Updates to the Site

After having my migraines, it appears I had a bit of insomnia, so I updated some items here on the blog. 

Our Online Chapbooks page now has chapbook images and poems designated to each book.

The section of fiction, Drabbles, Microfiction, and Novelettes, was added with an sample drabble. 

I am hoping to add more images so those individuals who save their favorites to Pinterest can do so in the future. 

I hope you enjoy the updates! 

Have a great and wonderful day!

The Dog Days of Summer

Tomorrow will be 1m45s shorter.

 Yeah, yeah, yeah... promises, promises.

Summer cannot end soon enough. I live in a hot and arid location. It is great to live here most of the year, except June through September. 

Before I was taken ill, I loved the heat. Now, my body cannot regulate itself as well to extremes in temperature be it hot or cold. The heat of the desert creates more lethargic days and days filled with migraines. Some headache cycles can last for ten or more days. 

So I am regulated to the indoors, only to venture out into the night. That means I try to sleep days and only do chores in the early morning hours with the rising sun. 

Winters are a little different. I am up by mid morning and back in bed by mid afternoon as I cannot get warm without the direct sunlight. So somewhere in the middle I do my one hour of chores, grab a shower, and hunker down until the sun warms my home again.

What a life! 

I feel like I live on a bed life preserver. 

I hope this coming winter I can get some creativity flowing again. This spring and summer have been harsh on me. Mean people, especially, have reared their ugly heads and my body cannot take the stress. Migraines, sleepathons are amongst the notables. 

But I am ready to start getting my art and writing out there again. I do not know exactly where as of yet. I am working on it. 

I am making a plan and checking it twice. 

Maybe this time the planets will align to come to my aid and not to my determent. 

How do you cope with life interfering with your plans? 

Have a great and wonderful day! 

Crickets and Meandering Migraines

Migraines are wonderful.

They are wonderful for screwing up your schedule, causing immense pain, and terrorizing your life. 

I am ill and migraines are a cyclical answer my body gives me about the condition I am in. It's not pretty. Sometimes, it's just not something that is easily overcome.

With this last round this week, I found myself in the dark with no noise and plenty of ice packs, only to be serenaded by a cricket in my closet. I moved my shelving. I squirted him with some watered down apple cider vinegar... nothing would shut him up! 

Finally, I banged on the wall a few times and he got the message. I was so not interested in him as a man. He needed to hop to another bar. 

So after he got out of my closet and into another part of house, or he got eaten by a kitty, my migraine left my head. Well, head. Then the pain went down to my left shoulder. It stayed there for a long time. Then as the pain was exiting my shoulder it went to my left wrist and eventually to my left ankle. 

You're guess is as good as mine. 

I hope you have a great and wonderful, pain free, day!

Birthdays, Attitudes, Chores and Wishes Galore!

I love when a migraine lasts for days.

Sometimes when things seem to go awry, other things fall into place. Interesting concept but it happened today. It's my birthday so good news should happen.

A little over four decades and I have survived more than my share. Actually, I'm giving away my share if anyone wants the bad stuff. I'm only into the good stuff now.

So I went to the store, got my bday dinner, and came home. I found a cab driver who doesn't use toxic chemicals and air fresheners so I am going to employ her this week. It is tough to find a cab that isn't so heavily scented.

As for me, I did my customary gambling. Once near my birthday and once by New Year's. I spent five dollars and won two back. Funny, funny, funny.  I never get that kind of return playing the lottery. I may stick with cheap scratcher's tickets from now on.

So on this bday post of mine, I am glad to be getting some things accomplished this week so I can get down and dirty with my actual chores next week.  Lots to do.  People who need their attitudes checked and paperwork to be sent off are all on my to do list. 

I love people who believe that because I am disabled means that I am mentally handicapped and therefore deserve to be bullied or my favorite: talked down to. I am ill. Sick does not mean stupid. 

Some people. 

I guess their karma is going to find them some day. Well, I can only hope. I want to get beyond karma and investigate the reality of our reality. 

Isn't that funny or what?

Have a great and wonderful day, I know I am!

Migraines and Karma are Bitches

There is one thing in life that I despise more than peas and lima beans... any guesses? It's migraines. 

I had a nice one yesterday morning, which carried over into this afternoon. Usually one of my migraines is about detoxing or weather patterns. So I'm guessing a detox reaction. 

Great. Swell. Better out than in!

The cats didn't care until this morning when I did not get out of bed and open up the curtains for their viewing pleasure. So I got played on, meowed at, and otherwise terrorized by the furry inhabitants of my home. 

But I have a cure for incessant negative behaviors and that is the squirt bottle full of water. Don't tell Jackson Galaxy! When you can't hardly move and you need some peace and quiet... the squirt bottle is the best option.

People tend to frown upon murder and it almost came to that this morning. My migraines are so painful that they not only raise my body temperature, they inflame my senses: so I cannot stand light or sound.

That's okay, my vision is so blurry I cannot get around well anyway. That means: no television, no reading, no nothing. 

And sound? Everything feels like a drum on my body. Even the slightest touch can feel like a heavy brick chaffing my skin and bruising my muscles.

What a nice gift mercury and black mold gives to the body. Since I cannot take any pain medications, I'm totally allergic to most OTC and Rx drugs, I have to lay quietly and still with ice all over my head, neck and sometimes shoulders and back. My muscles tense up so badly in my legs that I can get charlie horses and other cramps while I am trying to get past the migraine.

I even have melted ice so fast that I have had to change out water for cubes almost hourly. 

Thank you to everyone who poisoned me. What a joy it is to be in that much pain several times a month. You should try blinding pain sometime. It really is great.

Do they care? Hell no.

That's the great thing about karma. Once you've done something so offensive, it's kind of difficult to relieve yourself of galactic payback. So they might not receive migraines. It might be a car crash injury or cancer. Always the balance must be restored on the cosmic scale. 

Even when you think karma is finished with you, here she comes again!

My illness and maybe even karma was not because of some offense, but because I believed that people would do right by me as I had done with them. Silly me. What was I thinking?

So I lay here hoping the pain in my temple is not another migraine coming on. 

I think back to the way I picked up nails in my boss's parking space on a near daily basis, warned people when the cleaning crew used a dirty chemical rag to wash out their coffee pot, helped people out when I did not have to, and took in my family when they had nowhere else to go.

And I think how stupid I was to believe that when you do right, right is returned to you. 

It seems the only constant in life is karma and am I forever paying for my good deeds.

Isn't that a bummer?