Showing posts with label 52 week blog challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 52 week blog challenge. Show all posts

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Blow Your Stack Saturday: I Found Myself Again

 

Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay

It's stack-blowing time again, always a great time to take stock and try to figure out what's working and what isn't. Fortunately, I seem to be working again, at least for the moment, so let's do this.

I submitted an eight-poem collection tentatively entitled Survival to The Temz Review today and recorded my submission in the Submission Grinder.



Submitting my poetry manuscript today felt good, but I think that's partly because I let up on myself a bit so it didn't feel like horrible homework. 

Moving forward this month, I plan to submit a selection of five poems and a story to The Subliminal Journal. 


They are okay with work that was previously published on a blog or social media only, so I am going to roll with that. During April I will use the NaPoWriMo prompts and April PAD Challenge prompts to create a chapbook for the Temz Review's annual chapbook submissions.

This seems like a pretty manageable goal for the poetry side of things. I'm still working the fiction side of things out. I had a good long writing session for the Cosmically Bonded series yesterday and decided that I'm going to break the longer volume into a series of novelettes/short stories. 

I'll probably include the first chapter of Cosmically Bonded in my April newsletter. One person from the Marketing for Romance Writers group (https://mfrw.blogspot.com/) said that they have a subscribers-only serial that they include in their newsletter. 

While this sounds like a great idea, I decided I don't need one more project to commit to. Subscribers to my newsletter will get the Pot Luck Grab Bag Raffle Prize, aka, whatever I happen to be working on that I decide to share. Sometimes it will be poetry, sometimes a complete short story, and sometimes a chapter from a WIP. My newsletter is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes it's a nice caramel, sometimes it's fresh and fruity, sometimes it's full of nuts. 

Okay, granted, it's my newsletter, so it's probably full of nuts. If you're lucky, it won't be Crunchy Frog or the Spring Bolt Surprise.

I suppose that now would be a good time to drop a link to subscribe to my newsletter. Don't worry, I've never included a Spring Bolt Surprise for my readers...yet!


People like getting gifts, so maybe I should consider doing a quarterly grab bag giveaway box. It could include something like an autographed copy of one of my manuscripts because you know you want that. Maybe I could also include some candy and a pen and a fun surprise. I'll have to figure out how I'm going to select a winner. Since I only have five subscribers as of this writing, I'll probably just number them from one to five and select a winner using the Random.org method.

This is starting to run on a bit and I need to get a shower in. It's Food Bank Day and I like to look slightly presentable when I stagger forth from my tomb into the sunlight. Bluh!

This is probably the least ranty Blow Your Stack Saturday on record. Don't expect this to become a trend. I can always find things to be pissed off about.

Spirit of the Universe, thank you for helping me find my way out of yet another Approval Seeking Trap. Please keep me on the path to true success and happiness rather than clamoring for validation. Help me to remember that when I help myself I am better able to help others. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


The weather is warmer so Ornery is wearing a festive crown of spring flowers.
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors




Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with a poem or chapter from an unpublished WIP every month. You may find yourself in possession of a fabulous rarity that would otherwise be relegated to history!



Thursday, March 10, 2022

Make It Happen Thursday: Taking Stock in the Pressure Cooker

 

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

My accomplishments for the week:
I am currently working on a selection of 8 poems to submit for consideration to The Temz Review. If anyone else is interested in submitting work to them, here is the link.


I will probably collect the poems I create for the April PAD Challenge/NaPoWriMo into a chapbook to submit to The Temz Review. This means that I will be publishing none of these poems on the Poetry of the Netherworld blog. 

I would like to give shout-outs to each of the sites whose prompts helped me create today's alphabet poem for my aforementioned WIP. Give them a visit!



I've been consistent with working on this project and I submitted a 1000-word prose poem to the Syncopation Journal. So I have been successful on the poetry front. My other projects, not so much.

Today's question from 52 Weeks of Writing is:

Did you expect too little of yourself, too much, or was your goal just right?

Ah, you know, I totally cut myself some slack and have been chillin' like Goldilocks eating just-right porridge in a just-right cozy bed all week. No worries!

Ornery, stop lying, you say. 

Right, you caught me.

I totally expected too much of myself like I always do.

The second question is:

If you didn't reach your goal(s), what could you do next week to make sure you do?

I'm going to keep rolling with the Submission Grinder to find places to submit my work. Fortunately, I won't have a stupid blood draw hanging over my head for a while. That crap will be done tomorrow along with a few errands. While some of you may wonder why a blood draw is such a big deal, it's because I live in a remote rural area and have to drive 60 miles to get it done, and my veins are a complete trash fire. Not my idea of a good time.

Regarding my independent, self-published work, I just need to do my best to stick to my schedule.

I've already got myself scheduled for book promos and reviews at Readers Roost, and I need to scale way back on those. It's always exciting to sign up for them so I overdo it. I need to put myself in check.

Third question:
What have you learned about yourself and/or your writing over the past week?

I have learned that I am still discovering new ways of doing things after operating with a stressful and ineffective mindset that became ingrained decades ago. The definition of crazy is doing the same thing that hasn't worked in the past and expecting it to work this time. I'm trying to cut loose from the crazy. 

Learning to be driven by genuine inspiration rather than by anxiety and fear of failure is not as easy as it sounds but I think I am finally making some headway.

A big thanks to Eugenia at Go Dog Go Cafe for hosting today's blog hop.



Spirit of the Universe, please help me be patient with myself and to realize that no matter how small an accomplishment may seem, it is a step in the right direction. 

Here is the soundtrack for today's post.


Here is the link in case you can't see the player.
https://odysee.com/@jazz:89/Kenny.Burrell_Blue.Lights.Vol.2_1958:1?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with a poem or chapter from an unpublished WIP every month. You may find yourself in possession of a fabulous rarity that would otherwise be relegated to history!

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Where It's At Wednesday: The Continuing Journey #MFRWAuthor

 

Image by Piero Di Maria from Pixabay

Today's question from 52 Weeks of Writing is:

Did you achieve any goals not on last week's list? If yes, write them down here.

Why yes, in fact I did. I discovered the Submission Grinder, and I submitted a 1000-word prose poem to the Syncopation Journal. Here's the link in case you'd like to see about submitting work to them too. It's a non-paying publication, but it is exposure for your work and there's no submission fee.


Here's the link to the handy Submission Grinder. I tracked my entry to the Syncopation Journal on my dashboard. The service is free. If you like it and can afford to do so, drop them a donation.


I also discovered The Temz Review and am creating a collection of 10 poems to submit to them over the next 10 days. I used prompts from Writers Digest and Eugi's Causerie to create today's poem entitled Survival.


And now, today's Deep Thoughts.

Sometimes the daily journey looks very much the same, except there always seems to be something coming out of left field. It's pretty exciting when that Something looks like a pair of hip angels or friendly aliens coming to tell me that one of my pieces was accepted or that there is a sudden surge of sales for one of my books. However, we all know that isn't usually the case.

Usually, the thing coming out of left field isn't awful, it's just annoying. It's something along the lines of having to drive 60 miles to go get quarterly labs drawn and having to drink enough to float a fleet of battleships so they even have a chance of finding my shitty veins without leaving me looking like I was the loser in a barroom brawl. 

I try to bundle annoyances, so I'll go pick up my thyroid medication and grab a few things at Wal Fart and maybe a pizza from Costco on the way home depending on how I feel. 

I found this humorous meme that I'd like to share.


I would ask people to remember that solidarity with Ukraine doesn't mean hatred for the Russian citizenry, which includes vulnerable populations such as disabled people, the elderly, infants and children. Women become more vulnerable to domestic abuse and sexual assault during wartime.

I am supporting the International Committee of the Red Cross this Charity Sunday. Follow the link to read my post. I will donate a dollar for every comment I receive on the post, rounding up to the closest number divisible by 5. So if I receive 8 comments on the post, I will donate $10 or more.


My writing work has been a bit sporadic this week. I'm on my second month of reading Adrift for the Online Book Club. It's a good book but a long one. I've got a volunteer review due on the 17th. 

One place where I'm still allowing myself to become overwhelmed is with book promotions and reviews. I hope that nobody takes the fact that I'm going to reduce the number of these that I'm doing personally. I need to take care of myself.

Part of the problem is I really want to help my fellow authors promote your work. So many of you have written such amazing stories. I wish I could read every one of them. 

My heart is feeling squashed right now. I remember having nightmares when my son was little about running from assailants with him in my arms. That such terror has been real for many mothers saddens me to the core. That it will continue to be real for mothers because there will always be wicked megalomaniacs who care nothing for the most vulnerable lives enrages me.

I know I'm not the best writer in the world by a long shot. I know that much of what I write is probably schlock. But if that schlock lets someone forget about their pain for a while, then I've done what I set out to do and I'm proud of that. To paraphrase Stephen King, most of what I write is salami. I try to make sure that it's good salami, but in the end, salami is salami.

I happen to like salami, so let's wrap this up by raising a glass and toasting salami.

Here's to more salami!

Spirit of the Universe, remind me that it really doesn't matter if my writing is a critical failure. If my work brings joy in any way to a struggling world, that is real success. Please help me strive to make my words have the greatest impact they can, even if that impact is simply making someone forget their pain for a moment. Amen.

Here is the soundtrack for today's post.


Here is the link in case you can't see the player.


~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks



The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with an exciting new chapter or poem in every issue. You might end up with a one-of-a-kind rarity from the eldritch depths of the Netherworld!




Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Tackle It Tuesday: Things I Tackled This Week

 

Image by Melk Hagelslag from Pixabay

It's that time of the whenever I get to it to make a list, check it twice, and find out whether I've been naughty or nice. Or, as 52 Weeks of Writing phrases it, look at last week's goals. What did you achieve? What didn't you achieve?

I'm sure you're surprised to learn that things went off the rails last week, because that certainly never happens to me. But while we sit here Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, let's ruminate on it.


Here's the link in case you can't see the player.


If you know anything about Miles Davis, you might know that the album title Relaxin' is a bit ironic considering that he was one of the most un-relaxed people ever to walk the Earth. Rumor has it that he was nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" by his fellow musicians because of his notoriously bad temper. One of his ex-wives, Betty, said that she earned the Davis surname every day that she was married to Miles. Apparently one time towards the end of his life, Miles got so riled up at hospital personnel that he had a stroke. 

I'm not relating these stories to put down Miles Davis. What I'm leading up to is that I've had to work very hard not to be as temperamental as he was. I grew up believing that all families shouted at each other and made digs at each other the way my family did. I was always surprised to encounter families where the parents and children were genuinely supportive of each other. Unfortunately, I think that they were probably the anomaly.

When I realized that my son was pulling away from me as a teenager and genuinely seemed to dislike me, I knew I had to make an effort to get my angry outbursts under control or I was going to lose him. I wasn't physically abusive but I'm ashamed to say that sometimes I was verbally so. I would berate and lecture my son and then feel horrible about it. Fortunately, by the time my son turned 16, I had turned things around. 

"So get to the damn point, Ornery," you may be saying. "What the hell did you accomplish with writing this week?"

Well, Frustrated Reader, I have been kind of all over the place with writing this past week, but I did submit a prose poem/creative nonfiction work to Syncopation Literary Journal, and you can submit work to them too. Check out the specs by following the link.


I discovered Syncopation Literary Journal via The Submission Grinder. It's a helpful tool for discovering publications where you can submit your work and tracking the progress of your submissions. Setting up an account is free.


From what I've heard, Scrivener is a tool that I really should be considering. It's 50 bucks to buy a copy. I think I'll go for the trial version first, but it sounds like it could help me organize my shit so I don't have a bunch of notepad files running wild on my hard drive. I'll give it a go and let you know.

I signed up for a subscription to FanStory so I could enter their contests and get feedback on my work, but holy cow is it expensive! Not only do you have to pay $9 for the monthly subscription but you also have to pay to enter each contest. You can earn FanStory cash by reviewing other writers' work and use that to finance your contest entries. I don't know if it's worth it to keep the membership. It's pretty time-consuming and I don't think I'd be able to afford to participate more than once a month.

I haven't done anything in the way of editing this week. I'm still considering submitting Lucina Entombed to Dragon Soul Press. 

I've decided that the Open Book Blog Hop is wonderful but it's one too many hops for my baked brain. I'm still trying to do too much. At this point, I need to scale back and add things in if possible rather than adding more things.

I made a Dulce de Leche cake with mixed berries today. It's chillin' like a villain in my fridge. I can't wait for dinner. I'm making bean and chorizo tortilla pizzas with cheese and sour cream. 

Miles is done tooting his horn now, so I think it's time for me to slap a Wrap it Up Box on this sucker. 



Here's the link for those who can't see the player.

Until next time, this is Ornery Owl wrapping it up!

Spirit of the Universe, please help me keep my temper in check. Let me direct my anger towards finding solutions to unjust situations rather than belittling and lecturing others. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors



Hangry is looking forward to bean and chorizo tortilla pizzas and dulce de leche cake with berries.
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with an exciting new chapter or poem in every issue. You might end up with a one-of-a-kind rarity from the eldritch depths of the Netherworld!






Saturday, March 5, 2022

Blow Your Stack Saturday: Welcome to Whitewashed Utopia

 


Today's prompt from 52 Weeks of Writing was "hey, Ornery, it's Blow Your Stack Saturday! Is there anything you want to bitch about?"

Okay, that was my interpretation of today's prompt, and yes, there is.

I recently fell down the syrupy Hallmark channel rabbit hole and have been watching Cedar Cove. Like so many romantic visions of television utopia, this one has a seedy underbelly. By seedy underbelly, I don't mean that Walter White has set up a meth lab or there is a prostitution ring. I mean that behind the perfect facade of perfect people in a perfect town there is some perfectly putrid prejudice that nobody wants you to notice.

Cedar Cove is the whitest place anywhere. I have not seen a single non-white person even in passing. Everyone is straight and attractive by Hollywood standards. Look all you want, you will see none of those unsightly disabled or fat people. Disabled people simply don't exist and fat people are a bugbear used to scare the Perfectly Pretty Able-Bodied White Straight populace into earning their eating-disordered binges through orthorexia.

Shows like Cedar Cove are the television equivalent of the ladies' magazines you see at the checkout stand in the grocery store. These initially appear to be innocuous fluff but they are actually fronts for insidious attitudes designed to keep impressionable women buying products to keep themselves looking impossibly young and girlishly thin. Do you want to eat a slice of that delicious cake on the cover? Better get ready to force yourself to vomit, take a few laxatives, and engage in a few hours of punishing exercise, you slovenly oinker!

The photoshopped cover models for such magazines have no lines on their faces, no stretch marks on their bodies, and not an ounce of fat. Any model deemed too dark-complexioned has their skin tone lightened. These magazines are chock full of "inspiring" stories of women who lost half their body weight on the latest fad diet. Never mind if you have to cut out entire nutrient groups on these diets and never mind that weight reduction dieting only works long term in approximately five percent of dieters. You don't want to be a bad fatty and not try yet again, do you?

I used to spend a fortune on these dreadful magazines hoping that I was going to finally find THE DIET that was going to work permanently so I didn't have to be ugly anymore. Approximately twelve years ago I realized that the messages these magazines promote are even uglier than I am. I raise my middle finger to the beauty, diet, and fashion industries. Fuck a whole lot of that shit. 

Spirit of the Universe, please help me accept myself as I am. Please help me to keep making improvements that will truly benefit me rather than trying to fit someone else's idea of what I'm supposed to be. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~





Fat and Ornery
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors


Hangry isn't having it.
Free use image from Pixabay

Fabulous selfie of my actual middle finger by me.
You can't touch this.
It's not like I really care that much, it's just that I know that most people are cunts.









Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

Buy me a coffee

Or buy me a coffee here

Join me on Patreon!
Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox! Now with a poem or chapter from an unpublished WIP every month. You may find yourself in possession of a sanity-scarring eldritch horror or fabulous rarity that would otherwise be relegated to the dustbin of history!




Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Where It's At Wednesday: Little Bites with Sensible Bunny

 


Greetings to my -666 fans! Meet Sensible Bunny, the newest member of the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp.

Sensible Bunny takes little bites of both food and her to-do list because she doesn't like to choke on her food and she doesn't like to become overwhelmed by work, even when it's working towards a creative goal.

Sensible Bunny and I created a new daily planner for me. Today's task from 52 Weeks of Writing was to break my goals down further. Since I have a lot of goals, I've broken them down over the course of the week. The new planner looks a little bit something like this:

Week At A Glance

My World Monday

Rhyme Time Tuesday (doesn’t have to rhyme) + Review It Tuesday

Wednesday Edits

Take a Chance Thursday/Make It Happen Thursday (pieces for submission, review the current week’s progress, and plan for next week. Visit Go Dog Go Café to participate in Make It Happen Thursday.)

Flash Fiction Friday, Fanfic Friday

Sexy Saturday (erotica series)

Change the World Sunday (poetry, pictures, and politics) + Sunday Dinner at the Grover Hotel

This doesn't mean that I can't work on other projects on specified days. What it means is that since I have a lot of goals, I now have a day where I bring each one into focus. For instance, on My World Monday, I focus on my serials from my Universe (including certain borrowed characters.) The Mighty Adventures of Nyarlathotep and Yadira. The Perils of Gerry and Pepper. The Madcap Adventures of the Dreamlands Brotherhood. And so on.  

I've got a lot of 'em. I wish I'd thought of them twenty-five years ago. I will never finish this interconnected set of serials. They will continue on and on until the day that something stops working in this old body. Perhaps if the soul reincarnates, I will continue working on them in another life. Or perhaps I will instead run screaming away across the fields upon seeing one of my books and decide to work on something--anything--other than writing.

I have thus revealed that I believe reincarnation is a possibility. Or I hope it's a possibility. Or I'm a fatalist and suppose that it's probably what happens because I can't imagine the grind not continuing. The wheels of the gods grind slow but they grind exceeding fine and all that sort of thing.

I'm not here to convince anyone else to believe as I do or even suppose as I do, so I would appreciate if you do not presume it's your place to browbeat me into believing as you do, whether you believe that I'm going to hell for not being a devout fundamentalist Christian or whether you believe I'm stupid for postulating that reincarnation is a possibility. I'm not here to argue about theology. I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the matter. 

That being said, I like this simplified and catchy system, and if it helps me to imagine a friendly cartoon rabbit reminding me to implement it, that too is my business.

I've never understood why some people get so snifty about adults liking cartoons. I'm not saying that you have to like cartoons. Don't tell me I can't like them. It doesn't make a person more or less mature to like or not like cartoons. I find a character like Sensible Bunny appealing and comforting. Sensible Bunny would never berate or scold me the way my inner critic does. 

A person who does not have a history of being emotionally abused probably doesn't need a friendly cartoon support animal. This doesn't make the person who benefits from such a concept less worthy of respect or more deserving of ridicule. The people who think it does need to take a hard look at themselves and ask themselves why they see the need to be so mean-spirited to make themselves feel superior.

I have remembered that I always found writing poetry before I write anything else calming. I've done this over the past couple of days. I do not put any restrictions on my expression. It doesn't need to be the best poem in the world. I often confine myself to short forms because I have a tendency to run on otherwise. 

You know, ProWritingAid, some adjectives and adverbs are necessary. I don't ALWAYS confine myself to short poetry forms but I generally do. I changed the word to "often" instead, but fuck's sake. Sometimes these damn grammar checkers are irritating as fuck. 

Anyway...

Writing prompts are useful tools to prevent my mind from running amok. I haven't been able to share my recent creations with the writing prompt hosts because I am planning to submit the poems created over the next few days to Humana Obscura. Since I want to thank the prompt hosts for their help and want to let other writers know about the opportunity for publication, I leave a comment doing just that.

In fact, here you go. Don't say I never gave you anything.
It is freeze-your-tender-parts-off cold today. Our furnace runs on propane. Propane prices per gallon mirror gas (petrol) prices. We have a 1000-gallon tank. The propane company divides our fills into equal monthly payments rather than insisting on the entire payment up-front. Nonetheless, it's expensive. This month's bill was $225. 

The stove, water heater, washer, and dryer are all-electric. This month's bill was around $225, which is better than it was the first year we were here but still a big chunk of change for people living only on my $1240 per month disability check. It's actually $1380 per month but fucking United Healthcare takes away $140 of that for Medicare. Anything over $1308 means you're living too high on the hog, you disabled piece of shit. 

If you think I'm bitter about this Draconian system that comes nowhere close to covering the cost of living, I am. I speak not only for me but for those who have it worse than me. 

LEAP (Low-Income Energy Assistance Program) will give AmeriGas (the propane company) $500 sometime in the next couple of months. I don't know exactly when. They do it when they do it. It helps, but I'm pissed off because they gave us $1000 last time and only $500 this time. I suppose they don't have the funding to give as much. They rely on donations. 

Imagine that, a program that the government should run has to rely on donations so people don't freeze to death. Fucking hell. If anyone asks me why I'm a socialist regarding welfare programs, issues like this are why. 

I suppose I've gone on long enough. I'll probably pick this up again tomorrow, but as a wise man once said, tomorrow never knows.

I'm concerned about my only two friends. I've not heard much from either of them in quite a spell. I always worry that I've made people angry, but I suspect they aren't doing well. 

Spirit of the Universe, help me keep taking things one day at a time. Please help me remember that I don't need to measure up to anyone else's standards and please help me to be realistic in my standards for myself. I want to be challenged but not overwhelmed. Perhaps it will sound trite and unsophisticated, but let me know you are there and that you care. I often act like I'm an island, but I'm a lonelier island than I like to admit. Amen.

Ornery Owl is thanking Sensible Bunny for her assistance.


Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



Creative Commons License


This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

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