tone deaf
What is wrong with us?
A bout of vertigo has kept me out of commission for most of the day, but don’t fear, as soon as this resolves, I will return to Susie’s story.
Vestibular migraine: not for the faint of heart or stomach.
Think back on your most memorable road trip.
Highway miles
Turn to country roads
Take me home
To the place
I belong
Mothman Prophecies
Makes sense
Here
Back to highway
Small towns
One road
Where are the bathrooms?
Hungry
Tired
Small towns branch out
To cornfields
Hundreds of miles
Cornfields
Tucked within is
A small town
Or is it all smoke and mirrors
Giant stadiums
Practice courts
Hotels
Famous faces
Feet emerge from car
Leg Cramps
No time to rest
Set up the interviews
Tomorrow it starts
Anticipation
With the toss of the coin
Heads or tails
Play begins
Game, set, match
©️2024 itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved
What snack would you eat right now?
Chocolate
Revered by the Mayans
Used as currency
Given as gifts
It was sent from the gods
Given as gifts
Golden coins of chocolate currency
Consumed by the masses
Chocolate
Come up with a crazy business idea.
Imagine this
Not a harebrained scheme
Only a flip of the wrist
As we turn the page
In half of a month
We will say goodbye
To all of these prompts
That make me want to poke myself in the eye
Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?
A baby’s blanket
Acrylic, blue
Held by a little girl
Chaos was all that she knew
It sits in the basement
Folded and clean
Stored away with other memories
Forever felt but not seen
©️2024, itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved
What is your mission?
Who really knows?
It’s not up to me
One thing I know for sure
I’m not a fan of Bloganuary
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
A long life to one
isn’t long enough to another
And perhaps too long
to those
who suffer
A life that is brief
But filled with meaning
Is that really a short life after all?
©️2024 itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved
It all started with Mama Kitty.
She was a pretty Tortie, a green-eyed stray with a home. I know, that seems paradoxical, but in reality she was. Her home was about four houses down from mine. She would walk the fence in the backyard to come to my house. As is the case with the Cat Distribution System, we couldn’t figure out why she began to show up. But as this is a cat house, cats who show up get fed.
Mama Kitty was different. An anxiety suffer for most of my life, I could tell that she suffered from panic attacks and anxiety. Any attempt to bring her into the house to eat on the landing, she would run away. After a time, she would enter the house to eat, but the door had to remain open for her to have a clear escape. I know all too well that feels like. Anxiety is stifling and the flight response is overwhelming. Once she was done eating, she would go back outside and disappear for a few days. She slept on our front porch glider that was covered for winter.
It was during the late winter of February/March 2008 when one day we noticed Mama Kitty was a bit round in the belly. A few pets to the area revealed what we didn’t need a vet to tell us: Mama Kitty was pregnant. Capturing her to bring her into the warmth of the house became of utmost importance. As I mentioned, it was winter. If she’d had the babies outside, they all would’ve died. As I’ve also mentioned, Mama Kitty had an anxiety disorder. Getting her in the house without causing a full-blown panic attack was going to be challenging, if not impossible. The guest room became a nursery.
We prepared a large cardboard box with old sheets inside and placed it in the closet on the floor. This would serve as the birthing area. Cats will seek out confined areas that are private in which to give birth. After several attempts to capture Mama Kitty, we succeeded, but she was terrified. Our course of action was to place her into the guestroom and shut the door. I would visit the room and coax her out to eat and have a gentle scratch or two (hundred). She was a very loving, sweet cat – but she was terrified of men, dark pants and boots. (You can guess why.) She eventually ventured out of the nursery and was comfortable enough to sit on my lap in the living room.
It was one such occasion that she was on my lap and I was rubbing her. She allowed me to rub her belly, and I often felt the babies rolling around and kicking each other. There was one baby that was very active and seemed larger than the others. We could count three with our hands, but weren’t sure about a fourth. Mama Kitty was not a very large cat. She was quite small, in fact, so we weren’t quite sure where she would store a fourth baby.
On the early evening of April 15, 2008, Mama Kitty was enjoying a relaxing massage in my lap when she suddenly stood up and quickly jumped to the floor. I noticed after she jumped that there was water on my lap. Her waters had broken and she was in labor.
Stay tuned for Part II . . .
©️2024 itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved
What could you do differently?
What could I do differently? Or what I am going to do differently? The latter. Due to the current prompt being underwhelming, regularly scheduled prompt response is being replaced by a birthday wish for Zora Neale Hurston.
Born on this day in Alabama in 1891, Ms. Hurston was a part of the Harlem Renaissance. She was an author, a filmmaker and an anthropologist.
I first learned of Ms. Hurston in an undergrad American literature class via introduction to my favorite novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I often refer to her as a true wordsmith. I feel as though her words are able to cast spells and almost hypnotize. Sublime words that dance around the reader’s head. I can see her words. They are the color of honey.
I am forever grateful to the graduate student who taught that American literature class years all those years ago.
Happy Birthday, Ms. Hurston.
Some of my favorite quotes by Ms. Hurston:
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Goodreads
He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Goodreads
There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still gulf of formless feeling untouched by thought
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?
Zora Neale Hurston, How it Feels to be Colored Me
Goodreads
Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.”
©️2024 itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved
“It's Amy,” I said. 