Glad I Found These Before the Vacuum Could (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

***********************************

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Catsynth, Keith, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

***********************************

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.   

It is my month to post the Words for Wednesday, and River is posting them as well.

This week's words are:

well

understanding

challenge

person

genuine

suffering

and/or

faith

ambition

chance

hard

design

closet

Charlotte's colour of the month is Steel Blue.

Please feel free to use any words or none of the words or all of the words.  They are a springboard to get you started writing a story.

Last week, for Angel Teddy's Poetry Day on Thursday, this photo was the prompt.

I wrote a very positive poem because it reminded me of a couple i know, not in physical resemblance, but the expressions, one guarded, one rather hopeful.

Samantha is closer to 40 than 30, is a pharmacist and owns her own home and a rental property, and has always wondered if The Good Lord had someone in mind for her.  She only went out with men of FAITH and while she had some career AMBITIONs, she truly thought she would enjoy being a wife and mother.

Alan is also closer to 40 than 30, has a great job as a CPA, and has always wondered if the right young lady is out there for him.  They don't attend the same church, but when a mutual friend wanted to introduce them, they decided to give it a CHANCE.

They'd been dating several months, each liking the other more and more, finding each other to be GENUINE and growing closer each month.  

Unbeknownst to her, he had decided he was ready to settle down and she was the one, if she thought so, too.  He'd planned for it to happen at the restaurant in town where it is hardest to get a reservation, two months out is the minimum, so he made one, knowing he'd have to keep it under wraps all that time.

Alan was also planning a mission trip with his church during this time, and knew Samantha's schedule had her working nights sometimes, days other times, so he had to pick the one Saturday after he was back from the trip but before she went back on night shift, the only time they'd have for such an important date.

Thus, for over two months, he laid his plans and lived up to the CHALLENGE to keep it quiet.  He knew what kind of jewelry she liked, deciding to DESIGN the ring for her.  The HARD part was knowing what ring size, and he got a friend of hers who was the only other PERSON in on the plan to get into her CLOSET under pretense of borrowing a certain jacket and snoop in the jewel box to figure it out.

WELL, you have to know with two months, there'd be something.  Yes, they had a misUNDERSTANDING over text messages right before he left for the trip, and though they'd patched it up somewhat, she was truly SUFFERING, not knowing if they were going to even be a couple when he got back.

He did come back and they managed to carve out a day to get together for a few hours.  Upon asking her what she needed, she told him she just wanted to know he wasn't going anywhere for at least the next few months.  Not forever, she reassured him, not wanting to scare him off if he wasn't ready to commit, but for at least a while.

Alan managed in turn to reassure her, and he asked her out to dinner the next Saturday.  He had to play it close, let her know he was sticking around without letting her know how long he was hoping it would be.  She agreed to the date, and the night before, he snuck over to her parent's house to ask her father for her hand in marriage.  He had to keep it that close, because if Samantha's mother had gotten even a hint of what was up, the whole thing would have been out in the open.  When he told her father that's why he waited until the night before to ask, the man laughed and agreed he was getting a very wise son-in-law.

The next evening went like clockwork.  He wore his best suit, she wore her Steel Blue dress (I've seen her in that color and it's amazing), and she was so enchanted to get to go to this very fancy restaurant she was totally blown away when he pulled out the ring and got down on one knee.

They're both walking on cloud 9 now, the ring was just what she would have wanted, they're planning a Christmas wedding, and that's why this photo, of a man looking like he's trying to not blow it and her shyly glancing his way with a prim smile reminds me of them, and why the poem i wrote was about him planning to propose and her wanting him to do it.

***********************************

Today is:

Barsi Bhagat Puran Singh -- Sikhism

Bogota Carnival -- Bogota, Colombia (celebrating the city's Hispanic founding; through tomorrow)

Celtic Tree Month Coll (Hazel) commences

Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead Day -- uttered this day by Admiral Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864

Festival Wednesday/East End Parade -- British Virgin Islands

Hanakasa Matsuri -- Yamagata City, Japan (10,000 costumed dancers perform; through the 7th)

Independence Day / Republic Day -- Burkina Faso (former Upper Volta)(1960)

National Blackmail Day -- according to mostly ecard sites, with suggestions to send a card to the friend who has told you his/her secrets, with the notice that you plan on celebrating this date!

National Underwear Day -- sponsored by www.freshpair.com, which encourages people to rethink their underwear style and make sure they have the right fit 

National Waffle Day

NOMS (Not of My Species) Day -- celebrating animal friendships between animals of differing species

Nuestra Senora de Africa -- CE, Spain (Day of Our Lady of Africa, also called Fiestas Patronales)

Oyster Day

Sacrifice to Salus -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of health, associated with Greek Hygeia)

St. Afra of Augsburg's Day (Patron of converts, martyrs, penitent women; Augsburg, Germany)

St. Oswald of Northumbria's Day (Patron of Zug, Switzerland)

Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian defenders -- Croatia

Work Like a Dog Day -- different from work-a-holics, people who work like a dog work hard while they are at it, and rest when they aren't

Birthdays Today:

Jonathan Silverman, 1966

Patrick Aloysius Ewing, 1962

Maureen McCormick, 1956

Erika Slezak, 1946

Loni Anderson, 1946

Ja’net DuBois, 1938

John Saxon, 1936

Neil Armstrong, 1930

Sydney Omarr, 1926

Raoul Wallenberg, 1912

John Huston, 1906

Conrad Potter Aiken, 1889

Joseph Merrick, 1862

Guy de Maupassant, 1850

Thomas Lynch, Jr., 1749

John Eliot, 1604

Joseph Justus Scaliger, 1540

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Revolver"(Beatles Album, release date), 1966

"Eleanor Rigby" & "Yellow Submarine"(Beatles singles, A & B side respectively, release date), 1966

"American Bandstand"(TV, national premiere), 1957

"Andy Capp"(Comic strip), 1957

"Little Orphan Annie"(Comic strip), 1924

Today in History

The last outpost of Bar Kockba, Betar, falls to Rome, 135

Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald of Northumbria at the Battle of Maserfield, 642

King Edward and Earl Aetherlred, leading the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, defeat the last major Viking army to raid England at the Battle of Tettenhall, 910

Anti-Jewish riots in Arnstadt, Germany, 1264

Sir Humphrey Gilbert establishes first English colony in North America, at what is now St John's, Newfoundland, 1583

The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America, 1620

New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true, 1735

US Army abolishes flogging, 1861

Standard Oil of New Jersey is established, 1882

The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor, 1884

Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip made in her husband's invention, the first patented automobile; her journey was to publicize the invention, and she garnered attention and sales, 1888

The first electric traffic light is installed, in Cleveland, Ohio, 1914

Debut of the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie", by Harold Gray, 1924

Debut of the comic strip "Andy Capp", by Smythe, 1957

Nelson Mandela is jailed, 1962*

The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty, 1963

The city of Knin, a significant Serb stronghold, is captured by Croatian forces during Operation Storm, 1995

The Copiapo mining accident traps 33 Chilean miners about 2,300ft below the ground, 2010

NASA launches the Juno Space Probe to study Jupiter, 2011

The world's first bovine stem cell lab-grown burger is eaten in London, 2013

The UN Security Council votes to impose sanctions on North Korea for its continued missile program, 2017

New Zealand canoeist Lisa Carrington wins her third Olympic gold medal of the Tokyo Games and the 5th gold of her career, 2021

Volkswagen launches a prototype of its first flying car, an automated electric passenger vehicle nicknamed the "Flying Tiger", 2022

Google loses an important US antitrust case involving its search engine, with a judge finding, "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," 2024

Kokichi Akuzawa (102) becomes oldest person to climb to the top of Mount Fuji in Japan, surpassing the record he previously set at age 96, 2025

*Released in 1990