13: The You’d Never Guess List
1. You’d never know I got bit by a dog on the thigh/butt just a couple days before and that I was dancing (my ass off) on ibuprofen. – Read more from This is How Good the New Year Sounds HERE.
2. And when you’re bit in the ass / you have to ask ‘what is the metaphor / for this chewing out?’ / What immunity have I been inoculated against? / What symmetry of destiny? / What betrayal? – Read The Bite is Always Worse than the Bark in its entirety HERE.
3. That’s me in the picture above packing a suitcase for the afterlife.
4. Our Christmas Eve neighborhood cookies and Kaluah get-together this year was small. It was what I call a “quiet party,” which I think is an oxymoron.
5. Yesterday I googled “does Donald Trump have a personality disorder?” and BINGO, I found THIS: “Therapists Confirm Trump’s narcissistic Personality Disorder.” The article describes a narcissist personality disorder as being characterized by grandiosity; an expectation that others will recognize one’s superiority; a lack of empathy, lack of truthfulness, and the tendency to degrade others. HERE’S another take on that.
6. I also googled “how America helped create Isis” to brush up on that fact that some of the roots of the Islamic extremist movement can be traced back to when the CIA under the Reagan administration trained, armed and funded Bin Laden and others to fight Russians in Afghanistan, and that the American invasion and occupation in Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups like al Qaeda, which has grown into ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). 
7. After my grandson Bryce woke up from a long nap when he was at our house on Sunday, his 5-year-old brother Liam asked, “Did you even know you were sleeping?”
8. That’s Liam (to the right) wearing the shirt his dad painted when he was a student at Blue Mountain School. Cut to music HERE.
9. Speaking of things that blow my mind, what will they think of next? THIS is an art installation of a ladder climbing high into space, made with fireworks!
10. A friend who is struggling with health issues wrote on Facebook how hard it is to answer the question, ‘how are you?’ I’ve always had trouble with that question too. As a reporter/poet, I want to be truthful. I believe in the accuracy of language but also in the non-rote creative use of it.
11. My answers for ‘how are you?’ this morning were: I’m starting to like sauerkraut, I’m worried that the water in the chicken’s water bowl has frozen, I need a haircut and ever since I saw that serrated spoon in the silverware drawer this morning I’ve been thinking about grapefruit.
12. For me, writing poetry is like knitting and writing prose is like using a sewing machine.
13. Yesterday’s oracle is today’s google.
________________Thirteen Thursday
January 6th, 2016 9:41 am
#5……..what took you so long.
#12……yours makes sense. Personally, and am probably alone on this, both are ‘things we do with sledge hammers’. One wildly, the other with some aim.
January 6th, 2016 10:12 am
Oh yes, that too, Calvin:
Poem Making
Like cracking the husk
of a black walnut
to get to the meat
Food for the winter
with the edge of a hammer
I’m stained with poem making
I’m hungry for more
January 6th, 2016 10:34 am
I can’t sew or knit, so now you know why my blog is mostly pictures! Loved all your notes and especially the Trump and Isis ones … Thanks for distilling your research into paragraphs that even my pre-coffee brain can assimilate… And, heck, thanks for thinking the way I do … It’s not easy for a blue stater here in Florida .
January 6th, 2016 10:40 am
#5: yessss…
January 6th, 2016 11:09 am
oh, you cracked me up saith the nut
January 6th, 2016 11:41 am
Hi there! I’m here.
January 7th, 2016 3:00 am
Interesting list. Thanks for sharing.
Happy New Year!
January 7th, 2016 8:25 am
I like your analogies and I hope you’re healing after the dog bite thing. Thanks for sharing your interesting thoughts.
January 7th, 2016 11:16 am
Some interesting analogies. I really enjoyed this
January 7th, 2016 12:29 pm
I so enjoy watching these grandsons grow
January 7th, 2016 12:45 pm
How does one pack a suitcase for the afterlife? 🙂
Love your lists!
Onward,
Susan
January 7th, 2016 1:43 pm
Always a Fascinating T13, dear Colleen. I hope that Dog Bite heals quickly, though others I have known with similar happenings say it takes a L-O-N-G time to heal completely!
#12…..Not sure I agree on that. Prose is often poetry and takes great skill and doesn’t ever run as smoothly as a Sewing Machine in my experience……
HAPPY 2016, My Dear Colleen.
Cannot believe how Grown Up Liam is……Oh my, Time does march on…….
January 7th, 2016 1:51 pm
Hi Susan, Packing the Suitcase for the Afterlife is a poetry collection that asks how much does the essence of one’s psyche weigh? Is the soul the one carry-on that we can actually take with us? What do we value and what do we let go of in the end?
Hello Naomi, Well, I don’t knit or use a sewing machine so I could be wrong. To me and in general, poetry is more pick by pick picky where prose you just go and say what you want.
January 7th, 2016 2:52 pm
And in Japan they say to treat a bad experience as having been bit by a dog – something to shake off and move beyond. Easier said than done.
January 7th, 2016 3:13 pm
Sorry to hear about the dog bite. Hope it wasn’t too serious! Happy new year! My T13
January 7th, 2016 6:26 pm
Sent the fireworks vid to my nephew, a registered pyrotechnician. He loved it, too.
January 9th, 2016 4:57 pm
Hope the bit heals well. At least it wasn’t a rabid raccoon. Happy New Year!