Life Keeps Getting More Complicated--Why I don't Like Puzzles by Connie Vines

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While we are all hunkered down during the Pandemic, everyone is discovering hidden strengths, honing new-skills, discovering new hobbies, or in my case--discovering tasks they really, really dislike.

Adulting is difficult and tiring, even in the best of times.
Now, we--well, me anyway, are entering a new dimension--frustration.

When I leave my home, masked, gloved, and careful to observe social distancing--I can't decide if I'm slightly agoraphobic, feral, or simply confused because I'm in the great out-doors.

Did I lock the door?

Did I turn off the oven?  Since I wasn't cooking this morning, odds are the answer is, yes.

I'm concerned about others during these uncertain times.  I worry about family, friends, and those with pre-existing medical conditions.  I also recall, in a time before vaccines were perfected for measles, whooping cough, mumps, and chickenpox.  My parents spoke of  families self-quarantined when a loved one contracted the deadly virus, polio.

Somehow, we are emerged from those difficult times and I trust we will again.

So, I'm blogging, writing, baking, and visiting with my youngest grandson, a second-grader, who is being home-schooled.

Of course, I wish to be supportive.  I listen as he pencils Mandarin characters and explains what he's learned.  At his age, I was fascinated with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs so we 'share' information.  He also loves puzzles.  I have no problem looking at puzzles online, finding the puzzles he wants--those with zillions and zillions of pieces.  Mount Rushmore--with 4-presidents faces carved in the granite, The San Francisco Bridge over the blue bay and fog-engulfed sky, and other challenges.  Which I happily give to him with a joyous heart.

Sweetie that he is, my grandson is worried that I'm sad, "Grammie, I don't have a puzzle".

Well, I didn't have the heart to tell him that I really, really don't like puzzles.  Oh, I understand the concept.  Find the corners, then fill in the boarders, separate by color then by 'what you think it is: nose, eye, snowman's hat'--whatever.

Perhaps, because I'm the eldest of five-siblings, I'm unfamiliar with the concept of 'personal space'.
My Barbie dream-house couch was stepped and broken by brother number 1, about two-seconds after I pulled it from the box.  My sister (at the age of 4), would systematically pull out every Oreo cookie from the package, eat the frosting and skillfully reassemble the cookie before placing it back in the package. Brother number 2 and brother number 3 would race to the door whenever the doorbell rang.

Please note: A trajectory is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. Hence, a complete trajectory is defined by position and momentum, simultaneously.

Which means:  Connie, walking the the door to greet her date, was in the trajectory path.

And to add to the daily chaos: 

We had two dogs residing in the household.  My sister's well-behaved Lab/Shepard mix.

And my AKC champion purebred miniature poodle. Smart, trainable, loving, and master of Covert-Ops.

Jacques, ate marbles, crayons, and snagged biscuits to hide under couch cushions..

I hope I've brightened you day with my blog post :-).

I'm thrilled to share my "cover-reveal" for my next BWL release:

an anthology for women who like romance Cajun style

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A brief history of the written word - Part One - by Vijaya Schartz

CURSE OF THE LOST ISLE CELTIC LEGENDS - "Edgy Medieval, Yay!" 5-stars Amazon - B&N - Smashwords

I was always fascinated by the multiplicity of languages, cultures, and different kinds of writing. My research about the origins of the written word only proved that not all the experts agree, but this is what I gathered. 

In every Asian country, there is a legend saying that writing was a science of the gods, and they taught it to man as a means to impart their knowledge. This explains why the most ancient writings are religious in nature and tell of the life and exploits of the ancient gods, as well as ancient teachings, like the knowledge of medicinal plants, acupuncture, etc.

 

In China, Cangjie, who, according to legend, brought writing to the court of the Yellow Emperor, was a very unique individual. He was described as having four eyes. Not your typical human being. 

A Chinese character is an entire word in itself, often a graphic representation, an image that evolved over time. The pictogram for rain, for example, represents a stylized window and the falling rain seen through that window, with a flat cloud above. The writing is read from top to bottom and from right to left, allowing continuous writing on long scrolls. 

Since Chinese is an agglutinant language, it doesn’t use prepositions or other small connecting words. The placement of the word inside the sentence clarifies the meaning (who is doing what to whom, how, why, where, whether it’s a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc.)

 

In the late 6th Century AD, a mass political exile saw large numbers of Chinese emigrating to Japan. They took with them the teachings of Confucius and their system of writing. Since the native islanders of the time (the ancient Ainu tribes) didn’t have writing, they used the Chinese ideograms to write their own language. Then different emigrants came to the islands and mixed with the Ainu and the Chinese to form the Japanese people. They wrote with Chinese characters, same meaning, different pronunciation, using the same brush strokes. 

However, the Japanese used a number of one-syllable connecting words to form sentences, and there were no phonetic syllables in Chinese. So, they added a number of small, simple connecting characters, called Hiragana, representing phonetic syllables, which are also used today to teach children to read and write, before they can memorize the thousands of complicated pictograms or ideograms (Kanji) necessary to read and write the main language.

 

Legends of India say that the Mahabharata, an ancient epic depicting the exploits of the gods during their time on Earth, was recited by the sage Vyasa from the oral tradition, while Lord Ganesha himself (the Elephant God) penned it down… implying that only the gods could write.

 

Other legends of India also portray the gods teaching writing to their people. Sanskrit is one of the oldest forms of sophisticated written language, used to write the Vedas. But it doesn’t use images, only letters linked together to form sounds and words. Sound is very important in India. Some sacred sounds are so powerful (like the mantras) that they are believed to manifest divinity.

 

In 3400 BC a cuneiform type of writing developed in Mesopotamia. Legend says it was given to the Sumerians by their Anunnaki gods, those who from the heavens came. The oldest tablets tell of the interactions of the Anunnaki with their human workers, stories of the flood, etc. The characters represented stylized Sumerian or Akkadian objects. Soon, these symbols were also used to represent specific sounds.

 

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs seem to have derived from Sumerian cuneiform writing. Sometimes they represent an object, an animal, a river, a sacred symbol. However, a bird doesn’t necessarily mean a bird, but the phonetic sound of the bird’s name, which is used as a syllable in a longer word or name. To indicate that, the full name of a Pharaoh, for example, is enclosed into a cartouche. 

Since I want to keep this post brief, I will continue this history of the written word in parts 2 and 3, in the next two months.

In the meantime, you can read my CURSE OF THE LOST ISLE series, where history and Celtic legends collide. Years of research went into it, and the result is an edgy medieval fantasy saga. Find it at - Amazon - B&N - Smashwords and more.  

From history shrouded in myths, emerges a family of immortal Celtic Ladies, who roam the medieval world in search of salvation from a curse. For centuries, imbued with hereditary gifts, they hide their deadly secret, stirring passions in their wake as they fight the Viking hordes, send the first knights to the Holy Land, give birth to kings and emperors... but if the Church ever suspects what they really are, they will be hunted, tortured, and burned at the stake.

HAPPY READING!

Vijaya Schartz, author
Strong Heroines, Brave Heroes
http://www.vijayaschartz.com
amazon - B&N - Smashwords - Kobo - FB 

So we think we have it hard—Tricia McGill

Find all my books on my BWL author page

For my next book, I have been researching London during WW11, specifically around 1940. This got me thinking about how it compares to what we are experiencing around the world right now with restrictions placed on our normal routines. Rationing in London continued until 1958 and I can still recall my mother sitting in the chair with her ration books in front of her and a worried frown on her face. How she coped with feeding her large family I will never know. I do remember that one sister who worked in a factory would sometimes come home with sugar that she had purchased on the ‘black market’. As a child, I had little idea of the meaning of all this as, being the youngest and spoilt, I was well fed and at times even had butter on my bread and not margarine, but that was after the war had ended. Add to this our Mother’s worry over the three of her sons serving overseas in the armed forces. Thankfully, they all came home.

The government introduced rationing as a means of ensuring the fair distribution of food and commodities and began at the start of the war with petrol. By January 1940 bacon, butter and sugar were rationed, and by 1942 many other foodstuffs.

A typical weekly ration of food for an adult would consist of:

4 ounces of Bacon & Ham 

Other meat to the value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops)

2 ounces of Butter              

2 ounces of Cheese                  

4 ounces of Margarine 

4 ounces of Cooking fat   

3 pints of Milk     

8 ounces Sugar    

1 pound of preserves every 2 months. (I guess this was why my mother often asked the grocer for sugar instead of her jam ration)

2 ounces of Tea         

1 fresh Egg (plus allowance of dried egg)

12 ounces of Sweets every 4 weeks.

Thanks to: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Rationing-in-World-War-Two/

After the fiasco of people rushing out to purchase ridiculous amounts of toilet paper at the outset of the pandemic, (I am still trying to work out just why that idiot started the stampede) I got to thinking about how people coped during the war years in that department. One of the first things some of the older generation that I spoke to said in response to this was, “We had to manage with newspaper—how would they like that?” This was cut into squares, which would then hang on a hook in the little room. Some lucky people even managed to acquire tissue paper.

Two of my sisters were married in 1946 and even then they had to buy the fabric for their dresses using their allowance from their ration books. Fruit and some vegetables were in short supply and many people grew their own. If someone heard that a delivery of say oranges had arrived at the greengrocers then the women would rush to get on the mile long queue to wait for their share.

So you see, we may complain that we cannot get to hug our loved ones, but there is a light at the end of this current tunnel and soon you can welcome home your children and grandchildren. We have online shopping where we can still order to our hearts content and have it dropped off at our door. We have our trusty phones and can keep in touch with our family and friends and even chat face to face with them.

Funnies are flying back and forth each day. Here are some of my favourites:

I am starting to understand why pets try to run out of the house when the door opens.

Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands??

I’m so excited; it’s time to take the garbage out. I wonder what I should wear? 

You think it’s bad now? In 20 years our country will be run by people home schooled by day drinkers… 

Day 7 at home and the dog is looking at me like, “See? This is why I chew the furniture.” 

My Mom always told me I wouldn’t accomplish anything by laying in the bed all day, but look at me now! I’m saving the world...! 

I swear my fridge just said: “what the hell do you want now?” 

Coronavirus has turned us all into dogs. We roam the house all day looking for food.  

If anyone owes you money, go to their house now. They should be home... 

I’m giving up drinking for a month. Sorry, punctuation typo... 

I’m giving up. Drinking for a month.

Stay safe, and always look on the brighter side of life.

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