Unblocking the block

 It's post Thanksgiving, my writer's block has been severe and the only way to get out of it is to TRY to write something.  

Bear with me.

I have been struggling, like the rest of the nation, with the restrictions from Covid, the horrid behavior of ONE of the candidates for the highest office of the land and the actions of those who support him.  it is wearying at the least.  Like most people, I can't do the things that cheer me up and if I see one more holiday commercial where there are random people celebrating together , I am going to lose it.  

I need to read more.  Chris bought me a kindle and I finally figured out how to load it.  I signed up to be a reader for ARCs and some of the books are wonderful and some I struggle to get through.   I TRIED to read a book called "The Warriors" about a lesbian roller derby queen who is also some kind of professor at UCLA.  ummmm.  Turns out the book was number three in the series which sort of explains why they assumed you knew the characters but really it was just badly written.  It jumped from one stupid situation to another, loaded with clichés and misogyny.   It was almost like a thirteen year old boy had written it.  For the record, I think the author has it in for lesbians.  NO One is likeable or even interesting ( let's face it Hannibal Lecter wasn't likeable but he was interesting enough to keep you reading, amIright?)

This time of year, everyone slows down and counts their blessings.  I am trying to do that and come up with a list of small things I am thankful for- other than the obvious.  So, here goes

Space heaters- I have one at my feet in the kitchen and it warms my toes when I am writing.

Quiet mornings

Coffee

a good night's sleep ( I rarely get them these days, so when I do I am thankful)

I will think of more later this week, I hope.  What small thing makes your life better?

Short story

 I Have not written ( or mor accurately I have not shared) a short story in ages.  I am taking an online Master Class and I thought Why not put it here and see if anyone comments.  Short stories are, frankly, not something I have ever done particularly well, but I have been doing a lot of reading and  find myself thinking "hey I could do this" ( It's something I remember my Creative writing teacher Don Wulffson doing with us in class, showing us work and asking if we could do this or better)  So  I present (and hope you enjoy) my short story  "Salsa"  It's probably still a work in progress, but take a look at the draft. Comment, but don't break my heart!

Sally Southerby  took her cup of coffee and sat out on the picnic table on her

patio that looked out over her small garden.   Sally enjoyed the peaceful time

she had in the morning, before going to work. If she were quiet, she would not

wake Ralph at all and her day could be a good one.  Ralph was still asleep,

"recovering" from his nightly  visit to his "watering hole" ( Sally thought of it as

his second job)  She had planted a garden this year, alongside the oleander

hedge, that blocked the neighbors prying eyes and ears from what went on at

the Southerby house.

 

Sometimes, Sally wondered if they heard, but refused to get involved.  Sally

resigned herself to the fact that there was no point in wondering and looked

again at the garden. Yes, everything looked ready to pick and Sally still had a

little time  before she had to go to work.  She would finally make that salsa she

had been creating for so long in her mind.  Today was the day.

 

Sally walked along the oleander hedge that bordered the garden, carefully 

selecting all the items she would need for the special salsa.  Once in her kitchen,

 she worked quickly and quietly and placed the finished  product in a ceramic bowl

her mother had given her when she married Ralph. Her mother had high hopes 

that Ralph would be good to Sally and Sally was glad her mother had not lived 

long enough to see the results  of Sally's bad choice.

 

Sally quietly put on her uniform and went off to the Rattlesnake Cafe, where

she worked from seven to two in the afternoon.  The pay wasn't much, but the

tips were decent and Sally got to see people.  It was better than being trapped

in the house all day.

 

The regular crowd was there and Sally was quickly taking orders for eggs and

omelets and filling coffee cups.  She was joking with Harry and bussing his table

when the sleeve of her uniform slid up to revel the huge  bruise that wrapped

around her wrist.  Quickly she yanked the sleeve back down, but she was fairly

sure Harry had seen it and she knew Jesse the cook  would have caught the

motion and known that Ralph had been Ralph  again.  Jesse had been angry

when he saw the last set of bruises.  He told Sally to get out.  "In my own time"

she assured  him.

Sally stopped at the store on the way home.  Tacos.   Ralph loved her tacos and

would eat at least eight or nine of them in one sitting.  Sally hoped the salsa

would come out the way she dreamed it would.

Ralph came home from the bar at Sally's urging "I'm making tacos" she said

"and I know how much you love them hot."   He had been at the bar long

enough to  have a few under his belt, but not be the blistering angry drunk his

usual night at the place made him.  Sally was pretty sure the bartenders who

made a good wage on Ralph' bar tab  had no idea what the results of their

nightly ministrations meant for Sally.  Ralph was a professional drunk, the life

of the party in public.  It was only behind closed doors that the angry monster

poured out of him.

 

Sally was grateful to see Ralph eat nine tacos and generously spoon the new

salsa into the shell.  "This is some GOOD salsa, Sal" he said more than once. 

Sally smiled back and told him it was a new recipe.

 

Ralph soon staggered off to bed, waving off her reminder to take his heart

medication and  leaving Sally to clean up.  She smiled to herself as she scraped

the rest of the  salsa down the garbage disposal.

 Sally always cleaned the kitchen after dinner was done. She looked out  the

window over her garden at the oleander hedge and smiled.

 Tomorrow was going to be a good day.

Holidays and keeping busy

 Today is a holiday of sorts, Indigenous People's Day.  It used to be Columbus Day but they changed it.  I am sure some of my Italian- American friends are having a stink about it.  They do not tell you what a jerk Columbus was, that he did not "find" North America- he didn't make it this far and it was here all along and how come things are only "found" when white men find them anyway.

Ugh.  Columbus was a jerk.  His crew mutinied for goodness sakes.  He  got lost a lot.  We need to stop worshiping the myth.  

I am home and I am going to get off the computer for  a while.  I have stuff to do.  I have to make my final decisions on the ballot and decide if I am dropping it in the box by the Library or waiting and voting on my day off in person.  I have already decided who I am voting for for the main offices ( big shocker, huh?) but I need to look at the propositions to see which way to vote.  I need down time to do that.

I made granola and granola bars this morning,  It's fairly easy, I just need about an hour uninterrupted to do it.  I might make beer bread in a bit.  it's cooler and fall brings out the baker in me.  I love to make food!

I finished my ARC commitment yesterday and am waiting for another assignment.  So far, four of the five books have been good.  I did not finish, therefore did not review the last book, the Warriors by Glen Lazar Roberts.  Here is my take on it, I only got about 50 pages before I gave up and  I TRIED for three days.  Disjointed, it hops from cliché to cliché with no real purpose.  The lead character is a lesbian Roller derby queen.  I think Mr Roberts has never met an actual lesbian and is working from the vantage point of a junior high school boy.  It's supposed to be Science fiction mixed with satire- ala Christopher Moore.  It missed the mark.  Avoid it ( and if you read it and it tickles you, do let me know what I missed about it.  The fact that the former lover of the lead character was a Sasquatch and she supposedly was a "professor at UCLA" of some stupid thing or another, just made me give up.  It sounded very junior high.  When I was in high school, we wrote a collective story about an alien who came to earth and opened a chain of hamburger stands.  It was better than this.

I am avoiding watching the news and hoping at least two Republicans will grow a pair or get a vagina. I can't stand this.  the election can't come soon enough and I hope the idiot loses, even as they try their best to cheat their way in.  FAKE election boxes?   I hope their people place their ballots there in droves.

sigh.

Banning books and other Sunday musings

 The news about Trump dominates everything.  It's a shame that he is such a con man and a liar ( it's a PROVEN FACT the guy LIES- not misspeaks- LIES) that people think this is another of his misdirections.    I feel bad about questioning his health status, but not too bad.  Time will tell.  The most interesting thing  is all his minions, when announcing their infection status, don't call it the boss's preferred sobriquet, "The China virus"  suddenly, it has become "Covid-19" as if by infecting Trump, it gained real status and is no longer a hoax that will miraculously disappear should they decide to try to postpone the elections.

It's  been a bad week for the Trump camp anyway.  His tax returns show him in hock up to his eyeballs and hemorrhaging money.  No way to sugar coat this.  The returns either show he is a broke and bad businessman, or he filed fraudulent returns- which even for the President of the United States- is a crime.  While his lapdog, Bill Barr won't bring charges, I wonder if the all powerful IRS will.  They should.

It's Banned Books Week, and every year, I look at the list of books and shake my head.  No one should have the right to decide what I read.  If YOU don't like a book, and don't want kids to read it then by all means, forbid your children from cracking it open ( fun fact about kids, they will read a "banned " book quicker than one you recommend)

I keep going back to books and authors whose long ago written works are now getting a modern morés.  Laura Ingalls Wilder got taken down as being a beloved children's author for ACURATELY QUOTING her mother's view on native Americans.  The current take is that we should not expose children to Ma, I suppose.  Was Ma wrong?- well yes of course.  Was it the prevailing thought of settlers?- yes again.  Do we take this opportunity to talk to children about how people felt 150 year ago and how things have changed and why Ma might have said what she said in the first place?  You would THINK so, but instead, now Laura and her family are OFF the list of books to read and Laura herself is being disparaged.  Put what you don't agree with in a box, never again to see the light of day.  

It reminds me of the story of Sleeping Beauty.  Cursed at her christening that on her 16th birthday, she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die ( which was later amended by a fairy to fall into a hundred year sleep) He parents overreacted.  Instead of TEACHING her that the darn thing might be dangerous to her, they hid ALL of the spinning wheels in the kingdom ( how anyone got clothes made in that place is another thing to ponder, but I digress) so when she was confronted with one- or a roomful of them depending on which version you read- she touches it and , well, the rest is history. ( the original story of Sleeping Beauty, written by Basile of Naples is far more horrible and the Grimm Brothers Fairy tales in the original also would have wound up on the Banned Books lists)

Banning books and putting out false news narratives do not "protect" us.  Instead, they make us skeptical of anything coming from a certain source and while questioning is the best way to learn, having to challenge EVERYTHING is exhausting.

This year needs to be over

 Geez.

When I was a teenage girl, I used to go body surfing.  Every summer my friends and I would don our bikinis and hit the water.  Body surfing was fun.  We would time, catch and ride the waves, surfing without equipment.  I remember hanging out in pods of fellow enthusiasts, waiting to catch the swells.  We would talk about the sets, how the waves were coming- usually in threes- but sometimes fives.  We would time them together and take off on a glorious ride.

Until one summer.

For some reason the tides were strong or my timing was off but in the middle of the day i got SLAMMED by the first wave, pushing me down to the ocean floor.  I remember remembering not to struggle but to relax until I felt the wave pass over me so I could rise to the surface.  Unfortunately, there was another wave behind it and I repeated the cycle.  I came up the third time and motioned to my buddy to get me to shore,  She grabbed my wrist and dragged me out.  

I stopped surfing that summer and have never really found the joy in body surfing, although I have been back in the water at least once since then.

This year is kind of like those waves.  Every time We surface, another one slams into us.  ENOUGH already.

This afternoon, I learned that a long time friend had died.  Trina was a friend from High School and we reconnected via Facebook.  She was always posting something political or photo-memes of a dog named ( I think) Norbert.  She had a marvelous sense of humor and a great heart.  She also had Diabetes.  We can't even gather together in her memory, to hug each other tight and honor who she was in our lives.  F-YOU Pandemic.

We keep saying we need to be done with 2020, but the yearend is not like some journey that finishes just because of the tick of the clock or the flip of a calendar page, even if we wanted it to be.   I think of this year as if Fate is having a ginormous yard sale and every horrid thing she has is being flung on the lawn.  I hope that her garage of awful is empty soon and we can get on to better things.

Hug your friends, even if it's virtual. If you are reading this, consider yourself hugged. 

Hässlich

 I was thinking about how hateful the world has become.  How anger and violence have become the norm in my country.  It has somehow become acceptable to scream invectives, to name-call, to belittle in order to get your way.

It's like Biff from Back to the Future is in charge of things.

It's funny, I have been trying to remember my German, after forty plus years of being away from any formal schooling in the language.  MY father and I spoke it with each other- he had learned  a bit in his teens working in a place in upstate New York at a place called the Dutch Mill.  The owner was German, but Germans were not acceptable after World War One, so they all became "Dutch" ( the Amish were Pennsylvania  Dutch for instance)  I thought of the word for "ugly" this morning for no particular reason except for its literal translation.  Hässlich means hate-like  To be considered ugly , you must have hate in your heart.

Peaceful protests are being taken over by those whose agenda is contrary to the mission of the protest and what begins in a lawful assembly can de-evolve to a riot in the blink of an eye.  The problem is exacerbated when the President cheers on those who are creating mayhem and branding those people who are protesting for a change in policy as somehow being fascists ( look up "fascist" to see the irony of that statement)  Antifa is literally anyone who is anti FASCIST, so all your World War II dads and grand dads are now on the WRONG side of Trump-ism.

Back to my original thought.  Hate makes you ugly.  Hate grows around your heart and makes you a bitter person.  We need to get back to where we can listen thoughtfully to all sides of an argument and move forward as one.  

Faith- and I will probably offend someone here

 My husband and I had an online argument with  a "distant " relative ( to be precise she is related to his half-brother on his mother's side and since they share a father, I wonder if you can even count that)  She thinks Trump was sent by God himself and got all up in our faces about her faith and her "personal relationship with Jesus Christ"  Ok. 

The thing I find about most hard-core evangelicals is that when they are LOSING an argument, they drag Jesus into it, as if he is some sort of Deus ex Machina to end any discussion, as if accusing someone of being Godless is some kind of victory lap.  I went to Sunday School and can quote  ( or look up) Scripture with the best of them.  When I threw a few NEW Testament verses at her, she went all Old Testament on me. She went off on me about "Fearing God". Why the HECK would I fear God?  I read somewhere that a Hebrew word meaning ' respect" was poorly translated and the word "Fear" was used instead.  Some religions try to scare you into faith ( much like the current "platform" of the Republican Party, but I digress)  I gave her tit for tat and she blocked us.  Probably better that way.

 My question to Trump supporters- and it's a REAL question is- WHAT is Christlike about Trump?  You know Jesus helped the poor, stood for the downtrodden, tried to unite us all in loving one another.  He wasn't motivated to accumulate wealth.

I doubt he had a junior high style nickname for Pontius Pilate.  

These days, I am remembering why I stopped going to church.  It was the parishioners that drove me away. I saw their judgmental behavior, gossiping about someone's clothes or their lives in hand-rubbing glee that turned me away from belonging to any particular denomination.  I still consider myself to be a Christian, but the people who are waving their Bibles in the air and proclaiming Trump as God's chosen are exactly the kind of people who drove me from a faith community.

The people of faith I most admire are those who "walk in faith"  they don't just pay it lip service but really behave  day-to-day- in a way that speaks well of their faith- whatever it may be.  My dad used to say people would "Go to Church on Sunday and to Hell on Monday"  meaning the minute they walked out the church door the sermon was forgotten.

He was right in the case of the church I attended and a few years after I left it, the Church closed. They sold the building to another church of a different denomination, folded their tents and left town.

Still, I have a good Biblical education, although they did choose what to teach and what not to teach from the Bible.  There are so many horrific stories of rape and violence in the Bible, probably not suitable for elementary school kids to hear about..  I have no desire to try to read it cover to cover.  It's a hard thing to do and it takes a commitment I do not have at this stage of the game.