Today’s Bloganuary challenge asks What chore do you find the most challenging to do?
My super-quick answer: Clean the oven.
The answer springs readily to mind, having nagged at me for over a week now. A rather juicy casserole ran over in my oven last week and I haven’t gotten around to cleaning it yet. Shame on me! The grease by now is thoroughly baked on — and this oven is an old one, not one of the self-cleaning sorts. Needs serious elbow grease.
Another blogger, Louis Carreras, writes that the most challenging part of a task is getting started. I can agree with that. Few chores are as hard to execute as they are to keep dodging around. As stated in my last blog post. (See Edgar Guest’s poem It Couldn’t Be Done. )
The Ragtag Daily Prompt word this morning is HELLACIOUS, a word I’ve never used. Anything with the word HELL in it should be terrible. Horrific. Extremely annoying. Even prompter Martha thinks it’s mean. Spell-Check refuses to recognize it. 🙂
I was amazed when I looked it up on Lexico; this word has a milder definition than I expected: – remarkable, astonishing – formidably difficult
Merriam-Webster starts out with the darker sense: – exceptionally powerful or violent – remarkably good – extremely difficult – extraordinarily large
The Ukrainian couple recently arriving in Canada described fleeing a hellacious situation in their homeland. Willy faced a hellacious mountain of debt. George & Mabel Smith just won a hellacious windfall in the lottery.
A Suitable Adjective
Frustrated again this morning with the non-workings of WordPress, I toyed with the idea of deleting my account and starting over. As they say, “Using a shotgun to kill a fly.”
Or perhaps I should get a new e-mail address and switch everything over to that, as the g-mail address seems to be the issue: “This is e-mail is attached to an account you are not currently logged into.” But it’s attached to my WordPress account, so what’s the problem?
For some blogs I must constantly log in to leave a comment – even if I’ve already been there and commented ten minutes ago. And I can’t LIKE anyone’s comment, or response to mine, on any other blog. A prompt to Log In flashes, but disappears before I can do anything. Sometimes I’m asked to log in, but even when I do, if I hit the LIKE button nothing happens. Annoying.
Yesterday I spotted an odd URL on the post I was about to publish. I tried to fix it because it didn’t look right. Got it again on my evening post, but just left it as it was and published anyway. It didn’t show up in the final link. Strange – have I never noticed before? Has my blog been hijacked?
Perspectives
I think of the Ukrainian couple in Moose Jaw who shared their story of invasion. Undisciplined Russian soldiers pouring into their city, the bodies of defenders lying in pieces all over. Soldiers going through homes raping women and children, torturing people. No power half the time. Living in the hallway of their apartment, fearful of bullets and flying glass. Hellacious like being like hell.
Frame of Reference
Most of the adjectives we choose are based on our frame of reference. what we’re used to. How different something is from what we expect, what we hope for. A glorious sunset or a dreary rain on parade day. Instant results or shambling slowness. Sometimes I’ll put up with inconvenience because I’m lazy languorous and hope it will change without my having to do anything major.
This couple lived through their nightmare for three months, hoping to wake up one morning and find the war over. Believing this terrible invasion would end soon and life would get back to normal. Finally they had to leave everything behind and flee for their lives.
I did call once and was assured everything’s working as it should. Now I have to call WordPress again and get this sorted out. Meanwhile, Ill see if I can get this posted without too much trouble.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is TRAFFIC. Here’s a little verse in response:
rush hour traffic
streams of weary communters
snailing homeward
Today We Bury My Sister
Donna died of a drug overdose on November 28, two days after her 66th birthday. Her middle son, James, had her cremated within days, but it’s taken while to arrange burial of her ashes in her daughter Barbie’s grave. Barb died back in 1989, from what likely would have started as cervical cancer. A sad time for us all; Barb was just sixteen and full of life.
Being a Saturday morning, the traffic on the highway between here and Moose Jaw will probably be light. We’re to meet at the cemetery at noon to bury the urn holding Donna’s ashes, then we’ll have a gathering in remembrance, which will take the form of a family picnic in the park. I don’t expect it to be a large gathering, as she lived in her own circle of friends so a lot of her nieces and nephews hardly knew her.
Donna and I were close when we were young — as close as siblings can be when they live in different homes over 100 miles apart — but as an adult she and her family lived here in SK while we moved East and lived in Ontario and Quebec. Coming back to SK, I was only able to locate her a few times. So, sadly I’ve only seen her four or five times in the past thirty years — mainly at family funerals.
I haven’t had anything to do with her Rob & Jason, her oldest & youngest sons, since I spent a few days with Donna when Barb died. Sad when families get so estranged, but my husband and I chose a different path — lifestyle if you will — and lost contact with them. Hopefully we can get a bit more acquainted today.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt word this morning is ENVY. American poet Edgar Guest had some wise thoughts on this subject and many of his verses speak of being content, so I’m going to post a couple today. Here’s the first…
THE OTHER FELLOW
Whose luck is better far than ours? The other fellow’s. Whose road seems always lined with flowers? The other fellow’s. Who is the man who seems to get Most joy in life, with least regret, Who always seems to win his bet? The other fellow.
Who fills the place we think we’d like? The other fellow. Whom does good fortune always strike? The other fellow. Whom do we envy, day by day? Who has more time than we to play? Who is it, when we mourn, seems gay? The other fellow.
Who seems to miss the thorns we find? Th other fellow. Who seems to leave us all behind? The other fellow. Who never seems to feel the woe, The anguish and the pain we know? Who gets the best seats at the show? The other fellow.
And yet, my friend, who envies you? The other fellow. Who thinks he gathers only rue? The other fellow. Who sighs because he thinks that he Would infinitely happier be, If he could be like you or me? The other fellow.
From his book JUST FOLKS copyright 1917 by The Reilly & Britton Co.
Christine's Collection 