Category: The Good Man

Round and Round

The past couple weeks I’ve participated in the Theme Thursday challenge. A fresh topic is presented each Thursday and over the next week, bloggers interpret the theme.

Cool, right? I sure think so.

The first couple weeks were pretty easy. The words were game and knot and I happily interpreted them in my own way.

This week, the theme word is wheel.

It’s one of those deceptive words. It seems so easy. Simple. Complete. Because it’s so simple and ubiquitous, it actually becomes hard to narrow down a single interpretation of the word wheel and go with that.

So I won’t.

Here’s a real time brainstorming session. All the ways wheel speaks to me:

Ferris wheel. Uncle Cliff’s in Albuquerque. I’m kid, waiting in line. That incredible view of the lights of the city when I’m up there at the top and it pauses a moment just to let you sit. Yeah. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs wafting up. That’s summer.

The Wheel of Fortune Tarot card. Round and round.

The Wheel of Fortune television show. Vanna, pick me a letter.

The wheels on a car. Man are tires expensive. Yesterday it rained like it meant it here in the Bay Area. The first big rain of the season. We drove up to San Francisco, and it became very clear that The Good Man’s car needs tires soon.

The steering wheel. Remembering gripping that big wheel when I learned to drive in my dad’s 1972 Chevy Blazer. Blue. Four wheel drive. I loved that truck.

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turning…” Who did that song? Gonna have to Google it. Oh yeah. Journey. Weirdly, Steve Perry has been in the ballpark during the San Francisco Giants baseball playoffs. The park has been playing “Don’t Stop Believing” and Perry has been leading the singalong. Hell, if Steve Perry is the Lucky Stuff that got us to the World Series, I’ll take it.

Wheels, as used in baseball. Referring to the feet, especially of a fast runner. “Man, that Andres Torres has some wheels! Did you see how fast he got to first base?”

If you say the word wheel to yourself long enough, it starts to sound weird. Wheeeel. Wheeeeeeeeel. Have you seen that Geico commercial with the little piggy going wheee wheee wheee all the way home?

Asleep At The Wheel, what a great band. Saw ’em play live at the Pan Am Center in Las Cruces. Danced my booty off. Fun!

Business lingo: “Let’s not reinvent the wheel.” Though lately that’s been replaced by the equally lame phrase, “Let’s not try to boil the ocean.” Argh! Take your low hanging, wheel inventing, consensus building, suit wearing phrases and stick them in your…. *curse words redacted* for the sake of my mom, who reads my blog.

Ok, I think that’s enough. There’s more where that came from, but ten interpretations of the word wheel is plenty.

And there you have it.

Photo by Tamás Schauermann and provided royalty free via stock.xchng

The Big Blue Chill

Ok, I’m bouncing back from complete blogger lock up yesterday with the assistance of the idea generator.**

Today’s topic: Name five things in your freezer

So without further ado, here are the first five things that came to mind while sitting at my desk at work:

1. Green chile

Only a small amount, but those few bags of the good stuff make me ridiculously happy.

Roasted it myself!

2.A bag of really, really good coffee

French roast. Ground for a melitta. Just. Yum.

Honestly, I’m not really supposed to drink coffee. It doesn’t agree with me or my tummy (or my esophagus, actually).

So when I indulge, it better be the ding-dang good stuff.

And this is it.

Served with real half and half and brown sugar, if you please.

3. A bottle of Siberian vodka

Hand carried to The Good Man by our friend who grew up in Siberia and made a visit home to see family. We coddle this one bottle of the good stuff like a colicky baby. It’s deeeelicious. Smooth. Perfect.

Best when sipped straight from the freezer.

4. Frozen fruit

I’m a little bit obsessed with making smoothies. Fruit juice, almond butter, a little egg white powder for protein, and a bunch of frozen fruit.

Blend!

Totally addicted. Now…there is a LOT of sugar in there, so I have to limit it to only one or two a week. I could have a smoothie three or four times a day if I’d let myself.

Gah!

I get twitchy when we are out of frozen fruit. There is a Northwest Triple Berry Mix you can get at Costco that rocks the house. Marion berries, raspberries and blueberries.

Yes, please.

5. Several of those blue freezer thingies that you put in an ice chest.

What the hell is that blue stuff made of anyway?

Seriously. I’ve never had one break on me, but I always wonder what sort of biochemical hazard would occur if one of those bad boys was leaked out upon the world.

Hmm…maybe that’s the basis for my new blockbuster screenplay. A truck carrying a load of those blue packs overturns. Through a series of unfortunate events, thousands of the blue packs are burst open.

The blue stuff takes on the world! Freezing things on contact. Sort of “The Blob” meets Medusa meets Outer Limits.

I like it!

**The idea generator has been pretty maudlin of late. Questions of death and dying, faith, etc. It just wasn’t working for me. I need fun, silly and weird to get The Muse off the couch.

Floating in Blue

A few weeks ago, one of our beloved Betta fish took ill (as Bettas are wont to do).

At wits end wondering how to help our little female fish through the rough spot, The Good Man consulted with a fairly fish knowledgeable employee at the store where we got the Betta.

Most fish owners will just dump an antibiotic like Tetracycline into the tank and hope for the best. Not knowing exactly what is wrong, we didn’t want to go that route.

The pet store guy recommended something called Betta Revive as a first defense.

It covers a broad spectrum of low-level medications to address a whole host of potential fish illnesses.

One of the main ingredients in this remedy is Methylene blue.

For those a little short on their anti-psychotic knowledge, Methylene blue, also known as Thorazine, became a heavily favored drug for psychiatric use in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Apparently, it also has an antifungal effect, so is included in the fish remedy to ward off the dreaded Ich.

We got the Betta Revive and made up a fresh batch of water and added the remedy. Predictably, it turned the water a nice shade of medium blue. Pretty much the color of airplane toilet water.

We floated our sick fish in the blue water, changing it daily, for about a week. She’s mostly recovered and is eating again, which is a good sign.

I’m blathering on about blue water to get to a point. It’s coming, don’t lose me now….

Over this past weekend my body decided to avoid the holiday rush and succumb to a nasty early winter cold.

It the usual stuff, runny nose, sinus pressure, achy joints, low-grade fever and a raging, uncontrollable cough.

I feel like crap and I’m a little depressed. In an effort to cheer myself up, I took a nice hot bath last night.

While soaking, I thought to myself, “Hey, I wish I had some of the blue water to soak in. I don’t know if what I have is viral or bacterial, so a broad spectrum fix might be just the ticket!”

I mean hell, it’ll make my scales lay down nicely and the Thorazine will help me feel aaallll right about the world.

I asked The Good Man if I could soak in some blue water. Gonna have to get a big container of the stuff, but I’m ready!

He gave me that one-eyed squinty look that says, “I’m just going to nod my head and walk away.” And so he did.

I may be sick, but my creative brain is always working out the angles. Even if The Good Man doesn’t buy into all of my (fabulous) ideas.

Carbo Loading The Muse

This past weekend, I competed in round two of the NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge.

It goes like this: They give you a genre, a location and an object. You get 48 hours to write a one thousand word story incorporating all of that.

I *love* participating in this contest. It is my third year and it challenges me and stretches me and causes me to come at my writing from different angles.

Until this contest I’d never written anything that could be remotely labeled science fiction, fantasy or historical fiction. But guess what, I’ve done them all, and in the case of historical fiction, twice.

My first jab at historical fiction was a well researched story about Babe Ruth. It remains one of my most favored stories of all that I’ve written.

It scored very low with the judges, however.

This weekend I pondered all the angles of a comedy set in a tunnel with a gold watch. (A little bit like Clue…Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.)

As I threw around story ideas, I got the brilliant Good Man involved in brainstorming. He looks at the world in a way very different from me and is a good source of inspiration. While brainstomring, he uttered one of those pearls of wisdom that will stay with me all my days as a writer.

The conversation went like this:

Me: “What’s funny about a tunnel? Is there a tunnel that could be funny? What about a sewer? Is that funny?”

TGM: “Well, anything with poop in it has potential.”

There it is, folks. Write that down. Embroider that on a dish towel. Just remember you heard it here first!

But he’s right. Bodily functions are usually funny. Except when they are not.

I chose to avoid a sewer tunnel for my story, choosing something a bit more metaphysical instead.

All of this yammering on is to say, my brain is exhausted. My Muse is weary. She gave it her all for forty-eight hours and informed me this morning that she didn’t *feel* like coming up with a brilliant blog post idea today.

So instead, I chose to follow well-heeded wisdom when it comes to writer’s block…

Write through it.

So here I am, writing through the block. Suddenly words are forming into paragraphs and the page is filling up. It’s not brilliant words of prose, but it’s working.

And here I am at about 400 words. Plenty enough for a blog post! So ok! I did it!

The Muse didn’t even have to work that hard.

Though I think if I hope to get another blog post tomorrow, I’d better treat her to some baked goods. She does tend to run better on sweets.

The Tradition of One Thousand Paper Cranes

Are you familiar with the Japanese tradition of folding one thousand origami paper cranes?

From Wikipedia:

“An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. In Asia, it is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person’s wish come true.”

I have always been enchanted by this tradition, and many years ago when the daughter of a friend was to be married, I even helped participate in the tradition by helping the bride fold a thousand cranes before her wedding day.

It is an act of diligence, of repetition, of bringing yourself and your heart to each crane.

I was reminded of this tradition today, as I contemplated the creation of this, my one thousandth post here at Oh Fair New Mexico.

Each post is, to me, like a beautiful origami crane, my own work of art constructed from the folds of my brain, the diligence of my psyche, and the creativity of my Muse.

The posts vary widely in topic and scope. I started out as a homesick New Mexican looking to assuage my guilt by talking about home. Three years later, it still holds that space for me, but it’s also grown well beyond, helping me to find my voice and my writing style.

I’m grateful to each and every reader who stops by and gives me their eyeballs for a few minutes. Especially those readers who have been here long enough to remember that The Good Man used to be The Cute Boy.

When I started this blog back in 2007, I hoped I’d be able to make it last for a year. I’ve well exceeded that goal.

So today, as I finish folding my one thousandth crane, I string them all together and let them take flight upon the wind. I’ve cast my cranes to the fates and I send them all out with the best of me on the wing.

Tomorrow, I’ll sit in front of a blank Word document and start again, folding the first crane in the next series of one thousand.

May we all make a beautiful wish that comes true.

Mine already did.




Image source: Hakobyan Hayk’s Blog