Friday, January 13

Friday, January 13

Today has been one of those days.  You know, the kind that can be seen as a complete waste of several hours of my life OR a restful, relaxing day that has rebuilt my mental health by being effort and drama free.

I slept in.  Did my morning obligations, fed the cats, tossed some peanuts out for the squirrels and blue jays, bagged up some recycling, and dragged it to the breezeway.   Then I made myself lunch—reheated the second Culvers bacon cheeseburger that Lily brought for me and had a scoop of potato salad, a handful of carrot sticks, and a sliced up fresh pear. 

While I was bagging up the recycling, I discovered one of my pears in the recycling bag with a big bruise and teeth marks.  Obviously one (or more) of the cats was up on the counter attacking the pears like they attacked the sweet potatoes.  Apparently they perceive my food as prey. 

Speaking of prey.  When I woke up this morning, one of the little toy dogs that I display with the Wellie Wishers was in my bed this morning.  One of the cats had jumped on the antique dresser in the living room, stole the dog, and brought it to my bed where, no doubt, it was abused horrifically for an extended period of time.  When I picked up the dog, Sawyer snatched it right out of my grasp with one swipe of his paw and ran off with it.  I have not seen it since.

In the afternoon, I watched some random stuff on TV—including the show Twister, which, I understand, is releasing a sequel sometime this year.  It will be interesting to see how they deal with casting, since at least two of the main characters (Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman) have died since the original movie was made.  I wonder if they will write a script in which those two were killed in a tornado chase.  I know there is no way they will recast them with different actors.  I would hate that, and I suspect most other fans of the show would also hate it.

My mother called and talked for almost two hours.  She only bitched a little bit about my paternal grandparents and how they had treated our family “horribly.”  Actually, what she was bitching about to day was true—but it was 58 years ago, so it is time to let it go.  My dad’s parents kept him on the farm all his life promising him that one day he would be “a rich man with two farms,”—theirs and the one he inherited from his maternal grandmother.  Instead, when they got ready to retire, they booted him out, sold the farm out from under him, and gave him only the oldest, crappiest machinery that wasn’t sold at the auction and cows that were old, scrawny, and nearly at the end of their reproductive lives.  Same with pigs.  Then they spent the next 25 years traveling the world and spending all the money they made off the farm. 

Yeah.  There was some foul shit going down there.  But still—all that happened when I was 10 years old.  I am 68 now.

While I talked to her, I cut out one of the five doll clothes patterns that came in the mail yesterday.  I just finished making myself a ham and swiss cheese sandwich and a lettuce salad with cherry and grape tomatoes with blue cheese and Western dressing and a few carrot sticks.  The greedy feline overlords have insisted on being given about half of the ham.  Fortunately, I made my sandwich with approximately twice the ham I needed—just for this possibility.

Yes.  I know these cats.  Pigs.

I am now watching the movie The Martian which I have seen several times before.  It is the only thing that I could find that looked moderately interesting.  I read the book which was fabulous, so the movie is pallid in comparison. 

Not much else is new.  Tomorrow I may attempt to go outside and drag my garbage and recycling bins back to where they belong and then take out the smelly garbage and recycling which does NOT smell but which is in the way.   I may call Becky David and see if she would lend me one of her kids for about ten minutes.  That’s all the longer it would take to drag those bins back and even carry out the bags for me.

There is nothing else to report. 

Oh.  I did read that Lisa Marie Presley died today.  Only 54 years old.  But I also read that she had a lot of addiction problems.  Sad.  What a waste.

Now I have used up all my news and energy for writing in this entry.  I am proud of myself that I have managed to post daily for 13 days.  I have not done so well in some of my other daily goals—for one thing, I have not written one word of fiction, and I optimistically made it a goal to write 1500 words a day.  So, I have decided to modify my goal and try for 500 words a day and hope that my creative juices begin to flow and it becomes a self-perpetuating endeavor.  My talents do not lie in the sciences or in mathematics, but I do believe in that law that states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion.  So if I start to write daily, perhaps I will continue to write daily. 

It has been a very long time, but I remember when I wrote every day—for hours—and stayed up long into the night writing. 

I have a few ideas for plots.  I am not big on plotting the whole story out and then writing from a “road map.”  I am more of a chaotic organic writer.  I put some random ideas together and just see where they take me.

Today is Friday the 13th, which I have always considered to be a lucky day.  I should have bought a powerball ticket.  Someone has to win that jackpot.  Why not me?  I swear I would do good with the money--and I confess that I would most likely indulge in some ridiculous, self-indulgent spending as well.  But I would do more good for more people than Donald tRUMP has done in his entire life.  (Of course I realize that this is a pretty LOW bar.

Ha.

Okay.  I really am done now.