Pat Bertram's Blog, page 19

Vexatious Issues

When I first started working outside this past spring, it felt as if my yard were an extension of my house — an outdoor room, perhaps. Now the outdoors feels hostile and alien, a place that I cannot control, at least not in the way I can control the “climate” inside my house. We can’t control the inside one hundred percent, of course. So much is still out of our control, such as bugs that find their way inside, appliances that go wonky, as well as any number of things that can go wrong. But at least inside (so far anyway) I don’t have to deal with searingly intense and dangerous heat, slime molds, dead birds (well, one, anyway — I found it on my front lawn when I went out to mow today), clouds of grasshoppers that chomp on non-suspecting plants, grass that turns brown and desiccates overnight.

The past few days, dealing with all those vexatious issues, I haven’t even felt like sitting in my gazebo to enjoy a few minutes of rest after my hard work. I’ve just gone inside, closed the door, and felt glad to be in a more familiar place.

At least for a while, that is, until the phone rings. And oh, does it ring! In the past couple of days, I’ve received maybe forty calls from entities with names like “Spam Risk,” “Haitian Chick 5,” and “Telemarketer.” I don’t answer (well, I do, but I hang up immediately; if not, the calls go to voice mail, and then I have to delete all of them) so I don’t know if there are real people behind the calls or if it’s all robots. But it doesn’t matter who is calling — the ring always startles me, though I have it on low. And I turn the phone off at night to keep from being awakened.

Apparently, after the slowdowns and shutdowns and sheltering-in-place during the past couple of years, the telemarketing machine gave us a bit of a break, but now it’s going full bore, trying to make up the money they think they lost. (Though why, with all warnings about spam and identity theft and fraud, people are still buying into these scams, I don’t know. They blame the “old people,” but my generation and even the one before me are tech savvy and wary. Or so I thought. But maybe we’re losing what few brain cells we have left, and what we once knew we no longer do?)

But luckily, it’s cool inside, so there’s that. And I have books to read and food to eat. And, if necessary, I can mute the ring so I don’t hear it at all to give my poor frazzled nerves a break.

Even luckier, I was able to leave all the rest of my vexations outside where they belong.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Gardening is Like Life

Sometimes gardening it too much like life to suit me. Come to think of it, gardening isn’t “like” life, it is life. All those plants and other living creatures go through the same sort of life cycles we do, with ups and downs, growth and stagnation, illness and death. They might not have to deal with the angst of their traumas, but we — in this case “I” — suffer the angst for them.

This has been a particularly confusing time for me garden-wise. The sun desiccates plants so quickly, that what was thriving yesterday, is all but dead today. I’m glad I took a photo of these petunias yesterday because today, not only are the flowers gone, but the plants themselves look as if they might not make it through another drastic heat wave.

The same thing happened to the zinnias, though I don’t know why. They generally like this climate and this area especially — at one time, 92% of all zinnia seeds were grown in this valley not far from here. Luckily, only the flowers desiccated. The plants themselves seem strong enough to produce more blossoms.

The grass especially confuses me. The large area of the lawn that had turned brown about a month ago was doing well until last night, and now it’s even worse than it was the first “brown” time. As if that weren’t bad enough, I’ve been infested with slime mold in a different area of the lawn. How the heck does such a dry climate even have slime mold spores? And how can a certain area be moist enough for the slime mold to take hold when the area all around it is gasping for a drink? (A while back, a cat with diarrhea left its offering in that very spot, so all I can think of is that it somehow ingested the spores and was generous enough to share.) Even though I clean up the slime mold every morning and sprinkle the grass with baking soda, it grows again overnight in a different spot.

And no, I didn’t take a picture of the white blob. I wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible; I certainly didn’t want to memorialize the creature. (I suppose it’s a creature, though it’s not an animal, a fungus, or a plant but an amoeba. A smart amoeba. Supposedly these plasmodium can solve problems even though they don’t have a brain. Sheesh. As if the life of a garden — and gardener — wasn’t horror enough.)

Another issue I encountered was with a hen and chick plant that flowered. This rooster, as the blooming rosette is called, came right on time. (They flower about every three years.) One gardener told me the flowering stage was the end of the cycle and to pull up the whole rosette so the “chicks” could grow. After I did that, I found out the flowers produce seed, so I could have left it until the rosette died on its own. See? Too much like life. Either way, the chicks will soon become hens. And that, too, is life.

Although I have enjoyed the wildflowers, I’m not sure if I’ll buy more seeds to plant next year. (I still have some left over, so I can change my mind about planting them at the last minute.) The blooms are staggered, so there’s not a lot of color at any one time, and the mass of plants mask weed and weedy grass growth. I’ll need to completely clear out some of the wildflower areas since that will be the only way to get rid of the weeds, but it won’t be a problem since most of the flowers were annuals anyway. The flowers that went to seed won’t be affected — the seeds should still grow.

One thing that does so very well here is the magnus echinacea no matter how the weather or the gardener treats it. I’m considering getting a lot more of those plants for problem areas.

And that, too, is like life — when one thing comes to an end, you do your best to find something else to start.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Liking What I Write

Sometimes I read an article I wrote, and I think, “I wish I had written that,” then it hits me that oh, wait. I did write that.

A case in point:

This morning someone left a comment on my post “Let It Ride,” telling me he was doing a podcast about the movie and wanted to know if I would like to join the discussion. Not remembering having ever written about the film, though it is one I like, I went back and read the post. The piece turned out to be not so much a rehashing of the movie (which the critics hated and apparently, so did the screenwriter, because she had her name removed from the credits), but a discussion of the philosophy of luck.

I generally do not like stories about gambling. They set my teeth on edge because of the inevitable slough of despair the character falls into when the addiction gets the better of him. Despite that, Let It Ride is one of my favorite movies, probably because although the story takes place at Hialeah amid the horse racing culture, it is not a movie about gambling. It’s the story of how the forces of the universe align to give Jay Trotter (Richard Dreyfuss) one perfect day, how he had the wisdom to recognize the gift, and how he had the courage to accept it. Not everyone accepted the gift. Even those who saw what was happening to him and were jealous, refused to follow his lead when he so generously offered to share the luck.

I think the part I liked most about that particular post was my summation: What does this philosophical vision of the movie teach me? Perhaps that luck — and life — should be taken as it comes, we should trust ourselves, and beyond that, we should just let it ride.

So, that was an example of something that I wish I’d written and had. On the other hand, there are a lot of things I read that I am very glad I didn’t write. The last book I read (or attempted to read) was a mystery written by a man from the point of view of an alcoholic woman journalist who kept sabotaging her life. It was a popular book, though I don’t know why. A writer struggling with alcoholism is such a trite theme; hundreds, if not thousands of books (though not a single one by me) have been written with that same generic character.

Another book I was glad I didn’t write was the one I read before that — a novel by a youngish white woman whose point-of-view characters were a flamboyant black woman and an old man (who turned out to be younger than I am). I thought such stories were no longer acceptable in a world where people don’t appreciate race appropriation.

I suppose I should be grateful that I like the things I write since there is so much writing out there that I don’t like. I also suppose I will follow through and email the guy about his podcast, though I’m not sure I’ll accept his offer. I really have nothing much more to say about the movie than what is already in this post and the one where he left his comment.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Flowering Despite the Heat

This is a hard time for me to be doing any gardening. Although my lawn is a football field blend of grasses with Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, and red fescue — a mixture that is supposed to do well in heat and cold, sun and shade — it’s struggling. Even worse, the Bermuda grass that once covered the yard is poking its way through the thick grass and without some sort of intervention, will eventually take over. For now, I’m just pulling it up when I can. Later in the fall, when the temperature cools down, I’ll dig it up and reseed those areas, as well as any area that didn’t make it through the summer.

I can see why I never particularly wanted a lawn. It’s rather a pernickety plant that can break one’s heart. Still, I enjoy it more than it frustrates me, so I will keep it as nice as possible for as long as possible. I think the second year will be easier (the sod was laid mid-October, so it hasn’t been here a full year yet) because I will be able to see patterns of growth and stagnation, as well as what sort of weeds and weed grass to look out for.

Despite my frustration, struggling plants, and problems with weather, there are still many things to enjoy in the yard. Right now, it’s mostly daylilies and echinacea, but a sunflower or two are also flowering.

I suppose, despite the heat, I’d have to say I’m flowering, too, since I’m being more sociable than I have been the past couple of years. In fact, I haven’t had a completely “alone” day for a while, and don’t expect another one for the foreseeable future.

Luckily, yard and garden care are projects for the very early morning, so I’m available to accept invitations the rest of the time, and I’m less inclined to say “no” than I have been. (I suppose I should be still saying “no,” considering the rise of yet another virulent strain of The Bob, but like almost everyone else, I’ve gradually strayed from taking stringent precautions.)

If I sound a bit down, that’s understandable. It’s a full moon tonight, and I don’t sleep well around this time anymore, so I tend to let my less-than-ebullient nature get the better of me.

But tomorrow is another day, and if nothing else, there will be another flower of some sort.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Weird Dream

I had a weird dream last night.

Well, that was a silly thing to say. Isn’t it the nature of dreams to be weird? That’s why I dislike them so much — they leave me feeling queasy and uneasy. When I found out that vitamin B-6 in the evening can help you remember your dreams, I immediately revised my vitamin-taking schedule to make sure I don’t ingest B vitamins in the evening. And it helped.

[In checking to make sure I was right about the specific vitamin that helps with dream recall, I noticed that all the articles were based on “new research” done in 2018, but I’d stopped taking the vitamin at night decades before that, so that “new research” was actually rehashed old research.]

What also helps is that if I do remember a dream when I wake, I immediately put something else in my head.

This morning, however, something banged against the house on the other side of the wall where I have my bed, and it woke me with a start. And somehow the dream stayed with me.

In the dream, I was visiting with my sophomore-year high school English teacher, and I decided to give her my latest book. My dreaming self could clearly see the published book, though when I went to get it, I couldn’t put my hand on it, and I realized the book hadn’t yet been published because I no longer have a publisher. And then . . . bang!

In that first moment of waking, I decided to go ahead and self-publish the book so I could give it to her, then it dawned on me that I hadn’t even written it yet. Didn’t even have a clue as to what the book would be about. Would never give that teacher a book of mine if I ever happened to see her.

The dream seems rather banal, now that I think about it. It was the bang at that precise moment that seemed weird, especially since I couldn’t tell if the bang waking me up was a real-life sound or a dream-induced sound.

Another odd thing is that this particular dream had its roots in a decades-old incident. That particular teacher once told me that she’d saved papers from every one of her students she thought would one day become a writer, then she looked directly into my eyes and said, “But I never saved anything of yours.”

I have no idea what she thought she was accomplishing by that statement, though it seems another example of how fellow students often thought I was “teacher’s pet,” but that teachers generally hated me. (In both cases, now that I think about it, it had to be due to my always knowing the answer. I was one of those silly students who read the schoolbooks the first few days of school, and then had nothing left to learn the rest of the time. I did get smart, though. When I realized some teachers refused to call on me anymore, I stopped listening to them.)

I clearly remember leaving my third-grade classroom at the end of the year. The teacher was sobbing and telling each student in turn how much she would miss him or her. Then it was my turn. She glared at me briefly without saying anything, then turned to the girl behind me and continued her sobbing good-byes.

And then there was my senior-year high school English teacher, who got a horrified look on her face when I walked into her class after everyone was already seated. (The advanced class I’d signed up for had too many people, and instead of being fair and eliminating the last to sign up, the teacher drew a name out of a hat — the only time in my life I ever “won” a drawing.) I’d had that horror-stricken teacher for freshman English, and she hadn’t liked me . . . not at all. And so we were stuck with each other for another year. (Though not really. I asked her if I could take the class independently — teaching myself, in other words — and she jumped at the opportunity.)

But this is getting far from the dream. I have a hunch the dream was more about writing and publishing than anything that happened so many decades ago.

I won’t ever go through the process of trying to find an agent or publisher again, and both my previous publishers have had very little luck with my books, so that leaves only one option — to self-publish, which is something I never wanted to do. Because of the confounding situation, it’s easier to not write at all (except for this blog).

Still, the dream seems to indicate either that I’m not through with writing yet or that writing isn’t through with me. Or conversely, it could indicate I took a B vitamin way too late in the evening.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Treading

This is one of those days when I forget I’m not a native of my adopted town. Everywhere I went this morning, as I wandered about doing a few errands, I met up with a good friend. I even managed to collect a couple of hugs, which was especially nice. I was particularly glad to see the woman I have tea with occasionally. We live only a few blocks apart, but we’re both so busy, it’s hard to find a time to get together (and with the weather being so hot, it’s hard to want to make the effort) but we took the opportunity today to make tentative plans for the only day this week we’re both free.

There is another friend I would have liked to encounter but didn’t. I’ve been meaning to call to invite for tea, but there just doesn’t seem to be time. (We’d planned to meet every week, and it’s embarrassing to think how long it’s been since we last got together.) It’s not that I’m so busy, really, it’s that I no longer like making plans to do two different things in one day. Two different things involving people, that is. Obviously, I do more than a single thing every day, even at this time of year when the heat is so enervating. Or maybe I should say especially at this time of year. Despite the heat, I am outside every morning for a couple of hours trying to keep my yard (and me!) hydrated and the weeds from taking over.

Doing yard work now is nowhere near as much fun as it was during the spring. The entire three months of spring I had to contend with strong winds, but still, I managed to find cooler times to be outside. Seeing the growth of the plants and enjoying the splashes of color as flowers blossomed made it all worthwhile. I’m in a holding pattern now, just trying to keep what is there alive. To be sure, there are a few blossoms now and again (lilies and echinacea right now), but mostly, the spring flowers are long gone, the summer flowers are disappearing, and the newly reseeded flower beds and the fall bloomers haven’t yet started to blossom.

Considering how hard it is to maintain what I now have, I can’t imagine what it will be like when the last two uncultivated areas of the yard are de-weeded and planted. I would like the raised garden to be built this fall (and so would the builder so he can check it off his list), but I’m not in any hurry to plant, though truthfully, that planting will be easy. This winter I’ll toss some wildflowers in the trough and then fill in with a few vegetables next spring. It’s the other area, a long stretch back to the alley, that is the real problem. So many weeds, and deep-rooted ones at that.

For now, I’m just treading water. Well, not treading water since mostly the water I see is what comes out of my hose. So treading soil, maybe? Treading paths? Treading errands? Whichever “treading” it is, I’m just holding my own, unable to overcome my heat-induced inertia as well as my garden’s inertia, to propel either of us forward through the summer doldrums.

Despite the rather forced metaphors, you get the picture and can understand why today’s serendipitous meeting with friends was so sweet, even if (as it seemed) I haven’t actually lived here my whole life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Lilies of the Field

I thought I was being clever when I named this post since I am attaching photos of my lilies. I also thought I was being clever when I Googled “lilies of the field flower” to see what exactly those flowers were so I could astound you with my knowledge.

And that’s where the cleverness ended, mine and everyone else’s. Like with so much else I look up for this blog, there is no definitive answer.

Some people think the lilies of the field are lilies of the valley.

Some think they are the now rare — and spectacular — white Madonna Lily, the lily from which our Easter Lily was derived. Because this wildflower exists only in the high valleys of Galilee and a few other places and not near the shores of the sea of Galilee, other people think the Madonna Lily can’t possibly be the original lily of the field.

Some people think the lily of the field is the scarlet martagon. Even though this flower did exist at the proper time, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus supposedly named this flower “lily of the field” after the biblical reference.

Some people think the lily of the field is the poppy anemone.

So, apparently no one knows what the lilies of the field actually are. All the lilies pictured here are lilies of my own field . . . well, yard . . . though “Lilies of the Yard” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Lilies of the Field.”

Making things even more confusing, only the first lily adorning this blog is a true lily, hybrid though it might be. The others are daylilies, which aren’t true lilies but are in fact a completely different genus.

But no matter what you call them, these lilies of my yard are lovely even though, as in the bible, my lilies toil not, mostly because I do the toiling — such as watering and weeding — for them.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

History Repeating Itself

I filter through a lot of information every day — books, articles online, pretty much whatever comes my way — and out of all those words, whatever sticks in my head is what I write about.

So what is sticking in my head right now?

Electricity.

The increase in electric rates, to be exact.

A lot of communities in southeastern Colorado are dealing with electricity rate hikes, which is no surprise considering that everything is going up. But what caught my attention is that along with a notice about the price increase, the electric companies are telling people how to save money by using less electricity.

One of their suggestions is to set the air conditioner thermostat at 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Since I usually have mine set at 80 if I’m not doing anything but reading, does that mean I’m supposed to raise the thermostat? Wouldn’t that cost me more than leaving it where it is? I might save a few cents on the cost of running the refrigerator but I haven’t found anything that says 78 degrees is a better temperature than 80 for the house and the appliances. And anyway, most of my life I lived without any air conditioning, so 80 is real luxury! Another suggestion was to use the outside grill (which I don’t have) instead of the stove or the oven because it doesn’t heat up the house.

These suggestions aren’t what caught my attention, though. It’s that utilities and other energy providers always pull this stuff — they raise the rates because they’re not making enough, so then they suggest that people use less energy and then . . . guess what?

I don’t need to guess. I know. And so do you if you’re old enough to remember the gas shortages and energy crises we dealt with during the previous century.

What happened back then was that people followed the suggestions and used considerably less energy — fuel for cars, natural gas for homes, electricity — which cut into the profits the price hike was supposed to create. That meant the energy companies ended up losing more money than if they hadn’t raised the rates in the first place. So they raised the rates again.

That seems to be what is happening now. And as history shows, by the time the cycle ends, no one is happy, and we end up paying way more for less.

Lucky us.

I was being ironic with that “lucky us,” but if you forget the cost of the energy, we are lucky that we have such things as refrigeration, lights, hot water, air conditioning, and heat, though I don’t even want to think about the furnace during these incredibly hot days we’ve been having.

Still, it is amusing (somewhat) to see history repeating itself.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Grief and Loss of Friendship

A recent widow wrote to Dear Abby because her best friend is blowing her off, cancelling plans, and not calling or texting. The widow is understandably upset because not only is she mourning the loss her husband, she’s mourning the loss of a friendship as well as being hurt and confused because she doesn’t understand her friend’s behavior.

Neither does Abby. (Understand the friend’s behavior, that is.) As she so often does, the advice columnist doesn’t bother to go into depth with her answer, just suggests that the widow join a grief support group and to keep busy so she doesn’t “brood.” After that, according to Abby, the widow can confront her friend if she decides it’s in her best interest.

Normally, that weak answer would make me think the columnist was ignorant of grief, but she herself is a widow. (She’s also 80 years old, which means she should be a lot wiser than she tends to be.)

A woman who recently lost her husband and whose best friend wants nothing to do with her is grieving, not “brooding.” She’s also doubly alone, and loneliness tends to exacerbate grief. So many of us who have also been left alone (with the obvious exception of the columnist) know the truth of grief — that it takes you in its grip and doesn’t let go until it’s ready to let you go.

As for the friend, it probably wouldn’t do any good to confront her. Chances are she has no idea why she’s ignoring her widowed friend. I’m sure the friend feels uncomfortable and hesitant to be around the widow, but if she’s like most people who are still married (I’m making an assumption here), she can’t handle the other woman’s grief because if she gives it any credence, then she also has to accept the possibility that she herself will one day be in the same unimaginable situation.

Death is shrouded with an element of blank. It is the great unknown and unknowable, and our brains are not equipped to handle the immensity. We who are left alone have no choice but to grapple with all the conundrums death brings, but others can and do choose to ignore the whole situation. And they choose to ignore us, because — to them —we are the situation.

While we are in the grip of our grief, the survival mechanisms of those around us are triggered. To avoid facing the unfaceable, people close to us will indulge in self-protective behaviors that shut us out. Some also sense that our needs are so great and so complicated that they would be best not to get too involved. And perhaps they sense their own inadequacy at dealing with the very topic of death.

Even though I’m sure they know deep down they are being unfair, people blame the grievers, as if the grief-stricken had done something to bring on their fate. (That in this case the husband died of The Bob would make it even easier to blame the victim, because either the widow or her husband should have been smart enough to avoid getting sick.) We humans simply cannot handle the idea that life is capricious, that we are living at the whim of fate. (I think learning to handle that concept is part of why grief takes so long. The biggest part, of course, is that someone intrinsic to our lives is gone, leaving us with a huge hole in us and in our life.)

It’s possible that one day the friend will resume the friendship when the raw grief the widow is feeling has been tempered by time and work (grief work, that is). It’s possible the friend will excuse her behavior the way people always do, professing that she thought the widow would be uncomfortable with couples or with people who are still coupled. It’s possible the friend will assume they can get back on the same easy footing they once had, but that easy footing won’t ever happen. Even if the widow comes to understand the friend’s behavior, it’s hard for me to believe that she’d ever be able to let down her guard around someone who so willfully let her down. But more than that, grief changes people. It’s as if a line was drawn, and those on the loss side see things differently from those on the “no loss yet” side.

A fellow griever once told me she had a friend who treated her as if her grief was a small thing, telling her to get over it, to move on, all the usual platitudes. Later, when the friend’s husband died, she called to apologize because she hadn’t known the truth of how hard it is to lose someone to death. As she discovered, you can’t know until you’ve been there, which is why I sometimes give people the benefit of the doubt when they offer paltry advice and scant comfort to people who are hurting. But it’s hard to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who has been there, yet still offers little help or understanding.

The letter writer should have come to me instead of writing Dear Abby. I do offer grievers both help and understanding, as well as a few stray tears of empathy.

At least I do now. Before Jeff died, however, I was as impatient and as uncomfortable as everyone else on the clueless side of the line.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Grumply Day

Everything to do with the internet is getting ridiculously expensive. If you don’t pay with cash, you’re paying with the annoyance of multiple ads. It used to be that WordPress, where I have my blog, only showed ads occasionally, and never to someone who had an account. Now, they show ads to everyone, sometimes even in a few places on the same blog. I just checked one of my blog sites, and the ads were more prominent than the post!

If you don’t see ads here, you’re welcome. I pay to make sure no ads show up, but I can’t do that for all my sites. Because of the whole mess with FB, I have to reblog this article onto another blog, then upload the photo to yet a third blog or else I can’t post both the blog and the photo on FB. I could upload the photo directly to FB, but I don’t want them to add my photos to their database. Chances are, I’m fooling myself, but at least, this way, the photo is at one remove. All of this blog sleight-of-hand wouldn’t be necessary if FB hadn’t blocked this blog. For a while, I returned the favor, but too many people said they missed seeing my posts (even though I’m sure most people don’t see them anyway since FB wants me to pay to show my posts to my friends).

I should have persisted with my boycott, especially since I have come to hate the site with a passion. They are continually doing things to make even my few minutes on the site an inhospitable experience.

When I first signed up, it was at a time when hordes of authors were signing up, and no one had a clue what to do. So I started various groups (or took over a stagnant group or two) to give authors a place to talk about writing and to get to know other authors and readers. My plan worked for a while, but over the years there have been numerous changes to the groups so now they are worthless. And yet the changes still keep coming. The latest is that any entity can join any group and post anything (can you say “spam?”). I could, of course, delete the groups, but that would mean deleting each of the thousand members individually, and that takes almost forever. (I know because I did that with another couple of groups.)

What a mess! If I ever decide to leave FB permanently, I will spend the time to remove all of my tracks. And when I do, I won’t have to worry about the ads on my other WP sites because I’ll never need to use them.

If I sound grumply (a typo, but I like the made-up word — it expresses how I feel — so I’m leaving it), it’s no wonder. I am grumply! Not only is it hot, but a strip of my lawn along the fence is dying. I think it accidentally got spritzed with Roundup (not my doing). The grass has been steadily dying the past couple of weeks since the spritzing, no matter how much I water. (If the grass hadn’t been killed, it would have started to green up by now.) To have to deal with internet shenanigans on top of all that is too dang much.

There are a couple of solutions for the rest of the day — turn the air-conditioning down a bit, turn off my computer, and grab a book. And if it is the roundup that killed the grass rather than the July heat, I’ll wait four months until the poison has dissipated and then reseed the areas.

I hope your day isn’t as grumply as mine.

But wait, I forgot! there is one great thing about today: a blooming lily!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.