So I’m sitting here today and thinking about Clue. You know, the movie with Tim Curry with a whole bunch of different possible endings? Yeah, that one. And then I started thinking about all the pieces of my world that make me go argh.

Here’s how I could see it.

My home is geriatric and poorly insulated, filled with dog hair and dust that makes me sneeze. Repairs happen one at a time and are heinously expensively never ending.

I own a lot of sweaters.

I work long days. If it’s not my actual career, there’s chainmailing and writing and promotion of said chainmailing and writing, and it’s exhausting. It’s also not terribly profitable.

Oh, and my own mother has not read my books.

I have a pile of games with relatively little time (Or people with which) to play them.

I need to eat lunch but I don’t want to cook.

I have an ongoing case of shingles that I can’t get to go away. While I have a health care provider’s blessing to get vaccinated, I can’t get it the vaccine til I’ve been clear for 12 months. Average length of time between attacks- 3 to 4 months. Also, extra fun, one of my eyes has already been scarred due to said shingles, so there’s that.

 

Here’s another way I could see it.

I have a beautiful home built in a time when builders believed in large rooms and larger yards. We’ve been slowly upgrading bits as needs arise, and within ten years, it’ll be like we built our own place.

I have 3 beautiful pups that are my constant companions and love to snuggle.

I own a lot of sweaters.

I have multiple fulfilling jobs- artistically and professionally, I always have something to turn my hands to. The ability to create has always been vitally important to me, and I have people in my world that understand and support those efforts, even if its not an interest in their direct purview.

My mother doesn’t read my books, so she can’t tell me how I did it all wrong (and she would). The people that HAVE read them have given them great reviews, and I will forever know that I did make people laugh and cry along with me, at the right times for the right reasons.

Even this minute, instead of typing this out and musing on the vagaries of perspective and reality, I could be playing one of hundreds of games that are just waiting for me on one of the five systems within arm’s length.

And that’s just in my office!

And today, I even have the day off to enjoy all of these things.. time with my pups, outlining a new story I have in mind, working on chainmail, playing a little Kingdom Hearts 3… and if I wanted to, I could go out to lunch or have it delivered. Which is a good thing, cause half of my body is in severe pain right now, and a little rest and relaxation could help me get over my current case of shingles.

 

Like Clue- it could be all of these things are true and none of them are.

 

See the warning? Great. If your mind is made up that abortion is wrong, please turn back now. I’m not going to say anything that’s going to make you particularly happy, and I’m not going to be debating this issue with you. These are my thoughts, my ethics regarding the situation, period.

And they begin, as many of my philosophical wanderings, with asking myself which act holds greater evil. Let this sink in… I am not pro abortion. I am not running around telling everyone I see shopping in the maternity section to kill their children. I do not think abortion is a great thing to do, I think it is, for some women, a necessary thing to do.

I believe in equality for women, and have come to the conclusion that if you are anti-abortion, you are not committed to equality.

A woman without a choice becomes a reluctant mother and what should be something beautiful and joyous instead becomes a burden. Carrying that burden sets that mother up to be less successful financially and emotionally.. and horribly guilt wracked for feeling in a way that’s really understandable and human at its core.

Why don’t we love children enough to give them the blessing of being wanted? Loved? Prepared for and eagerly welcomed into the world?

If you want to tell me that life begins at conception and must be protected, then I want to remind you that it doesn’t end at birth… and by allowing life to begin with a lack of care and stability- well, you’re setting the stage for the destruction of two lives.

If you want to debate the financials and how you do not want to fund abortion, I will remind you that it is far more expensive, both financially and at a human level, to cope with the outcome of unwanted children. We have this romanticized idea that adversity breeds excellence- is it true? Or is it just a salve for our collective conscience when we see situations of families struggling to provide the bare essentials?

And no, being unwanted doesn’t make a person doomed. But think of the problems of our society today- general lack of resources, increasing levels of depression, reported feelings of isolation, hate groups radicalizing into violence… how much of that do you think stems from the very beginning, of people bringing children into the world that they weren’t prepared for and could not raise with the love, time, and care that should be every child’s birthright?

We like to think we live in the greatest country in the world. How great are we if we condone, and indeed, enforce children having to live in poverty? How can women achieve equality if there is always the chance that they will have to give up such a huge part of themselves and their lives to a child?

They can’t. And we aren’t.

 

Out in the world, it’s been a really crazy couple of weeks. I could go on for hours about the shutdown and the rest of the seriously screwed up situation in our seriously polarized, uncivil, and sometimes monstrous country.

I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’m going to talk about Michael Beatty for a few minutes here.

Who’s he? Well, he’s an average guy, like most of us, who doesn’t always do what he knows he’s supposed to do for his health. Unlike most of us, he ended up in a coma due to that… and very luckily, he pulled through.

And came home to a mountain of medical debt and a fixed income to try and handle it with.

Like most of us, Michael follows the back and forth of conversation on social media from time to time, agreeing with what he agrees with, and sometimes savagely roasting what he doesn’t.

This week, it was a post from Patton Oswalt that he felt the need to spew some bile on, personally attacking the comedian.

I’ve followed Patton for years… while I don’t always like his work, I hold tremendous empathy for the man. What he did next brought me to tears.

Instead of firing back at Michael as a faceless online entity, he stopped and looked at the person. He put himself in Michael’s shoes. And, well…

He helped Michael pay his medical bills.

This, this, THIS is a shining example of what we keep forgetting. We aren’t Trump supporters or moms or dads or blue collar or Republicans or Democrats or antivax or pro life.

We’re people. Every single one of us has a story that shaped who we are and why we react the way we do. That’s what the folks interested in controlling us want us to forget, they want us to be labels, cause they know it’s way easier to weaponize people against a label.

It shouldn’t be so easy to weaponize us against each other. But thanks to our own need to feel like we’re ahead of someone else in the race, our desire to be better than, our fear of experiences unlike ours, we’re handing them all the tools they need to do it.

Ironic, isn’t it? In an age where communication is the fastest and most accessible it’s ever been, we let it be used to make people hate each other, because when we’re divided, we’re easier to control. We don’t have to let this be the norm… we can decide how we feel about people. We can decide that someone holding a different view from ours doesn’t make them or us wrong.

Forget the labels. Learn about the people, walk in their shoes. Choose kindness and understanding.

 

 

It’s kind of funny… I started out the year knowing that I needed to change some things up to put myself in a better place- the place I wanted to be.

I started out by choosing a new mantra for each day. Over time, I found two that truly worked for me whenever I felt things pressing down too hard.

Let go of anything that doesn’t serve you.

Anxiety is contagious, so is calm.

I still need to find a mini dragon fountain and build a zen garden for my courtyard come the spring. And maybe find a non juniper bonsai to trim. But truth is, I feel better and freer than I have in a long while. And that’s a good thing.

Just when I didn’t think this situation could possibly get any more AUGH, it did.

The last word we had prior to this installment was that our missing parts would ship either Friday the 4th or Monday the 7th.

Now we’re being told they shipped Friday the 11th. Not that we can verify that in any way by the tracker number we were given, because it goes to a login page for their shipping company. If I were feeling a bit more puckish and less Hulkish, I’d ask them for the login information in order to access it, but it just didn’t seem worth it.

We’re now 20 emails deep in the chain with these folk with no real end in sight.

While I typically try to keep these posts somewhat lighthearted, I just can’t anymore. All I can say is, if you’ve read through the saga here, and you still think it’s a good idea to give the folks from https://ultimategametable.com/ your money… I can’t help you.

Is the product concept cool? Yes, absolutely, a thousand times yes. But the sheer frustration and fury of trying to get them to respond, let alone deliver just isn’t worth it. Honestly, if I had known what I was in for, I would have paid three times the price to have exactly what I wanted delivered in a reasonable time frame.

I’ve learned my lesson… you get what you pay for.

I was in the kitchen, shredding up some Dr. Pepper slow cooked pork shoulder, when I realized that I only learned how to make it because Draz wanted to try it. I mused for a moment, thinking of all the things I tried or made for him… I only drew a line at steamed broccoli because I hated the smell of the stuff.

It made me smile, like a lot of the memories I have of him do, but then I started thinking about how I’m usually much too reserved and shy to tell people how much I care about them.

Instead, I cook. And not only do I cook- I bust my ass to make sure I am making the best possible whatever it is, putting everything I feel into working over that stove and giving that dish extreme TLC.

Because, you see, it’s my way of giving people TLC.

For Draz, it was Dr. Pepper pork shoulder. For Adam and the kids, it was meatloaf. For Dan, it was wookiee cookie cake. For my mom, it was sugar free orange chocolate cheesecake. For Frog, it was my giant double decker hot fudge cake.

For Rick, it was dragonmeat.

It goes back so many years… to my mom (oreo brownies) and my dad (chocolate chip peanut butter cookeis).

It was never enough to make something well… it had to be perfect, cause it was carrying more than the weight of some calories, it had to carry the weight of all the things I couldn’t, and to be fair, probably in a lot of ways still can’t say.

Thanks, Draz, for still being over my shoulder and giving me the thoughts I need to be thinking.

Green chile, how I love thee.. and how my stomach hates thee.

Due to indulgence in aforementioned chile, I wasn’t feeling too good last night, so when a CVS mission came up, Rick, like the hero that he is, did that trench run solo. When he got back, it was with the furtive boyish grin associated with surprises.

Rick (at the doorway to the office, hands behind his back): Okay hon, I know you’ve been wanting another corgi pup, and I finally decided it’s time!

Me (lifting skeptical brows): Oh?

Bree (filled with dismay): alarmed look

Rick, with a giant grin, produces this from behind his back.

It plays Bad Case of Lovin You and dances and all the dogs hate it. I guess if you subtracted the music and adding potty training, it kind of is like a new puppy.

Rick’s still in the doghouse with all the females in the house, though.

Poor Rick. Hope he’s enjoying those chuckles.

 

Extra extra-

While I was writing this, Rick headed out of the office, then back in again a few minutes later, carrying something.

Me (sniffing): Oh, you found food.

Rick (munching): Well yeah, I knew the roast was nowhere near done, so I heated up some leftover chicken.

Me (sighing): You know, I had a plan for that. If you like talked to me (makes hand puppet of Rick with a hand puppet of me answering back) you could have known that! Not worth bothering for just me.

Rick: But.. normally you get mad when I ask cause you don’t have a plan.

Me: THIS WAS LIKE THE ONE TIME I HAD A PLAN!

We both sigh and laugh a little. Joys of marriage.

 

One of the supposedly useful functions of the Google home thing is that it can start timers for you. This is real handy when cooking, until it isn’t.

Me: OK Google, how much time is left on the timer?

Googlebitz: There are four timers. One is a six minute timer paused at thirty seconds. One is a fifteen minute timer at zero. One is a seven minute timer paused to two minutes. One is a twenty five minute timer at zero.

Me (making a face, cause none of these were the timers I was looking for, and I wasn’t in the mood for Google mind tricks): How much time is left on the thirty minute timer?

Googlebitz: That timer is t minus four minutes.

Me (sourly with volumes of sarcasm): Thank you so much.

Googlebitz: You’re welcome, I’m here to help.

Rick (bursting out with laughter): I think Google just flipped you off.

Me: That’s it, I’m watching you!

Rick (still laughing): But she’s so polite with her British accent.

Me (still glaring at the bitz): Aussie!

 

Rick’s still laughing. Googlebitz is sitting in a cloud of smug silence.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a day behind on writing about my mantra experiences- so this was yesterday’s focal thought.

For the past few years, I’ve taken on a lot between my work life and my personal life, had lots of little epiphanies and revelations about what it means to be myself but also to be brave.

From either of the sides of my life, so there’s so much that wouldn’t have happened for me if I hadn’t been willing to answer a challenge, so many people I wouldn’t have met that helped me change the way I saw myself.

So yeah, the last years haven’t been easy, and I’ve been more tired than ever before. But through accepting the challenges that have come and learning from the astounding people I’ve met along the way, I’ve also found out how to truly love myself, even the aspects that I never thought I would.

Pretty fair exchange, I’d say.