Open Link Monday: but no laundry

What did I do on Monday if I didn't do laundry? I took up my latest wild and exciting hobby—getting all juiced up.

juicing vegetables

generating healthfulness

celery, zucchini, 

cucumber, carrot,

bok choy and bean sprouts

I like it, dog loves it, husband hates the taste.

intriguing machinery

juice comes out one side

pulp out other side

dog loves the pulp but I’m saving it for soup.

next time apple

little bit of cantaloupe

(half a head

of lettuce—

reduces

to juices

just like that!)

The best I could do (because I hate to do nothing)

for Open Link Monday at

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

What could be easier than Open Link—just present a piece of my own writing and go to bed (yes, it's still Monday here) so I can lie awake all night wondering what everyone is thinking about that crazy Canadian lady who writes poetry about vegetables. Squished vegetables, too.

No, this isn't my dog, although she's a similar color. It isn't my husband, either. It's my new toad-shot. 

With Real Toads: Chapter 9

Kerry, of the writers’ group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, has announced today is, as always, the free-for-all (doesn’t that sound like fun?) known as Open Link Monday.

This unfittie is feeling particularly unfit today, so I have chosen to re-publish an entire short chapter (but not the shortest chapter) from The Unfittie’s Guide to Adventurous Travel.

CHAPTER 9—MORE ABOUT ME

My husband has read my manuscript to this point and thinks I haven’t told you enough about myself.

Although one’s self is often one’s favorite subject, I thought it over and decided this is merely a matter of misery loving company. Dick has to listen to all my woes, and has lived through many of them with me, so he thinks it would be easier for him if half the western world shared his misery.

I don’t think so.

You can tell I’m an unfittie if you can imagine a family doctor, a gerontologist, a rheumatologist, a gastroenterologist, three ophthalmologists, a podiatrist, a massage therapist, a sleep therapist, and a denturist; and if you know the pharmacist recognizes the old guy in the referee shirt as “Kay’s husband coming to pick up her meds.”

You don’t need to know the gory details. You probably have enough gore of your own.

With Real Toads: Pleiades poetic form

For this weekend's Sunday mini-challenge, Kerry of the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads introduces a poetic form called Pleiades, named for the group of stars otherwise known as The Seven Sisters.
The poem has a one-word title, and the first letter of the title is also the first letter of each of the seven lines (for seven sisters). There are six syllables in each line because only six of the sisters are visible with the naked eye.

Kerry also introduced another new element to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads today: the group's newest member, namely Yours Truly: Kay, with whom I seem to have spent my entire life.
I'm thrilled to have been invited to become a member of this terrific group, because, in a short time, Real Toads has been influential in getting me to break out of my rut and try new things. I am convinced, and I hope rightly, this will help me break out of my long-standing inability to get back to the style with which I started my book An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel. To any writer, a prolonged siege of Writer's Block is not only unpleasant, it can also be dangerous. Not fatal, one hopes, but dangerous in that the longer we stop, the longer we are apt to stay stopped.

I was thinking this past week about my father, who died two years ago this month, and remembering how he never seemed to let himself get bogged down by such a thing. In fact, if I might be so bold on his behalf, I could say he probably didn't even believe in Writer's Block. If he didn't feel like writing, he'd go for a walk on the beach to clear his head, then go back to his typewriter. He never did have a computer, but he did agree to accept my brother's gift of an electronic typewriter, which made corrections easier to handle. In the process of editing his Living Rivers books (which was not a difficult job, because he wrote well) I would enter them into a computer before delivery to his publisher.

Gordon Davies
1924-2009

Where is all this leading? Kay just loves to talk about Gordo, my friends could tell you. That's true, but this is leading to my Real Toads submission for today: a Pleiades style poem—one-word title, seven lines of six syllables each, each line starting with the same letter as the title word.

Father

funny, handsome young man,

faithful husband to Mom,

free spirit, eccentric,

filling our lives up with

fabulous adventures,

finding self in travel,

fishing, writing—our Dad.