Memorial Day...

They traced their family history back to the Revolutionary War. Fighting to have control over their own lands. A rebellion against taxes. A colorful family history, if the colors were Red, White and Blue. They were a Star Spangled bunch. Generation after generation enlisting in the armed services. They had them all. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force even a cousin in the Coast Guard who the rest of them teased.

Many had enlisted. They had a generation that had been drafted as well. Many who came home from wars came home wrong. Not complete. Physically or mentally.  Even those that served in times of peace changed while they were serving. Trying to explain to families that did not have the tradition of service was impossible. They didn't understand why you would do a hard, dangerous, job for very little money. They were looked down on as probably not very smart.

Then 9/11 happened. Suddenly everyone was supporting the troops. Suddenly everyone understood how important service to the country was. Not enough to join, but they understood. It was still the same families with the history of service that carried the load. And the families without other options. Join the military, see the world. Or at least a small corner of it. See things that cannot be unseen.

If they were in uniform they were thanked. If someone asked about their time in the military they were thanked. They got discounts at the movies. A free piece of pie on Veteran's Day from the local bakery. They all laughed about it. Basic training was totally worth it just to get that piece of pie. A year in Afghanistan was cleared away because of the $2 discount to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. BUT only if you had your active duty ID, let's not get crazy.

Let's not get crazy.

It was still the Star Spangled Families that carried the burden.
It was still the families with no other options that filled the ranks.
It was still the gold plated tin stars in Washington who decided where to send them.
Places they themselves would only go with a full military escort in and out as fast as they could. Shake some hands. Nod their heads. Hide behind their helmets and flak jackets. So grateful to the Troops. Now get me back to Washington where I can show this video and call myself a true patriot.

But they tried not to be bitter about it. They understood that it is through the blood of patriots that the tree....however the fuck that saying goes.

Why were the ones sending them to die trying to claim the mantel of patriot while they were just boots on the ground? Just the troops. Thank you for your service.

For your sacrifice.

Star Spangled Gold Star Families.

But they traced their family back to the Revolutionary War. They understood. They served.

They died.

Memorial Day.

Thank you for your service...

Viewpoints and Perspective...

I've said it before and I will say it again. If you don't want me to call you a racist or a bigot or a homophobic asshole then don't say or do racist, bigoted, homophobic things. That seems really simple right? But you would be surprised the push back I get when I say such things.

Yesterday I posted as my status: "Here's an idea... if we aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead how about you not be an asshole while you are alive?" Same vein of thinking. The first comment was from someone wanting to know who I was thinking of. Well..anyone who is still alive who doesn't want to be spoken ill of. He didn't believe me and wanted a specific person. Well, pick someone who is dead and you think was an asshole and use them if you need a specific person to be able to understand what I am saying. You wouldn't think don't be an asshole would get push back, seems simple to me, but okay.

Reading an article last week about the removal of the confederate statues in New Orleans and got a heaping dose of rationalizing for the thank god they lost cause. And in the midst of that was the story of one guy who was talking about one of his best friends being African American, but he wasn't like the rest, he was a really good guy. Ummm...what?

The "on this day posts" in my feed this week have had gay marriage and the Boy Scouts of America being issues in previous years. And I saw the remnants of a conversation with someone who has since been tossed off my list where they did they "not like other gay people" thing. You know, they loved their gay friend because they weren't like other gays. Hush. And oh yeah, go away.

I have friends who are Muslim. When attacks happen like the one in Manchester yesterday, and ISIS takes credit for it I always feel horribly for my Muslim friends. Because they deal with it on two levels. First off the level that all of us do. It's horrific. It's impossible to understand. It's heartbreaking. And then they get the bonus level of judgement from people who, though they want to point out that their Muslim friends aren't like this, believe that Muslims are awful and violent by nature. Or they get told they have to HAVE to speak out against these crimes as if they somehow have something to do with them. I don't have to apologize for every American's crime, or agnostic's crime, or white person's crime, or woman's crime or people in their 40's crime but my Muslim friends? They get demands put on them that they are somehow at least tangentially responsible for over a billion other people because they share the same faith.

It's a perspective thing I think. Instead of saying your Muslim friends aren't like those other guys, how about realizing those guys aren't like your Muslim friends? It's a subtle shift but it makes all the difference in the world.

I'm a left leaning independent. I have my reasons why I will never be a democrat and why I will never again be a republican. I boycott businesses that do things I don't agree with. I post my social and political beliefs quite freely. I don't go to protest marches because I don't like crowds, but I support my friends who do protest and I do support those who peacefully walk out of commencement speeches and I do believe that protests and boycotts can initiate change. I don't support Antifa. I don't support the people who riot. But guess what? It's not that I'm not like those guys, it's that those guys aren't like me, or the people like me.

The majority of people are good people. No matter, religion, color, sexual preference, country of origin, income level, pick your judgment. Most people are good people. Instead of saying you aren't like those other guys, say those other guys aren't like you. The aberration is the extremist. The norm is the majority.

It really shouldn't be this complicated.

But it looks like it is. It looks like the assholes are winning. I get that. I feel that. I see that reflected in the news, in the reporting, in the way people interact with each other. My temper is shorter than it used to be. My patience is thinner. My quick to judgment button seems always half way depressed. But I'm not like those other people, so I'm going to make more of an effort to change. What is the Ghandi quote? Be the change you want to see in the world. Close enough.

Don't let yourself succumb to being an asshole. Try to leave the world such that people don't speak ill of you, and if they did, nobody would believe them. Make sure you are one of the norm and not like those other guys.

Because they are assholes.

Magic...

Ever since she was a little girl she had wanted to be magic.

When she was little she watched old Bewitched re-runs and she practiced wiggling her nose for hours. She tried to be like I Dream of Jeanie and crossed her arms and nodded her head so much it gave her a headache. Any stray stick she saw was picked up and given a twirl just in case it was her magic wand.

It didn't stop as she aged.

She took a music class in middle school and they got to try out all of the instruments. When it was her turn with the drums the first thing she did with the drumstick was give it a practice wave. When she took her turn on the flute she imagined charming snakes to her will. The music teacher ended up giving her a tambourine because she was so distracted.

In high school she met a girl who said she practiced Wicca. Then she promptly insulted the same girl by getting angry that it wasn't actual witchcraft like in the books. She read about voodoo and old curses and evil eyes and on and on and on. None of it was what she was looking for. None of it made her magic.

In college she studied psychology and sociology. She learned about why people believe in magic and curses. Knowing that it was a search for order in a chaotic world did not stop her from wishing she was magic.

She read Harry Potter and dreamed of her long lost letter. She still tried to use the force to bring the TV remote closer. She couldn't resist waving her hand with a flourish in front of automatic doors or pausing and saying a small "spell" before activating the moving sidewalks in the airport.

She knew she wasn't magic. Not really. But she still wished that she was.

When he watched her staring at the remote, concentrating, he knew she was trying to use the Force to bring it closer and he sometimes tried to tip the table just a bit so it would slide closer. He always paused before stepping in front of the motion sensor to let her open the door her way. He never got on the moving sidewalk before she had activated it. He waited for her, he smiled at her quirks, he bought her wands, but mostly he loved her.

Because she was magic.

Crazy world...

Ahh!! Now that I've set a goal for blog posts for the year I am already behind! But it's crazy right now.

I mean the world is crazy.

How do you even encapsulate our current political situation in a blog? In the past two weeks (maybe less actually, there is so much it's hard to keep up) there have been firings, accusations, memos, hiring, secrets shared, secrets denied, then admitted to but totally justified, a press secretary hiding in the bushes which then had to be corrected to hiding AMONG the bushes, Roger Ailes died, I am sure someone somewhere is working really hard to tie that to the Clintons as we speak...*gasp*

It's crazy.

Now I have to be honest. I still don't think we are going to see an impeachment out of this. I could be wrong, I've been wrong about everything where Trump is concerned, but I think unless and until Congress switches from a Republican to a Democrat majority he will skate on by. There is also the possibility that he didn't do anything wrong. It really could be true. But he's so bad at not being the center of attention that he just makes it LOOK like he's done something horrible. I really don't know. At least now with the special counsel we might actually find out what happened. Wouldn't that be a treat?

Though, come on, we all know that won't matter either. Look at the sheer number of Benghazi hearings. And the email investigation. And there are still people chanting lock her up. This is going to go the same way. If Mueller doesn't find anything untoward the Right will say, SEE?? and the Left will trot out the conspiracy theories. If Mueller finds something the Left will say SEE?? and the Right will trot out the conspiracy theories. It's the way it goes now. Though with the Right we will know that the conspiracy starts with the Clintons so we've got a head start on that one.

And I honestly don't know how we get out of this sort of cycle. The 60s were like this right? The Right and the Left just couldn't see eye to eye at all. But then it sort of quieted down. I know for a long time in my life being able to work across the aisle was seen as a good thing. Bipartisan was a good thing for a bill to be not a bad one. Compromise was what you aimed for. That's not the way it works anymore. Now if you give in you are a traitor. If you budge you have failed the Resistance.

Glenn Beck apologized for his part in creating this rift. Did you see that? He went on shows and said how sorry he was. How he realized he helped create this great divide that got Trump elected and got all of us to hate all of them. And then this week he hired Bill O'Reilly. Hunh. Well I see how you are sorry...

The world keeps spinning.

And because of this my phone is constantly buzzing with breaking news. I'm a little worried every morning to see what has happened over night. Is it just a twitter bomb or did he actually drop a real one? Are we another second closer to midnight?

And with all of that we keep going.

And I keep checking off blogs closer to my goal. This counts.

But what I really want to do is have a break. Have the president act presidential. Have the investigations be completed and let us know what happened and who was shady. And, again, come one, we all know Flynn was shady as fuck. But let's take care of it. Let's move on. Let's try and be good people who want the best for each other. I want so badly to feel good about the majority of us again. I'm an optimist at heart. I'm a joyful, happy person at my core. But, damn, the world has been harshing my gig lately.

If he was wrong I want people to be ready to accept it.
If he wasn't I want the strength of character to accept it.
But mostly I just want it all sorted out.

It doesn't seem like too much to want.

Smells Like Sunk Cost...

Okay, I was going to say that could be the weirdest title for a piece I've ever written but we both know that's probably not true...

This morning I finally got around to cleaning out my spice rack. I say finally because I've been putting it off for ages. It's one of those things that I would look at the jars and cans of spices and think, I really need to sort these. Then I would remember how much that little jar of spice cost and close the cabinet. But the thing with spices is that it doesn't matter how much you paid for it, eventually it will stop being, well, spicy. It's just a jar of faded herbs with no real flavor, or worse, a bitter nasty flavor. But so expensive...

So this morning as I was cooking breakfast I took all of my spices out and put them on the counter. No closing the door and ignoring them this time. And really how bad could it be? I'm sure most of them are fine, right?

Started with the basic sniff test. Does it still smell like the spice it's supposed to be? And as I was opening and smelling I saw that some of them did have dates on the jars. Well that's a handy marker as to when I bought them, and holy crap was it really that long ago? Well that explains why the dark green it should be is more of a suggestion of green now...

I ended up dumping about 2/3 of the spices I had. The ones I kept are for the most part almost empty, obviously the ones I used most frequently are the ones that are freshest. Now I need to keep in mind when I go to make something that I probably don't have that spice after all and should look at buying it. Just a very small jar of it, if I can. There is a spice aisle now in the grocery store where you can buy your spices in bulk, or not bulk as the case may be. Need a pinch? Buy a few pinches instead of a giant jar. Or a trip downtown to Penzey's might be a good Saturday addition to our week. Still not cheap, but much less waste for sure.

Which is still what made it a hard morning. Looking at all of those jars and bottles and cans lined up on the counter I could hear the ching ching ching adding up in my head. That's a lot of wasted money. The few teaspoons that were missing out of a few of them made me cringe. Obviously the recipe wasn't good enough to repeat and there wasn't something else that needed that spice in my treasure trove. So a lot of them were dumped in to the trash. Glass bottles and metal cans put in to the recycling. The rest just tossed.

Salt, pepper, chile powder, cumin, garlic, onion, cinnamon, oregano, basil...these are the ones that I use over and over again. Marjoram? It was opened, but I'm not sure there was anything missing. Old Bay? I know there are people that swear by it, but what did I use it for again? Dried rosemary? Much easier than fresh for sure, but apparently I rarely make that easy choice. And on and on. Just tossed. Ching, ching, ching...

Sunk cost. We get so attached to things because of the money we have already put in to them. I bought those seasonings so I need to keep them. For years. Never mind that I didn't  use them. I paid for them so they must be worth something. Same thing happens when we are clearing out other areas of our houses. I can't possibly just get rid of that chair. I spent so much for it, I will sell it and get back at least half of my cost. Then you find out that the real market value of that chair is not $100 but more like $20. So you get insulted and decide to keep it. You cannot possibly afford to get rid of it for that little. It's worth much more than that!

No, you can get rid of it. And you should. I stopped trying to profitably sell most things ages ago. Now if it's a big ticket item I will sometimes try to sell it for a little bit, just enough that people don't think it's trash but little enough that it goes very quickly. It's better for me that someone comes and gets it than if I have to pay to have it hauled away. I've done the FREE! thing as well. You can have it if you come get it, I'm done with it and it's just taking up space.

I'm in the process right now of paring down in the house. The level of stuff has crept up again so it's time to clear it out. I like things a little sparse. It makes me feel better to see space on shelves instead of crammed edge to edge with things. But that doesn't mean I don't have a lot of things. I recently found a box of collectibles that had been put away for 15 years. They made me happy when I saw them so I put them back out. Now I'm trying to decide if they make me happy enough to keep out. And that's the test for me. Does this thing make me happy? I have some odd collectibles. Things that other people might think, what the hell? But they pass the joy test. The things that don't pass the joy test anymore? Those are going away.

Which is harder than you think. Because I have some things that USED to pass the joy test with flying colors. They made me very happy. But that was a few decades ago and my tastes have changed. Or they have gotten beaten up so much in our many moves that they aren't so joyful anymore. But I look at them and I hear the echos of the 20 year old me when I first got that Talbot print and I felt very grown up to actually have it framed instead of stuck to the wall with tape. The memory makes me smile. The actual print now, well, I look at it and think, ehh. So it's hard to take it down, but I know I will. I need to make room for things that make me joyful now. Not echos of joy, but current joy.

And life is filled with those things. Jobs that no longer work for you. Books that you started to read but you aren't enjoying. Clothes that never have fit right, or fit right long enough ago that you just need to let them move along. Shoes that pinch. People that rub you the wrong way. Let things that are not working for you anymore go. They are taking up space in your life that you could use.

When C was in elementary school he wanted to add chess club to the things he was doing. I told him fine, but he had to let go of another activity. He was doing Tae Kwon Do, swimming lessons, coronet club, football and now wanted to add chess club. I told him I couldn't do another activity. I was full. So he had to choose. If he wanted to add one, he needed to get rid of one. If you want to add something to your life you are going to have to get rid of something else. Even if it's just free time. Everything has a cost. Make sure what you are adding isn't actually subtracting. And that's a decision you need to make for yourself. Only you know what really brings you the greatest joy, or sense of accomplishment, or peace. You get to choose what to spend your time and your money on. C dropped football and picked up chess. I would have ditched Tae Kwon Do. That's why he made the choice, not me.

Now I'm going to make a pitch for a friend here, I wasn't planning on it but as I was writing this out I realized that for some people getting things sorted and cleared is really hard. Not just a little time consuming like it is for me. But actually hard to even know where to start. The Practical Sort is a company a friend of mine runs. She can give you a hand in getting the clutter out. Make room for the things in your life to breathe. Make space for new things that bring you joy. Get rid of the mess that makes you stress. It can seem like an odd thing, but getting control of that hall closet can make you feel pretty accomplished.

Let go of the things that aren't working for you anymore. Even if it's a $12 bottle of spice.

Mother's Days...

I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before but it was driven home for me again this week so I'm doing it again...

I decided on Monday to do a Mother's Day themed week with favorite pictures of C and me for my Facebook page. It was prompted by a Picture of the Day shot of the two of us that greets me each time I open that album to post another shot. It's a goofy shot, not surprising, and it not only makes me laugh each time I see it, it encapsulates what a good sport he is. The day I took it I told him basically come here, make a grrr face with me and I will post it and his response was to come there make a grrr face with me and let me post it. He's just that chill.

So then I started the process of which shots to use for the rest of the week. I turned a collection of Disney pics in to my banner and picked a few others. Tomorrow will be the leap from an around 14 year old C to a toddler. Not because I don't like any of the pictures in between those years but because there aren't a lot. There are a couple from Disney trips (one I used in the banner) and that's about it. It looks like he raised himself for most of his life.

I have pictures of him at the milestones. I have a few shots of him and Brent that I snuck because Brent was as camera shy as I was. But mostly it's just C. Posed for the picture that we proudly took of him. Enjoying our kid and our time with him but not wanting to be captured for posterity because of any number of reasons. Weight for me mostly. I hid. I moved. I cropped pictures to take me out. And now I have no record of me in those years. Just him. Thank goodness we at least have the pictures of him.

I realized right around the time he hit his early teens that I had edited myself out of his childhood and stopped it. Knowing that even if I was never going to be happy with my weight, or that patch in my 30s when my skin revolted, or the way my hair looked...okay, wait. That's ridiculous, my hair always looked great...but what ever reason I was giving for not being in those pictures they weren't good enough. That started the mandatory shots. I always take one of the three of us where ever we are. At an event, on a plane, in an airport, at a show, if we are doing something together I take a shot. This started before the flip cameras on phones so for a few years I would hold up my actual camera guess if it was lined up and take a shot. Look at the picture, then adjust and take it again. The final shot in those is usually gold because we are all laughing at how long it took to get a good shot. Not to mention the times kind strangers offered to take a picture and we had to explain that we were grateful but that this was kind of "our thing." I still do it with Brent and me because I didn't want to stop having pictures just because it's usually only the two of us now.

But there is still that dead zone. That time I cannot get back. Those moments that I wish I had. Where it was us, all of us, doing things. Being a family. Goofing off. Or going to concerts, or wiring his house for his school project, or...anything. Just the day to day stuff would be great. I don't have a lot of pictures of my time growing up. I was the last child so there wasn't the constant picture taking that my older siblings had. We didn't all carry cameras with us on a daily basis as we do now so there weren't the abundance of candid shots we all have now. So I don't have those pictures of my parents either. And I wish I did. And I would guess at some point in time C will wish he had some of us during that dead zone time as well.

Or maybe he will weave a story about the years where he was left alone to fend for himself...

Maybe not.

But the moral of the story is GET IN THE SHOT! Take pictures of you with your kids. With your spouse. With your friends. With that gorgeous scenery. Roll your eyes at people who disparage your selfies, or make them get in the shot with you. But take those pictures. Be in them. You'll be glad to have them someday. Even if you are a giant dork with a kid who humors you. Maybe even especially then.

Get Away...

When people asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, when people asked where she wanted to go to college, when people asked what she was thinking about the answer could always be, “away from here.” For as long as she could remember the constant drum beat of “get away, get away, get away” had played in her head.

 She couldn’t wait to get her first bike at 7 so she had freedom to get away, even if it was just to the end of the block. Her first babysitting jobs at 12 meant money in her pocket and an evening away, even if it was still just to the end of the block. She started work at the diner that was within bicycling distance at 15 ½; the first day she could legally be hired. Her driver’s license came at 16 and a car 6 months after that, which meant a new job at the mall, more money in her pocket and farther away. Get away. Get away. Get away.

She did well in school. Her grades put her in the top 10 of her graduating class. She wanted her choice of colleges. And she needed them to come with scholarship offers. Everything she did went toward that aim. The guidance counselor said she needed to round out her “high school experience” so she added extracurricular activities. Researching which was most likely to get her more scholarship offers before taking them on. She didn’t really feel drawn to journalism, or marching band, or student body government, but those things would lead to acceptance letters. Get away, get away, get away.

When she was deciding what to major in she researched the top jobs in the furthest away cities she could imagine. Where could she work? What would pay well? There. Away. What were people hiring for there? And then she focused on those areas. Chose her major and her minor in leaving.  Get away, get away, get away.

One day in class the professor had written, “You can never go home again” on the white board and asked them to write an essay on that sentence and what it meant. She wrote the essay she knew he was looking for but what she really thought was, “Yes!” she printed out the quote and hung it on her bulletin board in her dorm room. But she changed it just a touch, “You can never go home again!” And she didn’t.  She worked a part time job to make sure she had enough money to stay in a hotel during holiday breaks when the dorms were closed. She took summer internships in a city far away and lived in an apartment with four other interns to make rent. They all went home at the end of summer to enjoy the two weeks they had before school started again, she volunteered to clean the apartment and hand over the keys. Quiet. Alone. Away.

After graduation the company offered her a job. She took it without a moment of hesitation. They offered her a month off between graduation and her start date, to give her time to go home…she smiled and said she’d rather start right away. She rented an apartment to share with one of her former roommates from the intern summers. Her roommate would be joining her in a month, taking the offered time off. To each their own, she thought, but she knew she could never go home again. She was finally away.

Life moved on.

She did well at work. Moving up the company ladder. In her annual reviews there were always glowing reports. She was solid. She was dependable. But there was something to work on, sometimes she seemed a little removed from her clients and her co-workers. Sometimes it seemed as though she was thinking of something else. She should work on being more present. More here.

 She made friends. She was social. But they all would say the same thing about her, she’s a little detached. A little distant. It was like part of her was always someplace else. When her roommate moved out to live with her boyfriend she just left the room empty. She could afford to live by herself and so she did.

Life continued to move on.

They had been dating for long enough that it was time to move to the next level or to move on. Normally she chose moving on. This time she didn’t. He wanted her to meet his parents. It sat like a rock in her stomach. She wanted to get away. He wanted to stay. He wanted to go home again. She never wanted to go home again. But she went. She met his parents. She smiled and shook their hands. She gave a startled laugh when his mother said that was ridiculous and pulled her in to a hug. He watched her with worried eyes. Would she run away?

She sat with a cup of coffee on his front porch. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” he looked to her for approval of his childhood home. “It is. The forest must have been fun to play in when you were younger.” He smiled, “It wasn’t a forest. It was the world.” She smiled at him. “I want to come back some day. Buy a house. Raise my children here.” Her hand shook, almost spilling her coffee. “You can never go home again.” He took the cup from her, “Yes, you can. If you want to.”

The wedding was beautiful. The bride was glowing. The groom beaming. She started her walk down the aisle alone. Then his parents stood, one on each side of the aisle, they walked toward her, each taking a side and escorting the now crying bride to meet her groom. Then they sat, each on one side of the aisle again. She was their daughter now, there would be no choosing sides.

He read his vows in a shaking voice. Swearing to always be there for her. To always love her. To always support her. To always bring her coffee on the front porch. Their friends laughed. She smiled. He placed the ring on her finger.

She took a deep breath and told him how much she loved him. How she would always be there for him. Always support him. Always drink his coffee. Their friends laughed. Then she said the only thought she had every day at work, on the commute home, was that she couldn’t wait to get away. To get back to him. To always go home again. He cried.

She got away.

Some Days...

I wanted to write a quick fiction piece. That was my intention when I logged on. I have a piece in a bigger story that the back of my brain is chewing on. It's not quite ready to be written, it's close and I will get something out for Dana this week, but it's still tumbling around in there. Often when that is happening what helps it gel is to write something just front of brain, top of mind, super quick. So that was my intention.

But I had nothing to write about. I'm in a bad mood. I've been in a bad mood for the past few days. Mostly PMS related. I'll admit that. But hormone driven pissed off is just as pissed off as any other kind of pissed off. Probably more so. Politics and stupidity and antifa assholes and hormones and an angry uterus that needs to just stop pinching me...It's not a good combination. And it's really not a good combination for creativity.

But I still wanted to write a quick fiction piece. For one thing a really good piece can make me feel better. I might still be in a bad mood but I MADE something. And when you MAKE something you can look at it and say, the world might be pissing me off but I was still able to MAKE this today! And I not only MADE this I SHARED it with you. Because I'm a good fucking person!

Or something like that.

When I'm in a bad mood I tend to need to remind myself that at my core I'm actually not a violent, raging, asshole who will cut a bitch but a decent, kind, person who really cares if you are having a good day or not. Sometimes it takes a lot of reminding. And Brent agreeing. And cake. But since I've cut back on sugar and try to only have sweets on the weekend cake is out of the question on a Tuesday. Which pretty much is the stupidest idea I've ever come up with and who the fuck thinks sugar is bad anyway? Dietitians? Scientists? Medical Doctors? Idiots...

So anyway...

I wanted to write a quick short story to self medicate because the sugar was out of the question and my uterus is all pinchy (and pinche to tell the truth!) and...well...nothing.

I have a few ideas written down. Death following me this morning is one of them. But that's going to BE something. I want to think on that one a bit longer. I have a pretty traditional love story start written down but it might actually belong in the bigger piece I seem to be writing even though I am not really big on bigger pieces, but anyway I think those people are part of that story and I don't want to break them off and realize, yep, they don't belong here. I've already got one short story I need to search for that I've realized belongs with that bigger piece...which none of you care about because you haven't read it yet and are like, Umm...what bigger piece? If you didn't bring enough to share with the class we're going to have to ask you to stop...

So when no other ideas came I started working on the rest of sabbatical. I have a few more pieces to put in place now that the bigger frame work is there. I'm pretty sure I'm adding a trip to San Francisco, (Francisco...that's a fun name) but I'm not entirely sure what I want to do there. You know? I mean I've never been out of the airport there. I've been to Alameda (where they keep the nuclear wessles) I've flown in and out of San Francisco, but I've never looked around the city itself. So what should we do? Alcatraz. Walking across the bridge. Ummm....what else? Don't know. So that got put on hold while I think about it.

Fine, okay, back to writing. Felt like Winnie the Pooh, think think, think think, think think...and nothing. Fine, I'll just go the easy route. Googled writing prompts. Found a website with 365 writing prompts clicked it and...

Virus warning!
This site is unreliable and possibly unsafe.


Which really is my problem right now.

My ideas are unreliable and possibly unsafe.

Isn't that just the way some days go?