Decor of the Times (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     \

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Elephant’s Child.     

This week's prompts are:

1. Bird
2. Lifetime
3. Impossible
4. Days
5. Dreams 
6. Meet

And/or

1. Spider
2. Thread
3. Secret
4. Thing
5. Author
6. Recesses

A few weeks ago, i mentioned Angel Tree.  The people in our church line up to get names of children whose parents are in prison so we can be a not-so-SECRET-Santa to them. 

No matter how short or how long the prison term, each year must feel like a LIFETIME to those behind bars and the family who miss them.  It's a joy to try to make a couple of these kids Christmas DREAMS come true.

The two boys whose names i'd chosen wanted the latest, greatest game system, so they could play a specific SPIDERman game, among others.  Unfortunately, it's sold out everywhere, IMPOSSIBLE to get unless you want to pay more than double the retail price.  Instead i ordered another game system, one with games built in so they don't ever have to buy games.

Of course, it got backordered.  Now i'm hanging by a THREAD to my sanity, i just want to find something for these children, especially as a little BIRD told me the 12-year-old has cancer.

Finally i asked the mom if there was anything else these boys would like.  It turns out they wouldn't mind having bikes.  Okay, i agreed to MEET her at a store that sells bikes when i was done with my DAYS' work.

She couldn't make it, instead the grandmother brought them, and the store was out of bikes in the sizes for the boys.

Deep breath, offer them options -- come back when the bikes are restocked, go to another store, or get them something else they like.

Younger boy would love a hoverboard, so we find him one, and i insist on getting a helmet to go with it.  (Yes, i would have gotten them helmets for the bikes, too.  Always Wear A Helmet!)

Elder boy, the one undergoing chemo for leukemia, can't have a hoverboard.  His bones could break too easily because of his treatments.  It turns out he has a THING for action figures from a show he watches, so we found him several of those.  He also wanted a Baby Yoda pillow to hold when he goes in for treatments.

Yes, i'm the blog AUTHOR, but i can't make this stuff up.  In the RECESSES of one aisle were home decor pillows, and one was a Baby Yoda.

Of course i blew the budget on this, but it was worth it, and i didn't blow it badly enough to have to cut out anyone else's gifts.

Merry Christmas to all!

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Today is:

Beetle Banquet and Badger Ball -- Fairy Calendar

Chipmunks Day -- the date, in 1958, when Alvin, Simon, and Theodore hit #1 with "The Chipmunk Song"

Day Sacred to the Lares -- Ancient Roman Calendar (household gods)

Hari Ibu -- Indonesia (Mother's Day)

Icelandic Traditional Calendar Month Morsugr "Fat Sucker" begins -- Iceland (refering to the daily fare becoming scant in deep winter and body fat is used up)

Icelandic Yuletide Lad of the Day, Gattapefur -- Sniffer, who uses his big nose on hlakkandi ("looking forward" day, when you begin to look forward to Christmas) to sniff out a cake or two to snatch

Khoiak Ceremony for Raising the Djed Pillar -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (Osiris festival, the pillar represented his spine, and so stability and strength; date approximate)

National Date Nut Bread Day

Santa Claus Flight Clearance Day -- US FAA (they make sure he's cleared to fly, with his de-icing system, Terrain Avoidance Warning System for low-altitude flight, and special seat belt extension in good working order)

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's Day (Mother Cabrini, the first US citizen canonized; Patron saint of emigrants, hospital administrators, immigrants, orphans; against malaria)

Unity Day -- Zimbabwe

Birthdays Today:

Jordin Sparks, 1989

Ralph Fiennes, 1962

Maurice Gibb, 1949

Robin Gibb, 1949

Steve Garvey, 1948

Diane Sawyer, 1945

Steve Carlton, 1944

Hector Elizondo, 1936

Joe Pyne, 1925

Barbara Billingsley, 1922

Gene Rayburn, 1917

Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson, 1912

Dame Edith Margaret Emily "Peggy" Ashcroft, 1907

Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869

Giacomo Puccini, 1858

William Ellery, 1727

James Edward Oglethorpe, 1696

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Graduate(Film), 1972

"Ding Dong School"(TV), 1952

Today in History:

A serious earthquake strikes Innsbruck, 1689

The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies, 1790

The first freight train is operated in Roorkee, India, 1851

Jules Janssen flies in a balloon in order to study a solar eclipse, 1870

The first string of Christmas tree lights is created by Thomas Edison, 1882

Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, becomes the first Prime Minister of Japan, 1885

French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for treason, triggers worldwide charges of anti-Semitism (Dreyfus later vindicated), 1894

Colo is born, the first gorilla to be bred in captivity, 1956

Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany, 1989

Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63, 2001

An important peer-reviewed study of the spatial memory of bumblebees is published in the Biology Letters journal of the Royal Society by a class of 25 8- to 10-year-old children at Blackawton Primary School, 2010

Ebola vaccine VSV-EBOV is found to be 70-100% effective in a study published in The Lancet, becoming the world's first proven vaccine against Ebola, 2016

A tsunami hits Indonesia's Sunda Strait killing over 400 after part of the Anak Krakatoa (Child of Krakatoa) volcano slips into the sea, 2018