My Middle Name is Patience

Ten Is A Lot

Chartroose tagged me for a meme and against all odds, past practice and fate, I'm actually going to do this within a 24 hour time frame. Shocking, ain't it?

Well, it would have been.

The Rules: The rules are simple:  choose 10 favorite things beginning with a single letter of the alphabet and explain why you like them.  The only catch is that the letter is assigned to you by the person who wrote the post you’ve just read.

Uh oh. Let's see how quick I am to assign the letters.

My letter is T (because I am Terrific. Chartroose said so.)

T: Ten things? Geez. Hey! 1. Ten. 10.   That's one of ten. What's not to like about ten? Ten fingers to knit with, to turn pages, ten toes to count when ten fingers arent enough. Ten helps to scale unweighable options, as in on a scale of one to ten, a way to combat the homicide rate by counting to ten first, ranks everything from authors to hot guys to zoos in the Top Ten. Image taken from Lil Fingers Storybook Coloring site. 

Poem found at  The International Virtual Institute for Historical studies of Mathematics. 

Ode to the Numbers by Pablo Neruda
			Such thirst to know how much! Such hunger to know how many stars in the sky! We pass our infancies counting stones, plants, fingers, sand grains, teeth, pass our youths counting petals, hairs. We count the color and the years, the lives and kisses, bulls in the fields, waves in the sea. The ships made ciphers which multiplied. The numbers spawned. The cities were thousands, millions, and the wheat came in hundreds of units each holding other integers tinier than a single grain. Time became a number. Light became numbered and however much it raced with sound it had a velocity of 37. Numbers surround us, At night we would lock the door, exhausted, approaching 800; below having come to bed with us in that sleep the 4,000 and the 77 goaded our foreheads with their wrenches and hammers. The 5 would compound itself until it entered the sea or the delirium where the sun might greet it with steel and we co racing to the office, the mill, the factory, to start fresh with the infinite number 1 of each day. Friend, we had the time so our thirst could be satisfied, the ancestral longing to enumerate things and total them, reducing them until rendering them dust, dunes of numbers. We are papering the world with figures and ciphers, but the things existed nonetheless, fleeing all tallies, becoming dehydrated by such quantities, leaving their fragrance and memories, and the empty numbers remained. For that reason, for you I love the things. The numbers which go to jail, move in closed columns procreating until they give us the sum for the whole of infinity. For your sake I want some numbers of the way to defend you and you to defend them. May your weekly wages increase and grow chest-deep! And out of the number 2 that binds your body and your beloved wife's emerge the matches eyes of your sons to tally yet again the ancient stars and innumerable spikes of wheat which shall fulfill the transfigured earth. (Trans. William Pitt Root) from NUMBERS AND FACES, Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, Issue # 24, June 2001, pp. 23 - 25.

 

2. Taxes.  I don't love paying taxes and I wish there was a dollar for dollar acounting for where exactly the tax dollars go but tax returns? Are fun. The deductions, the credits, there's a story behind how each one landed on your tax return and the little social tweaking that goes on.

3. Traffic: Techically I loathe and despise traffic. I've been known to go miles out of my way just to drive at a snail's pace so I don't SIT on the freeway. (Now if I was at a stop light, I'd probably pull out my knitting or a book. But on the freeway? I just fume.) But the last few months, there has been an eerie and somewhat terrifying dearth of traffic. Please tell me all those folks time shifted their work hours, moved out of state or are working from home, as opposed to, say, mass unemployment.  Pretty please?

Side note: Last night when driving out to Berkeley to meet up with Birdsong - who is as fabulous as you'd think, if not more so - check out the Triina she's knitting, that yarn is so soft. Also nupps are pronounced noops evidently just because Nancy Bush says so - there was plenty of traffic, particularly when I was on the frontage road by the Berkeley Marina with oncoming traffic on both sides of me. Yowza.  

4. Tuna: Technically Sheba was the one that loved tuna but I must include it. She loved Bumblebee water packed tuna the best. Actually she loved the juice the best, the rest of it I could toss.   Hezekiah has not really hopped on the Tuna Love train (although she'll eat it, if it's fresh.) What she really likes are my spinach souffles but those are S's, not T's.

5. Trees. I LOVE trees. Look at my late lamented poor ghost pine trees. They were viciously attacked by pine beetles (who are currently working on the rest of the pine trees in the neighborhood -sob). To this day, the bluejay will occasionally hop around disconsolantly where his pine tree was and complain bitterly about its loss. We are in complete agreement.

There seems to be this dreadful conspiracy against trees lately. They're being lopped out of yards, shopping malls (the to better "see" the shops - any shop that felled trees, I don't frequent anymore). 

And, at times, I can't see the forest for the trees.

6. Tomatos. There is no more glorious food than a tomato freshly plucked from your garden.

7. Tomorrow. My favorite time to do something. Which is one reason why this post is so darn long.

8. Time. No time left for me! On my way to better things........What's not to love about time? I just wish they'd perfect Time Travel.

9. The Tudors. No list of T's would be complete without the Tudors. Now that's what I call a fun family. Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth R PBS miniseries began a fascination with British royalty.  Wow, Glenda Jackson is an MP now? And that series was shown in 1971? Huh.

10. Think. Think, think, think. What else starts with a "T"?

Miss T, of the Mystery House of Yarn & Horrors, who graciously awarded me with the  Kreativ Blogger Award.

I'd be happy to give out a letter to anyone who's interested! But I warn you, this is harder than it looks. Just me? That figures. :)

Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

A Blogger's Silent Poetry Reading.  I almost missed this! And I'll have to be content w/Maud because a book I just finished kept quoting it at the beginning of the chapters and it's the only poem that comes to mind. For now [said ominously].   Yes, it's the beginning of Poetry Month.

Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson

Maud

COME into the garden, Maud,
    For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
    I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
    And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
    And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
    On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
    To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
    The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
    To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
    And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, 'There is but one
    With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
    She is weary of dance and play.'
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
    And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
    The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes
    In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those
    For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose,
    'For ever and ever, mine.'

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
    As the music clash'd in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
    For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
    Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
    That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
    In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
    And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake
    One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
    As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
    Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
    They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
    Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
    Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls.
    To the flowers, and be their sun.

There has fallen a splendid tear
    From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
    She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'
    And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
    And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
    Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
    Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
    Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
    And blossom in purple and red.

From Englishverse.com

I also have something to ask of you.

In these days of terrible economic crisis, you might want to adopt - a word! Go to Save the Words for your own word to adopt. Mind you, the site is a bit  keleusmatic.