For Her Forgetful Husband (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 yours truly.      

Please feel free to use some of the prompts, none of them, or all of them as you see fit.  The point is to get the creative juices flowing in whatever manner your muse leads you.

This week's prompts are

privilege

cater

landscape

morning

novel

level

and/or

failure

rumor

mention

matter

descent

outline

Charlotte/Mother Owl has chosen luminous bright red as the color/colour of the month, which may also be used as a prompt.

"What's on the agenda for this month?" Mattie asked as she stifled a yawn coming into the small office for the first of the month MORNING meeting with her partner. 

"We have the PRIVILEGE to CATER the local Chamber of Commerce convention at the end of the month.  Other than that, just the usual, a few weddings, a bat mitzvah, various board meetings," Yvette said.

"Ugh, them again?  It's no convention, it's just the local business leaders looking for an excuse to eat too much and drink wine and brag.  Like they need an excuse, right?"

"You sound grumpy.  Were you up all night again reading a new NOVEL?"

"You know me too well," Mattie said, giving in to the yawn this time.

Yvette smiled.  "Anyway, it's a normally busy month, not crazy busy.  Here's the OUTLINE.  Weddings in teal, mitzvah in yellow, board meetings in blue--"

"They should be spelled B-O-R-E-D meetings," Mattie interrupted.

"Well, I wouldn't MENTION it to them, if I were you.  Our catering business got to a new LEVEL of popular after we landed the Chamber gig a few years ago, and some of those businesses are now a big part of our bread-and-butter."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of telling them that.  Anyway, what else?"

"The Chamber event at the end of the month is in Luminous Bright Red, and it would be a FAILURE of me as your best friend and business partner if I didn't ask you what's really bothering you right now.  And I mean besides the staying up too late for your own good part."

"It's nothing, really," Mattie said to which Yvette replied, "Does it even MATTER to you I can read the LANDSCAPE of your face?"

"You've told me that many times," Mattie said drily.

"And I've always been right, just like you are always right when you see my DESCENT into an anxiety attack coming on and bug me to take medicine to avert it.  What's going on?  You and Louis have a fight?"

"Only over me leaving the light on too late and keeping him up."

"Remind me to get you one of those around the neck light reading gizmos for Christmas," Yvette said.  "The real RUMOR is you've been writing a book of your own, and Louis says it's good, and he should know, he's an editor."

"I'm afraid he's just prejudiced."

"You know he's no such thing, he loves you but he's always brutally honest about the written word and he'd have no trouble telling you if it were terrible.  What's really bugging you, Mattie?"

"Part of me is afraid of getting too good at the writing and losing what we've built here."

Yvette was silent for a moment.

"Well, if it happens, it happens.  We're still friends and I hire two more chefs to take your place."

"Very funny."

"No, seriously.  If it happens, we cross that bridge, but we're still friends.  Now, go home and get some sleep.  We only have one B-O-R-E-D meeting today, and it's a light lunch so I'll handle it."

"Yvette..."

"Yes, Mattie?"

"Thank you."

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Today is:

Be Kind to Humankind Week:  Willing to Lend a Hand Wednesday 

Chung Yuan (Zhongyuan) Festival -- China (Festival of Hungry Ghosts; according to legend, during this 7th lunar month the souls of the dead are released from Purgatory to wander the Earth, and so today is the day to appease those spirits with joss stick burning, prayers and food, "ghost money", and other offerings; dates of this vary in other countries)

Constitution Day -- Kazakhstan

Day of Satisfying the Hearts of the Ennead (Nine Major Gods) -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival of Charisteria -- Ancient Roman Calendar (a day to give thanks)

Frankenstein Day -- in honor of Mary Shelley 

Full "Blue" Moon -- the second full moon in the month; related observance

     Adhi Nikini Full Moon Poya Day -- Sri Lanka

Huey P. Long Day -- Louisiana, US

International Day of the Disappeared -- Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of Detained-Disappeared

International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances -- UN

International Whale Shark Day -- WiseOceans has more information 

La Tomatina -- Buñol, Valencia, Spain (annual citywide food fight festival in which around 30,000 people take to the streets to pelt each other with tomatoes)

National Holistic Pet Day -- celebrating the growing interest in natural/holistic medicine for animals

National Toasted Marshmallow Day

Popular Consultation Day -- East Timor

Santa Rosa de Lima -- Peru

St. Fiacre's Day (Patron of box makers, cab drivers, costermongers, florists, gardeners, hosiers, pewterers, taxi drivers, tile makers; against barrenness, fistula, haemorrhoids, piles, sterility, syphilis, venereal disease)

Talk Intelligently Day -- holiday thought up by someone tired of non-intelligent conversations (maybe with co-workers?)

Victory Day -- North Cyprus; Turkey

     Turkey's Hellespont Swim -- one of the world's busiest shipping lanes is closed so that over 300 participants can swim the Hellespont from Europe to Asia, a Victory Day commemoration of winning the Turkish War of Independence in 1922 against the Greeks

Anniversary Today:

Roman Polanski marries Emmanuelle Seigner, 1989

Birthdays Today:

Cameron Diaz, 1972

Michael Michele, 1966

Michael Chiklis, 1963

David Paymer, 1954

Timothy Bottoms, 1951

Lewis Black, 1948

Peggy Lipton, 1947

Frank "Tug" McGraw, 1944

Jean-Claude Killy, 1943

Elizabeth Ashley, 1939

Warren Buffett, 1930

Kitty Wells, 1919

Ted Williams, 1918

Fred MacMurray, 1908

Roy Wilkins, 1901

Shirley Booth, 1898

Huey P. Long, 1893

Claire Straith, M.D., 1891

Ernest Rutherford, 1871

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1797

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Anna Lucasta"(Play), 1944

Today in History:

European leaders, in an attempt to end war "for all time", outlaw the crossbow, 1146

One of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty, begins between the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders, 1363

Capture of the entire Dutch fleet by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell, 1799

Founding of Melbourne, Australian, 1835

Founding of Houston, Texas, 1836

Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner, 1901

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in south Louisiana, the longest bridge over water (continuous, not aggregate) that is not also a viaduct, opens, 1956

The Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation, 1963

Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1967

Guion Bluford becomes the first African American astronaut in space, 1983

NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces, 1995

A commercial expedition to raise part of the sunken British luxury liner Titanic ended in failure, 1996

Harley-Davidson celebrates its 100th anniversary in Milwaukee with a parade of 10,000 motorcycles, 2003

India and Pakistan agree to release hundreds of fishermen and other civilians in each other's jails as part of their ongoing attempts to negotiate peace between their nations, 2005

Sumatra's Sinaburg volcano continues to erupt, two people are killed and 21,000 are evacuated from the vicinity, 2010

In Chile, 33 miners trapped half a mile beneath the surface make contact with their families for the first time in three weeks since the incidentally, 2010

Late author Terry Pratchett’s unfinished works are destroyed as per his request, 2017

For the second time, Ukrainian amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov discovers an interstellar comet, 2019

Algeria becomes the last country to stop selling leaded petrol/gasoline, 2021

The largest water treatment facility in Jackson, Mississippi, US, fails leaving thousands without clean drinking water, closing schools and businesses, 2022