Month: September 2018

#AccountaClub Friday, September 14, 2018

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accountaclub-woodBoy, am I late today with the #AccoutaClub post, AccountAbles! I swear my reasons are good. I’ve been following the news, and today might prove historic in two different directions. It’s tough to look away from historic.

Which could sum up most of my Getting It Done issues.

So it’s going to be a quick one today, I have much gawking to do.

Editing is getting onto an even keel, I think. Could I have done more? Always. But is the manuscript getting better? I hope so, I guess I’ll find out the next time though. I’m solving some puzzles I have with the story, so I think that’s always a plus.

Workout wise, very solid week. I did the live Daily Burn workouts every morning, though not through any particular effort. My body just woke me up even when I didn’t want to be awake. Too bad, it said, you’re up, might as well do it.

And so I did. I definitely struggled with some of the classes this week, I don’t feel that I crushed it, but I did do it, so there we go.

How about you?

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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Ten Word Story Photo Prompt: Wrecked

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Pictures from  Heritage Snapper and Imageafter.com.

It’s Thursday and time for a new photo and new ten word story! Feel free to post on your blog and drop a link in the comments, or here, if you prefer. Whatever works for you. There were some awesome ones last week, make sure you see the comments to check them out.

 

Using the above photo, write a ten-word short story. Easy, right?

Eh.

Titles are fine, just keep them reasonable.

OK, here’s mine:

Unmoored, the airship drifted upward, reluctantly facing its blue eternity.

Wednesday, but don’t look for wisdom.

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Not only can I not do that, but I can’t even totally figure out how it’s being done. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Sometimes we expect things to be difficult. Some things intrinsically are; editing a book, for an example that is not at all relevant to me in anyway and is entirely hypothetical and stop interrogating me.

And sometimes we expect them to be difficult and they aren’t, like that phone call you’ve been putting off expecting it to take hours, but it’s done in minutes. That’s always fun.

But.

Then there are the things we expect to be easy. And they’re not.

That’s frustrating.

This morning I had that in the form of my workout. I saw the instructor and thought, OK, this shouldn’t be too bad, it will be yoga-ish. Ah, wrong.

It was hard. So hard. Much harder than I expected.

And while I was doing it, I was mad that it was hard. Because for some reason that defies logic, I’d decided it shouldn’t be. Which made it harder.

Workouts are as much a mental challenge as a physical one. Pretty much everything we do in life requires us to get our brains on board, and when we fight it, it just becomes all the more challenging.

Should we assume everything is hard? Should we reserve judgment?

I have no idea. All I know is that my expectations colored my experience. What if I’d gone into the workout expecting it to be at least as challenging as the prior two days?

I guess I’ll never know.

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.

 

Of dreams and not dreams.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

You may be pleased and unsurprised to know I survived the dentist. Well, the hygienist, which is, as I noted to her yesterday, a tougher word to spell. I never quite get it right, but here in the 21st century we have spell check.

Long live spell check.

It’s just one of those things you have to do whether you like it or not, because having teeth is nice.

And last night I went to bed super, super early, got up relatively early today, but got the length of sleep that most people would call “normal,” though I don’t know many who really do get that much sleep. And with that sleep came very intense dreams.

Here’s the the thing about them. I don’t remember what happened at all. Not even a glimpse, really, I only know that when I woke up, I’d been somewhere very far away leading an entirely different existence.

I always find that so strange, how there can be an entire universe that simply vanishes when you open your eyes. No trace of it remaining, but that sense of it being solid lingers.

Very weird.

So I’m venturing into my Tuesday not entirely sure of where I’ve been, only that that place isn’t here, not in any meaningful way, anyhow.

Have an amazing Tuesday.

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.

Monday and Hummingbirds

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I got out for a bit at the Chicago Botanic Garden yesterday, and happened across a slew of flowers. And some of those flowers bobbed and ducked completely independently of any breeze.

There were hummingbirds. Not even sure how many hummingbirds, because they moved so quickly, darting into flowers, resting in the trees for what were seconds for us, probably an eternity for a hummingbird.

And of course I didn’t bring my real camera.  But at least I had my cell phone.

There’s something magical about them, those tiny, tiny birds, hovering. And they made this little noise, someone else watching them compared it to a chipmunk, as they excitedly drank from the flowers.

And I’ll think about those hummingbirds as I take on one of my least favorite tasks, twice a year.

The dentist.

Wish me and my teeth luck.

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, September 7, 2018

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accountaclub-woodIt’s that time again, AccountAbles! Here we are, another Friday, another week in bizarro universe down. Very down.

Extremely down.

But that’s not why we’re here. Today’s the day we talk about how our weeks have gone, and what kind of forward progress we’ve made on our stuff.

I’ve done some editing, but not as much as last week. The weather’s been very gloomy and rainy, and often when it does this it messes with my head, triggering a headache. And when I have headaches, I have problems with words, so not the ideal time for editing.

But some editing. So that’s something.

And the exercise continues! Five days this week, three of them live, even though doing them live wasn’t actually a goal. I was just up and ready, so why not?

So that’s all I have to report this week, nothing earth-shaking, nothing enormous, just one foot in front of the other, even though there were many wobbles.

How about you? How are you doing?

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.

Ten Word Photo Prompt: Solutions

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Photo by Life Of Pix on Pexels.com

It’s Thursday, and ten word story time! Even though I’m pretty consumed with the hearings going on right now, taking a break to do something like this is a great form of mental exercise.

Got to remain flexible in our bodies and our heads.

Judging by my take, though, apparently not too flexible

So, in case you are new here (and then welcome!), using the above photo as a prompt, write a 10-word story. You can have a title if you choose, but don’t go overboard.

OK, here we go.

Final Senator shoved in, she clicked the lock. Problem solved.

Wednesday Wisdom, but not so wise.

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Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Right now, it feels as though the entire universe is reflected in a pane of glass held at angle, so everything is distorted and out of place. I’m having a hard time believing reality is reality.

Don’t worry, it’s not a mental break or anything; I can safely say in this case, the fault lies with reality itself. Things are weird.

And not my kind of weird, either.

I’m resisting throwing a freight train metaphor in here too, because the whole universe in glass and the train are a bit much and then you think broken glass and the whole thing gets messy.

But I have to say that it’s one of those days where it feels like the very fabric of time and space may be torn open, (shattered? perhaps I should have gone train after all) and “one of those days” makes it sound like they happen a lot. And they don’t.

Blogging seems a little trivial.

It’s as though the very first alien spaceship could land right now, and here I’d be, typing a blog post. Aliens could be fun.

Or very, very not.

Also it’s probably not aliens.

Whatever it is, I hope it’s the thing that gets us back to our real timeline, because this one is not great. We can’t even mock it anymore, it’s gotten too out of control, too depressing.

I hope we can count on the aliens.

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.

 

Back to school time, minus the school

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Photo by Porapak Apichodilok on Pexels.com

As I drove up Lake Shore Drive yesterday, toward the top of the Drive where it ends, I looked over to the packed beaches on their final official weekend, and it felt like five minutes ago they officially opened. Summer is a blip.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have summer temperatures, but I’m thinking of sweaters and cute boots, and then cute boots giving way to real boots that have to stand up to a frozen slush I swear no other city makes just the same way. The school supplies are picked over, shiny backpacks nearly as big as their new owners on their way to fulfill their destiny.

Back to school time.

I’m not going back to school, but still the force of it lingers, it grabs us all, students, parents of students, or completely student un-adjacent. Time to buckle down. Time to get serious. Time for new things, new challenges.

Spring is an undeniable start, a clear beginning with new life bursting forth everywhere. But Fall is its own kind of start. An introspective one.

The New Year isn’t the only time we can begin again or choose a new mountain to climb. Pick your peak.

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.

 

It’s Labor Day!

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Copy of YOU ARE SIMPLY THE (2)The day we honor the resilience and fortitude of the Labor Movement. It’s also a day people tend to barbecue for some reason.

It’s a holiday here, so I’ll treat it as such; if you super-duper miss me, click the image above and check out one of my books! They’re like hanging out with me here, but longer.

And weirder.

Mostly weirder.