A Cheerful Holiday Note

from great big canvas

It’s the holiday season. I posted a mournful scream a few days ago. Now I’ll balance that with something a bit more cheery.

We are expecting snow here along the floors of the Eastern Oregon/Western Idaho valleys. A covering of white over the mud. Yes, please! Even if I have to drive in it for work, it doesn’t seem right if the end of the year doesn’t have that blanket of snow or snow falling or some sort of snowy snow happening or already happened. If that makes sense. I have a bit of Fireball whiskey in my coffee. A droplet, really.

My cat goes in and out, restless as a mini tiger. What a joy she is. I am so very glad I decided to keep her. I am grateful for this loving little beast who seems to utterly adore me. She went from slowly dying homeless refugee to cosseted spoiled lovebug. Stop and help an animal if you see one in trouble or distress.

I have stories placed here and there. That’s a nice feeling. That my work is ‘getting out there’. That slowly, so slowly, but surely, I am making some inroads writing-wise. There’s City Full of Rain, Gladys, Pig Bait, Elbow and Bean, Seffi and Des, Blood and Bread, Witch of the Highway, the Fish Whisperer, Everything You Need, Jimmy’s Jar Collection, Let There Be No Memories…I am forgetting one or two or several, but what a list for 2021. Submit, submit! is my battle cry for 2022.

I also put a novel out– The Remarkable Women of Brokenheart Lane, which is 99 cents over on Amazon through tomorrow, btw. Ahem, hint. I loved writing this. I love those three sisters I created– Lily, Violet and Laura. I adore the bikers that took shape in my head and oh yes, on the page. From Gut Bucket and Rosecheese to Amy Octopus and poor doomed Bluebird. I think the version that made it to final edits is the version closest to the one originally in my head. Sort of lighthearted doomsday fairy tale fare. Whee, indeed. I did have a very heavy, dense, savage version, but I think this go-around works so much better as a story and as a reading experience.

I do have a novel from last year I’ll blip about as well. Aftermath: Boise, Idaho. Yeah, it’s zombies but they’re sentient ones. Most of them are, anyway. It’s also 99 cents over on Amazon through tomorrow!! Ahem, ahem. This is Hannah’s tale. She kills herself rather than succumb to the zombies about to break down the door of the place she’s trapped in. But she wakes up in an office setting, with zombies for bosses, in some parallel existence, where she’s at a loss and disadvantage. However, being scrappy, pragmatic and mostly realistic, Hannah navigates somewhat successfully until she doesn’t. Her alter ego, the Hannah of the world she now finds herself in, seems to be some sort of spy for the resistance. There’s always a resistance. She messes up by killing her for-show boyfriend/one of the leaders of the resistance and it all snowballs from there, until Hannah finds herself fleeing the scene of many crimes, heading off into the Idaho wilds to take her chances.

Again, another novel I had such fun writing. I enjoyed making up slang and inventing this NWO as run by conservative zombies in pearls and business attire. I also toyed with explaining why Hannah fell through the time cracks, so to speak, but…it got clunky and stopped the story colder than a bowl of congealed brains. I also fiddled with several endings but decided on the one now as it seemed fair to Hannah and true to her character of a tough person just trying to survive the unimaginable.

Okay, I’ll keep this short. Happy holidays, however you celebrate or don’t. Don’t let what’s happening in the world or on your doorstep rob you of any joy or hope. Not just yet. New year comin’. Gird the loins, sharpen the knives, battles are comin’, woot woot.

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

The Day Before the Second to Last 2021 Battle On the War on Christmas!

from turbosquid

Brigit, cowgirl extremis, wonderdog and all around great canine, went missing the other day. She occasionally takes off for cross-country adventures, sometimes with Molly gamely in tow. However, Brigit returns a couple hours or so after disappearing across the fields if someone turns their back a bit too long. She hates being cooped up in the yard and if she doesn’t get to go out, do stuff, she gets SUPERBORED AND SUPER-RESTLESS. Yes, she’s a Border Collie type of animal. Needs near constant stimulation and attention. I am thinking of getting her an actual sheep to keep her busy. Sort of kidding.

Anyhoo!!

She’s missing all afternoon. Up into the evening. It’s cold outside, baby. I mean down in the twenties. She lives in the house. She has short fur. I’m worried one of the farm trucks rushing to and fro hit her. There’s also the worry that the local coyotes led her somewhere and turned on her. Or that someone grabbed her and took her home. Or that…all the worries you get when your pet goes missing.

However, this is not a sad tale of a pet lost or a pet found smashed on the road. The evening drew nigh. I, having worked a graveyard, settled in on the couch to watch Hallmark fare and see if Brigit showed up at the door. I opened the door to check, yet again, for Miss Bridge. We’d all looked for her. Drove around the neighborhood, walked miles in the mud. Did I mention how muddy it is here this week?

She slinks into the house, wet, alive and exhausted. Very much alive. Not hurt. Thirsty. I squeal. A high-pitched OMG shriek. Brigit is home. I repeat, Brigit is home. Yay!!!!!! The sheer relief alone. Coming back from work just days before, I had noticed a dead dog and a car pulling up alongside it, with people getting out to gather up their pet…and I wish they’d gotten a happy ending instead of that. I know that scenario. Where you find your beloved companion dead or dying. That helpless grief that you can’t make that pet better. And how big a hole their leaving rips in the very fabric of your being.

Okay.

It’s the eve before the eve of Christmas. The troops are gathering to wage their final two assaults on the season, of course. The War on Christmas commences! I have no idea what those battles will be over. As the War on Christmas is a super-imaginary Fox News BS PR stunt that’s, ugh, endured. Was it Bill O’Silly who started the current version? The one touring with pumpkincunt to ever dwindling crowds?

As the Pilgrims hated Christmas and…anyway, American history has to now be super-postive, focused on WASP-y folks who were the ‘only ones’ involved in ‘building’ ‘merica.

No, really. Not kidding.

See Texas history books that have cut out nearly all or every mention of brown folks in the annals of American history. These same books go out to the rest of the country. Slavery was just imported labor or however that was repackaged. Ahem. Civil Rights? Good look finding anything other than carefully groomed MLK quotes said by white politicians.

See Ron DeDeathface, guvvie of Fluckida, and how he used an MLK quote to justify outlawing Critical Race Theory anything being taught in any school, ever. That includes where it’s actually taught– law schools. Not even kidding.

I am skipping this holiday this year, and maybe, always. Just done with it. I feel no joy or hope at the approach of the red and green monstrosity that doth croucheth across the end of the year like a particularly Lovecraftian Elder God horror. I went over, a bit, about my aunt and her charmless circle of nutballs. The other set of relatives are nearly as bad. I want to stay home, watch bad Christmas movies, drink whiskey and Kool-Aid [sort of kidding] and just…be. I’ve put up no decorations. There’s no tree. Not even presents. And nobody has said a thing. I’m tired.

My job has me waking up in pain, having to gulp down aspirin, noticing that twinge along my spine from trying to lift, several times over, a client at work who’s pretty much dead weight, not helping or trying to support themselves as they should. A situation that will need assessment quite soon, as it effects all at work, not just me.

Christmas has become the most stressful time of year and I just can’t anymore.

I just can’t.

I remember the Christmas of the past, with the entire family, both sides, there to celebrate. And I remember it probably not at all as it really was and isn’t that the point of holiday memories? That you don’t remember the icky, the awful, the mundane and the boring? You just remember the lights, the smells, the tastes, the sound of paper rustling and ripping. Maybe that it snowed or there was snow on the ground, if you lived in a state with four seasons.

At least, this year, there might be a white blanket on the ground by the time the Elder God settles over the world with a blood-smeared grin. And the guns will be loaded and set by the fire, in hopes that the Antifa will soon be near…bang bang, slaughtering protesters is the newest cool kid thing to do in America! Bring your boomsticks, Civil War Two will soon be on!

So tired of all this trumpie stuff. So tired. Wow.

December

O it’s the month of snow, figgy pudding, evergreens and tense family gatherings. If one watches too much Hallmark schmaltz, one gets the notion one is really flucked in the noggin. Or cursed by Krampus to endure a black pit of despair and stress for what remains of the year.

Why are not my holidays filled with the actual Santa Claus, snow, skating rinks, hot chocolate, baking sugar cookies and sparkly holiday evening wear??? Why???

Oh yeah, cause real life, can’t skate, global warming and the local thrift store doesn’t seem to have much sparkly holiday wear.

So. Abortion is going away in America. Legal, safe, medically supervised abortion is going away in a lot of states when Roe V. Wade gets gutted or just tossed out by a handful of gleeful religious extremists, most of them men. One woman who’s replacing that glass ceiling as hard and fast and much as she can. Amy Coat Hanger Barrett, is, I believe, her actual legal name. This overturning of Roe has been in the works since it got put into law in the 70’s. The Moral Majority wed itself to Ronnie Raygun [or Ronald Reagan if you have to have the actual name of that fuckstick], and here we are. They worked, schemed, planned, got their people into high places to make this happen. And the left sat back and scrunched their faces a bit, but otherwise ignored all that as much and as hard as possible. And then acted all surprised when Roe V Wade is on the chopping block, is already chopped.

Hey, going backwards when women died at home from botched abortions seems to be the holy grail of the American GOP. With the issue of banning abortions decided by men, for men, with seemingly no input from the females it will impact the most. They’re not even a consideration here, seemingly. Religious fanatics seem to rule the roost in ‘merica and it’s fucking scary.

That the left can’t form a single cogent means to attack any of this is also scary and feels like it must be inevitable that America will try on that coat of fascism to see how it fits.

So yeah, am not feeling too hopeful right now. I admit it. As others have said, the Gross Old Perverts ain’t gonna stop at ending abortion rights. They want to roll back that clock to a time when only rich white Christian straight men had the only voices, the only power, the only presence on the work or political stage.

Which brings me to that scene in the first season of Handmaid’s Tale where Serena Joy, who campaigned so tirelessly for shoving women into roles of livestock and silent powerless nothings, gets bit with her own rhetoric. The same laws she saw applying to other women, also apply to her. Her face as she’s relegated to wife only, stripped of her public persona and her public work. That face of someone realizing too late she aimed the gun at herself, too.

Do the GOP ladies not realize they’re in for a rough road, as well? Do they really think none of this shit will affect them?

I’ll say it plainly. Women have power and control over their own bodies. Their bodies belong to them, not the church or the state or anyone or anything else. We do not legislate men’s bodies. We do not treat sperm as a state property that must be used no matter what is going on with the man who spewed it.

But hey, no health care, no paid leave, no maternity anything, and all those kids being born into a system stripped to the bone or just gone when it comes to helping out those in need. Social safety nets??!! That’s commie shit, after all. Just ask the GOP, they’ll gladly shout about that for days on end. Bootstrap it, babies, bootstrap it!

I smell a Dickens revival! I suspect the rage-filled poetry written during this time will rival some famous poet nobody reads. I suspect the left will send out emails demanding signatures to save blah dee blah and to chip in a few dollars so business can continue as…usual. Yeah.

Hey, December 2021. Can you send us some chuckles before the new year crushes us completely here in ‘merica? Thanks!

Or at least a pretty snowstorm and a big plate of nachos? And some of that fabled fighting spirit to combat this extremism crappola? Extra thanks!!