Five More Days Until My Birthday

Me at home after cataract surgery

Good afternoon – It’s about a week and a half after my surgery. The vision in my right eye was pretty instantaneous and then they taped it closed. So yes, clear distant was immediate; the close up vision is still working itself out. I have found I can read if I put the screen or book at arm’s length; otherwise, my left eye is doing most of the reading work. I’m thankful the left eye can still see well with glasses because there were a few things no one mentioned until the final pre-op visit. 1) I can no longer drive at night. The surgeon appeared a little hesitant at the pre-op – I don’t want to tell you you are my youngest, but yeah you’re my youngest patient. This was followed by, You can’t drive at night anymore. I laughed, Well since I don’t drive at all that would probably be a good idea. Needless to say this relieved the surgeon because most of his patients have already stopped driving at night and he wasn’t looking forward to telling a 47 year old she can’t drive at night.

The second thing I found out at that visit was I could not bend over for a week. Hello, I have CP and do not have the balance to bend at the knees. I spent an entire week not being able to do anything. I’m still not allowed to do any strenuous activities, which again with CP is very restrictive because I use more energy to do things. I did empty and reload the dishwasher the other day. When Shawn came home he yelled at me; I was like I can bend over now and emptying and reloading a dishwasher isn’t that taxing. I am still not lugging around the vacuum, mop and bucket, or laundry baskets. And yes I’m going a little stir crazy just sitting around the house. Imagine if all these restrictions carried on for a month if I scheduled my left eye two weeks after my right. Since my 48th birthday is after the two week mark of my surgery, I also wanted to be able to celebrate it.

One thing I have been able to do is sit and write haiku so at least I’m not twiddling my thumbs all day.

Do not bend over
Eye needs enough time to heal
Sit and write haiku

Start new fashion trend
Extend usefulness of glasses
Right lens taken out

It’s okay to cry
But be careful not to sneeze
After surgery

Could see right away
But it was not long enough
Eye taped to go home

Stuck on couch all day
Housework falls by the wayside
While I recover

No strenuous work
Leaves almost nothing to do
Boredom rules the day

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#NaPoWriMo Borrowed Poetry

Kitchen sink plug – not in use

 

Closed Mind / Open Door

Ferme la bouche
Patriarch keeps female mouths shut
Ferme la bouche
Women speak up with a loud whoosh
They voice ideas in clear-cut
Precise words to stop any but
Ferme la bouche

Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day.
@carsonbot

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our prompt for the day (optional as always) asks you to peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem. Need an example? Well, there’s actually quite a respectable lineage of poems that start with a line by another poet, such as this poem by Robert Duncan, or this one by Lisa Robertson.

Good morning readers and welcome to day eight of napowrimo. I’m not exactly sure where this one came from, but the tweet from @carsonbot was the first one I saw this morning and I’ve had doors on my mind as Silver Birch Press is running a series on the front door. And ever since taking high school French, the phrase ferme la bouche has been something I remembered and use on occasion. Not sure this really works in the rondelet form, but I went with it.

Yesterday my children heard my voice loud and clear. Before Shawn went to work, he hand washed some dishes; which I thought was very sweet. I had a growing pile of items that were not dishwasher safe and I was procrastinating at washing them. But in the early afternoon, I figured it was time to drain the sink and put away the dishes, only to find my husband used the garbage disposal plug upside and I could not pull it out. So yeah my children heard me cursing out and plotting their father’s demise. According to Gretchen I sounded like Lady MacBeth. I finally asked Robin into the kitchen to help, thinking it would be easier for him to pull up the plug. He just siphoned the water out of the sink, and then I borrowed a pair of pliers from Shawn to pull the plug out. Right now I have the plug hidden away in case he gets another bright idea to wash dishes by hand he’ll have to use the correct plug and I don’t think there is anyway for him to use it upside down.

#NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 9

 

To Do List

Spring cleaning
Blooms
Laundry
Dishes
Mop, sweep, vacuum
Add season remote reading
A dash of poetry
Energy droops
Day by day
Petals fall
Counting down
Until April ends

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 9 – Our (optional) prompt for the day asks you to engage in another kind of cross-cultural exercise, as it is inspired by the work of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese writer who lived more than 1000 years ago. She wrote a journal that came to be known as The Pillow Book. In it she recorded daily observations, court gossip, poems, aphorisms, and musings, including lists with titles like “Things That Have Lost Their Power,” “Adorable Things,” and “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide!

Good Morning! Welcome to day 9 of NaPoWriMo. I was busy yesterday cleaning house and getting ready to start the remote reading which made today’s prompt perfect for a to do list. Last week Gretchen and I popped the screen out of the back Living room window. I am not a window cleaner. I couldn’t tell you the last time screens were washed, but the back window can now be checked off the to do list.

DEAR

Don’t know what to write
Every line comes out trite
And not worth the fight
Revisions may take all night

Yesterday’s prompt was to write a poem around a metaphor or slang term. And pretty soon I’ll be D.E.A.R (drop everything and read). Not sure an acronym really works as a metaphor but it is one of my favorite pastimes.

Weekend Chores

Hello readers here we are as another week has passed. I’ve written at least one haiku for the #haikuchallenge on Twitter this week, but nothing else on the poetry front. Thursday Rachael came home from school complaining of a headache. It blew up to a full migraine and fever and chills so she didn’t get any sleep Thursday night. As I’ve mentioned she doesn’t have school on Fridays; she was fortunate there.

Friday morning I get Gretchen out the door to school and go back to bed. Rachael not getting any sleep Thursday night meant I got very little, too. She actually fell asleep Friday afternoon so I texted Gretchen to be quiet when she got home from school. Friday night was the Erotic Poetry reading at Alwun House. I was going to go, but the plan was for Rachael to drive me over to Nonnie’s so she could get her new scrub and then Nonnie and I were going to go to the reading. Oh well. Shawn didn’t get home until 3am! I waited up for him. Of course Saturday no one did anything, besides getting Gretchen to and from her college course.

Saturday night Rachael wanted hot & sour soup from PF Chang’s (Pei Wei is just down the street) but she wanted the really good soup. As I was putting the order in online, Shawn asked for the Japanese Beef; I showed him the steak selections and said PF Chang’s not Pei Wei and he said, I have to go all the way down there (it’s only 3 miles from the house). You’re the one who agreed to your child’s soup request. Came home with dinner and red fortune cookies – a first for us. Now do you think they are red for Valentine’s Day or Chinese New Year or maybe both?

Then this morning Rachael got up bright and early, dressed and went off to work. I didn’t start to stir until around 11am and I hear her voice. I look out the window and sure enough the car was in the driveway. I get up and and ask, You’re feeling too bad to go in and get a paycheck? She said, No I went in and they sent me home. Apparently her father gave her a strange look when she walked back in the door only about two hours after she left. I was so tired I didn’t even hear her leave or come home. She’s spending a third day zoning out on the couch. Gretchen has tomorrow off for President’s Day, but ASU does not and knowing Rachael she’ll be off to school tomorrow.

And today I’m busy catching up on chores, making sure the sick germs do not travel. When I got up to see Rachael this morning, I thought she was talking to her dad, but he wasn’t around. He went out early to get the grocery shopping done. Apparently he has a full schedule of helping out a bunch of people today and since it’s been over a week since we’ve done grocery shopping, we were number one on his list. I’ve gotten groceries put away; changed cat litter; started laundry; emptied and reloaded the dishwasher; and now I’m taking a break.

Sunday has arrived
do laundry over again
cycle never ends

Happy Easter

Sunday
coffee is made
husband is up early
I roll over to get more sleep
How many chores wait for me?
Out of bed, floors are swept and mopped
then clothes go in washer
working before
Monday

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 16 – Today I challenge you to take your inspiration, like our featured interviewee did in the chapbook she co-authored with Ross Gay, from the act of letter-writing. Your poem can be in the form of a letter to a person, place, or thing, or in the form of a back-and-forth correspondence.

Welcome back to NaPoWriMo day 16 and Happy Easter! I’ve done the list of chores above and decided I had time to write my poem before putting the ham in the oven. The above poetry form I learned about back in 2011 over on gather.com. It was created by a member of the mindful poetry group. I thought it was called a conversant which is what made me think of it for this prompt. And the fact I’ve written epistolaries for napowrimo before – Dear Washer. But when I looked up conversant poem, they looked nothing like the form above.

Housework, Job, and Write a Poem Bop

Alarm goes off five am each morning
it is a struggle to open my eyes
waking before the sun begins to rise
to start the day, I walk down hallway in
the dark because everyone else is still
asleep, open door to wake little girl

My list of never-ending chores is long

Then into kitchen to make her breakfast
at five-forty alarm two goes off and
older child gets up to take a shower
after eating, little girl starts to dress
meanwhile, it’s time for me to pack a lunch
by six am the last alarm goes off
everyone in the house is stirring
tea kettle on; coffee set to brew

My list of never-ending chores is long

The house begins to empty – one by one
occupants leave and I am left alone
to sit and enjoy my coffee before
floors are swept, dishes washed, laundry folded
and least I forget, poetry written
the time of year my sanity questioned

My list of never-ending chores is long

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 11 – here’s our (optional) prompt for the day: the Bop. The invention of poet Afaa Michael Weaver, the Bop is a kind of combination sonnet + song. Like a Shakespearan sonnet, it introduces, discusses, and then solves (or fails to solve) a problem. Like a song, it relies on refrains and repetition. In the basic Bop poem, a six-line stanza introduces the problem, and is followed by a one-line refrain. The next, eight-line stanza discusses and develops the problem, and is again followed by the one-line refrain. Then, another six-line stanza resolves or concludes the problem, and is again followed by the refrain. Here’s an example of a Bop poem written by Weaver, and here’s another by the poet Ravi Shankar.

Welcome back to day 11 of NaPoWriMo and what a doozy we have today. You know, I usually check the prompt the night before, because midnight EST is 9PM for me. I read this one last night and thought. I hate long poem forms. Plus tomorrow I have to work and then when the little one (Gretchen) gets home, she has an orthodontist appointment. When I applied to be a reader for Measurement Inc., they said day shift was 8:30am-12pm and then 12:45pm-4:15pm with a 45 minute unpaid lunch. Well I converted the times from Eastern to Arizona. There was no way I was going to start at 5:30am so I requested afternoons only. Well it turns out the company converts the shifts into your time zone. Only they seem to think Arizona sprung ahead like the rest of the country, because my work schedule is 2:45pm-6:15 pm Eastern. If we sprung ahead it would be the same afternoon time, but for me it’s actually 11:45am-3:15pm. This works out well for me though, because I only have a half an hour of work to go once Gretchen comes home. Plus it gives me plenty of time to work on dinner. I like to know what I’m making by 3 o’clock. Depending on what we are having, I need to start prepping it then. It takes me at least double the time to prep food with only one good hand. Though it has been nice now that both girls have begun helping in the kitchen. Rachael is better and more cooperative, but we’re working on Gretchen’s reluctance.

Sorting Laundry – Tyburn

Crashing
Trashing
Smashing
Dashing
Chores neglected crashing, trashing dirt
Laundry piled high smashing, dashing skirt

Actually I haven’t been neglecting chores. I’ve gotten quite a bit done the past two days, including laundry. Tweetspeak poetry shared 10 laundry poems which was part of the inspiration for this tyburn. The other part was how trashed my house can become when one man is left alone for two weeks.

NaPoWriMo Day Fifteen – Terza Rima

Here I am, day fifteen, halfway there

Time to write a terza rima on…

A blank page open, I stop and stare

Wondering if I can come upon

Anything to wax poetic of…

I focus on chores, my mind is gone

One site suggests we write about love

Groceries sit out in need of my care

Housework neglected, given the shove


Attention divided spawns despair


 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now our (optional) prompt! Today, I challenge you to write a poem in terza rima. This form was invented by Dante, and used in The Divine Comedy. It consists of three-line stanzas, with a “chained” rhyme scheme. The first stanza is ABA, the second is BCB, the third is CDC, and so on. No particular meter is necessary, but English poets have tended to default to iambic pentameter (iambic pentameter is like the Microsoft Windows of English poetry). One common way of ending a terza rima poem is with a single line standing on its own, rhyming with the middle line of the preceding three-line stanza.

Okay write a terza rima about… halfway point and I’m up in the air without a parachute.  I hate heights.  I went over to Writer’s Digest in hopes the prompt would give me a subject.  It did and a terza rima would make a great form for love or nonlove poem, but I write love poems to you know who often and I’m bored.  This is why I need to decompress after April.  Thirty poems in thirty days wears and tears.  On top of it, Easter is this weekend.  I have two weeks of housework to catch up on.  So yeah, I’m punchy and this is the result.  Don’t worry the groceries were put away before the poem was written.