Honey, the Kids are "Money Laundering" Again! (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Catsynth, Keith, 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, Sean Jeating is providing the prompts which will appear on River's blog.

This week's words/prompts are:

1.countenance  

2.favourite  

3.once  

4.pillow  

5.regret

and/or:

1.bags  

2.faces  

3.machos  

4.steps  

5.swear

6.boarding

use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.

Charlotte's colour of the month is Smoky Rose

These last several weeks, while Grandma was in hospice care, have been difficult.  Not ONCE did we REGRET getting them involved, especially as our FAVOURITE aide and nurse were both so wonderful, but I could tell by Grandpa's COUNTENANCE he was sad to see so much being done for her by others.

On the way back from making final arrangements at the funeral home on Sunday, Grandpa told Uncle J, "I really miss her."  Just four words to encapsulate 64+ years together.  I know when i was there Saturday, he kept walking into her room looking like a forlorn puppy.  Grandpa has never been one to share emotions, not that he's one of those MACHOS, but he's just not the touchy-feely type, so you can tell this isn't easy for him.

Saturday was cleaning the house day as usual and picking the outfit she'd be buried in, but after Ms. S Monday morning, i went back so Uncle J and i could begin to tackle sorting her belongings.

The drug store which brings all the hospice supplies had picked up the bed, oxygen machine, and etc.  Only the mattress was left, since Grandma had purchased one several months ago which was more comfortable and actually fit the hospital style bed she'd been in.  It was sitting on the floor by itself, almost giving the impression of a derelict BOARDING house room, since so much of the other furniture had also been moved out of the room as more equipment had come in.

We went through dresser drawers and found treasures and trinkets, BAGS of things, some trash, some things we've kept as mementos and some we've set aside for the grandchildren to go through.  All of her paintings, the landscapes, the odd FACES, the abstracts, are waiting to be claimed.  We've taken STEPS to assure each of us will pick one favorite, then go around again, so you might not get all the ones you wanted, but you will certainly get some.

I chose a scene with beautiful purple mountains in the distance and a desert in the foreground, the ground turning Smoky Rose as it comes toward you.

The books are boxed, the grandchildren can look through them, and we've found many things for Grandpa to keep, including her first stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, awarded when she got her nursing degree.

Grandpa is getting a lot of things as we go through them.  One thing i've made Uncle J, my brother, SWEAR is we will always love each other and put people before things when dividing stuff when our parents are gone.  We're being carefully respectful to do so.

It's going to take stamina, I figure it will take a while to go through her stuff, then through the rest of the house.  One thing at a time, though, and it will get done.

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Today is:

Apple Day -- U.K. (to inspire local orchard revival and celebrate local varieties)

Antillean Day -- Bonaire; Curacao; Saba; St. Eustatius 

Armed Forces Day -- Honduras (Dia de las Fuerzas Armadas; traditional date, now usually celebrated earlier in the month as part of Morazanica Week)

Babbling Day -- an internet generated day for Blatherskites

Caramel Apple Day -- US (leave it to the US to add sugar to a delicious, nutritious snack!)

Count Your Buttons Day -- whoever came up with this one needs to count his marbles maybe?

Egyptian Naval Day -- Egypt

Garbanzo Bean Day

Global Iodine Deficiency Disorder Prevention Day

Hagfish Day -- a day to celebrate the uniqueness and necessity of even the ugliest of sea creatures, like the hagfish

Hurricane Bebe Day -- Funafuti, Tuvalu (commemoration of the destruction by this hurricane in 1972)

Independence Day -- Marshall Islands(1986)

International Day of the Nacho -- Mexico; U.S.

Jailhouse Rock Day -- Elvis' song hit #1 today in 1957

National Nurses Day -- Thailand

National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day

National Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day -- US

Overseas Chinese Day -- Taiwan (Republic of China)

President Ndadaye Day -- Burundi

Reptile Awareness Day -- hooray for snakes and turtles!  and lizards, don't forget lizards, and gators, and...

St. John of Bridlington's Day (Patron against complications in childbirth)

St. Ursula's Day (Patron of educators/teachers, holy death, schoolchildren, students; British Virgin Islands; Catholic education, especially of girls; Cologne, Germany; University of Paris)

Trafalgar Day -- British Empire (noted, but no longer an officially holiday)

Anniversaries Today:

Juan Peron marries actress Evita (María Eva Duarte), 1945

Birthdays Today:

Jeremy Miller, 1976

Ken Watanabe, 1959

Carrie Fisher, 1956

Benjamin Netanyahu, 1949

Elvin Bishop, 1942

Judge Judy Sheindlin, 1942

Frances Fitzgerald, 1940

Ursula K. LeGuin, 1929

Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford, 1928 

Celia Cruz, 1925

Joyce Randolph, 1925

Dizzy Gillespie, 1917

Georg Solti, 1912

Edwin Myers "Ted" Shawn, 1891

Will Carleton, 1845

Alfred Nobel, 1833

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Butterflies are Free"(Play), 1969

"Orphee aux enfer/Orpheus in the Underworld"(Offenbach operetta), 1858

Today in History:

Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea defeats 1st Crusaders, 1096

Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg., 1512

Ferdinand Magellen arrives at Tierra Del Fuego (Pacific Ocean), 1520

Sea battle at Dunes, Lt Admiral Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish Armada under De Oquendo, 1639

First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America, 1774

US Navy frigate Constitution, Old Ironsides, launched in Boston, 1797

Battle of Trafalgar, Adm Nelson defeats French & Spanish fleet & dies, 1805

The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by the Rev Hutchings. It is the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia, 1816

Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement (Yorkshire England), 1824

Thomas Edison perfects carbonized cotton filament light bulb, 1879

First transatlantic radiotelephone message, Arlington, Va to Paris, 1915

Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time, 1945

Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun, 1965

The European Patent Institute is founded, 1977

The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, 1983

Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz, 2003

The European Parliament awards Cuban Dissident Guillermo Farinas the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, 2010

Kateri Tekakwitha is canonized as the first Native American saint by Pope Benedict XVI, 2012

The Parliament of Canada confers Honorary Canadian citizenship on women's rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai, 2013

Oscar Pistorius is sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 2014

The Spanish government suspends Catalonia's autonomy in the face of a deepening political crisis over the region's push for independence, 2017

Excavations at an 8,000-year-old site at Marawah Island, near Abu Dhabi, UAE, uncover the world's oldest natural pearl, 2019

In what is later dubbed the "Great Cheese Robbery," thieves steal about 22 metric tons of a rare English Cheddar from Neal's Yard Dairy in London, 2024

Japan's parliament elects conservative Liberal Democrat Party leader Sanae Takaichi (64) as Prime Minister, the first female to hold the office, 2025