When Your Name Is Mommy (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, 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 Susan Kane and posted by River.       

This week's words/prompts are:

1. mine

2. child

3. foundation

4. careful

5. bird

6. dog

and/or

1. hate

2. sadness

3. lemon

4. attach

5. breakfast

6. time

use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.

If you want to use Charlotte's color of the month, it is Salmon Range/Salmon Pink.

I didn't head into art class that day expecting to learn a life lesson, but do we ever expect a life lesson when trudging in the day to day of the ordinary?

As normal for me, I'd skipped BREAKFAST.  No, I didn't HATE breakfast, any more than I hated LEMON in tea, I just didn't prefer tea with lemon, and I didn't prefer to waste TIME on breakfast.

What I did prefer was to sleep a few minutes later and eat a bigger lunch after class.  Why would this day be any different?

The classes I'd been taking had gotten progressively tougher, as they're supposed to.  This one was in a medium I hadn't explored before, clay sculpture.  Our final project was to be our biggest, and all of us had drawn up what we envisioned.  Mine was rather whimsical, if I do say so myself, a DOG, floppy of ears and tongue lolling out, looking up, somewhat cross-eyed, at the BIRD perched on his head.  The bird was looking down at him, something of a smirk on his beak.

I listened as the art teacher told us how to build the FOUNDATION to hold up our creations.  He emphasized we had to be CAREFUL and ATTACH the supports extremely well, or the whole would collapse, as these were to be large projects.

My mom always said I was a CHILD in a rush.  I was born in a rush (a three-hour labor), rushed to learn to read (by the time I was 4), rushed from instrument to instrument when taking music (and fully mastering none).  Does it surprise you many of us in the class were in such a rush to get to the good part of the project we neglected the supports, and one of those was MINE?

I was one of the class members who watched with SADNESS as the SALMON PINK clay of the base collapsed on itself because the metal support pieces couldn't hold up the weight, they weren't attached well enough.

I was also one of those rushing (again) to get the assignment completed on time so as not to get an "Incomplete" on the final grade.

Yes, it got done, and yes, it was as cute and whimsical as I'd wanted, but I was worn out and those who'd been more careful from the beginning didn't pull all nighters to get finished and enjoyed the process much more.

These days, I eat a little breakfast.  Just a piece of fruit and some protein or other, something to be a support to my morning.  I try to be more careful doing the first things, the preparatory things, the early things, so the stuff that comes after, the fun stuff, is easier and stays fun.  These days, I slow down when I find I'm in a rush.

It's amazing how life can hand you such a good lesson when you're not even looking.

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Today is:

As Young As You Feel Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, which encourages you to stop acting your chronological age and go act peppy!

Banned in Boston Day -- see history for 1630 for explanation of why today

Coq Au Vin Day

Día de la Abolición de la Esclavitud (Emancipation Day) -- Puerto Rico

Hindu New Year -- Hindu (local custom/date may vary)

     Hari Raya Nyepi Tahun Baru -- Indonesia (New Year in the Balinese Saka calendar)

     Nyepi Day -- Bali, Indonesia (Day of Silence, Balinese New Year/Saka New Year celebration on which everything is closed, even the international airport)

     Ougadi -- Mauritius and some regions of India (the Telugu New Year)

     Ramayana -- Hindu (local customs/celebratory dates may vary)

       is often with Hindu New Year, but sometimes starts a day later  

International Goof-off Day -- sponsored by Monica A. Dufour and A.C. Vierow, who think everyone needs a special day each year to goof off.

International Day of the Seal -- drawing attention to a disappearing species

Laser Day -- the first patent on a laser was granted this day in 1960 to Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes

National Bavarian Crepes Day

National Sing-Out Day -- begun by an anonymous person who must love singing; and yes, i promise, i won't sing where anyone has to listen to me

Ramadan begins -- Islam (at sunset, through the evening of April 20)

St. Darerca's Day (reportedly the sister of St. Patrick; Patron of Valentia Island, Ireland)

World Day for Water -- UN

Anniversary Today:

The Tuskegee Airmen are activated, 1941

Birthdays Today:

James T. Kirk, 2233

Cristen Powell, 1979

Reese Witherspoon, 1976

Elvis Stojko, 1972

Matthew Modine, 1959

Stephanie Mills, 1957

Lena Olin, 1955

Bob Costas, 1952

Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1948

James Patterson, 1947

George Benson, 1943

Bruno Ganz, 1941

Marvin Yagoda, 1938

M. Emmet Walsh, 1935

J.P. McCarthy, 1933

William Shatner, 1931

Pat Robertson, 1930

Stephen Sondheim, 1930

Allen Neuharth, 1924

Marcel Marceau, 1923

Karl Malden, 1912

Louis L'Amour, 1908

Chico Marx, 1887

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Conversations with My Father"(Play), 1992

"Brighton Beach Memoirs"(Play), 1983

"All You Need is Cash"(TV movie), 1978

"I Can Get It For You Wholesale"(Musical), 1962

"Mr. Wonderful"(Musical), 1956

"This Year of Grace"(Musical), 1928

"El maleficio de la mariposa/The Butterfly's Evil Spell"(Play), 1920

Today in History:

Hugo de Groot escapes imprisonment in Loevenstein Castle in a bookcase, 1621

The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags, 1621

Algonquian Indians kill 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony's population, 1622

Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables, 1630

Joseph Priestly invents carbonated water (seltzer), 1733

The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Stamp Act, which introduced a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies, 1765

The Emerald Buddha is moved with great ceremony to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand, 1784

The three protecting powers (Britain, France and Russia) establish the borders of Greece, 1829

Cornstarch is patented by Orlando Jones, 1841

Slavery is abolished in Puerto Rico, 1873

The Edmunds Act adopted by US to suppress polygamy in the territories (especially aimed at the Mormons), 1882

August and Louis Lumiere privately screen the first "motion picture" ever made, of workers leaving their factory three days earlier, 1895

World's first airline, St Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line, begins, 1914

The Arab League is founded when a charter is adopted in Cairo, Egypt, 1945

Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser, 1960

Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1978

The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips, 1993

Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space, 1995

The Comet Hale-Bopp has its closest approach to earth, 1997

Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest women's World Figure Skating Champion, 1997

ETA, the armed Basque separatist group, declares a permanent ceasefire, 2006

Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest, 2009

A massive fire devours thousands of hectares of ancient forests and threatens wildlife on Mount Kenya, 2012

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" between Hawaii and California has 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and increasing rapidly according to new research, 2018

The journal Science publishes the first major announcement of the discovery of the Qingjiang biota, a 518-million-year-old fossil site near the Danshui River in China that is one of the most well preserved and diverse sites of the early Cambrian explosion ever found, 2019

The world's largest painting, "The Journey of Humanity" by British artist Sacha Jafri, sells in Dubai for $62m to raise funds for children's charities, 2021

New research conducted at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam finds microplastics in human blood for the first time, 2022