Archive for the ‘Misc. Griping’ Category

Like many people, when my life as an adult becomes an overwhelming wave of obligations, I reminisce about the bucolic memories of my childhood. Halloween was fun.

I grew up in a trailer court. There were not a ton of advantages to that, but there were a few. One of them was trick-or-treating. I had twenty-eight adjacent neighbors, all in one short walk, all waiting to hand out candy.

I seem to remember we always trick-or-treated in the dark. It doesn’t seem like kids do that nowadays. My cousins from the country would come up and trick-or-treat with me. After my little sister got to toddler size, my mom would come with too. When it got to a point where I was too old to trick or treat, I would just take my sister out.

My dad would always go through our plastic pumpkins when we were done and pick out all the hard candy so we wouldn’t choke on it. This was a running theme with all my uncles too, so I can only speculate that someone in the family had a traumatic experience with choking that no one will talk about directly, but consider it some sort of cautionary tale nevertheless. He would always complain in the weeks that followed that me and my sister always ate the good stuff and left him the chaff candy (ie. no chocolate).

Ah, the candy. The peanut butter cups always went first, then the Hershey’s miniatures (Dad liked to eat the Mr. Goodbars and spit the nuts out, leaving them in a dish, hoping one of us in the house would accidentally start to eat them; then the joke would be on us. What some people will do for entertainment…), followed by the Kit Kats, M&M’s, Almond Joys, Mounds, Nestle’s Crunch, Baby Ruths, Snickers and Milky Ways.

The Butterfingers would usually go right before the non-milk chocolate candy. That would be the Smarties, the Toostie Rolls, the DumDum suckers (apparently if a stick was attached to the hard candy, the choking policy would be bypassed, presumably because the stick was some sort of retrieval device), Bazooka Bubble Gum, Starburst, Bitto Honey, and those weird maple nougat things with the peanut butter inside (which I love as an adult). The popcorn balls and various fruit were removed from the containers immediately and thoroughly inspected, even though we knew which neighbor gave them to us, because, “You never know these days.”

My favorite memory is the skeleton. My mom has always been the queen of resourcefulness. She saved all the stryrofoam containers that meat from the grocery store came on and used them to cut out bones. Then she carefully connected the bones with fishing line and hung the skeleton in the window. It was a good thirty inches tall and probably had a couple dozen pieces. It was just the coolest thing. It was so cool, that none of us would leave it alone, so inevitably the skeleton would get tangled. I seem to remember my mom carefully untangling it numerous times every year, but she still brought it out.

I should ask her if she still has it. Most of the meat at the store comes on either yellow or pink containers now. I suppose nowadays, people would be all freaked out to touch the skeleton if raw meat had touched it. Leave it to advancements in internal medicine to be a buzzkill.

Happy Halloween!

The thing that really scares me about electing a new president is that they become so insulated once they get into office. It really starts to feel to me like many of those who have political aspirations seem to forget that they are public servants as much as they are self servants. As a public servant, that means that EVERYONE’s opinion has to be taken into account. Everyone matters.

The next public program our government decides to cut could effect the family who has the kid that might someday figure out the best gene therapy to stop Alzheimer’s or invent the next semi-conductor that reduces resistance on power lines and saves the country trillions of dollars in lost energy costs.

Every human being born in this country has the potential to do something amazing with their life, regardless of the social circumstances they are born into. When our government discounts someone’s worth because they can’t be pigeon holed into a desired demographic, they do the entire country a great disservice. Instead of lowering our expectations of people based on their lack of privilege, we should elevate our expectations of all of our citizens and instill in them the possibilities for greatness. Only then can we rise above the quagmire of infighting and placing blame, and finally solve real problems.

If a corporation is indeed a person, as the supreme court deemed true, than it is a greedy, callous, selfish person, and our country should not be run like one.

Don’t forget, you can’t bitch if you don’t vote. Just sayin’ in my gripish fashion.

I really admire those writers out there who faithfully sit down at their desk the same time every day and pound out, say, a thousand words. Wow! Good for you! I just have one question: Are you independently wealthy?

Do you have a housekeeper,a gardener, a nanny, and a secretary all on retainer because your sugar daddy (or mamma) keep them all paid, so all you have to do is write?

If you are sensing just a smidge of bitterness, there’s a reason for it. I have 4 different part time jobs this month. Four! And those are just the jobs with a W2’s attached to them. I also help the hubby juggle all the bills for our small business, the rental property, and our home. Oh yeah, and I have that whole silly book marketing thing to do too.

Book 3 is just about ready to be completely launched on this site, but this site’s not enough. I need a Facebook page. I redesigned the cover for Book 3, so Book 1 and 2 need new covers to update the branding of the whole series. I have two readings this month. I don’t have any for November. I need to call people again and set up appearance dates.

And household chores? Ha! Laundry gets done when the dirty pile next to the bed starts to block the door. Cat boxes get cleaned out when the basement can no longer be entered without gagging. When the dust bunnies on the floor start to develop into recognizable creatures, a broom might be utilized.

And yet, somewhere in this morass that is my life, I do manage to write. It’s rarely the same time every day, and it might only be a quickly penned idea, but it happens and it’s selfishly all mine. At this point I’ll take what I can get. Someone go fetch my housekeeper and tell her the cat puked on the rug again. Oh yeah…I forgot… Sigh…