Ms. SE Has a New Dishwasher, Hooray! (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Steve at 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, yours truly is providing the prompts on my blog.

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 the prompts are:

convince

education

slice

decide

craft

family

and/or the following phrases

beating a dead horse

on the ropes

wake up call

Charlotte/Mother Owl has also chosen Mouse Grey as the color of the month, which you may use as a prompt if you wish.

His marriage had been both a Wake Up Call and an EDUCATION.

He knew when he married a widow with a very dramatic nine-year-old daughter it was going to take a long time to CONVINCE her he would never try to replace her father, but he was willing to be there for her no matter what as an adult she could turn to as a friend.

Trying to CRAFT a FAMILY from broken pieces is never easy and sometimes he felt he was Beating a Dead Horse.

She had him On The Ropes once when, after her softball team had lost a hard fought game, she lit into him about hating that she had to move when he married her mom, hated that she had to join a new team, hated to have had her life upended by an interloper.

He simply, quietly reiterated what he always said, he knew he would never replace her father, nor would he try, but he would always be there for her as an adult she could turn to as a friend.

He was there for her and her mom and she began to see it.  He never missed a game, never let her down when he made a promise, and made her mom happy, even she could see that although sometimes she resented that anyone could make her mom happy besides her dad.

One day a counselor at school asked her, "Would you rather see your mom miserable?"

His constant, loving presence and that simple question helped her immensely.  

He knew they were turning a corner one day when there was only one largish piece of cake left in the kitchen.  She'd made a cake and it had turned out to be the ugliest cake ever, in her words.  The icing had turned Mouse Grey as she'd used the food coloring incorrectly and didn't have more ingredients for more icing so had to go with it.

He'd not only eaten it and said it was delicious, he'd made her laugh when he said he was food colorblind anyway and was on the see-food diet, eating all the food he could see.

Then it was down to that last wedge, and they'd both come to the kitchen wondering if it was still there.

"You take it," he said and she responded, "We'll share, it's big enough."

"You're right," he answered.

Then she said something he'd not heard before, "You SLICE, I'll DECIDE."

"What?" he asked.

"It's something my dad taught me, a way to share the last piece fairly.  One person does the slicing or cutting and the other picks a piece first.  It keeps things fair because you try to make them as even as possible."

"I like that," he said, picking up the knife and making the pieces as even as he could.

"I do, too," she said, and as he finished cutting both pieces, now being rather tall and thin, they fell over, one to the left and one to the right, separating into layers and making a mess.

They laughed themselves silly as they lifted what was left of the bits onto two plates and sat side by side at the kitchen counter with crumbled cake and glasses of milk.

"I'll never replace your dad, or even try, you know, but I'll always be there for you," he said quietly as they finished up their snack and cleaned up.

"I know," she said.  Then for the first time answered, "Thank you."

The next softball season, she was the team captain and got to pick the team nickname.  She chose the name of his high school baseball team.

(Very loosely based on a true story.)

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Today is:

Aquino Day -- Philippines

Buhe -- Ethiopian Orthodox Church (Christian remembrance of the Transfiguration.)

Cadillac Day -- the first Caddy was built this day in 1902

Consualia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (festival of Consus, god of grain and silos)

Crazy Day -- go crazy, in honor of Patsy Cline recording Willie Nelson's song Crazy on this date in 1961

Fete de la Jeunesse -- Morocco; Western Sahara (Youth Day, on the Birthday of HM Mohammed VI)

Gospel Day -- Kosrae, Micronesia

National Medical Dosimetrist's Day -- American Association of Medical Dosimetrists (medical radiation safety experts) 

National Pecan Torte Day

National Senior Citizens Day -- US

National Spumoni Day

Poet's Day -- a day to celebrate the poet in you, and share special thoughts about poets and poetry

Senior Citizens Day -- US (by Presidential proclamation in 1988)

St. Pius X's Day (Patron of first communicants, pilgrims; Des Moines, Iowa, US; Great Falls-Billings, Montana, US; Kottoyam, India; Santa Lucija, Malta; Springfield-Cape Girardeau, MO, US; Zamboanga, Philippines)

Anniversaries Today

Seminole Tribe of Native Americans is legally established and recognized, 1957

Hawai'i becomes the 50th US state, 1959

Birthdays Today

Ozma, Queen of Oz, year unconfirmed

Hayden Panettiere, 1989

Usain Bolt, 1986

Brody Jenner, 1983

Alicia Witt, 1975

James Robert "Jim" McMahon, 1959

Steve Case, 1958

Kim Cattrall, 1956

Jackie DeShannon, 1944

Peter Weir, 1944

Clarence Williams III, 1939

Kenny Rogers, 1938

Wilt Chamberlain, 1936

Melvin Van Peebles, 1932

Shimon Peres, 1923

Christopher Robin Milne, 1920

Friz Freleng, 1906

Count Basie, 1904

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, 1872

William Murdoch, 1754

Francis de Sales, 1567

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"La Cage Aux Folles"(Musical), 1983

Today in History

Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shogun and therefore de facto ruler of Japan, 1192

Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt, 1680

James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales, 1770

The Nat Turner slave revolt in Virginia leaves 55 dead, 1831

Mighty Casey (Dan Casey) is struck out! In a game against the N.Y. Giants, 1887

William S Burroghs patents the adding machine, 1888

Oldsmobile is incorporated as a division of General Motors Corp., 1897

Arthur Rose Eldred becomes the first Boy Scout to earn the rank of Eagle Scout, 1912

Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1945

James Anderson, Jr., posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine, 1968

Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport, 1983

Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range, 1986

Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses, 1991

The Red Cross announces the famine in Tajikistan and calls for international aid there and in Uzbekistan, 2001

Hurricane Dean becomes the first storm to make landfall as a Catagory 5 since Hurricane Andrew, 2007

After 108 years, a "message in a bottle" put in the sea by the UK Marine Biological Association is announced found on a beach in Amrum, Germany, 2015

Big Ben, the bell in London's parliament clock, chimes for the last time before a four-year restoration process for its tower starts, 2017

The discovery of water-ice on the Moon by India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is published, 2018

Nigeria goes three years without a case of polio, a landmark toward eradication of the disease, 2019

Masai Graham wins funniest joke at Edinburgh Fringe with "I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn't get pasta," 2022