Confessions of a Lazy Blogger

 

My daughter's kitty Zizi who passed a while ago

I have been enjoying other bloggers' long posts full of links and photos and diary-like reporting of their lives, and I think yeah I should do that too. Then I think nah I can't be bothered. Today I had planned a longer post for Jim's Song Lyric Sunday, which would have featured the song "I Hate Myself for Loving You" by Joan Jett, who was born in September (the theme). I had the idea of relating the lyrics to my own experience of the same, as this month marks the 10-year "anniversary" (9/25/16) of when I met the Michael who ghosted me at Thanksgiving (as opposed to all the other Michaels). I was going to jabber on about the significance of the square numbers, and go through the whole boring story again, even though some of you have heard it a few times already. 

Meh.

I find that I just don't care enough about it any longer to talk about the details. If it's uninteresting to me, I am pretty sure I can't make it sound interesting to you. Plot twist: I'm happy that I no longer care about what happened 10 years ago or any other dating experiences. They're all a big stupid blur of who gives a f*ck?

Nothing else grabbed me to post for SLS, so I thought OK I will do Joyce's Hodgepodge. But the theme is football. I mean, it goes beyond football, but ugh. Football. If I participate and share my link, then I will need to read other posts on the topic to participate fairly... blech. This is nothing against people who enjoy football. Some of my best friends like football. Hah.

I saw someone in my feed post about "lilac," and I followed the link back to the OP, who are a couple peeps I interacted with years ago on Wordpress, but they have their comments disabled. Blogspot posts do not "ping back" to another post when you create a link; the only way to alert another blogger that you tagged them is to go over there and leave a comment. I don’t mind doing this occasionally, but if comments are disabled, I don't feel like dealing with it, going to all the pingbacked links, hoping for a few return visits, blah blah, even though I might have done that if I could have commented, which makes little sense as it's the same thing, but hey. Then I thought, fine, I'll just do my lilac post for my loyal readers who come here of their own free will just to read exciting posts like this one.

Meh. I was out of the mood by then.

Generally, I avoid the diary type of posts because I have to leave out too much, since I don't post about work in any specific way nor do I want to say anything about family or friends that they might not like. I have been burned before in writing about these topics. It doesn't seem like anyone I know in "real life" reads this blog, but if I ever mention something like say a roommate I had back in Huntington Beach, then you can bet they will come slithering out. I do use the name Michael, and occasionally Jim, as there are a kabillion of them, and I doubt one will want to make himself known by jumping up and yelling YES I'M THE AHOLE!

I see that the Sunday Whirl Wordle has some really pretty words in it like mosses and plumes and forest and ruffle, so maybe if I get over my lazies I will write a poem with all the prompt words. Hazy images are starting to materialize in my mind...

Here's the bottom line (literally): I don't want blogging to take much effort. If an idea for a post turns out to be Not Fun and a Giant Chore to continue with, I delete it. If participating in a "blog hop" takes a bunch of work, I'm out. There are too many books I could spend time reading instead.

Fictional Meanderings

AI dragon with jellybeans

[I wrote this earlier in my Some Thoughts on Fiction post, but then I realized it should be its own thing.]

Novels are created from a writer's imagination, as least partly, but the key for me is that they could be true, either in this world or in a fantasy world. There are all types of fiction, but for me to immerse my mind in a story, I have to find the characters and the situations believable. But what about House of the Dragon? I have mentioned my love for that show. Sure, there can be dragons (or gods, ghosts, genies, vampires, shifters, etc.), but they have to follow the rules and conform to the boundaries the writer built for the fantasy universe. Anything that is “magical” needs to follow a set of rules, preferably presented in advance, so that plot twists and resolutions avoid the dreaded deux ex machina. Non-magical events should conform to boundaries we already understand from this world, and no rules should be fudged to resolve a conflict. 

Skip this paragraph if you are familiar with the deux ex machina plot device. This is when in the stage plays of old a literal “god” (the deux) would come down from the ceiling to solve the problem. A crane-like machine would lower the actor to the stage. When we use the term now, we generally mean that the writer failed to create a resolution using the rules s/he already established in the story's universe and instead had something new swoop in to save the day. Let's consider James Bond in Live and Let Die escaping certain death via crocodiles by nimbly leaping across their backs to safety (in a suit and dress shoes!). That’s perfectly in line with the 007 character. But if the writers had decided instead to have the crocs all suddenly expire from multiple lightning strikes, that would count as a deux ex machina device and be horribly unsatisfying for the audience. Good writing always avoids this! 

Back to dragons. In the imaginary world that George R.R. Martin created for Game of Thrones, there are established rules, such as dragons don’t burn and neither will the special humans with dragon DNA, so it’s fitting that Daenerys survives infernos, but her cruel brother Viserys, who is always faking his dragon status, gets burned to death by molten gold. What isn’t believable in the story, however, is when people without antibiotics survived messy, painful, and terribly unhygienic amputations. The dragons are fine in my mind; Jaime surviving his hand getting lopped off is not.

The problem I have with most shifter romances is matter of logistics. What happens to the human clothing when a man shifts into his tiger or bear or wolf or whatever? And doesn’t he get all smelly and gross and full of parasites during his animal phase? What happens with all that when he shifts back to human form? Yes, I know that even in the spiciest novels no one talks about using the bathroom (unless that's part of the spice), but I can’t stop thinking about these “practical” issues while I’m reading, so it kind of wrecks the whole shifter story for me. 

Non-magical stories do not escape my fussy criticism either. In romance novels and romcoms, I have a huge problem with too many coincidences; often, more than one is too many. The fact that the hero and heroine meet at all is an amazing coincidence, so why pile more on top of that to make the story wobble from unbelievability? I'm a fan of Collen Hoover’s popular novel Verity (soon to be released in movie form with Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and some man), but there’s no reason for the protagonists to “pre-meet” in a coffee shop, with the requisite spilled coffee and ruined blouse, before they actually meet at the job interview. In the novel I’m currently reading, Heartbeat at My Feet by Kristin Judd, the protags will meet when Josie travels to Sorrento, Italy with Cicero (the adorable doggie), so why did Judd create an awkward encounter between Josie and Giorgio at a gelato shop before that? It makes no sense!

In thrillers, my biggest problem is usually the protagonist acting contrary to her given character or any person really simply to further the plot. If you introduce a smart, sensible businesswoman who inherited her kooky old great-aunt's mansion, you can’t have her fall apart the minute she steps into the house and begin to make the stupidest decisions. Honestly, the only intelligent thing to do when you get bad vibes from a creepy old house is to GTFO and check into a motel (not the Bates one though), not spend the night there in your filmy nightgown and explore the basement at 3AM because you heard a weird noise. FOR PETE’S SAKE!

No, I do love fiction. Good fiction. And there’s plenty of it. You just have to sift through the dreck, which I’m generally willing to do. I finish most books that semi-annoy me because I forgive imperfect writing, but they have to contain at least one redeeming quality, like a cute dog. And gelato, whatever that is ~ apparently not ice cream, as I had previously assumed, according to AI. I don't think I've ever had gelato, but now I want some.

Watch everyone comment about the gelato and not my profound observations about fiction.

Some Thoughts on Fiction

Powell's in Portland, August 2015

Reena's Xplorations Challenge this week gives us some questions to ponder regarding fiction. First, she asks what constitutes fiction in the post-truth era, and I'm probably going to disagree with most of the other responders when I say I don't think our era is less truthful than any other era. Regular people have always lied, or at least insisted upon their version of the truth, as have politicians and their entourages, and whatever media existed at the time. What we see now however is more of a mass production and dissemination of lies because of the way "news" can reach so many of us almost instantly. There is also so much media available in so many forms. Back in the day, we had to wait for some wanderer to wend his way to our village to give his version of a thing that happened months ago at court. Now, within five minutes the whole world knows what a President said at a conference. Or, we think we know, depending on our source and whatever meme we saw on social media.

How thin or distinct are the lines between fact and fiction? 

In writing, as opposed to political "news," the lines are somewhat clearer between fact and fiction. Somewhat. Recently, I read a non-fiction book about bats, and I think it's safe to assume that all the bat information I learned was factual. The author was specific about what was known and what wasn't. (I will have a Thursday Thirteen post on bats coming soon.) Historical books can definitely be biased towards a particular viewpoint. Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs are in the non-fiction section, but those are all someone's version of what happened. Self-help books are considered non-fiction as are books about food, travel, economics, and religion. Hah! Poetry is its own category. 

My favorite types of books fall into the fiction category, but even here things can get muddled. Some fiction is based on true stories. Some characters are closely based on people the author actually knows. Some writers use real-world locations and events in their fiction, while others create imaginary cities and scenarios. Science fiction and fantasy writers sometimes create whole new worlds and types of creatures in their stories.

Do the disclaimers that all characters are fictional really mean anything?

No. All characters, even the nonhuman ones, come from bits of the author's experience, whether direct or from something s/he read. No one writes in a vacuum. Since most real people aren't that interesting on the page, the best fictional characters are a mix of traits that the author has observed or read about. Even monsters, dragons, aliens, gods, etc., are a mishmash of human qualities. We create them all in our own image because what else is there? Funnily enough, the most fictional of fictional characters are probably the dreaded stock characters that a lazy writer grabs from the cardboard stash: the corrupt cop, the schoolyard bully, the cozy grandmother, etc. Real people are usually more nuanced.

Do you follow a formula when writing fiction, or just let it all flow freely?

For a while, I was writing spicy romantic fiction (novels and short stories), and that was all formulaic. I quit writing it and unpublished what I had when I became the stock cozy grandmother. No one wants to stumble across their nana’s erotica. Yuck. My later fiction is more free flowing. Hell, I didn't even know how Ghosted was going to end when I started it. Generally, I begin with a title or an idea that I think is funny and go from there. Sometimes I get bogged down in banter and have to delete a bunch of it to make room for action. Good short stories and flash fiction are actually harder to write than novels because there's no room to indulge yourself with prolonged banter, physical descriptions, and pointless meandering. The pointless meandering is my favorite.

Speaking of that, I had this enormous post written with my thoughts on various genres blah blah, but I have now scooped all that into a new post because I had actually missed addressing Reena's questions. 

My Silver Anniversary

 

Image stolen from Google

This week marks my 25th anniversary working for the same law firm. It’s a big deal, especially these days when people are constantly changing jobs, and I was honored for my years last Friday night at our company dinner. Not coincidentally, I was the oldest person in the room. I can still remember being the youngest person at work, back in Chicago after dropping out of college (I returned later to get my degree).

I found a quarter in the office parking lot this morning (heads up), which I will take as a sign of good luck from the gods for my 25th milestone, or maybe a sign that someone dropped their change. I’m hoping that it’s not a sign I need to stay employed for 25 more years.

I haven’t felt the blogging muse for a while, though I do have a couple posts scheduled for this week. I guess I mean the prompts lately haven’t inspired me, and I vowed not to post filler here. I did a lot of filler posts on my last blog just to stay in the feeds, and I ended up stressed and unhappy because of that. I started a few poems recently and abandoned them all because I wasn't feeling the vibe.

Interesting that my stats have returned to “normal” after that weird World Cup surge. (Probably a coincidence.) I’m still getting hits from odd places, but not thousands of them. It’s also strange that even on days when I post nothing, I get a hundred or so views. Whatever. I don’t want to obsess over stats.

I’ve also been busy, at least for me. Besides the work event on Friday, I had social events on Saturday and Sunday. I also have more social events scheduled for this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The next weekend is similarly packed with people-ing. What the heck? I’m supposed to be an antisocial, introverted hermit!

For someone with nothing to say, I have managed to write several paragraphs. 

Two for Tuesday: Mysteries

Two ducks in Los Angeles (my photo)

I read these books in August to discuss with my online book club.

1. Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica. This book was disappointing. Kubica used present tense for the “now” and for the past, and then she mixed in further past in the past sections, for which she used past tense. It wasn’t confusing as much as it was simply annoying and distracting. I have a big issue with jumping timelines in general, unless the story is compelling, which this wasn’t. It could have simply been told straight up chronologically without all the jumping. 

I understand that book club questions focus on the big themes, but I am not inclined to delve into those when the writing itself irritates me. I mean, there are a zillion mystery novels where we find out disturbing facts about a dead character, so that’s not interesting in itself. There’s nothing about this particular dead guy that I found intriguing, nor did I find his widow’s reaction or behavior relatable.

The main characters made the stupidest decisions to the point where they simply weren’t believable after a few chapters. A dentist decides to start betting on basketball games when his business isn’t going well. A mom keeps leaving her kids in the hot car to chase after specks of “evidence.” She takes a 4 year old’s bad dream as “proof” of a crime. She keeps lying to the 4 year old and saying daddy will be home soon when he’s dead. A dental patient deliberately lets an infection fester and almost dies just so she can sue the dentist. What?! On and on. I didn’t like any of the characters except for Clara’s dad and the dog. 

I don’t know why I am even giving this book two stars instead of one. The ending was good.

2. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth. Three stars. Started out sorta slow, but it became more interesting after a few chapters. There were some twists I saw, and some I didn’t, so that was cool. I like to be surprised, but only if the twist is earned. Characters were interesting and layered, except for a couple bad guys. The ending was a bummer.

I try to use a logical scheme for book ratings, but it’s difficult when I mix in my feelings, such as giving an indie/ friend four or five stars for encouragement (and generally they have very few ratings to begin with). Sally H is a popular author, especially in the book club communities, so I don’t feel the same obligation to help her. For example, she has over 200K ratings for Mad Mabel on Goodreads! I’m also inclined to bump up a star if the author tries something different because so many books are the SOS. I liked that the narrator of MM was a cranky old lady, but when we got into the details of the abuse and bullying she suffered as a child, it became ridiculous. The “saving grace” was the first person narrator, which made me say OK we often exaggerate both the bad and good parts of our past in our own minds, particularly when we obsess over them. We know that memories can change the more they are examined, even if retold only to ourselves.

This is an important point regarding POV. I know most readers don’t think about the mechanics of storytelling overmuch, but there’s a huge difference between a first person narrator telling us what she remembers and an omniscient or even a limited omniscient narrator telling us the facts. When I try to discuss these POV points or other writing mechanics, such as the chosen tense, with my book club peeps, I get crickets or blank stares. I’m not sure how someone can read a sh!t ton of books and not be aware of these things, but I guess that’s a failure on my part to understand other humans. It wouldn’t be the first time!

Everything

Pegasus flying to the moon in a colorful sky (AI)

 

On Poetic Inspiration [sonnet]

I am inspired by a sorrowful tune

To translate tears from my pen to the page;

I am enthused by the silvery moon

To write of loneliness, heartbreak, and rage.

I am beholden to nightmares and dreams

That give me stanzas to take for a spin;

I am grateful for the scams, shams, and schemes

That move my hand to craft lines about sin.

I’m indebted to the sound of the rain

That spreads across my landscape like a bruise;

I am thankful for reminders of pain

That keep this lady well-versed in the blues.

Cheers to whatever mischievous gods fling,

For what inspires me is just... everything!

~*~

Shared from my book Odds and Ends for John Holton's Writer's Workshop, where he asks what inspires us to write.

Where My Rosemary Goes

Colorful music notes from Pixabay 

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim asks us for a spicy song… I mean a song that mentions a spice. I think rosemary counts because people use it to add flavor to food. This is what Google says:

“Rosemary [...] is a fragrant evergreen shrub with needle-like leaves native to the Mediterranean region. It features blue, purple, pink, or white flowers, belongs to the mint family, and is widely used for culinary flavoring, aromatic oils, and ornamental landscaping." 

So, it’s a spice, yay! Oh wait…

I also discovered that rosemary is technically an herb, not a spice, "because it consists of the fresh or dried green, needle-like leaves of a woody shrub in the mint family. In culinary terms, people often group it with general seasonings or 'spices,' but botanically herbs come from leaves while spices come from roots, bark, seeds, or fruits."

OK, then. Not really a spice, but whatever, too late now. 

This is what Edison Lighthouse says about rosemary:

She ain't got no money

Her clothes are kinda funny

Her hair is kinda wild and free

Oh, but love grows

Where my Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me

Aww, I guess that's nice, in a sort of backhanded compliment kind of way. "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" was written by Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason* and released in 1970. These guys were not members of the British pop band Edison Lighthouse (formerly Greenfield Hammer), however; the members were Tony Burrows (lead vocalist), Stuart Edwards (lead guitar), David Taylor (bass guitar), George Weyman (drums), and Ray Dorey (guitar).

She talks kinda lazy

And people say she's crazy

And her life's a mystery

Oh, but love grows

Where my Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me

Thank gawd she has these guys singing a ballad at her, since no one else seems to like her. Geez. The reason I really like this song is because I named one of the main characters in a novel Rosemary, but like most of my ambitious writing projects, it fizzled out. Well, not totally: it ended up as a long short story in my Sidewalk Noodles book, but poor Rosemary gets only two mentions there, so not exactly a main character any longer, is she?

There's something about

Her hand holding mine

It's a feeling that's fine

And I just gotta say, hey!

She's really got a magical spell

And it's working so well

That I can't get away

So she's like a witch? Lyrics from Genius. Listen to the whole song here, if you like.

*This is really weird, but today (Thursday) I saw another one of Fandango's "loosely based" posts and decided I would write one of my song fiction posts on Tom Jones' song "Delilah" combined with the Plain White T's song "Hey There Delilah," and just now when I looked up the writers of "Love Grows," I found out that Barry Mason also wrote "Delilah." Mind blown! Anyway, you, dear reader, are not going to see this fascinating paragraph until Sunday morning, as that's when we schedule our posts for Jim's SLS, but tonight (Thursday) I am going to write the Delilah post, which you will probably see tomorrow (Friday) morning. I want to do a good job on it, but I also need to do a 3-mile exercise walk, so I might end up too tired to finish the post since I haven't started it yet. It's all clear in my mind though. Sort of...

Sharing My World

Gatsby, my soul kitty (my photo)

Hey, it’s been a while since I responded to one of Di’s Share Your World posts, and I couldn’t resist this one. 

1. What have you recently forgotten to do until the last minute?

I’m probably jinxing myself here, but my answer is… nothing! One of my main OCD tendencies is to make lists of everything and add reminders to my calendar for every possible minor deadline or even things sans deadlines that I simply want to accomplish. There are things I should do but haven’t done, of course, but that’s not because I forgot ~ I just don’t wanna do them.

2. How many blog posts do you publish on average a day?

I would say probably one or two. Blogger doesn’t show you highly detailed stats the same way that WordPress does, so this is just my “feeling.” When I first began this blog (or wiped and restarted it) in the summer of 2024, I vowed that I would not post just to post. My old WP blog had loads of filler posts that embarrassed me when I looked back at them. Back then, it was normal for me to post five times per day ~ I probably went three or more years without skipping a day! Now, I regularly skip days. Last week I think I skipped two days. 

3. How long have you been blogging?

Short answer: 22 years, with a few breaks. Skip to Q4 if you aren’t interested in the long, meandering saga.

I began my first blog in 2004 (Ultrablog from my then-screen name of Ultraviolet) because my writer friends were all starting them. Most of those friends have given up blogging, sadly, and their blogs lie abandoned in the internet graveyard. They still operate under the illusion that’s it’s possible to have meaningful conversations on Facebook. I despise FB! I’m only there for my book club now. The latest horrible annoyance is their refusal to hide/ mute stuff you request. They literally do not care how miserable the user experience is; they care only about the ads and business pages people pay for. 

Sorry, irrelevant rant. The 2004 Blogger blog got derailed over the Pit Bull War, my comments were “hacked,” and I deleted the whole thing in 2007. I began a new, quiet Blogger blog that focused on cats and trivia, but I became bored with it. At the end of 2007, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I started a private Blogger blog to express my thoughts surrounding her illness and death. I think I invited 20 readers to commiserate with me. After my mom died, I archived that blog and took it down.

A year later, my divorce was in process, and I began dating a man who was supposedly going to leave his wife (ha ha). Since I was frequently depressed over my entire situation, I began a WordPress blog to post angsty song lyrics, snippets of poetry, and sad quotes. That ended up morphing into my long-running blog, which I paid for to eliminate ads and kept up for over a decade until I got heartily sick of it and of WP generally. I deleted that blog in early 2023.

But I still had this Blogger blog! This wasn’t my original blog or my trivia one, both of which had been deleted; this was simply my backup blog, which I used when WP was being glitchy to “hold” posts until WP behaved again. Anyway, I decided in 2024 that I missed blogging after seeing a movie and desiring to write about it, so I wiped this one and began anew.

4. If you had to rename your blog, what would it be?

Idk. I really like this name, but if I had to rename it, I’d choose something like Pointless Meandering.

Gratitude: I am thankful that I figured out how to give Inky her flea pill. She doesn’t go outdoors, but fleas are everywhere, and one might sneak inside the house, so it’s important to stay protected. This particular pill is very grainy and hard to stuff down her throat, so I gave up for a couple months, but Saturday I was determined. I put a dab of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter on the pill to make it slippery. After making sure she swallowed, I put a tiny dab of it on her nose so she’d lick it off and swallow again. It worked! Yay! (I used to give Gatsby topical flea prevention meds, but those are icky, and I want Inky to be able to take a pill.)

No, I don’t have real butter in the house. I like butter to be fake and spreadable. Thanks for asking. Also, before anyone starts, the Chewy vet said this was okay to do.

Insensitive

Watercolor of a woman in the rain (Pixabay)

Version 1, parataxis:

It was late. She confessed. We got dressed. I drove her home. She was crying. I said goodbye. She opened the door. It was raining. She walked away. 

Version 2, hypotaxis:

It was late, and there wasn’t anything left to say after she confessed that she had fallen in love with me. As we got dressed, I explained again how I had signed a contract and would be based in different cities over the next several years. While I drove her home, I told her how much I had enjoyed our time together, as brief as it was, but I couldn’t make any kind of commitment. She was crying and seemed inconsolable, so I said goodbye. She opened the door, and it was raining as she walked away.

Explanation:

I wrote these two versions of a scene based on Reena’s prompt of parataxis (no conjunctions) vs hypotaxis (use of connectors to give a flow. I used Jann Arden’s song “Insensitive” as my inspiration for this scene—both versions are from the opposite perspective of the song’s female narrator. I’m including this post in my new “song fiction” collection, which I began with Lucille's Version, a continuation of the Kenny Rogers' song, and next I wrote “Stones” via Neil Diamond, a response to Fandango’s “loosely based” idea.

Tiger Striped Hodgepodge

Meta AI created image of "tiger fudge"

Happy last week of July! I am participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week by answering the following questions.

1. What was the last thing you celebrated? 

We celebrated a friend's birthday with a Friday dinner at BJ's and seeing The Odyssey. I enjoyed the film but it was very loud, very long, and very violent. I wore earplugs the whole time, which someone told me to do, and I definitely appreciated that advice. Saturday the party continued at the Orange County Fair where we attended the fabulous (and glittery) combo cover band concert of Kenny Metcalf as Elton John and ABBA LA. Very fun! I wandered around the fair for a couple hours, mostly staying indoors to see the exhibits because I enjoy them and also because the weather has been extremely hot and humid here. Sunday (today) my family got together for a pool party and to celebrate (a bit belatedly) my grandson's birthday. He seemed happy with the FIFA themed foosball tabletop game I gave to him.

2 July 29th is International Day of the Tiger. Besides the wild animal itself, when you hear the word tiger what's the first  person-place-thing-whatever that comes to mind? 

Tiger fudge. This ridiculously delicious treat is made with melted milk chocolate chips, melted white chocolate chips, and heated peanut butter. You pour each layer in a pan separately and then swirl a knife through the whole thing to make it stripey. Refrigerate it until completely cold and then cut it into little squares. Meta AI didn't know what tiger fudge was, but after I described it, I ended up with the above pic, which I think is adorable.

3. The expression 'eye of the tiger' describes someone with intense focus, determination, and the drive to succeed. What area of your life are you currently bringing that kind of energy to?  

I don't have this level of focus and determination any longer. I prefer to do things at a moderate pace, probably because when I was focused and determined, it didn't lead to the success I wanted, so why not enjoy life a bit more? For example, I no longer force myself to get up at 4AM and write for three hours before work. That didn't lead to publishing success, so I might as well get more sleep.

4. What was the last meal you cooked? 

Hahaha. I don't cook for one person (myself), except for the simplest things like an occasional omelet. It's too hot to cook now anyway, and I prefer salads and fruit bowls with yogurt or cottage cheese.

5. Describe your July using exactly five words. 

Hot, humid, exercising, reading, blogging.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I had over 3000 views on this blog yesterday, which is disturbing, since I know they're almost all bots. What do they want from me? I think the massive view numbers began when I did April A2Z this past April, and they've been rising steadily. Before that, I hardly had any visitors, so the bots must scrape blog addresses from public lists, such as A2Z.

Pinch

Butterfly from Pixabay

A pinch of poetry, a cup of cats, a spoonful of peeves, a sprinkle of crafts: this is how I flavor my blog. I don't have a specialty, a niche, or a business; I am not writing a novel in 8,000 pieces; and my interests flit around like butterflies in a vast field of flowers, but in a shallow way, so don't bore me with stats or facts or (god forbid) podcasts.

Sometimes I do a prompt for three weeks in a row, and then I might quit participating for months, even though "they" say that readers like consistency. Oops, I guess I am writing only to please myself, my bad.

I tried for years (decades, heck) to please an audience, to get published, to find some way to get paid for my writing, even though it's always been a labor of love, and all that came to naught, so I decided to forget it and just say what I please when I want to say it right here on the blank blog page for no expectation of payment or fame.

If I ever announce that I have a publishing contract, someone should pinch me because I'd be dreaming.

~*~

Written for Denise's Six Sentence Story (pinch).

Lemony Hodgepodge

Lemon bars via Meta AI

I'm participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week by answering the following questions.

1. Do your goals and dreams energize or exhaust you? Elaborate. 

It depends on specifics. I bought a cat feeder to program, and it's so complicated that it exhausts me to think about it, but I will do it. (I'm writing this on Sunday to post on Monday, and hopefully by the time your read this, the programming will be sorted out!) My exercise goals are both tiring and energizing simultaneously ~ I get tired from 30-45 minutes of aerobics, but it feels good, so I'm excited to do it again the next day. As far as dreams, I don't have them on a grand scale the way I used to (finding love, getting published, becoming wealthy, etc.), which is good because I'm happier if I stick with boring daily goals that I can actually achieve. I don't buy into the cliché that you're never too old to do X thing. Hell yeah I am too old to do a lot of things!

2. July 23rd is national lemon day. Are you a fan of this flavor? What's a favorite dish or beverage you enjoy that calls for lemons? 

I am a huge, huge lemon fan! I don't care for lemonade though, strangely. I love lemon desserts, such as the surreal lemon bars pictured up top. Lemon cake, lemon cookies, lemon sorbet, all delicious.

3. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"...is this something you're pretty good at managing? Have you had to do this recently? If so tell us about it. 

Absolutely, and I think it's the only way to be happy unless you're incredibly lucky to get everything you want. Life is full of disappointments, and you have to be able to adapt to them, change your goals, lower your expectations, etc., if you don't want to spend all your time moaning about what might have been. I try not to go down the "if only" road too often, and my personal motto/ mantra is more in line with it is what it is, so now deal with it.

In the last few years, I decided to completely give up on the idea of being paid to write in any way at all. Some of my writer friends still struggle to eke a few bucks out of the various self-publishing platforms, but to me it's not worth bothering with. First, I despise marketing. Second, even when I forced myself to do some, it had minimal results. Third, I don't want to write to please an audience; I much prefer writing to please myself. How did I "make lemonade" out of this? I self-published two final poetry books just to satisfy my OCD with zero expectation of sales, and also I returned to blogging ~ fun writing that makes me happy!

4. Something you love that is lemon yellow in color? 

I adore lemon-yellow roses, even if they set off an allergy attack. I think they're prettier than red roses.

5. How would you describe your attention to detail? 

Insane. That doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, but I am relentless about catching/ fixing them. This doesn't only apply to typos, but also includes consistency in various forms. I also obsessively straighten stuff up and make sure that all objects are either at right angles or deliberately and pleasingly off-center.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

For an introvert who needs a lot of alone time, I sure have a lot of social plans coming up!

Flashback Friday: Some Like It Hot

Somewhere in time...

I'm participating in Fandango's Flashback Friday today with a post from June 19, 2021 that I found on the Wayback Machine for my old WP blog. 

Hot Enough For Ya? 

Are writers pyromaniacs? They sure talk about heat and fire a lot. Romance novels are full of warm looks, hot kisses, burning desires, and fireworks exploding when people make love. The obsession with heat transcends genre however. Here are some titles from my list of read books. OK, most are romance, though some are horror (as if there’s a difference).

Sizzling. One Hot Cowboy Wedding. Devilishly Hot. Firestarter. Firelight. A Song of Ice and Fire. The Girl Who Played With Fire. Little Fires Everywhere. A Dream of Fire. Heart of Fire.

What about music? Fire It Up. We Didn’t Start the Fire. Fire Down Below. Fire and Ice. The Heat Is On. Hot Summer Nights. Hot Legs. Hot Child In The City. Burning Up. I’m Burning For You. And those are just the titles!

It’s kind of weird that fire/ burning is associated with love/ sex/ romance, when it also conjures up notions of hell. Then again, considering my past relationships, perhaps it’s not strange at all…

Sweet Potato Hodgepodge

Baked sweet potato with broccoli and sunflower seeds

I’m participating in the Wednesday Hodgepodge again this week, which is hosted by Joyce @ from this side of the pond. 

1. What do you make more complicated than it needs to be? 

Hmm, pretty much everything including this question. The older I get, the fuzzier things appear (cleans glasses), and further possibilities sprout up like little forest mushrooms after a rain. I'm not talking about math, normal daily routines, or other things with clear answers (although the higher up you go in math, the fuzzier that gets too), but complex questions and new issues that require new decisions. Take Social Security, the supplement, and a drug plan, all of which I signed up for this year. OMG, how I agonized over all that! In general, I'm happy to take the advice of other people, especially my daughters, most of whom know more than I do, and ~ more importantly ~ seem confident in what they're doing.

2. What impresses you? 

Confidence, hah. Creativity, humor, kindness, empathy. 

3. On a scale of 1-10 how picky of an eater are you?  (1=extremely and 10=not at all) If you had to eat a meal made entirely of one color what color would you choose? 

This is a complicated question because on the one hand, I stick with the same basic meals and do not require nor generally desire anything fancy, but on the other hand, when I'm confronted with a list of foods many people hate, I'm fine with most of them, even if I usually don't eat them. For example, I love coconut, sushi, shrimp, oysters, mushrooms, olives, beets, eggplant, tofu, blue cheese, etc., but I don't usually eat any of that because I generally have the same boring salads and sandwiches and fruit. As I age, out of necessity I avoid a lot of fried food and other things that give me indigestion, so maybe overall I'm a 7.

I guess I would choose orange for my single-color meal because I could have cantaloupe to start, then a baked sweet potato, and uh... pumpkin pie for dessert!

4. What does balance in life mean to you? Does your life currently feel 'balanced'? 

To me, balance means that I work normal business hours, chat with my family most days (texting), hang out with friends on the weekend (a few times a month), and still have enough time for reading, writing, chores/ errands, puzzles, and loads of kitty snuggles. I am lucky in that my life feels balanced currently, though sometimes at the end of the month I have to work overtime.

5. If you could travel the world for a year what would be your first destination? 

I absolutely would not want to do this, no matter how much money I had. I would miss my family too much and also Inky! How could I leave Inky? I don't even like to be gone for one night.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Websites lately are so irritating, though I still find Blogger vastly preferable to WordPress (and I'm never going back). Whether it's an online store or a news site, you're bombarded with pop-ups and ads, and it's hard to even read an article anymore without being harassed. For example, I used to read People magazine to get the dish on celebs, but it's so obnoxious that I can no longer deal with it. Articles hang up before they finish loading because the ads are taking too long. On the other hand, sometimes an Instagram ad looks interesting, so I think OK let's see what this is all about. Nope. I can't even view whatever thing it is because the company would rather pester me to sign up for emails and deals than let me view the product in peace. You know what this reminds me of? In the olden days, we used to browse in meatspace stores (how quaint!), and salespeople were constantly pestering us with small talk and asking what we're looking for. We hated that then, and we hate it online!

X-ed (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

Me, around Y2K, with things I've X-ed*

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with X for X-ed.

X is a funny letter in that it marks the spot, checks the box, and can indicate approval or acceptance, but on the other hand X is also used to say an emphatic no, show disapproval, or denote a former status. We X our fingers for luck. X can represent a cross. X-mas for the holiday. It's a positive and a negative. PerpleXing! But that’s English for ya… 

In this post, I'm using X for something I quit doing. Here are some misty memories of things I have X-ed out, whether voluntarily or otherwise. Around age 5, I had piano lessons and a bit later flute lessons, both abandoned for reasons unknown, maybe moving. I had swimming lessons around age 10, then poof. I was on a bowling team for a while and dumped it. In NJ, I joined a chess club, quickly realized I wasn’t good enough, and skedaddled. In high school, I joined and left the Spanish club and the newspaper (I was the movie reviewer, lol). I did stick with my volunteer position at the creative writing magazine senior year, yay.

I started college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and dropped out after a semester (finished my degree 10 years later at CSUN). I began a public speaking class in Chicago and bailed after two sessions. Kept taking dead-end jobs and dumping them throughout my 20s. Began taking the exams to become a real estate broker and quit when I realized I would have to deal with people constantly. Ish. Same with substitute teaching. I did finally find the perfect job (for me) and am coming up to 25 years, so there's that. 

Tried marriage a couple times and decided, nah, not my thing. Noped out on the whole dating/ romance world altogether. I already mentioned hobbies I gave up ~ crocheting, novel-writing, scrapbooking, painting, baking, etc. Joined and exited plenty of Meetup groups (and now barely look at Meetup at all). X-ed X and Bluesky. Medium. Substack (still there but don't really participate). WordPress of course and all my old blogs. Started and stopped Facebook a few times (am on now mainly because of a book club). Used to belong to a gym; now I don't. Tried a bunch of prescription meds and lifestyle changes to combat migraines, but most had no effect, so they got X-ed. There are probably a zillion more things I started and X-ed out of that I don't even remember.

One thing I am not quitting early is this 2026 A2Z challenge because there are only two letters left to go!

*The things in this photo I have since eXited from are collecting Beanie Babies (or anything), scrapbooking, getting perms, and wearing contact lenses.

Quiche (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

My mom's engagement pic, 1957

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with Q for Quiche.

This post is more about my mother. Unlike me, she liked to try new things, especially foods. Supposedly, one of the reasons my father fell in love with her is because she delighted in all the cuisines available in NYC after 20 years of eating the same old boring small-town Ohio farm food. I forget when she said she moved to New York though ~ somewhere in her early 20s, I guess, when a job opportunity arose. She married my dad in 1957 when she was 26. There was no long, complicated engagement or fancy wedding; they met at work at Nationwide Insurance, dated for two months, and he proposed. My dad's philosophy on dating was very simple: find a pretty girl and ask her to lunch. He didn't understand my problems with dating sites or why my relationships had to contain so much drama. I don't understand it either.

From as far back as I can remember, my mom was jumping into the latest food fad. She made her own bread for a while (delicious) and her own ice cream (meh). Any new kitchen gadget that arrived on the scene found its way into our house. In New Jersey, she created blender desserts made with Jell-O, whipped topping, and canned fruit. Not my favorite. She grew vegetables and made zucchini "boats" ~ huge squash halves stuffed with ground beef, tomato sauce, and cheese. Those were great! Zucchini bread was tasty too. Ceviche. Paella. Granola. Next came the quiches. My dad loved those, so Mom experimented with all sorts of different quiche recipes.

Mom returned to work full-time the year after we moved to Illinois ~ she got a job as a claims adjuster in the same insurance company where my father worked as an underwriting manager. Their jobs were in Chicago though, which was a long commute from our suburb 40 miles away in Cary. Since they got home late, during the week our dinners were often casseroles or crockpot concoctions that she had put together earlier. After a while, I started cooking for us and enjoyed it. For years, I liked to cook until after I became an empty nester. It's no fun cooking for one, not to mention there's just as much prep and cleanup. 

I used to enjoy baking as well, and that lasted until a couple years ago when it seemed as though all my friends were on various diets and not eating eggs or sugar or gluten or whatever. It became too hard to cater to the individual preferences, so I gave up. It made me sad to toss all the leftovers, and I didn't want to eat them all myself either. Occasionally, when I was still dating, some man would bitch about how I didn't cook or bake for him. Why didn't he cook or bake for me? I work full-time too. Eventually, I decided I liked my new lifestyle of Not Cooking, Not Baking, and Not Dating so much that I didn't want to switch back for any reason.

The jury is still out on the Not Writing. (When I say "not writing" I mean novels, not posts or poetry.) I am enjoying this recent burst of blog writing… we’ll see how long it lasts this time!

My Blog Story in Four Stanzas

Inky just because

Sadly, the WordPress prompts got me rattled;

I felt compelled to post all the damn day.

Yet my words seemed so empty and hollow:

I kept jabbering with nothing to say.

I found I needed a permanent break

To quell my ravenous craving for likes--
I wanted space to regather my thoughts

Without staring at statistical spikes.

Was my blog glass half full or half empty

When I let it slip and crash to the ground?

My stress level dropped down from the red zone;

This was a good solution I had found.

I lurked around the edges of Blogland,

And to my shame felt the craving again.

The yen for an audience flickered on--

I picked up the metaphorical pen.

~*~

Written for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 751 using the prompt words ravenous lurked shame space found glass hollow flicker rattled slip red crash.

Happy World Bear Day

I signed up for April A2Z today! It’s the first time in several years that I did this officially, but what the heck, right? I already have posts A through L written and scheduled, including images. (I should be OK for space because I bought extra Google storage and decreased the image sizes besides.) My theme is Misty Memories, and it’s great to peruse old photo albums for ideas. Not all memories are happy ones… and not all are accurate either. I regularly remind readers (and myself) of this.

I decided not to stress about when I first participated back on WP because those posts aren’t available now anyway. So, I just said that this will be my first round of A2Z. Hopefully, other bloggers will visit and create a bit more buzz in my comment section. Recently, I’ve followed more blogs and have been commenting more often too. I’ve always felt at home in a community of writers, which has an entirely different vibe from book clubs (though book clubs can be great, of course), and while I don’t want to return to my obsessive WP-level of interaction, a little more would be nice.

Some peeps might think that writing posts in advance is edging back into OCD territory, and to that I say pffft. Now go celebrate World Bear Day while I contemplate what I want to write for M. 

Brace Yourselves

I have some exciting news! I am sure all of my five (?) regular readers will be shocked and awed. 

First, I have definitely decided to participate in April A2Z here at Light Motifs. That means I will post 26 times in April, minimum! I’m committed to this path despite my constant droning on about how I don’t want any posting obligations these days because blogging should be fun not work blah blah blahg. I just feel like writing more and have already written and scheduled the first four posts. Of course, I still won’t be jumping through hoops to be part of official A2Z lists, as that’s always a giant PITA. 

Second, my theme won’t be very “themey,” which is quite unlike the me of years past. I am sure you all recall my James Bond A2Z back on my (now deleted) WordPress blog. That was epic, if I do say so myself. I had some ideas, but then I asked my buddy Meta Al if he had any, and he suggested memories, beginning with amusement parks. I liked that idea, though I am not starting with amusement parks because my A2Z titles have to be only one word. Why? Because! Anyway, I think it’s a great notion to get some moldy old memories documented before I forget them all. The theme is “misty memories.”

Third, starting April 1, with my first A2Z post on this blog, I am going to resume using images! As most of you know, I had images all over my WP blog because I paid for extra storage space along with no ads. Here, back in the day, I did not pay for extra Google account storage, and my old blogger blog was running out of space. (They count an image toward storage even if the same one is used in two or more different Google spots. Kind of unfair, but it’s the way it is.) In the meantime, however, I started paying for my Google account to have extra storage for my pics, so now I have enough to last for the rest of my life. 

I still believe that Instagram is the best place for pics, but I do like the look of one image at the beginning of each post, so imma start doing that. Yippee!

Antisocial Butterfly

For an antisocial introverted hermit, I’ve sure been going out and partying a lot! And when I say partying, I mean decorating themed cookies with my book club and hanging with some fellow old folks to talk about grandkids and such. It’s Day Three of this whirlwind of activity, and tonight I am playing online board games with a third group of peeps. Craziness. 

I had a bit of a sad yesterday when I realized that I no longer have any of my old blogs archived. Not sure what happened there, but my new philosophy is to deal with things as they are and not moan and groan about how I wish they would be. Well… maybe a just a little M&G, depending on the sitch. I still have some stuff from my old WP public blog available via the Wayback Machine, which used to annoy me because I never gave them permission to keep my writing available after I delete it, but since it’s too bothersome to get it taken down, I will use it for my own purposes instead.

Good news! I finished the insanely difficult 1000-piece puzzle I began over a week ago (had some help the first day), and now I’m ready for a puzzle break. I think I’ll try sketching something. I printed a swan outline for a guide, so hopefully it turns out decently.

It’s been a struggle in the migraine department with the heat and the wind. Crossing my fingers that tomorrow is better. Oh, I finished Stephen King’s epic time-travel novel 11.22.63, to which I awarded five stars on Goodreads (plus added it to my favorites list). I highly recommend it! Yes, it’s over 800 pages, but it’s so worth the time. I think it was Roy who encouraged me to read the book after I mentioned that I enjoyed the miniseries. Thanks Roy!