30 Days of Haiga 2021: Method to Madness (Double Haiga)

 

Background image by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

Text art and effects by Ornery Owl (Cara Hartley)

Sharing With

Word Prompt: Method

https://girlieontheedge1.wordpress.com/2021/09/19/sundays-six-sentence-story-word-prompt-178/

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2021/09/weekly-scribblings-88-equinox.html

Notes if you Need 'Em

Though you don't have to read 'em

Just read the poem if you'd rather

I was inspired by the second and third poems offered for inspiration by Poets and Storytellers for the Weekly Scribblings, though my interpretation might be a bit obscure. 

My heart is indeed jaded, and reason would be welcome, but there is neither reason nor compassion when dealing with government agencies. I see them for what they are: sadistic and soulless collectives that delight in keeping people who are struggling downtrodden. 

I worked as long as I possibly could to avoid having to deal with these Nazgul. Then the day came when the final body part gave way and I couldn't work anymore. I still don't have full range of motion in my left arm and I have to use an upright walker to go more than very short distances.

The knotted, grinding feeling in my stomach and the grinding of my teeth are courtesy of SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Inhumane Services department here in Shitkicker County. My jaw hasn't ached this much in months.

I started receiving disability payments back in February. Can't live without 'em, but I'd rather not have to live with 'em. 

I was doing fine with SSD plus Medicaid. Then, here comes Medicare. The benefits from Medicare are quite good, but they cost me $140 a month...

Which comes out of my disability check...

The check which just covers bills with a little left over for food and fuel.

The bulk of our household's food comes from the food bank, but it's still necessary to buy some meat and cheese. 

Anyway, I was told to contact Medicaid and have them pay my Medicare premiums.

Which they won't.

Why?

Because my disability check grants me a generous sum of $1390 per month.

The cutoff for Medicaid to pay my Medicare premiums is $1308 a month.

You can read the following links to see how disability screws people.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/08/people-disabilities-are-forced-poverty-trap

https://blurredbylines.com/articles/ssi-disability-benefits-2k-limit-poverty-able-accounts/

https://ncd.gov/newsroom/2017/disability-poverty-connection-2017-progress-report-release

A person on disability is not allowed more than $2000 in savings.

A person on disability is only allowed one vehicle. So, if you think it would be good to have an auxiliary vehicle in case your main vehicle is in the shop? Ha! You fool, you!

What little money I make comes from doing book reviews. In a good month, I may make $150. Most of the time it's less.

My son and I are being allowed to live in the house where we reside rent-free, courtesy of my ex-husband who owns the house. He used to help us monetarily, but his reserves are tapped. 

I try to have a semi-positive attitude, but lately I want to scream, cry, and throw bricks at Congress and any smug one percenter who spouts off about the trickle-down theory. Also at the space cadets Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. I'm trying to keep it PG-13 here, but as my late father would have said, these people can go pound sand. 

So, there's my story, it's sad but true.

I surely hope it don't happen to you.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

I wish I could be doing this

Free-use image from Open Clipart Vectors

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Want more poetry?

Get it here!

http://bit.ly/getmorepoetry

Buy me a coffee

http://bit.ly/NNPCoffee

Or buy me a coffee here

http://bit.ly/NNPKOFI

Join me on Odysee

https://bit.ly/POTNOdysee

Join me on Patreon!

Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

http://bit.ly/NNPPatreon

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox!

http://bit.ly/NaughtyNetherworldNews

30 Days of Haiga 2021: The Carnival Departs

 

Background image by Antony on Unsplash

Text art and effects by Ornery Owl (Cara Hartley)

Inspired by the two songs that appear at the end of the post: Rainbow Eyes and Carnival of Rust.

I was feeling deeply melancholy when I created this. It's that time of year when I have to prove I'm worthy to continue receiving Medicaid. I owe the IRS close to $600, and for me, that's a fortune. My son and I went to the food bank today. My nights have been rife with sleep paralysis and horrific dreams.

With my broken body, mind, and soul, I feel like an abject failure. I try to convince myself that I'm doing the best I can and it's okay, but sometimes I just can't. My "best" doesn't seem to be a fraction as good as other people's worst.

I felt strong suicide ideation today.

I wonder how much of it is me and how much of it is me wondering "how does the world think it's okay to let people become this broken, or worse?"

The carnival prompt reminded me of certain moments in my youth when I allowed myself to believe that my life was going to be wonderful. I became giddy and drunk on those daydreams. Sometimes I wish I'd never had them. They allowed me to believe that I was better than I was.

The carnival is a metaphor for the glamour that we are convinced we should pursue. Celebrity worship is like drinking poisoned champagne. It tastes good and it gets you high, and then it leaves you with a rotten headache and reeking of vomit.

Truth be told, I don't need poison in my champagne for it to have that effect. Best that I stick to club soda with lime.

I've been trying to just let my poetry do the talking, but I felt the need to throw in a note today. I've started to realize that the middle of the month sucks for me.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Sharing With

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2021/09/weekly-scribblings-87-lets-go-to-fair.html

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Want more poetry?

Get it here!

http://bit.ly/getmorepoetry

Buy me a coffee

http://bit.ly/NNPCoffee

Or buy me a coffee here

http://bit.ly/NNPKOFI

Join me on Odysee

https://bit.ly/POTNOdysee

Join me on Patreon!

Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

http://bit.ly/NNPPatreon

Get the latest literary happenings and slices of life in your inbox!

http://bit.ly/NaughtyNetherworldNews

Poetic Pandemic Preview: The Canopy Bed Digital Text Art Manipulation

Click to enlarge

The Canopy Bed Version 2

I was experiencing massive frustration in trying to get my shape poem, The Canopy Bed, to conform to Kindle Publisher's format and all fit on one page, even after I reformatted the page in Word and shrank the font. It occurred to me that I could take a screenshot of the shrunk-down version of the poem. I simply pasted the screenshot into MS Paint and saved it as a JPEG.

The poem looked a little bland all on its own, so I found an image on Pixabay. I then opened the image using Pixlr's free image editor (http://pixlr.com) and layered the poetry JPEG over the top, increasing the poem's transparency. I also added a "dust" effect that I felt enhanced the image. 

I don't get squat from Pixlr for telling you about them, except for the satisfaction of sticking it to Adobe for their skeevy ways. I feel that even the free version of Pixlr is a strong competitor for Photoshop, and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it. Having a competitive free version of their software available for broke-asses like me makes Pixlr the good guys and gals of the digital art software world, while Adobe are the sketchy, mustache-twirling villains tying broke digital artists to railroad tracks by putting evil DRM in the software that these poor souls paid big bucks for. 

Planned obsolescence is a sleazy game of dirty pool and I don't like it. So, if I ever do start making money off my work, I will purchase the paid version of Pixlr, and Adobe can go lick a cactus, right alongside of Apple. My iPhone 7 decided to go tits up yesterday morning, with no warning signs such as the battery not charging as quickly or not holding a charge as long. 

I had always piggy-backed the phone onto my computer with a lightning cable, and it worked fine and dandy. Sometimes if the computer went to sleep, the phone would stop charging. This is what I figured had happened when I found the phone lying on my computer desk dead this morning. No big, I thought. Now that the computer's awake, the phone will charge back up.

No dice.

I took the phone out to the car to try and give it a quick boost from the car charger, which usually wakes it up in less than a minute. It was still unresponsive. So, I brought it inside and plugged it into a wall outlet to charge. Nothing was shaking. My son took it up to his room to charge it on his wireless charger. It remained dead, so we called the time of death for the damn thing at about 12:30 PM, and I ordered a Samsung Galaxy 10 that I'll be paying off for the next two years. Except for iCloud, I've had it with Apple.

This image fits in the book, but I realized that it might be difficult for some people to make it out on their tablets, computers, or smartphones. So I decided to create a web version and include a link in the book.

The new book is called Poetic Pandemic and it is due for release in the second week of May. You can wait for the free promo announcement shortly after release, and pick up a copy then. As I always say, free is my favorite price.

In the meantime, if you haven't already grabbed your copy of my first poetry volume, Another Autumn, why not check it out now? It's only 99 cents, which is pretty close to free. Or, if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can borrow a copy. 

Here is your handy link. https://amzn.to/3aExYT5

Now you can't say I never gave you anything. I have just given you a fantabulous digital picture and a link to some ornery poetry. What more could you want, except, you know, to win the lottery or something like that?

Cheers,

Your ornery old Aunt Cie

And now for the acknowledgments and legalese blah-blah

The background image behind the words is copyright Ajay Kumar Singh.

https://pixabay.com/photos/planet-lonely-spark-night-universe-4848364/

Contents of the poem, the transformative image utilizing the poem, and this explanatory post are copyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

Please do not repost

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it.

Sharing a link to the poem is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the poem for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

This poem is published on the following sites:

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

http://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com

http://publish0x.com/naughty-netherworld-press

Check out more ways to support Ornery Poetry!

https://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com/p/places-to-support-poetry-of-netherworld.html

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 1 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 1: Escape on the Asphalt Sea

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

on an asphalt sea my son and I ride

as long as the weather is on our side

we make a journey to retrieve

items from a place that we must leave

on an asphalt sea

as the earth turned, so did the tide

fortune has not been on my side

I search for reasons to believe

on an asphalt sea

some days I do not mind the ride

other days I wish to escape inside

over the years there have been reasons to grieve

I examine the dreams that my mind may conceive

on an asphalt sea

~cie~

notes

I combined the NaPoWriMo prompt with the April PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt AND the April PAD Challenge Countdown prompt. Go me!

Forbidden Love: A Fetch Flash Fiction Haibun

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Princess Ondina walked along Rsevfha Beach as the larger of Zecor’s twin suns followed its small companion below the horizon. Three of the planet’s seven moons had risen, but they were outshone by the presence of the little man who stood at the monarch’s side.

“Serab, I am selfish,” the Princess confessed. “I am sorry my brother took you prisoner but pleased that he made you my bodyguard. His joke backfired on him. I never felt like this before. You are the best friend I could imagine and more.”

impossible dream

small, strong hands and stalwart heart

my forbidden love

~cie~

notes

This Flash Fiction Haibun features the Princess Ondina, reluctant captive monarch of the fascist regime of East Zecor and her bodyguard and secret love, Serab, a common thief captured by Ondina's cruel brother King Qweh and presented to Ondina as a jest. The joke backfired when Ondina not only accepted Serab as her bodyguard but fell in love with him.

The image I chose to illustrate this piece is nearly perfect except for the size of the people shown in the silhouette. Ondina was six feet tall and Serab stood around five foot four.

The people of Zecor have an elflike appearance. Qweh and Ondina are half-siblings. As Ketil Nagel explains to his friends in Team Netherworld's first published novella, Ketil and Yitzy's Adventures in the Xura Dream House, the dark-complexioned Qweh's mother was of the Wxzca line and the fair Ondina's mother was from the Welryv line. The pair's father is from the Welryv line.

The ruling race of Zecor, regardless of subtype, is tall. King Qweh was seven foot seven while Ondina was six feet tall. Serab, on the other hand, was an Ahprizite hybrid. The Ahprizites were a small, elflike race. At five foot four, Serab would have been very tall for an Ahprizite.

For the sort who would quibble that a Haibun can only be non-fiction:

1. I don't care.

2. Not according to Poetry Soup.

3. See 1.

If you enjoyed this little WIP excerpt and liked reading the background of the people of Zecor, please consider picking up a copy of Team Netherworld's Fetching first novella.

I hope to be back to sharing excerpts from Ketil and Yitzy's adventure next week. I am continuing to make headway on The Ballad of Gerry Clifford despite personal setbacks.

Tan Renga Wednesday on Friday: Last Leaf

Image Source

a last leaf

swirls on the wind towards the east -

first snow falls gently

the falling snow is pleasant

the icy roads are not so

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~

notes

The Hokku stanza was written by Chevrefeuille. The Ageku was created by me. I do like the snow, but I hate driving on icy roads. I've had a couple incidents when doing so which left me with a bit of PTSD. I tend to tense up when I have to drive on icy roads, which makes doing so a bad idea.

I will try to catch up with the poems over the next few days. I was working on a short story for blog.reedsy.com. If you are looking for a short story contest with no entry fee, they have a weekly contest here. Go to the apps section of the page and choose "story prompt."

Also, if you're looking for help with editing or publishing your book, you can look at what Reedsy has to offer here. Using that link will get you $25 credit on any of Reedsy's services.

I believe I may have had another TIA. There always tends to be a cognitive shift when one of these happens. It's hard to explain. It isn't as if I'm having short term memory issues (well, no worse than I ever did). It's simply that the WAY I think changes. At this point, I find myself needing to be a little more measured in my output. I get tired very easily. It's frustrating because although I've never been a Type A personality by any means, I've always been very productive.

I know that I'm vulnerable to vascular problems because of my diabetes. Well, I'm perfectly happy to keep my blood sugars in check, which I can do if I have, you know, ADEQUATE INSULIN! Which my health care provider and Medicaid seem to be conspiring not to provide me. Going without insulin for weeks at a time is, I don't know, a bad thing when you're diabetic. 

The elite devils in charge of things don't care about that, though. They want the poor and the handicapped dead. Of course, then they won't have anyone to do the menial jobs that they revile, but I wouldn't give them too much credit for being smart.

Yeah, I said "handicapped" instead of the more politically correct "disabled." I honestly don't see what the difference is. I can apply both to my own condition, and I don't find either one offensive. Sometimes people become so busy picking nits that they forget to work on the issues that really matter.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 4: Night Owl

Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay

Night owl

working all night long

night after night

far into the wee hours of the night

burning the midnight oil

burning the candle at both ends

never getting ten winks

let alone forty

night after night

going in for a night's work

running on fumes

an hour or two of sleep

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she said

but then in the dead of night

at the witching hour

as she was walking her rounds

she saw a thing that wasn't right

any time of the day or night

the night owl that needed to call it a day

looking into the face of something

that wasn't really there

or was it?

She supposed she didn't really want to know.

~Cie~

Notes:

The prompt for the fourth day of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge was Night _____.

I wasn't sure what to write, and then I found that picture.

I worked as the night emergency contact person in a retirement community for close to ten of the eleven years that I was employed by the community. I was well-suited to night shifts because I don't sleep well at night. Then again, the whole bipolar disorder/add thing ensures that I don't sleep well at all a lot of the time. Also, working night shift jacks up a person's circadian rhythms. Plus, I had obligations during the day. Sometimes I'd work several nights in a row sleeping only an hour or two before coming back to work.

If I did this for long enough, I would start hallucinating. It was harmless things, like seeing a penguin in the hall or a seagull flying through the building. Were these things imagined, or was I looking into another world? I don't really know, but I do know that it was an indication that I really needed to sleep.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #101: Photoshopping Haiku: Cricket Silence and Thunder Strikes

Image copyright Geralt

cricket silence

between scraping sounds

autumn begins

my son says prairie thunder

sounds like the sky coming down

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

Want to just read the poem?

Then hop off the bus, Gus.

Because now I'm gonna discuss much!

First, I went with a Tan Renga for this one. The Haiku stanza was written by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) and the Ageku stanza was created by me. I liked the contrast between the quiet of the chirping crickets and the powerful sound of prairie thunder.

I have not heard the sound of prairie thunder yet. My son told me that it sounds like the sky is coming down.

This is my son. This picture was taken around his 28th birthday at the Denver Botanic Garden. 

He is the reason we are moving to the Grover Hotel, although, in fairness, I'm the one who found the listing.

And now for our moving horror story. There will be more bitching to come.

My son had the idea that we should move him and the cats to the new place a day before the scheduled move. That way I could be in the townhome to direct the movers and he would be at the new place when they arrived.

Good plan, except these clowns slagged us off.

I suppose I ought to tell the sorry tale from the start.

I filled out a form on one of those "find a contractor" sites describing the work we needed done and was contacted by All My Sons moving company. I'd seen their trucks around. I think they are only in the U.S. but they might be in Canada too. So people in North America, I warn you, do not arrange to have All My Sons do your move. It is one fiasco after another, and if I had only looked on Yelp beforehand, I would have kept looking. Most of their reviews are one star.

First, they arranged for an evaluator to meet with us. I even confirmed the appointment with her. 

She never showed up. I called the office. They apologized and said somehow I had been removed from her schedule. Okay, shit happens, it seemed minor, and she did show up to the rearranged appointment and was pleasant enough. 

I called the office to arrange a date. I was told we were on for the sixth.

My son remembered the evaluator had mentioned a deposit. I called to ask about the deposit and was told we didn't have a date down. 

I said "WHAT???"

The man apologized profusely, put us back down for the sixth, took my deposit via debit card.

I should have known to call these clowns BEFORE we had driven for three hours with meowing cats.

I called when we got to the place and was told that the "BIG BOSS" had taken us off the schedule and had tried to call me several times about this.

I received no calls or voice mails from anyone. I was livid.

My son said that he thought it would be fine to stay there and get the cats settled in. But just a sleeping bag turned out to be too little padding. Fortunately, he found some comforters in one of the storage cases. 

When I got back to Grover in the morning I saw that some of the fields had become temporary lakes. Colorado has notoriously bad soil (bentonite.) The water doesn't absorb well, it just sits on the top.

My son described the thunderstorm. He said he'd never experienced anything like it. He described it as sounding like the sky was coming down on top of the house. He said that normally he would have loved it, but trying to sleep on that floor left him in such pain that he actually felt nauseous.

This room is on the second floor of the building. It will be really grand one day. For the moment, it looks like this. The floor is patently awful to sleep on. My son used to go camping when he was in Boy Scouts. He says that he imagines the only place he will ever camp in the future is in a cabin with a bed and running water, which happens to be my kind of camping.

The cats were very unhappy too. We ended up bringing them back to the townhouse. One of them is asleep in his carrier right now. He loves the carrier as a cat bed, not so much as a carrier.

This is Bart. This photo does not show his giant feet.

The move is rescheduled for this coming Thursday with a different company, who have already provided an email confirmation and will confirm again 48 hours and 24 hours before the move. They are called Homegrown Moving and are only in Colorado. So far, so good.

I really don't feel all that great at the moment. Stress--it's a killer!

Carpe Diem Field of Flowers: Honeysuckle

I can remember

the smell of honeysuckle

New Mexico night

~Cie~

Notes:

I recently completed and am about to submit my manuscript for the Insecure Writers' Support Group anthology contest. The genre is middle-grade historical fantasy/action.

I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.

The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.

I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.

Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Twilight

Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

Looking forward to

Finally seeing twilight

From the window of

My new home on the prairie

Will the day finally come?

~Cie~

Notes:

When you invest in a historic property in a way-off-the-beaten-path town, there can be holdups. This place is not move-in ready, and getting it to that state is proving to be a challenge. It's been like pulling teeth for the electrician to get the necessary permits. He's trying his best, but the people who are supposed to be helping him aren't being very helpful. He said that usually permit people are more than happy to take your money.

It's also been like pulling teeth to get the proposal from the plumbing company. Why don't these people want our money? If they don't get the proposal to my email tomorrow, I'm going to tell them that we'll come to the office and sign it. 

With my health issues, these 250-mile round trips are knocking me on my ass. I'm an old night shift worker who has never slept well at night and these contractors like to get cracking at the ass-crack of dawn. 

I may suggest to my son that we consider packing everything from the townhouse into a pod and staying in one of those by-the-week motels in Greeley so we don't have to keep making this drive. It's really taking a toll on me. Of course, we'd have to find one that would allow cats...hell, it's always something.

Anyway, this bit is going to start coming down today, so that's a start.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Shadow

Photographer unknown

I

blue autumn skies

folded into mountains

purple shadow

blue autumn skies

stretching endless before me

skies blue like your eyes

folded into mountains

a felled giant lies sleeping

dreaming of the past

purple shadow

falls over eyes which can't cry

I have seen too much

Jane & Cie

II

such a hot day

my shadow needs to cool down

under the willow

such a hot day

sun beats down unrelenting

upon troubled earth

my shadow needs to cool down

it steals away and leaves me

muscles wracked with pain

under the willow

I find trouble waiting there

in the form of thought

Kyoshi & Cie

Note:

The "sleigh" of the first Troiku was created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The "sleigh" of the second Troiku was created by Kyoshi Takahama (1874 - 1958). I wrangled all the horses.

I have chronic, widespread, low-grade pain from fibromyalgia and am constantly hot and easily fatigued due to my various endocrine problems. The summer is not my friend.

Grover and Clem aren't bothered by this weather, seeing as Grover is a ghost and Clem is a mutant Cactus Man, or maybe a Man Cactus.

Visit the Artist

Visit the Artist

Visit Grover and Clem and follow the Grover Hotel renovations at the Good Stuff from Grover blog!

Troiku Challenge 2019: Day 14: Pink Sakura Blush

Cherry Blossoms

pink sakura blush  

spring’s kimono falls to earth

silk snatched by a breeze

pink sakura blush

singing song of sakura

many years ago

spring's kimono falls to earth

the young men choose their partners

nobody chose me

silk snatched by a breeze

like a dream that won't come true

drift into the past

Kim & Cie

Notes:

The "sleigh" of this Troiku was created by Kim R. Russell. The Three Dejected Horses of the Apocalypse are my responsibility.

Many of these prompts lately are reminding me of the year when I was in the fourth grade and I learned about Japan. I was a very shy and unpopular child with a terrible overbite, always chosen last for sports teams, and none of the boys wanted to dance with me at the school socials.

The Bitch is Back

Image copyright Pezibear on Pixabay

All right, you've all met my wounded inner child and I had a day where I crashed and burned. As I said, I do not do well with confrontation. However, I bounce back more quickly than I used to, and today, the bitch is back. Now, meet my sassy inner child and my asshole super-ego.

I had made the decision to stop participating in the Poems in April prompts, but I rescind that decision at this point. I had an absolutely odious interaction with one individual, which is what caused my meltdown. I don't tolerate being patronized or told that my truth is a fabrication. 

The preceding statement remains true. But overall, my interactions with people from this link-up have been super positive, and I'm not going to allow, as Inspector Tom Barnaby would say, a barney with a person whose condescension towards me caused my temper to go nova to stop me from making positive connections.

Around these parts, the heart and soul take precedence over credentials every time. I honestly don't give a flying flea-bitten fuck in hell what your credentials are. I care about who you are and how you treat others. I don't care if you have a Doctorate in Everything or if you dropped out of kindergarten. A fuck I don't give. 

Look, obviously it's pretty impressive if you managed to get a Doctorate in Everything or even a Doctorate in Anything. Or a Master's. Or a Bachelors. Or an Associate's Degree. Or even if you managed to graduate high school. Or if you got a GED. Credentials mean you worked through a program, and the higher the program, one assumes the more knowledge you obtained. It still doesn't make your thoughts any more important than the thoughts of people who have not obtained the level of certification that you have.

I care about your heart. I care about your soul. I give not one single fuck about your credentials. Do not expend your energy bragging about your credentials to me. I probably care more about the ingredient list on my bottle of cold brew coffee from Stok. Coffee. Almond milk. Cane sugar. Chocolate syrup. The good stuff!

Unless you are performing a service for me where credentials are important (i.e. I don't want you operating on me unless you are an actual surgeon) please reserve your bragging about your credentials to your own damn space. Nobody here cares.

That being said, I am not going to allow a thoroughly odious interaction with one person stop me from forming connections with the vastly greater number of good and supportive people. They have shown me their support, and I want to do the same for them. 

In the future, to prevent another donnybrook, I will refrain from interacting with the individual who lit my fuse in the first place. I may possess the soul of a ten-year-old child (I learn best by playing games and I have a collection of several hundred stuffed animals) but I am capable of behaving like a civilized adult. With people I don't get on with, I find the best course of action is to forego communication with said individual. Unless they insist on poking the bear, the problem should be solved.

Here's Twisted Sister to tell it like it is.
As one commenter said, I've never seen anyone so angry about carrots.
The disobedient son in the video is played by the video director's son. The angry dad is played by Mark "Douglas C. Neidermeyer" Metcalf.

~Cie~