Episode #138: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {1}

Remember kids! Cow flatulence is harmful to the climate!

Scene: A tired looking man, with tired features resting on a tired body, holding a tired pen, sitting in front of a tired table, writing on multiple pieces of tired paper, tiredly sipping on a glass of tired water.

Annnnnnd....ACTION!

Hellloooo? Is anybody there? Hello?

The tired man suddenly comes to life. He bolts upright, cleans out an ear with his pen before cupping it with his hand. "I could've sworn that I heard that voice. But...how?"

I know you're in there, and you know that I know you're in there. So 'fess up and show yourself!

"There it is again! But, it simply can't be....Flexi?"

Suddenly a loud clap of thunder crashes into his den, as a deluge of sulfuric smoke envelopes the den. Coughing and hacking, he quickly reaches for his handheld portable fan, flips the switch and starts blowing away the smoke. Roughly thirty seconds later, sitting on his tired table, with svelte legs crossed and waist length hair cascading down her chest, is his long thought missing in action muse, Flexi.

"Flexi?"

"In the flesh!" she answers in her perpetually perky voice.

"Good Lord, you're not actually in the...flesh are you?"

Flashing an evil smile, she quickly removes her hair from her chest, which causes the man to wince in embarrassment. When he opens his eyes, he sees not the actual voluptuousness that drove stronger men than himself to drop to their knees in sinful lust, but the perceived voluptuousness tastefully hidden by the clothes that attracted him to her in the first place. 

"Flexi, what on are earth are you doing here? I thought you were on an extended vacation in the Caribbean or some such place?"

"Caribbean, Macao, St. Martinique, Hawaii, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on. Anyways, I heard that my tiny little man with ginormous gonads has started doing some original writing."

"Really."

"Really, so I said to myself that I needed to see for myself if this was actually true, and not just some bad millennial with a pointless MFA in something called un-creative fiction trying to impress your personal assistant with vapid language skills. So, are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Being freshly creative, silly."

"I suppose so."

"Great! I'll be right back!"

The tired man simply stares at the daffodil scented misty cloud that Flexi had left behind, before sadly shaking his head and turning his attention back to his tired paper on his tired desk. Exactly thirty seconds later, he suddenly bolts upright and goes rigid in fear. With eyes growing bigger than his proverbial gonads, he screams at the top of his lungs, "FLEXI!!!!!!"

Tune in next week for part 2 of Dad's Muse Has Come Back!

 

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #137: Grandpa Is Officially In The Driver's Seat

Yesterday, I was at a baby shower for my son and his wife. This photo was taken some 20 1/2 years ago at his sister's baptism. So yeah, I are old. Oh and, he is completely bald just like his old man.

Nonetheless, in about a month and a quarter, I will be a grandfather. There are some days that I feel really, really old. At the ripe old age of 57, this is one of those days.

Because I spent my Sunday prepping and attending a baby shower (never really experienced the phenomenon that is weekend golfing until I went to a country club), blogging was the very low on the list of things that I needed to get done.

Nonetheless (hey, I'm getting good at working on archaic words into my writings) here I am writing this somewhat informative blog post.

In regards to my current writing project, Hot Mess, while I'm making steady progress with it (up to 80k+ words), it seems to have spun a little bit out of control. To whit, while I have 21 chapters written, I'm somewhere between one-third and halfway through the story. I'm at the point where the first part of the story plateaus/climaxes, which will be followed by the immediate valley/peak of the second part, which of course is followed by the third part doing a partial repeat of the second, except the story ends.

I'm finding it quite enlightening to discover and apply a few of the basics concepts learned from reading other books/writers, with the most notable being that to properly bring certain characters thought to be done with after a period time forward to further along/fill out the story. I think it's making this story more fulfilling and meatier. I'm also getting better at rounding out the various sub-plots so that they better compliment the main story plot.

Having said all of that, I'm now reevaluating what the final word count will be. Based on doing some research to figure out what kind of fantasy story I'm writing (low fantasy), I can say with confidence that the final word count should be either slightly south or slightly north of 130k words.

So...yeah. This will be a hefty novel for sure, as I'm already starting on a second three ring binder for this story, and while I have roughly ninety percent of the plotline endings reasonably figured out, I still have that remaining ten percent to figure out.

And a gentle reminder to everyone, I'm writing this entire story out by hand. Which means that I used approximately 220 sheets of paper (roughly ten sheets per chapter) to write this bad boy out, as well as two pens. As the bulk of the advice given to newbie writers these days is minimize/eliminate outside distractions, writing by hand allows me to not only eliminate about ninety-five percent of my various Internet distractions, but allows me to enhance my concentration to a level rarely seen these days. 

And that is very acceptable in my life these days.

Have a happy Monday and a mellow Tuesday through Sunday.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #136: Dad Says The Only People Worth Your Attention Are Little Childrens...

...because they're the only ones uncorrupted by the stank that we adults are currently giving to the world.

So earlier in the week, while I was out on one of my morning walks to nowhere, I found myself in the home stretch of my walk, in that I was on my home street some sixtyish yards away from my house.

So of course, being a late sunny morning {this past week the temps did not drop under 85 in the morning nor under 94 in the afternoon}, a few of the neighborhood children were out. When I say "few", I mean about four, since my neighborhood has pretty much turned over because the only ones that are left are now Class of 2022 graduates.

So....yeah.

Anyways, my street, for better or worse, has virtually no car/pedestrian traffic during the day M-F. In fact, for the morning thru early afternoon, you can count on one hand the amount of cars that come through. So I'm within actual sight of my house, when I hear the quadraphonic sound of four young voices calling out, 'LEMONADE!! FRESH LEMONADE!!" 

Now normally, I simply smile/wave in acknowledgement whenever I come across a lemonade stand. However, there was no possible way I could blow this one off, because living on the same street some six houses down gaurenteed that I would probably hear about for quite a while. So I sucked it up, went over to the tent and yes, I will have one. Financially, that one third of a cup cost me but a fifty cent piece.

Health-wise, I paid a hefty price for the rest of the day. As most everyone here is aware of, I are a diabetic. Which means I have to severely deaden my sugar intake. But, because this was my good deed for the day, I couldn't simply not drink the lemonade, nor could I pitch it within any kind of view. So I took a couple of noticeable sips in front of them, spoke to the mother who was feeding her very newborn baby for a few minutes, then made my way home with the cup of lemonade in my hand.

Now once I got inside the house, the lemonade got tossed. And my sugars stayed somewhat elevated for the rest of the day. Would I do this good deed again in the future on my street? If I was caught walking, you betcha I would. Would it be worth getting sick again? Yes and no. Yes to bring a little happiness to young children's faces, but no, getting sick to make children happy really wasn't a good thing. But you have to remember, children like to see/hear honesty in an adult, so I just simply couldn't walk away w/o drinking any of it.

So ultimately, my good deed made some children happy but made me sick for the rest of the day. So in this particular instance, a win-lose was actually the best outcome I could actually expect.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #135: Dad's Stomach Is A-Growlin'

Not even remotely sure where I'd originally dug this up from all those years ago, but hey, maybe it's a new version of Don Quixote.

So Dad, or perhaps I should start calling myself Old Grandad, eh (note, to go further on the website, you have to verify your age), is feeling a bit peckish at the moment.

Before we delve any further in today's beefy topic, we must give a minor writing update on Hot Mess. Currently we're in the process of writing chapter 19, which I'm deducing is possibly the midway point of the novel. The present word count stands at 69.7k words, so I'm quite happy about that. At my current pace it looks like I should finish either slightly south of 100k or slightly north of 100k. I'm personally guessing slightly north, judging by the amount of words written so far.

Now, with the update out of the way, today's beefy topic is lunch. I had originally visited this topic, along with breakfast and dinner, in November 2012 (yeah, I've been blogging that long), and I strongly suggest you clink on the link for some good old fashioned humor about the that particular meal of the day.

Lunch has radically changed for me in the preceding 10 years, in that what I eat is a little more healthier and a lot more routine. Being retired going on two years has allowed me, for better or worse, to badly tweak my lunch routine.

One thing that has remained disgustingly the same is that I go in long stretches of eating the same thing Mon thru Fri. Seriously. Because a lot of what I eat is directly tied to my diabetes, there is a tendency to stick with the same thing repeatedly.

To whit: we did PB&J (natural and sugar free respectively); when we got tired of that, we switched to tuna salad sandwiches, complete with a plethora of hot sauces; then we changed to chicken salad sandwiches; after getting tired of sandwiches, we switched to lunchables (both Oscar Meyer and Armout).

Then to start saving some money, we started doing our own version of lunchables, using tuna salad, then switching to PB&J, then to buying packages of bite sized salami and bar cheese, and finally, we're now using the Armour version of Spam called Treet., along with hot sauce and salsa.

Keep in mind that these were like month-long stretches in eating each particular type. And of course, you can't forget the other parts of lunch. Like pickles, which we started with gherkins, then switched to spears, then to hamburger dill chips, then finally bread and butter (not sugar-free which is gross) chips. 

Then we switch over to chips. First we went with the snack size of Lay's chips varieties, then we switched to store brand corn chips (saving money here), then we switched to Capp Fries, and finally, oyster crackers (again, saving money).

Can't forget about the liquid refreshments. For an extended period we did Cape Cod soda cans, then switched to teas, crystal light drinks, then finally bottled water. Btw, water is bland, so at one point we used those single serve powder mixers, but switched off due to chemical warfare, so bland water it is.

Finally, we get to dessert. Almost 97% of the time, it's been fruit. Plums, nectarines, apples (red, golden, granny) and bananas. The other 3% were things like sugar free cookies.

On the weekends it changes only slightly, in that about 97% of the time, we do Banquet chicken nugget dinners for lunch. Yes, very cheap and it fills a necessary need. The only 3% is covered by fast food, usually dictated by abnormal events of the given day.

So, that is the annoying sameness that is my Sunday thru Saturday lunch. The joys of having a long term medical issue dictates what you eat for lunch is just so....peachy keen fine wonderful goodness. As SpongeBob would say, "JOY!!!!"

There is no joy in Hooterville today, for Arnold The Pig has become beefy pork chops and picked pig knuckles for the community picnic.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #134: Dad Is In Fine Fettle Today

I was ganged up on by these guys this past Friday in the drive thru. Man, if you thought ravens have attitude issues, Canadian geese are 100 times worse.

Dear old Dad had nothing on tap for a topic to write about this week, as life got in the way of writing and blogging.

So today's blog post is gonna be a deep dive of the archives from my first blog, Cedar's Mountain. I do hope that you'll enjoy these classic posts from yesteryear.

The first in question features some very old e-mail humor from 2000, about various products with stupendously stupid label instructions, called Humor Circa The 20th Century.

Next up, a sample of some free form fiction and a humor filled e-mail from somewhere long ago. The fiction is moi, and the poem is entitled, "Frenemy". Overall, the post is called Fluffernutter

Number three on our hit parade is Coffee!!! Specifically, a cartoon featuring Grimm & Mother Goose, with links to Dave Grohl and Squeeze (links are still good).

Number four with a bullet is one about feeling really, really old. For proper context, i'm 57. Which means stuff from when I was growing up would make people in their mid 20's squeal like a pig about retro vintage stuff. Either way, if you're under the age of 40, you're probably not gonna appreciate what your elders went through. This one is simply called, So You Feel Old, Eh?

And finally, number five is actually from another one of my olden blogs called Father Nature's Corner. This one was around from 2013-2017, which was during one of my down cycles and after I had spend some time blogging on Tumblr (nuked that blog). 

Unfortunately, this blog's archive was a cringe-worthy trek of posts featuring broken links and YouTube purged videos. It took me quite awhile to find something, and it happens to be an old YT video featuring a Rube Goldberg machine. Simply called Still The Untitled Post.

I sincerely hope you've enjoyed this tiny trip down memory lane and hopefully by next Monday, I'll have a proper post for everyone to enjoy. Happy Star Trek!

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved