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A Special Thanksgiving

Michael 7 Comments

 

Thank You God for waking me today and reminding me that nothing will happen to me that You and I cannot deal with together. 

That is a pray I’ve said every morning for as long as I can remember. It is a personal thanksgiving that got me through domestic crises, cancer diagnosis and surgeries, and a failed kidney transplant. Not the sort of things usually put on a list of things to be thankful for.  

Yet they are. Together they are the epitome of ‘what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger’ and that the power of prayer is stronger than man alone.

Two weeks ago today I was in the emergency room, disoriented, unstable, with a crushing headache. As each professional passed through the room the same questions were asked. How long? Maybe a week, maybe 2, was never this bad. Did you fall? No. Did you hit your head? No. Sinus infection? Yes. And a million or so tests taken and I was ultimately admitted to the cardiac floor (because I do have valve issues).

To make a long story short, everything that could be considered was considered except what I was considering. Perhaps it is something brain related. On Saturday afternoon, my daughter and sisters were visiting and almost simultaneously, asked what was happening. Apparently they all noticed my face drooped and my speech slurred, and just as fast, returned to normal. Not able to recite three people’s observation, thee attending physician ordered a CT Scan, and in quick order, another, the a transfer to neurology l then another series of scans and MRIs. A day later, a diagnosis…a subdural hematoma.

We still don’t know how it happened but I know I was able to deal with, together with my Highest Power and somehow He”d get the message to someone to check that out. 

Sometimes it’s the big obvious things that scream for gratitude. Sometimes it’s the quiet moments that remind you the everyday is a day of thanksgiving. And none of them do we get through with some help.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. And don’t forget to thank your Highest Power. 

 

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Still more time to heal

Michael 7 Comments

Hello strangers. I have missed you all terribly. I feel like I’ve been on a sabbatical since last weekend, except even on sabbaticals, one is allowed to connect with people. I suppose I feel more like I’ve been a retreat, a silent retreat, since last weekend. 

Let me catch you up on my lost week. In 1945, Billy Wilder directed The Lost Weekend. He should have waited 80 years. He’d have had five extra days to explore.

On Thursdays, I re-work some sort of story off that Wednesday’s Uplift. This Wednesday that was A Time to Heal, probable one of the best Uplift posts we’ve done in some time. Perhaps that Diem wrote most of it had something to do with that. Anyway, go read it. I don’t have the energy to visit it here. 

Since the beginning of this week, I’ve not had the energy, particularly mental energy, to post to social media – a shame because almost 80% of ROAMcare’s visitor engagement come from social posts, and also because nearly all of my author site engagement comes from social, and especially this week because Monday was launch day. 

Since the beginning we of this week I have been on a rollercoaster with body temperature, chills, dizziness, and the Casios so when I least expect bout of nausea. But of all the times I’ve missed, it’s been connecting with you. 

I’m happy that I feel strong enough now to typed out these few words. I don’t know how that will last. Will see if I can get back to my regular Monday thing on Monday. Please read A Time to Heal. It’s really good.  And if you’re curious about what writing projects I’ve ignore this week, check out Michael Ross Media. I’d tell you more but now I need a nap. 

Yay for me

Michael 14 Comments

I had such a weekend. l’ve been collecting pieces of idiocy and ran out of space in my brain before we ran out of weekend.

I doubt there is anywhere in the country where stores are not feeling the penny pinch. The US Mint stopped making pennies earlier this year. That hasn’t really caused the shortage. That the Federal Reserve Bank’s coin exchange program was directed to not accept pennies from member banks caused a big problem. Some parts of the country have none, others have enough one cent coins to last through their expected 60-year lifespan. In my neck of the woods, a major local grocery chain was running perilously low on the copper clad coins so they came up with a solution. Bring in any pennies you have laying around the house and they’ll double that in gift cards for you. The preliminary count Saturday night was over $1 million dollars in coins turned in for exchange. All because somewhere in country, banks have vaults full of rolled pennies they can’t exchange for other coinage.

Speaking of coins, there was a lot of coin dropped Friday night when The Big Cheeto gave a 1920s, Great Gatsby themed party where he performed his signature dance, the f—-ed up chicken. This on the eve when SNAP (and don’t forget WIC) benefits would be stopped. The orange menace probably thinks he’s punishing people for not working hard enough to pay their own way. I know how to stop the bleeding and get him to release the funds he is legally required to release. Tell him every dollar of benefits he holds back is $2.00 of business one of his greed-soaked friends is missing out.

There were many other tales of stupidity but I tire of listing them even though I’ve stayed away from Herr Cheese Puff’s lunacy for a while. He damn near overshadowed that today is publication day for Bad Impressions. Yay me!

Like at first sight

Michael 9 Comments

There are things I like that I have no good reason to. You do too. You know you do. For me some of them are stress balls (not to de-stress with but to keep in a display among others knock knacks and dust catchers on a bookshelf), hats of any type (NOT worn backward), anything with Peanuts (the comic strip), anything with peanuts (the food), red cars (fully 50% of the cars I’ve owned were/are red). There are many many many many other things I like but they took some time getting used to or I had some reason that I like them more/better/deeper that some other version of them whatever they may be.

These things that I just like, for no apparent reason, defying explanation, or I should know better than to, were like at first sight. There was never a time I didn’t like peanut butter cups or Kung Pao chicken or chicken satay. Nor have I ever met a hat I didn’t like. You get the idea. They all made a grand first impression on me.

What is it that the dime store philosophers say about first impressions? You never get a second chance to make a first impression. I take exception to that. With that? I take exception with that. I think sometimes people’s first impressions are so innocuous that one doesn’t even recognize an impression has been made. Other times first impressions are so offensive that one puts them out of their mind. For those of us who fall somewhere between Marvin Milquetoast and Attila the Hun, well, we probably do drop into that category of people who need to be a bit careful of the first impression they make.

What do you do if you make a less than stellar first impression. Review, revise, and retry. Nothing says you can’t strive to make fabulous second, third and fourth impressions. If you don’t want to go through all that, check out Differences Among Us, this week’s Uplift post at ROAMcare. Your first impression of it might be that it has little to do with first impressions. Sorry. It really does.

Seasonal affective disorder

Michael 5 Comments

It was a sad weekend. Sad because it was time to put Rosemary to bed. Sadder because this year’s unusual weather patterns left us with an autumn devoid of autumnal hues and the annual romp through the country lanes with the top down trying to catch a falling leaf or two.

Last year’s fall foliage was positively neon, a culmination of ever more brilliant colors year over year for the past five or six years. This year…bleh. I blame it on little orange men. They’ve screwed up everything else in the world that was good.

But back to nature. It was not a good year all the way around for topless driving. The spring was too wet, the summer too hot, and the fall was too dull. A dull fall is the worsts way to end convertible season.

There’s only one thing that can be done. Not end the year yet.

It’s been more than several years since I had the opportunity to run a snowflake rally through the Christmas lights, as comforting, if not quite as comfortable, as a leafy lope through the mountains. As much as there is something indescribable in driving along the mountain roads nearing the same heights as the tree tops themselves as they give up their colorful leaves, it is even more difficult to describe the feeling of driving along inside a snow globe. Both or either must be experienced.

Of course, the problem is there is no guarantee that the holliday lights season will overlap the falling fluffy flakes season. Fortunately, with a couple quick connectors it will be no problem to wake Rosemary and prepare her for a quick midwinter excursion if the opportunity arises.

I suppose you will just have to stay tuned for updates as the seasons change. Wish me luck.

Advanced planning?

Michael 2 Comments

Let me start by saying I don’t expect anything to happen soon but… Like many Americans, and maybe other Earthlings, I have planned and prepaid my, ahem, final expenses. When I first entered into the agreement? program? coercive activity? it was called pre-paid arrangements. After a while, the monthly bills would list it as pre-planned activities. (You know, activities like pickleball and croquet.)  Now, even though the arranged activities have long been paid, I still get a monthly mailing detailing new options and and additional services in what is now referred to as advanced planning. 

I have a problem with this nomenclature. Shouldn’t all planning be of the advanced type. Doesn’t the “plan” assume it’s happening “pre-“ something. What would the opposite of pre-planning be anyway? Crisis management?

It seems to me that somewhere along the way, someone wanted to capitalize on making plans but ‘plan’ all by itself sounded too weak to be a viable strategy. Plan. Dull, unimaginative, overlook-able. Can you hear the marketing guys talking about plans?

Plan? Won’t do. Much too unremarkable. We need to spice it up or people won’t go for it. Let’s call it a pre-plan. Maybe an advanced plan. How about advanced pre-plan? Too much? Okay. We’ll start with pre-plan and go from there. If in a couple years we need to goose it up a bit, we know we have ‘advanced’ in our back pocket.

Personally, I think ‘plan’ all by itself gets the message across. It’s a message we spent some time on in yesterday’s Uplift post at ROAMcare, Be prepared. And yes, had I been more prepared today, you”d have gotten this post in your mailbox hours ago.

Several of those days

Michael 5 Comments

Now that the day is half over (in my time zone), it’s probably time to do something with it. Heaven knows I have a lot I can be doing. But do I really want to? Clearly, the world doesn’t want me to.  And why, you may ask??

I’ve tried several times to get to work on a writing project and Word does not want to cooperate. Odd thing that is. I use a machine based version and every time I open it, it lets me type a sentence or two and then it disappears, just like Scotty beamed it up. Or down. Or somewhere. But not on my screen any more. And of course the autosave doesn’t seem to be doing any better than the native program so I can’t even retrieve the sentence or two.

Pre-orders for Bad Impressions opens today and naturally there’s a glitch, specifically with the hardback version. Fortunately it doesn’t look like any hardcover orders were rejected. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like any hardcover orders were rejected.

I have a conference all later today for an upcoming Toastmasters conference and I’m not looking forward to it primarily because in order to accommodate various people’s schedules, it’s right in the middle of the evening, interrupting my usual dinner hour which seems to be trending later and later because lunch has been trending later and later because my day starting hour has been trending later and later. I said I’m not looking forward to the call primarily for that reason but there really are not secondary or tertiary reasons so I guess I not looking forward to it solely for that reason.

I should be cleaning the deck and putting away things that are put-away-able and covering things that are not so easily put away but because of the brief deluge from yesterday, it will be a good 2 or 3 days before everything is dry enough to consider covering up or storing away.

And those are just the things that I woke up knowing I’d have to/want to/should consider to do. It looks like it’s going to be one of those days several times over. Oh well, tomorrow will be another day. Hopefully not another one of them.

Learning to unspeed through life

Michael 4 Comments

Hello everyone. I am much later than usual today because I finally am trying to take my own advice. Or the advice of an unknown African philosopher. Yesterday in the weekly Uplift post at ROAMcare, we quoted an African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Unlike these slapdash, mental meanderings, the Uplift posts are researched and written quite some time in advance, so I’ve had those words on my mind for a while now. And about a week ago, perhaps a week and a half, I started thinking that I’ve gone as far as fast as I want to go alone, which in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t all that far. It’s time to extend my outlook. Time to extend my reach. Time to find others to go far with.

The problem with that is that one can’t just order “others” off the Internet. I’m not sure Amazon even carries “others” and if they don’t, where else could one expect to find some. And that became the key point in that post, Gathering Time.

Finding others to go far with means we have to slow down so we can see the others out there waiting for us. I ended up re-writing that post to build onto that initial thesis, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together” and that the only way you can find someone to go far with is first to go slow. Go slow, take in your surroundings and those with whom you share them. Go slow, experience what is happening right now and what is involve in those happenings.

So I’ve been doing things more deliberately, taking time to say more than just “hello” when I pass someone while out on a walk or walking through the supermarket, appreciating the few fall colored leaves rather than grumbling that everything is still green, thanking those who have contributed to my day, to my knowledge base, to my life – even the unknown African philosopher.

I hope you will take a few minutes to read Gathering Time. There’s a great story about ‘Grandma Camp’ buried in there.

I also realized I never shared the cover reveal to Bad Impressions with you guys. I shared it on my socials and on my author site but not here. Shame on me. So here it is, and here is the link to my site if you want to see the progress of “Bad Impressions” and where we stand with books 2 and 3 in the series. Rumor has it that the pre-order window opens Monday. (And if you don’t already get enough email, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter there too.)

Band-Aids and Coffee

Michael 17 Comments

I visited my daughter yesterday and she greeted me with a small bandage around a finger and a series of them of the larger variety up her right arm.

“My! What happened to you?

“Just a regular morning. Seems my life being held together with Ban-Aids and coffee.”

Coffee is her pick me up and her sedative, her elixir of life. For as long as I remember, she’s always liked coffee. I was like that too. I never didn’t not like coffee. Coffee, tea, chocolate. Anything with caffeine although I don’t overly indulge. I can’t say that I have known anyone else who immediately took to the black gold of beverages. (I also immediately took to that other liquid black gold, Guinness, even though beer in general is not among my list of favorite beverages. Guinness has a sweetness to me, but that’s a story for a different post.)

Most “adult” beverages take some getting used to. Some people never get used to them. Or to some of them. The clear ones, tequila, vodka, and gin, take most people by the greatest degree of surprise at first sip. They’re clear. Like water. They should have no taste. But they do. And somehow people get used to them.

It’s not only beverages that hold this acquired taste phenomenon. The cheese family has many examples of food that objectively tastes bad. Stop and think about it. Most cheeses smell bad, rely on mold or fermentation to achieve their heady flavor, and many come with a slimy, sticky, or crumbly texture if they aren’t held together by a waxy coating. Not the sort of list one might write up when developing a yummy confection from scratch.

Did you ever try to eat a peeled kiwi by hand? Impossible. It’s like trying to corral a sardine.

Speaking of sardines, the fish family is another with seemingly endless reasons not to like. Slimy, smelly, bones that magically appear after cooking.

then there are bizarre organ meats. Liver, tripe, brains. Ecch.

Mind you, I like all this stuff. And add to that olives, squid, eel, even cilantro.

But no liver or brains. And no gin.

And another thing

Michael 8 Comments

Sometimes the most obvious of things are overlooked. Other times, we are so ingrained in language and process that we fail to see the contradictions right in front of us.

I give you this opening sentence in a news article from this morning’s local paper. “A graphic video that shows the moment a homicide suspect shot a Robinson motel manager at point-blank range pushed the District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday seek a gag order in the case.” If you have an actual video confirmation of someone blowing the brains out of a different someone, is it reasonable to assume he’s gone beyond the “suspect” phase.

I’m sure some will say “it could have been AI generated!” Yeah, no. This isn’t one of our political “leaders”(hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!) trying to pretend all is right with the world and what you are seeing is just the radical lunatics attempting to distract you. This is a man who was also caught on camera in that same parking lot shooting and wounding a woman while her young son sat in the car watching it, and who shot and wounded a pursuing police officer presumably caught on body cam video. There was no attempt to deceive and apparently some pretty conclusive evidence. Shouldn’t it be time to call a murderer a murderer? Or is it fair game to ignore what our eyes tell us.

Another thing we too often fail to see is that we are not immortal. The question of what will happen when I die records low on most people’s inquisitive meter. Regardless of the visual evidence and historical proof, people don’t want to acknowledge death, particularly their own.

We put death on the forefront in yesterday’s Uplift post at the ROAMcare site and asked the question, “If you were told today would be your last day, what would you do?” Many of the answers revealed most of us don’t understand the assignment. (Some of the answers revealed not all the narcissists have Washington DC addresses, but that’s a different story for a different post.) We found one answer though most telling. Read that one and see our answer to the question what would you do if you found out today was your last day in our post, “The Last Day.”