Week in Seven Words #195 and #196

#195
ambiguity
The child finds the balloon entrancing. The dog backs away from it with a growl.

appraising
He's young but speaks like a savvy consumer, confident of what's a quality product and what isn't.

erratic
I've bumped into them, careened off of them, and have no particular desire to see them again.

facade
When you speak with him, he'll look past your shoulder at the next prospect. I feel like I'm standing outside a vacated building, talking at it.

mold
She will only be satisfied when she breaks me. Of course, she doesn't see it that way. She sees it as helping me.

partisanship
He makes it a point, wherever he goes, to wear a hat covered in political pins, with additional pins on his lapel and the front of his jacket. His appearance is more an endorsement for the other party than for his own.

pollyanna
Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that he can look at us all and really believe in what he says. His words come up against the harsh reality of who we are.

Week in Seven Words #176

cracks
The papers show me a barely literate boy who can't understand a mathematical word problem because the vocabulary is too advanced for him. For years he's lived like this (no one intervened?) and now they expect that sixteen hours of summertime intervention will prepare him for the sixth grade.

detached
A silent figure at a window, she watches the flags, the batons, and the floats. She can probably hear the cheers through the thick, dark glass.

funning
He offers passers-by a joke for a buck. His takers are a skeptical-looking teenager and a sobbing toddler.

incorporeal
He plays the violin huddled in on himself, as if he wants people to think that the music is flowing out of a bodiless entity.

particles
Closed to the public, the promenade becomes a place where shadows stroll and spots of sunlight skip on the pavement.

sunning
Ducks preening in a brown pond.

trifles
Booths selling blue ceramic teapots and ornate doll heads.

A smurf, a goose head and gratitude

It's funny how I thought I'd be able to walk through Times Square this morning. I caught the tail-end of the Thanksgiving Parade. I'm not a fan of standing around watching parades, so the short time I was there was good enough for me. I'm glad I didn't remember about the parade's location in advance either, because the floats were a pleasant surprise. Giant smurfs make me smile. The dangling head of what looks like Mother Goose both creeped me out a little and made me smile, not that I have anything against Mother Goose.

To get to the 1-line subway platform at the Times Square stop, I wound up making a detour around the crowds and into the Port Authority station, which felt like a rabbit warren. Good thing the signs were clear so I could know where I was going.

Here's a nice video from a Jewish site. The topic is blessings as a form of gratitude; as long as we're alive we can express gratitude. Whether or not you're Jewish or religious the video gives a sense of perspective on life's problems and a reminder of things to be grateful for, so I thought I'd share it on Thanksgiving.