How Many Toothbrushes Does One Family Need? (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Keith, 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, the prompts are being posted by Elephant’s Child and are being provided by David M. Gascoigne.  

This week's prompts are:

• People
• Overjoyed
• Single
• Chore
• Life

And/or

  

• Birthday 
• Plight
• Juggle
• Dog
• Play
   

 Charlotte (MotherOwl) has selected Pretty Flower Pink as the colour of the month.

 

Have fun.

Unlike many PEOPLE she knew, she usually had to work like a DOG on her BIRTHDAY --  it was just another day.

It was a PLIGHT she shared with many other SINGLE mothers, a LIFE of JUGGLE and struggle, and of joy as well to see her children well cared for and thriving, but she needed a bit of care, too.

A couple of friends had gifted her with a day of PLAY, and she was OVERJOYED.  She would take one of her paid days off she usually saved for kid events or emergencies.

The friends were going to come over and wake the kids, feed them and get them to school, and only deliver them back at suppertime, and with supper, too.  She was told to not set her alarm, wake when she wanted, and not do a CHORE one.

When she did wake that morning, she found the kitchen cleaned and the house empty, the coffee thermos full and lovely breakfast pastries waiting for her on the table decorated with flowers in her favorite color, what she always called Pretty Flower Pink.

She went out for lunch and treated herself to a manicure and pedicure, then came home to simply read and relax.

The friends, and their families and her kids, all showed back up around suppertime with supper and a cake, and they cleaned the kitchen after, too.

It was a wonderful day for her, one she never forgot.

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Today is:

American Red Cross Founder's Day -- established by Clara Barton on this date in 1881

Anastenarides Feast -- Greece (feast to St. Constantine and St. Helen)

Battle of Las Piedras Day -- Uruguay

Circassian Day of Mourning -- Circassians

Día de la Afrocolombianidad -- Columbia (Afro-Colombian Day; commemorates Columbia's abolition of slavery on this date in 1851)

Dia De Las Glorias Navales -- Chile (Navy Day)

Elf Fest -- Lothlorien Nature Sanctuary (near Needmore, Indiana; through Sunday)   

Emergency Medical Services for Children Day -- because children need different care, they aren't just tiny adults   www.acep.org

Festival for Vevodus -- Ancient Roman Calendar (god of the dead, swamps, and volcanic movements, and sometimes regarded as the king of the Di Manes)

Honvédelem Napja -- Hungary (Day of Patriots and Military)

Independence Day -- Montenegro

"I Need A Patch For That" Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, which notes that since everything else has a patch, why shouldn't you?

International Tea Day -- UN

Lilies and Roses Day -- London, England (memorial of the death of Henry VI on this day in 1471; held at the Tower of London with representatives of Eton College and King's College, which he founded.)

National Employee Health & Fitness Day -- US (originally the 3rd Wednesday in May, but now spreading around the world as Global Employee Health & Fitness Month)   

National Memo Day -- an internet holiday with no known origin, just take a memo

National Strawberries and Cream Day

National Waitstaff Day

Passion Play Day -- the first Oberammergau, Germany, Passion Play was staged this date in 1634

Sister Maria Hummel Day -- birth anniversary of the Franciscan nun and artist

St. Constantine's Day (Greek Orthodox Church; Patron of Greece)

St. Eugene de Mazenod's Day (Patron of disfunctional families)

St. Helen's Day (Greek Orthodox Church; Patron of Greece)

     St. Helena Day -- St. Helena

Turn Beauty Inside Out Day -- the day to remember what really counts is who you are, not just what you look like

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development -- UN

Anniversary Today:

Humphrey Bogart marries Lauren Bacall, 1945

Birthdays Today:

Sarah Ramos, 1991

Ashlie Brillault, 1987

Lisa Edelstein, 1966

Judge Reinhold, 1957

Mr. T, 1952

Ian McEwan, 1948

Leo Sayer, 1948

Janet Dailey, 1944

Bobby Cox, 1941

Heinz Hollinger, 1939

Peggy Cass, 1924

Andrey Dmitriyevich Sakharov, 1921

Raymond Burr, 1917

Dennis Day, 1917

Harold Robbins, 1916

Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel, 1909

Fats Waller, 1904

Armand Hammer, 1898

Glenn Hammond Curtiss, 1878

Elizabeth Gurney Fry, 1780

Alexander Pope, 1688

Albrecht Dürer, 1471

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Empire Strikes Back(Film), 1980

"Gypsy"(Musical), 1959

"Le Fils prodigue / The Prodigal Son(Prokofiev ballet, Op. 46), 1929

"Pagliacci"(Opera), 1892

Today in History:

Syracuse, Italy is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily, 878

The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese navigator João da Nova, 1502

The nobility elect John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1674

The Order of St. Alexander Nevsky is instituted in Russia by the empress Catherine I; it would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky, 1725

Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War, 1758

Slavery  is abolished in Colombia, South America, 1851

Russia declares an end to the Russian-Circassian War and many Circassians are forced into exile, 1864

French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting, 1871

The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton, 1881

The Manchester Ship Canal in England is officially opened by Queen Victoria, 1894

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is founded in Paris, 1904

Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, 1927

Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, 1932

Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens, 1934

A Soviet station becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean, 1937

The National War Memorial in Canada is unveiled by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa, 1939

Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1946

The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition – a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively know as the New York School, 1951

Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, 1972

Democratic Republic of Yemen and North Yemen agree to a unity, merging into Republic of Yemen, 1990

The Ethiopian Civil War ends, 1991

Suharto, Indonesian president of 32 years, resigns, 1998

The clipper Cutty Sark is badly damaged by fire in London, England, 2007

JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launches the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket, 2010

The most active volcano in Iceland, Grimsvotn, erupts and triggers 50 small earthquakes, 2011

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus performs for the last time at the Nassau Coliseum in NYC after 146 years, 2017

Nepalese Sherpa Kami Rita sets a new record for the number of climbs of Mt Everest, reaching the summit for the 24th time, 2019

Omani author Jokha Alharthi becomes the first Arabic writer to win the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Celestial Bodies along with her translator Marilyn Booth, 2019  

Scientists announce the oldest and most distant gravitational waves ever detected, from a collision of two black holes, with first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered at 7 billion light years away, 2019

Rayyanah Barnawi of Saudi Arabia, the first female Arab astronaut, goes into space on Axiom Space's second private mission, 2023

The French Post Office (La Poste) issues a scratch-and-sniff stamp that smells of bread to celebrate the baguette, 2024