#MondayThoughts: Forward motion

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Welp, that’s my coffee gone. It might be a day for a second cup.

We’ll see.

It’s another day that seems both sunny and potentially rainy, and Chicago is nothing if not moody. But these days, aren’t we all.

It was wildly hot for the end of May last week, and I suspect we’re in for one of those summers that makes you forget winter’s utter absence of warmth. On Saturday, everyone was out, absolutely everyone, and you could see that each person put thought into what they wore, this first taste of summer with the pandemic seemingly starting to retreat.

Seemingly.

I still am confused by the CDC, but that’s a whole other post.

And inspired, I ordered a whole plethora of clothes to see me through the swelter, on a sale that where the total was less than half of what it would have been. I chose whatever struck my fancy, the total so low I didn’t need to edit my cart by the end, and each item felt like a little ticket to a future that was different than last year.

I hope I like them when they get here, whenever that may be. I am opposed to spending money on shipping when I can avoid it, which means my shipping method is rarely fast.

Anticipating is half the fun.

Have a great Monday.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

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#MondayThoughts: Not the easy way…

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about doing things you don’t want to do. Sometimes you have to do them, they are the annoying cobblestones of life. But not always.

How do we know what will make us better if we just push through, and what is akin to punishment?

No idea.

This morning, Daily Burn had one of my new favorite trainers, he’s fantastic, his workouts are great. But it was Tabata.

I hate Tabata.

And so I gave myself permission to do something else. It was still challenging, I still got my heart rate way up, but I didn’t hate it. I enjoyed it.

And somehow that felt like cheating.

Could I have pushed through the Tabata? I’m sure that I could have, and maybe I would have felt all the better for it.

Or.

Maybe I would have felt awful afterward instead of the energized I did feel.

Still going back and forth, as you can see. But maybe we can think about like this: it’s not taking the easy way, it’s taking a different way.

Either way, that’s it for me. Have a great Monday.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: Cheerleader or saboteur

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Do you ever get the idea to do something, get inspired to do it, and then have that little critical voice chip away at the plan, chunk by chunk, until you figure, eh, it’s not worth the effort?

Of course you have.

Unless you’re a unique kind of creature who also probably wingsuits off mountains and teaches salsa dancing to grizzly bears or something.

Give me a break, my exampler hasn’t yet become fully caffeinated.

We all have those moments when we can either don the Team Us! uniform or slouch in the bleachers in our decades-stained and threadbare “why bother” t-shirt, waiting to throw a sardonic look at anyone who glances in our direction. I agree, even putting on the Team Us! uniform can sound like a lot these days.

But.

As someone who is not me once said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Which apparently can be traced back to Chaucer, and not, as it sounds, like a pyramid scheme hustler seeking investors.

If you don’t try, you’ve already failed, also said by someone who is not me, allegedly J.D. Barker but I have some suspicions he wasn’t the first to string those words together.

But I digress.

Your effort is your own to use as wish. And maybe some things aren’t worth it.

But the question remains.

What if they are?

Have a great Monday.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: Some light is getting through.

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Well somehow it’s May. It’s also gray and rainy today, though not gloomy somehow. So that’s interesting.

Maybe interesting is too strong a word.

As of today, I am fully vaccinated. I may go more places but overall, it’s not going to change my habits that much, I’m still going to mask up. And there are reports that due to people who buy in to Republican lies–Republicans who, themselves, I’m sure, did not hesitate to vaccinate, I might add–the US may never achieve herd immunity.

What a mess.

I will never escape the thought that this was done by trump and Republicans deliberately, given that trump did the opposite of very pandemic containment protocol from the very beginning, and admitted he knew it was deadly, also from the beginning. And now we’ve had 577,000 deaths.

So depressing.

The number does seem to have slowed, finally, with President Biden in charge, now there to clean up the incredible, devastating messes of the past four years.

Wow, the weather may not be gloomy but I’m certainly making up for it. Oh well, Monday thoughts are Monday thoughts, and they’re not always fun ones.

Anyway that’s it for me today. Have a great Monday.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: there’s an “outside?”

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Our chat will be brief today, as I have things to do and they’re not in here. Shocking, isn’t it? That some things need the broader world?

It’s been an odd year.

I think it’s raining, and if it’s not raining now it will be soon. Which always adds a level to traversing the city but hey, who doesn’t want to level up?

Basically everybody.

It’s definitely Monday on this stalwart march through April, the days stacking like fallen dominoes. Like someone painted reality with a blur brush.

Not a fan of the effect.

And that’s it for me today, like I said, brief. Have a wonderful Monday.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: And we’re off

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It’s cold today, 9 degrees Fahrenheit cold, and it’s snowing in a lazy, unhurried way. Everything is a shade of gray, the ground, the roads, the trees, the sky.

Glad I don’t have to be outside.

Today is a reheated coffee morning, and even so, it’s lukewarm again. I have no idea how long I let it sit, I may give it another burst but I doubt it will improve things.

We’re back on impeachment this week, and hopefully we will see the end of the trump era, with the door closed on him forever. That’s the goal, anyway. A Republican Congressman died of COVID, I wonder if the death of their colleague will shake them out of this fugue state.

Doubtful.

It seems like we’re finally settling into this new era of calmer, untensing from disaster after disaster. Sure shocking news will continue to break about what happened while trump usurped the White House, but there is, at least, a finite point to it, a period at the end of that sentence.

And that’s where my mind is this Monday. I hope you have a good and productive one.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: Well, well, well.

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What a difference a weekend and a called race can make. President-elect Biden, Vice President Elect Harris, the first Black VP, the first South Asian VP and the first woman as VP and she’s ALL THE SAME PERSON. This is a great moment.

Of course the geriatric toddler is very very mad, and is certain he was wronged so of obviously he spent the weekend golfing as one does when one undertakes a project. This cannot end soon enough.

I appreciate all the global support, you have no idea how very much. Meanwhile it will be a rocky transition, but come January 20, trump is gone, no matter how he tries to make it not so.

It will be so great to have that feeling of stability back, a feeling, I hope, will permeate the planet and the US becomes, once again, the US.

So that’s me on this post-election Monday. Have a great day and a wonderful start to your week.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: Already Frustrated

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Sometimes you have to wonder if people are genuinely wanting to solve problems, or if they just want to stir up the mud.

There are far more mud stirrers than you would think. Or at least than I would think. Sometimes I hate this place.

This place being Earth.

It’s a rough way to start out a week, angry and annoyed, but that’s pretty much the base emotion these days, everything piles on top of angry and annoyed.

At least they are emotions that can be channeled for writing.

Speaking of writing, I don’t think I’ve mentioned my writing for Rantt Media on my blog. It’s political, some of it nuts-and-bolts, some of it more toward analysis.

Here are my articles, if you’re interested, and I’ll be adding a link in the sidebar. I suppose I could have done that with more fanfare.

Hmm.

It’s the annoyedness again.

Anyway, I’m off to do…stuff. Have a great, productive Monday in which you manage to channel your frustration.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.

#MondayThoughts: Let’s Monday up this joint or the Legacy of Dr. King

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And by joint I mean slang from early last century, not the marijuana kind, even though that would be perfectly legal here in Illinois. Not my thing but you do you. With the blessing of the Illinois state legislature.

Well, that’s a tangent I didn’t expect to take this morning. No, here on this particular Monday, on this day of remembering the great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,. I am raring to go.

Because here’s the thing. When he started, he had so much further to go than we have to go. When he started, the people before him had even further to go. And the people before that came here in chains, against their will, eventually to be decreed 3/5ths of a person.

Just think about that.

But here we are in a future full of robots who can vacuum your floor and cars wanting to drive themselves and more information within our grasp than any human could conceive. We can speak and be heard.

Dr. King’s legacy isn’t just the remarkable things he did. His legacy lies in what he showed us we could do.

And with that thought, I feel renewed to face the wilds ahead. These are tough times, but there have been tough times before. Oppression’s win is in our resignation to it.

We will not be resigned.

#MondayThoughts: Sigh

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So here we are back at Monday again. This weekend I spent a lot of time being scolded in response to a tweet. The nice thing about twitter, though, is you can just make those people disappear.

Poof.

No worries, I was scolded unjustly as there is nothing people enjoy more than blaming a woman for the faults of men, in this case the Speaker of the House while pretending the turtlely Senate Majority Leader is as innocent as a brand-new hatchling.

In case you were worried.

Nonetheless, here I am on Monday feeling the full Mondayness of it all, and more than a little nonplussed. Which is probably the point, I’d guess at least two-thirds of the scolders were fake accounts.

Social media is so strange. It’s an entirely made-up world, and you have no idea if the people in it are even remotely real. Meanwhile it’s sunny and perfect outside, and there’s no question that that is real.

So that is me on this Monday. I hope you have a great one.


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 quick and weird and FREE!
Peruse Montraps Publishing
See what I’m writing on Medium.