NanoPoblano 2021

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It’s that time of year again- time for NanoPoblano!

If you’d like to participate, please leave the url for your blog here so everyone can find it easily and visit your space to see what you’re up to this month. šŸ™‚

Also there’s a FaceBook CheerPeppers group that you can also find a list of the daily posts of bloggers who are also participating Give it a visit at https://www.facebook.com/groups/cheerpeppers.

Happy Blogging Friends! šŸ™‚

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Hey – hey! Guess what day it is?

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#PepperDay

Suddenly they all died. The end.

You know what day it is – it’s Pepper Day! Woo!

And that’s about all the excitement I can muster right now. Because it’s also Hump Day and, well, I’m awfully glad we’re on the downhill slope of the week.

See, my job was another victim of Covid, but I was super fortunate to find a new job in only a couple of weeks. Fourteen years of experience, plus my pretty new(ish) English degree, landed me a job in another law firm, and I started on Monday. While it feels good to be working and having days filled with adult conversation again, and while I’m glad that my younger kids are getting some social interaction with other kids (and trust me, the kids are just as happy about that as I am), it’s been three days of hard mornings. It’s hard enough to go back to work – even at…

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Protests: Public, Private and Non-Violence

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#PepperDay

Not Just Sassy on the Inside

Note: readers here who are also on FB with me know my father is in hospice. It definitely deserves a post or two but I’m not ready to do it yet…

wave3.com

Here in Kentucky a big, debated news story in recent weeks has been the tale of two protests with wildly different results. In one case, white supremacists armed with assault rifles spent two hours around the Governor’s mansion yelling, banging on windows and threatening with their guns. Not one arrest was made.

In the other, peacefulĀ  Black Lives Matter/Breonna Taylor protesters sat quietly, arm in arm on the KY Attorney General’s lawn. All 87 were arrested and charged with felonies (charges later dropped). Much outrage has ensued over the disparity of treatment.

After the incident at the govenor’s mansion, Governor Beshear gave an emotional speech in which he talked about how one of the rooms where they were…

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A 2020 Haiku

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#PepperDay

Failing at Haiku

quarantine spring
the summer of Sonic shakes
a nest made of string

6-22-2020

What things are you getting to do this summer? We are able to go to stores, but mostly choose not to. We could eat in at restaurants but choose not to. We get ice cream at Sonic and extra food when we order out. We are letting our son buy a lot of video games and letting him stay up late because it’s all we can do this summer. My mom is still going through chemotherapy, and rather than quarantine myself and my family for 14 days before we can see her, we are being abundantly cautious. We used Walmart pickup for the first time ever, and we are ordering everything online now so that it gets touched by a limited number of people, and we come in contact with a limited number of people. I’m…

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Emotional Quicksand

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#PepperDay

Breaking Moulds

You’ve probably been stuck in quicksand before, even if you didn’t realize that’s what it was. Maybe you’re stuck in it right now.

I heard the expression ā€œemotional quicksandā€ on the radio last night – right alongside another resonating term ā€œdoomscrollingā€ – and realized even as I learned about its existence that I was already in it and sinking fast.

It might start with a feeling of loneliness brought on by isolation, or frustration and anger at an injustice you heard about or experienced or are experiencing, or sadness and confusion at being ignored/ghosted by a person you had high hopes about, or panic and fear brought on by something you read or saw while ā€œdoomscrolling.ā€ There are so many ways you can step in emotional quicksand, but once you’ve dipped a toe in it, the sand starts to take your whole foot, then the other foot, then your calves…

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Building

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#PepperDay

Cats and Chocolate

It’s July, and I could swear it’s been a year already. So much and so little has happened. I’ve been out twice during the last few months. Once in early June, when we all went to see my sister for a socially distanced present-swap for her birthday – in the car-park of her flat. Then again in late June to drop her and Matt back to their flat in the car (all be-masked with all the windows open). My Mum is still officially shielding until the beginning of August. After that, who knows? We won’t be dropping it all and going back to ā€˜normal’, that’s for certain.

By Edwin Hooper, Unsplash.

There’s a stark difference in my state of mind when I talk to people who have had a bit more freedom. They have been to supermarkets and have left their houses to go for walks. Shielding meant that we…

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Sharp

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#PepperDay

The Matticus Kingdom

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I was drawn to the sharpness of these leaves, the tiny points that will scratch the unsuspecting, the unwary.

Life is so interesting sometimes…

Come find rest in the shade of my leafy branches but don’t get too close. I’m here for you but only to a point. This is a common theme in nature, supporting others while protecting self.

I’ll leave it to you to draw any parallels to our current lives in quarantine.

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So we might be buying a condo…

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#PepperDay

The Illusion Of Controlled Chaos

My husband and I have been living with family for over 2 1/2 years. We were planning on trying to find somewhere to rent, but there is nothing affordable in the state I live in. We started doing some research and realized that it might actually be cheaper on a month to month basis to buy.

A month or so ago we started looking. We saw some things we liked, but when we ran the numbers we realized that they were unaffordable.

So we lowered our budget even more and saw some single family homes that needed way more work than we wanted to deal with and some condos that were okay, but not quite what we wanted.

Then we saw a condo that was supposed to be a 1 bed 1 bath, but it turns out that the bedroom was about the size of a smaller walk-in closet. The…

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Kid You

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#PepperDay

No Talent For Certainty

You.

You know this place.

You know this place from once inside a dream:
A dream about a life before this life,
When just a Coke machine meant luxury.
In flipping dials, in-room heat and air,
In eyes wide open, mid-chlorine and all;
In dripping in a towel beside a pool.
In comic heroes viewed from in a store
Your parents bought the towel in, and a box
Of candy-coated popcorn with a toy
So cheap and flimsy, it would die that hour.
The world before events became the world
And hours spent in ways so un-ideal
Defined the self you show out to the crowd
Who isn’t here — who wasn’t ever here —

But you know this place, you know you do.

Yes, you.

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