by Kelly

trying to fix it,

hubby breaks the microwave —

one more bill piles on

by Alison

.

Wear the sun screen folks!

Along with a wide brimmed hat

and Oil of Olay.

.

Check out Audrey Hepburn and Kate Moss rocking the wide brimmed hats! Wearing a wide brimmed hat does not need to make one look like they just popped out of an Army Navy shop. Wide brimmed hats can be very chic. And you can bet that this is going to be my new obsession. I want the most fabulous, awe inspiring (as well as a few sporty and practical) wide brimmed hats that are out there. And yes, along with sunscreen and Oil of Olay… they offer sun protection!

So I just had my surgery yesterday and I want to tell you that although it was not a huge deal, it was not a small deal either. After the surgery I was given a mirror to look at the wound on my forehead and It looked like I was shot in the head. Thankfully, they stitched it up and covered it with a bandage and I don’t have to look at it for two days, when I have to remove the bandage and clean the stitching. My forehead is now swollen and it looks like there is a goose egg sitting underneath the bandage. It may take up to three weeks for the swelling to go down. My left eyebrow is raised due to the pulling of the stitching and it may take up to 6 months for my eyebrow to relax into it’s normal position. The scar will heal into it’s permanent state in 1 - 2 years. As far as activity is concerned, I am supposed to do close to nothing for the next week, a little more than nothing for the second week and I’m not to exercise for the next month. Whoa!!! It will be interesting to see how 4 year old Penny handles a more sedentary mom and I’m also curious as to see what my house will turn into.

So all of this is certainly endurable but it still sucks. So ladies and gentlemen and the kiddos especially, wear your sunscreen and not just at the beach! Because it’s good for you and your skin will thank you.

by Kelly

Haiku poets of yore used the measured three-line form to express moments of quiet clarity. Today, though, writers are using haiku to express all sort of emotions, including rage.

Enter F U Haiku, a new collection of 5-7-5 haiku written by Beth Quinlan and Perry Taylor.

Roughly 200 poems are gathered in its pages. Each one is filled with bitterness and spite. These “pissy poems” (as they are described in the introduction) are aimed at everything from traffic jams to taxes to bad waitresses to bonus-taking bankers.

This one aimed straight for the airlines:

Flight to France canceled

All I got was this lousy

Voucher. What the F * * * ?

While I bleeped out the swear word here, the book doesn’t.

And, of course, you can’t have a collection of angry little poems without including several on the topic of “my ex sucks.” Like this one:

You told your friends I

Sucked in bed. I proved you wrong

One friend at a time.

I was hoping that F U Haiku would be funny in a sarcastic sort of way. And it was, I guess.

But after reading through the whole thing, that’s not the vibe I got. Instead, I felt overwhelmed by anger. I wasn’t angry, but I felt like the writers definitely were — which perhaps I should have picked up on from the title. But to be totally honest, all that anger was a turn off.

It was a bit like watching the polarized pundits on some political talk show take swings at one another. Their bickering holds your attention for a while, but then it gets to a point where they are just so obviously enraged that you can’t stand to watch them anymore.

Maybe I would have been better off only reading two or three F U Haiku at a time. Maybe then these “pissy poems” would have stuck me as funny as opposed to resentful and irate. But since I didn’t …

If you’re looking to get yourself worked up into a tizzy, let me know. I’ll send you my copy of F U Haiku.

by Kelly

stuck in a dry cold spell –

I’m grasping at haiku that

remain elusive

salmon and sturgeon

swim away, lashing their tails

as I cast my net

Read more of Raymond Garraud’s haiku.
Did you know Raymond Garraud writes one haiku a day? It’s true!
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