Back from the abyss.. and grumbling

I've been sick. Sicker than sick. That will teach me for not getting a flu shot this winter or last. I am tired of being tired, sick of feeling sick. I want to go swimming. 

I wonder where all the "goop" comes from over and over as one blows, coughs, gags it up. I have bagged all the "bio waste" from the many wastebaskets in the house and sent it to the dump with my obliging husband. I have aired the house until frost started to form on the mirrors. Still I am coughing. Still I am headache-y and feverish at night. I am angry because I had planned to spend the past week writing and submitting. So today I got it together to do a couple submissions: Seacoast Writers Assoc. and Poetry Society of NH. Both are in NH and I'm thinking regional for the moment (no reason but just to do it). 

I heard that the post office is planning another stamp hike in the near future. Do they WANT us to stop sending mail and do everything online? They are really getting on my last nerve here. I instructed my hubby to please get some more "forever" stamps before the price goes up AGAIN. I need to somehow out-fox the P.O. After all, a writer with constant stamp purchase issues is not a happy writer after all. I am all for the P.O. only delivering five days a week. But don't raise the prices while considering downsizing services. "It just ain't fair" I say!  So, next month is my first social security check. Will the whole damn thing eventually go for stamps?

Spring is in the air. That is the good news. I really have to get my seeds ordered. I am ready to be outside again and digging in the dirt. I want REAL veggies. I am peeved at the quality of the crappy veg that comes to us via the stores. Once you have tasted the good stuff from the garden you are ruined forever from tolerating the stuff from the store. Organic they may call it, but it tastes like plastic to me.

OK, so you need a prompt from me, eh? Want me to stop grumbling and start writing? Here is the compromise:

Write a ten  line poem grumbling about something that is seemingly small but has gotten under your skin. 

Start with this:  Not everyone cares

Use any or all (or none) of these words: slap, heap, candy, earn, turn, wager, margin, lapse, sign, reserve

Ok, stop reading now and get writing!

Well, it's February already and there is blood in the yard. A hawk has scooped up a pigeon and there is one dead squirrel. It's interesting how the cycle of life keeps spinning, how there is always blood somehow involved. For this week, what about cycles? Is there something cyclic in YOUR life you'd like to "poem-ize?" Here are a couple starters and some juicy words to use:

Starters:

It's a matter of blood

or...

It's more than wash, rinse, spin

Words to consider using: 

patch, garish, decay, rag, flint, scoop, whirl, cinder

or.... 

wring, front, lease, copper, burn, winnow, exhaust, fret

OK, now it's up to you. I will post my tries later.