Santa Is Still Hanging Around Some Places (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 Hilary Melton-Butcher and are being post by Elephant's Child.     

     

This week's prompts are:

1. Wellington Boot
2. Art
3. Murmuration
4. Sedge
5. Thresh
6. Fissure
   

 

And/or

 

1. Heath
2. Race
3. Cottage
4. Mosses
5. Windbreak
6. Ajax

"When did you get the set of WELLINGTON BOOTs?" he asked.

She was tempted to laugh at his pretentious mannerism but knew that would hurt his feelings.  He never realized he could sound pretentious.

Out loud she just said, "Someone who didn't need these rubber boots gave them to me and I use them when I walk the dog.  The field across the street can get muddy."

"Oh," he said.  "Carry on!"

She suppressed a grin until he was out of sight, and then in MURMURATION under her breath, thought out an answer that was as silly as the tone of his question.

"When I leave the COTTAGE to take the dog to RACE across yon HEATH, among the SEDGE and to the WINDBREAK of trees, as I do not wish to THRESH my body parts as wheat, as they are growing fragile as I age, and there are slippery MOSSES, areas of mud, and the occasional FISSURE in which I might trip or slip, I wear these sturdy boots and carry my trusty walking stick to prevent such an occurrence!"

The next time he walked through, she was scrubbing out the sink.  Again, in a way he couldn't know sounded like affectation, he asked, "What are you engaged in now?"

She restrained herself from giving him an oration of the ART of choosing between AJAX and Comet cleansers when scrubbing stainless and suppressed her grin again.  "Just cleaning," she told him, and he wandered off with, "I'm going to read the intellectual section," his name for the newspaper comics.

(Not an actual conversation with Brother-in-Law, who has Aspergers and simply doesn't know how he sounds sometimes, but it easily could be.)

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Today is:

Australia Day -- Australia (National Day); Christmas Island; Cocos (Keeling) Islands; Norfolk Island; (Commemorates Captain Arthur Phillip's arrival at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet, on January 26, 1778.)

     Australia Day Cockroach Races -- Brisbane, Queensland (the greatest gathering of thoroughbred cockroaches anywhere, with competition proceeds going to charity)

Dental Drill Day -- George F. Green, of Kalamazoo, MI, US, patents the electric dental drill, 1875

Duarte Day -- Dominican Republic

End of the Fifth Quarter of the Ninth Dozen of the Thirteenth Set -- Fairy Calendar

Liberation Day -- Uganda

Lotus 1-2-3 Day -- released this day in 1983

National Peanut Brittle Day

National Pistachio Day

Republic Day -- Delhi, India (pompous and splendid celebrations through the 29th)

Sailing of Anubis -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (celebration of the god of the dead; date approximate)

Spouse's Day -- an internet generated reason to tell your SO how much he/she means to you

St. Paula's Day (Patron of widows)

St. Timothy's Day (Patron against stomach and intestinal disorders)

St. Titus' Day (Patron of Crete)

Toad Hollow Day of Encouragement -- begun at Toad Hollow School in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the 1800s, a day to encourage your friends

Anniversaries Today:

Establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park, 1915

Michigan becomes the 26th US state, 1837

Birthdays Today:

Kherington Payne, 1990

Kirk Franklin, 1970

Andrew Ridgeley, 1963

Wayne Gretzky, 1961

Anita Baker, 1958

Ellen DeGeneres, 1958

Eddie Van Halen, 1955

Lucinda Williams, 1953

David Strathairn, 1950

Gene Siskel, 1946

Angela Davis, 1944

Scott Glenn, 1942

Bob Uecker, 1935

Father George Harold Clements

Jules Feiffer, 1929

Paul Newman, 1925

Anne Jeffreys, 1923

Jimmy Van Heusen, 1913

Maria Augusta von Trapp, 1905

Bessie Coleman, 1893

Douglas MacArthur, 1880

Mary Mapes Dodge, 1831

Julia Dent Grant, 1826

Emperor Go-Nara of Japan, 1497

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Phantom of the Opera"(Musical), 1988

"The Dukes of Hazzard"(TV), 1979

"Duchess of Padua"(Oscar Wilde play), 1891

"Cosi Fan Tutte"(Mozart Opera), 1790

"Esther"(Racine play), 1689

Today in History:

The fifth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, 66

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil, 1500

The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, 1564

Isaac Newton receives Jean Bernoulli's 6 month time-limit problem, and solves the problem before going to bed that same night, 1697

The magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America, as evidenced by Japanese records, 1700

The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent of Australia, 1788

The Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia, 1808

Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States, 1838

Hong Kong is proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain, 1841

The first US income tax, passed to raise funds for the Civil War, is repealed, 1871

Muhammad Ahmed ("Mahdi") rebels conquer Khartoum, Sudan, 1885

The World's largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found, 1905

The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III is officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use, 1907

Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane, 1911

Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier receives its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera, 1911

Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer, 1920

Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses, 1952

Danny Heater sets a worldwide high school basketball scoring record when he records 135 points for Burnsville High School (West Virginia), 1960

Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon, but misses its target by 22,000 miles (35,400 km), 1962

Hindi becomes the official language of India, 1965

The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h), 1978

Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations, 1980

An earthquake hits Gujarat, India, causing more than 20,000 deaths, 2001

President Hamid Karzai signs the new constitution of Afghanistan. 2004

The 41st World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland, 2011

Libby Lane is ordained as the first female bishop of the Church of England, 2015

LA Lakers basketball legend Kobe Bryant dies in a helicopter crash, 2020