Priscilla Spider sighed. Spinspinspinspinspin! Day after day, endlessly spinning a sticky web to trap bugs and flies to feed her multitudes of offspring, with never a moment’s help from their father. Lazy, worthless so-and-so! It’s just a shame we have to use them only to hatch a zillion new little spiders!
Once, she’d had a friend named Charlotte. Some weirdo wrote a BOOK about her, just because she talked with a pig!
Now she was alone, bored and ready to quit.
It shouldn’t be long now. She could feel her life draining as she worked.
Zing and Zang perched carefully on a billowy cloud above the amusement park. What they couldn’t understand was why it was called “amusement.” It didn’t seem to them that people were actually having fun!
Shrill screams echoed from the big wheel containing buckets the people sat in. More screams came from cars that constantly bumped each other. There was something called a roly coaster, and the screams from THAT were earsplitting!
The only place where there was laughter was the little wading pool where human toddlers splashed each other in the face.
“Humans are weird,” said Zang.
“Yup,” responded Zing.
_________________________________________
Lifeisn’t always an amusement park. The last few months have been difficult. I’ve developed terrible vertigo that leaves me weak and sick. I’m working on getting help, but frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much help for it. Motion sickness pills just make me sleepy AND dizzy! I’ve done vestibular therapy that helps a little, but really not much. I read somewhere about the main problem being not floating crystals in the inner ear, but rather compression of the vagus nerve. Made a lot of sense. I ordered something to help with that, and am still waiting for it to come. Then, of course, my chronic back pain has ratcheted up a notch. I’m very thankful for a good pain doctor who knows how to help me without dosing me up with pain pills that turn me into a zombie. And to top it all off, what I thought was just a bad cold has turned out to be bronchitis. Seriously bad bronchitis. I’m as weak as a kitten, but not nearly as cute 🙂 I haven’t been this sick in a long time, and I’m happy to be coming out the other side.
Both the back issues and the vertigo seem to come with age. My back started lettingme down about ten years ago, and the vertigo has been with me for maybe five years. I’m beginning to understand more clearly how some older friends of mine talk about looking forward to heaven! There’s an old spiritual called “Soon I will be Done With the Troubles of the World, Goin’ Home to be with God!” Truly, I’m not trying to be morbid here. I do love life! Sometimes, a body just needs a break from the daily dealings with physical conditions that are not going away. So. Now that I’m not coughing incessantly, I’m hoping to return to some things I’ve let slide. It’s good to be back.
“Well, I’m not going to college, so I suppose I have to learn business machines. What a bore. I’m getting married as soon as I graduate! I won’t have to work,” complained Barb.
“But you never know when you’ll need to help out. Farming is a risky business. So much depends on the weather, which we can’t control,” responded Shirley.
“Nope. Robby has already told me I won’t have to work.”
“Time will tell. You may be glad that you know how to do more than housework–which is, by the way, a LOT of work!”
Out of curiosity, I looked up Train Philadelphia, and look what I found:
Other, older trains:
Changes come and go; things get upgraded and/or retired, and Philly’s SEPTA system has been hurting financially to the point that many outlying small towns have shut down commuter trains to and from the city. Lots of railroad tracks are being paved over to create bicycle-and walking- paths.
It always makes me sad to see a part of our history disappearing.
“No clue. Not one single clue. Can’t read the metal plate. All those holes. . . . “
“Could be a game? Something you play with pegs?”
“Could be. I sure hope somebody in that writing group Linda likes so much knows what this is!”
PS. Editing my post. I KNEW this was some kind of game, but absolutely could not bring up the name–until I read Rochelle’s post 🙂 What a relief. Now I can sleep tonight 🙂
I have a question. Why do I have to fill out my email and my user name on some posts in order to comment, but not on others?
“Hey, Mom! Is that what they call a ROCKer?” yelled Willie. He busted out laughing at his own joke.
Mom, on the other hand, was taken down a different path. She immediately thought of the old song Rock of Ages, and another hymn, On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand. So many others crowded her memory, she could hardly keep up.
Floods of words sped through her mind, along with the memories of learning to play those songs for church. She was in a different world from her young son.
Zing was equally speechless. In fact, tears trembled in the corners of his eyes as he watched his cousins being bounced mercilessly, bumping each other and swinging like pendulums.
“Zang, it’s too cruel! Isn’t there something we can do?”
“I don’t think so. We’d blow our cover, and the next thing you know we’d be strung up there just like them!”
Sue’s eyes widened as the waitress place the platter on their table. “Oh my! I didn’t know lava cake was like THIS!” she exclaimed”
Ron smiled, happy with the success of his plan. “Well, it’s not your typical lava cake. But I knew you’d be impressed with this, so I made sure they’d get it right for you.”
“But how’d they get it to flame, and smoke? And the lava streams. . . .it’s kind of scary!”
“No need to fear. I’m not going to sacrifice you to the volcano goddess.”
Just Writing! 