Theme Reveal - About the House.

Social Distancing is for the birds. Suddenly, my homebody lifestyle is ready to travel. Well actually, I always want to travel. It's just this little thing called money and responsibilities that ties me to my home. A house full of dogs and cats keep me busy too.

I currently have the widow dog at my feet. She mourned my brother, but she has adjusted to her new home. Her breath stinks when she barks at me to get up and do some mysterious chore for her. I've told her "heck no" we are not trampling through the weeds and briers of the woods.

She didn't eat her dog food this morning. I was cooking a roast beef. She was waiting for a better offer. I have to feed her around 5:30 PM. She barks at me and looks at the stove repeatedly. I know what my brother did at 5:30 most nights.

Anyway, I'll be making periodic posts on my Facebook page about good blogs that I enjoy reading and other flotsam. Naw, it is not like I got that much free time. I am behind as usual. When I die, I predict someone will light a match to settle my affairs.

I set up a Facebook page to build my platform as I wrote the great American novel. That novel has sprouted stories much like the snakes of Medusa's head. The story I chop off and finish is the real mystery. Platform is my comic relief. I'll go out and look for Perseus in the night sky for inspiration on how to handle this monster my writing has become.

Meanwhile, my theme for 2020 A to Z will be ABOUT THE HOUSE. It is blogging as normal for me. You'll wonder if I have more snakes in my head than Medusa had on hers. HeHeHe

Hopefully most will be tongue in cheek. Some people are possessed by Demons. Me, it is a squirt of a dog.

Cheers and I hope we all avoid this Corona virus. Real life and adulthood are close to the same thing. I still got my mom so I am still a bit sheltered from real life. I may take care of her but she still likes me to brag about myself to her.

Waking up from a long sleep.

It's been over a year since I last posted. The year has been hectic. I haven't had time to remind myself to slow down. There is always something to do. I hired a man to help me. With the heat of summer, we did not do what I would have liked to do which is work outside.

I like to piddle work inside the house.  Unfortunately, I worked entirely too hard before he came.

I learned a lot about hiring someone. For one thing, I am not good at making the rules.

He wanted to be paid under the table. I wanted to pay him and take out taxes and have worker's comp insurance. I needed help, I paid him under the table.

He came at 10:30 and had left at 3. He did not like my dogs. He was allergic to fire ant bites, He had a bad back. The work he did was mediocre and he did not naturally move from one project to another one I needed done. He did not put trash in the trashcan. He left it where he had been working. I had to leave one day while he was working, he worked quickly and went down to my mother's room to sit to get her to let him leave early. I paid him $75 for each day. My compromise with paying under the table was I could only afford two days a week.

The good news is he stopped coming. I did not have to ask him to quit. It saved me from taking that bull by the horns. All it took was telling him to wear clothes that he didn't mind getting paint on. We were going to paint the hallway that next Monday.

I do know you can pay someone up to $600 and not report it to the IRS. So I would pay the next person the first $300 under the table. If they are a keeper, I would pay the taxes.
I'm going to be lucky if I ever get anyone good.

This man was good person. The problem was what he thought the job would be versus what it was. Add to that, he is in my situation. My home life is too hectic to fit a job in. He has young adult children and a wife who still works but is sick. She goes to sleep as soon as she returned from work at 3 PM and slept until the next morning. This is why he needed to leave by 3 PM.

I'll continue to be nice to whoever I employ. Part of the relief of getting help is not getting the stress from negativity. The other part is I don't enjoy pulling that person out of my psyche that has to give someone hell to get the job done. As Blanche DuBois said in Tennessee William's play "A Streetcar Named Desire", "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers."

The mother cat I have recently adopted and her brood is not helping with the housework.

Currently, I am feeding a dog that is immensely afraid of me and my car. It likes my food. I rolled down the window and called to it that it has a home when it is ready.

I've been hesitant to post a new blog post in that I do not have the time to visit everyone. Add to that is content. I've decided to post pictures of my part of the world. I'm not a professional photographer and the picture content is quite ordinary. But someone from a different part of the world may enjoy the novelty. I certainly enjoy the pictures of others.

This will be a brilliant Gold in about a week. 

Cassiopeia, the cat, standing in tall grass with a branch of poke salad in the foreground. The birds love the berries. The red in Poke salad makes it very poisonous. You have to know how to pick it and prepare it to prevent poisoning. At this point in the stalk's life cycle, it would be extremely poisonous.  I have eaten poke salad. It tastes about what you think grass clippings would taste boiled.

Muscadime grapes are finished for the year. They were delicious. Muscadimes are grapes native to North America. The thin skinned European varieties do not grow well here due to Pierce disease.

Beauty berries

I created a nice area for the kitty and her babies in which the dogs would not be a problem. BoDuke insists he could never be a problem.

Zeitgeist 2018

The zeitgeist of 2018 has to be strong rumblings followed by sighs and upheavals, sort of like an Earthquake and it's aftershocks.

I read a recent Facebook story where the man firmly asserts his righteousness and being a virtuous person to his fellow man. But he lost me. He started giving an opinion on politics.

I get his drift, you know what I mean jelly bean. I've worked apologist logic too. There comes a point you accept that what will be will be. It all boils down to where you stand as an individual.

My observation about people and politics is that it sometimes has more to do with a cultural inclination that is hard for anyone to change. Realities cause and affects are going to happen no matter what. I like the idea that Jews eat something sweet and something bitter during Passover. Life will have it's sweet and bitter moments.

The rescue of the children trapped in a cave in Thailand gives us all something to rejoice. You can imagine those poor kids. You know they had to be scared. Then you could fit the queasiness in the pit of your stomach that their loved ones were feeling. The Thai people know they rose to the occasion. I love that people from different countries pitched in their might and expertise to get those kids rescued.

I listened to a joking on the View about who should be in the movie. It truly was a cliffhanging drama much of the world was held in suspense. In reading the few details coming out, when they make the movie, I will go. I truly feel they had the prayers worldwide got everyone out of the cave. The pump broke that was reducing the water level as the last three rescuers were escaping the cave.

What impressed me most with the rescue were the airtight oxygen cocoons they created for the children. One of the biggest dangers they had was a child getting panicked. Did they sedate any of the kids? Sedation would hinder their ability to help themselves. I heard on CBS news that the kids were given anti-anxiety medication.

Skilled swimmers and scuba divers navigated that cave and those kids just had to have faith. I remember most kids could not swim when I was a child. We called ourselves going swimming to play in a pool or creek. But mostly, we just splashed and played in the water. That lack of experience in water had to be a detriment. I've read where the kids wore several wetsuits to deal with the icy coldness of the water.

As thin as those kids were, swimming would be difficult with so little fat on their bodies. I remember a guy in college who the swim coach had us to walk beside to lift his body up to the surface in the pool. He was so slim, he just sank to the bottom of the pool as he swam. You had to be able to swim across the pool to satisfy a PE requirement when I was in college. It was the only way the guy could pass the class.

Before the kids were located in the cave, I talked on the phone with my older brother and he brought the topic up. I was honest with him, I was avoiding the news. It was difficult to have hope for the kids. I felt sick for the coach. He was 25. But 25 is still an age where nothing really bad can happen to you.

It is such a shame that the Navy Seal Saman Gunan died within the cave. There is such a loss felt when anyone passes but there is a special angst for someone who dies in the prime of life and offers so much to society. If Valhalla is real, I'm sure Saman Gunan got a rousing reception.

The boys were marginalized people in Thai society. I'm glad they gave the Thai's something to rally around and hopefully it will help people change how they perceive them in Thai society. One of the greater gifts of our humanity is to give a gift that you know can never be repaid. Apparently the 14 year old who did the translating was quite a scholar. I hope this bodes well to help him advance in this world.

The rescue of those kids was remarkable. Besides being happy those boys were saved. I feel a relief that so many people from so many countries and walks in life joined in wanting those boys saved. The world is still a dangerous place but we still get to experience the Grace of God.

I spent some time mowing the same grass I mowed yesterday

We got that rainy thunderstorm weather in the afternoons. I remember summer camp. They would caution us to be careful as we walked under the electric lines in the open going to dinner in the evening. With blank minds, we said we would.

My latest dog, Little Red.

Being careful about what can't be controlled. We should have taken another route.

I went to a psychic about a week ago. I've heard of this woman over the years. I guess she was about ten years older than me. My sister had gone to see her years ago and wanted a reading. So I spent part of my reading telling her my sister had had a stroke and asked her to be careful what she told her. Even a psychic needs a heads up.

A teacher I had worked with who was probably glad my "hardass" left hosted the get together. I'm a quasi believer in psychics. I don't think anyone has the ability to tell you the future. But sometimes, I think there are some gifted. I watched a show about psychic detectives on the ID channel before they sanitized their shows so much.

When she was talking to me, I listened and chatted a bit with her. She told me I had to get my blood pressure and blood sugar under control before it affected my health. At my age and at my size, that was a given I would have problems with either one.

What surprised me is that she mentioned me being a care giver without any prompt. She said I needed to not be so generous with my money. I admit I spend my entire pension each month in support of my family. It has been weighing on me to get a bit more serious about saving. I'm 62 so there is a piece of me that wonders why.

I went ahead and applied for social security. I worked 19 years in a school system that did not take money out for social security. That reduced my benefit by 60 percent due to the Windfall Provision. I get $561 a month. I was a bit disappointed. But hey, I get something. I wanted to use the money to save and retire my mortgage a bit early. I hope to just save it for a rainy day or household repairs which will happen in time. I had worked second jobs for about 8 years during those 19 years. I thought that time would help but I guess not.

Now that I shared my personal business about money, I will tell you about my love life. Well I'll let you know if one happens.

My sister asked the psychic if she would get married again. I felt sad. The psychic said no but she would have romance. She is handicapped by the stroke. I hope she continues to recover and the psychic is wrong.

The early years of being a senior citizen is much like getting out on your own in your late teens and early twenties. It is a big shift is relating to the realities of this world. My older brother had a nurse sit him down and tell him he is getting older and he needed to slow down.

I'm back to blogging about who knows what. I wanted to sort of start writing book reviews. It's difficult to finish books when you have eight in different locations at various stages of being read. I wound up buying a hard copy of Shawn Coyne's book The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know.  It was too hard to follow on a Kindle. I've started from the beginning which is a chore. He wastes the first part of book basically selling his book.

I forgot to ask the psychic about how my writing career will fare. If you want to know the truth, that is my love life. I would like a boyfriend. But they are a lot of work. If I could find a man who loved to mop floors, clean out my closets, cook a yummy meal for my family, there would be some real romance in my life. I don't know how he would feel about me using my free time to catch a movie or go to water aerobics while he was watching Price is Right with my mother.

But I remember romance. It was fun.

Big ole Mother's Day is coming.

May is an exciting month. My birthday falls on Mother's Day. I would like to say I noticed this first; but, it was my mother. I remember when I was 6 or so, my birthday was on Mother's Day and I was so happy. I reveled in knowing I was born on Mother's Day.

As a teenager, I humored the old gal.

As an adult, I appreciated how much my mother loved me.

At 62 and 87, we are going to have a "whoopdedoo" party with no one but the people and dogs living in the house with us.

We are celebrating mother's day in the grocery store with one brother. We all stress him out. This way we don't have to sit down to eat in a public place, have him complain about the prices, and have him insist on paying. We will call him Mr. Particular.

The other brother can come on the official day. However, we are probably going to meet up with him a week before and drive to have a dinner with him. He is convalescing from losing part of a foot. He has a vascular problem which could be the result of the use of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. We will call him Brother Buck after the character Uncle Buck in the movie of the same name.

It is humbling to get older. And a terrific thing too! This spring, arthritis has begun rumbling which is more depressing than painful. This wasn't supposed to happen to me. I can't say Time is a thief. I've made hay while the sun shined. And I'm still here with a sound mind. Mom has a good mind too.

One of the most satisfying things in life for me is I've learned to embarrass my brothers. I know their buttons. You're never too old to think like a child I must say.

One is embarrassed by my politics. Although I am a moderate, he thinks I am a LIBERAL. (I looked on the Facebook profile of me. It said I was a moderate which was a relief.) The other is a moderate too. He thinks I am snooty. All I got to do is drop my drawers and pee in his front yard. Good news, I'm still young enough to know that stuff belongs in a movie!

But Mother's Day is mine this year. Everyone else will have to defer to me. However, if they will agree to spend the night and take care of mom and everyone a couple of days. I could change my mind.

How is your Mother's Day going to be?

And my condolences to those of you who have lost your mom's. I remember a child in the 8th grade who lost her mom that year. I did not feel the full impact of how bad that was until my father passed. You do lose your best friend.

Mom's dogs Daisy and Jobelle will be guests of honors at the big whoopdedoo.

We all have a Story

There must be magic in good editing.

Listening to one writer suggesting changes to another person's work, The fine line between improving a story and changing the voice is difficult.

Writers who produce the mass produced tomes are good. Too good in that so many of them lack a certain texture to what they have written. Some are too good in that the writer's work is brilliant. I had a friend in college who did not like a particular trained singer; he liked the texture of imperfection,  I'm afraid I have that preference. Perhaps a little rambling about why someone thinks the way they do or not having a story arc at all.

My recent reading has certainly ran the gamut. I'm currently reading J. M. McTeer's account of being a white witch doctor. The white refers to the magic he practiced. He would never take money for removing a hex or curse on someone. His being a sheriff and white man, your initial impression is he did this out of compassion and not out of belief. He did do it out of compassion but he had a lot of respect for the African traditions and people brought to North America from Africa.

It is a fluke I started reading about root doctors. I know the advice from childhood was to keep my distance, and something could only hurt you if you believed. My first book was Blue Roots by Roger Pinckney.

What I like about McTeer is his obvious respect and admiration. I know that I am a white woman with my culture coloring my view of the world. McTeer crossed that line. Root doctors welcomed him into their ranks and discussions.

That seeing how others think is what I love about reading. I pick up a book now and think of all the work that went into it. Looking at the cover of a paperback written by Cornelia Walker Bailey titled God, Dr Buzzard and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee talks about life on Sapelo Island, Georgia. What an attractive cover. In writing the title, I recommend a short one if you want it shared. I had to flip back a few times to get the title right.

I've been visiting some blogs. Blogging from A to Z is coming up and I will be reading. I just will not be blogging this time around. There is just not enough time in the day. If I can get a once a week post up, I will be happy.

Anyway, I am still around. I'll be around. I hope to see a lot of my blogging friends on the A to Z. Then May, I'll be the only one around with a post. lol

Anger Management is Easy!

Not a whole lot going on in the book writing department. But, I have had a few ideas.

I'm writing a play called Canadian Occupied Florida. One of the principal characters has acquired a new attribute. I was reading Janet Reid's blog about agents and the writing biz. She spent today's post discussing people misbehaving on social media in response to opinions. I decided one of the play's characters will tell people if they are right or wrong on opinions. It may mimics today's politics. But, none of this countries or any other countries' politics will be explored. It is a comedy not a tragedy.

This past week, I have been exploring anger issues. My dad loved to quote the Greek proverb that when the Gods decide to destroy you, they make you angry. The universe had a message for me these past two weeks.

It started in a doctor's office. In two days, I had accomplished 7 appointments for family members and number 8 was me at the dermatologist. I called the sheltered workshop that my brother attends to tell them I was picking my brother up and for him to not get on the bus and that he would not be coming the next day. My other brother was in a hospital in Carrollton, GA.

I hang up and begin to listen to messages and this man yells for me to take it outside. He did not want to hear my personal business and I was yelling on the phone. He repeated this three times. I start to say I was not yelling. My back was to him so I sat quietly and took a picture of him over my shoulder.

I remembered I needed to pay a bill for my mom and went to the front desk which saved me. My mom called to tell me she had found her checkbooks. I thank her and tell her I need to get off which is hard. She is hard of hearing. But I was across the room from the man.

So I walked over and sat across from him to look him over good. He never looked up,he stayed glued to his computer screen typing. Next to a blaring television I might add. He was there when I left. I bet he was a drug salesman.

I spent the evening and a little of the next day laughing about how I could have retaliated. But you know, I would have liked to rough him up. He was so clean and neat, I might have been able to do this without being arrested. I mean a loud, long fart or a stinky, quiet one. Then act like it was him. I mean some of the social skills from elementary school come to mind at times like these.  I absolutely do not know anyone who would pay my bail.

This bothered me that I would give a dog gone. So I deliberately told myself not to think about him. I was nuts to be stewing over it.

Three days later, someone calls animal control about my dogs being locked in my car. The animal control officer says there is no problem. The car is idling with the air conditioner on. We had gone to the nail salon. My bull dog and my sister's Pomeranian were barking up a storm from the proximity of the handicap space. I think my sister being in a wheelchair helped. I take my bulldog to a lot of places and she is normally quiet and unobserved. She just had her rowdy friend with her.

This is a huge problem with dog hauling. People don't check to see if the car is running. They don't observe a dog who is not in discomfort. An over heated dog is very quiet and in the coolest part of the car which is a floorboard. They aren't in front of the air conditioner vent with 50's-60's country music playing or dancing in the window to bark at you.

Some who make a big issue with you are sincere. But I do think there are plenty who just love that rush from indignation. The only thing new about "holier than thou" attitudes is that we understand the endorphin rush people get from the attitude. Somehow all that results in the topic of anger. I think it is my anger in this case.

A few days later, I was rounding a double lane drive through. This woman steps on the gas and rushes by my car. It was the sort of maneuver that will lead to an accident one day.  As luck would have it, my order went through first and I went in front of her when the lanes merged. I took the time to look at her face through my rear view mirror. She had resting angry face. My initial hehehe, I'm in front of you moved to sometimes people just have rotten days or they really hate to wait.

It is my opinion that rushing about is more a bad habit than anything. I had a co-worker who passed me every morning going to work. She was in the school at her desk before I parked. So some rushing can get you where you need. But I still don't rush through yellow lights etc.

I finished reading The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas and Mark Olshanker. Anger is the root of so many antisocial crimes. So I googled the nature of anger and got a lot of books to help with anger management. Then I googled anger in general and got some information surprisingly from WebMD and the like.

Another day, I returned to check on my brother and help out at his house. He is still in the hospital. I stayed late and got back about midnight. I got up at 5:30 am and did what I do in the morning before we all toured hell that morning.

After leaving the grocery store, we stop at a fast food place that we get carryout for a light lunch. All four cashiers were busy. One opened and a woman behind rushed ahead of me. The same cashier opened so I walked over and she walked off to get a drink of water.

So I am back in line. She then calls me over. I say, I will stay in the line I'm in. That cashier finishes and gets her paper work out to do and ignores me. A third cashier opens so I try to get to him. He calls for the man behind me. The woman doing the paper work realizes I have been waiting. I'm so aggravated. So I say, don't worry about it and leave.

Getting in the car I know I was too demanding in that I had no patience. Long story short, I recognize I am worn out.  What I hate about being inpatient is that is how those people will remember me. They were being the keystone cops of cashiers. But they weren't trying to drive me crazy. I came in that way.

We go to another place we like and I just go through the drive through. You have to give your name at the drive through and the young woman there gets to calling me Miss Annie over and over.

I'm still in a mental rut. I tell her my name is Ann. She is trampling on one of my classroom rules. You do not make personal comments about someone's physical features nor do you alter their name. Nobody likes to hear that their teeth look like mouse teeth even if they do look like mouse teeth.

So I have gone full circle. Why can't I just read the Cliff notes sometimes. I would like to wallow in shallowness, sort of like doing water aerobics in a hot tub.