Swiped from Charlie! Who got the idea from Michelle Rowen who is challenging blog-landia to share their dusty bits and bytes.

Feel free to join in and post your own……This is the original beginning for a book that was supposed to be a Blaze…then wasn’t and is now lying in a dusty heap on my computer. I can’t even begin to tell you how HARD it was not to edit…and how much I cringed  :lmao:

See below the cut

It had been a long day, even with early dismissal.  The kids were excited about getting out for Spring Break.  Not that he blamed them.  Any more than he could blame Mitzi for leaving him.  How cliché.  A dear John letter.  Except, of course his name wasn’t John.

    Dear Dane,

    I know you’ll understand when I say I’ve met someone.  Someone I feel I can be happy with.  Someone who wants a family—a real family.  By the time you get this, I’ll be on my way to Denver and Kenny.  I’m only taking my clothes, 5000.00 from savings and the computer—since you gave it to me.

    Please sign these as fast as possible and return to Mr. Bentley.  He’s waiting for them and will finalize the divorce so Kenny and I can be married as soon as possible.  He has my new address to send the papers to.  Don’t try to contact me.  It won’t do any good.

    Kisses—

    Mitzi

Dane slumped at the kitchen table, letter and divorce papers in hand, and ran shaking fingers through his thick blonde hair.

At sixty, old Wilt Bentley was a bigger gossip than most of the women Dane knew.  If Wilt knew what’s going on with Dane’s wife, then the whole town did.  And probably knew more about it than he did to boot.  Sighing, Dane picked up the phone and dialed Wilt’s number.

“Bentley & Bentley,” the older man said.  There was only one Bentley.  Wilt’s son, Jerome, was doing drag in Vegas, much to his father’s chagrin.

“Wilt.  Dane Keller, here.”

“Afternoon Dane.  I suppose you got Mitzi’s papers.”  Dane swore the old man sounded like he was chuckling.  “Not much of a treat to come home to for Spring Break, hu?”

“No, it’s not.  Listen,” he began, determined to get this mess over with as fast as possible, “what do I do with these papers?”

Wilt might be a gossip but he knew his job.  Quickly, he explained the process to Dane.

“So, in six weeks, it’s over,” he mumbled.

“Yup, just sign them and bring them down.  I’ll take care of the rest and by Summer Vacation you’ll be a free man.”  This time there was no hiding the chuckle on the other end of the telephone.    

“I’ll see you in an hour.”

Dane hung up, grabbed a pen from a nearby kitchen drawer and quickly scanned the papers.  There were no hidden surprises.  Other than the one he’d discovered when he hit the door.  Mitzi and her trusty computer were gone.

She’d begged for a computer for months, stating she was bored and needed something to do during the day.  His suggestions about job hunting had been ignored.   

 

Thank you so much for the wonderful birthday wishes. It was a great day. Jason got me some new Twins gear (an awesome jersey, hooded sweatshirt and t-shirt) and then took me to Dave & Buster’s so he could decimate me in the basketball-shooting game. (I am the WORST at that game.) It was a fun time and it was so great to have the week off.

The weather has been perfect all week, too. It was 66 degrees on Monday, so I tossed my summer gear in the closet and can now wear tennis shoes instead of clompy boots outside. The poop swamp is gone and our yard is now contaminant-free. (For now.) There’s only a few stubborn ice remnants left, and I kindly help them out by stomping on them with my heels so they can disappear faster.

A neighbor cat peed on our patio window last weekend, so I washed it (the window, not the cat, although I would love to get even with that window-peeing menace), and then washed the inside of the window, and you guys, seeing the sun stream in through crystal-clear glass healed my soul. I’m not kidding. We took the plastic off our windows and opened up doors and screens and it was heavenly. Just heavenly. I knew summer this year was really affecting me, but I didn’t realize how close to the end of my unravelled, unknotted rope I was.

Hey, do you want to hear about my stupid dream neurosis? I hate when people in my dreams don’t listen to me. Last night, I was with a group of people fighting off evil attackers in some post-apocalyptic world. We drove off the last of the evil-doers and started congratulating each other, when I turned around and there stood Eric Bogosian. And I was like, “What the hell is HE doing here?” And people were telling me, “It’s cool. He’s with us.” And I said, “NO. That is Eric Bogosian. He’s a bad guy.” And they said, “No, no, he’s a GOOD guy.” And so on. They wouldn’t listen to me, even when I insisted that Eric Bogosian is ALWAYS the bad guy, don’t they know ANYTHING? And sure enough, a hidden group of bad guys ambushed us, Eric Bogosian started laughing evilly and saying, “I double-crossed you,” and as I started fighting back I shrieked, “Why doesn’t anyone LISTEN to me?”

Man, even in my sleep I’m a whiner.

You guys listen to me, right? Right?

Hello?

 

This afternoon, I finished putting a new thingy on the door. (You know, the thingy? The thingy that allows the door to slowly close instead of trapping your ankle in the doorway?)

Anyway, I was all proud of myself because I basically MacGyvered the whole installation in 45 minutes, having bought a thingy that was shorter than the previous one, which meant lots of hammering of the dented old one and drilling for the new one. MacGyver probably could have done it in 3 minutes with a toothpick and a canteloupe, but all I had was myself, a bottle of Mt. Dew and the helpful assistance of two cats intent on eating the drill bit.

I tested the door and while I was busy congratulating myself on my door-fixing achievement, Abby snuck outside and started her months-planned escape. Once I wrangled her back inside, I decided that I would be generous and let both cats out in our fenced-in backyard.

I put Abby’s leash on her because if I don’t, she eats enough grass to barf up later in a giant Mountain of Slime. I didn’t put a leash on Sunny, because she thinks you’re trying to kill her when you do and will ram her head into the wall trying to escape.

Outside, Abby made a beeline for the grass before I tied her to an acceptable surface under the patio: half sun, half shade, full view of birds. I then watched Sunny meander around the yard, her tail twitching in nervousness and her occasional worried “mew?” my cue to reassure her she was OK.

When I saw her heading toward our prickly raspberry bush, I went to retrieve her. I picked her up and right then, a giant grackle flew by. Sunny, frightened to death, screeched and kicked at me viciously with her back paws. I set her down with an unkind word and looked at my shredded arm.

It was a horror map of destruction: two long, angry welted scratches down my bicep, with enough forks in them to warrant their own Robert Frost poem. And right in the crook of my arm: three deep gouges that were, to put it mildly, oozing copiously.

Everything’s going to scar. I already have two smaller ones on my upper arm, courtesy of Sunny and her Claws of Angry. I’m not so worried about the scratches scarring. But I am worried about the three gouges, seeing how they’re located exactly where a drug user would have needle marks.

Edited to Add:

Exhibit A

You can even see the bruising underneath the scratches already. I’ll have to put a moratorium on picking up Sunny about a month before the wedding.

Goodness, you ask such hard questions, Amie. :-) I will admit, I, too, do have a problem with men being overweight. Oh, a little overweight is fine - but extreme overweight is a problem.

Young guys are also a problem for me. I’m 43 and, for whatever reason, I seem to be attracting young men. Maybe it’s all the ‘older woman’ stereotypes. Who knows? At any rate, while it’s flattering, and does do definite wonders for my ego (shallow, I know), I just can’t do it.

One of the guys I met was this 28 year old, Italian guy. He was GORGEOUS. I mean, I felt all those fluttery things we write about and could stare at him for hours (but I didn’t - I do have pride, you know). Fantastic accent, had that European intensity thing (i.e., where you feel like you have 200% of the man’s attention - how rare is that? LOL - where he wants to know all about you because you are oh-so-interesting, etc.) that makes you feel special (and hard to distinguish the B.S. from the truth - LOL). But he was just so YOUNG - that youthful idealism, had just started his career, etc. And when I met some of his 20-something friends … OMG, I felt like a mom.

We only had one date, which was fun, like a trip down memory lane when I was in college, but I just can’t handle the age difference.


 

And thanks for the links, I see where you’re coming from now.

I have checked out said articles and they do talk about not raising boys, in no uncertain terms.

Mind you, the more I read them the more their ideas make sense! Truly! Basically what I think they’re saying is that for at least the last five thousand years women have been subordinate in this patriarchy, they can’t see it changing unless women do something a bit different to what they’ve done thus far, thus far they’ve enabled men and boys and brought up boys who then become indoctrinated into the system, all women’s energy has been spent on serving patriarchy and not on supporting womankind, furthermore, if the choice is EITHER:

1. stay as we are [which we can't do without being self-hating women, because women and girls are being raped and murdered and subordinated to androcracy every day and will continue to be until we do SOMETHING]; OR
2. refuse to focus on boys and men to the detriment of women and girls any longer

then the only thing we can do to save humankind is to put women and girls first for a change.

Makes sense to me. Of course it sounds ‘mean’ or, at the very least, it smacks of behaving like the oppressor, becoming like the oppressor, even becoming the oppressor but actually it isn’t. Because on the one hand we have upwards of five thousand years of a patriarchal system where women and girls are murdered and raped and boys are trained as murderers and sent off to war to die, which looks set to continue for a full five thousand more years and, on the other hand, we have women saying STOP! either I’m bringing up no more cannon fodder or, if I do spend any of my time bringing up child(ren) it will be only those who are least likely to murder, rape or warmonger, namely not boys. Most women never have this choice under patriarchy of whether or not or who they will bring up.

One good point which stood out was that the blogger was being villified for speaking her THOUGHTS on a what-if scenario (see below)*** whilst all along the ACTUAL infanticide, rape and murder of women and girls (which the blogger flagged up) continues daily worldwide, yet went un-commented on by her attackers, who overlooked the issue entirely to criticise the blogger’s words in preference to patriarchy’s deeds. Makes u think.

Thanks again Anji

Joy

—–
*** “I will rank the following three scenarios, options, if you will, in order of my preference:

Male infanticide.
Female infanticide.
Females continue living as males’ slaves.
Of course, these are not the only three options available, though they do seem to me to be the options most likely to occur with any lasting *effect* (with full recognition that numbers 2 and 3 concur).

But, yes, I believe male infanticde to be the best of those three options. That is to say, I believe male infanticide to be a *better* option than the current circumstances. That doesn’t speak to what I might feel the *best* option would be. I only mean to put into perspective my stance on male infanticide, given its invocation in the comments of another post. I think it’s better than what we’ve got.

Note that I also feel that female infanticide is a better option than being born into patriarchy as it stands, as well.

I just happen to think it’d be better if the males were the ones dying, rather than that the females be the ones dying *and* suffering.”