writing

 The ultimate weapon against the undead

I spent the last 48 hours within a state of intoxication, like a tornado swirling around and turning my world upside down, my mind was saturated with a blur. At last when the winds died down, I kept hearing his last words. Words that haunted me…
“A word of caution: Never, ever speak to demons, even if they speak using a language built out of your own weaknesses.”

It wasn’t truth my mind was contemplating, or focused on, it was the man whose words impacted me so deeply, so completely, that I’d remember them all, but not much else.

Within my mind the meal was pleasantly set, and now my thoughts were feasting on meat and drink, but my stomach needed relief from liquid abuse and my natural-born hunger.

If only I could remember where I last placed my clothes?

Finally, after finding my little pile of clothes, I quickly check my pocket for the vial of holy water. Instead I  found another empty vial of scotch, and a few odds and ends that I had picked up along the way, and, aw yes, here it was…The ultimate weapon against the undead. I shook it a bit, just to hear if I could, how much was left in the vile.

Like a pocket of loose coins gangling together, new thoughts commingled, they came out from their hiding places within my mind. New thoughts of different what if’s. Could it be true? Could there be some yet newly undiscovered reality, a new use for this ultimate weapon–could it by chance also solve a nights worth of drinking scotch? I didn’t quite know if it was the head ache or the attempt of thinking so deeply that rushed me to such thoughts. All I knew was I needed relief, and the sooner the better.

I unscrewed the vile top, my hand trembled at the thought, what if it didn’t work? Would I have wasted it so easily, so quickly, when at some point I may need all I have to face an overwhelming force–a mob of blood thirsty undead? Will I be able to survive them should our paths cross? Or will I look with dread and regret, when the last drop of holy water falls short of it intended mark; all the while thinking I shouldn’t have…

I used a moments worth of my remaining life’s time contemplating this vial, with its clear substance and it many potential uses. How many times must I still use it in order to keep my head attached–my thoughts attached and thinking still? Either I must find more of this magical water, or I must muster the courage yet needed in finding more of my kind–other unaffected humans. Together we may yet stand–divided we certainly will surly fall to what seems like will be my present fate, to fight to the last drop….

I was no longer willing to live in hypotheticals driven on the fumes of liquid courage . Opening the door to the hide away I dashed out into the cool damp night, meeting my future on my terms.

I called out indiscriminately to the black of night:

To all who are alive, yet are one dying. Thither I speed to twist and turn the knob of deaths door. I call out to the earth and sea half-held by the night, as my newly minted power that gives me flight. Stare with dread into the craggy sockets of the abyss, and marvel at its resemblance, its shape of your very own prison in another man. This world, a graveyard it will become. Damp, musty soil of its sharp, yet distinct whiff of today, that decays under it own weight of ignorance. It’s been far to long, and greatly limited, where I could not take part….but now, I stand before you, no longer a mythical read from some book–but an invited guest to it end.

I  had plagiarized different writers with this little speech. but I rationalized, who had influenced whom in the first place? A spirit full of life yet to live, or one who had drowned himself in lost hope?

There are stories, and then there are storykill’s.

I could just start this story off with the phrase: I see dead stories everywhere. There you go! And that’s exactly how it’s going to be started off. It is befitting, after all, you’re probably wondering what a “Storykill” is right about now? Well another writer of sorts coined the word. Much of this post is not a copy but an idea duplication of sorts. After all we’re both Seahawks football team fans and have to live with the aftermath of an epic storyKill.

Exactly what is a “Storykill”? To describe it I guess,  it would have to be similar to buzz-kill or killjoy, storykill described as Seth said it, is that feeling left behind that haunts you when choices alter the course of your narrative—propelling you to that not-so-happy-ever-after that would have defined your story as a tragedy. It is those epic fails so often we’re reminded of by family, friends, or our ex’s, that truly haunts us.

Ok. I’m just now recovering from the tragic Supper Bowl Seattle Seahawk’s loss. In short a “Storykill”. The hawks had one of those unreal seasons after coming off a supper bowl win the previous season. But after an iffy start to the season, my hecklers were starting to beat me down. “The hawks are just a lucky team and not all that good.” “We gave you that last one buddy.” Those were the kinds of things said to me, with that last one said to me by a Denver broncos fan. A 49’ers fan said,” the hawks are a JV team now!” Wow! It was hard, but I have been a fan of the hawks from the beginning, through all  of those embarrassing losing seasons, so it’s hard to discourage me.

The hawks this season made it a habit to be a second half team. They came back from a sure losses in the 3rd or 4^th quarters of what seemed like the last 8-10 games of the season. They took that style of play right into the supper bowl. In fact right into the last seconds of that game. Friends became discourage watching the games, throwing up their hands, thinking all was lost. But then it happened–or so I thought.

After one of the most unlikeliest catches of all time (in any sport ever) the hawks end up on the 3 foot line—first in goal. Just 3 feet from the glory of winning two supper bowls in a row baby….they lose? Instead of handing the ball off to beast mode as they called their running back, they throw! They throw an interception. Some say they handed the win over to the other team (Who will forever remain nameless for me). I sat in shock. We threw an interception! We lost! How was that even possible?

Storykill struck, and struck the Seahawks hard. Every sports fan has their own stories of disappointments where their team let them down. Just a hand full of unlucky fans though have had to live through such an epic fail of this magnitude, laser etched or so it seems, into the memory banks as well as into the inter-web—creating ghosts that will mercilessly haunt them for the rest of their lives. After all it is just an entertainment, It’s just supposed to be a fun game.

I have had to repeat that more than just a few times—but yes it’s just a game. Why do sorties like this affect us so deeply? It is now a dead story—and those dead stories, right from the very moment of completion are also hardest to bury. It can be the same feelings anyone gets when your favorite character played by your favorite actor gets booted out of the story line. Sometimes by an unexpected surprise, a twist in the story line itself, and still at other times due to true life happenings. It’s the same feelings when the bad guys win in the movies, or in the office where you are working with inter office politics. Storykill’s don’t just happen on TV or in sporting events. They can hit close to home too. Fairytale weddings ending in divorce, causing splits, criticism and hate, and children’s pain. There can be also those children born against all odds with loving parents who struggle against those odds—only to see positive promise along with bright futures dim with drugs, alcohol, and addiction; or for that person who passing their final test in getting their degree; a degree where no one sees worthy enough to hire you. Life is filled with storykill’s, dead ends, disappointments that at least in our minds view “weren’t supposed to happen this way.”

Life is full of storykills, or stories that can kill the human spirit. Some believe, every person that they come in contact with when hearing their life’s stories, that life is unfair and needs to be equalized somehow? But where do we draw the line, and how do we quiet down the complaints, in an effort in separating the complaint of unfairness, to the stories of just dumb luck, and or the ill effects of just dumb choices made and their uncomfortable personal outcomes? Success in life isn’t an exercise of keeping score of what you have in comparison with what I have. Stop keeping score at the football games so to speak? Just how would anyone equalize the inequality in different appearances in supper models and the average person? When will we just see life as it is? Being unfair! Weather we like it or not life is just plain unfair. Plastic surgery may do the trick for some people? Even so life isn’t always perfect or fair—plastic surgery some times leads to more surgery–and plastic surgery doesn’t always age well for some people.

When we look around our lives, we can certainly find plenty of storykill’s, we may also have plenty of people who will constantly remind us of a few as well? But living life isn’t about measuring up to some lofty standard someone else set for us. Aren’t we all just trying to overcome life’s odds? Storykill’s are nothing more than a wrinkle in our life’s stories. Challenges presented to us to keep us from being bored with living. Making an effort, or making unequaled effort’s in overcoming those challenges is what keeps us young in spirit and in heart. Storykill’s aren’t the death of the author’s story as they intended it to be, but the reminder to the author that a new wrinkle has developed and a new chapter now needs to be written.

All the best.

Thanks to Seth Pierce who to my knowledge coined the phrase “StoryKill” and who I also quoted.

Go Hawks!

Breakthroughs 

Never underestimate the awesomeness of someone disappearing from your life, who would rather hold you back from change, in order to remain in comfortable surroundings. Even if that someone should be you!

Never allow yourself to accept an average existence to someone else’s expected conformity to their dreams. But seek out the your own path of breakthroughs.

Some say, if you make good sound judgments, breakthroughs will seemingly fall from the sky. Life will be easy. You’ll be an overwhelming success. But then good judgments come from experience. And all of that comes from bad judgments being made in the first place.

So it is easier to look for the easy way out of any of life’s problem by seeking out a miracle breakthrough provided by someone else to you. But then, you’d be living up to someone else’s risk reward, success or failure, dreams vs. realities, not to mention their willingness to extend their own efforts to you. Not really any breakthrough you can hang your hat on. What is this thing called a breakthrough really?

Breakthrough’s are those small moments in our life, in specific portions of time, where we have tried so hard to overcome an impossible problem, and then we get one more flash of an idea that enters our brain. Now try this! Is that sudden spark of an idea kindled in our subconscious and all it takes is that spark to create a fire, to uncover that breakthrough. Be it a specific answer that we’re looking for. To that working challenge, or some relationship challenges, or just some great obstacle encountered along life’s road towards our dreams, all of these things may require another try. When seemingly we have already made all of the then known attempts at overcoming them.

If you are looking for a breakthrough, or trying to overcome a problem, within yourself, or within a relationship, at work, or with a working relationships and or project. In short, solutions to all. We must remember there is no such thing as a drive-through breakthrough. There is no fast food ordering window for some future success with little efforts. There is no such thing as a happy meal without effort made of ourselves in finding those breakthroughs. There are only moments or pauses where we have to wait for that lightning strike of an idea to enter our thoughts–creating a pathway that may also produce that breakthrough we are looking for. Yet an idea alone isn’t any guarantee that a breakthrough is happening, or will happen.

Solutions come from trying things. Learning from things, learning things from our efforts while actively trying to move forward. We only get to have breakthroughs by going through. We don’t get to see changes happen without efforts unless we are weather watchers. Sometimes the biggest changes that need to happen in our life’s are also keeping us from a breakthrough, change that needs to take place within ourselves, changes that are so often also avoided.

Consider just how hard it is to change yourself, and you’ll understand what little chance you have at changing someone else. Yet, we do try. Don’t we? To often we try to change others for our own comfort, while we repeatedly bath in our own discomforts. Don’t expect someone else to make any efforts that you’ll need them to make in order to attain your dreams. You’ll be more often than not disappointed.

The next time you’re tempted to take the drive-through route towards a perceived outcome, goal, wish, or some visionary expectation we have for ourselves, thinking we are creating our lives as they would’ve turned out by now already. Don’t be disappointed, frustrated, and or depressed, but be thankful.

“Be thankful for your struggles, because without them you wouldn’t have found your strengths.” (Quote unknown)

And without strength of endurance, brought about by repeated actions, that wonderful world of breakthrough’s may be just beyond your reach. Reaching one small goal at a time and then moving on to the next, is what propels us to great heights. Success may look to be always out of our reach. But looking backwards for prospective, our life is a pathway of stepping-stones, stones of one success after another that we have walked upon. Beyond the hear and now is the unknown, there is the unseen obstacle, the unthought-of breakthrough, and yet, over time we will have moved along some more of life’s stepping-stones of success.

Life isn’t fair! So we shouldn’t expect equal outcomes. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others despite the fact that we both have walked along life’s same pathways for a time. Life wasn’t supposed to be measured by some medium of score keeping. Nor should we measure it by the amount of breaths we take. But rather measure the value of life or success by the times something has taken away your breath with amazement. Sometimes realizing a breakthrough to our problems isn’t a real breakthrough at all. Doing something we’ve known about in the back of our minds, and still choosing not to do it; even when we then change our choice and do it. That choice doesn’t really qualify as a breakthrough. That’s avoiding the obvious? Maybe the biggest breakthrough in our individual life’s, is accepting that our attitudes are usually the biggest obstacles encountered as we work towards our goals.

All the best.

Word of the day.

Word of the Day: Niveous:

Dan pushed the accelerator to full power. His jet responds roaring down the run way until it became lighter than air and lifted off. The ground swoosh by in a blur as the afterburners kicked in. 30,000 pounds of thrust pushed the jet through the cotton-balled sky. Dan’s heart began to relax a bit after breaking through the top layer clouds. Clouds never bothered Dan much, but that was before his jet was struck by lightning during takeoff, causing an engine malfunction, which led to a close call crash. He could never shake the feeling of being covered in cool dampness, a sudden covering of a niveous  blanket after he ejected out of the jet that day. Now, with every takeoff, his heart races a bit more than usual, fueled by nervousness and memories of that day. Memories that cause a kind of blackout as he’s flying on mental autopilot until arriving, until toping the last cloud.

Third-graders suspended because of porn.

A school district in Lake Stevens, Washington State, has suspended two third-graders after finding sexually explicit images on a district computer and shared them with classmates.

Austin Maxwell, the stepfather of one of the students suspended who allegedly typed in the search term that brought up the controversial result, told KING 5 he was furious, but doesn’t blame his child.

According to school administrators, somehow software designed to prevent students for viewing inappropriate materials failed to block it from happening. District officials sent an email home to parents suspending all student computer use until they discover and fix the problem.

Problems, slip-ups, and mistakes, are bound to happen in an imperfect world run by imperfect people; it’s just what it is to be human. As a parent, Maxwell wondered: “Is it a safe place for her [his daughter] to go back to?”

Is that a valid question to ask? It is certainly horrifying for a kid in the third grade to witness pornographic images. You’re robbing the child of innocence. Children seeing images of the pornographic nature can lead to obvious problems.

It would be one thing if the kid had other behavioral problems that were evident from other things going on. But in this case it seems like all involved recognize that this little girl was not the instigator and was not exhibiting some kind of deviant behaviors at the school. And yet the school authorities saw it appropriate in suspending.

What good is anyone doing expelling these students? Basically it ends up punishing them for being a victim at the school. Third grade students don’t understand what they’re sharing. To them it’s gross and just unbelievable, or whatever, and so they share it. It seems to me adults in the room and in the position of leadership, you’ve got do deal with the situation using common sense instead of knee-jerk-reactions. We shouldn’t be focused into reacting unrealistically like other news stories of late that suspended the student who makes his hand into a gun pointing his finger, or the kid who has an “imaginary” supper weapon, or the kid who brought to school his Pop-Tart gun. In these stories as with this one, we as a society have lost the opportunity of a valuable teachable moment.

If students are being punished in this case for a computer glitch, a problem with security designed to keep them safe, then isn’t the school district not only liable but responsible for the physiological trauma if any and open to punishment themselves? It makes no sense to punish the student for the PC lines we draw, if those same efforts also eliminate nurturing an education in common sense.

Public requests…….It to “exhausting being a woman,”

If happiness could be a pile of money, would it be wrong to request a donation of one dollar from each of the 300 million or so citizens of the USA? All donations could be given directly to me. After all, its such a small amount to be given and it would make such a huge impact on my happiness.

Now that I set the stage properly with a scenario of subject matter and thought to go along with it……

If anyone was in an auto accident and thrown face first into, or thrown though the windshield, I would think nothing of someone making a request of their insurance company or some charitable entity to pay for cosmetic surgery. I would also think the worse of the company that would refuse someone who just survived such an accident and refused them in kind.

But then that would be using common sense, logic, and the proper amount of appropriate compassion. Today we have had a compleat generation or two of people who have barely heard the word “NO” as an answer given to what they have asked for, (realistic or not) net alone that answer being a stern “NO”. Followed by an explanation of how unrealistic they are in making such request. ( not that all questions and requests should be answered with a no. Just the crazy ones.)

Because these people haven’t heard the great answer of “NO” all they know is to constantly push against boundaries. Making the boundary the enemy, so all attempts must be made to erode them away. It’s the boundary that is keeping them from true bliss, happiness, feelings of self-worth. It the barb wire fence of boundaries that keeps people from becoming accomplished and therefore successful in life. That’s the thought process they convince themselves of. They believe they are entitled to having everything they want. It’s that frame of mind along with the attitude “you owe it to me”.

Yet these same people except certain boundaries or are all to willing to create some new ones of their own, so long as it doesn’t confine them or their desires. They are used to acting without ever contemplating that a society without boundaries is a worthless society, caustic, a sign of a decadent and decline.

From UK daily mail
Transsexual says “to exhausting being a woman,” wants public taxpayers to pay to change him back. As if now, two wrongs will make a right? Because the public payed for his first surgery, now he thinks the public has an even greater responsibility for the second. Only basing his need on fleeting emotional demands.

“A transsexual who had a £10,000 sex change on the NHS to become a woman now wants the taxpayer to foot the bill for a further £14,000 of surgery so she can become a man again.
Chelsea Attonley, 30, who was born a boy and called Matthew, said she now finds being a woman ‘exhausting’, is tired of putting on make-up and wearing heels, and now accepts that she should always have stayed a man.”

Throughout this story he gives the impression though it’s a bit offensive, summarizing his view of femininity and the female sex to nothing more than “heels and makeup.” Women are more than the way they speak, the makeup and clothing they wear. Women aren’t carictures that can be easily copied by some Nip-n-Tuck style of self-mutating surgery and then swiping on some lipstick as the finishing touch to being a new age woman.

He goes on to complain that women aren’t so easy in excepting him as an equal. But then he only sees the goal of becoming woman as high heels and a slathering of lipstick after vanity surgery.

In life we have to except it’s not always “Fair”, there aren’t any equal outcomes to every kind of efforts made. And so self-worth, or individual happiness comes from ones “Self”, not from modern skills and talents of some Frankenstein like surgeon willing to fix the mentally ill with the myth of reassignment surgery.

According to Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.

If the man from the UK Daily story (or anyone else in those same shoes) desires to be happy, let him or her gain employment and save-up for and spend their own money on whatever they feel will make them happy. Expecting society to spend taxpayer money on his happiness out of some misguided compassion for him in his plight. Is denying society their own happiness in place of yours.

It’s not naive of me to believe we can bring out the best in people if you know just how to act. Some times that means having to say, with no uncertainty of terms….”NO!”

We are all equal. Different, but equal, which means that no one is better than me. That no ones own happiness can then be dependent on commandeering money (of which money equals hours of ones life) in order to find happiness at the expense of another’s.

Vanity surgeries, because you believe that is what will make you happy is the responsibility of the individual buyer to provide for ones self. There is no difference to buying a vacation, no one would expect another person, a neighbor, another tax payer, to provide that to them for the sake of finding happiness. It’s not society job then to make anyone happy. And so the answer should always be a resounding defining roar of “No! Absolutely NOT on the publics dime!”

All the best to everyone.

Do you have any thoughts?

Transsexual Chelsea Attonley who had £10k surgery on NHS wants to be man again | Daily Mail Online http://t.co/a7r40GoONx
Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;’ Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’ | CNS News

Does the Grinch live in church?

Despite of his best attempts to remain incognito, the Grinch reached out his hand while offering me a smile. I responded in kind while also offering a hardy Merry Christmas. After all, tis the season.

Somehow Christmas means something differently to whoever views it through their own pair of rose-colored glasses. Is Christmas filled with subliminal messages? Secrets that yet have to be revealed? Except for the few that I seemed to have ran across of late, people who also dared to point their fingers at the obvious, ( I’m sure those people were the Grinch’s relatives. Or could it have been….). They continued tugging at my ears to listen as they then explained.

One of those person’s found it necessary to show me a hand-made card. The card had gilded edges, dazzling red and green fonts, and a assorted sprinkling of glitter, followed by this message:

“Jesus is the reason for the season” TRUE!

“Merry Christmas”

“FALSE”!!!!!

This person had crossed out the Merry Christmas part, and made it a point to plop their finger on that one part. A physical exclamation point so I would know this was serious stuff!

I was confused. But this person like a dog with a bone, and wasn’t going to let it go or me off that easily. They went on to explain how Christmas was high-jacked by the “Pagans”. “If I didn’t celebrate just so” (metaphorically speaking) and accordingly to the church / God I could be guilty of paganism.

I’m beginning to believe that many churches could advertise on their marquee that “The Grinch lives here” Why do some people like to lurk inside of the church lobbies as if they’re self-imposed “Pagan police”? You know! Those people who are only looking to be nick picky about everything in church. They hope to change everything back to the way it was. All the while forgetting that it’s about the relationship with God that extends far beyond that one or two days most people go to church per week, month, or in a year….. Sorry for the snarkiness. But some people can be more of a thorn in my back side then a delight to be around, despite having sat down on a thorn-bush. (If you know what I mean)

This person went through a whole historiography about all of the subliminal but totally accidental paganism inside of the Christmas celebration, and other celebrations that churches are involved in. So I felt the need to ask them, “How is it possible to become an accidental Pagan and not for Pagans to become accidental Christians? A look of disgust came over them as they snatched their presentation away and scoffed at me.

“You’ll more than likely be on God’s naughty list if you enjoy too much yuletide cheer.” They added calling out over their shoulders as they walked away.

I thought my question deserved an answer. After all, there are people who wear apparel, or who have tattoos, and wear jewelry with crosses on them – but nobody accuses them of being a secret Christian. It is people who appoint themselves as the Pagan police that miss the point of living what you “believe”. For it is your outwardly presentation of yourself towards others that makes a lasting impression of your beliefs. Is that going to be a positive? Or a turn off? Or is it that these pagan police are just good self-liars – presenting themselves as being good Christians in a legalistic way, in a way Re-hashing the same argument that Jesus had with the Jewish church leadership in his day. Anyone can read all about it in the Bible. It’s all there in black and white so to speak of.

When the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and built the temple of Jupiter on its ruins, would sensational pagan evangelists have pointed out the traces of Jewish symbolism and architecture infringing on the worship of the Roman God? Yet with some Christians it seems like they are willing to credit the devil with more power than Jesus, to trick people into becoming accidental pagans even though they claim to be Christians and who dares to celebrate in the ways they’re pointing out.

It seems to those Christmas-haters acting in this way are just throwing a cold bucket of icy water onto the Christmas celebration, by calling people to the attention of possibly being  accidental pagans. It would seem they are missing the point, to the same degree as the recent “Fad du jour, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” did.

Can you really have a true and lasting relationship when it is based on peer-pressure?

If there is a negative, a blanketed observation that could be made of all religions and the celebrations of Christmas, it would have to be our tendency to saturate it with sublime materialism and selfish ignorance

It seems to me it is just as dangerous to be overly critical, as it is to be overly celebratory in being a underachiever. A person who will never be perfect or good enough – and then gives up on making even those small efforts to make improvements.

We should encourage people to become a positive, though they’re imperfect. (For that is to be Christ like) Not verbally beat the imperfection out of them for the sake of having a better relationship with them. Somehow these Christmas-Haters never expect God to treat them in the same way they tend to treat others.

We should be a positive towards others, up lifting, and encouraging to try to do better. Not just be the person in church with a big stick.

Marry Christmas, and a happy new year to all.

All the best.

They just don’t make them like they used too.

The holidays are supposed to be filled with times to remember. Christmas lights and trees filled with ornaments and presents under them, the crackle of the fire in the fireplace and grandpa poking around complaining a bit about hot coals spilling out, and that slight smell of fireplace smoke adding to grandma’s cooking. This time of the year should be filled with Family, friends, great dinner’s, cookies and ice-cream, laughter, and good cheer. Like it was growing up and going over to Grandma’s house. A house that was filled with the aroma of old-fashion cooking, no boxed prepared delights purchased at the store for the usual two for one sale here.

Grandma was a product of the “can do” society. Where quality was emphasized over quantity, where hand-made was the definition of luxury, durability and longevity – and by her standards all these things also defined true love.

The home cooked meal, cooked from scratch, using ingredients that were time tested family secrets, were those memories burned into my head, that at times a single perfumed scent in passing could set off memories of the nostalgic past. Like fresh vanilla baked cookies and a good herbal tea.

Today we don’t have the time. We live in the go-go-get-em rat race of life. If I wanted to make cookies I would have to run out to the store, grab the prepackaged pack of whatever, and run home hoping that there was still had time to preheat the oven to bake them both, hoping all the while in that multitasking mindset that they both needed the same oven temperature. And all of this before my favorite TV show comes on.

It’s no happenstance that we live in this self-created environment of multitasking. Where we all think doing things fast – as fast can be, is the solution to our high-stress compressed ways. Funny how doing the unnecessary three times fast gives us all now-days the sense of accomplishment. Until the oxygen gets sucked out of the room with those same three things we completed in record time, begin to fall apart. Stress is reborn, and anxiety elevated, as we grumble to ourselves, nothing is made to last anymore.

So what if dinner tastes sweet! Doesn’t the hint of vanilla and pot-roast add to the cookies flavor complexities?

My tortured emotions from my torrid paced life required an overhaul. So this year I took some time off from my work. I risked whiplash while slammed the breaks down so to speak. Bringing my life’s speed down to the nostalgic past. At least to a pace I thought it was in the days of grandma cooking and Christmases long ago.

In my slow motion vacation I picked up some old time-tested cook books of grandma’s. Thumbing through them, as I slowly turned the pages of past memories in my mind. Suddenly I saw it. My eyes focused on an old cookie recipe that flooded my memory bank to a point that I tried to wipe some perceived crumbs off my face just as I had done when I was a kid. Ok! I’ll admit it. I stole some of these cookies, and crumbs always got me caught until I learned the art of hiding the evidence.

I placed the book on the counter while I gathered up the ingredients, quietly reminding myself this isn’t a race…. It’s a test of endurance. I placed the pan on the stove and turned it on. I quickly plopped some coconut oil into it, hoping to melt it to a liquid before adding the vanilla just as the recipe called for.

Damn! I forgot to get the vanilla out. I rushed to the cabinet that housed it, retrieved it, and returned to the holy-grail cook book to see the exact amount needed. I added it. Instantly flames shot up out of the pan up to the roof.  I was completely sure I singed the hair off the front of my face. I instantly grabbed the burning caldron, but didn’t know just what to do with it. All the while flames were licking at the ceiling leaving their mark like a crazed child with a new box of crayons, running around marking the walls because someone forgot to also gift them paper to color on. The situation was tense and dangerous, after all I had a hold of a pot of liquid flame slopping around and up the sides of the pot as I dogged, bobbed, and weaved, around the kitchen looking for a place to put it down to extinguish the fire.  Somehow the thought of multitasking, or bad hair days never crossed my mind. Yet it’s the first thought I have when I am faced with a tense situation at work minus the danger of course.

As life would have it I got the fire out, the pot didn’t survive, and cookies didn’t magically mineralize for me to enjoy though I had plenty of crumbs on my face. The holidays were spent repainting the kitchen. Luckily no one could make the cross country trip to come spend it with me. And even more lucky than that, I didn’t mention to anyone, in a braggarts way, that my Grandma’s vanilla cookies were the best in the whole wide world and that I was going to make some. No one had to suffer the disappointment of not having a taste – net alone; I didn’t have to explain the embarrassing story of why there weren’t any cookies to try. The only thing I need to do was to fabricate a great heroic story to explain my missing eyebrows and the slightly shorter hair on the front of my head. My recovering facial skin, though it was still rose colored, would defiantly hide some of the red from the embarrassment for the truth if I told it.

This year make some great memories but hold them just short of burning the house down. Throw multitasking to the wind, and apply yourself to the time tested — quality over quantity. For there is a reason that curtain memories hold their value like Rolls Royce’s and antique’s… and so make for great stories to tell at family gatherings – they just don’t make them like they used too.

All the best.

News; Black Friday shopping. Because voicing your opinion isn’t enough.

“Voicing your opinion isn’t enough”, said Sergio Uzurin a protester in front of Macy’s flagship store in New York. “You have to disrupt business as usual for this to happen and that’s the only thing that ever made change. That’s the real way democracy’s function.”

Unfortunately Sergio doesn’t, or is unwilling to understand that in order for democracy’s to function while preserving individual freedom requires the “Rule of Law”, not a mob redefinition of the law.

Apparently it’s no longer PC to call a criminal a criminal & a preplanned riot a travesty!

St. Louis-area mall closes on Black Friday as Ferguson protests spread http://news.yahoo.com/calm-comes-troubled-ferguson-protests-dwindle-across-u-050740438.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons&soc_trk=tw via @YahooNews

Measuring relationships with technologic calendars.

Most people see time like a calendar. They see we only have 2 months left until 2015 comes in. At other times we calculate time like, back in the year 2000 we met and got together, this year is our 15th year anniversary.

But today, people, mostly younger people keep track of passing time differently.

Are you one of those types who measure your relationships in prototypes of cell phones, instead of anniversary’s? You just see anniversary’s like generations of phone technology. Back in the day when there were flip phones, before selfies were so popular, I met my significant other….or in some terms of some such.

Some couples get new phones with every technologic new release, so, time is marked in these advances not in the advancement of seasonal times. It is if the seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter, only become a blur in passing. Only noticed while reviewing older digital photos.

Perhaps there is that, another advantage for loving your iPhone. You still get to count in those old fashion terms of numbers with regards to your anniversary’s. I just don’t know if that’s a proper use of smart phone technology though?? After everything is said or done, do you think you have what it takes to say that your relationship has lasted past iPhone 40….41…..50….51?? Will iPhone last, or out last your relationship?

Enjoy your life, because life is good.