A Comfy Kind Of Restless

Hey 🙂

My prompt for today was a bit of a head scratcher:

I challenge you to write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings.

It then gave me a link to a book of flower connotations to peruse. I read up on the meaning and usage of the herb I had settled upon, then wrote a poem trying to incorporate those.

She tended my fevered brow,

Bade me drink from her drafts

Steeped in hushed folklore

And community whispers.

“The herb of angels” she said

Waving the white blooms

Ritualistically

Over my head.

I will paint her in the garden,

While the fairies run and hide

From the wind chime toll.

Not sure if that hit any mark whatsoever, but there we are 😉

Keep on washing those hands and hanging in there, and I’ll ‘see’ you for Day 12…

Monty X

[Pic is from here]

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Copyright © 2020  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

*Waves* 

So! I wandered off for a few months again, it would seem!

But I come back to this blog in March 2020 with a rather different world outside my safe little home, a situation that we didn’t know was brewing back in November 2019.

I hope that wherever you are reading this, you and yours are safe and well, and your family has not been hit too devastatingly with this illness sweeping the globe.  I send virtual hugs to everybody, and have nothing but admiration for those of you still out working in key positions, keeping your fellow humans as fed, protected and medically cared for as you possibly can <3 thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone out risking their own wellbeing to serve others. You truly are angels.

We at the Comfy Restless residence are living up to the name nicely here in Scotland after our first week of lockdown 😉 We are incredibly fortunate in that hubby can easily work from home and I am the chief kid wrangler anyway. Of course it is harder keeping ‘home harmony’ when it kinda feels like a holiday and yet the kids are meant to still be looking at schoolwork – and when there are tight restrictions on how we conduct ourselves outside – but our income is secure, we live in a fab community that cares about us, and none of our household are considered to be in a high-risk category for any symptoms we get turning nasty on us. We know far too many families can’t say the same, and we really hate that.

So: if you’re struggling or grieving, overwhelmed – or anything in between – my heart goes out to you. Feel free to send me a comment, or PM my Facebook page, if you need an ear. I have an energetic 7 and 9 year old here charging about giving me cheek and attitude, so feel free to share any parenting woes, too! 😉

I will be participating in NaPoWriMo again this April, and posting my daily ditties around the chaos of the kids being at home for the foreseeable. I don’t know what frivolous topics may be cast up in my poetry, but please believe that I am watching the news with horror as the global death toll goes up, I am hoping for a swift vaccine and I can’t get over how selfless our medical professionals are for being brave enough to endure the swathes of critically ill people and fight the infection, even when they may succumb themselves.

I am hoping to concentrate on brighter things here in the main, however.   I think we may all need it?

So, starting tomorrow, I will write a poem a day for a month, using the prompts from the NaPoWriMo site. I will also aim to actually post my endeavours on the correct day – kids permitting 😉

Catch you in my next post! Take care and please stay safe.

Monty xxx

[Rainbow pic is from here]

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Copyright © 2020  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi 🙂

I have swapped the poem that I wrote today for this one that was written after the passing of Stephen Hawking in March of this year.

I have decided to use today’s poem elsewhere 😉

The sound of space

Seems familiar to me:

The tuneless roar

Whilst spinning in blackness –

Finally revelling

In the blue beauty of Earth

I hope that one bound by paralysis

Again found joy

In that sight.

Unshackled, weightless,

Tipping off his axis;

Finally gaining answers

He’d yet to uncover.

[Pic is from here]

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Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hiya!

The prompt asked me to look at the myth of Narcissus (a man so sure of his attractiveness that he harshly turns suitors away, then is punished by being made to fall in love with his (unattainable) reflection; eventually withering while staring at himself in a pool of water, and then being turned into the flower that bears his name).  The prompt goes on to say: “after reading the myth, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way”.

As I regularly traverse YouTube and Amazon looking for little positive nuggets to fill my head with, I have come across Louise Hay’s notion of ‘mirror work’.  It is a tool to garner self-love and acceptance, and it involves talking to one’s reflection.  It was on my mind a lot as I read The Self Care Project this week, so happily popped up again when contemplating this prompt!

Because you lied,

Because you put it all on me:

I here return.

I’m fighting not to look there

But I must

(The feeling of betrayal was too much)

I now try to love reflections:

A backward little fix

To show me what others’ tricks

Still make me miss.

This nemesis has been there all along

Their whispers, jeers and put-downs made ‘her’ strong;

I’m not sure these affirmations

Can help us get along…?

[Pic is from here]

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Copyright © 2018  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi 🙂

Today I changed the rules, and reworked my ‘sticky post’ on my Facebook page so my lovely followers could suggest a sentence to use in a very short story (that I had to construct in 20 mins); and also tell me whether the sentence should be:

1. The opening phrase
2. The closing line

Or

1. If I could use it anywhere in the story

Sandy stepped up first, and gave me this line to use: “unless by prior agreement”.  She left it to me to decide where I inserted it into my story, so I set 20 mins on the timer and got to work…

I hadn’t taken anyone with me.  That was my first mistake.  There would be many others, but…yeah.  No one to hold my hand, ask the right questions – remind me that everything would look better on the other side.

I’m not sure what was said afterwards.  I remember that the floor felt better than the chair.  Sturdier, stronger, less likely to shift beneath me.  It was reassuring to know it was still there.

I remember that the nurses all had perfume that competed, and made me feel a bit like I was on a sedate hen night.  They all talked at once, as I floated into bed.

It was morning. I was dazzled by the sunshine slanting through the blind.

My husband got a free parking pass; unheard of “unless by prior agreement”.  A nurse joked about my VIP status.  I wondered who to complain to – whether this situation meant I had to be ‘graceful’ for the rest of my days.

Strangely, I didn’t think of Jamie until the lunch trays arrived.  How jealous he’d be that I got to eat strawberry jelly on a Wednesday!

I couldn’t decide what exactly the backstory for this piece should be.  I was going to write ‘midwives’ at first, but I thought ‘nurses’ gave more scope for the reader’s imagination? 

My red spidery scrawl is littered with lines through words, but I feel I am using the word ‘that’ a lot this week.  It’s bugging me.

I can’t get away from my old pal alliteration, either.  Subconsciously scribbled sentences, saturated senseless with whispered words sporting similar sounds! Torture…

Thanks to Sandy for the inspiration!! Hope you like what I came up with 😉

Tomorrow it is Sheelagh’s turn.  I have not looked at her comment on the ‘sticky post’ further than where she indicates it is an opening line she has for me.  Don’t want to spoil my surprise before my writing session tomorrow…

Hop over to my page and add yourself to the little queue of brain sparks that is building in the sticky post!  I look forward to using your contribution in a future post…I’m stupidly excited about the whole challenge, truth be told. I will get a notification that you’ve posted a comment, but won’t look at it until your turn in the queue, so I can’t write stuff in my head from your phrase, days in advance and kinda cheat.  Cos where’s the nervous fun in that?!

What better motivator than someone depositing a completely random gift in my creative lap, and me having to make it fly in a crazily short space of time?! 😛  🙂

[Pic is from here]

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hiya 🙂

Unfortunately there is a misspelt word in the Jimpix offering today.  As I am atrocious at spelling myself, however, I’ll forgive the oversight 😉

I got to revisit my Latin a little for today’s poem, but I have probably used the wrong ending for ‘incertus’ (so you have permission to roll your eyes, any Latin scholars in my readership!)

Medicare   Boundary  Dreams  Desiccants   Timer  Cavus  Quare  Fragment  Gratified

They whispered about Medicare

And cast sorry expressions

Down to mine.

I could not feel the boundary,

Just their thought-silica:

Everybody near

Tugging at my fluid dreams.

Stripping me.

Desiccants, all!

Somewhere, off to the side,

A timer ticked down silently;

Demons creeping from underneath my Pes Cavus

(Quare incertus)

Barely a fragment

Of my former self left –

And yet

They expect me to be gratified

By their very attempt at action.

I am not of this place,

But weighed by it;

Unbalanced on the edges

Of bright, sharp swords.

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello 🙂

From Randomlists

Fabulous  Creature  Whispering  Beautiful  Sky  Disagree  Motion  Stranger  Tie

She says:

There is a fabulous creature

Whispering beautiful poetry

Into an autumn sky.

It makes her look so happy

I haven’t the heart to disagree.

Her hands are in perpetual motion

As she describes the stranger

Sat on the animal’s left:

Iridescent, she says.

Her words become slower

As she loosens her final tie

To this mortal plane.

[I found the Unicorn pic here]

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

How do?

Carrying on the food theme from yesterday, I wrote about a lady who appears a little obsessed with the subject…

Overeat  Abolish  Particular  Notebook  Lake  Observation  Prefer  Rain  Instal

She hated to overeat –

Thought we should abolish

All particular references

To ‘seconds’.

She kept a notebook,

Filled it with calorific details

‘Til her eyes swam

In a lake of regret.

Her diet observation

Hurt me to watch;

I’d prefer to rain

On the parade of perfection:

Instal a little ice cream in the regimen.

Have you ever been on a strict diet?  How long did you last?

As I have probably mentioned before (!) I lost three stone between July 2015 and March 2016 through using the My Fitness Pal app…but I definitely ate chocolate every day!  I was just sensible, made better choices than I had before, and gave myself a manageable goal (1,800 calories a day before exercise, to begin with.  I also aimed to lose 28lbs by Christmas).

I took up the Lifepoints Diet around the time I gave up smoking (at 28), and kept track of my daily progress using paper and pencil –  that was excruciating!  I stuck to it, but it made me (even more) neurotic, and I did not have much fun following it!

Give me an app that reads barcodes and remembers what your go-to foods are, any day!

I have been feeling the cold a lot more these last two winters. Sometimes being thin is not all it’s cracked up to be, you know 😉

Before

After

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi!

Yesterday, Hubby and I went out together while my mum took care of our lil tearaways at her house 🙂

We had a nice relaxed late breakfast/lunch at an American-style diner we like, then went and did most of the M&S school-clothes shop while we had the time (and patience)!  We met one of my friends by chance in a café after that, and had a blether before heading back to the car to drop off our shopping bags.  It had turned into a nice afternoon, so Hubby and I had a wander around the park I used to go to as a child, then headed up to my old university to really play the nostalgia card. 

From Randomlists

Unfortunately, this is when my food choices at the diner caught up with me, and I belatedly remembered that chasing two fried eggs with a dessert that includes cream and ice cream is not very clever when you have my stomach…!

Consequently, I went 24 hours without food, and only ate a tentative brunch about midday today.  I still felt really ropey, as if I had copious amounts of alcohol last night. 

This being my train of thought, the speaker in my poem has a hangover…and is still valiantly mothering through it 😉

Corn  Rule  Puncture  Nerve  Grip  Chunky  Arrest  Ruin  Smoke

I looked at my cereal –

All that corn goodness

(As a rule,

It* usually can puncture

Any diet plan)

But my nerve this morning

Was not there.

In the grip of a wave

Of threatening, chunky yuck;

I decided to arrest the plan

To fill my tum.

Instead, I watched my son

Deftly fold his pyjamas,

Beat me at board games,

And squish me with hugs.

Why let a few bad choices

Ruin time with my baby?

I’ll do better tomorrow –

And wash off this smoke…

* I changed ‘flakes’ to ‘cereal’, but forgot to change ‘they’ to ‘it’ in my notebook!

 ->slaps forehead<-

Hubby is continuing to teach the boys to swim, and has taken them out separately today.  What the kid in the poem was doing mirrors Youngest’s antics with me this morning. 

He was really sweet and kept stroking my head and playing with my ears in concern.  He still didn’t let me win any games, however 😉

Both kids helped me put away their dry washing; luckily they seem to find doing small piles of folding quite therapeutic!  We iron as the need arises around here, I live with three ‘drawer foragers’ so would need to press their stuff all over again anyway, after they’d flung it about looking for something.  Life’s just too short for that nonsense!!

Now I’ve had dinner, the headache that decided to join my dodgy tum is finally subsiding, so I’m feeling much more like myself again.  I will try and remember that I am not invincible, in the future!

The carrot cake was very yummy, all the same…

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello 🙂

The first five words of this selection from the Random Word Generator site powerfully brought to mind all the focus at the moment on bed blocking and social care.  A lady in her mid-eighties immediately stood in front of me.  She looked a bit like my Great Grandmother.

See   Spirit   Frame   Harass   White   Detector   Fling   Grass  Atmosphere

One could see her spirit wane

All fire extinguished in her frame;

The nurses’ harass met with nought

When, once, white uniforms were fought.

Metal detector at the door

Became her entertainment score,

As she shuffled corridors

And sweet little kids did bore.

She used to tease about my ‘fling’

Be quick to notice everything;

At pasture’s grass, now – some ‘Old Dear’ –

Her room devoid of atmosphere.

Metal detectors are not commonplace in UK hospital entrances, but I know they are in (at least parts of ) the US, so I used a bit of poetic license there 😉

I would hate to be spending any of my twilight years stuck in a hospital when I was well enough to be back in my own space again.  It would make me feel vulnerable, useless and as if I was never going to be allowed to escape – all feelings I descend into after just a few days in the house with a virus!

Our mood can affect our health, so it can only be dangerous to make older people believe they are not required to be functional in society any more. 

I really hope the Care Quality Commission’s investigations significantly help our NHS to make some breakthroughs in this area; and start giving everyone the freedoms they deserve as soon as their health allows.

[Photo credit: Pexels]

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!