Oh my, got a new job. In Special Ed. Been there less than a week.
Quit the hotel job, had my last shift Monday. A truly hellacious set of days and am glad it’s over, over, and yeah, over. Mountains of laundry to a staff being harassed to the point where they had to barricade themselves in the office and general what-the-fuckery that I am not going to miss.
The weather, you ask? Oh, it’s tryin’ to snow.
What’s that? The dryer and water heater went on the same damn day?? Yeah. Yeah, that happened.
Rejections flying in like rabid bats on meth? Sure! It’s very disheartening. I need to throw away the stories that keep getting rejected and start afresh. Is that the answer? Sigh.
The candle I got, on sale!! is called California Coast. It’s a refreshing scent. Not anywhere near what the actual coast smells like [bitter salt and burned tourist skin] but hey, candle. Yes, I am one of THOSE PEOPLE. I luv luv luv candles. If you need to get me a gift, for whatever reason, get me a smelly candle. I like flower, fruit and Christmas stenches. But, really, would be happy with any candle.
I’ve been ordering clothes. Funky tops and funky pants. I also got a bag of costume jewelry and hey, total delight as I went through the items. Reminded me of stuff my grandmother wore. Both of them, actually. I still have a necklace apiece from both. A long string of jet glass beads and a long four strand of plastic yellow beads. Nothing fancy or museum-worthy but a link to a past that lives mostly in my memory…priceless. Ah!
It’s nearly March.
And then Easter. I do have lots of stuffed bunnies and now, stuffed flamingos. I seem to be collecting flamingos now. I think I just like the pink color.
I even bought a hot pink 50’s era necklace from the thrift store today. It’s very Doris Day. I do love Doris Day movies, if that helps or explains anything.
I’m going to try and start writing again. I am just exhausted and wrung out and blank upstairs. I did finish a rough draft of a story set in Eugene, Oregon. No zombies but it does have an imaginary dog in it. It’s rather sweet and hopeful…so not like me at all. I might start writing nice, sweet stuff, see how that goes. I am finding hope and light rather lacking of late.
Oh! What do you call baby tater tots?
Give up????!!!!
Totlers.
That was the joke told during morning announcements at the high school I work at now. Bwhwhahahahah!!! I laughed when I heard it. Sophisticated, subtle humor, no way! Corny dad jokes? Yes, please!
It’s snowing. The huge storm predicted actually arrived over half of my state.
Yesterday was a hell day at work, starting with me spinning about on some ice. As in my car spun about like a big deadly sled. Just bumped against the curb, no damage but still…and then work turned out to be hellish, crushing and gut-punching but hey, normal in these modern times and olden times and times not named. Huzzah.
I am not sleeping that well. Probably why I’m up writing this little blurby thing.
It’s already been a long December. Winter has arrived here in Eastern Oregon and I suspect plans to stay around. We usually get a bit of snow, it melts, it’s spring.
Going back to bed. I’ll put on an old comfy movie and wake up later on to marvel at the snow level outside. Don’t have to go anywhere, or be anywhere and what a nice sensation that is.
Hope your December is going better than mine. I haven’t even put up any decorations nor really plan to. I might wrap a garland or something about the cat just to be festive and because it would annoy her.
Writing-wise. I have been submitting a bit but am just taxed out that way right now. Might need to take a break, paint rocks or knit, something else that’s not writing. I feel crushed and untalented and unable to produce anything but dreck. Normal writer stuff, right? Yeah.
I might need some Hallmark Christmas fare to perk me up. My depression has been slapping me about lately, compounded by shitty job. Might be why I’m only sleeping in about three to four hour blocks, if that. Might be end of year doldrums where you just wanna stay in bed drifting along, rather numb and used up.
But hey, got paid. I might order those avocado green platform boots because you only get one life something something. And because they’re avocado green. There’s that, too. That’s 70’s shade that so delights the eyes. Mine, at least.
Snowy night. All is quiet and hushed. The dogs and the cat are snoozing away. Should I make myself some coffee or actually just go back to bed? I don’t have to chance the roads of death tomorrow to get to work by seven. I can stay up all night not writing and try to take a nap, feeling guilty I’m not producing magical works of art that will lift me out of poverty and despair…
Geez.
This is our fourth or fifth snow, by the way. Winter might be a bad one this year. Or good, depending on your view of snow and needing it for that decades-long drought hereabouts.
I have books out. I have short stories in many an anthology. I have people doing my plays. I have stuff out there. I’ll end this ramble there. I have stuff out there.
“Why does it have to be tape?” Callie clutched the only picture she had of her mother as Xu kept a lookout for bears. The dead oak tree on the old Pearson property had not seen bears for twenty-three years, but one never knew.
“It can’t hurt the tree,” Xu answered, her face turning this way and that, the snow dancing past her suspicious eyes searching for objects to cover and change. It had not snowed for near three years. Not really. The sky seemed bloated and too gray-white for Callie’s comfort. “The tree’s magic won’t work. That’s the rules. What was that?”
Both peered toward the tilled field, where corn had stood in military precision until just a few days ago. A rather large blurry object bumbled toward them. “That’s the stray dog. The St. Bernard Mr. Kelly tried to shoot. Said it was eating his chickens. So I tape this to this magic tree and my mom comes back?”
“There’s words and stuff,” Xu offered, her crisp black hair covered with a raspberry beret. “It don’t always work. Like real magic. That’s how you know it’s real. When it doesn’t always work. That is a big dog. Tape it already. Duct tape, right?”
Callie pulled a long bit of scotch tape, heart beating too fast, eyes dazzled by tiny snowflakes waltzing past. “You didn’t say that. You never said that.” She stepped back, the picture of her mother in her high school cap and gown flapping, threatening to fly off. She heard panting. The St. Bernard, skinny as the old barn cat, Mrs. Mouse, looked at both with one mournful eye, the other gummed shut and leaking yellow matter. Matted auburn and ivory coat and one ear shredded, swollen. A more beat up, unhappy dog Callie had never seen. Xu backed away and it shadowed her. “It’s just an old dog.” The picture tore free, zoomed into the air, upheld by the growing wind. “Damn it!”
“No, let it go. Now say, dance dance, tree tree, come back to me. And your mom’s name.”
“What? Okay, whatever. Dance dance, tree tree, come back to me, Vivian Thomas. Oh her middle name was Jane.” Callie’s bare hand touched the back of the giant, emaciated dog. It leaned against her legs with a sigh. A collar? She removed it, the dog shook its entire body. Lady had been etched into the cracked leather. “Come on, Lady. You can live in the barn.”
“It’s probably got worms,” Xu trailed behind, always wary about bears but quite good with magic. Callie took the picture of her mother, put it in her coat pocket. “No! It has to remain near the tree. The dog stinks.”
The picture spiraled upward. Lady sniffed at a clump of weeds. Callie headed home, with her best friend Xu grumbling about it might not work now in her ears.
I do have the plague. Official test came back positive. Damn. Everything tastes weird or off. Dry cough. Trying to sleep, not get dehydrated.
Good news. Ready? The dog returned. Brigit, who’s been missing for days, showed up at three in the morn last night. I know!!!! Squeeeeee!!!! She’s mud-splattered and exhausted. And we’re all stopping to tell her we’re glad she’s back. Ah!
Going to try and be productive, somehow, today. Get some writing done, maybe. Get something sent off. I have not been sick for years and this crap is kicking me up and down and all around.
That pic above was taken by the Owyhee River. All three dogs, Brigit, Molly and Jake.
I am sick. Have been sick for a week. Waiting for my test to tell me a thing or two. Missing work. Well, not missing it. Ha ha.
Sadly, our Brigit has gone missing. It’s been two days since she pranced off for…somewhere. Usually she zooms about the neighborhood, before returning home. Not this time. We didn’t find her body but we do live in the country, it’s in the twenties and I hope someone grabbed her up, took her home. I’d rather know what happened to her than this waiting.
As for writing anything, no. Just a few little snippets. My head is a fuzzy wad of crud.
All my houseplants have died. I think the house is just too cold for them. It’s just a death and missing paloosa around here.
Okay. Have a great, fantastic week. Better than me hacking my lungs up. Hug your pets.
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
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.
It’s the month before Halloween. My pumpkin patch is producing mini pumpkins. I have short stories being accepted. I even applied for a job.
I know the news has been a ghastly rollback of women’s rights, war, setbacks, WTF moments, etc…etc…etc. So here’ some pics of my dogs and the hills just up the road from me. The two Labs are Jake and Molly, with Jake being the black one and Molly chocolate. The other dog is the Cowgirl or Brigit, and we’re not sure what she is. But she might be a Kelpie or something like that. A stray dog I found by the bridge.
Old junked car and very dry hills. Molly in the Owyhee irrigation ditch. I took this in August, but isn’t this a beautiful bug? Three dogs enjoying the day. That pump is for irrigation purposes, of course. A row of cheerful sunflower-like wildflowers and two Labs. Wildflowers and dog and water. Brigit and the scenic vista.
Storm about to hit plus the old locust tree. June 2020 pic. That’s a corn field behind it.
The fireworks and dog and pony show are now over until next year. That’s Fourth of July to those not in ‘murica. I did not attend my family’s gathering. I have actually been trying to follow guidelines about public safety and not helping spread this pandemic about as hard and fast as possible. I guess I hate ‘freedumb’. I guess I hates it really damn hard or sumpin. Wear a mask, love the devil! That’s America right now!
A Jimmy Johns employee makes a noose out of dough cause…BLM is the real problem here, obviously. Just head-exploding…yeah.
Okay. Before I just start typing every cuss word every invented and calling upon Satan to curse my own with pus-filled painful boils for their MAGA-filled bullshit cunty cunt…Okay. Okay. See what I mean? Just a screaming unintelligible stream of consciousness filthy river that I hope will drown the world in a river of actual liquid feces infected with exploding small pox so we can be done with all this. Amen.
is there an American equivalent of Ms. Salt?
Ahem.
My mood has traveled to a low point in the life highway. Eh. What’s new. Except the sheer awfulness that is America right now seems to be a permanent stain on whatever composition is actually me. It’s tiring and stultifying.
The hits never stop; they pound relentlessly against the already torn fabric of this country and the world itself. Fraud. Lies. Greed. More lies. More damned lies. Mountains of lies. Victim playing while causing even more damage. Temper tantrums because the likes aren’t high enough from the press. Ratings are bad, temper tantrums, we all get punished.
Daddy isn’t happy! You earned that broken bone, America! Why do you make Orange Daddy hit you??? That black eye is YOUR FAULT FOR MAKING DADDY MAD AT YOU
Oh. Here we go. Bear with me a bit. I apologize if I mangle this.
I’d go into the J.K. Rowling brohouha but others have done it so much better, so much more elegantly, with far more understanding that I do of this terf issue. I had no idea what a terf was until lately. TERF– trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
That’s a head scratcher. Why would you exclude entire groups from feminism? What would be the point and…? Oh, prejudice and ignorance and a host of some other stuff and things, got it.
I will also state that trans people are people, the end.
Someone identifying as another gender or being gender-fluid or anything in between that—please understand I am not an expert in this and sorry if I state things wrong or badly—has no effect on me, my life or anything to do with me. It doesn’t detract from me or subtract from me that someone else is not like me or doesn’t identify in a way that I understand right off the bat. It might take me a moment to wrangle out details, word meanings, words used, terminology, etc. But I will try and understand, read up, listen up, catch up. It’s not my struggle, but it doesn’t mean it’s not real for others going through all this in some way or another.
Sometimes I don’t instantly receive all the changed anything to do with this issue of transgenderism and gender in general…I have to catch up, read up, watch something. I try to listen, instead of offering opinions and getting testy and defensive. I also, frankly, become afraid of SAYING OR WRITING THE WRONG THING about trans people or marginalized folks.
Because I know I have misconceptions, prejudices, wrong takes, hasty assumptions all just waitin’ to brand me a big ole idiot with poo for brains. I, like others, have no real need to be embarrassed or shamed, like, ever.
But.
How can you learn anything if you don’t venture into the unknown field of New Ideas and New Notions and Brand New Stuff That’s Scary At First To Explore. You might even get bogged down in It’s Always Been This Way Swamp. Ugh, amirite?
There is more than one way to be a woman, far more than Rowling and others in her camp cling to. You can only be a woman if you menstruate…? Um, no. Geez. That’s so obvious it shouldn’t even be offered forth as a reason to deny people basic rights and/or try to legislate them out of existence.
I understand Rowling’s essay, quotes from it, have been used as part of legislators trying to get laws passed against trans people. So, her views are actively and actually hurting people. I am not okay with that.
I am not okay with that!
Yes, read all the Harry Potter books. I did notice some troubling stuff. The 50’s perfect family conservative vibe, for one. The house elves…ick. The goblins…yikes, or was it just me who wondered why the goblins resembled the hoary stereotypes of Jews that people still vomit up to this day?
And Dumbledore being gay…after the last book was out and selling in the billions. It’s…yeah. Was it said in any of the books? No. Suddenly there’s a hot and heavy affair between Dumbledore and Grindelwald that wasn’t written about in any of the books? I…mm. Why not just be open from the start, write this side of Dumbledore into the story from the get-go? Why pretend it was there all along when it so clearly was not?
The females of this world get short thrift as well. They’re either stereotypical moms, like Mrs. Weasely or hard-nosed grim types, like McGonnagal, or shrill shrews, like most of the other female characters or love interests with no real layers to them, like Cho Chang or even Ginny Weasely. Hermione is the scolding, annoying rule keeper to the two boys being rule breaking adventurous risk-takers. Which is the backbone of Western literature, after all. Sigh.
I am all over the map here, with lots of profanity thrown in. Woot woot.
I am also not writing. I just. My brain seems very empty. Tumbleweeds don’t even bother blowing past the sad line of fences leaning here and there inside my skull. I should be almost done with the current rewrite of a film…This about the worst actual case of Don’t Wanna I’ve had. I just don’t see the point anymore in writing for love or money. Mostly love cause nobody gives a piece of toast about anything I string together; that might be the acute depression mumbling. Might be.
I seem to be waiting for the awful other shoe to drop here in my country. So I can adjust and get on with resisting in the correct way. As those that I’m protesting against have decreed are the correct ways to protest! So they don’t get upset or have to think or have to do anything at all, really but totally ignore my protesting. And then nothing changes and we all go on as before until another forty years has passed and there’s a need for protesting and…
Woot. However, things do change. They do. It just seems to take generations for actual change to register. Plant a tree today. Be buried a long time before that tree gets cut down to make way for more condos. It’s kinda like that.
Hopeful note!
I have a mini green pumpkin growin’ away. It’s so cute! I want to give it kisses and talk to it like I talk to puppies. Hey there, cutie pie! Oh you’re so cute! How are you so cute!? Baby pumpkin breath…No. No, that’s a garden too far.
It’s my birthday. I didn’t spend the day weeping. So it’s a good one. This is one of the good ones!
I made my own cake—chocolate raspberry with a raspberry syrup-vanilla frosting mix atop it. If it has raspberries in it, there are no calories. That’s, um, how that works.
Oh, I took the three dogs for a mini trip. I drove up the road toward the state park. I pulled over onto the little side roads, parked, let them run and shout as I collected rocks for my garden efforts. We all had a lovely morning. They flushed a rabbit. And possibly found a snake. I just heard the hissing. I did not see the snake. One of the dogs brushed against an electric fence and got a shock. Poor baby! Yes, it’s cattle country as well as state park area.
Just a low-key enjoyable day. I even rented myself Little Women for tonight. The new one. I discovered you can stream videos from a service…yeah, it’s a whole thing. Why didn’t nobody tell this near-Luddite??
Two good things this week. DACA is still a thing. LGTBQ people cannot be fired for being LGTBQ. There are actual meltdowns going on because…people retained or gained some rights. Grudgingly so. Some folks are losing their minds! Because other citizens of their same country have the same protections they do, sort of…
It’s…mm. STOP BEING HORRIBLE SHITS TO EACH OTHER. There. I said it. I even wrote it down.
The DACA decision hinged on some paperwork that didn’t get done right…so yeah, America, still gotta vote. Still gotta get Pumpkincunt out of office.
So, hey, June is flying by.
Oh. Union County, up the road from moi, is swimmin’ with COVID-19 cases. Traced to a Pentecostal church in Island City. Eastern Oregon, we’ve joined the pandemic team, so to speak.
Tomorrow is Juneteenth. June 19, 1865, when the slaves were freed. This is not a date I was ever taught in a school.
All righty, fellow babies, cuties and assorted stardust mamas, have a great month.
ANN WUEHLER 