I Am Still Wearing My Mask

As much as the world needed a break, it also needed to… stay diligent for the threat that is perceived to still be coming.  The Covid pandemic is far from being over and a new wave is expected to hit us again and again.  I am optimistic that it will eventually end, but the risk of getting sick is not low enough yet, so I will continue to take the necessary precautions, and it is possible that over time, our bodies are going to learn how to deal with this virus.  Lockdown restrictions have been rescinded and many people have stopped wearing masks out in public.  We have several highly effective vaccines that can protect us, but nobody knows for sure if the rates for Corona virus will go down, or if they will continue to fluctuate.  Most people think that we should accept that Covid is here to stay, and these people just want to get on with their lives, even though the CDC still recommends that everyone should be still wearing masks, as an average of 40 Americans are still dying form Covid-19 every day.  As of May 11, 2022, a total of 996,376 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States, which is almost 0.3 percent of our population.

People realize that we will never reach herd immunity, because so many people have resisted getting vaccinated and also, we don’t know how well the current vaccines are protecting people from becoming infected by new variants, or from spreading the virus to others.  Vaccinated individuals have become infected, although their illness tends to be less severe.  Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the United States, but last year COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the U.S.  In the winter of 2021, more than 3,400 Americans were dying every day from the virus on an average, so it appears that we are doing much better now.  The omicron BA.2 variant, which is sometimes called “stealth omicron”, because its genetic mutations initially made it difficult to detect, is now spreading rapidly in certain parts of the world, and this new variant appears to be 50 to 60 percent more transmissible than the original omicron.  Even if we take precautions, we probably won’t be able to prevent this virus from being transmissible, but we may be able to prevent it from killing us.  Realistically, COVID-19 will gradually transition from pandemic to endemic status, a situation in which the disease is consistently present in the world, but is being confined to a particular region, making transmission somewhat predictable and reducing or eliminating the need for broad societal interventions.

Written for EM Writing Prompts May 2022 Week 3.

The Power of The Ocean

The water slapped her on the leg, and then it began to… take her under.  She was in the surf zone, where most people play in shallow water with the waves.  She turned her back to the waves and suddenly she was flying backward, tumbling till she slammed into the sand.  She was in less than two feet of water on the stretch of shoreline between the water’s edge and where the waves break, and this is where the undertow grabbed her.  She swallowed a lot of water, and she was choking, but her instincts kicked in and told her that she was caught in a rip current, so she knew that she should not attempt to swim shoreward directly against the current.  She began to swim parallel to the beach, so she could emerge from the rip current before returning to shore.

She was happy to survive without being injured, but whoops, her bikini top slipped off.  She knew that the waves are very mischievous in this area and slips can always happen, so she was used to minor embarrassing incidents.  In those cases, she would just turn around pull her bikini top back up like a normal day at the beach and get on with it.  This was not the case today, as that riptide felt like a giant vacuum had sucked her top right off of her in a split second, it was nowhere in sight, and she couldn’t see it anywhere.  She was stunned and figured that the water must have caught her top at just the right (wrong) angle and now she was completely exposing her 38D breasts, to everyone who cared to take a peek.

She had a decision to make, to keep showing her wonderful boobs for everyone to see or try and take it in stride and cover her breasts with her hands and walk back to where she placed her beach blanket.  There was some cheering, and she actually got a standing ovation, but it was really humiliating for her, being naked in front of all the beachgoers.  She somewhat regained her dignity when she covered herself up with a towel and she was really happy that she didn’t lose her bottom.  The lifeguard walked up to her and handed her back her bikini top telling her that it had washed up on the shore and he washed the sand out of it for her.  She smiled at him and said that she was happy to have the swimsuit top that matched her bottom and he said that he would be glad to help her put it back on.

Written for EM Writing Prompts May 2022 Week 2.

Trouble Sleeping

One day, in the dead of night, the idea came to her to… try out the vibrator that she just bought.  She didn’t have a partner and with the pandemic still going on, she decided against looking for one, but she needed to get some sleep.  She did a search for the best vibrator, and she ordered it on Amazon, but she was one of the small group of women that had never masturbated before.  Her girlfriend put the idea in her head by telling her that May is International Masturbation Month.  She figured that it is never too late to get into the task of exploring her body and finding out exactly how it works.  She knew that tonight was going to be an important and healthy step in her sexual journey.  She led a sheltered existence, never being told anything about masturbation and she always thought that it was something shameful, which only loose women would do.  She wasn’t what you would call a particularly horny person and she never felt the urge to touch herself before.

She decided that tonight would be the night that she tries it and if it doesn’t work that will be fine for her.  The difficult part for her would be starting, because the vibrator is intimidating to her, because she is a first-time user.  She is scared of doing it wrong and even though the vibrator came with an instruction manual that told her how it works, it did not tell her what to do.  She took it out of the package figuring that it was time to get to know her vibrator and then she washed it off.  It was a hand-held battery type and she put the batteries in and started checking out the buttons after reading the manual.  Now that she had familiarized herself with the toy, she knew that it was time for her to fiddle around.  The toy didn’t make much noise and she lived alone, so there was no need to worry about privacy, but she locked her bedroom door anyway, turned off her phone and lowered the lights and lit up some candles and turned on some soft music to set the mood.  She had put new sheets on her bed, and she gave herself permission to fantasize and explore.

She took a long hot bath to relax herself and decided to wear a negligee with no panties or bra underneath, because she figured this would make it more convenient to touch herself.  She felt like a delicate flower that was ready to bloom.  She knew what she longed for, and she was going to take her time to get there.  She was unsure about what she should focus on and she decided to touch her earlobes and then she caressed her neck with her fingers.  Not bad for a start, but she needed to keep going.  She wasn’t ready for the vibrator yet, so she decided to touch her nipples.  She used a light touch that felt like it was just enough for her.  She had read about women and men reaching orgasms by nipple stimulation, because the sensation received from the nipples would travel to the same part of the brain as the sensations from other sex organs, but she was not sure this was going to work for her, and maybe she needed to apply more pressure, utilize a percussive tapping, or try some type of tweaking to experience these wonderful sensations.  She gave up on the nipple play deciding that it was time to switch on her toy and use it on her clitoris and inside of her vagina, because she really needed to make herself happy by curbing her frustration with her battery-operated friend.

Written for EM Writing Prompts May 2022 Week 1.

She Has a Nice Personality

This is how you are supposed to describe a person that is ugly, but unattractive girls are said to be better in bed, because they are willing to try harder.  They will do things to please their lover, like eating him up as if he’s the last piece of chocolate cake left in the entire universe, and they are absolutely starving to death.  Every night the beautiful people are able to find each other, as attraction comes natural to them, like a powerful wave that is seemingly unstoppable, however for the less fortunate, they are forced to look for others who are on their level of attractiveness.  It is entirely possible that an ugly person could find love by meeting a non-judgmental person, who likes them for their internal beauty and understands the difference between love and physical attraction, but that is not likely.  There are certain people who prefer a mate that has a little more cushion for the pushing, but many of these chubby chasers are ashamed to let anyone know about their preferences.

Unobtainable beauty ideals have many people questioning their self-worth, based solely on their appearance.  The truth is that if you are called ugly enough times, you will start to believe it and since ugly is as ugly does, by believing this, you will inadvertently make yourself ugly.  A person is what they are and not what they look like, and if you tell yourself that you are ugly, your thoughts could become reality.  Ugly can spread like a super virus, consuming everything in its path.  We all seem to judge books by their covers and choose the ones with the covers that make us feel good, so it is not much fun being ugly.  Everybody gets a laugh at ugly jokes, so when the kid asked their mom if they were ugly, the mom replied, “I told you not to call me mom in public.”  Even models are not totally satisfied with the way that they look, and their pictures are often photoshopped to get rid of what they consider to be flaws.  Everyone will experience some criticism and rejection as there are only a handful of winners and the rest of us will need to struggle to get by.

Having a nice personality is considered to be an external factor, but it will make the sex better.  You could hook up with a person that is not hot looking and does not have a great body, well let’s just say the word ugly, but sometimes you just connect to a person.  I have been desperate at times after being tantalized and teased by legions of girls that were way out of my league.  I admit to having scraped the bottom of the barrel, because I knew it was going to be a sure thing.  From the beginning, I just closed my eyes and decided to go with it.  I was satisfied, as it wasn’t what I would call a negative experience, because once we made it, there were those mouthwatering oooh’s and ahhh’s that oozed out of both of us.  I never hooked up with the young urban maid again, even though she was a real fox in the sack, and I am thinking about taking a sabbatical from having any type of relationship.

Written for Sheryl’s Daily Word Prompt – Urban, for the Daily Spur prompt – Satisfied, for EM’s Random Word Prompt Legion, for FOWC with Fandango – Negative, for Ragtag Community – Fox, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Saturday Mix – Double Take hosted by weejars aka Sarah where she asks us to use the homophones Made and Maid and Oooh and Ooze, for SueW and GC Weekly Prompts Challenge – Beginning, for Di’s Three Things Challenge prompt words – Mouthwatering, Tantalize, Tease and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Sabbatical.

79 Years Ago

In the distance, there was a familiar set of landmarks, and Joe made it his mission to… celebrate Bicycle Day, the day when Albert Hofmann took the first LSD trip.  The Swiss chemist ingested a minute amount of a compound derived from the ergot fungus.  Albert felt disoriented while riding his bicycle home, where he experienced all the heavenly and hellish effects of lysergic acid diethylamide along with an extremely stimulated imagination.  Joe decided to drop acid as a quest to feel reborn from the self-isolation COVID-19 restrictions that he had been going through and also to commemorate the bike ride that took place on the afternoon of April 19th, 1943.  Since it is a rather warm day, Joe saw no reason to wear clothes while he was tripping.  Joe hoped that nobody would get offended, but he always feels the urge to strip off all of his clothes and run around butt ass naked every time he is tripping.

Written for EM Writing Prompts April 2022 Week 3.

Nature At Its Best

The skies were filled with colors, and the trees collaborated in nature… you couldn’t want a more perfect day.  This is the most wonderful time of the year with the Sun shining orange and yellow, however I know that is only a misconception, as the Sun is essentially all colors mixed together, which appear to our eyes as white.  With the Earth’s natural source of light being the sun, we see white light, because that combines all of the colors in the visible spectrum, which is the range of colors that we can see.  It may appear to be yellow, orange, or red, but that is only because its short-wavelength colors (green, blue, violet) are scattered out by the Earth’s atmosphere, much like small waves are dispersed by big rocks along the shore.  The reds, yellows, and oranges make their way through the thick atmosphere to our eyes.

Each color in the visible spectrum represents electromagnetic waves of differing lengths.  The colors change as the wavelength increases from violet to indigo to blue, green, yellow, orange, red and deep red.  The clouds in the sky are very colorful around the Sun, but off in the distance they seem to meld into a pool of blue sky.  Clouds can take on many colors, but near sunrise and sunset, a cloud’s color is usually white, the same as sunlight color.  Clouds are made up of many small water droplets, and ice crystals, so light reflects and scatters so many ways from clouds.  Grey clouds may appear and rain on your parade, but you could also see those clouds with silver linings that bring hope for better days to come.

There is a ray of sun shooting through a pine tree, because our Sun is spitting out cosmic gamma rays constantly and those tiny bits of atoms are always permeating us.  They are wandering travelers, that are just passing through and they do not harm us.  Yellow flowering plants adorn a field of foliage with a few dead trees mixed in to show us the stages of life and death.  We are born helpless, and we try to discover what life is all about.  We learn by watching and mimicking others, and we try to fit in while we retain what makes us unique from others.  We start making decisions, we go through many trial and error moments and then we experiment with new things.  We push the boundaries, make commitments and try to deal with what we have made of ourselves in this world.  If we are lucky to leave an important, meaningful legacy behind, then we can smile with contentment, knowing that life has been good to us.

The dead branches are like a murder mystery that is literally frozen in time, and they are no longer absorbing the life-giving energy from the Sun, making the landscape appear as if it is warm, and cold at the same time.  The mountains off in the distance are interacting with the atmosphere, and the Sun to shape their own climate and provide life.  I will visit them one day, but today I am going out to play golf with my friends, as today is so perfect for that.  Heading out to the greens with all the colors in the sky might allow me to play my best game ever.

Written for EM Writing Prompts March 2022 Week 4.  I love the vivid verbal descriptions that EM gives us for these prompts.  “The sun is shining orange and yellow through the clouds in the distance and fades into the clouds, which meld into the blue of the sky. There is a ray of sun shooting through a pine tree. In the front of the photo, there are a few dead trees mixed with a field of foliage. It looks warm, and it looks cold at the same time. There are some mountain ranges far in the distance hugging the sun.”

No End in Sight

Life had always been an adventure for Jules, but for the first time, it was… a prolonged one where she saw no end in sight.  Jules had planned on visiting her family in the Ukraine, but the last she heard was that they were trying to make their way to Poland.  Her family never mentioned anything about wanting Russia to liberate them, but Putin launched this unprecedented attack, so he could institute regime change.  Her Aunt Daryna and her cousins Kateryna and Nataliya are currently in transit, and they chose Poland as their destination because Ukrainians can understand about 70% of the Polish language and with a little practice, they could be fluent in a month.  Her uncle Borysko stayed in Ukraine with his two sons Hadeon and Igor to fight the invading Russians.  They have a couple of rifles and some Molotov cocktails that they will be using to defend themselves.

Jules lives in London, and it is cold and wet today, so she is wearing her winter coat.  She went outside for a walk to get her mind off of the horrible news, but everywhere she goes, she runs into these inconvenient puddles.  Jules remembered jumping into the puddles with her cousins when they came to London for a visit when she was young and that made her smile.  Jules remembered going to a park with her cousins and the trees provided relief from the heat for them when they walked under them together.  She stopped and said a little prayer for her family, as she looked at her reflection in a large, dirty puddle on this cold and dreary day.  There were no leaves on the trees today and she was glad that she was wearing a warm coat and she kept her hands inside the pockets.  Jules noticed a building on her left, and she remembered that was where she met her husband.  Jules became sad again because the building reminded her of losing her husband to cancer and she felt so helpless, because there was nothing that she could do.

She saw that her hair looked a bit messy in the mirrored image on the water, but there were so many bigger problems going on in her life at this time.  Jules felt powerless and venerable, but her uncle and her cousins were standing up for their country and she drew strength from knowing that.  Jules was on her way to the bank to withdraw money that she would send to her family.  As soon as her aunt got situated, she would call and let her know where to wire the funds.  She was so proud that her family was fighting back and not giving up, and since Jules understood that family was everything and that all things are possible, when you have the love and support of your family, she was going to do all that she could to help them.

Written for EM Writing Prompts March 2022 Week 1.  The photo is by elifskies on Pexels.co