SLS ~ Promise/Vow

Jim Adams hosts our wonderful Song Lyric Sunday and today he gave us a variety of words to use for a prompt. Funny thing, I looked up this song by Eric Clapton because I knew it had the word “vow” in it, and it turns out the title of the song is “Promises.” Hah, a twofer!

This song was released as a single in 1978 and was also a track on Eric Clapton’s album Backless (and compilation albums too). It was written by Richard Feldman and Roger Linn. “Promises” did well in the U.S., reaching #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Promises

I don’t care if you never come home
I don’t mind if you just keep on rowin’ away on a distant sea
‘Cause I don’t love you and you don’t love me
You cause a commotion when you come to town
You give ’em a smile and they melt
And your lovers and friends is all good and fine
But I don’t like yours and you don’t like mine
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
I don’t care what you do at night
Oh, I don’t care how you get you delites
We’ll leave it alone and just let it be
I don’t love you and you don’t love me
I got a problem, can you relate
I got a woman callin’ love hate
We made a vow we’d always be friends
How could we know that promises end
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
I tried to love for years upon years
You refuse to take me for real
It’s time you saw what I want you to see
I’d still love you if you’d just love me
I got a problem, can you relate
I got a woman callin’ love hate
We made a vow we’d always be friends
How could we know that promises end
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
Wohoo, la la la la la la la

https://youtu.be/GeSqBOdmcMc

~*~

Image credit to Jim Adams.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Self-Isolation Report 3

Saturday Morning

7:30 ~ got up earlier than yesterday to be productive, wasn’t…

8:00 ~ Noon… finished the Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies, had coffee & tea, played with cats, read news to further terrify self, did phone games and Messenger chat

Saturday Afternoon

12:30 ~ did a couple hours actual work, moped, felt sad, depressed, horrified, etc.

3:00 ~ texted with drunk friend in MA 💖

4:00 ~ had a salad, quesadilla, blackberries

Later Saturday

5:30 ~ cleaned up kitchen, still feeling bad

6:00 ~ did stretches, had snacks, made tea

7:00 ~ 10:00… chatted online with friends & daughters, set up Zoom to play party games later, did really well at 2048, played the Cat Lady app for the first time (very fun)

10:00 ~ decided to look at writing messes in progress… NO WAIT! Schedule more posts for April, whew. Almost got trapped into doing actual writing, close call there 😱

~*~

Images from Bitmoji and me.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Neep [socs]

Fred saw that his son had cleaned up the garage as he’d been told. He went into the family room where Dylan was watching a movie with Grandpa. “Dylan, thanks! The garage looks great.”

“Neep,” Dylan said.

“Neep?” Fred asked.

Dylan waved a hand. “Like yeah… neep. I’m acknowledging your compliment, Dad.”

“Whatever happened to no problem?” Fred said. “I hope you aren’t using this casual language to your teachers.”

“Like they ever give me compliments,” Dylan muttered.

Grandpa spoke up. “Back in my day, we said you’re welcome.”

Fred rolled his eyes. “How many times have I heard back in my day?”

“Not enough!” Grandpa chuckled.

“I like you’re welcome,” Dylan said. And he began using it with his friends, who thought it was hilarious. They said it instead of neep. It was fun! Made them stand out from the crowd.

At the parent-teacher conference, Ms. Pine told Fred she was pleased with Dylan’s progress. “He’s a very well-spoken young man. He even says you’re welcome when I thank him for turning in his English homework. You’ve done a great job with him, Mr. Hartley. Thank you.”

Fred, being divorced and thinking Ms. Pine was very pretty, wanted to seem cool. So, he smiled and said… “Neep.”

Ms. Pine frowned at him over her glasses.

~*~

Image credited to Shelley Krupa.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Self-Isolation Report 2

Friday Morning

8:30 ~ finally got up after sleeping until 7ish & then lazing in bed playing games on my phone until I ran out the battery

9:00 ~ Noon… had coffee but wasn’t hungry for breakfast, chatted with friends online, played with cats, took shower, read news to further terrify self, ate a protein bar, had tea

Friday Afternoon

12:30 ~ drove to Crystal Cove State Beach & walked around for a couple hours taking pics

Later Friday

3:00 ~ stopped at grocery store to get fresh produce, milk, bread (they were pretty well stocked)

4:00 ~ put groceries away, ate late lunch of spicy vegan black bean burgers topped with melted non-vegan brie (yummy)

5:00 ~ FaceTime with elder daughter

6:00 ~ tea and phone games

7:00 ~ contemplated writing… decided to do this report first and also the SOCS and the SLS… plenty of time to write… plenty… my gosh, I’ll be knocking out so many new books soon they’ll probably ban me for hogging all the Kindle space! 🤣

~*~

Images from Bitmoji and me.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

PFF42: Toilet Paper Math

Welcome to Paula’s Friday Flashback! This is a challenge begun by Fandango and it’s fun to see what we posted back when (as well as the comments). The post below is a reblog of a post I made 8 years ago (plus a day). And it’s a reminder of our innocence BC (before coronavirus), when we took for granted both the abundance and variety of TP in every grocery store. Last week I was lucky to find some at Von’s when the TP man was delivering, but I grabbed what I could get ~ 2 packs of some weird brand. I was thrilled to buy it too! Anyway, I read that soon the stores will be fully restocked and we’ll all feel very silly. 🤪

Toilet Paper Math

Curious if any of mah readers do the toilet paper math? Does anyone stand there and try to figure out which is the best deal — the 12 double rolls or the 24 super-pack or the generic 6-pack that’s also on sale, etc.? I mean, to do this properly you have to go square vs. square to make sure you’re comparing price per. Or I guess you could do yards… but whatever you do, it can’t be per roll because sizes vary. That’s how they getcha. (Assuming they do.)

I try to be a careful shopper, now more than ever, and with TP who cares what brand really? They’re all nice and soft and fluffy, imo. I can’t tell a difference. I’ve gone house label many times. Since I live alone, one 4-pack lasts a while, so sometimes I’ll just grab that, even though I know it’s not the most economical. I feel guilty though a few weeks later when I’m writing down TP on my shopping list again — that was dumb, I scold myself. Buy the larger package! But honestly do I really want to be walking into my apartment with enough TP to last me through a siege? I have to wonder what people will be thinking… she must have a problem, eek.

Yesterday however I was determined not to make a stupid TP purchase.  I debated between the 6-pack of fatties for $6.99 and the 12-pack of normies for $5.99. Seemed like a no-brainer to go with the 12, so I did. ICBW. I don’t think anyone noticed when I lugged the giant package in from the car, whew! And I must have saved a bunch of money, I am sure.

Which is good because I just got the new Pyramid spring catalog.

/end reblog

~*~

Image from Pexels.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Self-Isolation Report 1

Thursday Morning

8:00 ~ cleaned cat box, vacuumed, did laundry, cleaned bathroom, read blogs

9:30 ~ had coffee & an avocado 🥑

10:00 ~ dusted, cleaned kitchen

11:00 ~ exercised to a video

11:30 ~ downloaded phone games

Thursday Afternoon

1:00 ~ played phone games, ate cookies 🍪

5:00 ~ thought about writing, took a walk in Huntington Beach

Thursday Night

7:00 ~ ate instant noodles, made tea, started work

8:00 ~ freaked out about Gov Newsom telling us we can never leave our homes again and began frantically chatting with friends and daughters

11:00 ~ finished work, had more tea

Midnight ~ made this post, feeling too anxious too sleep, glad I still have some Valium

Yah… so just like the olden days when I was all upset about some dumb man, I can’t get my mind in a clear enough state to switch over to the fictional realm. It’s too cluttered with stabby bits of reality and what ifs.

~*~

Images from Bitmoji and me.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Thursday Inspiration 48

Welcome to Thursday Inspiration! This is my weekly prompt post and hopefully it will inspire you to write something creative, perhaps a poem or a piece of flash fiction. If you’d like to share your writing with the community, please indulge me and tag your post with #p0eticlicense and/or #lightm0tifs, and of course link back if you wish. I will try to visit everyone who participates. 🙂

This week’s theme is island and the picture is below. Here is the song snippet from “Thunder Island” written by Jay Ferguson in 1977.

Sha, la, la, la, la, la, my lady
In the sun with your hair undone
Can you hear me now
Callin’ your name from across the bay?
A summer’s day laughin’ and a-hidin’
Chasin’ love out on Thunder Island

~*~

Image from the Happy Color app.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Whatever…

I guess I haven’t posted anything today. What’s left to say? I was looking forward to the FPQ, but then I saw I would have to listen to a news clip. Ughhh. Like I’m not glued to the news enough already? Too much and yet I can’t stop looking at it like I’m passing a car wreck except it’s the whole world in a wreck and I can’t just pass by because I’m living in it too.

Then I was gonna post for the Color Code Challenge, but I didn’t have anything. I had pics with colors, but no pics with groups of colors. Boo. That would have been a fun post, if it had materialized. 🌈

I thought about Sadje’s pic of the woman on a cliff with the broken god, but eh. Then there was a “glorious” sunrise or something too. Meh. Just not feeling the fiction. Or poetry. The challenge from last week was humor, but I’m too consumed with anxiety to be funny right now.

The weird thing is that I had a relatively good day, very productive. Things ended on a happy note too, and now I have a 4-day weekend. I had planned to go to Vegas with some friends, but obviously that’s not going to happen now. I’ll read, write, exercise, and maybe watch a few movies alone at home. Those are the kinds of things I enjoy, so I’m not upset about Vegas, but I dislike uncertainty. A lot. 🙁

Believe it or not, I watched Contagion last night. It’s a good movie! People wonder why I’d watch that now, but now is a great time to watch it imo. Absolutely stellar cast too. It’s weird to see Bryan Cranston before he played Walter White. (Never watched Malcolm.)

So anyway… I’ll be around. My Thursday Inspiration is coming right up tomorrow morning and I’m working on my April A-Z game posts here and there. It’s a good time to catch up on things.

Stay safe! 💖

~*~

Image originally found on Pixabay.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

TOVID-22

Derek came upstairs to find Miranda watching the news again, despite their resolution.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as he sprawled next to her on the sofa. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He gestured to the American President on the screen. “And you think that will help? What is he babbling on about now?”

“He said he has the states of Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois under quarantine and all livestock has been destroyed, even chickens, to be on the safe side. People there are going crazy, not having meat. I can relate.”

Derek shrugged. “Not really fair to the ones who are immune though. They’ll never catch TOVID-22 if they had COVID-19.”

“But he keeps congratulating himself for keeping those numbers low.” Miranda switched to a channel playing Gilligan’s Island reruns. “He doesn’t like people calling it TOVID, by the way. Says there’s no proof it originated in Topeka. Maybe Mexicans brought it in when that wall fell down in the earthquake.”

“You’ve got to quit obsessing over it, darling.” Derek put his arm around her. “I keep telling you we’re perfectly safe here in my ancestral home.”

“But I’m hungry,” Miranda whined. “We need to hunt again soon. How can we know who isn’t infected? I got such a tummy ache during the Black Plague.”

Derek nodded. These pandemics were so inconvenient. “I remember.”

~*~

Written for Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #57.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

No Sharing!

Melanie had some fun St. Patrick’s themed questions today, but I wasn’t in the mood for those. Then she posted these, which are much more to my taste.

What harsh truths do you prefer to ignore?

All of them! Let’s see… a big one is how many bugs and bug parts I’m probably eating all the time in salads, cereals, etc. Gross! Next, is how I’m damaging my health by sitting on my butt all day and never exercising. Another is how I keep reading the news and think I actually know what’s going on lolololol 🤣🤣🤣

Actually, a super harsh truth right now is how many greedy, selfish, inconsiderate people there are who will not stop harmful behavior without the force of law. I mean, we always know this, but I for one am not usually thinking about it. Then this virus comes along and people just don’t wanna cooperate for the greater good. They have to be forced, no way around that fact. 😢

Is free will real or just an illusion?

Illusion. We’re almost completely wired up to make every choice due to our genetics plus environment, and we exercise very little if any “will” over that, even though it feels like we do. I say “almost” because of the random elements in there, not will.

I guess, given this truth, we can be more forgiving of the sh!t heads in my first reply who won’t voluntarily cooperate. They can’t help their selfish ways. But that does not mean we let them do what they want. No. We hire more cops.

What is the meaning of true love?

True love, in my opinion, is that passionate attraction we feel toward another person combined with the steady certainty that we would care for their well-being to the same degree or greater than our own.

If both elements are not present, then it is not true love. Passion without care is just a sexual connection, even if it’s embellished with other goodies like intellectual sparks and shared hobbies. Caring without the passion is a great friendship, but most will jettison that for even a slight chance at a romantic partner.

Great questions! 😻

~*~

Image credited to imgflp.com.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.