May 21, 2021 #WeekendCoffeeShare

Raindrops. Copyright © 2021/05/20, by Liz Bennefeld.

Time has slipped away, this week, as the weather varied between wet and dry/warm and cold. This morning, there is hot water for tea or coffee and filtered water in the refrigerator. There are apples, mixed nuts, and yogurt; and gluten-free crackers (corn or rice).

Thanks to stress and poor air quality, I have not accomplished much in the way of writing. I did, however, sow some of the daisy seeds in the south side garden just between rain showers. It came with its own mulch and plant food, so I am hopeful that even though the seeds are not this year’s, some will still appear.The container, which Al received from one of our neighbors across the back fence, is said to contain seeds to cover 400 square feet; it was almost full when we received it.

I am pleased that the blue wild flax plants have multiplied from last year and that there are beautiful flowers. (Wild flax flowers last only a day…in hot weather, they seem to drop their petals before Noon.) The first two rounds of tulips have flowered and died back; I have cut the flower stems, so that the plant will put its energy into the bulbs, rather than making seeds. At least one more variety—I don’t remember which—is getting preparing to bloom. There is less sunlight on the west side of the house, where the cotoneaster trees and the garden shed cast shadows during the afternoon, this early in the year.

Later today, since the rain has been canceled until next week (but not the smoke from the fires in Manitoba, Canada), I will put on a double face mask and see about digging up the backyard garden that was not seen to last year. We took down the garden fencing, and Al mowed the plot. The only plants that survived were the chives, which I hope will grow back after being cropped by the lawnmower.

Summer is always a tired time of the year for me. Late autumn, winter, and early spring (before the tree pollen gets going and when the temperatures are low) are the best, the healthiest times. I am remembering to take the multivitamins that I bought a few weeks back; I think they will kick in pretty soon.

I have been fooling around with the new WP site, learning how to make it do what I want it to. This is a good time of the year to submerge in indoor activities of sufficient complexity that I can lose myself in them. I have cut out a lot of my online activities. retaining those on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That is, the weekly Poetry Heals workshop, a small meeting for worship via Zoom, and Saturday’s meet-up with a group of artist/writer friends, where weekends alternate between social and social/co-work. It is enjoyable to visit with others and find out what they’re working on as well as how they’re doing in general. As I have been able, I  try to make the Lunchtime Write-in, Monday through Friday. Which is the time during which I am writing this blog post.

This past week, I went through my Patreon memberships and  made some major changes. Over five years, people’s activities, interests, and involvement change.  And my interests change. I am more home-centered, I find, and inclined to spend more time and energy doing my own thing. During the past fourteen months, my focus has shifted and my health problems become more complex.  I dropped or altered half my Patreon memberships, and I find that I am happy with those decisions.

Well…  Enough of that! I took some photographs, the past few days, that I really like, and so I will (try to remember to) add them to this post.  I do look forward to looking through the Weekend Coffee Share posts, each week. Thank you for continuing to write them!

Hugs & much love,
Lizl

Natalie, our host, has outdone herself, this week! You must visit her blog, where you also will find this weekend’s Linkz lineup of Weekend Coffee Share participants. —EWB

May 14 2021 #WeekendCoffeeShare

Spring Tulips

Welcome! Nearing the end of another week, and I am pleased to have your company for Weekend Coffee Share (hosted by Natalie at Natalie the Explorer). Spring Cleanup, Week was successful, in that I got a lot of books hauled out to the curb for pick-up. After putting out my (and my parents’) Great Ideas Today yearbooks (supplements to Great Books of the Western World), we went through the myriad collection of cookbooks, saving one family cookbook (Al’s family) and a couple large and multi-volume books that I have used regularly in the past. It seems a shame, getting rid of the gluten-free and the rice & potatoes recipe books, but I hadn’t used them for decades. Pretty sure I kept the cookbook with recipes from the 1800s.

This week, I need to remove all the books from the front-room book cases, dust them and the books, and arrange them in some sort of order. While I am at it, I intend to toss out all of the cassette music tapes and the drawers they’re stored in. Many of them are more decades old than I care to think of. I have long since quit trying to play music in the background. I listen to the music and don’t do anything else until it ends.

I have been poking at the new WP log, previously mentioned, and have finally chosen a theme. I think… Recently, I have enjoyed placing some of my haiku, tanka, and such on the photographs that I post them with,  also including the poem in text format … or not.

This week, I neglected one of my cameras, not loading the files onto my computer until today. The orange-yellow tulips have about ended their run. The weather has been cold, windy, and dry. I have removed the flower stems and left the remaining green leaves to feed the bulbs instead of producing seeds. I do hope that the air quality is good enough that I can clear and plant the back garden, this year. If nothing else, I can spread the daisy seeds, which came in a container with mulch and plant food included.

On the best days, this week, the PM2.5 index has gotten back into the “Good” category before bedtime, and so these past two evenings, I got back into the gazebo and put in ~2.5 miles each time. I continue to lose weight, but not too rapidly. I keep forgetting to eat, and I must not, now that I take multivitamins. So far, I haven’t gotten below the weight range I set. Seems odd to be setting a “bottom” to that range, rather than an upper limit.

The usual Zoom meetings, this week, and a “social” gathering tomorrow (Saturday) with the artists/gamers. I enjoyed the Wednesday night Live Event on Cancel Culture, presented by the New York Times. Not sure whether I will attend the next one, which is two weeks from yesterday, since it is back to back with the Poetry Heals workshop.

Flower photos from today are at the end of this post. Flowers or not, I really do prefer winter, rather than the other seasons. Late autumn comes in second, with its fruits and changing leaves. I really miss the cold and the snowflakes. And the clean air. But wildflowers are really quite beautiful.

I must get on with the day, and catch up on the dish washing while the Scampers are taking their naps. Best wishes for your weekend and the coming week!

Hugs & much love,
Lizl

White Wild Violet

Busy Week | #weekendcoffeeshare

Good day! I’m pleased that you have dropped by for a cup and a visit. It’s late in Sunday afternoon, and there are no more commitments for the weekend…except for trying to write this post;

This past week has been full of activity; online, catching up with chores, and writing poetry (the last week of National/Global National Poetry Writing Month). I have posted my poems at journal.thewrittenword.net — Though I have posted a poem for each day (and included a day’s poems in one post, having enjoyed that day’s writing streak), I have continued writing for the fun of it.

This was the week when the leaves burst forth, the tulips and dandelions (and a wild blue violet) bloomed. In spite of cold temperatures and middlin’ strong winds.

Friday, I was writing poems. Saturday, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Assn. (SFPA) had its first Town Hall Meeting (via Zoom), which was interesting and lots of fun. People I’ve known for decades, but whose voices I’d never heard; some, I’d never even seen a photo of. In the afternoon, Liz D.’s weekend Zoom meeting, “social”, rather than co-work sessions.

We hope to finish installing the rain gutters on the workshop, this weekend. If not today, then Tuesday, since tomorrow’s’ forecast looks to rain. I have enjoyed taking photographs during the week, and a lot of them are still in the camera. Today, meeting for worship and social time afterwards. On Tuesday evening, there is an online event for alumni of the college I attended.

I still am trying to get reoriented after such a focus on writing poetry for all of April. I even found myself taking notes for another poem during the social time after worship. Focused, as I understand it, on how they have been operating under the Covid-19 hazards and restrictions.

Time has fled, and I must finish this and get the URL posted here: The Upside of April,  where you will also find the Link Party links.

Best wishes for the coming week!

Love & hugs,
Lizl

Moving toward spring | 27 Feb 2021 #WeekendCoffeeShare

Some photos from the past week:

Welcome! Coffee’s hot, and tea water’s heating. Snacks on the table to my left: apples, mozzarella cheese, and g-f rice crackers. The sunlight is making it through the high clouds, and the temperature is high enough, the breeze mild enough, that I was able to take the Scampers into the back yard, yesterday, without having to put on a shirt that has sleeves to it. (Overcast, 35°F/2°C) This morning, so far, the temperature is 11°F. Supposed to have light snowfall, this morning.

My sleep pattern has regularized since I changed my alarm from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m., and start getting ready for sleep around 10:00 p.m. I sleep longer, and the Scampers do as well on the later morning start.

February is National Haiku Writing Month, and I am caught up with my poems through yesterday (Friday) with only two more to write. Some of my poems turned into tanka, and I wrote two “dual haiku”, which I’ve discovered are quite fun to write. Dual haiku involve writing two stand-alone haiku that also work with their lines interwoven.

ancestral lands
my heart stills
dreams draw me closer
trees and tall mountains
waves of light
going home

 

Another example, is “Stars and Water” on my Quilted Poetry blog: NaHaiWriMo poem, 2021 Day 25.

I have two Zoom meetings, today, one in the afternoon (weekly social gathering) and one in the evening (a NaHaiWriMo gathering/poetry reading).  I had not thought about it much, but as more of my online time involves people interactions, the more broken up my writing time becomes, with household activities and chores being tucked into random quiet spots.

Sometime this weekend, I hope to lay out a schedule for my typical week to see where my time and energy are being spent. I think that I need to find a pattern that will enhance my use of resources and provide a better balance. I can see that the building blocks of my world are not going to change in the near future, so I must see how I can rearrange them to work better.

The Scamper puppies are in need of my attention, and so I am going to leave the computer for a while. Also, fix a proper breakfast and pour myself another cup of tea.

Best wishes for your week! I hope to visit more Coffee-Share blogs, this weekend, than I did last week.

Hugs & much love,

Lizl

Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.  Blog post: The Nine Gifts of February.

Before Valentine’s Day : 13 Feb 2021 #WeekendCoffeeShare

haiku by Lizl Bennefeld written for valentine's day


Welcome! The tea’s wet, and the coffee is brewing. Help yourself to beverage and snacks, and sit a while.

This has been such a scattered week, between online activities and my writing, that it seems a blur, punctuated by many, many naps and not much else accomplished. I did enjoy the Poetry Heals workshop, Wednesday evening, and earlier in the afternoon, an online discussion (Beyond #NoDAPL: Indigenous and Black Lives Matter, Anpetu Wi Dialogues). My indigenous heritage, Sámi, is rooted in northwestern Europe (Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia). It appears that my father’s father’s people came to the United States from Norway in the 1870s. Here in North Dakota, I find myself more interested in local populations and issues. My father’s mother’s people also came to the United States in the same time period, from Ireland and Norway.

I have been keeping up with writing at least one poem for each day during February, which is National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo). Being located in a part of the country where the temperatures are stubbornly remaining below 0°F, I have mostly been using photographs/images from the “free to use” Internet sites to inspire my poems. Too cold to go outside for more than a few minutes, and I’ve gotten out of the house during February for only my appointment with the ophthalmologist on the first of the month. (Poems for this month are on my Quilted Poetry blog.)

Right now, I am sitting in on a combo social/co-working session with friends via Zoom, hoping to finish this post and get on with writing more poems. Or at least finding more inspiring photos to prompt more poems.  My husband is heading out for two hours of volunteer work in a little bit, so I will take a break then to get some more laundry going.

As far as reading, this week, I have been sorting through my ebook collection of novels by Georgette Heyer to see which favorites I am missing. So many of her books are republished by a variety of publishing companies that I have to list the titles, rather than depending on the list of books available through Barnes and Noble. Actual reading, however, involves more escapist novels. Yes, back to rereading L.E. Modesitt, Jr.  The Flash, Archform: Beauty, and The Octagonal Raven (related) novels. They blend in nicely, and more dramatically, with Francis Fukuyama’s nonfiction political/sociological writings. (Check out AmericanPurpose.com. Some  (but not all) of the articles are interesting.

I found a good summary online of why I should wait for the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. Chemicals in the first two vaccines available were mentioned as being the ones that I had identified as being the source of the allergic reactions I was worried about. Those chemicals are absent from the Johnson & Johnson offering. When it does become available, I will contact my PCP about when and where I can get it. Until then, I am holed up at home, freshly washed face masks and nowhere to go.

I am not planning anything else for the rest of the day and hope to catch up on relaxing and listening to music. On the NY Times web site I came across, in the music section, 12 jazz recordings that turn out, the first ones I have listened to, at least, to be mind-blowing and the sort of music I love most. I want to spend a lot of time listening, and then relistening to the entire set.

I hope that you are having a fun, relaxing, productive…? weekend. I look forward to visiting more blogs this weekend than I got to during the last. My puppies call to me.

I hope you will stop by Natalie’s blog; she is the current host for Weekend Coffee Share and the links app where other participants will be posting their blogs for this weekend.

Hugs & much love!
Lizl

Natalie the Explorer blog and Link Party: here: Natalie the Explorer.

Writing and Dreaming | #WeekendCoffeeShare 5 Feb 2021

aurora borealis

my heart stills

ancestral lands

trees and tall mountains

dreams draw me closer

waves of light

going home

[interwoven haiku]. Copyright © 2021–02–04, by Lizl Bennefeld.


Good Day! I’ve just decanted a batch of Toddy coffee concentrate, and the first pot of tea for the day is ready to pour. Help yourself to a cup! Mozzarella cheese and mixed nuts on the table, also.

The first week of February, and finally we are heading into winter weather. Cold and snow that will stay around for a while. I am enjoying the lower humidity and the sparkle of sunlight on the newly fallen snow. The temperatures are now plummeting, and there is a winter wind chill advisory with regard to the combination of very low temperatures and brisk winds.

February is “National Haiku Writing Month” (NaHaiWriMo), an activity I have enjoy immensely, most years. Last year, I think it was, I dropped this annual challenge, not inspired by the provided prompts, but not up to coming up with my own. This year, I am wandering through other people’s photographs, as well as my archives, and writing what I see and feel. I do not always post every poem I write during these and other events. However, so far I have been posting them on my Quilted Poetry blog.

I have put aside my cameras for the time being, hoping that there will be true winter weather with snowflakes and frost on the trees and other seasonal variations. On Monday, at my optometry appointment, I asked for a prescription specifically for reading my piano music. I am hopeful that when I do get to the lens crafter’s shop, my attempts to expand my music practice will benefit. I continue to exercise, and my energy level is up from last week.

Tomorrow, I hope to enjoy a Zoom meeting, again, with the usual bunch (mostly gamers); not a social/co-working session, but just a social gathering. I made it to most of the lunchtime write-in sessions and either wrote a poem or washed dishes or got a load of laundry into the washing machine. Time set aside specifically for doing things! There was an extra Zoom meeting of the group around Wednesday lunch, providing needed concentration time for folks on deadlines. Enjoyed the Poetry Heals online workshop, Wednesday evening, and attended the Thursday Meeting for Worship, also via Zoom.

I have picked up a bit more reading material, this week. An article about Bernard Baruch available through B&N, since I remembered that I delivered one of his speeches for high school Declamation; Roses and Lords, by Anthea Lawson; still reading A Quiet Gentleman, by Georgette Heyer; and The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph Henrich (recommendation by a friend). and Crucible, an anthology of short stories written in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar story line. I had forgotten that I’d bought this anthology, and so it was an unexpected treat, finding it in my ebook library.

The day has progressed, and it’s nearly “Puppy Time”, and so I must go away. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend! I look forward to visiting your blog before the end of Monday. Best wishes for the new week!

Love & hugs,
Lizl

Natalie, at Natalie the Explorer blog, is the current host for Weekend Coffee Share. Her marvelous post for this weekend is at this URL, along with the Inlinkz link party with web addresses for other participants in this weekend’s coffee share.

Downtime — #WeekendCoffeeShare on 30 January 2021

photograph by Tea Creative | Soo Chung @teacreativelife
Wish List for Afternoon Tea

Welcome! Tea, coffee, and yogurt for the fruit. Help yourself! I have been enjoying a slice of ham and a cup of baked beans. Fruit and yogurt for lunch. I think I had just Toddy coffee and a square of chocolate for breakfast. That’s my regular morning fare. It would be nice to have tea with guests, again, someday.

Moon behind the clouds

The week has passed quickly, here. The weather has been variable. This weekend, we’ve had freezing rain and snow advisories. My husband has scheduled additional volunteer shifts, so he will be out and about one weekday and both weekends for a few hours. I did get out a few times with the camera. This is the photo that I liked the best. Taken from the back step, looking West.

Poems that I have written since my last Coffee Share post: Tired, Butterfly Moments, Rough-Chopped Breakfast, Inside/Outside, Beginnings, and Time’s Flight. Looking through my text files, I find that I have started rough drafts on at least half a dozen other poems during the last week or two. I’ve been sorting out the files, today, and deciding what I want to do with each…delete, rewrite, or polish and finalize.

Reading in progress:The Octagonal Raven(Modesitt, reread), The Listening Path (Julia Cameron, new), Blood Banked (Tanya Huff, short stories),The Quiet Gentleman (Georgette Heyer, reread), and a couple that I decided I didn’t like enough to finish reading or wasn’t in the mood for at the moment.

Again, I have slept a lot, in addition to reading.  The air quality, again, has not been good, even though the classification for pm2.5 is “Moderate”, which has kept me inside and mostly near the air cleaner. I look forward to colder weather outside and drier air. The past few days, I have been able to exercise for short time periods. Not enough.

I enjoyed my two-hour Zoom meet-up with Liz D. and friends, Saturday afternoon, while Al was away. Tomorrow, I hope to make it to the 11:00 Meeting for Worship, also via Zoom. The app has not been cooperative, recently. Thinking overloaded systems somewhere. And this evening, I uninstalled my Microsoft 365 module, on this (13″ screen HP convertible), and I now have LibreOffice on both of my laptop computers. It is nice to not need an office suite anymore. I’ve used so many of them over the past 34 (?) years. I do believe that Microsoft’s Office software has been the most frustrating of the lot. Happy to leave it behind.

I’m finding that my eyes get quite tired at this time of night, and so I must go away and get some sleep, now. I am looking forward to my appointment (only seven months late) with the optometrist, this coming week.

Natalie, at Natalie the Explorer blog, is the new host for Weekend Coffee Share. Her post for this weekend is at this URL, along with the Inlinkz link party with web addresses for other participants in this weekend’s coffee share.

Thank you for stopping in! I appreciate it very much.

Love and best wishes,
Lizl

Featured photo by Tea Creative │ Soo Chung on Unsplash.

The end of a long week | #WeekendCoffeeShare on 22 Jan. 2021

Well, almost the end of the long week.

Welcome! This is a decompression day (2nd of 2 for the week.) I forgot I was to get up and make breakfast, and so I am eating now, before lunchtime catches up with me. There’s v. dark chocolate, mixed nuts (with or without peanuts), Toddy coffee (of course), and fresh mozzarella cheese, and also filtered water, cold for drinking or ready to heat for tea.

It was nice to visit the dentistry office, on Wednesday. Too long since Al and I last took the drive to Hawley. Next month, if all is well, I get to meet with the optometrist, also. I’ve a small cavity starting on the gum line, so hope to go back, sometime after the eye exam, if the weather and pandemic cooperate.

Wednesday evening, I attended the free Poetry Heals workshop via Zoom, which was fantastic and just what I need. Listening, being heard, and writing poems together. Yesterday, a lot of notes for more poems and resting. Catching up on sleep. The Scampers and I also attended, via Zoom, the weekly noon Meeting for Worship for Healing.

We (the Scampers and I) awakened before the alarm went off. They had breakfast, but I had not. The nuts are good, and the chocolate was delicious. I’ve a Zoom meet-up scheduled for this afternoon with the four oldest siblings in the family. That would be the Bay area in California, eastern North Dakota, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and Connecticut. I need to fit a lunch into the next hour.

Tomorrow noon, I will enjoy an hour’s Social gathering with Liz Danforth and friends via Zoom. This week, I have been rereading a 2-book story arc by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., comprising The Parafaith War and The Ethos Effect, both of which have informed my view on current U.S. events; Blood Banked: Stories from the Blood Verse, by Tanya Huff, in ebook format., so I can read them comfortably ; and I have just started rereading William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth: A Deep Map, which merges prose and prose poetry—quite addicting.

Twice, this past week, I got out into the snow-and-cold with the Scampers to take photographs. Hope you find something you like among them.

Poems that I wrote, this week: Winter Art,  Room Enough, and Winter Grass.

I hope to visit your blog for coffee, sometime over the weekend. Thanks for dropping by, here.

Hugs & much love,
Lizl

P.S. Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share post for this weekend is here: Natalie the Explorer.

Holiday weekend — #WeekendCoffeeShare 01 Jan 2021

Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)!

Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about?



Welcome! Coffee (hot or cold brew) or tea (green or black loose leaf)? I’ve butter, honey, and peanut butter and a gluten–free corn or rice crackers. Help yourself!

I understand that Allison will not be hosting the Weekend Coffee Shares after this weekend. If someone steps up to volunteer, I’ll add a note to this page. (Natalie has volunteered.) In the meanwhile, this week the InLinkz link party still can be found here at EclecticAlli’s blog.

In truth, this week has been rather blurred. Too much potential for things to happen, and so I pretty much stepped back and let everything float by. I did enjoy Laura Anne Gilman’s New Year’s Eve day Zoom get–together for her Patreon following. New stuff in the works for me/us to look forward to. And tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon there will be a mixed work/social gathering via Zoom with Liz Danforth et al. that I very much look forward to. (Gary? Zoom get-together?) I also have enjoyed getting to know Wild John Reinhart, a poet who is also a musician and a school teacher. He and his family live in Maine. He writes good stuff. Off the beaten path.

Complete change of pace for reading: The intro book, Christmas Sisters, a Romance, by Thompson, Kem, Grace, Bishop, and Howe, and and six related books, one by each of the authors. I quite enjoyed them all. And then, I revisited Wen Spencer’s four Ukiah Oregon novels. Science Fiction, I guess, and not Alternate History. And I now am reading Christmas on Mistletoe Lane, by Annie Rains. Also a romance, plus a bonus short story included. Nice for the holiday season. (I think I have read other books by the same author…maybe.)

Other than my dancing, i.e., exercise, and a little photography, I have been relaxing, playing with the Scampers, talking with Al about a myriad of things, and we’ve both been catching up on sleep. Had a lovely snow, here. Our next Chewy shipment arrived, so the Scampers will not be starving. Must order more tea and replace some well–worn hypoallergenic clothing, also. ::sigh::

Our second Economic Impact Payments showed up, and so I was able after all to send an end-of-year donation to Seti@Home, for which I processed data from the middle of May1999 until I no longer received data units for processing. I’ve had that computer practically forever. It did make it all the way through that project. I lost my account information for the Milky Way project and could not recover it, and so could not quit that one formally.

Still have to find a replacement for my printer/scanner, which died last spring. And look for a replacement for the 13″ convertible laptop, which is dying.  Seems like four years, and then they quit, unlike the little Lenovo, my Seti@Home box, which has lasted for ten years and has had no problems except for handling some of the software upgrades.

I have decided not to continue using Microsoft Office (now Microsoft 365), in favor of LibreOffice. When I was running Linux, I used Open Office and liked it a lot. Since I’ve retired, I don’t need total compatibility with clients’ software.  I’ve taken MS Office off the 17″ computer and plan to install LibreOffice sometime this week or next. If that handles everything, I’ll dump and replace on the 13″ also. These are by way of being my goal/resolutions for the new year. At least, the first month!

It is now time to play with the Scampers and find something for supper. I hope that you and yours are well and staying safe. My apologies for rambling on, here. Not in a hurry, this week, at all.

Best wishes to you!

Hugs & much love,
Lizl

Outside, Inside #WeekendCoffeeShare 30 Oct. 2020

the moon and mars
Mars and Moon

Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)!

Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about?

You will find Allison’s Weekend Coffee Share post here at Eclectic Ali and also the Inlinkz link party with links to other people’s weekend coffee share posts.


Welcome! If we were getting together for coffee, this morning, there would be lunch to go with it. In the meanwhile, I have just finished a snack to tide me over. I have started writing this post during my weekday “Lunchtime Write-In”, which puts aside 75 minutes, Monday through Friday, for nothing but writing and related research. In the kitchen, you can help yourself to some mozzarella cheese, mixed nuts, and a Braeburn apple. Or, we can heat up some Cashew-Carrot-Ginger soup and toast a slice of bread.

I have lost track of days, I think, as winter weather, melting, and then last night’s snowfall, have blurred the hours of the day, activities, and sleep cycle. It is almost like going to sleep in a snowstorm and waking up to spring, green, and waterdrops on new grass.

wet leaf on the wood floor
The Outside Inside

green grass and snowflakes
dry leaves blown against the house
wet leaf on the floor

The framework of my social activities continues to be Zoom meetings and conversations with Al, scattered throughout the day, and curling up with the Scampers when he goes out for volunteer work (he’s taking more shifts, these days), errands, and grocery shopping. And the weekday write-ins and another on Saturdays with connections through Patreon.

The major change in my schedule for November is the National/Global Novel Writing Month. As is our custom, writer friends and I will be writing a poem a day for the month. Prompts are provided by various organizations, which is a kickstart for each day, even if a poem decides to intervene…or wander off on its own. Looks like seven of us are free to take part, this time around. We also do the National Poetry Writing Month activity together during April. I expect that with the pandemic and the winterish weather, I will have fewer distractions, this year.

This week, I wrote five (six?) new poems. Four are posted on my QuiltedPoetry blog on WordPress. One will go to the other members of my speculative fiction poetry critique group, and one—will be pulled apart, reworked, or abandoned. A couple of poetry-writing months, I wrote practically nothing but fragments, sketches, and notes that I referred to in writing many new poems over quite a few years.

clothes piled by am closet
Needs Washing

Again, I have spent much time indoors, napping. Towards the end of the week, I have gotten outside with my camera. Mostly earlier in the morning. Love that the wind is melting snow and drying the fallen leaves. I love the shapes and piles and mixtures of species and colors. I love doing different things with the photographs, bringing out colors or shadows or geometric patterns. I could easily become lost in it. But…laundry. Running up and down the basement stairs is exercise, too.

I hate to leave Weekend Coffee Share at this point, but time has slipped away. Perhaps I will make it back here before the end of Monday to add a few notes on the weekend as it happened. Or perhaps not. In either case, I hope you have a marvelous new week, and I look forward to a visit.

Hugs & much love,
Lizl