Here is my official announcement that I will be participating, unofficially, in the A to Z Challenge this year. This will be my third year to join in. The challenge is to write every Monday through Saturday, throughout the month of April. This amounts to writing for 26 days, using the alphabet in order (A to Z).
As with the last couple of years, I will not be writing to a specific theme.
For more information about the A2Z Challenge, check out this site: Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.
For Mother’s Day I am reposting something I wrote last year on April 15th. She’s been gone for over 30 years, now. I still miss her and I am also grateful that she is not around to see what is going on in the states. I know that so much that is going on would break her heart.
A2Z – M is for Mom
Today is the anniversary date that my Mother left this world. She’s been gone for twenty-nine years. There are days that I still miss her tremendously.
She started her life in Chicago, born in a small apartment, weighing in at 13 pounds/5.9 kilograms. I can’t imagine giving birth to a 13 pound baby, especially on my own. Six pounds 14 ounces was enough for me.
She was pulled out of school in 8th grade and sent to a trade school to become a professional seamstress. She applied those skills at Macy’s and marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in the 1940s.
She married my dad in the late 1940s, moved to Detroit, and gave birth to me in the early 1950s. They settled in the house my dad inherited from his mom and dad.
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I’ll never forget how many of the people, who got up to speak at her funeral, referred to her as a saint. She will never be anointed sainthood, but she sure did try to live her life as a very good woman.
Even so, Mom had her faults, as everyone does. She would never stand up to Dad, even when she knew he was wrong. One time, the time that I lost faith in my mother, she sat by as my dad spanked me until I was bloody, for something I had not done. Much later, she entered my bedroom and told me that she believed me. All I could think at that time, through my tears, was why didn’t you say anything when it mattered.
After that, I was not the very best daughter, nor the worst. Though I never fought with my mother, she had to put up with the tumultuous relationship that grew between my dad and I. Through it all, I know my Mother loved me, with all my faults, blemishes, and stubborn tenacity. Sometimes, I think she admired my independent nature, as she had never been taught to embrace independence.
What happened? I fell short of writing through the A to Z Challenge. I missed out on writing about all the years that I played an xylophone as a child. I could have spent some time yakking about my times at Yosemite. Instead, I let the existential horror created by the yahoos wreaking havoc in our country weigh me down, silencing me, bringing me to the letter Zed and zilch for the last few days.
For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, here is a post from April 25, 2024.
A2Z Challenge – V is for Vampire
It’s late and I’m tired, so here’s just a very brief post about vampires.
Here’s a tiny peak at my collection.
While looking for a music video that I could add, I discovered that Neil Young had a song about being a vampire. Vampire Blues
I’m thunderstruck by how many find the U.S. Constitution such a bother.
Posted for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday and the A to Z Challenge.
After yesterday’s A to Z Challenge post, I wanted to post something a bit cozier, a bit cheerier. Here is Stormagedden, the Dark Lady of All, in all her furry glory letting me know I need to pay attention to her, and not my laptop. 🙂
Trigger warning. This post is about rape, and some may find this very difficult to read.
I, also, ask that readers do not share this post without asking for my permission, first.
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Rape. This is an ugly, dark word for something that many women throughout the world have experienced. Our country now prefers the term sexual assault. Sexual assault sounds almost kind, almost soft, almost friendly. It is not. It is rape and rape is not soft, not kind, and not friendly.
I was raped at 16 years old. I looked 12. I weighed 89 pounds. The man who raped me was almost 30 years old and weighed 250-300 pounds. He did not whisper sweet nothings in my ears. He did not caress me softly. And the way he threw me down and tore at my clothes and skin was not friendly. There was not an ounce of kindness in his take over of my body and the ensuing pain of my soul.
My friend, who I had been visiting, did nothing, as I screamed, and cried, and tried to fight off the man. Afterwards, when I asked him why he didn’t help, he said he was afraid of the man.
What came after made it all the worse. I went to the police to report the rape. They told me I didn’t have a case. I showed them my bruises and scratches. They told me that they didn’t know if I liked it that way or not, so no case. They pointed out that I was visiting an 18-year-old boy, and that was enough proof that it probably wasn’t rape.
People ask why more women don’t report being raped. Why bother, when the people who have reported get treated as I was treated, as a skinny, small teenage girl. Rape is ugly and painful in so many ways, but the humiliation and gaslighting that are endured afterwards brings on even more pain. That pain can be even worse than suffering the degradation of the rape, itself.
Please note, I am well passed the trauma, and have moved on. I am not posting this to look for sympathy; just hoping to help others to reach a little understanding of what millions of women face throughout their lives. I fear that, in our country, things are getting worse for girls and women, and that the people in power, who are trying to make rape sound more like a natural game between men and women, will drive girls and women away from seeking any kind of help when they are raped. With knowledge, comes power. We all have the power to prevent that from happening.
Quick! Think of something that starts with a Q!
I don’t have a quintessential list of words that start with Q. I can sift through my past A to Z post for more Q words, but that feels like too much work today. It’s late. I’m tired.
Earlier today, I watched a very quirky episode of Doctor Who. To call it abstract seems almost too tame. It was downright surrealistic, at times.
Talking about surrealism. It seems that we are moving more and more toward a government that has embraced Qanon, especially in the health sector. We have one person who denies the usefulness of vaccines, and another who wants us all to stop taking our prescription drugs. If these ludicrous ideas weren’t so alarming, they would be laughable.
Posted for the A to Z Challenge, Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, and the Ragtag Daily Prompt.
For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, this post is from April 18, 2024.
A2Z Challenge – P is for Puddle
Thanks for the Ragtag Daily Prompt word provided by Bushboy for the inspiration of this blog post.
I was the kid that jumped in puddles or rode my trikes/bikes through them, all the time. Every once in awhile I’d challenge myself to jump over a puddle, but that was nowhere as much fun as the great splash that was created jumping in one.
We had a couple of dogs, Doc and Rover (yeah, I know, how very cliché!), when I was very little. Doc had a habit of rolling around in puddles. I don’t remember having any other pet that liked jumping or rolling around in puddles. I did have a cat, though who liked jumping into swimming pools.
When I had my son, I taught and encouraged him to jump in puddles. Rainy days were a lot of fun for us as we shared this sensory experience.
My son and several of the children in the apartment building that I managed would challenge each other to see who could create the biggest splash, who got the wettest, and who could jump over the biggest puddle. Sometimes, I’d join them. Other times I’d hang back to watch the sun catching the drops, creating little rainbows.
I haven’t jumped in a puddle in a while, though I have stomped in a few over the years. I live in a high desert area, so we get very little rain. Last year, we finally got some really significant rain after years of drought. That provided some puddle stomping fun, which I’m sure my neighbors were convinced I had lost my mind.
I’m not feeling well today, so I’m going to pull a little cheat for the A to Z Challenge and share a post I did last year for the letter O. The post is very appropriate for this week, as the one person on the library board, that attempted to fight against those who want to ban books, who claim that there are pornography books in the childrens’ section, and that the drag queen story hour was nothing more than a burlesque show done in front of very young children, was forced to resign this week.
https://yvensong.com/2024/04/17/
One-Liner Wednesday & A2Z – O is for Opinion
Some people’s opinions are obviously based on what they were told to think, not based on checking out the truth of what they were told.
Posted for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday.
I just spent over two hours listening in on a library board meeting. The majority of the two hours was spent listening to public comments regarding Drag Queen Story Hour and books that are being challenged.
Many of the reasons for banning the Story Hour and books, were very flimsy. There were people, who, by the way, have never attended Story Hour, claiming that the Queens were putting on a burlesque show for young children. There were people who claimed that there is outright pornography in the Children’s section. Unless the Song of Solomon, in its entirety, is shelved in the children’s section, I doubt there’s any outright pornography in the Children’s section. Some of them seemed to be under the misguided impression that young adult books are shelved in the Children’s section.
I have always been a proponent of free speech and the freedom to read what one wants to read. As many others commented at the meeting, I think if a parent is so very concerned what their young child is reading, then they need to review what their child is planning to check out. It is the responsibility of the parent/caretaker to monitor their own children, not everyone else’s children.
I am concerned about the direction the board may take on these issues, especially with the new chairperson. Some of her attacks on another board member make her look like she sides with censorship.
(Thank you, Fandango, for the added inspiration — FOWC – Flimsy)
yvensong 