Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Toys – Week 2

June 25, 2013June 24, 201310 Comments

still making us smile

We always swore to never repeat those awful catch-phrases our mothers (and fathers) would fling out at opportune parenting moments but every once in a while we catch ourselves with very similar words on the tips of our tongues. The platitude that sprung to mind today was “things were simpler when I was a kid”. It doesn’t take a degree to deduce how this can’t, in fact, be anything other than historically accurate as we grew up pre-electronic diversions, pre-colour television, pre-headphones, pre-pretty much everything.

Entertainment was basic but there was no lack of it. Inside or out, alone or with friends, our choices were limited by the little available on the market or what we could scavenge and throw together in a pinch. We certainly didn’t have as much stuff as children today and some of it has survived the long haul of adolescence, leaving home and starting our own families to sit in their own place of honour amongst our prized possessions. Our own bears have seen alot of action, now they watch us compose and create, revise and revisit, like talismans of permanence in a rapidly changing daily life.

This fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Toys – suggests that everybody’s got their something…

Last week, Across the Bored was curious – “What form do toys take for you?” – That fuzzy bear, a game of solitaire, pick-up sticks or camera clicks, beads and baubles, stereos sweet, nail polish for toes on pretty feet, shiny cars, long telescopes to see the stars or best of all – a cardboard box and simple ball… We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Clean – Week 2

June 11, 2013June 10, 201310 Comments

not since and probably never again

Once upon a time, and it was a very, very long time ago, there was a young woman who had received a gift of more tomatoes than she could possibly ever eat in one sitting – or even four. Being somewhat frugal and hoping to earn some brownie points in the domestic arena, the maiden (against her better judgement it must be said) consulted “she who is never wrong” for the best way to preserve the quickly-ripening fruit for the long, cold winter ahead. Complex instructions were dictated, interspersed with anecdotes of how “she of the bad temper’s” recipe was not up to snuff and why “she who never listens” methodology was questionable, amongst other digressions.

The process was supposed to be an easy one but like so many culinary endeavours that masquerade themselves as “a pleasant afternoon” spent in the quest for the authentic flavours of yesteryear, it wasn’t. It was tedious and messy, labour-intensive and messy, dangerous and messy. From knife blades sharp enough to slice a single hair lengthwise to industrial-sized pots of boiling water threatening to erupt at a moment’s provocation, it was not fun. The young lady was not pleased but completed the task, placing the many precious jars in a very high, very dark cupboard.

Three months down the road and well before the first snow, the hint of an odd odour in the kitchen began to tease the maiden’s nostrils. She was told it was all in her head, that she had an over-active olfactory system, that it was the age of the building, the damp weather or, heaven forbid, the possibility that something had reached an unforeseen demise between the walls. The last option was not to be tolerated and so “she who always persevered” crawled up to the top rung of a very tall ladder, gingerly opened the cupboard door and discovered the unthinkable – no rotting gypsum, no black and creeping fungus, not even a nightmarish rodent corpse – worse. 42 jars of fermenting tomatoes oozing a slick and noxious liquid out from under once-tight metal caps and down their sides to corrode eighty years of paint off the shelf in perfect circles. A crucial step had obviously been omitted – or not transmitted…

Conserving a summer’s harvest is much like this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – it doesn’t hurt to make sure that everything is really – Clean.

Last week, Across the Bored put forward an age-old question – “How does clean appear to you?” – The lines of a Countach or curve of her back, fresh laundry on the line or graphics of a sign, raindrops, old-fashioned string mops, even spinning tops, is it sudsy or soapy, stringent or strange, glossy and glassy, fancy or plain… We would love to see your vision.

200 and counting…

February 23, 2013February 23, 20135 Comments

It is snowing… again. The house is quiet for the moment and we are mulling over the sequence of this last week’s events that have brought us to yet another interesting crossroads in our present adventure. It is in our nature to lament the fact that we get into ruts with some of our routines – wishing them otherwise, weighing the possibilities, sometimes taking subtle or glaringly extreme measures to create change, all this is the stuff of daily life and yet we still have the opportunity to complain that just when we get comfortable doing things or having events, people, even furniture arranged and behaving in that certain way where it all runs smoothly like the proverbial well-oiled machine all hell breaks loose. Domestic chaos theory at its finest…. whatcha gonna do?

We like to think that we exercise a modicum of control over those initial conditions that make getting up in the morning, being productive in our work and building harmony in our home and social lives satisfyingly worthwhile but introduce random factors like, say, anyone else who is not playing by the same set of rules and you have what Edward Lorenz built an entire career upon and has had theorists scratching their heads over for the last 50 years. It is not a matter of if but when and sometime, somewhere, someone is going to bugger it all up. How dramatically horrific the reaction to this kind of stimulus is, of course, temperament and age-sensitive. Where once the resultant roller coaster ride on the learning curve of experience used to be gut-wrenching, heart palpitating and nausea inducing with explosive duck and cover repercussions, it has quiesced into more of a slow train where the conductor raises an eyebrow, holds out a hand for the fare and offers the pragmatic approach of how do we solve this and get on with it.

Granted, this is all easier said than done but it does remind us of the oft-chanted mantra “Could be worse” – after all, we are still Masters of our own Blog Universes and all that entails…

Thanks to Across the Bored’s challengers, followers and visitors
for getting us to 200 and beyond.