A To Z Challenge Theme Reveal Blogfest #teamDamyanti

             Badge Courtesy of: Samantha Geary-Jones @ writerlysam.wrodpress.com                                                                           

 

I know, I know. It's not #ROW80 and it's not my usual ravings about stupid stuff that goes on here in da 'hood. It's something different; hopefully something with a little class! Even though it's still winter and the Olympics are roaring along in Sochi and I had a 232-page post (just kidding) prepared about life in Russia, that will just have to wait. Something much, much more important is taking place!

Today is the day we announce the Theme Reveal of the AtoZ Challenge that occurs each April. The theme part of the challenge is the brain-child of Mina Lobo who participates each year. Last year was the first year I participated and I enjoyed it so much that when one of the established co-hosts was looking for volunteer-minions I jumped into the breach!

I'm proud to be a member of Damyanti's team and you can find us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/atozchallenge or on Twitter with hashtags #teamDamyanti and #A2ZReveal. 

Be sure and check out the blogs of my fellow minions and my fabulous co-host Damyanti from her main page! If you have any questions or need help cooking up a theme, you can contact any one of us, or be sure and come to me! I am first-rate at whipping up a big batch of confusion. Some of you may remember that I followed myself last year on my own blog, trying to answer one of my commentators.

That was probably the least idiotic thing I did in 2013. But, I digress. The important thing is to join the Challenge at the A-to-Z for 2014 and pick a theme! Write about cats, or cupcakes as my co-minion Csenge did one year. Or not! Write about the letter C, like my friend Gina Valley did, when she couldn't remember the alphabet! I told her the funniest thing I ever saw was the drunk lady on "World's Dumbest Partiers" who sang the Alphabet Song at karaoke, which in itself is pretty stupid, and couldn't get past the letter "A" even when another drunk tried to help her. Hysteria and apoplexy followed, which really helped my parkinsonism! I almost had a stroke and a hernia! Just kidding. 

Anyway, you get the idea. Come on and join in the fun. You don't have to write War and Peace. You can write haiku if it suits u. . . That's bad, even for me. Well, I've been up way too long and it's time to get some sleep. Come and write. Come and read. Come and read and write, but sign up, first, here. You'll get a nifty badge at the end of the Challenge for finishing and feel good about yourself. Trust me.

My fellow minions are: Samantha Geary-Jones, Vidya Sury (who has 2 blogs) Anna Tan, Giulie Castillo-Oriard, Jemima Pett, and our own SteamPunk lady, Csenge Zalka (who also has two blogs!) Along with our intrepid leader, Damyanti, we hope to provide seekers with the very best, or at least non-mediocre ideas for themes, so stop by if you're in a quandary and need some inspiration! And sign up!

#ROW80 1ST QTR 2014 WED CHECK IN AND #IWSG A DAY LATE! PLUS, A RANT

2014 was supposed to be the year that I really got it together, because frankly, I had so totally "streamlined" (read "cocked-up") my life that there wasn't a whole lot left to get together. Boy, was I wrong! I've been running like a bat out of hell since January 1, and really don't have a whole hell of a lot to show for it, except that I've leveled up several times in Attack and am getting my 99 Cape of Achievement in two weeks. 

The electrician came because our lights have been flickering up and down, ever since we got new neighbors, but they're leaving because their freakin' drug dealer was pounding on the door day and night. Rather than dealing with it in my normal fashion, which would be to confront the asshole, and since I can no longer have a firearm, since I've been deemed mentally ill, and that is no longer an option, I went to my landlord who threw the bastards out. They are finally leaving after delay, after delay, after delay. I faced down the drug dealer after he showed up every 15 fucking minutes looking for his money, with the time-honored method of out-ballsing him; kinda the same way I did with the muggers.

For a long time, I could see out of only my right eye. I wish I'd had my eye doctor fuse my eyes together. This would have been neat!

I put my laptop in the front door and sat behind it, with my LifeCam facing out, after Mr. Dealer had buzzed by our place about 80 times in the course of 90 minutes. The dealer got the hint and instead of trying to look in my house and see what kinds of goodies he could steal, in lieu of payment from the welsher next door, he took a powder. Sometimes, ya just have to get slicker than the slicks running around here; I should become a crime lord. 

Anyway, the electrician should probably be on trial for murder or something; when he left the lights still flickered and now the water is the temperature of the Sun. He's been lurking around the other houses and when he sees us, he looks sheepish/happy as if he's glad/surprised we haven't burned to death. I'm calling the Electric Company and having them in to do a once-over ASAP.

 I never bought in to that happy Redy Kilowatt guy. Killerwatt is more like it. They actually have something called Killerwatz in Runescape as a slayer monster and I couldn't do them; they freaked out what little is left of my retinal and optical nerves. Electricity belongs in the ground or the sky, not in people, or at least not in great quantities.

This would just be business-as-usual, but JC is just getting over pneumonia and I have been trying to get my own doctor's appointments set up. This is a major undertaking for just him, but I've put off my own things, as I've felt well and he's been so sick over the past year. He's finally starting to come back around and get out more and I am really happy about that.

What I wasn't happy about was yesterday, when he came home, here right behind him comes the druggie-welsher neighbor, who while in the process of moving, ran into JC, as he was returning from an appointment. I had had a bad morning, complete with a dressing-down from Brighthouse who tried to tell me I owed them 68.00, when I pay them a month in advance. I called to cancel because I got a much better deal with Verizon, plus a land line, so I can go back to work part-time (VERY part-time) for an old company. I told Samantha of the Retention Department, that I would NOT be paying any 68.00 bill, as I was paid in full, and that I, in fact, was cancelling a day prior to my payment due date. 

 I'm fairly sure the people that have dealt with me sans bipolar meds would prefer I be somewhat, er, sedated. Were I able to skip the middleman, I would be first in line to do so, but it seems here lately, that customers are a plague. In the last month, I've been yelled at by my bank, Bright House and now, once again, my psychiatrist's receptionist. I worked with customers on the phones for years and never encountered the hostility I've run into here, recently and I make it a point to reward good customer service.

 
So, already pissed, I discovered that I had missed my own psychiatrist's appointment of February 4th. This is a special kind of hell; they never call and remind us of our appointments anymore and it took me 6 weeks to get a new prescription for my Cymbalta, back in October. This front office has done more to obstruct my psychiatric care than any other specialist I have and it's unconscionable. I have been Baker-Acted. I have a history of violence, when provoked. Wouldn't you want to keep that person placated, or at least go along with that person, while you're calling out the guys with the white coats and nets? I came so very, very close to saying "Y'know what? This is all a big pile of shit and fuck it!" Start taking hostages and barricading myself.

It goes that quickly and when I've had little to no sleep and am on edge and am trying to help JC and do 90 million other things and I get abuse on the phone, I just go starkers. It's really enough to push one over the edge. The so very, very frightening thing about this, is that I can gauge it. I know when I've reached my limit and there's always a point, where I can say "Stop". I haven't reached critical mass. But I am so afraid that one day, the set of circumstances will be enough for me to just let it reach critical mass. That's when I understand what people do when they take hostages or kill wantonly and it's not us, it's the society. God willing, the governor is in good shape. I have a good support system and I can laugh at the truly idiotic idea of my own psychiatrist's receptionist's being the trigger for my last two near-melt-downs. But really? Shouldn't she be in another line of work? I'm going to suggest that to my doctor at my next appointment, come February 13, 2014 at 2:45 pm.


 

#ROW80 1ST QTR 2014 - SUNDAY CHECK IN - ONCE AGAIN, IT'S THE STUPOR BOWL!!!

It's that time of year again, when we bid adieu to the American Football Season with the annual Super Bowl. This year, we have the Seattle Seahawks vs. the Denver Broncos. I'm still kinda hoping that that San Francisco 49'ers will show up, but that would just be bad sportsmanship, which the NFL will not tolerate, unless they will; everybody clear on that? It just depends on who's being unsportsman-like. Apparently, Richard Sherman doing his impression of a mad dog foaming at the mouth, and screaming, practically incoherently at Erin Andrews, who appeared to fear for her life, wasn't it. 

At least, Sapp isn't the one flappin' his jaw, here.

No, that just got everyone so riled up for two weeks of non-stop jabbering and carrying on so much that Warren Sapp thought it was time to pretend he was relevant again and take on Michael Strahan, who has tons more class than Sapp. The last time I saw ole' 99 (he played in Tampa, thus I am familiar with him personally), he was mouthing off to some poor kid in a wheelchair at a boxing match I was attending. The kid had the audacity to ask Sapp for an autograph. Asshole. I love it when athletes assume an imprimatur that is entirely bogus, forgetting all the while that it is us, the common folk who actually pay THEM, to watch them play. Sapp falling on people does not make for a better defensive tackle than Michael Strahan and Sapp is a thug; yes, I said it! A thug, with his thuggish ways, thuggish mouth and thuggish attitude towards his fans. 

Still, one hell of a fine writer!

But, I didn't start out to write an article about the shortcomings of players in the NFL. This is about goals, not of the touchdown kind. This is about writing goals and other goals outside of that as well. The writing has been coming along, albeit, not as quickly as I would like it to. But really, who says, "Gee, I want to drag out this process for the next forty years! THAT'S my goal!" I was looking at a list of books that Stephen King has written over his lifetime and was astounded. The amount of prose this man has churned out is impressive and although I cannot say that I am enjoying "Under the Dome" or "Needful Things," at least I can hold another author's published work in my hands.

Sometimes, I think King stopped writing with heart after "Dead Zone" or "Different Seasons" and just went into pap-mode, because the writing now seems forced; and the humor isn't really funny. His tragedies, although still Grand Guignol-like, and horrific and sad, fail to really move me. The characters aren't real in his later books. Or, maybe I am just reading with a different eye. The funny thing is, I still enjoy Dean Koontz, who has written nearly as many books, but has deepened his approach to his characterizations, while shortening the length of his overall stories. I don't know. If I go back and read certain passages in "Dead Zone" I cry, so I know it's not me.

I wonder if I could get this in blue?

Anyway, my health has been, (fingers crossed) excellent. Today, we moved the last of my furniture out of storage where it had been after the loss of the 2nd house. I am stronger than I have been in decades and am up to 112 pounds. For me, a miracle. I walk as much as I can (2 miles a day is easy) and have had no further incidents with would-be muggers.  As a matter of fact, I think I saw one of the men in the grocery store, and he took one look at me, my glasses and cane. I went into my "Gort" mode, and "stared" at him as he backed slowly up the cereal aisle. My friend, Alex, who had been an aisle over, came up and said, "Mary, what did you do to that man? He just put his basket down and left." I told Alex, "He needs to leave... earth... permanently. I hear Neptune is lovely this time of year". And left it at that. Alex knows better than to ask.

Everything from the storage unit is sort of shoe-horned into this place, so it's probably time for a garage sale. Our landlord put a shed out back for us, so we have lots of stuff in there, but so much needs to go. It's good to be back and trying to write again. This week is also the much-awaited #IWSG. Let's hope I get up in time on Wednesday to make that one! Have a happy Super Bowl and in honor of the event, I am going to post a link to last year's observations on the AFC Championship. Happy #ROWing and see you on Wednesday!