It’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Dan Antion at No Facilities invited Robbie and me over as his guests. We’re having fun talking about poetry and things. Come on over to join our chat. I’ll see you there!
Today is a poetry day
I should open with a poem
But I got zip
Still, bonus points are on the line
Stream of Consciousness Saturday
Nothin' zero
Robbie and Miriam have poems
Not here - in the anthology
Me? Nada - zilch!
Because today’s post required more planning than Linda allows, I was going to skip the SoCS part. But then she offered bonus points.
“Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘zip, zero, zilch.’ Use one, use ’em all, bonus points if you use all three. Have fun!”
If you follow my blog, you know I like poetry and I appreciate the work of poets. I have always had an interest in poetry, but only through the friends I’ve made blogging have I gotten to know poets. I have said it numerous times, but poets are the true artists in the writing world. The make…
The prompt for Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “a rainy day.” Write about the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the phrase “a rainy day.”
I took the first two photos today (January 17, 2022).
“It’s going to be a rainy day!” Hubby peeked out of the window. He gazed at the flat, gray sky backdropping the trees in the front yard.
“I hope it will pour for a few days.” I turned my head in the same direction.
“I’ll turn off the sprinklers,” he said.
“Yeah. There’s no sun to evaporate the moisture in the air. We can turn them back on if the rain didn’t breakthrough.”
“The clouds seem to be darker in the distance above the mountain. It looks like the rain started already.” He continued to examine the pattern of the sky.
“Did you watch the 10-day weather forecast?” I was curious.
“Yes, it said it will rain tonight. The storm will come in by the third day and have steady rain for two more days.” He glanced at me occasionally as he continued his examination.
“That’s wonderful! Remember? We had heavy rain several weeks straight a few years ago. The Naval orange tree loved it and soaked up every bit of the water. We had hundreds of juicy oranges that year.” That thought made my mouth water.
“Oh, now you remind me of collecting small bottles. I’ll squeeze the juice and freeze it. We had juice enough for four months in some good harvesting year.”
“You saved many 16oz peanut bottles. They are the good size bottles to stack up in the freezer.”
“That’s right. I’ll buy more peanuts,” he said.
“Why?”
“To have more bottles.”
“Do you want to eat more peanuts to save enough bottles for the juice? If we have about 1,000 oranges, 8 oranges to make 16oz of juice, you will eat 125 bottles of peanuts.”
We may have more than 1,000 oranges this year
“Might as well. That way, all the bottles are the same size.” He tried to convince himself.
“We’ll have a good harvest of the plums this year with the pouring rain. The year we had juicy oranges was the same year we had full loads of plums on both trees.” I recalled.
“Didn’t you give away many plums?” Hubby turned around to walk toward the back patio door.
“I did. They ripened almost all at once. I couldn’t pick them fast enough. I tried to leave them on the tree as long as I could and ate as many as I could each day. They get soft when continue to ripen. But I like firm plums.”
“I ate two or three a day. They were sweet, and that was all I could eat.”
“I know you worry about the blood sugar. Plums are full of fiber, which helps slow down a blood sugar spike after you eat carbs. Don’t worry about eating more of them this year.”
“You put a lot of in the refrigerator last year.” Hubby looked out the glass patio door.
“I tried to keep them from getting soft too fast. Out of curiosity, I tallied them as I picked. We got 1,100 plums from two trees. Even the new tree yielded many plums. The rain surely contributed to the abundance. The good timing of the plum blossom was an important factor as well. We had many blossoms last year, but it rained right after that and didn’t give the bees a chance to pollinate.”
Plumtree in2019
2019 Plums
“We don’t know how much rain we get this year.”
“The plum trees will blossom next month. I saw the bees are hovering all over the clovers on the slope. They’ll be ready to work.”
“The trees have a good soak so far. You may have a good harvest again.”
“I made four jars of low sugar plum jam last time, but we didn’t use it fast enough. It started molding after a few weeks. I had to throw it away.” I saved the jars, though.
“I don’t eat toast often enough to use the jam.”
“I know. I must do something this year to save the plums.”
“What?”
“I remember my friends in Oregon used an electric dehydration machine to make dry fruits. I could get one and dry the plums.”
“How much is a dehydration machine?”
“A 10-tray dehydration machine is about $200. I can get a smaller one, but it’ll take forever to dry 1,000 plum,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know. Let’s think about it and talk more about the peanuts and the dehydration machine some other time. Let’s see if it’s going to be pouring the rest of the winter.” He walked toward his new Rolls Royce recliner.
The cover has latches on the two sides of the screen and the two sides of the keyboard. It looks like a large box when it’s closed (latched). There is a handle to carry it to make it portable. I believe the computer’s central processing unit (CPU) was 2.5 MHz, 64K RAM, and it had a 9” green phosphor screen display with text only. It has a 5 ½ “floppy disk drive. It used the MS-DOS/PC DOS Microsoft programming languages.
There were so many codes that I don’t think anyone would have them memorized. But the codes were above and below the keyboard.
I worked as a Rehabilitation Counselor in downtown Los Angeles in the 1980s. But I wanted to go into education, so I was at California State University, Los Angeles, to get my Childhood Development Credential, and continued to get the Educational Administration Credential.
My ex worked for an airline in the Dallas Headquarters. He worked from Wednesday to Sunday and had Monday and Tuesday off. He wanted me to fly to Dallas every weekend and come back to LA On Sunday, then he flew to Dallas on Tuesday night.
I left the Rehabilitation Center at 4:00 p.m. every week and drove to LA International Airport carrying the heavy metal case computer. It was very sturdy. Frequently, there were no empty seats in the waiting area at the gate. I sat on the computer reading while waiting for boarding the plane.
He came back to LA after six months when the airline was about to cease to operate. I remember we replaced the computer with a Compaq Portable computer. It was not as heavy. It still runs on the MS-DOS program language. The codes came in a strip like a ruler that I put in front of the keyboard.
When I look at my keyboard at the present, I see the first row of keys is from F1 to F12, but you can also use Control + for that key to do shortcuts. The MS-DOS also used the F1-F? for shortcuts.
As far as the printer, we had a dot matrix printer with the sprocket-fed fan-fold paper used to move through the machines!
I should write a post about my first typewriter before the first computer! Okay, another time!
Linda G. Hill’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday #SoCS for July 18, 2020 is “link.” I love to play this week.
I’ve heard the song You Raise Me Up and loved it, but it brought more attention to me when my sister sent me a YouTube link with Chinese subtitle. I felt in love with song all over again and looked into the background of the song as well as the performer who sang this in the center of Maastricht, Netherlands. Here are the info and the links.
You Raise Me Up
You Raise Me Up” was originally composed by Rolf Undsæt Løvland as an instrumental piece and titled “Silent Story” in 2001. Løvland is a Norwegian composer, lyricist, arranger, and pianist. Together with Fionnuala Sherry, he formed the Celtic-Nordic group Secret Garden. Løvland later approached Irish novelist and songwriter Brendan Graham to write the lyrics to his melody. The song was made by and for Løvland himself and performed for the very first time at the funeral of Løvland’s mother
The song was performed early in 2002 by the Secret Garden and became a minor UK hit. By 2005, the song reached a massive world-wide success.
In his biography, the unemployed baker Martin Hurkens credited her youngest daughter for signing him up for the RTL program “Holland Got Talent” behind his back. He hesitated a little, then decided to participate in this great program. To his surprise, he reached the finale. Singing was always his hobby and he turned his hobby into a profession. He “seized the opportunity with both hands.”
After winning the finale, he received more and more requests for performances. In addition to these performances he also recorded a video clip in the center of Maastricht of the song: “You Raise Me Up.” This video became popular on YouTube and Social Media and has been watched all over the world. He received many requests for performances in China, Taiwan, and Japan.
When I am down, and, oh, my soul, so weary
When troubles come, and my heart burdened be
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence
Until you come and sit awhile with me
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “ground.” Use it as a noun or a verb in any tense (i.e. grind). Have fun!– Linda G. Hill
~ ~ ~
My sock escaped the patio of our condo on the fifth floor during our slumber on the third day in Maui. I scanned the bushes around the pool area at the ground level and glanced the walkway leading to the beach. Nothing resembled my sock.
Hubby and I walked on the beach two mornings ago. I gazed the trees at the far end curve of the beach and measured the rhythm of my steps. We could walk all the way there before turning around. Talking to myself.
Ouch! I bounced, retrieving my right foot from the sand. Something shocked the nerve of my bared foot. It was the spikes of the fallen twigs. Hubby suggested walking in the salty water hoping it would sooth the shooting sensation. It was not bleeding, saved by the reflex.
The next morning, I worried other unknown objects might surprise my feet. Some people walk on the beach with shoes but most of them do it with flip flops. I didn’t bring flip flops and preferred not to wet my shoes with saltwater. Wearing socks seemed to be a sound idea. After the walk, I washed off the sand and dirt of the socks inside and out and left them on the patio chair in our condo. It was not windy when we went to bed. Well, I forgot about fetching the socks and lost one overnight. It was the least of things I’ve lost during our travel.
Makena Beach
On a pleasant note, we went to Makena Beach that day to rekindle our memory of the beach wedding twenty-three years ago. It is a small beach at the end of the State Park. The size of the beach looks like a private beach in someone’s backyard. There was no disturbance from other visitors during our wedding and photograph. It was still a quiet beach when we visited it on multiple occasions during the previous trips.
We didn’t expect this trip to be different or a busy tour season in October. To our surprise, the beach was busy with at least a dozen people playing in a pool of water, sunbathing or reading in beach chairs.
The water was turquoise blue contrasted with the black lava rocks. The tide rolled in, hitting and splashing on the rocks to several feet high. Hubby spotted several turtles swam against the waves trying to get back to the ocean. Without Polaroid sunglasses, I missed the privilege of the sights.
The blue sky, the fluffy clouds, the turquoise water and the smooth sandy beach made a pleasant memory on this sunny day.
The Showers of Blessings 