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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 Hilary Melton-Butcher and will appear on Elephant's Child's blog.
This week's prompts are:
- Discourteous
- Flicker
- Martini
- Whips
- Belly
And/or
- Waving
- Frogs
- Moderation
- Smile
- Louring
An additional prompt from Charlotte (MotherOwl) is to include Signal Green in your take on the prompts.
Have fun.
He was still LOURING as he got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to his house after work, the look on his face the result of what he considered DISCOURTEOUS behavior by another driver on the road on his drive home, but the expression began to FLICKER when he saw his daughter out in the front garden, and he actively softened to a SMILE when he realized she was partaking of her favorite pastime, playing with FROGS.
She was holding an enormous one now, both hands under its BELLY, peering closely at the webbing between its toes and saying, "Your webbing is starting to look dry, I'm going to put you back in the pond."
He could hardly hold back a laugh as she headed toward the pool of water which sometimes formed in a low spot in the yard which she called "the pond." Her love of the creatures was famous through the neighborhood, and she was both solicitous with them and liked to "doctor" them, as she called it, reading everything she could about them, their habits, the different types, which were venomous, and even legends about them.
She'd even asked to have her room painted a Signal Green which she said went well with all her frog pictures.
Her mother didn't mind frogs much, although she'd never considered them playmates, but her father indulged her in her love of them and fondly figured he was being paid back for his boyhood shenanigans of catching them and WAVING them around as he chased his sister with them.
His sister, of course, wouldn't visit unless they reassured her there were none actually alive in the house when she came.
His daughter had stopped to let him give her a careful hug as she balanced her hands which were too full to hug back, and she headed for the water with her charge as he went in the house. He'd been thinking about a MARTINI but he and his wife usually saved those for Friday nights - she believed strongly in MODERATION of most things and drinking once a week was enough for her. His lingering smile over his daughter and her play made him decide to wait.
As he changed clothes, he heard his daughter come in and his wife calling to her to wash up for supper. He walked out of the bedroom in time to walk with the child to the kitchen while she excitedly told him, "Mama has a pie and WHIPS!" her term for whipped cream on top.
He let go the last of his bit of irritation as he didn't want it to spoil this time. And the "whips" were good, too.
(Loosely based on a girl who went to school with my children and loved frogs, she's now a biologist who studies wetland health through keeping track of frog population studies!)
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A bonus for International Box Day, Abigail in a box.
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Today is:
Asatru Alliance Founding Day -- Asatru/Slavic Pagan
Birthday of José Gervasio Artigas / "Never Again" Day -- Uruguay (Dia del Nunca Mas)
Butterfly Day -- an ecard holiday; if you know someone who loves butterflies, send an ecard, let them know you are thinking of them
Day of the Independent Hungary -- Hungary (a memorial day for those martyred in 1958, and for the end of Soviet occupation)
Festival for Minerva -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of arts, crafts, skill, war, and intelligence)
Festival of the Coming Ice Age -- can't find out anything about this one, but it sounds hilarious
Garfield the Cat Day (his birthday/comic strip premier)
International Box Day -- if you do not understand this one, you do not have a cat
Juneteenth -- US, celebrates the news of freedom on the day it came to slaves on Galveston Island, Texas
Labour Day -- Trinidad and Tobago
Midsummer's Eve -- many and varying traditions, with some celebrating the day before the solstice, and some always tying it to June 23, St. John's Eve
Night of the Fairy Goddesses Aine and Finnen -- Ireland (watch out for the antics of the little people on Midsummer's Eve, whichever day you celebrate it!)
National Martini Day -- some sites specify a dry martini
New Church Day -- Swedenborgian Christian
Rusalka's Week begins -- Asatru/Slavic Pagan Calendar (week-long festival to honor the divinity of rivers)
Spooky Stories Appreciation Night -- because someone thought it would be a good night to tell a few scary tales
St. Boniface of Querfurt's Day (Patron of Prussia)
St. Jude's Day (Patron of desperate situations, forgotten/impossible/lost causes, hospitals, hospital workers; Saint Petersburg, FL, US)
World Sauntering Day -- origin unknown, but perhaps begun at Grand Hotel (Mackinac Island) in Michigan during the 1970s as a response by W.T. Rabe to a growing movement toward the recreation of jogging and the idea was to encourage people to slow down and appreciate the world around them; the rules are to observe the lost art of Victorian sauntering, discouraging jogging, lollygagging, sashaying, fast walking, and trotting, but no word on meandering that i can find!
Anniversaries Today:
Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, marries Sophie Rhys-Jones, 1999
Birthdays Today:
Zoe Saldana, 1978
Poppy Montgomery, 1972
Mia Sara, 1967
Andy Lauer, 1965
Aung San Suu Kyi, 1965
Paula Abdul, 1962
Kathleen Turner, 1954
Ann Wilson, 1951
Phylicia Rashad, 1948
Salman Rushdie, 1947
Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane, 1942
Gena Rowlands, 1930
Louis Jourdan, 1919
Pauline Kael, 1919
Pat Buttram, 1915
Abe Fortas, 1910
Earl W. Bascom, 1906
Lou Gehrig, 1903
Guy Lombardo, 1902
Moe Howard, 1897
Wallis Simpson, 1896
Elbert Green Hubbard, 1856
Charles H. Spurgeon, 1834
Blaise Paschal, 1623
King James I of England and VI of Scotland, 1566
Debuting/Premiering Today:
Batman Returns(Film), 1992
"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"(Musical), 1978
"The Rocky Horror Show"(Musical), 1973
"Devil May Hare"(Cartoon short, Tazmanian Devil's premier), 1954
"I've Got a Secret"(TV), 1952
"Moon Mullins"(Comic strip), 1923
Today in History:
King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver, 1269
The Earl of Pembroke's army defeats Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven, 1306
English colonists leave Roanoke Island, N.C., after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America, 1586
Emanuel Swedenborg reports the completion of the Second Coming of Christ in his work True Christian Religion, 1770
Battle of Seven Oaks between North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1816
The first officially recorded, organized baseball match was played under Alexander Joy Cartwright's rules on Hoboken's Elysian Fields (Hoboken, New Jersey)with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1; Cartwright umpired, 1846
Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom; the anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 35 other states as Juneteenth, 1865
Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire is executed by a firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro, 1867
After all of the Southern States are formally readmitted to the United States, the Confederate States of America ceases to exist, 1870
The Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire begins, 1875
The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington, 1910
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York, 1953
Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom, 1961
In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University in Beirut, is kidnapped, 1982
Norway ratifies the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989, 1990
Prime ministers of several northern European nations participate in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway, 2006
The first full genetic study of house cats, published in "Nature Ecology and Evolution", reveals that they were domesticated about 9,000 years ago, and are all descended from one species, the African wildcat, 2017
General Electric is dropped from the Dow Jones Index, the last original member from 1907, 2018
Joy Harjo is named the first Native American US Poet Laureate, 2019
The United Nations adopts the first-ever legally binding international treaty to govern the high seas, called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, 2023
