Here’s Looking at You

I guess there are two realities in this country right now, ours and Donald Trump’s. In our reality, Biden won the election and is presently sitting on his thumbs waiting for the federal government to allow him access to information related to National Security and COVID 19. Donald Trump’s reality is that the evil democrats have stolen the election, pulling off a coup attempt and the fake news is conspiring to have him overthrown. It’s more like a Hollywood movie script than reality. Is he so wacked that we should fear he might do something really stupid, like launch a nuclear strike against China or Iran? Or is he going to embarrass us by standing up at the inaugural podium to be sworn in while Biden looks foolish in the eyes of the world?

As we have learned from the media and from some people that share Trump’s views, the election was stolen and massive fraud came about from secret elements of the Democratic Party. One such individual who I believe has in his mind the complete destruction of the Democratic Party, and just the Republican Party alone to control the government, sees this scenario as a coup attempt against his beloved President.

For this person who I subscribed to only because my conservative brother in-law follows him. His opinions, like Trump are about America first, America is or should be a Christian country, nationalism versus globalism and of course Republican, conservative values versus Democratic, liberal values.

I’m not an extremist on either side of the political spectrum and for the longest time I dealt with this person only because he is a fellow writer. Last month he complained on his blog about his followers not following him anymore; his numbers were way down. A time ago my best friend and my brother in-law suggested I try to avoid writing on all things political because most of my followers are conservative and I turn them off with my ideas. So, I being the generous writer I am suggested to this fellow writer to curtail his conservative opinions; maybe that is the issue he is facing at this time.

He read my suggestion and of course was more than mildly insulted that I should dare call his opinions archaic and out of touch with the mainstream. So I guess, after seeing for myself how forty percent of the people have reacted to Trumps expositions that he is the victim of fraud and other crimes and misdemeanors from a political party bent on his demise, I shouldn’t be surprised that these extremists exist and see the reality the way they do.

I hope he finally sees the reality the same way the rest of us see it.
Here’s looking at you.

What to do Now that Alex is Gone

It wasn’t devastating news that came on Sunday that Alex Trebek had succumb to cancer. Everyone who heard the news earlier back before the pandemic that he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer knew his days were numbered. The shock is that when we all saw him in September were surprised by how he looked, not a man at death’s door but someone with a gusto for life.

He was an icon of Jeopardy for 37 years and I guess lately there were dorms and Greek houses that did Jeopardy parties, something I wasn’t familiar with when I was going to college back in the 80s. Trebek made nerdiness cool.

I didn’t start watching that program until I was in my forties and moved back with my parents. I answered about half the questions, or responded to the answers with, in the form of a question. Most were well over my head because I never much had an interest in 13 th century Flemish art or what stellar constellations were in the Milky Way.

Now that Alex is gone, and the last program that he hosted will air after December 25, I have to wonder what happens next? Will there even be a Jeopardy? If there is, who will be its host or hostess? If I had to choose, if I had the power to call the one person would accept such an honor, I’d ask Ken Jennings. I guess there are others out there such as LeVar Burton, though this is the first time I’ve heard that.

Rest in Peace, Alex, we’ll miss you.

Well, It’s Finally Over

That sigh of relief you heard Saturday was me and 74,000,000 other Americans in this country who didn’t vote for Trump. The rest of the country though feel it was a fixed election with the outcome certain because, well, let’s face it, all Democrats are corrupt and evil and sinister, according to one fellow writer who thinks Trump is a saint.

I say, let the facts come forward, let Trump and his legal team try and find evidence of fraud, let Fox News and other Trump loyalists scream foul to the world that their man didn’t lose because over half the voters didn’t want four more years of him and his crass, arrogant style of running the country, as if he were a warlord or dictator, but because the election was fixed by corrupt Democrats.

If there is evidence, I’ll acknowledge it myself and make those who fixed the election, if that is in fact what “they” did and let the trials begin. I don’t see it changing the outcome. I don’t see Mr. Trump dole out more of his money to pursue after January 20, 2021, and I truly don’t believe Trump and his loyalists who cry out in the darkness of cheating and fraud.

As Biden said on Saturday, it’s time to stop with the divisive rhetoric, come together as a country and get stuff done, such as the Pandemic. When we work together for a common goal, we get things done.

Trip Line Hazard:Oops!

There I was, leaving a pet store and not noticing a crack in the pavement
of the parking lot.

Then I fell, tripping onto the lot and landing face first.

Blood poured from my head and I called my wife. Naturally, it went to voice mail. The clerk inside the store was alerted by another customer and she ran out in distress, apologizing as she handed me wet paper towels and then a wet towel to help me stop the bleeding.

Obviously, I looked like a mess. My wife called and I told her what happened. Naturally, she overreacted and before she arrived the fire department showed up with four paramedics who assessed me.

She arrived and we went to the local hospital’s ER and waited…and waited…and waited.

I was given a CT scan of my noggin and told I still have a brain somewhere inside, but I have a fractured nose.

I was prescribed some pain killers and antibiotics. I came home to very hungry and upset birds.

A Glimmer of Hope

With the election less than a week away, I being the moderately liberal Democrat that I am has a glimmer of hope it will actually go the way of the polls. But also, I have a better glimmer hope going on that is something I brought up last week with my A Man’s Passion project.

Last Tuesday I received the revised and hopefully final proof before it ultimately goes to print. I sent the edits back to them Wednesday night and am waiting anxiously for their reply. As you can imagine, I’m optimistic about this and hope good things happen as a result.

If this book does equal literary and financial success, it won’t mean I sit on my laurels and glory upon my pedestal. What it means is more work and perhaps more opportunities down the road. I have in my possession many first drafts that need revision, reedits and rewrites. I’m certain at least two of those manuscripts will never see the light of day based upon the reaction I received from my beta reader. The others I think have a decent chance of getting looked over by the submissions board.

I also have in my mind a kernel of an idea that if put to paper and worked on will also be popular. Changeling is what I’m calling this project. I don’t have all the details, and I need to do a lot of research into this, but it will be based upon a creature who changes into any number of beasts, animals, plants, or humans by simply imagining that in his mind.

Like I said I need to research other cultures’ beliefs in this phenomenon which has evolved over the ages through mythology and folk lore. It’s how gods were created eons ago. Perhaps even actual historical people such as Jesus Christ might have been such a creature. I’m just throwing that out there.

Truly Remarkable

My wife is upset about a whole bunch of things, not least of which is me. At any rate, if you hadn’t been up on the current event in our lives, we are in the process of moving. She is packing and wringing her hands and praying that the nasty and horrible winter won’t come too soon.

Too Late; it came in yesterday Around 10:00 in the morning and the snow storm didn’t stop until some time after midnight. WE obviously broke a record for October snow accumulation, I just don’t know what other records we broke too, such as coldest October morning.

Now, besides the stress of the move she now has to deal with the fact that she sent all her winter clothes south to her mom’s already and has literally nothing to wear that will keep her warm. On top of that is the problem of the mice we have and things I’ve thrown out that she didn’t want thrown out such a banana tree she had.

It’s not literally a banana tree, but a stand one uses to place their bananas to allow them to ripen naturally. Unfortunately, it was the perfect spot for mice to munch on the ripening fruit. We had to settle with storing everything in the fridge, to her chagrin. She has a distaste for eating cold fruit. It had all kinds of mouse dropping and it was gross. Perhaps I should have placed it off to the side like she informed me this morning. I told her it was a judgement call.

I got an email from the publisher who informed me the final cover design for A Man’s Passion is complete so the final proof should be ready for me to review and okay. A proof reader has been assigned to read I Albert Peabody. So in my world, I feel I’m starting to move up.

My wife though told me I needed to choose a different career path yesterday while we
were driving in the snow throughout Spokane. She has never been a huge fan of my endeavor, and I’m not sure why either. I tend to ignore her rants as mere jealousy. I think yesterday she had in mind to pick a fight and knew that button to push would set me off. But I ignored her none the less. She truly doesn’t know or care about how my writing is actually going.

Plus I think with her at least she is unaware what the process is in writing; how long it takes and what the sacrifices one has to endure before a successful writing career truly takes hold. It took me over 40 years to get to where I’m at right now; half of which was a vacation or writer’s block that had everything to do with looking at life from inside a beer bottle. If I had stayed course with my early writing career, things might have been different, but then I wouldn’t have the wisdom and knowledge from my pass mistakes to go back on.

I think she expects me to find a job down there in Southern Idaho, doing what is anyone’s guess. After all, I’m in my 60s now; no spring chicken anymore. I want to enjoy retirement, not work crappy jobs until I die, like my mother did. I have a to hold on to a career I once only dreamed of achieving, now appearing more fruitful. It is truly remarkable how things in our lives seem to make everything worthwhile.

Something About Isolation

It’s been seven months since this pandemic thing started and while I am fortunate enough to be back working and getting some semblance of normalcy, I know that many people are still isolated.

I can’t for the life of me understand how they must deal with this. I mean there is only so much for one person to do and reliving your day to day existence like that movie Groundhog Day, gets old, very fast. At least when I was cloistered for six weeks, I had my writing and my books, along with Netflix and Redbox DVDs to compensate for the dreary drudgery of day to day existence.

Seven Months? I’m absolutely certain I would be roommates with my stepson at Eastern State Hospital by now. I had many people ask me how I enjoyed not having to work while I was in isolation and I told them, it stressed me out to some degree. Mostly, it was the uncertainty that maybe I wasn’t needed anymore and that​ ​I would be replaced by someone younger and more​ ​capable than me.

At least that didn’t happen, and now it appears I will be looking at retiring come next March and possibly enjoy myself, being more focused on writing and perhaps getting more of my books published.

I don’t try and plan too far into the future because no one truly knows what the future holds. God knows, but He keeps all of that a guarded secret.

Earlier last month I was asked to write something on isolation through my Spokane​ Fiction Writers’ group. Naturally, it was fiction and has to do with what may be the final chapter​ ​of a novella I’m working on. In it the main character is going to find the antagonist on a​ ​reservation in Montana. He has the corona virus and his intent is justice for all the people who​ ​became this evil man’s victims through the​ ​years. He is isolated and determined. Perhaps that’s​ ​how I should view how others feel toward their own self-isolation.

Loneliness of Life Part 3

Cujo here along with Spike the other crazy Cockatoo.

“Speak for yourself. I’m perfectly rational and sane.”

“Of course you are, but now is not the time dwell on our states of mind. That dog is what we are all unhappy about.”

“Coco!” Elsa announced.

“Yes, coco has not been seen for awhile and the humans who feed us and makes us squawk about are mum about it. They act if she never existed and she was here long before me. It is a mystery and I haven’t a clue about her.”

“I suspect she made Mommy human unhappy and something dreadful happened to the poor little creature,” Harley announced.

“I don’t believe you were ever a part of the conversation, Macaw.”

“I believe I am mighty mouth.”

“Cah, Cah, Cah, yourself.”

“Come on boys,” Elsa scolded them. “It’s perfectly reasonable she just up and left for no reason.”

“I do miss her, don’t you?” Spike asked the flock of six different birds who lived a life of leisure inside their cages.

“Of course we missed her. She was fun to mess with. It never took much to get her
rattled,” Harley opined.

“I would act as though someone was at the door and start squawking like the world was coming to an end, and here she comes, barking and carrying on. It was so funny,” Spike stated with a chuckle.

“Yeah, Zeus doesn’t react the same way she did. He can barely make it back up the stairs anymore because he’s gotten so old,” Cujo said. He used his beak to clean out a nasty little parasite embedded in his feathers.

“Can I offer an opinion?” Snowball the cat asked.

“No!” They replied in unison.

“I’m going to anyway. Mommy and Daddy both talked about that dog. Mommy was
convinced she was sick and needed to be put to sleep…”

“What does that even mean? Bobby the old cockatiel asked alarmed.

“I’m not sure but I did overhear them talk about me the same way. It has something to do with them leaving here and going somewhere else, though I have no idea what a Gooding Idaho is. Do you Cujo?”

Cujo inspected the outside from his window vantage point where he could see the wild birds fly freely about searching for food year-round. He envied them. “I can’t say as I do know what that is.”

“Well, what ever it is, it can’t be good if they are putting us to sleep.

“You guys are probably safe. You aren’t old like me and that dog Zeus, though I help as much as I can with catching and killing the mice here.”

“Oh, you do no such thing. You are so lazy and a fibber on top of that,” Avatar stated
with venom in her Pionus voice.

“Just you wait, bird you’ll eat those words as I’m devouring you. I hear Daddy getting
up. I need to go outside and give myself relief.”

“Why don’t you do that in here? You have that box downstairs,” Harley told the cat
logically.

“I also want to not be put to sleep either. I’ll just play it safe and talk Daddy into letting me out. Meow, Meow, meow.”

They watched the cat make a fool of herself while Daddy let her out the front door and relocked it. He went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker, then stumbled blindly back inside his bedroom.

“Do you think that old cat is telling the truth about Coco?”

“It’s hard to tell. That cat has such a poker face, you can never tell if she’s being honest or lying,” Cujo told Harley.

The Loneliness of Life Part 2

I stayed home and didn’t like it. Daddy always takes me to wherever, but this time only the dog named Coco went, leaving here alone. Maybe it was the way they both talked and looked at her that got me thinking that this trip Coco took wasn’t such a treat after all. They took a box with them. Yesterday Daddy dug a hole by where those things that spring from the ground are grown. I don’t know why but I noticed it wasn’t a big hole, just big enough for…You don’t suppose, do you?

But it makes perfect sense now that I think about it. They leave with Coco. They haven’t come back yet, so it wasn’t to the store where all the yum-yums are kept. I wonder where they went. I remember long ago after we all moved here from that other place out in the country, we had an old dog I called grandma, but they called Princess. She was a Boxer and extremely sick with very little fat on her. The day after we moved, she made a mess in the hallway of the new house and Princess and I went to a place far away.

I remember it so clearly. He placed a leash on her and they went inside together. A moment later though, I felt this coldness struct me and he came out without Princess. I cried out. I knew he had punished her and she was no longer here. Is the same thing happening to Coco?

I hear them approaching and I go to the back door and listen for the garage to open. They are home. Is Coco with them? I run out to greet them, Daddy brought the box inside and set it on a table. I go to it and sniff. Coco was in there, but she wasn’t there now.

Daddy then went out to the hole he dug yesterday and refills it. Odd? Most definitely. Maybe someone else took her off our hands. I now have Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Well, there is still that silly cat Snowball and those crazy, angry birds I am forced to endure. I hope they too find a good home.

The Loneliness of Life

Coco is a dog. She doesn’t understand what’s about to occur to her later on today.

I’m not sure I understand. She doesn’t deserve this; no one does but options outside life come into play.

Yesterday Mommy called someone and told her she needed to put me down. I don’t know what that means. Everyone, Daddy and Mommy seem different toward me today.

They look down at me with their eyes so sad. Daddy is outside digging a hole in the yard near the rose bushes and the mint that grow so abundantly.

Mommy has a box she set aside and I watched her place a blanket inside. She hums a sad song. Daddy comes in and washes his hands in the bathroom. He nods at her and tells her in human language that I vaguely understand that it’s ready. What is it?

“Coco let’s go for a ride. Not you Zeus, you stay home.”

“Zeus is my life partner,” I bark at her. But she doesn’t listen to me. He whimpers as I go into Daddy’s car. We leave now. The garage door closes and I’m in Mommy’s lap. The box is in the backseat with a folded towel inside. I don’t know where we’re going. But, I have this sense it can’t be good.

Zeus always goes with me, everywhere. Why is he not with me?