#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Five

Gretchen text message on Tuesday

Taxonomy

Build my essay
in 💩 galore
all night
as class advances alters being
I’m sure to die writing this essay
far cooler topics and my angst is
ungratified

TOMOGRAPHIE
Das Bild meines Schädels
In Scheiben geschnitten
Zeigt Nichts
Als kleine Verkalkungen altersbedingt
Die sturen Schmerzen kommen sagt der Arzt
Vom Großen und Ganzen Ihre Angst ist
Unbegründet.
© 2001, Kerstin Hensel

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like the work in Translucence, reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own. Begin with a photograph. Now find a poem in a language you don’t know (here’s a good place to look!) Ignore any accompanying English translation (maybe cover it up, or cut-and-paste the original into a new document). Now start translating the poem into English, with the idea that the poem is actually “about” your photograph. Use the look and feel of the words in the original to guide you along as you write, while trying to describe your photograph. It will be a bit of a balancing act, but hopefully it will lead to new and beautiful (and possibly very weird) places.

Good Morning and welcome to day five of #NaPoWriMo where I definitely got weird, though I had a great poem to build off. If you don’t read German, hit the link and you can read the real English translation. It is spring in the US and that means standardized test time for school children. This week Gretchen was taking the English AzMerit which is divided into reading and writing. Tuesday was the writing portion and apparently Gretchen did not like her topic nor did she appreciate Mom’s commiseration. The child really should know me by now.

Speaking of standardized tests, I should be starting my remote reading soon. It may have been a good thing grading hasn’t begun yet because we had a power outage yesterday. No power means no Internet. I also got to see how the new thermostat works without power. It doesn’t since it is a touch screen. AC should always be turned off when your power goes out to prevent a surge when it is restored. Our new AC unit and thermostat takes care of itself. 

New thermostat rebooting when power came back

Gretchen just got out of school when our power cut, and she always sends a text on the bus. I told her we didn’t have power and she replied, Great that means no AC. Yes. Then she realized, That means no Internet. Also means no landline phone since it also runs through the Internet modem and it cost extra for the battery backup which the tech did not recommend since everyone has cell phones nowadays. But luck must have been on Gretchen’s side for her birthday because the power came back on just before she walked in the door.

 

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Back to the old grind

Gretchen and me 1st day spring break

Wearing of the green

Woken from sweet dream
Alarm turned back on last night
Lazy mornings gone

Good morning! It’s official both spring breaks have come and gone. The above photos are from the fun Gretchen had playing with snapchat. Also I promised my readers a photo of me in my green, Live your dash, t-shirt. So there it is. Well the first day of Gretchen’s break, she did sleep in past noon. Tuesday I woke her up at 7:30am because she had an orthodontist appointment. Then we went to the LEGO bricks & minifigs store. Believe it or not Gretchen still had some Christmas money burning a hole in her pocket.

Wednesday and Thursday we stayed home. Gretchen logged in quite a lot of time on the game Heroes of Might & Magic. I realized Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day and we did not have corn beef and cabbage. Shawn suggested we walk to the store, but we did walking on Tuesday and I can only walk so much. Friday Rachael is off so I thought we could buy the St. Paddy Day fixings then. Little did I know getting the oil change in the car would take almost 3 hours. The previous week when Rachael went to the dentist on her spring break, she texted, the engine light came on. Shawn was here because it was the day we were getting AC estimates. When Rachael got home, dad went out to the car; it’s the oil change light. Okay that we can handle – Rachael and I are old pros at oil changes now. The reason it took so long – the tire pressure light has been on for quite awhile. Shawn kept checking the pressure but even when he added air, the light did not go off. We asked them to check the tires; there was a nail in one so we had that repaired as well.

After the fun experience of our second oil change. Rachael and I went to the feed store to pick up hay for the tortoise. The look on the guy’s face when two women pulled up to load a bale of hay into a Honda Fit. They got the hay in the car; then we had to unload the hay. Guess what? ASU is #1 in innovation. They plaster it up all over so no one will forget. It took all three of us, Gretchen, Rachael and me to get the bale out of the car. Then Rachael started flipping the bale up the driveway, “Number one in innovation”. See what our tuition money is paying for. The bale was too big to push, but then I grabbed the twine and started to pull while Rachael pushed. This worked well until we ran out of sidewalk. The bale didn’t slide very well on the stones. Rachael flipped it the rest of the way onto the back porch. Oil change and tire repair done, hay for the tortoise in the backyard accomplished, now it was time to pick up Gretchen’s new frames.

We get to the eye doctor’s around 4:30pm and see the new frames have lenses in them. They were only suppose to be frames and they would switch the lenses from the broken pair to the new pair. Figured out the lenses were plain glass most likely to keep the frames in the proper shape during shipping. Well the office was very busy and they only had one tech who could switch out the lens so we had to wait. We walked over to the grocery store because Gretchen was disappointed we didn’t buy food while waiting in Wal-Mart for the oil change (still have not gotten the corn beef and cabbage). Buy some snack food and a roast chicken for dinner, walk back over to the eye store and learn it’s going to be more than a little while. It’s 5pm and we need to sign paperwork for the new AC at 6pm. I tell them we’ll pick up the new frames tomorrow.

Replace old AC
it worked well for 18 years
New one will be cool

Yes, we are all signed up to get a new AC unit. The old one is the original one stage system that came with the house. It has worked very well. One summer while we were out of town it stopped working. My cousin was coming over to check on the house, cats and tortoise and realized the house was warmer than it should have been. When we got home a good friend (who does AC repair) came over and saw we needed a new fuse. He replaced it for the cost of the fuse. Since then we have not had a problem, but the unit is 19 years old; it was made in 1999 but we bought the house new in 2000, which is why I say 18 years. And last summer was VERY HOT – the AC was chugging away all the time. Grateful it did keep chugging because during an AZ summer, you do not want to deal with no cooling.

And that brings us to Saturday. Rachael drove Gretchen and me back over to the eye doctor’s. Gretchen got her new frames and then we went over to Fry’s to get groceries for the week and the corn beef and cabbage. After we got home and put the groceries away, I had a little time to recoup before I had to start cooking the corn beef. It worked out pretty well. Then Saturday night Shawn went to the final event for the Erotic Show at Alwun House. I stayed home; I was worn out from all the adulting I did on Friday and most of Saturday. Sunday Rachael was off to work as usual and Shawn went over to help his mom. Then my cousin called to see if Shawn could help him. His mom lives down the block from my cousin, Shawn went over there to help as well. While he did that I made soup with the roasted chicken we bought on Friday. Prepped the veggies to go in and then had just enough time to get ready to go see the band, Come Back Buddy. They  were having a free concert on the lawn at the Wigwam.

Legend of Grandpa

Legend of grandpa
Seventy-six years ago
No television
Listened to The Lone Ranger
on the radio instead

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 19 – Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts a creation myth. It doesn’t have to be an existing creation myth, or even recount how all of creation came to be. It could be, for example, your own take on the creation of ball-point pens, or the discovery of knitting. Your myth can be as big or small as you would like, as serious or silly as you make it.

Welcome back to day 19 of NaPoWriMo aka my dad’s birthday. Is it really a myth – life BEFORE television. My grandparents didn’t get a TV set until my dad was in high school. And did you know, the world came across in black and white?! As I was thinking of myths, I remembered a story Rachael said when her class was reading To Kill a Mockingbird back in high school. One of her classmates wanted to know why Scout kept asking her dad so many questions; why didn’t she just google it? Ummm…yeah the world before television and computers may be a myth after all.

No Internet Haynaku

Panic
Data leak
Unwanted Internet escape

Panic
Data leak
Minecraft Lego style

#truestory just before 5PM yesterday there is a knock on my door.

Sorry, Ma’am, I had to shut off your cable. I can schedule a repairman first thing tomorrow morning.

For about 45 minutes before this my little one is complaining Netflix and youtube are not working. I was a good Mommy that day, giving her the minecraft village Lego set that came in the mail. Mostly because Dad spilled the beans of its purchase. But her complaint, I can’t construct Legos in total quiet!

Hey, what do you know you have an MP3 player. It isn’t the same, Mom!

Well just before 10AM this morning the leak was repaired. Not that my little one was happy. First thing in the morning was interpreted as – Before she left for school.