November PAD Challenge 2022: Day 3: The Golden Apples Left to Rot

Image by jhenning from Pixabay

You encouraged me from an early age

To learn about so many things

You read to me about the golden apples of the sun

You'll be gone twelve years at the end of this month

But even if you were still here and still you

I could never ask

Because you would only say

That you were right

And I was misguided

That's the way it always was

No sense in denying it now

Why did you teach me

All of those wonderful things

And then try to turn me away from them?

Why did you tell me

I needed to get a practical job

As a secretary or a nurse

When time and time again

I proved to have no aptitude

For such professions

I spent most of my life

Believing I was broken

When maybe I just didn't fit

Where I was told I ought to

I was misguided

But maybe so were you

At least when it comes to this

You planted the seed of the golden apples in my mind

I will cultivate this orchard of my imagination now

While there's still a little time

I wish that you could see the results

Maybe you do

Maybe now you can understand me 

I wasn't like you

I couldn't be

I can only be like me

Is that really such a bad thing after all?

I will always love you, Dad

But the hurt of never knowing your approval

Never ends

Even now as I approach the twilight of my life

Your daughter,

Ornery Owl

Image by Willgard Krause from Pixabay

notes and prompts used

"The golden apples of the sun" is a line from the poem The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats.

https://poets.org/poem/song-wandering-aengus

It is also the title of a collection of stories by Ray Bradbury published in 1953.

My father was a professor of arts and humanities. I can remember him reading The Song of Wandering Aengus and The Tyger by William Blake.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger

I learned how to read by the time I was four years old. My father wanted me to be a prodigy. I have no idea if I have the intellectual capacity for such. After all, I was labeled borderline retarded when I was eleven years old. 

I know for a fact that I don't have the patience to be a prodigy. I know now that I have ADHD, but that's a whole other story unto itself, so we'll save it for another time, possibly the same bat-channel, possibly not. It remains to be seen.

I always questioned how I could be retarded when I was reading and writing at an eighth grade level when I was in the fifth grade. However, I was terrible at anything beyond addition and subtraction, and I earned the borderline retarded label by spectacularly bombing on the Ravens IQ Assessment, which is based around pattern recognition. 

I also had some physical coordination problems courtesy of frequent ear infections in early childhood, and I had to use a special trick to determine left from right. I still use this trick at nearly 58 years old. Just last year, I added the Never Eat Shredded Wheat mnemonic to my arsenal, so I finally can work out direction. This is an excellent tool as I have no internal compass whatsoever.

When I was 23 years old, I learned that I was not retarded, I was somewhat dyslexic. That explained a lot, and it also made me want to go back in time and slap the school psychologist, the gym teacher who put me in the special gym class, and also my sixth-grade teacher. Granted, I already wanted to smack my sixth-grade teacher because he was an abusive asshole, but that's another story for another time.

As I moved into my teen years, my parents tried to push me in directions I wasn't interested in. I now understand some of their concerns, but they went about things the wrong way. Folks, if you try to browbeat a teenager into doing something, they will either push back and do the opposite of what you want, or they will comply and resent you. Neither of those is something you want, so here's what you need to do instead.

Many of us cursed by a love for artistic endeavors know how hard it is to make a living at our obsession. This is why those with a love for the arts should also be encouraged to learn a trade they can tolerate. It needs to be a trade of their choosing, not of yours.

I did a Book Blogger Hop post about a book called Reconfigurement. It was written to help older adults find a new career path, but many of the exercises can also help people of any age figure out what careers they might enjoy. You can read the post at the following link

https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/2022/09/friday-book-blog-hop-reconfigurement.html

Or just head over to Amazon and check it out.

https://amzn.to/3KkbJFg

I will earn a small commission from Amazon for anything purchased through the above link.

And now, without further ado-doo, I will share the prompts that prompted me to create today's poem and post.

https://earthweal.com/2022/10/31/first-poems-door-to-the-wilder-eye/

The weekly challenge from Earthweal asks poets to "look back at our younger selves, back to the first poems that made us notice them, and see where they have taken us." Some of my earliest memories involve my father reading to me the poems mentioned above.

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-3

Today's prompt asks poets to craft a "misguided" poem. Some readers may think this entire post is misguided. You are within your rights to think that, just as I am within mine to give no fucks what anyone else thinks.

Image by Thomas from Pixabay

Critical Chicken is judging you

Flashing Back and Forth: Wisteria & A Birthday

Image copyright Vũ Đỗ

https://pixabay.com/photos/chinese-wisteria-bee-insect-flower-5112048/#_=_

In the moonlight,

The color and scent of the wisteria

Seems far away.

As far away I think as

My sense of belonging here

Buson & Cie

Join Friday Flashback at:

http://fivedotoh.com

Join Haiku My Heart at:
http://corazon.typepad.com

http://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.com/2019/05/carpe-diem-1660-tan-renga-challenge.html

New Notes:

This will be a long post, so if you only came for the poetry, this is your stop!

Today is my son's thirtieth birthday. It is also Friday Flashback day. So I am leaving the notes from last year when I wrote the post.

Last year at this time, my son, his dad, and I were in the process of trying to get things in order to purchase the property that my son says is his literal dream house. I often say that I'm a pretty useless excuse for a person and pretty much a waste of oxygen and skin cells, but I am the one who found the house, so I have done two good things in this life. I brought my son into the world, which he sometimes may not think is such a great thing as it has been a bit of an uphill fight for him given that he lives with anxiety, high-functioning autism, and major depression in a society that demands a very rigid degree of impossible perfection and an ability to play by certain rigid rules.

This is the house, and you can well believe that I nearly peed myself when I saw that this property was being sold for $90,000. We had just finished looking at a very "meh" three-bedroom townhome in southeast Denver that cost $240,000 and kicking the worst real estate agent ever to the curb. Thanks for sucking, Matt. You did us a huge favor.

If you're interested in seeing just what this clown did, you can read this post.

https://www.ciethehuntress.com/2019/04/crap-not-to-do-as-real-estate-agent.html

I'd like to thank Xenia, the real estate agent we had prior to Matt, for sucking too. Rather than being a professional and telling us that she wasn't the right real estate agent for us, she did the bad high school break-up thing, hung up on me, and refused to return my calls. It was very unprofessional. Note that we didn't do anything wrong to her, we were always polite. We were looking for land, and she only wanted to sell upscale properties in Denver. Also, note that she approached us first, touting her abilities as a real estate agent. 

We instead ended up with Jason Wadsworth, who is a fantastic real estate agent. If you are ever interested in buying a property in Northern Colorado, Jason is your go-to guy. He can be reached at jwadsworth@remax.net

I am glad that my son's dream house is now a reality. There has been a lot of work done on it, and more still needs to be done. We are also still tackling the nightmare that is my old mobile home and hope to have it on the market this summer. I will be extremely happy when it's gone.

I couldn't end this post without giving a shout-out to Ghost Town Grover and Cactus Clem. I hope to be giving more attention to their adventures once the whole trailer mess has been wrangled.

Ghost Town Grover

https://pixabay.com/vectors/man-hat-bearded-cowboy-male-311670/

Cactus Clem

https://pixabay.com/vectors/cactus-character-man-western-154386/

Ye Olde Notes:

The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of the poem was written by Yosa Buson (1716 - 1784). The Akegu (closing) stanza was written by me.

I have never felt that I belonged in this world. When I was younger, I always hoped I'd find people I belonged with. There have been a few where I feel like they put up with me to a degree or felt sympathy for me, but I have never had a sense of finding my "tribe." The only person I'm really at all close with is my son. I tend to form only very superficial relationships with other people.

Dinners with my mother are perilous and fraught with small talk. She has never approved of any of my choices, and she knows almost nothing about what is really transpiring in my life.

I am not at all close with the other members of my family. I would not recognize most of them if I passed them in the street.

At this point in my life, I do not wish to party and socialize. I have one friend whom I confide in via email, and that means a lot. This friend lives a few thousand miles away from me, so it isn't as if we could get together for coffee.

I have felt a degree of understanding and acceptance from the people participating in this little Tan Renga challenge, which I usually don't get a sense of during such challenges.

I usually feel as if I am an outsider who has crashed a party when participating in blog hops, and the general sense is "what is that freak doing here at our exclusive soiree?" Some of the blog hops I participate in are very focused on clothing and fashion although other sorts of posts are allowed, and if you don't think I'm an absolute outlier when it comes to fashion, you don't know me at all. I can't afford nice clothes or even new clothes, and I look like an unmade bed most of the time.

One would think that I would feel more at home with creative blog hops, but I usually don't. I've been surprised by the feeling of peace I've gained participating in this one. Maybe it's just that no-one has attacked me yet. Hopefully, we can do without that happening this time.

The Inevitable Legalese and Other Blah-Blah

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October Spooky Writing Challenge 2019 + Aunt Cie's Soapbox: A New Age in Publishing

I just discovered the October Spooky Writing Challenge and intend to use the prompts to move this month's Team Netherworld Creations WIP, Nyarlathotep's Necropolis, and Naughty Netherworld Press WIP, Castle Necros, along. 

In case I'm feeling like I don't have enough to do (heavy on the sarcasm), I may also use it to lighten things up and create a little Ghost Town Grover and Cactus Clem adventure.

One thing I won't be using the prompts for is writing poetry. Between the Carpe Diem Haiku prompts and OctPoWriMo, I have a surplus of poetry prompts. If dark 'n' snarky poetry really is your bag, Baby, you can see mine at the Poetry of the Netherworld blog.

For the past year, I have only published the Naughty Netherworld Press WIPs because erotica tends to be focused on substance rather than length. There is probably a mathematical smut-o-meter to explain the ratio of sexual encounters to page count.

The Carnal Invasion series started out as a one-off Hump Of The Month series featuring human encounters with a group of lusty aliens. Following the release of Climax Castle, it became a serial focused on recurring characters.  The current WIP, Castle Necros, is the sixteenth book in the series. The books are of varying lengths, ranging from short and spicy to long and lurid.

In the heyday of pulp horror and classic science fiction, fans of these genres snapped up novelettes, novellas, and collections of short stories by their favorite authors. By the 1980s, shorter books had fallen out of favor and readers tended to only be interested in full-length novels.

Once I started reviewing books full-time, I became aware that shorter books are making a comeback. Michael J. Allen is an author who makes excellent use of the novelette and novella format.

I could not be happier about the renaissance of novelettes, novellas, and volumes of short stories. The modern Internet age provides a multitude of avenues for authors to share their work with potential readers. With blogging, paid content platforms such as Patreon or Ko-Fi, and ebook publication services such as Kindle, authors no longer need be confined to the constraints of the traditional path of seeking agents and publishers and papering their walls with rejection letters or throwing good money after bad to have their work distributed by unscrupulous POD publishers.

I, personally, find the seeking an agent and publisher route odious and will not be treading that path. I realize that this means I have to be my own promoter. This comes with its own set of pitfalls. I'm shy and introverted by nature and am not good at networking. I'd rather be reading and writing. Still, when I think back to the dark ages in a time before blogs and e-books, a bit of networking is a small price to pay, and sometimes I even find some kindred spirits along the perilous path.

Whichever path to publication you decide to take, I wish you well.

~Cie~

This post is sponsored by Cie's Proofreading, Editing, and Review Services.

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My requirements to review a book for individual authors are as follows:
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3) Please share a link to your review on this blog if you like it.

4) Please realize that while I really love giving positive reviews, I cannot guarantee a positive review. My less stellar reviews tend to distill down to "a good idea which needs improvement in execution."
It is rare for me to give a scathing review. On those occasions when I have done so, it is because the author has expressed hateful biases against members of a marginalized population, usually larger people. I am not keen for anyone being used as the butt of mean-spirited jokes and doing so will immediately earn a poor rating for a book.

So, there you have it! Let me know if I can help you.

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 3: Aunt Cie's Soapbox: Leave My Old Womb Alone (Choka)

Image by Solarus from Pixabay

lay off my old womb

I am not a candidate

for new motherhood

I can no longer achieve

reproduction, no

but it would not bring me joy

to endure the pain

of removing my old womb

it is my life choice

to keep my organs intact

despite a slightly

elevated chance that I

develop cancer

somewhere well on down the line

any womb is not

only worth saving when it

is available

to serve as incubator

~Cie~

Note:

The poem references the incidents of 2018 when my life continued revolving around my uterus despite the fact that the painful periods I had endured for 40 years had come to an end. In April of 2017, and again in April of 2018, I experienced post-menopausal bleeding, and in June of 2018, I underwent a D&C to determine the nature of the endometrial cells.

Had the cells been abnormal or the endometrial hyperplasia complex, this would have elevated my risk of future endometrial cancer by 36%, in which case I would have opted for a hysterectomy.

My cells were normal and it was simple hyperplasia. This only increases the risk of endometrial cancer by 1.6%. In the end, I felt that the risks posed by undergoing a hysterectomy, which is a major surgery no matter how casual a spin doctors try to put on it, were greater than opting for a wait and see approach. 

Post-menopausal endometrial hyperplasia can occur for a variety of reasons. It is more common in Caucasian women, in women over fifty, in women with a larger body type, and in diabetic women. I am a large Caucasian woman over fifty with a large body type who has diabetes. As it turned out, I also had a number of small fibroids in my uterus which were probably irritating the endometrium and causing it to overgrow.

My primary care physician wanted me to have a hysterectomy.

My OB/GYN wanted me to have a hysterectomy.

The gynecologic oncologist whom I consulted wanted me to have a hysterectomy.

This despite the fact that all of them quoted a very low increased likelihood of the type of hyperplasia I was experiencing ever developing into cancer.

I had one of those obnoxious trans-vaginal ultrasounds in February of this year which showed that the endometrial lining was still slightly thicker than normal but had greatly reduced in size and was within the perimeters of acceptable. I did not experience bleeding in April of this year. My OB/GYN wanted to do another D&C, but I said no. There was no presenting reason to undergo a procedure that leaves me feeling like someone has been up in my business with a cheese grater.

I consulted with a radiologist who specializes in a procedure called uterine artery embolization, which utilizes tiny radioactive grains to block the uterine arteries and cut off the blood supply to the fibroids so they shrink and cease to cause trouble. As opposed to a hysterectomy, which is a major surgery, this is a minimally invasive approach. The doctor told me I was not a candidate for the procedure because fibroids will shrink on their own after menopause, but she agreed with me that since I had not experienced post-menopausal bleeding this year, the endometrial thickness is within acceptable boundaries, and my hyperplasia is the low-risk variety for future development of cancer, a wait and see approach makes sense in my case. She discussed this with my OB/GYN and the gynecologic oncologist, and they agreed with her.

During The Year Of Focusing Way Too Much On My Uterus, I learned just how quick doctors are to recommend a hysterectomy to post-menopausal women. If a woman can no longer serve as a baby factory, let's just yank the old plumbing out, risks be damned. The fact is, major surgery is always risky although sometimes the risks of surgery are necessary. It is also a fact that the female reproductive system provides benefits to its owner even after menopause and unless it is malfunctioning in a way that makes life unacceptably uncomfortable or poses risks to a woman's health, it's best to leave it alone.

Uterus: it's not just for incubating infants. 

That's been Aunt Cie's Soapbox, Ladies! Hysterectomy is sometimes necessary, but it tends to be overprescribed, particularly in post-menopausal women.