Tag Archives: counting the cost

Field Mice

Posted on 16 July 2014 | Leave a comment

Walking down a desert path,
Sounds of stirring
Drew my eyes. Turning,
I beheld an object of wrath

Perhaps from the farmer’s wife.
It stopped, frozen: a deer
In headlights. A knife
Cut through my heart: fear.

Too dull, the blade, to last;
I laughed as I passed,
The mouse hoping I would not see.
Beyond his eyes, he turned to flee.

Walking down that desert path,
My eyes beheld
Another. He held
His youth as a tub a bath.

No sighting of farmer’s wife,
Too calm for cervine metaphor;
No fear of carnivore
Pierced him through with fear.

Filled with delight, he stood fast;
But before I passed,
He stopped his eating
In time to avoid a beating.

The many darting to and fro,
From hole to hole;
The two crossing the trail,
The first waiting for the second (aw, how cute!);

And the older fat one,
Too preoccupied with eating,
Too slow with his response,
So that if I had a heavier step
And a slower reaction time,
I’d be cleaning him off the bottom of my sandal.

© 2014 H.K. Longmore

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Independence

Independence

An 89-year old D-Day veteran was told by care home staff that he could not travel to Normandy. He did it anyway. 🙂

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Posted on 6 June 2014 in links

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Protected: Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Posted on 18 April 2014 | Enter your password to view comments.

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The Cost of Comfort

Posted on 16 April 2014 | Leave a comment

“Oh, my pillow, my soft, absorbent pillow!
What words of comfort have you for me today?”
Cheer up, all is not lost.
“And what will be the cost?”

Two drops is all.
“And what can I get for five?”
You are loved, even if some mistreat you.
You can have the pair for six.

“And how much for a verbal hug?”
Now that’s a tricky one,
A difficult task for a pillow.
What’s it worth to you?

I’ve saved up a lot,
Over days, weeks, months.
I wonder how much I should offer.
Would a cup be too much?

But as I start to pay
The dam bursts,
The stream won’t be held back.
“Is this enough?”

©2014 H.K. Longmore

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Aside

I deactivated my Facebook account last Friday. The time I was spending reading all the articles, taking all the quizzes, watching all the cat videos (okay, so I only had a few cat videos in my news feed, but I … Continue reading →

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Posted on 12 February 2014

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Is it Smart for Me to Take Out Student Loans?

Is it Smart for Me to Take Out Student Loans?

In this post my friend (whose recent post “Do You Want Financial Security or the Appearance of Wealth,” on 30 Dec 2013 on www.micawberprinciple.com, was selected to appear on rockstarfinance.com, a site that describes itself as “A Collection of Awesome Money Articles.”) discusses how to estimate the financial payoff for taking out student loans.

Applying this retroactively to my undergraduate degree and student loans, my payoff time was 0.65 years. In actuality, because I had an incredibly low interest rate, I paid it off slowly, with only an extra $10/month toward the principle, until I was about 2/3 done, then I started paying it off aggressively. My total payoff time in real life was about 4 years.

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Posted on 18 January 2014 in reblogged

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Three Misses

Posted on 8 January 2014 | Leave a comment
Soaking wet

Leaving work one day I took my AWD vehicle through a patch of snow that wasn’t plowed. The magnitude of my velocity vector was too small, inspiring the second stanza. My pants and gloves got soaked trying to dig the snow out from underneath.

Was it this word,
Or that, that she said?
“Life” he thought he heard,
But ’twas spoken while she fed;
“Mouth” is thus not absurd.
Misheard.

It will not budge;
His car is stuck.
The ice-crusted snow it can only nudge.
Did he think he drove a truck?
Must he now homeward trudge?
Misjudged.

For words overheard in passing he could
Seek meaning, though lacking context.
Alternate possibilities, weight of wood,
He might settle on the wrong text.
The comment made, was it for the good?
Misunderstood.

Copyright © 2014. H.K. Longmore

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