Glad-Factor

Aren't you SO glad, after nights that feel like this...

 We wake up in the morning feeling like this...?!

Glad for goodness rife with mercy

Glad for hope and strength regained

Overflowing in the morning

Where at night its cup was drained

Glad for more important purpose

Than mere Self to satisfy

Glad this grin-and-bear-it progress

Reaches through both grave and sky

Glad my sentimental musing

Is the gift of ‘having had’

Glad those things not of my choosing

Make me treasure more ‘the glad’

© Janet Martin

...and this morning my foremost thought is

"I'm glad to be alive!!!

after a TERRIBLE choking scare yesterday on a mouthful of Life cereal!

(the irony lost on me (because it shook me up so bad) 

'til I told Jim last night and he said that would have made quite the headline

"woman chokes to death on Life Cereal"

I was here alone with Brantley and had skipped lunch 

so I could finish the garden work while he was asleep.

After he woke up I remembered I didn't eat so I poured a bowl of cereal and I think I likely just put too much in my mouth 'cause I was in a hurry and when Life cereal gets wet it turns into paste

and it would not move up or down. Thankfully it moved just as I thought I was going to black out
(I will spare you the gross details)

so I have researched what to do when you are alone and choking!

 The  Four Most Common Choking Hazards

Choking

The moral of this story; slow down and chew your food!

Gateway to the Getaway...

 "I can't wait til September 'cause then I'll be in grade one", said Little Boy in wide, blue-sky July. "No, wait! I can't wait til October 'cause then I'll be six and in Grade one and I can play hockey again and that will be so fun AND it will be Hallowe'en and I'm going to dress up like a UPS driver like my dad, but oh, I wish the colors were black and red and yellow not brown and yellow...he pauses to chuckle "I really don't like brown and yellow!" All this without hardly taking a breath, as we podded peas...

Now six, now seven, now eight

Can someone kindly bar the gate

where night and day slip through and seal

what none can keep and none can steal

as gently dawn-to-dawn allots

the place where babies turn to tots

and Boy is in a hurry, oh

to have another birthday so

perhaps when he is five or six

he’ll be as big as Brother is

Now eight, now nine, now ten

Time seems in such a hurry to turn boys into grown men

And it will never bar the gate

Where child breaks through and mothers wait

At night with front porch lights left on

Until they’re home,

Until they’re gone

© Janet Martin

So This Is Summer

 Sometimes when days are a blur of busyness its good to remind ourselves to slow a bit because 

This Is Summer...the days we dream about all winter long!

Where sheen of green turns gold and bronze

So this is summer; clouds float free

Like pontoons on a sky-blue sea

And patchwork panoramas surge

Out to where earth and heavens merge

Garden grants labour and respite

Plants charm senses of taste-smell-sight

Where lark and cricket serenade

Afternoon art of sun and shade

…and lemonade is tart and cold

Where shadow-pools lure young and old

And flowers spill and thrill then wane

And everyone wishes for rain

…to quench the thirst of bloom and beast

Where billows burst with mercy’s feast

And we are all happy to sit

And be immersed in it a bit

…and feel the friendship of hello

Before the grip of sleet and snow

Rouses in us the wanderlust

For days like these of dew and dust

Where sheen of green turns gold and bronze

On skeins that dole out dusky lawns

Where puppies romp and children play

And Time feels like a holiday

…filled with the crack of bats and cheers

With sun-hats, flip-flops, hotdogs, piers

And supper hours, sweet and slow

While twilight-towers grow and grow

So this is summer; soak it in

For soon its canopy grows thin

Where tatters scatter from its crown

In silver glints of thistle-down

© Janet Martin

The Likes of You and Me...

Glimpses of lull, lilt and laughter to cheer the likes of you and me😉...

Just turned  8 yr. old girl: I got a Charlie Brown book for my birthday

Me; (cause I LOVE Charlie Brown:) Cool! are you a Charlie Brown fan?!

She: No.

Me, explaining that dry cows does not mean they are not wet;
it means they are not being milked because they are going to have a calf...

5yr. old Farmer Boy; "yeah, I fink dey stop milking dem because da fahmoh would be wowwied dat da calf might come out while dey'we milking it and dat would be 'vewy Stwessful!"
(still learning to pronounce 'r' and 'th' sound...so cute!

 4 yr. old girl; Janet, come quick! Hurry!!!There's something green on the slide
...and I think it might be poisonous!" (turns out it was an inch-worm)

"Blech, I know a time when bigger is NOT better",
 said 9 yr. old boy spitting... Peas are NOT better bigger!

This hustle-bustle-muscle through morn’s mayhem-amen mist

Will leave the likes of you and me forever farewell kissed

Before the view we’re privy to fades from the pastureland

The likes of you and me should pause ‘cause twilight is at hand

Delight is like a kiss from God where sod and sky and sea

Excites the soul-full senses of the likes of you and me

The likes of you and me are very different yet the same

For no soul can be saved except through Jesus. Praise His name

How easily the poetry of bud to bloom is penned

To keen the likes of you and me to life’s incumbent end

Do not despair; the care that begets prayer is like a stair

The likes of you and me are climbing to ‘you know Who, and Where’

Naps are a thing of beauty; beauty breeds happiness

Perhaps the likes of you and me should nap more and talk less

Well, well, the fell is yellow where yesterday it was green

The likes of you and me caught twixt what waits and what has been

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right; the likes of you and me

Are marching to the beat of moments making history

Laughter and love, midst all the ‘stuff’ not quite so gently streamed

Startles the likes of you and me in ways we never dreamed

© Janet Martin