RV Poetry

When someone RVs full time, I am told, they plan for dentist appointments, labs, and xrays, and doctor appointments back at their “home base”, scheduling as many appointments or procedures as possible for the time they are there. I am assuming most RVers also think to schedule their optometrist appointments then as well. If you are a person who does not need glasses or contacts, your time is probably coming. Just one word of advice (or two or more):

• Glasses are made on site by few places. You are quoted 7-10 days to get the lenses made and back to the optometrist. So, be sure you will be around that long! On that note, if you cannot see well enough to drive or function without your glasses, you may want to start saving now for a second pair to hold you over for those 7- 10 days.
• That 7-10 days stretches really quick into 14-20 days if the lab or optometrist messes up your prescription. I’m afraid you would be unpleasantly surprised if you knew how often that occurs. I have had it happen several times (in different states). So, add to the doubled time the few extra days of “hold” time, also known as, “You just need to try them out for several days first, your eyes have to adjust. We cannot send them back or send you back to our optometrist for a recheck until you have tried them.”
• Ask if you can return them somewhere else if they need to be repaired under warranty and you are 3000 miles away merrily camping and grilling away. It may be that a national or several region wide chain is what you need and there are a lot of resources for that: Costco, Sears, Walmart, and national eyeglass chains, just for examples.
• One other tip, there are eyeglass repair shops that carry full line of clip on dark glasses for any shape lenses. It is amazing how many they carry.
• If you can hold out until a half price sale of some kind, do. Glasses are so expensive, seriously, they are going to have to have a Farm Aid or similar just to buy glasses for people. . . . Dare you to call and see how much just progressive lenses are with anti-glare coating — just the lenses, forget the fancy smancy frames, just price the lenses. We got half off on our lenses (because we saved more than the limited buy one get one free for lenses and frames — I know I questioned it, too, but did the math.)
• One afterthought, it was also mentioned that if my glasses still aren’t right, sometimes the actual material used to make the lenses can be “wrong”. I just can’t wait for my glasses to come back.

OK, I can’t resist telling you, so you can start saving now!

Three pair glasses and frames, 2 of which had progressive lenses with anti-reflective coating, and one special safety frame and lenses without the coating: 774.85 (and the safety frames were only 24.95). The credit card interest alone scares me.

Now, in honesty, you may be able to find the lenses cheaper. . . we waited so long to get our eyes rechecked, I grabbed the first national half off coupon and drug Leon over there – and then didn’t use that coupon but their in store special. “Do as I say and not as I do.”

My first 7-10 day wait from a Friday night turned into only about 3, but I couldn’t get there until the following Friday night (figures) and they weren’t right and it was a holiday weekend, you know the routine, just try them. So, I did. Tuesday, the optometrist reexamined me and I was told the lab had not followed her instructions exactly on one lens. . . but she then CHANGED the prescription back to my previous prescription. And off to the lab went my new “cool” glasses so Leon read the lunch menu to me. He had suggested we donate our old glasses that very Friday we picked up the new ones. I knew better. So, now, they won’t even let me buy my safety glasses until the first glasses come back. . . So, IF they get it right this time, then I have to wait another 7-10 days for those and hope the lab gets that set right. So, no earthquakes or errant limbs on the hill until I get them. OK?

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Are you actively making a difference?

You probably are even if you feel you are not. Each time you smile or hug or shed a tear in sympathy in front of someone, you are making a difference in their heart.

Each time you acknowledge a person’s existence, you are making a difference, you are adding to their reasons for taking another step when they feel least like it, when their own self-worth is injured, however temporarily.

Could you make a bigger difference?

Most of us, have to answer that with a resounding, “Yes!”

How are you going to make a difference?

I have a few small ways in the works. . . So, here is a toast to the differences we all make and the hope we will all push ourselves to make a bigger difference. Cheers.

Watch for news of my active way of creating peaceful moments within.

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This week’s words for the Unconscious Mutterings meme are below, along with my muttered words. I have chosen to take the 20 words in order to then write a poem or story. It is so much fun! Please, if you decide after you have done the free association meme to do as I have and create your own poem or story, make sure, as a courtesy, you remember to give a link back to her site as you would in the original meme. And even if you hate poetry, you may want to participate in her meme, which is the free association part. That is fun for everyone!

1. Dancer :: belly
2. Intellectual :: wizard
3. Direct :: confrontation
4. Tolerate :: maybe
5. Post :: secrets
6. Instinctive:: I am
7. Brink :: destruction
8. Regain :: composure
9. Repulsed :: yuck
10. Distressed :: not

I do occasional change tense or form of one or two words – poetic license, you know.

PMS

She, a dancer,
tossed her belly fat
with wild abandon
in contrast
to her intellectual mind
that created words a wizard
would be envious of.

In direct confrontation she
rarely rose to the challenge,
but cowered.

tolerate change?
Maybe, though
post secrets
told a different story
of following instinctive steps
more than to tolerate sidesteps
or forward marches.

I am, she screamed, on the brink
of destruction!

He reached out and licked her cheek,
a man’s fumbled attempt at dealing
with a crisis he did not understand.
Rather than to gain composure
(as he had hoped)
she threw herself onto the chair
repulsed at the dampness on her cheek
and vomited the word, yuck.

He stood, distressed at his wrong doing,
but daring to stand his ground
(he was, after all, a man).

Not for one moment had she doubted
his motivation, only his execution of it.
The hormones subsided hours later
(yes, it took that long).

His dancer,
tossed her belly fat
with wild abandon
in contrast
to her intellectual mind
once again.

PMS, by natural definition was over,
she had survived the alternate definition
both would return again.
(After all, nature will always be
and
he was man, and loved confrontation)

MeeAugraphie
05/27/07

Copying our words is unappreciated. Sharing by link is. I am using NiñaLuna’s Unsconscious Mutterings words in her order in my poem with permission. . . all she asks is a link back. . . more than fair, don’t you think! That is all I ask for my own. . . Thank you.

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I look at a lot of RV related blogs as I dream. There is one site that specializes in RV related videos. This video is not about RVing, but because so many RVers overnight at Walmart, this was posted.

It is funny! You will be singing it later possibly, but hey, what’s one more song in our heads.

Walmart Woman

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LunaNiña’s meme, Unconscious Mutterings, is ten words shared for us, in her words, to have,”Free association fun!” I kept meaning to play along, I even have it on my RSS feed, but I get lost in my own ramblings.

Today, I could resist no more — I did the free association and then turned it into a poem, keeping the words in the same order, but, of course, adding some. . . I have no idea if anyone else has done this, but cannot imagine I had an original idea. . . These are WONDERFUL prompts for poems or stories. . . and the great thing is that once we have written using all of them, the possible good or gibberish that comes out of them may prompt great stories or poems from pieces.

My free associations felt a bit weak, and this time, I went back and added my thoughts on them in parenthesis, just for the pure heck of it:

1. Coastguard :: men (oh, yeah, lots of men)
2. Buddies :: not (I know where that came from)
3. Nap :: tired (well, I am)
4. Groan :: yeah (what was I thinking?)
5. Sitcom :: not (I just don’t like the word “sitcom”)
6. Reader :: me (I love to read)
7. Heroes :: them (so, so many of them out there)
8. Amazing :: them (was my mind stuck?)
9. Woman :: yes (and excited I am NOT a man)
10. Don’t! :: you (maybe a song line in my head?)

That fun exercise became this rambling thought/poem:

Some coast guard(ing) men
are buddies, not
(by the definition he told me
from his Navy years),
they nap when tired
but
when duty calls
they jump up
(and groan — yeah, they are
after all, human)

the reader (me, if no one else)
see heroes among them
and amazing thinkers
and amazing bodies, too, (of course)
though only by imagination as they
are wearing clothes and a woman knows
clothes do hide a multitude of sins,
and, yes, I am not so sure some
men don’t know it as well
though you men fake your
lack of knowledge well,
after all,
you are human, too.

MeeAugraphie
05/25/07

For those of you who might think my poem worth copying, please don’t, link back instead so the link to LunaNiña’s meme is intact! I couldn’t have written them without her words, too. Thank you.

It was so much fun, I think I will do it every week and maybe go back and do old ones as well. . .
One person’s play, is another’s prompt.
Try it, it could become the Recreational vehicle for your genius!

How will you alter this Recreational Vehicle?

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