Are you feeling the Magic of the season? For me, it comes and goes. I have days where I’m meh about it all. Whatever, Santa’s no big deal.

And it’s just so damn dark all the time. Even though it’s been short days for almost two months, I’m still surprised when I look out the window to see that my day has been stolen. Like I have lost a sense of time for a split second. It could be either 5:30 pm or 8:30 pm because it’s pitch black outside. Thank goodness for mini twinkle lights, right?

And baby, it’s cold outside.

We’re approaching the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. Do you celebrate the solstice more so than Christmas day? Winter solstice is beginning to hold more meaning for me as the years pass. Meanwhile, the importance of December 25th seems to be diminishing as I get older.

The Tattoo Club

I had a dream.

You treated me to a tattoo

For my birthday surprise.

I could not decide on the design

So many choices!

It’s funny, because

I realized

How hard this must be.

For you loathe tattoos

But want me to be

Happy just the same.

It was so clean and

The needle pain-free.

The final poke brought

me into a club–The Tattoo Club.

My forearm was the extremity of choice

(but never would be in real life).

Ink so bold and yet I felt the same.

I awoke before it bled,

Then I laughed as I watched you sleep beside me.

You had no idea what you had just done.

LTW.

Are you in the tattoo club?

image source: Photo by Natalie Rhea on Unsplash

Today, I am cautiously introducing to you, Nora M. Parker, my night time poet pseudonym or perhaps my muse, and alter ego.

Although I have only published one of her poems here—something she reminds me often—I plan to include more of her night poems here in the near future.

I will warn you that she has a bit of an attitude. Without further ado, welcome Nora M. Parker to the blog…

So, I need your help in relation to my upcoming humorous book, I Don’t Drink Alone and Other Lies. One of the lies I tell in this book is: “I can still stop traffic”. Of course, I clarify this lie with a grain of truth (as I do in all the lies I tell in the book). The truth is that I can still stop traffic at a pedestrian crossing, especially the ones with lights.

Do you dab life away? What do I mean by this? Well, I’m currently taking an online watercolor class. This is a new medium for me. I’ve painted in oils and mostly acrylics. Watercolor is a different animal altogether. I find myself dabbing away what I’ve put on the paper. In fear. Fear of what? Paint blobs.

The pandemic caused me to do some things I wouldn’t normally do…and whether it was out of necessity or desire is still unclear. For example;

I write this in memory of my father and don’t worry, I’ve tagged it in humor. It’s my recollection of one of the last times I saw him before his unexpected death. Anyone who has a perfectionist for a father will get a chuckle out of this anecdote…

Recently, as I waited at a red light I looked at all the license plates on the cars surrounding me. Not necessarily to see if they were from somewhere far away but to inspect the screws securing the plates. Strange, I know.

I blame my late father. I can still see him on that sunny July afternoon: bent down lower than a man his age should be. The object of his inspection? The oversized screws holding my license plate. Much to his consternation not only were these screws obviously too big for the job, but they were unsightly. This is just the thing that could keep my father awake at night.

I’ve had a fondness for pajamas for as long as I can remember. As a young child I recall mourning my pajamas when my mother confiscated them. She had decided they were too small for me. Just because my arms and legs were extending far beyond the leg and arm holes? I beg of you. Have mercy on a child who loves her pajamas. When I went in search of the trash bag I suspected contained my worn out pajamas, I found gold. Those pajamas lasted another year.

We’re in this thing together…

It’s hard to not panic when you read or hear the word PANdemIC. It has the word built right in. Pandemic definition: “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak of a disease.”