Month: June 2018

#AccountaClub Friday and #JUkNOWUCanDoIt! June 29, 2018

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So here we are at the end of #JUkNOWUCanDoIt! and to be honest, this month, I simply couldn’t. Reeling from the news I couldn’t even gather my thoughts to write about it yesterday. But #AccountaClub goes stalwartly onward, as it will be a regular feature.

Some weeks work; some weeks won’t.

My editing has stalled. I will get back to it, no question, but right now I needed to get away from the computer, which, these days, is away from words.

I did get onto a project I’d been putting off, painting two nightstands I use as coffee tables. They are/were a hideous, hideous dark wood, and they have every kind of trim you can imagine. I picked them up years ago in a thrift shop for about $5 each with the intention of painting them something bright.

Well, I finally got one painted, one to go. It came out really well; it’s a sunny sky blue and the paint has a nice even finish.

That’s something.

Thanks to Donna B. McNicol for her hosting of #JUkNOWuCanDoIt! and the extra hits of motivation this month!

How about you? How’s it all going?

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

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Coffee Catastrophe. Catastrocoffe

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By ŇÄĵŵÅ Ă. Мǻŗǻƒįę from KUWAIT (Nothing more than a tea) [CC BY-SA 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons. Yes it’s tea. But accurate. Ish. Whatever.

OK, so this was entirely, completely and utterly my fault. No one else is responsible.

Just me.

I was putting together my breakfast–yogurt with nuts, some figs and raspberries on the side, and of, course, coffee–when I heard the coffee maker stutter and gasp. Sometimes it does this, gets all dramatic, but I don’t pay attention because that’s what it wants me to do.

Anyway, it seems a lot more puffy and huffy than usual, so I look over and notice…there’s no water going into the cup.

And THEN I subtly perceive there is coffee-colored water everywhere, all over the counter, heading under the microwave, cascading to the floor. Everywhere.

I think back to a moment of “huh” while I was making the coffee, when I slid the cone-filter holder into place and it didn’t quite “click.” And realization struck.

I put the cover for the basket, the one with a hole to direct the water into the cone filter, on backwards.

Back. Wards.

So the water just ran over and out.

I told you it was my fault. So I had to clean it up, all that runny, runny coffee-colored water, which I discovered wasn’t actually my coffee as the grounds were dry as a bone and ready to go.

So upside, I guess?

That’s my morning. How about you?

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here. New pieces on Thursdays.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Ten Word Photo Prompt: Sepia

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By special request, we’re doing another ten word story from a photo prompt! Feel free to post yours in the comments, using the photo above (from this random picture generator) as inspiration.

This was actually the very first image generated, I thought it was pretty inspiring.

OK, mine, which is untitled:

Death waited patiently, unseen. But they’d know that soon enough.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here. New pieces on Thursdays.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

I’ve nothing to say, so buy my books

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By FotoDawg (originally posted to Flickr as Baby Turtle) [CC BY 2.0 ] via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve got nothing to say today, really. As a person who went through law school enthralled by the Constitution and with faith in the wisdom and impartiality of the Supreme Court, today is one of the darkest in American history.

So far.

Cheer me up, buy my books, read my books, and enjoy my books, let me know you enjoyed them.

We’ll chat again.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Fascism/life balance

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Well. So here we are. Children are still separated from their parents and now used as bargaining chips; if the parents drop their bids for asylum, they’re told, they can have their children back.

Of course I wouldn’t trust this regime on either front.

So now comes the question. How does one resume life while under the thumb of fascism? It happens all over the world, though in those countries, they are, unfortunately used to it.

I don’t ever want to be “used to it.”

Art, of course, is protest, and I suppose that too can be a means to resume work. I don’t know.

I’ve never lived through a regime that rips parents from children for reasons still unclear and uses them as hostages. At least not in this lifetime.

Meanwhile, life has not stopped, it does not stop, and that is another thing. So I’m trying to find that elusive fascism/life balance, and we’re back to normalizing.

How are you coping?

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

#AccountaClub Friday and #JUkNOWuCanDoIt! June 22, 2018

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Well, it’s that time again, our regular #AccountaClub Friday here and week 3 of #JUkNOWuCanDoIt!, the carry-on from #MAYkingItWork over at Donna McNicol’s blog. I don’t see her update posted yet, but it’s been a tough week for everyone, and hopefully she’s doing well.

So, if you don’t know, Fridays we gather to talk about how our work is going, whatever work that may be. I’ve been editing a manuscript; if you’ve been here at all this week, you probably can guess, given what is happening in the US right now, my attention was…elsewhere.

I did manage my political column, so at least there’s that, but that’s not a surprise, of course, in the context of the above.

How about you? How did it go? And if it’s “badly,” as did mine, that’s fine too.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Still not bloggy, but…

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“A person holding up their tattooed arms in front of their face” by Drew Hays on Unsplash

I did put up my political column this morning, if you feel like a bit of my voice, though it’s not one our usual topics over here. Here’s a taste; click the link at the end if you’d like to continue.

We will have #AccountaClub and #JUkNOWuCanDoIt tomorrow, emotionally rain or shine.

I know. I want to make it all go away too.

Right about now, I don’t want to talk about politics. Right about now, I don’t want to talk about children flippantly separated from their parents, taken without proper process and apparently with no intention of return.

Right about now I want to crawl into a cozy cave lined with magically-no-calorie cakes and sweets and fluffy fluffy television and a unicorn to help me pick the shows.

CONTINUE READING

I can’t think about anything else.

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By Beth (https://www.flickr.com/photos/laundry/4949030346/) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I am consumed with parents torn from children, children torn from parents, babies in cages with other babies; babies in cages alone.

There are no lighthearted posts about writing and minutia and breezes and sun in me right now.

All I can think about:  children in tents in 104 degree temperatures.

Children officials say will likely never see their parents again.

This used to be America.

It’s not anymore.

And think of the cost of doing this, of separating families. Of the infrastructure. What is the purpose aside from abject cruelty?

If you have Republican reps, demand they join in Sen. Feinstein’s bill to end family separation. Republicans have said a lot of words but haven’t done anything.

And don’t be fooled by Cruz’s bill; it’s actually intended to bring harsher conditions to immigrants and finance trump’s wall.

Protest marches against child concentration camps info

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As promised, here is the information for the marches in protest of the childen’s concentration camps. How this isn’t the only thing everyone is focusing on I just don’t know.

These children will have lasting trauma from what this regime is inflicting.

Participate. Contact your representatives. Don’t be fooled if your Republican reps are talking about how bad it is; until they actually sign Sen. Feinstein’s Keeping Families Together Act, it’s nothing but noise.

 

Children’s concentration camps are here. WAKE. UP.

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Look, there are children in concentration camps. We’ve only seen pictures of the boys; we don’t know where the girls are. ICE wants to destroy records of deaths, assaults and sexual assaults.

Kids will be placed in tents in Texas, where summer temperatures routinely reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit. To say nothing is to be complicit.

Children reportedly sit on benches staring straight ahead. They get only 2 hours of recreational time. They are not permitted to hug their siblings; no adults are permitted to soothe crying children.

This is an atrocity. This is not political; this is humanitarian.

Children. Are. In. Concentration. Camps.

Republicans could end this practice at any time. The White House could end it with a phone call. But it is deliberate. They know. They want this.

Please call your representatives, especially if they are Republicans. Children will die in those tent cities. Adults died when Joe Arpaio put them in tents in Arizona. Children will die.

I’m hearing rumblings of nationwide marches; I’ll post details here when I know more.