Don't Bother Reading This

Wow, it's been awhile... Where do I start?  I have zero time to sleep or eat or breathe right now between life and school and work and all the funny in my entire body has been drained via my soul being sucked out of my sleep deprived body. The End.



Just kidding. Although, I don't have much to write about right now. So, just kidding about just kidding. I'll have to come back to this another day.

Death Of A Talesman- Guest Blogger Danny Minnesota

…Not that I’ve ever finished a single book I’ve started, or a poem I’ve started or a script I’ve started. But I’ve started. And the point is, I'm an idiot...

And this is a story about that.

I’m sitting in my home office at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. My four year old is in the other room asking her mother for yet another plate of cheese and I’m dreading the inevitable constipation coming her way. My seven year old will be trotting off the bus from school shortly and then the house will become chaos.

So I have about twenty minutes to make progress on my story. I’ve been working on it for about two years now. The characters are all robust, complex beings with history and depth and a true sense of self. The main character, Dillion is a smarter, wittier and more handsome version of the man I wish I had become. 'Sadly I’m just me,' I think, as I stare at the screen. The words jump out at me. “This is good stuff” I think to myself.

“Momma!” I hear from the other room. “MORE CHEESE!” “Momma?!?”

“Honey?” I yell. No answer. She must be upstairs. I go get the kid some cheese and settle back down at my desk. The chair squeaks. I rub my eyes. Okay. What happens next? I reference my notes. Ah yes. The first attempt! I’ve been waiting to write this chapter for a very long time. I start writing.

“Dillion finds himself alone at last. The vast expanse of black marble reflects his angst as he steps slowly onto the platform. He rests one hand on the time machine he built and…

“Babe?” I jolt in terror as the wife appears out of the ether and rests her hand on my shoulder. “Tacos tonight? Or do you wanna grill?”

I shake my head and nod at the screen. “I’m in the middle of something. Ask me later.”

“I just wanna know if you want tacos or…”

“Tacos.” I say curtly. She leaves in a huff. I focus. I re-read my last sentence. Right. The Time Machine. I reference my notes. Back to the screen. I rub my eyes. A sip of coffee. Here we go.

“He enters cautiously. His thoughts take him back to that terror-filled day. When everything he had was taken from him. He reaches out his hand and…”

“Daddy?”

Oh dear GOD! I turn and there is the four year old. “Mommy says I can’t have any more cheese.”

“Well,” I say. “Then you can’t have any more cheese. Sweetheart, I’m working. I need a half hour. Can you give me that? Even just twenty minutes okay, Love-bug?”

Back to the screen and another half-sentence later and my seven year old trots into the office and sits down next to me. “Hey, Dad!”

I take off my glasses and turn to give her a big hug. “Hey, Kiddo. How was school?”

She shrugs me off and points and the screen. “Is that your job?”

“I’m working on a book, Hon. Remember? My book?” I’ve told her about it a hundred times.

“What’s it about?” she asks while picking fingernail polish off her thumb.

“It’s a grown-up story,” I tell her. “I need like ten minutes okay? I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

“Tellll meeeeeeeeeee what it’s aboouuuuuuutttt,” she whines.

I look at the clock and relent. If it will get me five minutes alone I’ll just tell her the story.

I swivel my chair toward her and lean on my knees. “It’s a story about a very sad man.”

“What’s his name?!?”

“I’ll tell you. Just listen. His name is Dillon. And Dillion fell in love with a very beautiful girl named Rhonda.”

“What color is her hair?”

“Brown. Now shhhhhh. Dillion and Rhonda like doing out-doorsy-type stuff and one day they are rafting out on the water. And there is an accident. And her raft tips over and Rhonda drowns.”

“Oh my gosh!”

“Right?!? So anyway, this makes Dillion, very sad, sweetheart. And he never quite gets over her. And nothing in the world can make him smile or laugh. Jokes aren’t even funny at all! So he decides that if he can travel back in time he can take jokes from NOW and tell those jokes way back THEN, and that would cause people all over the world to get funnier and funnier and funnier and by the time he returns back to NOW things will be very comical and can make him smile finally. Because all he really wants is to be happy.”

She looks to the ceiling and says “I don’t get it.”

I reply “I told you. It’s a grown-up story.”

“No,” she says leaning onto her knees. “I mean I don’t get it. Why is he time traveling to make things funnier?”

“Well because he’s so sad all the time,” I tell her. “He wants things to make him smile again.”

“But Dad. Why doesn’t he just go back in time and not have his girlfriend die?” She looks at me like I am a science experiment.

And in that moment I lean back into my chair realizing that I am quite possibly the single stupidest person ever to live. My story makes zero sense. None. And I’ve been working on it for two years. I have three time periods fleshed out for Dillion to try to “make funnier.” There are three love stories, bombs exploding, milestones in American and world history. Nazis even!

All because I wasn’t using my brain. He would just go back and save the girl! I am such an idiot.

I take my notes in my hand and toss them into the garbage. I kiss my seven year old on the top of the head and get up from my chair.

And with that she trots after me toward the kitchen as I ask, “Want some cheese?”

 Danny is the father of two delightful and insane Frozen princesses. He spends his time in Minnesota working in e-commerce, shoveling snow, and constantly cleaning up all things pink. He has four wives, one fish  one wife, four fish, and a job. He dressed as Marty McFly for Halloween. His real passion is writing and dreaming of some day performing his music in front of screaming female fans.

You can follow Danny on Twitter HERE.

I S illed Coffee On My Keyboard And Now The Stu id "_" Key Won't Work

Every day I s ill coffee on something. Do you know how many words ha  en to have a  in them??? A lot! So, now in tribute to Ste hen King, I will have to write all of my blog  osts with missing letters. I will rename my blog: The Unintentional Li ogram, which sucks because one of the letters is missing from the title.

Here is a list of words and  hrases I can no longer ty e.


1. Hi  o otomus
2.  hallic
3.  eter  an
4.  issed off
5. Vladimir  utin
6.  udding
7.  aranormal
8.  hotojournalist
9. a  etite
10.  e  er jack cheese
11. ine titude
12.  enchant
13. ractical
14. ort-a- otty
15. Mississi  i
15.  essimist
16.  roctologist
17. otato chi s
18. Donald Trum will never be MY  resident
19. oo oo
20.  ee  ee
21. enis
22. hobia
23.  hlegm
24.  lacid
25. i  i Longstockings
26. artical
27. itter  atter
28. ing  ong
29.  ajamas
30. linko
31. u  y
32. o  y cock


I think you get the  icture. This is going to drive me bat shit crazy...



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Murder, Soup Stock, And Cream Cheese Penguins

Last year, around this time, I was murdering turkeys. It wasn't a very pleasant task and the smell still haunts me. It's different killing something yourself and trying to eat it, than it is to go to the store and pick out an already dead thing to put in your mouth. The smell of blood and rapidly dying meat is sickeningly sweet and extremely pungent.

Anyway, our daughter wanted to try her hand at 4-H. We bought little turkey chicks (don't know the correct term for them and this is probably why we all failed at 4-H) and we raised them under heat lamps in a gigantic box until they were too big to house in our home. We took them to the 4-H farm and had to go water and feed them every day. Now, if you've never seen a real, live turkey before, don't waste your damn time. They are possibly the dumbest creatures on the face of the planet. Some days I would sit and watch them after feeding them and just wonder, "WHAT IS THE POINT OF YOU????" And, the answer is, none. No point except delicious meat.

Now, we couldn't afford to dump any more money into those stupid, fat, delicious birds, so we had to murder them ourselves. And, when I say my daughter wanted to try 4-H, I mean she wanted to see four little baby turkeys and then ignore the crap out of them for the following three months. So, my husband and I raised turkeys and had the pleasure of killing them one by one. We didn't have a garage to do this in, and obviously killing them in the house wouldn't have been pretty, so we dug a fire pit out in the front yard (on a street where kids walk and play), boiled hot water in a huge pot over the pit, and set up a noose in our mulberry tree. We hung them by their feet, slit their dumb little throats, and then dunked them into the boiling hot water to loosen the feathers. Our neighbors weren't impressed. But, they did stop talking to us.

Then came the fun part. And, by fun, I mean completely disgusting and life altering. I was in charge of defeathering and gutting. If you've never tried this, you just must. And, by must, I mean just go buy a turkey from the damn store. They're like $60 to raise and $17 at Safeway on sale.


So, I gutted four turkeys and then prepped them for eating. We sold one, gave one away, one was sliced into lunch meat, and the last one we saved for a Thanksgiving meal. Not worth it. But, after all of the slaughtering was done, I had the bright idea to utilize every part of the birds and make soup stock. Do you know how soup stock is made? Like this...

 You boil the feet and legs to get the gelatin stuff out of them. The feet area is apparently where all the flavor is.  I made gallons of soup stock, pulled out the old canner, and canned about thirty jars of soup stock. 

Cut to a few months later when I actually needed soup stock.

I opened the lid of one of the jars of soup stock, popped off the seal, and the stench of death and rot was overwhelming. I am not a professional canner of soup stock. So, the entire venture was a bust. But, I did learn that if I want to get fancy and make things bird-related I can just skip past the feet boiling and make these little guys out of black olives and cream cheese.

 The best kind of bird to eat is one you don't have to hang by a tree, murder, and disembowel.

It's So Quiet I Can Hear My Coffee Burning My Thigh

Every morning I stumble out of bed, walk blindly to the coffee pot, and pour a ridiculous amount of coffee that I try to drink out of my mug like it's a shot of Fireball. And, every morning, I spill coffee all over my shirt, the floors, and if I'm sitting, my legs. It's a painful reminder that mornings are the anti-Christ and I should just go back to bed.


All four of my kids are gone for one whole week. We let one grandma kidnap the boy and the girls went to visit their dad and grandma. My house is so quiet. I can't even concentrate because I don't have four tiny people screaming at me while I try to concentrate. I've gotten accustomed to the incessant interruptions and now I have to figure out how people without kids operate and do things without having to stop to wipe up poop or make cereal every fifteen seconds. I can't concentrate on anything except the lack of interruptions and listening to every small sound that would otherwise be drowned out by kids fighting or whining. I will accept that my personal brand of writing includes list writing and write a list of every audible sound around me.


SOUNDS I WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HEAR IF MY KIDS WERE HOME

1. SHIT!!! The arrival of the trash truck. I think I missed it.


2. The ice maker having a seizure.


3. A robin in the front yard.


4. The neighbor's yappy dog CoCo running in a circle like it's missing it's left hind leg in my front yard. I find it funny they named this dog CoCo because I always feel like grinding him up into a fine, brown powder.


5. Dust falling into place on the bookshelf.


6. My own thoughts. Is that my voice???


Anyway, you get the picture, It's really super quiet... I guess I can finally read all of those books that I have set aside to read but never have the time to actually get through a chapter. I'm going to start in on Jaxon M. King's novel Into Jackson: Everything In Between today. It's gotten really good reviews and if I can focus on anything other than the sound of my hair growing later, I hope to find another amazing read. If you want to check it out before I get a chance to review it here on the blog, here's the link to buy it on Amazon.

 Into Jackson: Everything In Between

My husband works with the author and says he's a really great guy and I probably should have waited to meet him in person before linking up on Twitter with him because now he probably thinks I'm even more crazy than I really am. I swear I don't talk about harming animals or sexual perversions as much as my Twitter account would have you think otherwise. Well, I did threaten to turn CoCo into cocoa this morning, BUT HE IS SCARY AND HE BITES MY ANKLES REALLY HARD (in my defense)!! Anyway, I'm sure Jaxon would appreciate any feedback on his new book if you'd like to give it. He is a freelance author, just starting out, and I think I'd like to pick his brain sometime about his process of publication so I know what I'm in for once all of the dust settles and my hair stops growing, or maybe just when my kids get back home so I can write in my normal dysfunctional setting.

In A Blog Far, Far Away...

I totally forgot about this blog I started a billion years ago. I just read the entire thing (it's only about ten posts) and I have to say, I feel like I've grown as a person. I recommend starting at the beginning.

Here is Mule Shit: The Stench Of Failure, in all it's unpopular glory. 

I'm thankful for running across this today because it has shown me that I have in fact "grown up" a little, even though most days I feel like throwing a tantrum equal to that of my three year old, and now I don't have to think of something to write about  and all of you get ten posts for the price of one. I expect compensation by means of barter. I will accept pies and/or food covered in either gravy or cheese. Thank you.

Writer's Block

Here are what the last few pages that I've worked on for the "book" look like:


So...









That was page 1.


The...









That was page 2.



One time...







Page 3.


It goes on, but I won't. How do any of you writers get out of a funk? How do you bring yourself to write under pressure? Even if the pressure is self induced? I don't understand my brain. I can sit and write for hours on my blog, but when it comes to something that I think might have a chance at publication, I freeze. It's just out there forever, bound, on shelves, and for sale. Is my writing worth $11.99? I picture myself as an actress while I'm asking myself these rhetorical questions. What is my motivation?

Is it money? For sure. Is it a shot at being known as something else than a mom? Of course. But, really, why is it that writers want to write? I don't think fame is necessarily a huge motivator because I saw how many people showed up for the Furiously Happy tour and, quite frankly, I don't think I could do it. Reading my words out loud to crowds of people who are happy you are a person and can recite your own words back to you is a little overwhelming. So, why do we do it? Therapy?

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