Leon

Daily writing prompt

Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

My family had a Christmas tradition — I guess one could call it a tradition. It involved a set of candle holders that spelled out ‘Noel’ that my mother had. These are common in the US. ‘Noel’ is an Old French word that means ‘Christmas’. One might wonder why the Old French is common; keep in mind that the German version is ‘Weihnachten’, which doesn’t lend itself to candleholders.

I should point out that my mother decorated for Christmas HARD, by which I mean she decked the halls until they got dizzy and tied ribbons around everything that didn’t run away fast enough. The Noel candleholders always sat on a piece of furniture that took up part of the living room.

My father, on the other hand, had a peculiar sense of humor. And dyslexia. And a colleague named Leon. All of these came together, and my dad would rearrange the letters NOEL to spell LEON. The trick was to see how long it took Mom to recognize that the letters now spelled Leon.

I adopted the practice of rearranging the letters. This made two generations of letter-swapping, and my mother had to be extra vigilant that her decoration was not declaring ‘Leon’ She was not vigilant enough; she never caught us.

One year for Christmas, I found a cute set of block candles that spelled out ‘Noel’. I unwrapped the packaging carefully and rearranged them, then had my niece smuggle them under the Christmas tree (wrapped, of course) to Mom from Leon. This niece got the joke, because she herself started rearranging the letters, making three generations to adopt the trick. My mother also got the joke and laughed hard. The next year I got a bottle of homemade wine for a Christmas present — named Vin Leon.

My parents are gone now, but my husband and I bought a set of letters spelling out NOEL, and we rearranged them for our tree. The Christmas tree proclaims LEON.

Clutter

Daily writing prompt

Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

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Clutter is the bane of my existence. We have clutter everywhere in the house. The coffee table is piled a foot high at the moment, and the kitchen counters are covered with soup cans and boxes of cornbread mix. There’s not a place for everything unless it’s at the bottom of a pile.

We’ve considered Swedish death cleaning, but we’re sure we might need all these things someday. That’s what you get when hobbies and projects take over life. I’m sure there’s a fishing reel winder at the bottom of the table clutter that I could never get to work. The seed-starting materials are piling up by the couch where I swear I will take them down to the basement eventually.

I could reduce clutter anywhere in the house if I could only find a place to start.

Unincorporated Areas

Daily writing prompt

Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

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I have this fascination with unincorporated areas in the US — these are not quite towns, but places that have names and very little population. They fascinate me because they obviously have a history and, at least at some time, an identity, yet many of them are forgotten now.

Some of them have road signs, such as Quitman, which is in the county where I live. I have been to Quitman and seen the small collection of houses there. According to Wikipedia, there are 45 people there in 23 households as of the 2010 census (Wikipedia, 2025). However, an unincorporated area’s road sign doesn’t have a population posted, which is part of how one can tell it’s unincorporated.

Other unincorporated areas are unmarked, but can be found in the memory of people who lived there. Wikipedia may have information on unincorporated areas in a county. Having the name of the unincorporated area, one can often locate them on a maps app on the phone. Even Gaynor, MO, which is listed in Wikipedia as ‘extinct’, can be found on Google Maps.

I have not been to Gaynor, but I have been to both Quitman and Wilcox, the two other unincorporated areas in Nodaway County, Missouri. And I remain fascinated by these former towns and not-quite towns that haven’t quite disappeared from human memory.

No Claws, Kitty!

Daily writing prompt

If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

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I have three cats, and all three have very sharp claws. They work hard to keep these claws in perfect working order, and I can attest to the functionality of these appendages. The three use their claws in unique ways to keep me in line.

Chuckie reaches out with his claws when I haven’t petted him enough. He reaches with just enough claw to sting, hinting at how much worse he could apply his claws. Sometimes he reaches for my face, and I suffer five tiny points of pain.

Pumpkin lurks in the kitchen and claws at my feet as I walk by. She’s not a very social cat, and she’s asserting her boundaries. My feet are trespassing in her space. The entire kitchen is her space.

Chloe likes to dig her claws into me when she’s jumping off my lap. I appreciate her need for leverage, but I appreciate her claws less. I have claw marks on my thighs because she digs deep.

I could clip their claws — ha! Have you ever tried to clip a cat’s claws? My cats aren’t highly trained sweethearts — they’re cats. I would be shredded if I tried to clip their claws.

Claw marks are a small price to pay for the privilege of being owned by amazing creatures.

My First Name is Lauren

Daily writing prompt

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

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My first name is Lauren, which I’m sure is buried somewhere in this blog. (My full name is Lauren Jean Leach-Steffens, in case you care).

The name ‘Lauren’ comes from Latin, meaning ‘crowned with laurel’, or so I was told as a child. Interestingly enough, it seems to be one of those deterministic names, the ones that shape one’s future. These typically are last names, like the doctor my mother had whose name was ‘Dr. Sickley’ or the undertakers ‘Blood and Wolfe’ in our hometown. But the Lauren who got all the academic honors in high school seems like another deterministic name moment.

I often wonder if I would have been less clumsy if my parents had named me ‘Grace’. I really am a very uncoordinated person, to where I have fallen off chairs and tripped over invisible turtles. Maybe the right name would have fixed it. But no, I’m Lauren, and at least when I was younger, that meant something.

My Dream Job

Daily writing prompt

What’s your dream job?

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My dream job, which should not surprise regular readers of this blog, would be an author. I am an author now; the difference would be that I actually received enough money from my writing to live on.

Making a living as an author is difficult, especially when one is an indie author. The indie writers I know who support themselves write romances and publish several a year. I will never be that prolific, although I’ve had years where I’ve written two novels.

The odds of my being able to support myself as a writer are infinitesimally small. The only way I will write full-time is after I retire. I have accepted this.

Un-Inventing WMDs

Daily writing prompt

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

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If I could un-invent something, I would un-invent weapons of mass destruction. I would just eliminate them from the earth. I would un-invent mutually assured destruction, the arms race, the nightmare of my childhood during the Cold War.

I remember reading a science fiction series where the premise of war was that the only weapons you could use were those that brought you to arm’s length from your opponent — in other words, swords and spears. With the books, this was to prohibit psychic warfare, but it makes sense to me. Weapons of mass destruction kill thousands, even millions of people while keeping one’s hands clean.

One could argue that this would eliminate all area bombs. I’m fine with that. If it gets rid of assault weapons, even better. I could get rid of all weapons, but I think hunting is a legitimate use of weapons (I am not a vegetarian).

What would war look like if we could get rid of looming threats? I hope it would be shorter. And less lethal.

Snack Time? No!

Daily writing prompt

What snack would you eat right now?

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Right now, I would eat any snack that came my way — even durian pudding! I’m hungry and I have to fast for a blood test, so I’m obsessing a little about food.

A Long Life?

Daily writing prompt

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

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I used to think I wanted to live a lengthy life. As a child, I joked that I wanted to survive to the US’s tricentennial in 2076, so I could help them avoid all the tacky memorabilia I remembered from the bicentennial. I would be 114 in that scenario.

Nowadays, I wonder if living that long would be tenable. I have some kidney damage from a medication I used to take for my bipolar, and I don’t know where that’s going to go as I get older. As it is, I am forbidden from all the good over-the-counter pain meds and a lot of the prescription meds. I’ve got a couple ‘wait and see’ issues in a couple of other places. I don’t want to live a long life if it’s only going to be pain and illness, unless it gives me enough wellness to write and visit with people.

I feel my mortality right now. I’m 61, and I know I will not live forever. I’m fine with it.

My Mission Statement(s)

Daily writing prompt

What is your mission?

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I learned about mission statements as a professor, when an assignment I inherited was to make students write professional mission statements. The source I found said that mission statements should be short and explain what one wants to accomplish but not how. I use that definition still.

I believe in mission statements. I think it’s motivating to have a statement to look at that gives direction and inspiration. Unlike a motivational statement, a mission is tailored to the individual.

I don’t have a personal mission. I think this is a bad thing, because it means I drift from day to day, doing what I need to do. And in a way, I think that is true. Perhaps it’s because I’m over sixty, or because I don’t feel driven to do things the way I used to. Perhaps it’s because I’m being treated for bipolar. At any rate, I have no personal mission.

I do have a teaching mission and a writing mission, however. Maybe it’s because those are things I do rather than who I am. My teaching mission is to give people the ‘Aha!’ reaction. Notice it’s short and sweet and does not talk about how. It’s my responsibility to make the ‘aha’ part of how I teach. My writing mission is to make fantasies romantic and romances fantastic. As I write fantasy romance and romantic fantasy, this is an accurate mission, even with the wordplay.

I still think I need that personal mission. I don’t want anything trite or false. I want a catchy mission because I like words, or as a friend once said, “words like me”. Maybe something like to make my life an ‘aha’ experience. That’s close. Let me think about it.