Tag Archives: adventures

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#Tanka Tuesday Challenge: Inspiration and Plan

pixabay image

When I was eleven years old, I somehow got the idea that my family (and my best friend) should homestead on one of the uninhabited Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska.

Committed to my inspiration, I perched behind my dad’s old typewriter and with one finger, tapped out a list of everything we would need from 7 chisels and 50 hinges to 100 lbs of tuna fish and 30 sheep. Yes… sheep.

The four-page list is pretty funny. Apparently, I thought 15 rolls of toilet paper were sufficient for this adventure but wanted 200 bars of soap!

A few other items from the list (with conversions):
2 big bells
6000 packs of seeds
20 hair brushes
4 dog sleds
2 dogs
52 lbs of instant chocolate  (23 kg)
400 lbs of chicken noodle soup (181 kg)
1000 lbs of tea (453 kg!)
140 books

The plan never got off the ground, but I saved the list all these years. You never know…

Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday challenge was to create a poem using synonyms of inspiration and plan.

~*~

Childhood’s fantasies
rewrote a commonplace life
plotting a passage
my sails filled with misspellings
my dreams charting windswept isles

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Taking a break from taking a break

This is my destination (close enough). Image from Pixabay.

On Sunday, I’m off to visit the old folks (older than me anyway) in the Colorado high desert.

My parents haven’t acquired any of those new-fangled gadgets like wireless “internets” and email is still on par with magic. Their town is devoid of coffee shops because those places attract liberal, tree-hugging, Bernie supporters (like me). Needless to say, I will be offline for a couple weeks.

I’ll probably be engaged in manual labor, which is my father’s idea of family fun. Last summer he had my brother and me trekking into the hills and hauling rocks for his stone wall. I think we made 30 trips with the old Subaru and transported 200 rocks before dad attempted to jump a gulch and ripped off the back end of the car.

My brother won’t be making this trip as the volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has him grounded. So, I’m on my own. Think of me while I’m dragging dead branches out of federally-owned land, piling them on top of the same Subaru, hauling them home, and cutting them up for firewood. (The trees are that little fringe of dark stuff on the top of the mountain in the photo).

My mom is legally blind, so the rest of the time will be spent talking about their eventual move to Oregon over my dad’s dead body, and I’ll be cleaning the house. She does an amazing job considering, but she needs help, and these stubborn proud people refuse to allow help in the house. Actually, they do hire help, and then my mom says she can do a better job herself and chases them out asks them to leave.

My dad is hard at hearing, and since only old people wear hearing aids, he clearly doesn’t need them (he’s 87). The television volume is set on nuclear, and he’ll be ranting about Trump, while my mother and I shout at each other over the noise. We’ll be sharing the sofa with nine cats. It will be so relaxing.

I will be completely absent from blogland and anything resembling a normal life for the duration of the visit. Wish me luck. I’ll be back in two weeks.

P.S. For the sake of family peace, it is my daughterly duty to advise you that this post is the pure unadulterated truth grossly exaggerated. 🙂