On Ms. JAI's Christmas Tree (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Steve at BeThere2Day, Catsynth, 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 Wisewebwoman is providing the prompts and they will be posted by Elephant's Child.    

This week's prompts are:

• Arithmetic
• Daffodils
• Bicycle
• Graveyard
• Sympathy
  

and/or

• Gravy
• Tugboat
• Flag
• Hospital
• Freedom

Charlotte (MotherOwl) has selected light blue as the colour of the month.

As always, have fun.

If you only looked at the ARITHMETIC, as she admitted to those who protested, it did not make financial sense.

She preferred to count DAFFODILS and life moments, although it was not something she could tell those people.  They always looked at her with the SYMPATHY of those looking at a beloved lunatic when she told them she was going to fly her own freak FLAG and enjoy it.

The head nursing job in the big city HOSPITAL had given her money, prestige, and migraines.

Moving to the small harbor town hospital and taking the weekend GRAVEYARD shift as a floor nurse had given her FREEDOM to have a life as well as a job.

The fact she lived close enough to work to give up her car for a BICYCLE was GRAVY in her estimation.

She even had time now for a man in her life, a TUGBOAT captain of all people.  He was teaching her to sail and for once she had time to notice the difference between the shades from Light Blue to dark to almost green which the water could be.

It wasn't a life for everyone, but more and more, she was deciding it was the life for her.

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Today is:

Agonalia -- Ancient Roman Empire; also observed

     Festival for Diva Palatua -- guardian of Palatine Hill

     Septimonia -- to honor the Seven Hills of Rome

Feast of Sekhmet, Bast, and Ra -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (goddess of warfare, feline goddess, and sun god; date approximate)

Fourth Republic Day -- Madagascar

International Mountain Day -- UN

Jashan-e Sadeh / Adar-Jashen -- Zoroastrian/Parsi (a mid-winter fire ceremony for purification; date approximate)

National Day / Republic Day -- Burkina Faso (also called Proclamation of Independence Day)

National Noodle Ring Day

Pampanga Day -- Pampanga Province, Philippines

Remembrance Day of Llywelyn II -- Wales (death anniversary of Llywelyn the Last, the last native-born Prince of Wales, killed in battle in 1282)

St. Damasus' Day (Patron of archaeologists)

St. Pens' Day (Patron of Llanberis, Wales)

Tango Day -- Buenos Aires, Argentina (birth anniversary of both Julio de Caro and Carlos Gardel)

Anniversaries Today:

Unicef is established, 1946

Edward VIII abdicates, 1936

Indiana becomes the 19th US State, 1816

Birthdays Today:

Rider Strong, 1979

Mos Def, 1973

Mo'Nique, 1967

Gary Dourdan, 1966

Curtis Williams, 1962

Jermaine Jackson, 1954

Ken Wahl, 1953

Susan Seidelman, 1952

Teri Garr, 1949

Brenda Lee, 1944

John Kerry, 1943

Donna Mills, 1943

David Gates, 1940

Tom Hayden, 1940

Rita Moreno, 1931

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918

Carlo Ponti, 1913

Naguib Mahfouz, 1911

Marjorie H. Buell, 1904

Fiorello LaGuardia, 1882

Annie Jump Cannon, 1863

Robert Koch, 1843

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"City of Angels"(Musical), 1989

"Magnum, PI"(TV), 1980

Today in History:

Honoratus, the first known Prefect of the City of Constantinople, takes office, 359

Llywelyn the Last (born c. 1228) the last native Prince of Wales, is killed at Cimeri, 1282

The Aurora Borealis is seen from New England by English settlers for the first time, 1719

The first newspaper on Curacao is published, the Curacao Gazette & Commercial Advertiser, 1812

Nitrous oxide is used in dental work for the first time in Hartford, Connecticut, 1844

Boston's Bijou Theatre becomes the first American theater lit exclusively by electricity, premiering Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe" as its first performance, 1882

The New Zealand Parliament Buildings are almost completely destroyed by fire, 1907

Color moving pictures are demonstrated in Madison Square Garden, 1909

The Boll Weevil Monument is dedicated in Enterprise, Alabama, 1919

The British Parliament enacts the Statute of Westminster 1931, establishing legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Irish Free State, Dominion of Newfoundland, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa, 1931

Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the last time, 1934

Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada, 1962

Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon, 1972

The Kyoto Protocol opens for signature, 1997

The People's Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization, 2001

In Taipei, protesters demand foreign live-in caregivers have the right to a day off each week, 2011

Pope Francis is named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year," 2013

A landmark trial for Huntington's disease in London announces positive results, the first time a drug has been able to slow an incurable brain disorder, 2017

India passes its controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill, clearing the way for citizenship for immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan as long as they are not Muslim, 2019

The journal Nature publishes details of the earliest figurative artwork found in the world to date, 43,900-year-old depictions of part animal, part human figures in a cave in Sulawsi, Indonesia, 2019

NASA's Orion spacecraft returns to earth after completing the Artemis I test flight around the moon in 25.5 days, a record distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans, 2022