Things I’ve Noticed

The Gilded Age, HBO. Bertha and George, Carrie Coons and Morgan Spector.

March. Warming up. Raised bed for squash almost done. Cat doing great. Now that you’re all caught up–

I happened upon Minx, over on HBO.

It’s about a fictional women’s soft porn mag started in the 70’s by a radical feminist and a hardcore porn mag producer. Whacky hijinks ensue! Yep, it goes about how you think it does.

Penises everywhere. Shrill, naive, unpleasant female lead named, seriously, this is her name– Joyce Prigger. I do mean unbearable. Holy shit. Fun, easy-going male lead, named Doug Renatti, who sees ‘something’ in the Matriarchy Rising mag layout of Our Heroine. She pitches her over the top feminist scream to several mag producers in SoCal at this fair. She of course gets nowhere because no one will give her a chance! She’s an editor shopping around her liberated woman ideals and no one will throw her wads of cash and accolades, wah.

I lost any and all sympathy for her about five minutes in. I’ve seen this shit so many times. The unpleasant, uptight female lead, the lead male totally likable and smart, the rest of the cast pretty adorable, sweet, intelligent at times and…ugh. Okay. It’s rom-com time. At least, that’s the take I take away here.

Our Heroine is fresh outta Vassar, working on selling subscriptions for other magazines and generally so stupid about how the world works it’s goddamn painful to watch. She doesn’t know how that to get financed, you have to get big donors with money? She went to fucking Vassar. She didn’t rub up against the children of politicians and even presidents? For fuckety fuck’s sake.

She can’t sit through picking a male model for their debut issue without losing her shit. Joyce is embarrassed and squrimy, tee hee. The college girl hasn’t seen many dicks! Tee hee. She’s not only a shrieking harpy, she’s a prude! Oh goody!

It’s not funny or charming or astonishing. It’s just dumb. She’s a dumb character, a stereotype, a Men’s Rights example of what they think a feminist is. There is no nuance to her. At least not in the episode and a half I made it through before switching over to Youtube animal rescue videos to clear my head of the ‘Why the fuck are they still writing this type of female character? And during the so-called women’s liberation height??? Fuck fuck fuck fuck!’

And then, yeah, I rewrote this series in my head. Because, writer.

What if.

What if Our heroine, renamed Linda Lewis, or some other normal name that doesn’t hint a thing, was cool. I mean, with it, on top of her life, ambitious, calculating, willing to take chances. And a force of nature or someone you’d want to hang out with, hear their views. She’s got a sense of humor! She wants to change the world and she’s not asking for permission to do it. Linda can be unsure of herself at times but mostly, she works out what needs to be worked out. She approaches the pornmag producer guy, pitches him her magazine idea and he suggests the nude male centerfold every month. As Linda is mostly okay with her sexuality, she agrees to this, but says she wants to be in charge of the whole enchilada, even the tasteful nudie stuff. They begin a tentative partnership and learn a lot along the way.

I’m so tired of the naive, awful female lead and the cool, with it male lead that makes the female lead look both childish and boringly stupid. See the Ugly Truth, with Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigel. The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock– which, despite her charm and Ryan Reynold’s scowling with his usual charm throughout it–presented a horrible female boss stereotype straight from a Hallmark Christmas collection of Bad Lady Bosses that just need a Good Man to Show Them Some Good Lovin’. Sweet Home Alabama, where Reese Witherspoon went home to shit all over her home town and her parents, yet wound up with her ex-hubbie after…ugh.

So yeah, done with Minx. Boring and irritating, not my cup of anything.

I’m also struggling with Our Flag Means Death. I want to like it more. I just fail at that. I do like Blackbeard. It helps that he’s played by Taika Waititi. I wish this series had centered more around Blackbeard facing the end of his time as the most bad-ass pirate ever. The Stede Bonnet character just repels me so utterly. A guy with a lot of money getting to do whatever he wants. Where in American politics and private blah dee blah have we ever, ever seen this crud?

I need a third to end this TV review rant.

Gilded Age! Now, it’s trashy, but it’s fun, gorgeous trash. I get tired of Marian, the female blond lead who’s so bland she blends into the scenery no matter what she’s wearing. Please, Jesus– let her be ravished by a pack of rabid sailors after that bland and boring lawyer guy sells her to a brothel after her aunt refuses to accept him into High Society. Wheeee!!!!!

And then she’s seen no more when she leaves with the sailors as their new captain. Work it out, writers!

As that would leave far more screen time to the Russels. Not the kids, yuck. Ick. Boring!

No no, Bertha and George Russel are fabulous, arrogant monsters you just love to love. She’s a social-climbing soft-voiced goddess and he’s a fiery, black-bearded robber baron you hope never escapes to run amuck in these here present times. Together they plan to dominate Old Money Manhattan and make it beg for mercy it ever slighted them in the least. Bwhahahahahaha! Yes, please!!

I also love the Peggy Scott character. Upper class black woman, with ambitions to be a writer. Her mom is played by Audra McDonald, of Broadway. The Broadway Audra! If you can’t tell, I love Audra McDonald. But, the show explores the middle class and even upper class POC post-Civil War strata that developed and lead to such things as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I also find it annoying and eye-rolling when the blond Marian doesn’t seem to notice all the rampant racism all around her. Okay, sure. Ahem. But. We do get a scene with her bringing second-hand shoes to gift Peggy with during an unannounced visit to Peggy’s parent’s home. Dorothy Scott, Peggy’s mom, rightfully embarrasses Marian with how Marian expected the Scott family to be near destitute and grateful for a white lady savior. Ouch.

It’s not Downton Abbey. It’s a colorful, somewhat empty, imitation but it’s enjoyable. Watching the New Money sorts clash with the Old Money sorts, great fun. Watching the Russels plow ahead like a team of shiny Clydesdales, also great fun. The two aunts of Marian, played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon, make up for a lot. They remind me of L.M. Montgomery characters, for some reason. I half expected Anne Shirley to pop in for a cup of tea and a saucer of neighborhood gossip.

And there’s servants but nothing so far that grabs the attention or begs for more air time. There’s no Thomas, for instance, slinking about, causing trouble while managing to remain a near tragic figure we have to love. But, maybe in later seasons, the servants will be fleshed out, given actual characters, become part of the stories around them, rather than just set decorations whenever Mrs. Russel stalks by in a red silk dress.

Thomas from Downtown Abbey. Sorry if I lost some of you there.

I wanted to do a fluffy blog post, what with all the horrors here in America and over there in Ukraine. And other places, and other places after that. Oh dear.

Right next door, Ammon Bundy is staging a protest over the state of Idaho stepping in to remove a baby that was being horrifically neglected, as in that baby could have died if something had not been done. This extremist, who’s running for govvie of the state, claims it’s a medical kidnapping and has called for protests and even possible violence if the child isn’t returned to the parents who were abusing it. As these parents seem to be related to Bundy’s campaign manager…it’s a frigging mess in Idaho, in other words, right now.

This bunch of political theatre stunt-makers even shut down a major hospital there in Boise for a bit. The present lieutenant govvie, Janice McGeachin or something like that, attended a white pride rally in the most open and defiant of ways. She’s an elected official. She also wants to be govvie. And she’s batshit insane and a religious nutball. Wheee!! I’m two hours from all this and it sucks. It sucks!

So yeah, I’m watching trashy historical dramas and submitting my writing now and then to the here and there. Spring is around the corner. 2022 already seems a bust. 2023, baby, you gotta give us all some hope, m’kay? Great!

Meridian, Nampa and Boise are close together.

Update– Just saw, in the Idaho Statesman, where the child in question was returned to the parents, more than likely because of Bundy’s threats and bullying. It really can be an awful world at times. I doubt those parents have seen the light. And terrorism wins in Idaho.

Viking vampire clown

Our Flag Means Death. HBO. Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet.

Full disclosure– the title of this blog post is from HBO’s Our Flag Means Death. Blackbeard observes that he has been turned into a ‘viking vampire clown’ as he discovers an illustration of himself in a book.

I heard those three words slammed together and went, hey, what can I do with that? Is that a title? A monster of some kind? Some sort of for-me only porn novella?

It’s probably also a sign I need to get out of the house.

So, a short one. The Cherry of Her Lips got an acceptance from Black Hare Press, for their War anthology. I really like this attempt of mine to freshen up the hoary Snow White tale.

I’m also looking at having a fifth book published. The Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus. It’s fantasy? meets mythology meets religious figures meets humans, Minions, ghosts and outer space monsters. There’s also Batboys or angels.

Basically, God wants Jesus to become the newest Satan, which would put Jesus under God’s thumb. This sets off a chain of events that leads to a strange showdown in Oregon’s Alvord desert.

Yes, I am working on how to plug this one. I have to invent something dazzling, interest-provoking and yet short that doesn’t have me trying to explain the plot in a thousand-word sprawl.

A bit blasphemous? Sure, why not but it does involve other gods, other mythologies and a nod toward the irreverent and sassy. Honestly, it’s not dark or hopeless or dystopian. It’s even funny in spots. I think so. There’s some actual character journeys taking place. Jesus, for one, gets a great big arc.

So, yeah.

Now. How to use ‘viking vampire clown’. Isn’t it odd what combo of words can bring you such fulsome, wonderful delight? Happy almost spring!

The potential cover!

Black Helicopters and Dinner Rolls

It’s March. When the heck did that happen?? Where did February go? Time flies! I am the very first person to ever write that. Oh, sorry. Are we now in post-post whatever goes era yet? Are we all back to expecting some truth and some reality into our national discourse?? International discourse now! We’re back on the world stage as a team player, yes? My head spins at the spin so I’m not sure what the spin is right now. See what I did there? Can you explain it to me so I know that I know I didn’t fall for the spin that was spun? Thanks!

Just a week or so ago, we had WILD WINTER WEATHER. Snow. More snow. Some more snow. Bracketed by very warm weather. Spring weather. SNOW AND WHAT IS HAPPENING, WHY IS WINTER HERE ALL OF A SUDDEN. Spring weather. The unsettled border areas between the last of winter and the start of the growing season are upon us.

Joe Biden is still president, by the way. In case some of you were wondering. I am not, cannot, go into the QAnon conspiracy badger sett right now. It’s like cutting off my fingers to spite someone’s golf game that they haven’t played yet. Jewish space lasers. I, um? I think people just got tired of waiting for Obama to take their guns so they invented the New Jersey pizza parlor cannibals eating children for their hormones to worship Satan, led by Hillary Clinton, the Hollywood ‘elites’, etc, with Geoge Soros funding all this because…Jewish. March 4^th was supposed to be the day pumpkincunt took the White House back and that DID NOT HAPPEN. Take it from me in Eastern Oregon, in literal nowhere at all, that did not happen.

Now, you can stroll over to Parler and Gab, whatever else, to read all this. That is if you want to submit your data and set up an account. For sites that have been repeatedly data breached. I’m bad with computers and barely understand how to turn one on and off but even I know repeated data breaches are bad, m’kay. But hey, if you want to read how Biden is dead, being played by a crisis actor or that FEMA camps are being set up right now to ‘re-educate’ patriots or that masks are a sign of the Beast and the New World Order, that the COVID vaccine is Bill Gates’s master plan to erase the earth’s population…well, you can peruse your Aunt Martha’s Facebook page. Or that guy you went to high school with, who morphed into a 2A rabid weasel who types in all caps about state’s rights, small government and why liberal women are all whores who kill then eat their own babies.

I could go on and on about the nuttiness that is American politics right now. And on and on!

So to end this brief scattershot for the start of March, I made dinner rolls yesterday. From scratch. I let them rise three times. I had a small roast in the crock pot, I let the dough simmer near that heat. Light, fluffy, airy dough, kiss noises! I baked them to perfection. Paul Hollywood would have at least given me a slight nod. I think it’s important when the globalists cut the power and start stuffing us all in camps that I have the skill set to make my own bread. I’d laugh but irony and sarcasm are dead in America, so I’m just sobbing into a pint of ice cream while waiting for the black helicopters to wing past on their way to carry out orders from the Clinton mafia.

Hello, spring. Hello!

Ditsy Scatterbrained Hagfish

from Redland City Bulletin. Hello, last remaining bee!

As I microwave my ancient morning coffee, which is ice cold, I ponder. I wonder. I’m also ovaries deep back in a Wonderfalls revisit. Talking souvenirs and kitsch objects giving cryptic instructions to a slacker chick. Because reality right now is just…um.

I wonder what it will take the crack the sneering veneer of Trumpikans. An actual murder? I wonder why the Democrats still have their velvet, be nice, gloves on.

Take em off, you squirrels. Take em off.

Stop playing nine-dimensional chess with assclowns swinging battle axes at everything in sight they find scary, threatening or scary. You two groups are not playing the same game. For thirty some years now, dears. Yeah.

I put half a candy cane in my microwaved coffee, by the way. Just for full disclosure. Yes, I still have candy canes left over from Christmas. Shoo fly, that might have been the last remaining bit of one. Can you buy candy canes for Easter? Honest question. I like mint, peppermint, the general mint family. Snapple with mint is still right up there as one of my favorite drinks of all time. Do they still make that? Honest question.

BRB!

I don’t believe Snapple makes this anymore. My hasty, barely glanced at google search seemed to find no evidence that Mint Snapple is available in March of 2019. Sad. Sad!

Spring has sprung. The spring bulbs planted eons ago yet again shove up their spiky green leaves, with hints that tulips and daffodils will soon follow. Bloom for about three days, then go back to sleep until next year.

The bees, all two of them, buzz about, inspecting me for pollen. Still don’t have any, bees. You’re making me nervous, bees.

Oh look, we still have bees. Global warming must be a hoax if I still see bees…

Seriously, Demo-door-mats, take them gloves off. Why do you think people are so freaked out by AOC??

IS SHE PLACATING THE VERY ONES PUNCHING HER IN THE FACE?

No, squirrels, she’s not.

I should run political campaigns, huh?

I’m trying to be super-cheerful. I don’t think I’m pulling that off. At all.

I’m readying my tiny bit of ground for a tiny garden attempt. My zukes were wildly abundant last year, yet my pumpkins, after a late belated start, were so so.

My eggplant…the less said the better but it was a weird ornamental variety. It tried. It grew tiny little eggplants!

Something kept eating or destroying my cukes and the summer squash never really got its engines running, if you catch my meaning.

The oregano went to town! My dill plant delighted me! The lavender, oh my! Lemon balm, never again. I don’t know what to do with it. I think I’ll try rosemary this year as I love rosemary in pretty much anything. Dill, yes! Sage and thyme! I might just go for spices and zukes and pumpkins.

I actually did manage to make pies from pumpkins I’d grown, after all. At least three!

I just need to work on my pie crust skills. Ouch. Ugly pies but they taste okay. I’m ashamed! I watch all those baking competition shows! My pies look like something that fell on the floor, then got stomped on by buffalo. I can and will do better!

I also need to dust off a novel that needs working on or finishing or…I’ll put a note up, stare at it a lot.

Work on novel.

Work on play.

Work on screenplay, you ditsy scatterbrained hagfish! 

The Ghosts of Pets Past

The actual little visitor. 

The baby bird made it through the night. The heating pad, the hasty scrambling for something to feed it, the toilet paper nest. Oh, did I not tell you? Yours truly acquired a somewhat newly hatched baby bird. Species, don’t know.

I am one of those folks who, yes, go out of their way to try and save wildlife and stray dogs and lost kitties. My life has been picking up stray little souls on the sides of roads, finding little feeble nestlings in the lawn and generally trying to save tiny lives others have dismissed as ‘why do you bother?’ Because something in me actually cringes at leaving something to suffer a lingering death. Or a quick awful one from being smacked by a rapidly moving vehicle. My mother also did this. I remember her stopping to help strays and little lives, too. Once a baby rabbit somehow got in our house and she tried to get it fed and calmed down. It died, being too stressed and too afraid to recover. That was the last year of my mother’s life. If you want, you can see that an omen or a foretelling. Or a warning not to try and save anything, we all die. We all die.

the old apricot tree, home to countless blackbird families

Except for those little lives we manage to save.

I’ve had some success with baby birds. One summer I managed to save and release back into the wild about seven or so. A robin and some tiny quarrelsome sorts that I found huddled up and freezing in a blown down nest. I raised the baby robin and wrote a short story about her. It never developed the colorful breast of the male robin, and it was too big for a starling, so I’m gonna go with it was a robin. It never got tame and as I had no intention of keeping it anyway, it got to hop-fly away. On the day I could not catch it again to put it back into the big cage it hated, that robin signaled I’d done perhaps a little good. Or not. That robin stuck about and took its chances with humans and dogs alike, and then it disappeared…but it survived, for a bit, got to grow up, and then discover the joys of finding its own bugs.

My mother once brought home a goat she found wandering about on the road. She also found a home for it, as we were not set up for keeping it permanently. It had a personality, it liked to drink beer, it head-butted whatever dogs we had at that time. I also remember this old cat named Alice who found my mother at a livestock sale– back when we were living in Southern Washington State. Where we were set up for livestock and my mother had gone to buy some young pigs. Alice went straight to my mother, meowing very loudly. Everyone looked at my mother. Who made it clear that Alice, as she later called that calico cat, was not actually her cat. Why would anyone bring their cat to a livestock auction and sale?? But Alice persisted, and as cats do, Alice adopted my mother and decided my mother was hers for life. Alice then starting bringing her kittens to my mother…who of course took Alice and her batch of kittens home. I don’t remember if she bought any young pigs or not at that particular sale. Alice proved to be a one-cat woman. She was also the best mouser this side of the Mississippi. And an ugly cat, this was not a show cat, this was an outside, scruffy, skinny, barely tolerant of anyone except my mother sort of cat. Rough calico fur, a loud voice, not fixed that I remember.

I won’t go into the Ghosts of Pets Past. The tragedies and triumphs. The assorted scruffy little lives. The bungled and the botched of wild and domesticated alike. But I will try to keep the nestling remanded to my clumsy care alive as best I can.

Don’t worry. No insanely precious stream-of-consciousness poetry is forthcoming. Yet. Yet!!

 

That’s one of the local quail, taking a moment to check stuff out

An update: This afternoon, that little life grew still. Breath stopped. The tiny peeping. I wish I could write something here profound and deep as the Marianas Trench. It lived, and then it didn’t. I buried it beneath the oak tree, beneath the carpet of old leaves, among the shy worms and the tunneling gophers from the neighboring fields. I should have made a little boat, Viking style, and let that very young life rise back up into the sky…fire and ash, the ash floating upward, upward toward that sky. I could have sailed that tiny boat, set on fire, in the deep puddles in the lane we have yet. Goodbye, little bird. Say hello to all the other birds I couldn’t quite save.

QUIT YER CRYIN’, DANDELION!

 

Homemade bread and homemade dandelion wine. Yep, yours truly can bake a bit. I know!

I picked a passel of dandelion blossoms. The two dogs were understandably confused. Their noses tried to sniff each bloom as I plucked it and they kept trying to get me to go lift stuff up so they could hunt mice. They both also looked toward the gate, hoping I’d grow a heart and let them frolic in the organic onion field. As just last year, this delicate and cannot be touched by dog paws field held alfalfa and a lot of random weeds– and nobody cared what the dogs did to it. Don’t you feel a lot better about what your hamburgers eat now, dears? The fields about the house, actual stretches of tilled earth that solemn American farmers turn into plants they harvest and turn into pennies every so often, have been thoroughly plowed, smoothed, planted. A special drip irrigation system has been set up, too! As the rains here stay on the other side of the mountains; most of Eastern Oregon is in what’s called a rain shadow.

But the dogs, ah, they like to chase each other after digging giant holes  in that once-an alfalfa field, going after field mice or field gophers or phantom rodents of some kind. Bunnies have moved in but the dogs can’t outrun them, which the bunnies know. And yours truly draws the line at bunny slaughter. That’s my line in the volcanic dirt. [As this area once sported volcanoes, and we have several active volcanoes nearby, like Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, and yes, Mt. St. Helens. Bwha ha ha.]

I picked dandelion blooms for two whole days. I froze what I had picked, hoping they’d still work for, yes, homemade dandelion wine. Which seems absurdly easy on paper to make. Dandelion heads, some yeast, a shit-ton of sugar, an orange and a lemon, some water. Seal it all up for about two weeks, let it bubble. Strain it, then pour that liquid into jars, seal those jars up, let that sit for a week or so. Easy-peasy, easy breezy Cover Girl! I found this recipe, by the way, over on Allrecipes. As I am underemployed [to be so fucking coy it hurts others to brush against my coyness], I was looking for both a project and some cheap ass booze. Having an imaginary crack addiction is not what it’s cracked up to be. Ha ha. Ha. Okay, anyway! Also, I vaguely remember my mother trying to make this concoction. My mother actually did the whole home canning, pickle your own pickles thing you see in movies about heroic farm women from the Ukraine, dubbed into bad English. She wasn’t from the Ukraine, she was actually born here in America, but you get the vague point, yes? I still have her sweet pickle recipe, it’s actually in a Lutheran cook book

put out by my church…yes, yours truly actually has a church in her background. [That’s why so many of my characters are ALSO LUTHERANS. Amazeballs indeed. Now you know.] I have never attempted to turn cukes or cucumbers into actual pickles. Both my grandmothers also canned and froze produce and made it perform later on at the dinner table. There were canning jars involved and baggies usually full of partially cooked corn and pressure cookers and sugar and fresh dill and steam rising from pots of sliced up this or that.

Now, my boiled dandelion-infused water bubbles away on a top shelf, where it’s dark and cool. As per the instructions. The dark and cool part, not put said water turning into, hopefully, wine, being put on a top shelf. I figured that if the magic water were out of the way and sort of out of sight, no one would pour it out or knock it over or in any way, mess with it. It has to ferment until the bubbles stop. The recipe was vague about that, ten to fourteen days. A creationist would crow about how science ‘knows nothing but God knows all’. Which is a way of reminding myself that if you want to see something there, you will. Even if nothing is there to see. Patterns dominate the human mind. We want to see patterns, we want to make connections and tidily label everything. Perhaps I’m reading far too much into my pre-dandelion wine?

Alas, now it’s just a wait to see what happens. I’ve made wine before, accidentally, with some, yes, homemade grape juice and sugar. I simply put some, yes, homemade grape juice, as in my mother picked the grapes and turned them into juice, into a small bottle with a lot of sugar. And capped it tight. Did I mention I was a kid when I did this? I was a kid. So mentioned. The dark purple turned into a sort of electric-looking paler violet. Hello, science! I took the cap off, after X amount of time. As in I don’t remember precisely how long that grape juice and sugar had a violent, passionate affair in that small bottle. It doesn’t seem very long, as I was not a patient kid. I’m not a patient adult. Or I’m still a kid and my adultness has not yet set in. Anyhoo!!

I uncapped my experiment. Yep, I’d managed to make about the most potent little couple swallows of wine imaginable. My grandpa thought it tasted good– that’s some powerful stuff. Yes, I did taste it. Wowsers indeed, it tasted quite different than plain ole grape juice. Did I take up wine making as a hobby?

No. No, I didn’t.

But here I am, many many many years after that innocent little science experiment with homemade juice and sugar, waiting now to see what happens with my homemade dandelion juice and some sugar. The circle has come round again. The circle has no end and no beginning, because it’s a circle and if it had an end or beginning, it would be some other geometric structure. And then I wonder how many dead bugs are floating in my bubbling away magic water into, hopefully, drinkable wine mixture. Then consider that dead bugs also figure, a lot, in legitimate wine. Even the Boone’s Farm varieties. As bugs are everywhere. Everywhere. They are everywhere. I watched a giant daddy long-legs casually stroll across my books just above my desk. I blew air toward it and it scampered away, thoroughly embarrassed, I hope, at strolling about out in the open where I had to watch it.

But I will, of course, keep all you darlings and dears and lovebugs updated as to the progress of my weed wine. Oh– sorry, there’s no marijuana in it. I meant as in dandelion, not cannabis. Always be clear in even your vaguest, most innocuous blog posts!

Though, I do love the cheerful yellow flowers that dot the lawn, no matter what you do to them. Robert Fulghum, yes, I have read him, shhh…wrote about his love of dandelions. I, too, share that love. Even though I massacred quite a few dandelions and then boiled them alive. I’ve read that plants can send chemical signals to each other, warning each other about big attacks or stuff going on or plant gossip…I just sort read the headline and skimmed it, because I’m a modern woman who doesn’t bother reading the entire article. I just give a like if I like the headline. And then usually find out later I just liked a pro-Nazi article. Ugh!! Gag me with a spoon!! And then I have to backtrack, erase my like and go from there. The lesson gained from my pro-dandelion wine ramble is to always read the content before giving a like or a retweet or a thumbs up or assigning some emoji that indicates your positive take on said contents. Or just stick to animal rescue articles and videos. But there are pratfalls and traps there as well. Sigh. You can’t win. That’s why cat videos are so popular, in my opinion. As liking anything else garners you weird looks from relatives, impassioned comments from advocates, and general WTF is wrong with you from total strangers. Cats are funny. Everyone likes cats. We can all agree that a cat playing hide and seek in a box is generally amusing and non-controversial. Carnivores to vegans like to watch kittens playing with a feather duster. Cats, the universal internet safe choice. Cats.

Wow, danger noodle. Tangent. Quit yer cryin’, dandelion!

Bet you thought I couldn’t work that title in, huh?

This one escaped the slaughter

65,966 rejections

 

Well, don’t I feel special. Two rejections for my submitted something or other on the same day. Those pieces sucked anyway and I submitted them during the wrong phase of the moon and my energies were all wrong and I wasn’t being open to all the universe had to show me yet, of course. Life lessons or something to be learned here. Or that my writing sucks and nobody wants a thing to do with it. I’m a crappy writer who has delusions of grandeur. I should have gone into shoveling dead animals off the highway, at least I’d have enough cash to buy Christmas presents once in a while and some actual self-respect rattling around in whatever’s left of my soul. Which is poisonous thinking and I should pour some sugared sunshine posit-tronic thoughtjuice on that and smile through the pain and fake it until I make it. Wheeeee.

Yeah. Something like that.

I know we’re not supposed to admit a feeling of utter GODDAMN IT GODDAMN IT FUCK. That’s so…defeatist. No sense, none, not a single dropsicle of sense, needs to be wasted on getting upset, angry or in any way emotional over yet another rejection and another right after that and another, and yet another, oh look, another rejection form letter urging me to keep submitting; even though they enjoyed reading my work it was not suitable at this time for our needs. Maybe next time. Maybe next time. The two following little blurts are from actual rejections sent to moi. I have made them generic and every day to protect the guilty and the sadsacks alike.

Thanks again for sharing this. As always, there was a wide range of excellent responses to this image, but we received 262 poems in total, and the artist and I could each only pick one. Unfortunately we chose other work—check the [I’ll leave the name to your imaginations] this Tuesday and Thursday to read the two winners. [Subtext– come and read what a good poet wrote. Why don’t you try being a good poet so maybe your life will have meaning at last? That’s so not the subtext, brainworm. I should support other writers, so they’ll support me when I’m in the winner’s circle. And when will you get near that winner’s circle, o Ms. Crappola O’Crappy? ]

Thank you again for submitting your play, [ what does it matter? It lost. It doesn’t deserve a title.] We are finally gearing up for this year’s production of [when did I submit a play for this place? Oh yeah, back in September 2016], and while we enjoyed reading your play, we are unable to include it in the lineup.

UPDATE, as of May 5, 2017– just got one of my fave kinds of rejections. Where they tell you you did not win and then wax rhapsodic over the play that did win. Like, a giant bitchslap of just how much you sucked and that other play ROCKED THEIR UNIVERSE AND IS THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD, THE WHEEL AND THE INVENTION OF CATS. “We just thought you’d like to know you didn’t get selected.” End it there. I don’t need a revival-tent-ish testimonial to whatever did win. Fragile ego here, god damn it!! 

Now, I do have a sense of humor about rejections, I do. I laugh– ha ha-– and then try to remember that rejection is a part of life and it’s all about learning something and that when you get lemons, drink vodka and that when a door closes, you still have cheesecake. Except when the cheesecake is at the store so you spread peanut butter on stale crackers instead, which makes you feel like a total loser because a real winner, even when they didn’t get picked from a random herd of sweaty, earnest other writers, would have fucking cheesecake in their fucking house. Amen.

There’s not even those fake Dollar Store cheesy puffy things in the house that try to be Cheetos but fail so miserably it’s laughable. Ha ha. Maybe the universe can send me one of those “You’ve won five dollars” scratch-off lottery tickets [One I don’t actually have to buy. One I find out in the yard beneath the oak tree. I’m totally down for some miracles right now. Magically appearing, modest-winning scratch-off lottery ticket, I’m in!] before deluging me with rejection letters. I think that’s fair. Totally, like, fair and stuff. There’s no balance here, universe. None! It’s a lopsided smackfest! At least send some fake ass cardboard-esque Cheeto wannabe products my way if you’re gonna keep sending me multiple rejection notices every other day. Hello!!! HELLO!! Is this thing on??

Oh, P-freaking-S– I was gonna, like, take a break from this here bloggie for a bit due to needing some mental health days [like, um, you couldn’t tell or something that my mental health, like Elvis, has left the building], having life flu, and generally, planning a dance like nobody’s watching dance party marathon for one, but…yeah. I decided to vent like a pouty little volcano and spew feeble almost-ash into the indifferent air. whee

Oh– Goddamn it, France. Remember when Germany occupied you, ahem, during that thing we labeled WWII? Why are you trying to put an actual far-right fucknut on your French throne there? [I know it’s not a throne, I was being cutesy.] So the actual  right-now Germany can make movies about the noveau [neu– I hope that’s a somewhat correct German word for new. Again, I was trying to be cutesy.] French Resistance? Yeah, immigrants, Satan sent them. So maybe build a wall around France and then Satan can’t get in…oh wait, that’s America’s Bigly Planz.  Um…let me get back to ya, France. BRB.

How bad does it have to get before people…Fuck. Really bad. It has to get kill a bunch of people, mass graves, atrocities and breaking news reports read by serious-faced perfect-haired automatons bad and even then, it has to get more and more foul until we all magically remember we’re all better than that and this cannot stand and how can people do that to each other…I forget that we all forget and have to repeat everything a bazillion times to get anything through our goddamn thick heads. And then repeat it all again after that because nothing sticks in our goddamn collective thick heads. Never forget? We never remembered in the first goddamn fucking motherfucking goddamn place. Amen. I ended with this French stuff to remind myself that rejections suck but fascism sucks more. It’s all about perspective, fellow babies. Now I want cheesecake and Cheetos. Hello, power of suggestion.

from Alchetron. The Sorrow and the Pity

 

 

 

The Day of the Rabbit

 

Chocolate Muscovy Duck and Netherland Dwarf-cross rabbit, Peter

Yes, moi is planning a stay at home all day and not mingle with the relatives be alone festival. Mostly because my ability to deal with people borders on cringing away in horror that other people actually exist outside my fevered brainlands. As said relatives, in a small town off the wilds of Boise [Idaho, for those who think I live in France or Canada, tee hee] have invited their relatives, who fill me with actual snarls. I have no wish to hear about how the lib’rals are blah blah blah and the paid protestors and…yeah. All of that swirling conspiracy crap spews from the various mouths and yours truly just wishes for that damn meteor of death already to hit. Boom. Gone. No more uncomfortable dinners with earnest little tape recorders.

 

I am a liberal in a very red part of my state/s. As this region here might as well be called Idaho-lite or Idahgon. But I won’t go into this, nope nope nope.

It’s the Day of the Rabbit. Where a magical rabbit hands out chocolate eggs to all the good children of the land and then there’s ham and springtime.

I know what Easter is, thanks. Brought up a Lutheran. Did the whole nine yards. Jesus and I have agreed to see other people but we still keep in touch, to misquote from True Blood. Lafayette.

I’ve been rewatching that, which is why those particular words occurred to me in this context. Not so much watching it as it’s playing in the background as I write frothy somewhat happy morality tales about talking animals.

I still grind my teeth over humorless Bill, who should have been staked in the very first episode, and shrill Sookie, the helpless little houseplant. [They made her do stupid things so Beell could save her all the time, it got old freaking fast.] I still enjoy Eric and Pam, wishing the show had cut most of the other characters and centered the show around those two Fangtasia fantastics. I won’t do a True Blood run down, don’t worry. It’s Easter! It oddly seems appropriate on the Christian Day of Blood [yeah, I went there and if you’re offended, that means you’ll come back hoping to be offended again. Yay!]

Okay! Working on my Beastface Bay tales. I have about five done. The giant squids of Jesus, Teddy’s back story, Burt and Judy and their crime spree, Sean and Bean’s exodus from Froggy Pond, and oh, how Teddy got and lost a friend. Oh. That tale went into a dark but satisfying place. I didn’t wish to write that fate of that little fish, and I know full well I can unwrite it. I’ll read over my words and see if it ‘rings true’ or not.

Oh, there are no tales about any rabbits in my Wind in the Willows knockoff.

Well, there’s a baker rabbit in Driftwood who might be selling her seven daughters to the locals for, um, favors, but that’s just a rumor there in a small town. You know how small towns are!

 

Oh my, this started with my staying home by myself on Easter and ended with a weird reference to a mother rabbit pimping out her rabbit daughters. With a hasty sneer toward True Blood, which I hatewatch, apparently. I should probably edit this heavily and add some smiley face pictures. Well, back to writing! I’m about to dive into Captain Isaiah’s shipwreck while hauling slave horses back to Beastface Bay during the dark days when slavery was a thing. Have a nice day, Jesus.

PS– Night of the Lepus was on last night! I laughed, I cried, I laughed so hard  I cried. I just want to thank whomever over at TCM for deciding to run that truly so bad it’s good little gem right after the rather sweet Ernest Borgnine movie, the Rabbit Trap. [I was not out having sparkling conversations with sparkling poets, sorry. I was schlumped at home with the remote control and some tap water.]

IN WHICH ANN CONCLUDES HER SUPER-SEXY TRILOGY WITH TEARS, LAUGHTER AND SIGHS

Beijing, China. The Summer Palace. School trip with the kiddies

Wuh!! Weeee!!

We, using the conclusion that others will read this, are at the end of my magnum opus of bloggy goodness. Part three of my Hundred Days of Things I Love. Yes!! Hallelujah!! Let Oregon rise again!

I’m not in the American South, so to say Let the South Rise Again would just be puzzling and not geographically correct. Not to mention, that battle cry is, um, a hearkening back to the Civil War and assigned to the side that LOST. So.

I had a good week last week. Three nice things happened! A possible go ahead on two of my short plays being included in a Hungarian universities anthology collection– in Hungarian, of course. A friend from undergrad days contacting me about sending her material for a reading series at the theatre she works/volunteers at. And…a short play of mine possibly being directed by a famous person and shopped around to film festivals. Now, I already have several little films out there based on my work…yeah. I do. Here’s one:

 

The above is based on my play, Traces of Memory.

http://www.10-minute-plays.com/dramas/traces_of_memory.html

So!! Mama had a good week!

That’s a shout out to the odd way I chose to label myself when I blabbered on about romance novel stuff and popular literature. Which is oddly Southern…and parts of my family do come from the southern regions of the US. Well, after they migrated from Europe, that is. And then settled in…yeah. Anyway!!

Here’s the tail end of my Hundred.

As always, I edited them for too personal content, took out names and generally sanitized them for public consumption. I plucked the hairs from its chin, in other words…

That’s eggplant and peppers in a sweet sauce and that’s rice beer. From my fave noodle shop just a hop and a skip from my, yes, dorm room in China. 

 

62. Breaking Bad is good, but it is pretty racist. Kermit the Frog! A giant bathtub with lots of bubble bath and candles. The smell of banana bread or pumpkin bread or any of those breads cooking on a cold snowy day. M. coming to see my Mermaids play. {I had a one night only staged reading of my full length in Los Angeles. Go me!}

63. Looking through old pictures. The mindless comfort of knitting, row after row. Can’t think of much– still giant problems in Ferguson, MO. The dead boy, Mike Brown, has been smeared to hell and back to make his execution seem justified. Like they did with Trayvon Martin and rape victims who come forward and…fuck, fuck, fuck. I hate America right now, I hate her racist rotten grungy slimy heart showing like this to all the world. But maybe we need this to really address our problems…maybe this time it will be different. Except…no, it won’t be. There’ll be another shooting, another killing, another murder covered up as justified because he/she was a ‘thug ‘, a gangbanger, a…whatever those trying to cover up what they did can think of. And the public spoons it up gratefully because it’s the expected narrative. It’s what supposed to happen– the bad guy gets gunned down by the good guys, justice, justice, justice. Except. It ain’t even close to the truth and…fuck…fuck…[Chills right now reading this.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown

64. Big violent storms moving through, the air cool and crisp and clean again. A reporter beheaded by the ISIS, James Foley. Wanting to write again. Throwing the ball for Trouble. My cuke plants growing away [cuke–cucumber]

65. Skipped. Went out side by siding.

66. Being out in Eastern Oregon wilderness areas. Saw a bazillion deer yesterday by the Little Malheur river. A cloudy, windy day. Manta rays of all sizes. The tadpoles are all getting large and sassy, with their legs well developed now. Pork rinds.

67. Being by myself.

68. I released the tadpoles into the settling ponds. I spilled them all over the front seat, however. Ugh. Covered with bug bites, goddamn it!! Problems with a friend, ugh. Got the flier for Beatrice [a play of mine] today. [[That would be Beatrice and the Puppies, by the Overtime Theatre in Austin, Texas.]

69. And now [friend] is mad. [I took this part out. I’m older and kinder now.] Trouble beat to hell! Did he fall out of pickup? Breaking Bad swept at Emmy’s. Can’t think of anything new I love. Music– Beth Hart. Love her smoky raspy voice. Pretty girly things, like mini tea sets, makeup, pretty clothes, fabulous footwear.

70. Nothing from [friend] Her dad gave us cukes and tomatoes today. I love cukes!!!!

71. Nothing from [friend] I feel very weighted down by this friendship and guilty I feel so. The guys left while I went to library, fine. Can’t think of anything to love today. It’s hot again.

72. Okay, word from friend. [ edited!!] Stormy day maybe, clouds showing on little internet weather thingie. My mother playing cards, how she loved games. My mother playing Heroes, a computer game. Had weird dreams last night, something about bulls, there’s a bull, we have to get back in the truck.

73. Watched Hobbit before bed– desolation of Smaug. And dreamed about Darth Vader and fighting for territory- H. V. was in the dream. She looked very different with a pig-like nose, very skeletal face, and burgundy paint smeared on her face. But I was successfully defending my turf against all comers until this tall guy had my sword put into a vault-like box only Darth could access. I was supposed to fight him but couldn’t find my sword. So I told him to hold on, he was very rude and yet oddly flirty/creepy. So finally figured out where my sword was, Darth Vader had it. Darth only wore his helmet, otherwise he had on normal clothes, a red shirt and jeans. The creepy/flirty guy got upset, he’d been following me around and taunting me. I fired back at one point, I’m a girl who’s held off all comers. It was cold, I had socks on but no shoes. My area was piled high, like a kid’s fort. I was at college or a boarding school. My sword was in a long black box that Darth Vader had to thrust his gloved hand into to open. Lovely windy cool night. Being alone all day.

74. I dreamed I became an OBGYN to pay off my student loans. Yeah. Wandering along the beach picking up shells. Gabriel Iglesias, for making me laugh, for his Aloha special and the story of him and his stepson fighting over deodorant. [I still love this bit. Still.]

75. That fall weather creeping in so gradually. Pumpkins ripening in a field. A good book on a long drive.

76. Did two submissions

77. Found three movies at thrift shop for ninety cents. VHS. Ah, technology. Sorting through clothes and belongings and finding stuff I’d hid away.

78. Finding Nemo opening– sigh, so good and so sad. My play open tomorrow in Texas. Still no word on ESL job, will apply again.

79. Molly’s faces, her scrunched up don’t wanna little face, so darling. A perfect leaf in its fall coat.

80. Watching the Beijing opera with C. Ponds full of koi, their flashing sides, the secret watery world they live in. How funny people are at times, how funny. Cambodia?

81. Cambodia? When the Breaking Bad marathon starts on Sundays. Earrings on sale. A storm, any storm, any storm will do.

82. I think it’s a no on Cambodia because life is all about the money, right? I can’t think of anything. A big giant moon last night. Heard an owl or some nightbird. Can feel the rot setting in. Nothing about play or…fuck.

83. Went riding yesterday. Lovely cool day.

84. Being happy for others when something good happens in their lives.

85. The most beautiful pumpkin of a moon last night. And wind, a windy night, just perfect for odd dreams. I was a witch guarding a castle against all comers, guarding it until someone else came back for it. M. in dream at the end of it– he was buying guns with another guy to come after me, we, my helpers, were pleading our case to leave us alone, it wasn’t our castle, just leave us alone.

86. Did I forget a day?

87. Songs that I love. Back in Black, Hell’s Bells, Highway to Hell, You Shook Me All Night Long– AC/DC. Hearts in Armor, On a Bus to St. Cloud, Georgia Rain, Trisha Yearwood. On My Own, Les Mis. Somebody Else’s Story, Chess. I’m Moving On, Rascall Flatts. If He Tried, Lorri McKenna. Runaway Train, R. Cash. Strawberry Wine, Deanna Carter. How Far, Whatever You Say, This One’s For the Girls, Martina McBride. A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, D. Yoakum. Anymore, Travis Tritt. Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Tougher than the Rest, The River, Born in the USA, Jungeland, Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen. Sinner’s Prayer, Beth Hart. Shadows on the Night, P. Benatar. A Long December, Counting Crows. Sweet Emotion, Walk This Way, Aerosmith.

 

88. Skipped?

89. Skipped?

90. big beautiful thunderstorm. Dogs shaking.

91. My big pimple thing squirted lots of blood and pus today, oddly satisfying. [Yuck!!]

92. I have no idea.

93, Skipped.

94. Saw snake, so cute, so tiny and scared, out by barn.

95. ?

96. Coffee sometimes seems to the only good thing left in the world.

97. Breaking Bad

98. Have no idea. I have no love in me. Loved the Roosevelt’s on PBS. I was actually weepy at times. Ford factories could put together a bomber in 63 minutes at one point. A million parts or more to each plane. Put together in an hour.

99. I’ve skipped.

100. Had a dream last night, Oct 1. Did a play of mine in Missouri, crazy high sets, at a college somewhere. And then did a reading of a musical I was working on, with people singing the parts. Weird hazy yellowish light.

And there ya go, gentle readers!! Some laughter, some tears, some truly head-scratching puzzlers in there…Did I not deliver on my promises? Whatever they were? Okay then.

Blackbird eggs in the old rose bush

CHEERFUL CONTINUED CHEERFUL FLUFFY FLUFF

Free-range calves up around Lookout Mountain, Oregon

Ah, I wanted to start afresh and new for April. So here’s some more from that list of A Hundred Days of Things I Love, written back in the innocent days of 2014. I’d write something kooky and trickster god-ish today but…it seems the real world is far too darkly Loki-ward and Coyote-tinged for me to compete with. Tangerine Vader and its Twitter fetish and fetish for destroying America just to stick one to Obama. France looking to elect one of the most extreme fucktoads out there right now available for electing– Marine Le Pen. Brexit. Syria. War war war. War. Some more war. Lots of war. The Russians have seemingly managed to annex America at last. The Walking Dead is insufferably boring right now. Just have Negan, for an hour and half, beat that entire cast of suffering sufferers to death with Lucille and call it a day.  End it!! Denial of science. Ugh, a list, there’s a list of ills and madness and true fuckery that no prankster can rival on his or her best day!

So yah…here’s more of that list of mine. Yeah. Uh. Mm. I left off at 31. Ah. Um. Yep.

Eagles checking things out on the Snake River, Oregon

 

32. Homemade cookies fresh from the oven. My grandmother watching birds through her big window. I sometimes think I can go in her falling down house, she’ll be there, watching magpies and sparrows and robins. My grandpa Jarrett and his roses– he offered them to me the day before he died, his rose plants. Staying in hotels.

33. Getting my play accepted at theatres. Enjoying an old beloved movie. [ James Garner died– 87 years old. ] Making Christmas decorations out of homemade play dough with my mother. We had them for years, cut out with cookie cutters.

34. When the two Labs, Molly and Jake, play their game of chase. Molly’s darting and dodging and her obvious egging on of Jake. Jake’s serious efforts to close with her. A stormy day after a heat wave. Cutting all my hair off, what a relief not to have to fix it. Painting rocks to make pets out of them with my grandmother– I remember one painted to look like a ladybug.

35. Scarves. My fetish with scarves. Walking with Greta, a weenie dog mix, on the beach at the Oregon Coast. Being flirted with. That first time meeting A. from Manchester, England. Finding a new word. Playing Oh Hell with my family during holidays way back when. My grandpa Wuehler slamming down the aces.

36. Cream cheese frosting on my grandmother’s carrot cake. Laughing like a loon with friends. Walking on the Great Wall of China with C. A midnight lightning storm that lights up the sky.

37. Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate, with hazelnuts or raspberry. My trip to Joseph, Oregon. Having my own place. Being independent.

38. Writing, wanting to write. Being underwater, that great blanketed silence, the pressure of the water. Going to the Aerosmith concert in Vegas with K. You wanna hear the old shit or the new shit– Steven Tyler.

39. My friendship with K., that get in my face talk we had at M’s party that cemented us as friends. When a baby bird lives through the night. Stars shooting across the desert sky. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown– still one of my all-time fave shows. I got a rock.

40. The simple-minded repetition of the Twilight movies…sigh. Wondering why Bella never perks up has become a consuming pastime! What if they had cast Anna Kendrick as Bella???? Anyway…it’s my heroin. I admit it here. Riding on that speedboat across the ocean by Pattaya Beach in Thailand. the spray, the bumping. the speed.

41. Hearing Trisha Yearwood in concert in Boise. Just sublime. Can’t think of anything, it’s too hot.

42. Getting letters in the mail from faraway friends. The dances at Camp Perkins. Even though none of the boys asked me to dance…

43. Driving over the Chesapeake Bay on the bridge. The smell of warm horse hide. Fishing with my mother and grandmother on the Malheur. My mother used a stick and some string. Curly, my grandmother’s Chihuahua– ROX, that means no. My grandmother would tell Curly ROX and Curly would just droop and go to her box. ROX that means no!

44. Watching Gilmore Girls for the hundredth time. Even though when Rory hooks up with Logan it makes me physically ill. Tadpoles in the ditch. Seeing the little frogs yesterday at the ponds.

45– Aug 1 That fall will be here soon, cooler nights, wind and rain, change. Israel is firing on Gaza…it’s truly terrible. There’s war everywhere. Can’t find many happy thoughts these days.

46. skipped

47. Went to Sumpter [day trip up to the Blues in Eastern Oregon]

48– Aug. 4th. Thankful that my computer recovered my novel!! Goddamn fucking computer in the first fucking place. So hot last night!! Fucking humidity!! Downpour in Ontario, but not here. Ugh.

49. When my mother called my aunt Fucky June. The lilies still growing by the forsythia. My mother planted them. My traveling dreams– all my dreams lately are about traveling.

50. My two tattoos. Finding a thunderegg yesterday at the ponds. The sassy robin daring to find food in the lawn despite four dogs and me, that same robin helping itself to a drink in the dog pool. At Midnight for making me laugh every time I watch it.

51. Jon Stewart and his crack writing team. Trouble’s soft white coat and his sweet submissive nature. The big hawk flying low this morning looking for breakfast. The bloody sun rising like a baleful eye in the east this morning. Tea Party candidates LOSING ALL OVER THE PLACE. Thank you, Jesus, Allah, the devil, whoever is responsible for sending some wake up calls to voters. [Oh…oh, reading this I just get the shivers. I’m sitting here rereading this entry and getting shivers at how voters didn’t wake up at all…]

52. Raspberry cheesecake. Clean sheets. A swift violent rainstorm after weeks of no rain at all. Performing with J. in Toad and Frog. [I’m also a troll over on Yahoo Answers and in case anyone actually reads this, I won’t, yet, reveal that one. Yay!]

53. skipped

54. Climb Every Mountain from SOM movie– the Rev. Mother, what a voice. Cheese. Hearing from a friend after a long time.

55. Monday–Police shoot and kill unarmed black boy in Ferguson, Missouri, protests, riots. My mother’s lilies are blooming. Beth Hart and her music.

56. Robin Williams committed suicide yesterday. I, too, am probably headed that way, frankly. There’s a big storm coming in. Heard a coyote this morning– I do love their weird eerie calls.

57. When I finish a play. Ferguson protests getting ugly. Massive police presence, more like a war zone than anything else. Mike Brown was shot and killed and people began protesting this, some looting but mostly peaceful protesting of police brutality toward the community, which is largely black. Lauren Bacall died day after Robin Williams. What an awful week so far…

58. Stormy cooler days in summer months. Cary Grant comedies– Arsenic and Old Lace, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Bringing Up Baby. A mountain lake dyed the exact shade as the sky at twilight. Seeing antelope in a field.

59. skipped

60. skipped

61. So fucking hot last night. Pulled my calf muscle. Covered in big bites. I just fucking can’t think of anything I love at this moment.

 

Oh dear, gentle readers, what a note to end on…

It’s lovely today here, though. Looks like an actual calm spring morning. The local rivers are all flooding, the Snake, the Payette, the Weiser, the Boise, the Owyhee, the Malheur. Uh…there’s sunshine and coffee. There. Positive spin! Part three coming soon to a blog near you.

Good guys with guns musta got spooked…