Author: Maria Johnson

a new little poem

I’m at Catholic Lane again this week with a poem about rocking chairs, and little ones in it. And then suddenly, they aren’t anymore. I was thinking about this a little more after seeing pictures of one niece going to her high school homecoming (she’s a beauty) and another niece (she’s a cutie) celebrating a birthday and following in her big cousins’ footsteps. Sigh.

But it’s a sigh in a good way.

Anyway, here’s a little teaser for the poem…you can read it all here:

Quiet Wonder

The rocking chair’s gentle embrace
Held you and me in its slow pace
Suspended, in both time and place.

As I, in quiet wonder, said a prayer.

….

7 Quick Takes, travel edition

Check out the collection of other 7 Quick Takes Friday posts, hosted at Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog, Conversion Diary. 

–1–

.

Dallas.

–2–

.

Laundry.

–3–

.

Dallas.

–4–

.

.

Laundry.

.

–5–

Kansas City.

.

–6–

Laundry.

–7–

.

The Washing Machine

I complain about the laundry
more than my dirty clothes deserve.
It’s a matter of functionality
to wash clothes.
I mean, it’s not like
I’m beating anything against
a rock in the blazing sun.

[read the rest here]

I had to write a poem to get this out of my system.

47 years ago…in a land far far away…

…I got on a plane to start a new life in the United States. My gratitude, to my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, who suffered for it on both sides of the Florida Straits, is immeasurable. My gratitude to this great country, for great it is, is equally immeasurable. God bless America.

 

laundry, and a therapeutic poem

I’ve got a new poem up at Catholic Lane. This one is about the laundry. I whine so much about it that I vented about the procedure, especially a little honesty about having to reset the dryer because I forget the clothes. Do you ever do that? I admit I suffer moments of homemaker angst when I acknowledge I’m not Suzy Homemaker. And then I get over it, believe me.

Anyway, there’s ultimately a little joy in the task, even if it does come at the end when I roll around in the freshly laundered towels.

You can read it here.

found a little piece of heaven

I’m sure I’ve confessed my love of journals here. Utilitarian canvas-covered sketchbooks and beautifully embossed covers with sewn-in creamy pages make me want to write brilliant things in them.

Then I get clammy hands and a terrible case of writer’s anxiety when I fear I won’t be brilliant…just…mediocre, and I don’t want to ruin the beautiful pristine pages with my ramblings. Because of this silly notion, I’ve amassed a stack of lovely (and some utilitarian) journals, sitting pretty and empty on my book shelf, longing to fulfill their purpose and house all kinds of thoughts.

Big thoughts. Small thoughts. Complicated and incomplete thoughts. Stream of consciousness and careful thoughts.

And yes, every once in a while, maybe something brilliant.

Something changed a couple of years ago and I started writing in these beautiful books. I didn’t think it would happen, but I’ve filled them all. I just opened the last empty one and filled the first page. Heaven.

set aside some time to create

I was looking for some inspiring stuff for something else…naturally. Isn’t that the way we find new things? Anyway, I ran across this short video on creativity, and it made me think about the way I approach creativity — mostly writing, whether it’s jotting off a poem or trying to get a scene just right for a story.

In either case (and in other cases, too) — I do a lot of writing at work. Whatever the case, I found that a couple of things need to be present for me to get some creative work done. First, I need to have some time set aside, and it needs to be time dedicated to me — no interrruptions, and I need an open space without clutter and distractions. When I was a little kid, I used to be able to tune out the entire world…it’s a little harder now that I’m trying to run the world, doncha know.

let’s talk about toothpaste

Toothpaste has really gotten under my skin lately. I mean, I’ve actually had a little bit of aggression as I face down my morning ablutions with this uncooperative and sinister part of my personal hygiene routine.

I’m used to this old-school aluminum tube that you squeeze from the bottom up. Okay, let me take that back. I squeeze it from the middle until it becomes a kind of lumpy uneven mess. Then I wake up in an OCD mood and decide that is the day I must squeeze from the bottom and get every last drop of Crest or Colgate or Superman bubble-gum flavored atrocity (I have little nephews).

That works for a while, and then, I get to what I think is the end of the toothpaste and that last inch seems to last for three years! Well, perhaps I may have a little problem with hyperbole…but it lasts for a really really long time.

So I switched to a different approach and bought this nifty little contraption which I believed would be the solution:

It wasn’t. Oh sure, it has a nice neat appearance, and sits up straight all important-like. But I can’t tell how much toothpaste is in there. I guess air squeezes out the toothpaste, so there’s no collapsing of the container. After a week, it weighs the same. Every time I brush my teeth I have this anxious moment where I wonder if this could be the last time. If next time I won’t have any toothpaste left because this insidious design is obviously a master plan to get me to purchase multiple bottles and keep them stored away. No! I will not be manipulated like that.

And anyway, those squirreled away tubes of toothpaste are in case of the zombie apocalypse and I won’t break into that stash.

So it finally happened and my worst case scenario became a reality. This morning I squeezed out the last bit of toothpaste in a rather unceremonious burp that splattered the paste onto my toothbrush and my shirt. Good riddance weird and unfriendly toothpaste container thingie.

Hello stash of half-used toothpaste left behind by college kids, visiting nieces and nephews, and numerous trips requiring travel-size tubes.

Pray for me.