Ironing Board Covers Have Gotten Fancy (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 River.  

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. owls 

2. chess 

3. telephone 

4. crinkle 

5. blustery 

6. what have you done this time?

Also include Charlotte's colour of the month if you can: Orient Red

Have fun.

Granny was in the wicker rocker again, and still knitting.  She'd finished the Orient Red scarf, and having some of the yarn left over, was working it in with a cheerful green to make a pair of Christmas mittens.

It was a BLUSTERY day in late fall, the kind where you hear the OWLS hoot starting earlier and earlier, and the CRINKLE of the fallen leaves under your feet was like an accompanying sound track to any walk in the park.

Dad wasn't expected home from work for another ten minutes or so and mom was in the kitchen getting dinner started when the TELEPHONE came to life with a loud jangle.  Granny was closest, which was probably lucky for the two curly haired moppets as they'd struck again.

"Hello?  Oh,  hello Pastor Brooks...they what!"  At this point, Granny stifled a laugh with a cough and said, "I see.  Well, make them undo it and send them home, we'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

Mom came into the room looking anxious as Granny started to laugh.  "What did they do this time?" mom finally had to burst out.

"Wrapped the pastor's whole car in plastic wrap!" she gasped out.  "Those two are geniuses!  Trying to figure out where they'll break out next is like trying to stay ahead in a CHESS game, you'd have to think several steps ahead of the person you're playing and I never could do that, but lawsey, those two!"

Dad came in just about the same time as the children and saw Granny shaking her head but smiling and mom standing with her serious look and with a sigh he said, "What have you done this time?"

The whole story came out, there'd been a game at the children's summer picnic at church, prizes had been wrapped in plastic wrap and you had to unwrap it and everybody had 20 seconds and then the next person got to try and prizes fell out as you got to them and they'd been trying to figure out a way to unwrap faster and they knew the church kitchen had the big things of plastic wrap for after the church meals for wrapping leftovers, and they'd decided instead of wrapping prizes they'd wrap a car because it would be funny, and the pastor's car was there in a corner by itself that day...

"Enough," dad finally said.  "No desserts and no TV for a week, you have to come straight home from school every day, apologize to the pastor, and this Saturday will be spent washing his car.  And don't you ever fool with anyone's car ever again!"

The pastor, of course, saw the humor in it eventually, and they kept to not ever fooling with cars again.  Boats, however, were another matter...

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Today is:

Armed Forces Day -- Mozambique

Banned Websites Awareness Day -- sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians   

International Ataxia Awareness Day -- highlighting the difficulties of living with the many forms of ataxia 

Kamarampaka Day -- Rwanda (Republic Day, marks the 1961 abolition of the monarchy)

Math Storytelling Day -- the brainchild of Maria Droujkova 

National Comic Book Day -- internet generated, but go read one, they are fun

National Crabmeat Newberg Day

National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims -- US

National Food Service Employees Day -- because everyone wants to eat out once in a while 

National One-Hit Wonder Day -- US, remembering those who had only one hit on the rock charts

National Psychotherapy Day -- US (a day to wear turquoise and encourage education about how psychotherapy can help people)     

National Women's Health and Fitness Day -- US, sponsored by Fitness Day    

National Youth Day -- Nauru

Old Holy Rood Eve -- OS calendar Holy Cross Eve, the last day to pick blackberries (after this, the devil poisons them because when he fell from heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush)

St. Cadoc's Day (Patron of the deaf; against cramps, deafness, glandular disorders, scrofula)

St. Finbarr's Day (Patron of Barra, Scotland; Cork, Ireland)

World Ataxia Awareness Day

World Pharmacists Day -- International Pharmaceutical Federation; this year's theme is "Pharmacists: Caring for you."  

Birthdays Today:

Lee Norris, 1981

Catherine Zeta-Jones, 1969

Will Smith, 1968

Scottie Pippen, 1965

Tate Donovan, 1963

Aida Turturro, 1962

Heather Locklear, 1961

Michael Madsen, 1959

Jamie Hyneman, 1956

Christopher Reeve, 1952

Mark Hamill, 1951

Cheryl Tiegs, 1947

Michael Douglas, 1944

Robert Walden, 1943

Juliet Prowse, 1936

Glenn Gould, 1932

Barbara Walters, 1931

Shel Silverstein, 1930

Phil Rizzuto, 1918

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906

Walter Wesley "Red" Smith, 1905

William Faulkner, 1897

Jean Phillippe Rameau, 1683 (baptismal date, as actual birth anniversary is unknown)

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, 1358 (Japanese Shogun)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Beauty and the Beast"(TV), 1987

"Stepping Out"(Play), 1984

"Winterset"(Play), 1935

"Dorothy"(Comic opera), 1886

Today in History:

St. Ferment is beheaded in Amiens, France, after voyaging there to preach the gospel, 303

The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Anglo-Saxon era, 1066

Columbus begins his second voyage, with 17 ships, 1493

Vasco Nunez de Balboa becomes the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the Americas, 1513

The first printing press in the Americas begins operations, 1639

Old Style date; two very accurate clocks are set in motion at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, the start of Greenwich Mean Time, 1676

Ethan Allan, American Revolutionary War hero, is captured, 1775

Benedict Arnold joins the British, 1780

The first all-black university in the US, Howard University, is created by Congress, 1867

Yosemite National Park is established by Congress, 1890

Charles Follis becomes the first black to play professional American football, 1904

Birth of the remote control -- Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the "Telekino" and guides a boat from the shore in the port of Bilbao, 1906

Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible, 1929*

Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops, 1957

In a referendum, the people of Norway reject membership of the European Community, 1972

Belize joins the United Nations, 1981

The last of the Magdalene Asylums closes in Ireland, 1996

The Vitim event, a possible bolide (comet nucleus) impact in Siberia, Russia, 2002

China launches the spacecraft Shenzhou 7, 2008

The Wildlife Authority of Uganda announces that, since 1999, the population of some of the animals in the country's game reserves have doubled in population, 2010

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announces that women will now be able to vote and run in municipal elections, 2011

Singapore closes schools due to hazardous levels of air pollution from fires in Indonesia, 2015

World's largest radio telescope at 500m wide in Guizhou Province, China begins operating, 2016

For the first time ever, a woman graduates from the US Marine Corps' Infantry Officer Course, 2017

Hazzaa AlMansoori becomes first Emirati in space and first Arab astronaut to travel to the International Space Station, travelling on Russian Soyuz-MS 15 spacecraft, 2019

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first woman to lie in state in the US Capitol in Washington D.C., 2020