The SCREAM

GAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

I’m so DONE answering stupid people.

I am.

Yesterday, one of the supervisors on the other side of the building QUESTIONED my authority. “Can Mona possibly be right about this?”

Of COURSE I was, ya Idiot Crap supervisor you.

People backed me up, of course, as they knew I was right.

But the Idiot Crap Supervisor did it AGAIN last night, in an email I got this morning.

“Can Mona possibly be right about this?”

I just finished composing an email to him, to everyone on his email list, and to a few other people who need to know what I have to deal with.

I didn’t send it right away, of course.

I took out the swear words.

And I said ‘Please’, and offered alternatives and suggestions.

I’m never right about who gets kicked off reality tv shows.
I can’t pick Oscar winners for shit.

But I DO know my job.

And anyone who says otherwise is lookin’ for a fight.

I was a free man in Paris/I felt unfettered and alive

Ever since a fellow Mother-of-a-first-grader mentioned that she woke up every morning at 3 a.m., and struggled to get back to sleep, my body has decided to pull the same stunt. With the stipulation that the time changes. And that the dreams around the awakening become more convoluted and scary.

I’ve always been an insomniac, but the early morning rousings are bugging me a lot more lately. They seem to come on the heels of some nightmare or other, something where kids are in trouble, or I’m lost in a strange city, or I’m bedding a stranger who I know is not a very nice fella.

Last night the dream had a meadow, a movie, my husband, something clean and pure and about to be trampled, and I awoke realizing I hadn’t taken a breath in a while. Several hours later, when my alarm went off, I woke up not knowing where I was, or where the alarm was, or where my gun was. For the record, I don’t own a gun. I had to sit on the edge of the bed for a while to put the puzzle pieces together, like “Memento”, but without the clever camera shots and tattooed events.

If I could just break this brain of mine, like a crazy horse, rein it in and teach it to go where I lead it and stay when the lights go off.

If I could sleep 6 straight hours, with no dreams, so deeply and so completely that I woke up refreshed.

If I could get some breath in my lungs.

I do find, though, that after a night like that, certain areas of my brain work better.

Weird.

A story idea that I mulled around last week formed itself into a nice round bouncy ball this morning, and I just finished a beginning outline of what could be something. Albeit something I’d need to videotape, because the words wouldn’t come, but the images did.

I dream in color.

In both videotape and film.

My dreams are also in re-run syndication.

Poetry Friday: The Word is COOKIE

Time being of the essence today, I will get right to it…the Poetry Friday Word is COOKIE. If you are so inclined, please feel free to use this word in your blog post today, in whatever chocolate-chip-studded form you choose…story, poem, photo, oo-ey goo-ey rich-and-chewy sounds….

I have three offerings today. Being that Girl-child offered up the Word this week, I am publishing the story she wrote. Girl-child took an interesting angle…a story written from MY point of view about HER, including the word “cookie”. It’s suitable for framing.

I also included a short list, and a short recipe.

Have a good weekend, y’all!


Girl-Child Writes from the Point of View of Her Mother, Looking at Girl-Child

I like Girl-child. She is fun and she likes cookies and lots of other things. And we loooooooooooooooooove each other. It is a gooooooooooooood life. One day we will have a girl day it will be fun but I know we will eat lots of cookies lots of them ok. Back to the me and her soooooooooooo we eat good things. So we like to kiss and hug each other uh-huh of course! Now I should play with her if I can.


Mona’s Short List of Cookies
1) When I was a kid, my mother’s hairdresser was named “Cookie”.
2) My mother and aunts created a cookie recipe that is my favorite, to this day. Although when they gave me the recipe, they skewed the ingredients and procedures so mine would never turn out as good as theirs. I have, however, ‘cracked the code’, and plan to open my own bakery someday featuring this wonderful cookie.
3) I’m working on a project that involves me deleting and changing the cookies on my hard drive. Have you ever looked at the cookies on your pc? It’s amazing how many I have, even though I’m not what I’d consider a ‘rabid’ internet user. They’re a necessary evil. But still evil.


Shortbread Cookies
(These are easy and quick to make…and so tasty…they melt in your mouth.)

1 ½ cup flour
1/3 cup white sugar
3/4 cup butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend all ingredients. Dough will be stiff. Press into 9x9 buttered pan. Prick top with fork. Bake until golden brown on top. Cool and cut into squares.

Poetry Friday Word for Tomorrow, plus…a 40th Birthday Gift

Work is crushing me under its gigantic, hairy thumb, and my thoughts are scattered.

Once again, I’ve neglected to appoint one of you brilliant creative folks as Poetry Friday WORD-Giver. I remembered this last night right before the kids went to bed, and asked Girl-child, “If I were to write a story, and put a special word in it, what would that word be?”

Girl-child thought for one entire second, then her eyes popped open and she shouted, “COOKIE”, and did a little cookie-dance, to make sure I understood. Then she ran to get some paper and a pencil, and started her very own story about cookies. Which she wouldn’t show me. Because it’s a secret. If she finishes it tonight, I’ll post it tomorrow.

The Poetry Friday Word for tomorrow is COOKIE. Please feel free to sprinkle a few crumbs of that word into the bedsheets of your blog post tomorrow…in a poem, story, photo, recipe, spam-filter anecdote, moral lesson of no morals….


I have a question for y’all.

Last night I was invited to a birthday party for a friend who’s turning 40. I have no idea what to get her. I mean…NO idea…as in, the creative part of my brain that loves to do the ‘just-right’ present thing has taken a powder and is hiding, whimpering, in the small space behind the basement toilet. Can y’all give me some ideas? Something cool and groovy and just-right?

Mardi Gras, Midwest Style

It's Mardi Gras, and I am not drinking beer for breakfast and standing, half-nekked, underneath a balcony showing my tatas for beads.

It's Mardi Gras, and I'm not stumbling down the street looking for a par-tay and evading la policia.

It's Mardi Gras, and I'm not writing a list of Things I Will Give Up For Lent.

It's Mardi Gras, and somewhere to the south of me, folks are wearing big-headed paper mache, and dancing to Brazilian rhythms, and kissing total strangers, hard, on the mouth.

Here in the midwest, we're a little quieter.

The Food Table here at work is slowly gathering its bounty of cookies, brownies, crackers, pulled pork, and the inevitable and painfully delicious paczkis. Painful is an understatement with paczkis...they're tasty, sure...

bavarian cream, apple, cherry, berry, prune, lemon, chocolate, creamcheese, kitchensink fillings....

ganache, powdered sugar, plain toppings....

but eat just one and it will sit in your belly like a stone, leaving the eater to waddle around the remainder of the day like a yard or two of cement got wedged in there.

Tomorrow my Catholic friends will come to work with ash crosses on their foreheads, and we'll all remember why we ate like pigs the day before..."Ashes...and it's Wednesday...OH!...that's why I woke up with a carb hangover this morning!"

Come to think of it, I do have a string or two of cheap Mardi Gras beads in my bottom drawer...maybe I'll tell the guys they can earn them by taking off their shirts....

What are you doing for Mardi Gras today?

El Dia de los Presidentes

It's Presidents Day here in the states. All the schools are closed, mail service is cut off, and state employees are probably still in bed.

But the mall is open. The kids practically dragged me there.

We shopped.
We ate lunch.
We shopped some more.
We got candy at Fabulous Candy Store.

I definitely need a nap now.

Poetry Friday: The Word is HEART

It’s a cold, sleepy day here in the Midwest. Not even fresh coffee is rousing my brain from its hibernating slumber. But now that I’ve downed several steaming cups of java, in my large-ish pig niche mug from my favourite potter, I can feel my heart start to beat a little faster, like a snare drum in an approaching parade…bum-ba-da-dum…bum-ba-da-dum-dum….

It’s Poetry Friday, folks, and the word is HEART. Feel free to charge up the paddles and yell ‘clear!’ in your blog post today, in whatever prescription the doctor ordered…poem, story, photo, love note to your third grade crush, embarrassing story of unrequited (or requited) love….

I’m listing it today, after contemplating a Five-Minute Free Write but abandoning the idea when I realized I couldn’t keep a thought in my head in a steady string for more than 5 seconds. (It’s cold, I need coffee, and a cave to curl up in.)

Have a good weekend, y’all!

Heart List

1) Sergei was right when he said I’m partial to song lyrics. Always have been. Words seem to steep themselves in the record collection of my brain. For example, with the word heart, now I’m hearing Kenny Loggins’ voice singing something about ‘heart to heart’, was it him or was it Loggins and Messina? Cory Hart, I always sing, when I see someone inappropriately wearing sunglasses. There’s the group Heart, Nancy and Ann Wilson, and although I was never a ‘fan’, “Barracuda” still gets my butt shakin’.

2) I have an irrational fear of a sudden heart attack.

3) My OB-GYN diagnosed me with a heart murmur last year. No, silly, he didn’t diagnose me by checking ‘down there’….

4) I cannot draw or paint for beans, but I can cut out pretty pretty heart shapes like a champ.

5) Yesterday I had a conversation with a co-worker about a certain sort of customer we cannot sell our product to…that sort of customer being prisoners. I told him the history of why our business model doesn’t support it, and said something like, “If ol’ Cletus is in jail for murder, he probably won’t pay for his order anyway, and we pretty much write him off, the deadbeat.” I said more than that, I forget what. I left to go fetch some printouts and then it hit me…my hand…my hand hit me, upside the head…quite literally…this co-worker, a really nice guy, well, his dad is in jail for murder. GAH. Stupid, stupid girl I am. I went back (sheepishly) to co-worker’s cube, and apologized…”I’m sorry, the things I said about prisoners…I mean, in light of what your dad’s going through…it was insensitive of me…it was heartless and stupid, and I’m sorry.” Co-worker smiled and shook his head and said, “Hey, it’s okay…it’s just as weird for my family too…don’t feel like you have to watch yourself around me, I’m okay.” Which was nice of him to say. And which made the day memorable in two ways…Co-worker really IS a nice guy…and that I should sometimes just shut my mouth.

6) Do you ever get that heart-thump thing, like, you’re sitting at the computer and all of a sudden you feel your heart beat outofcontrol justforasecond, and you take a big breath and then everything’s okay again?

7) Number 6) above used to happen when I saw a cute guy. Now it does it because of caffeine. Or the thought of getting 8 hours of interrupted sleep.

8) I’ve always wondered…why do we cover our hearts when we sing the national anthem? I’m sure it’s symbolic of protecting our heart against, oh, whatever, invaders or evil, but why that motion in particular? Shouldn’t we make some sort of motion like we’re covering our butts, or our frontal-bits? Or our brain box?

9) When I was little and we were poor, my mother would cook the most interesting things. My mom made beef heart once. Once. We didn’t want to eat it, but had to take a few bites out of necessity. Please do not EVER feed me heart, it’s just too weird.

10) I heart you.

Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow, also a belated vd, and a wry smile

Happy Valentines Day!

Yes, I know I’m late. Make that:

“Happy Belated Valentines Day Because I Went Through a Time Warp On the ACTUAL Day”.

Yesterday I was at the kids’ school early morning and late afternoon, and in-between I was at work dealing with excited programmers and marketing folk. There’s not much difference between the folks I work with and the kids I deal with…they’re always bouncing off the walls, always talking over each other, and both are full of candy and peanut-butter-products.

Due in large part to the holiday, the Poetry Friday WORD for Tomorrow is “heart”. Does that seem like a cop-out? Too easy, right? Well, we’ll go with it. Although, if you have a scintillating expose on the old tv show, “Hart to Hart”, I’ll let you use that spelling too. Anywhozeewhatzis, feel free to tie a red ribbon on your blog post tomorrow with the word “heart”, however you choose…poem, story, photo, allergy shot schedule, sappy love song, lipstick-kissed envelope….

During my work day yesterday, we all got to talking about websites, and one of my co-workers suggested I purchase a url and start a blog.

HAH.

Snort, sniffle.

I’m anonymous, baby.

So I listened patiently as he explained the ins and outs, and sent me a link to Wordpress blogging software, just in case.

If he only knew…and he won’t.

Are YOU anonymous? Who knows about your blog?

I was young and foolish then, I feel old and foolish now

1) I recently messed with my pill-taking schedule, in the hope of a) feeling better, and 2) losing weight. The thyroid med I used to take every morning I’m now taking at night. My endocrinologist is messing with my thyroid dosage, and going from an all-natural form to a synthetic form. The pills must be taken on an empty stomach, which is a perfectly good way of tricking my body into NOT snacking after dinner/before bed. I CAN’T. I need 2 to 3 hours of no food going in to take the pill.

Are you snoring yet?

Yes. I’m becoming my grandmother. Better watch out, I’ll start talking about my sciatica and my bunions next.

This getting old thing bites.


2) I’m having Food Fantasies. Specifically comfort food. I’m obsessed with the idea of peanut butter toast. It’s the Perfect Food! Warm and melty and sticky…mmmm…how can that possibly be bad for you when it tastes so good? And the thought of a hot turkey sandwich, which I detested as a child, is making me drool. And beef stew with warm bread and butter. Sigh.


3) When my alarm went off this morning my brain screamed, “No! The alarm clock’s lying! Today I get to sleep in!” Stupid stupid brain. I’ve been having vivid dreams lately, and the scary ones I still haven’t shaken off. I’m frankly a little afraid to go to bed.


4) Have you seen Julian Beever’s work? His sidewalk chalk drawings are incredible! Check out the Anamorphic Illusions halfway down the page.

The Cruel Way That February Has Its Way With Me

I had a small breakdown of sorts yesterday.

I’d gone grocery shopping late morning and, at the end of my trip, found some wonderful-looking sushi in the deli area. The sushi chef saw what I was looking at and chatted up the new spicy shrimp and crab rolls, which were made with thinly sliced cucumber lengths instead of rice…low-carb…FINALLY I could eat sushi on this diet. Since it was right before lunch, I phoned home and told Sergei I’d bring home sushi. I grabbed the low-carb sushi for me, and a box of marina rolls (shrimp, tuna, eel) for the kids and Sergei, some seaweed salad, and made my way home.

I don’t know exactly what happened.

I unpacked groceries, and had it in my head to check the laundry after lunch and wait, did the kids get homework done, and I really should make treats for Valentines Day and what would I make, and I was simultaneously getting lunch stuff ready, and the sushi was on the counter…

…and it fell. The sushi fell. After I opened it. The marina sushi, the stuff that I know the kids like, their ‘main dish’, was now in a heap on the kitchen floor. I screamed out and scooped it into the plastic container, hoping the ‘Five-Second Rule’ would apply, but realizing all too quickly that the floor was much too dirty for that (another task I had to do), and that I’d just ruined my ‘special lunch’. “I just dropped the f***ing sushi!”, I yelled.

Then.

I lost it.

I knelt down on the floor with a napkin trying to pull remnants of fish roe from in between the tiles, and I lost it. I started sobbing. ‘Cause goddammit, I TRY to do something nice….

The kids came into the kitchen, quietly knelt down, and hugged me. God I love those kids. After a minute I told them to go sit down and I’d get their lunch ready. I put my low-carb spicy sushi on their plate with seaweed salad, made them some tuna salad, got out fresh fruit and crackers, and served the kids. Sobbing the whole time. What a loser I was. Can’t even make lunch. I cried for a while, for no reason in particular, and every reason en masse. Why not.

It occurred to me later that this is par for the course, because it’s February.

February does it to me every time.

The months after the winter holidays kill me every year.

I think it has to do with how psyched up I am about Christmas, still, like a kid, excited and running around and planning and scheming…I love it. Then, afterwards, the Big Letdown. It’s Winter. Simply Winter. It’s cold, and snowy. I go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. Valentines Day is a poor substitute for a holiday.

In years past, in the Depressing Month of February, I have contemplated quitting my job, quitting my acting training, quitting caring.

I always snap out of it. When the sun winks at me on the drive home, when the mornings aren’t steel-snap frigid, when I can see the lawn again, when the newsletters come home about the first day of soccer practice…then I feel the heavy blanket of Winter start to lift.

Seasonal Affective Disorder? Perhaps.

I just think it’s the emotional Yin to my otherwise Yang.

Every February, I have to cry it out.

Before I can let the daylight in again.

Poetry Friday: The Word is HAIR

My computer is angry at me today, for no reason I can ascertain. It keeps crashing and freezing. Could be that gremlin I saw scurrying out from the back when I turned on my desk light today….

The Poetry Friday Word for today is HAIR. Please feel free to use it in your blog post today, in whatever manner finger-fluffs yer ‘do…poem, photo, song lyrics, expose on the hair care industry, Guinness Book of World Records factoid….

I have a list. And at the end are photos of my Fantastic Pottery acquired through my new favourite potter, Gary! I’m drinking out of the yellow niche pig mug right now and feelin’ pretty durn cute about it, I must say.

Have a good weekend, y’all!


Shinin’ Gleamin’ Streamin’ Flaxen Waxen

1) My aunt was a hairdresser who happened to work in the prison system. A local man was convicted of murder, and my aunt had the job of cutting his hair after the conviction. For whatever reason, she saved a lock of his hair for me. I know. Weird. Also fascinating.

2) In Kindergarten, I had waist-length hair. Two months into first grade, my mom had it cut…into a pixie ‘do. VERY short. Next day at school, most of the kids didn’t recognize me. The teacher did, however, and managed to dry my very frustrated tears. Since then, I’m convinced people recognize me by my hair.

3) My hair is naturally wavy/curly. Shoulder length or longer. Which is lovely, sure, but forget to comb it for a day, and it becomes something like the fibres of a birds’ nest…difficult to straighten out and tightly intertwined.

4) My husband has the amazing ability to grow hair. When he was in Well-Known Shakespearean Play, he grew out his hair and produced the most incredible beard you’ve ever seen. He has also shaved his head – bald -- which, I must admit, is a total turn-on. So is a Soul Patch. And a Goatee.

5) Boy-child is in need of a haircut. At his indoor soccer game last weekend, we noticed that all the soccer guys are growing their hair long. Just like the Winter X Gamers. We gave Boy-child a choice…we can either take him to the barber and get his normal haircut, OR he can grow it out. He’s leaning toward the ‘growing out’ option, but I know he’ll look like a shaggy mess in the process. Hooray for shaggy messes.

6) Girl-child has lovely Princess hair. It’s long and wavy, soft and manageable. She put it up a few nights ago in a dangly pink-sequined barret, for a ‘date’ with her dad. She spends more time on her hair than I do, and is much more creative with accessories. I’m envious.

7) This turned out to be a hoax.

8) This is not a hoax.

9) I get my hair caught in my car door a lot.

10) When I put my hair up, I look like my brother. Hence, I never put my hair up when I go to the gym, which makes for lovely sweatiness afterwards. You don’t want to stand too close to me after a workout.

And Now…

Fantastic Pottery!




It's like Christmas!




Cuddling pigs!



A trio of pigs with belly buttons!

Poetry Friday Word for Tomorrow (here baby, there mama, everywhere daddy daddy)

I tend to shower and wash my hair at night. My tendency towards morning sleep deprivation would lead me to be A Dangerous Situation if I were to crawl into a slippery tub upon waking.

Yesterday morning my hair looked like Medusa.

Like a big-haired 80s disaster…high and poofy, with the unnatural waves and kinks of a cartoon witch.

My children laughed at me.

Rightly so.

The Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow is “HAIR”. Feel free to use it in your blog post, in whatever fashion tangles your locks…poem, story, photo of that mullet you grew in middle school, odorama spritz of your favourite hair gel….

Have you seen “Hair”? The movie I mean? Wasn’t Treat Williams just dreamy? I mean, c’mon, he’s the epitome of 70s hippie love, what with the hair and those Robert Plant-like-jeans, and, well, I mean…DAAAA-YUM, he was HAWT.

Don’t you have a 70s crush on someone? You must.

Is it hot in here, or is it...

I have one light on, over my work area. Except for the hall light, and one light on in my friend’s office, the entire building is dark.

It’s nice in that sorta-sleepy/sorta-creepy way.

I managed to elude Crazy Night Computer Guy, which is good, because I’m hangin’ my tatas out to dry this morning…not totally nekked, just in a low-cut, loftily-perched sort of strappy tank top way underneath my hoodie.

I get hot easily.

I AM hot easily.

I just fetched my second…or maybe third?...cup of caffeinated coffee, which I will surely regret as soon as it kicks in and my brain forks over the admission ticket for Space Mountain and starts screaming and holding its hands up in the very front car as we ascend and then slip down at crazy speeds and...AAAGHHHHH!…click…and the instant camera takes a photo that costs $10 at the egress. Then I collapse.

I thought about posting today with a list of Embarrassing Things I Have Done.

But then I realized I haven’t done enough of them. And not embarrassing enough.

I thought about posting something “funny”, as in ha-ha.

But I left that part of my brain at home, in bed, and it’s currently hogging the covers and farting under the sheet and elbowing Sergei in the ribs and chanting alternate endings for "There once was a man from Nantucket...."

I thought about doing a “linky” post.

But really, I don’t have that much energy.

An update to my Fantasy Boyfriend list?

Uhhh…I’m right in the middle of a few fantasies and can’t interrupt the ‘hot actor on an empty soundstage’ line of mental self-stimulation.

The weather?

Lots we've been having.

Ahhhh….

Hmm.

Something on the roof right above my head, something heavy and metallic, just crashed down. It’s probably just a vent, opening and closing in the frigid breeze. Or maybe an animal seeking shelter.

Or…perhaps…a piece of Space Junk crashing to earth.

Space.
Junk.

Let’s put an end to this pointless post, shall we?

I’ll be sitting here gradually getting high, getting hot, getting HOT, getting….

One thing that bites, and three that do not

What Bites:

1) Dear Mr. Salt-Truck Driver,
Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence at 3:30 this morning. You and your doppelganger. Tag-teaming with your little blades and salty spritzes. Thanks to you, Boy-child woke up freaked out that we were in the midst of a horrendous storm, what with your thunderous motors and scraping, and your brilliant lightning flashes. I had to talk him down and back to bed. Then, just to be doubly sure, you did it AGAIN. Louder even. And then…I guess, to make up for the snow we didn’t get in December, you rounded our block a THIRD time. You’re lucky I wasn’t wearing any pants, ‘cause I would have chased you down and beat you with my slippers. Thanks to you and your generous scraping, my 5:30 a.m. trip out to my car revealed that not only had you pushed NO snow aside, but that you’d actually groomed the street to hockey-arena-iciness. Yeah. That’s nice. You may go to bed now. But just be warned…in the middle of your dreams, I’ll be there. Driving up and down your street. Honking my horn and throwing pebbles at your car.

What Does Not Bite:

1) Sergei turned me on to this guy last night...Eric Schwartz...singer/songwriter and dirty-minded expounder of liberal ideals. I’m pondering whether to float him in as Fantasy Boyfriend, and if he’s gay, to create a new category for him…Fantasy Gay Boyfriend. Hey, a girl can dream…. (Links at Sowing Dissent...to keep some semblance of 'cleanliness' on this blog.)

2) At the video store on Saturday, the clerks were playing this gem. Afterwards, I had so many quotes in my head, I had to put it on the list of ‘Best Comedies Ever’. And why isn’t John Cusack on my Fantasy Boyfriend list??? WHY?

3) If you didn’t see all the ads during the Super Bowl last night, here’s a link to see them. I was disappointed, overall. There were some cute ones, and some that were downright repulsive, but I was expecting more. A LOT more. HOW many millions of dollars did advertisers spend, and couldn’t they be any more clever? (But kudos to the walnut guys for including Robert Goulet. And Ricardo Montalban for being such a good sport.)

Poetry Friday: The Word is COLOR/COLOUR

I was reading some article or another yesterday morning and stumbled across the word ‘color’. It was used in the phrase “person of color”, and I thought briefly about writing a blog post about the colors of mankind, but couldn’t wrap my head around what to say. Instead, it sounded like the perfect Poetry Friday word.

But then…this morning…I was blog-surfing and realized that on Wednesday, Jeremiah had posted about colors. Did that plant the seed of Poetry Friday in my noggin, too?

Perhaps.

Thanks, Jeremiah! Great minds…!

Feel free to use the word ‘color’…or ‘colour’…in your blog post today, in whatever lovely tinted hue you choose…story, poem, photo, remembrance, scientific study of paint colour and general aggression….

My Poetry Friday offering today is a list…as the coffee isn’t sparking any bits of poetic flair, and I really must get some work done this morning.

Oh, BTW, my wonderful husband, Sergei, is posting again! It feels like my phantom limb has grown back…welcome back, honey!

Have a good weekend, y’all!


Mona’s Coat of Many Colours

1) I have yellow skin. Years ago, after comparing forearms with other Wasp-y co-workers, we decided we either had pink skin or yellow skin. Those with pink skin burned in the sun. Those with yellow skin tanned. But because I spend my days locked in a cubicle, the only tan I get is from fluorescent lights, and that’s not really a tan so much as a state of mind.

2) Blue is my favourite colour. When I was a youngster, it was pink.

3) The best thing I took away from high school science classes was the knowledge of the colour spectrum. The very specific order of it. ROY G. BIV. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.) Now I criticize cartoon rainbows when they transpose colours.

4) The best thing I took away from college science classes was the study of fruit flies, and how eye colour was passed down genetically. Even though my dad’s eyes are brown, he didn’t stand a chance of passing that trait down in the mostly-blue-eyed relatives we stem from.

5) The house we grew up in had lime green and pepto-bismol-pink walls. Until we painted over them. Now I wish we hadn’t.

6) This man's use of colour is amazing. So is his.

7) I remember very specifically being taught to colour inside the lines. Like a good girl, I obeyed. Maybe that’s why I find it difficult to colour outside my own life lines these days.

8) There were very few people of colour in the town I grew up in. When I came to Local University, I reveled in the diversity. I’d walk through campus listening to the accents and foreign tongues, the patois and the patter. Watching the faces, the walks. A friend visited Lebanon, his home, and came back with amazing stories, giving me currency from his homeland and writing his name, David, on it so I'd never forget him. I'm sitting here remembering folks I haven't thought of in years, and how their lives intertwined with mine.

9) When I was little, I discovered that if I closed my eyes really tight and rubbed them really hard, my eyes could see a dark-green background with 5- or 6-sided figures crowded into the space…like Buckyballs…all sparkly and pulsing. Did anyone else do that?

10) Sometimes I'll stare up at the sky, in the early morning or at twilight, and marvel at how intense the colours are. If I were to paint those colours, they'd look fake. Sometimes I'll see a blue sky with white clouds, and smile at how much they look like the opening of "The Simpsons".

Poetry Friday Word for Tomorrow, and then I collapse

Tomorrow’s Poetry Friday word is COLOR. Or, if you prefer the more British spelling, “COLOUR”.

Feel free to use it in your post tomorrow, however you wish…story, photo, haiku, limerick, YouTube link….

I wish I could say more about it, other than I don’t think the word has been offered up before. But I’m currently fighting some bug or other that has taken up residence in my stomach and everything I type is making me seasick.

Oh, here’s a thing for y’all before I hide under my desk for a quick nap….

Describe your favorite comfort food.

Right now, I’m imagining toast…big piles of toast with butter and orange marmalade on the side.