Category Archives: feeling sorry for myself

March 31, 2021 · 6:45 pm

It’s Not Easy Being Green

It’s not easy being green…. the color of so many ordinary things…

Especially as you grow older.

Because green is the color of growth and youth and life. But those things seem beyond the grasp of your outstretched fingers on your spotty and wrinkled old hand.

I am definitely no longer green like Littlebit, the Oceanian ship’s boy from the seas of Talislanta and the pirate ship, Black Dragon.

And, yes, an Iowa boy living as far away from an ocean as you can get in the United States, in all directions, you are bound to dream of pirate ships and the high seas, especially when you’re twelve and your favorite book is Treasure Island.

But now that you are old, green is more often your color because you don’t feel well… again… every day….

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But there is still bright green in dreams.

You can still go there and be a child again in memories and your imagination.

It’s just that now the green is written down in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and cantos.

And talking to your kids about movies, art and artists, stories and writers of stories…

Did you know the favorite color of all three of my children is green?

I have known it since they were small and I could sing to them songs by Kermit the Frog, like “Rainbow Connections” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

And with paint, you make green by combining the blue of sadness with the yellow of sunshine and happiness.

And it’s not easy being green…

But it’s beautiful…

And it’s what I want to be.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, coloring, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, poetry

March 22, 2021 · 7:00 pm

From the Darkness Comes the Light

It is a rule, I think,

From the Start of Everything.

Darkness always must come first

Before the Stars can Sing.

No matter how Black

The bad thing really feels,

It cannot go from bad to Worse

Without Goodness on its heels.

And from our many foibles

And Monumental Blunders,

We must learn valid lessons

To discover Any Wonders.

But Dark the road ahead now seems,

And the Light We See is far away.

But steadily we trek towards the dawn,

And Bright Lights of another Day.

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***** I really had in mind another long and laborious complaining post today. But somehow it only morphed into doggerel verse. Sorry about that. Bad poets can’t help but inflict the stupid thoughts in their poet-guts on the unsuspecting sometimes. While I’m at it, I haven’t yet shared with you the FREE BOOK PROMOTION for March. This book, celebrating its first birthday, is free from this moment until midnight tomorrow night, 3/23/21.

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Filed under feeling sorry for myself, Paffooney, poem, poetry

March 19, 2021 · 3:14 pm

The Secret Meaning of “Donuts”

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I am diabetic. I am not supposed to have donuts for breakfast any more.  Hence the obsession with donuts.  I am only guessing here, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that the very name of donuts tells you what to do.

“What?!” you say.  “What goofiness are you talking about now, Mickey?”

Well, I’ll tell you.  I had a donut for breakfast this morning… with nuts.

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The name “donuts” is literally a command.  It tells you to “Do nuts”.  So I had nuts with my donut this morning.  Peanuts to be precise.  Of course that’s what is wrong with the whole scenario.  It doesn’t mean “peanuts”.  It is commanding you to do something nutty.  Maybe more like eating a donut when you have diabetes.  No matter how good that particular donut tastes when you eat it, an hour later you are going to suffer.

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So here’s the result of my being nuts this morning.  I have come to the conclusion that the root of all evils in the modern world is “donuts”.  Especially when it is pronounced “doo nutz”.  Yes, eating a donut subjects you to the command, “Do nuts!”

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And we all know how bad Trump’s diet is.  Could he be imbibing donuts?  Horrors!  That explains Twitter, cabinet firings, tariffs for the fun of it, random protestations of “No collusion!”, and even “Covfefe”.  Although Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is an evil beyond even the power of donuts.

And how did Trump even get elected?  Do people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan glory in eating donuts before voting?  How about disgruntled Bernie Bros?  And one also suspects that middle-aged white women can’t resist a good donut… or an evil one either.

Could it be that I am down on donuts because I ate one and now I am writing this with a pounding high-blood-sugar headache?  Well, yes.  Eating one inspired this post.  It was a chocolate donut with green, mint-flavored frosting.  And it was evil.  It is taking out its evil revenge on the blood vessels in my brain.

So, I implore you if you are reading this… no, I’m not going to tell you not to “Do nuts”… I am going to tell you, “Please, for the love of God, keep donuts away from me!  Eat them yourself if you have to.  But be warned!  They have a secret meaning.”

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Filed under angry rant, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, humor, satire, self pity, wordplay

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March 11, 2021 · 7:48 pm

The World is Gray Today

It is cloudy outside. The sky is a cool, damp gray. No rain. No snow. Just dreary and gray. The world is gray today.

We have now been in a lockdown and wearing masks for an entire year. I have lost a lot of ground. Color-blindness runs in my family on my mother’s side. Great Grandma Hinckley was completely color-blind by the time she was in her 70’s.

I myself have known I had the color-blindness problem since I was in high school and the school nurse gave me a vision test that proved it.

In the dotted circle, I could see the blue-green number 29, but I could also see the red number 5. I was told that I had a slight color-blindness on the red/green scale. Believe me, I had no idea what that meant. Still don’t. I just know I have never seen colors the way other people with normal vision do.

But now, after twelve months of lockdown, I can definitely detect the fact that I have lost some more of my color vision.

Great Grandma saw the world in black and white and gray since she was 70. That, for me, is now less than six years away.

As a cartoonist I use a lot of pen and ink. I also love black-and-white movies. Being partially colorblind, you might think that I would be okay living in a film-noire world. But I am not. It is simply not enough. I have always craved color. I particularly love to create with bright primaries, red, yellow, and blue.

I will sorely miss color when it is gone.

And I have always loved cardinals. Not only because they are bright red songbirds, like the one singing outside in our yard on this gray and slightly blustery day. But because they never fly away when the winter comes. They stay even in the snow and cold. Trouble doesn’t drive them away. I shall not give up when I lose all the colors.

I remember the world being gray when I was a boy back in the 1960’s too. TV was only black-and-white… and gray at our house. I watched the funeral parade for JFK on the black-and-white… and gray TV. And around that time the three astronauts Grissom, Chaffee, and White had a similar funeral parade… also black-and-white-and-mostly-gray.

The Viet Nam conflict on the TV news with Walter Cronkite. The riots at the Democratic Convention in 1968 with the Chicago Seven going on trial. The world was very, very gray.

But then, in the Summer of ’69, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. A giant leap for mankind! And I saw that also in black-and-white-and-mostly-gray.

There was a hope of color in my life after that. And we got a color TV in the later 70s after that. And even with my partially color-blind eyes, I saw color everywhere.

And now again is a good time to anticipate color coming back into my life. I am on the waiting list for vaccination. My eldest son has a steady girlfriend living with him now. And we have a better President who actually seems to care if we live or die. Good things are over the next hill.

But still… the world is, for now… gray today.

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Filed under autobiography, battling depression, coloring, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, insight, Paffooney, poetry, self pity

February 15, 2021 · 9:29 pm

Wrangling Winter Woes

I know there is no surprising news here if you are in one of the 44 States hit by this weather, but we are snow-covered and frozen still, even in the sunny aftermath of the storm.

My number two son, the jailor for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, works the night shift. Saturday night’s storm caused him to cover a Sunday morning shift for someone who couldn’t make it in. He worked for 16 straight hours. Then drove home in dangerous conditions, a 36-minute drive, got 3 hours of sleep, then had to go back to work for another night shift. He was so tired that my wife drove him to work through severe storm-warning weather, and then spent the night in the parking garage waiting for him. Of course, the Sheriff’s Office asked him to work a second straight double shift because of employees who couldn’t make it in.

The thing is… there are no medals for either of them.

And the city was hit with rolling power-outages all day. The Texas power grid is a mess. Someone ran over the connector-box in our area removing internet connections in the neighborhood until noon. Bummer for me and the Princess who has a college paper to write. But nowhere near the trouble number one wife and number two son had to deal with.

There is lots to complain about in this weather event. My mother in Iowa endured super-cold temperatures like 20-below-zero, but fortunately she got her second vaccination before the weather set in.

Even the birds are disgusted. They fly South for the Winter. But for a lot of them, Texas IS South. The snowbirds are grumbling today.

It did give me a few lessons, though, on how to take pictures of snow in sunshine while the glare is threatening to overexpose the image. You gotta add them danged shadows in the picture..

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January 31, 2021 · 9:17 pm

Sick of Being Sick

I woke up late this morning with a headache and my eyes crusted shut. Sick again. Not Covid. My temperature is 37 C. I have no symptoms that correspond. I am suffering instead from allergies. And high blood pressure. And diabetes. And arthritis. As well as psoriasis and COPD. Six of them. Six incurable diseases on top of being a cancer survivor since 1983. Soon I may be facing diabetic depression. It is crucial that I constantly take stock of my health conditions. It is how I have stayed alive for 64 years.

Being unhealthy is really hard work.

The dog and I were talking about it during our limping walk this morning. She’s been suffering too since she found and gobbled my wife’s secret chocolate stash. She nearly destroyed her liver, kidneys, and digestive tract by doing that stupid, greedy act of theft. Now she’s on milk-thistle supplements to keep from dying. At ten years of age, she’s the equivalent of a seventy-year-old woman.

“We have to keep walking on our walks together. Our lives depend on the good effects the exercise has on out hearts,” she says.

“Okay. I agree as long as you don’t make me sniff bird poo the way you do.”

So, we finally have an understanding on that one point.

I need to keep laughing too.

I have been adding a lot of comedies to my Disney+ watchlist. My Netflix watchlist too.

I need to write more too. I haven’t really written anything beyond my daily 500 words more than three times in the last two weeks.

I have novel projects ready to start; The Boy Who Rose on a Golden Wing, There’s Music in the Forest, and Kingdoms Under the Earth.

I have projects still to finish; AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers. and Hidden Kingdom.

I simply need to re-energize my daily writing habit. I need to write more things that make me laugh again. I need to write a lesser number of things that make me cry as well.

These things all represent my reasons to go on living.

So, I am sick and relegated to my bed again today. The sad thing is, that doesn’t vary much from any regular day during the pandemic. It is hard to stay well. I need to eat very carefully, noting the numbers of carbs and not getting too little of the right kinds of proteins. More peanut-butter sandwiches and chili with beans. Soup is good food. I need to stay warm and keep my psoriasis sores as clean as possible. I need to stay near the airflow of my electric fan to keep me breathing well. I have a new heating pad, inherited from my recently deceased father, and I need to apply heat wisely to my lower back for just the right amount of time. And I must keep fighting to stay alive. My eldest son has threatened to kill me if I die on him before he’s ready to lose me. (I never bothered to ask him how that consequence happens.)

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Filed under battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, health, humor, illness, Paffooney

January 27, 2021 · 8:50 pm

Rest and Repair

Sometimes we all get a little tattered, a little weather-worn. Especially during this pandemic.

I rescued the little Valentine Bear from the pile of stuff from my mother-in-law’s house, the one that was sold this last spring. We still have all the rescued stuff on our patio, open to the weather, and the raccoons from the city park across the street.

I suspect he belonged to one of the two nieces that each lived for a time with Grandma. Sarooty Incaboody or Maroody Walladooty. One of them, though not both of them, and I haven’t given you their real names. Grandma had to move to San Antonio where there are more Filipino relatives to protect her from the virus. But less room for a lifetime of stuff that once belonged to her and my long-gone father-in-law.

You can see his right ear is damaged and needs to be resewn with red thread. His fur is a little crusty from the rain this last week and the dirt blown by the cold winds from this week. He’s a mess, and I thought I better bring him in and fix him up before the park fairies do the whole Velveteen Rabbit thing to him. After all, we don’t need a baby polar bear wandering around the Dallas suburbs, do we? And someone once loved him enough to keep him. He deserves to be cared for in retirement as much as I do.

I myself am a bit tattered and weather-worn by this pandemic. Being trapped in the house all day every day deprives me of the physical activity that keeps my heart healthy and my diabetes under control. My mental health is a little ragged around the edges as well. In this house we tend to get kinda snippy about money woes and unpaid bills. My wife and I now have separated finances. I am bankrupt and she is counting on Armageddon to overcome her credit-card-debt monsters.

My answer to the crisis continues to revolve around books and writing and movies and documentaries. I retreat into stories and ideas, both in the form of fiction and well-researched nonfiction. I throw myself whole-souled into the promotion of my books by earning the necessary points from Pubby by reading and reviewing the books of others and spending the points on honest reviews from other writers reading my books. I have never reviewed so many books before. Especially new is the number of badly written books that I have to slog through and then review honestly in a way that doesn’t crush the spirit of the slow-learning writing masses. I think so far I have only driven one writer to quit the review exchange. And I have only received two cruel and unfair reviews on my work. Which is, of course, less than expected.

The least mind-bending activity I use to repair my psyche is fixing up and playing with dolls, as indicated by the photos I have used in this post.

In these pictures you see five bargain-bin dolls and toys, two dolls bought at Goodwill and cleaned and dressed in a reclamation project. One repurposed aquarium decoration (the skull) and one Pinkie Pie that I bought with Christmas money at the full six-dollar price.

By doing these things, I have managed to avoid getting Covid 19 and generally avoid depression and mental illness.

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Filed under collecting, doll collecting, feeling sorry for myself, humor, mental health

December 31, 2020 · 5:17 pm

What 2020 Has Done To Me

The year began with me recovering from a bout of flu caught while substituting at Bush Middle School. I had thought it would be the end of me. But, no. I managed to survive. It left me feeling that no mere virus could get the better of me.

Oh, foolish and overly simple me! I had no idea what was coming. I had decided to write a novel set in a residential nudist park in South Texas that I knew nudists from but had never actually visited.

I discovered that my financial situation was headed for disaster if I didn’t earn enough money from substitute teaching. I was trying to pay off my Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and I was committed to paying $2000 dollars worth of our ever-increasing property tax. I wouldn’t be able to earn the money in time to avoid late fees, which meant I needed to earn even more extra money.

I dug down deep and found myself able to substitute teach to the full extent my doctor and the Texas Teacher Retirement System would allow. I was really hitting my stride and enjoying teaching again. I met a couple of kids in classes I subbed for that connected so well, I used them as inspiration for a few things in the novel I was writing, A Field Guide to Fauns. The novel practically wrote itself.

I published it. But it was about naked people. So a majority of people who might be fooled into reading one of my books will never read this one.

I was looking forward, after teaching so much that I could pay off the tax only one month late, to making more money I might actually be able to put in savings for a few minutes. But March ended all hope of that.

The long Covid imprisonment began with one novel published and one more, my AeroQuest rewrite, being more than halfway along.

I found myself with way more time to write and do other stuff than I had anticipated. But, of course, little money to do anything but survive with.

I definitely understood Kurt Vonnegut better in very short order.

I had a chance to reread a LOT of my own writing.

I gave some of my own books a careful reread and proofreading, even updating the content on Amazon. I began collecting my best posts from my daily blog. I put it in book form, becoming not one, but two collections of autobiographical essays.

My quest to put all my teacher recollections, goofy humor and cartoons, and philosophical wacky-waxings into some kind of order, allowed me to get a real sense of the overview of my life as both a teacher and a writer.

But, not only did my number two son get a job with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department as a jailor, but he got Covid in July as well from his job.

Not only did my number one son find a serious relationship with an excellent young lady, but he was forced to stay away from us and limit contact to the point he almost became a stranger.

And not only did my father’s Parkinson’s Disease get worse, it killed him in midsummer during a surge in the pandemic that meant only my mother and two sisters could actually be at the funeral.

But, in spite of setbacks, I managed to stay Covid-free and read and write way more than is probably good for any human man.

I published or re-published six books during 2020. It is an accomplishment that reflects a fear of imminent death and loss of any further chance to make my writing real, not just foolish fantasies and dreams trapped in my stupid head.

So, what has 2020 done to me?

It has made me fearful of the future. It took away enough of my health that I will never be able to stand in front of a classroom ever again. And it took my father away.

But it has also galvanized me with the heat of the struggle to survive. It has made me more careful, and more appreciative of what life is, and especially more determined to have more of it.

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Filed under autobiography, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel writing, writing

December 24, 2020 · 7:55 pm

Merry Christmas… (maybe)

This holiday is going to be different. Different from the holiday I grew up with. Different than the celebrationless non-holiday I lived with for twenty years. And different from the new traditions we established, my kids and I, as we pulled away from my wife’s religion. The pandemic affects everything.

I was born into a family of Iowa Methodists living in North Central Iowa in a tiny farm town called Rowan.

I remember Christmas being the most magical time of year. I believed in Santa Claus. I felt like the Christmas magic that we saw in seasonal specials on TV in black and white were so real… the realest reality there could be…even if Andy Williams wasn’t the host of the program. Candy canes and Christmas trees and sitting on Santa’s lap being terrified of getting it wrong… and making him think I was asking for a talking Chatty Kathy doll even though I was a boy… FOR MY SISTER, SANTA! FOR MY SISTER… Oh, gawd, that really went wrong. And we had family gatherings where we ate pot-luck family meals with Swedish meatballs and turkey and mashed potatoes with brown gravy and casseroles of fifteen different kinds and nuts and candy…eating ourselves into a semi-stupor as we also did only three and a half weeks before at Thanksgiving.

And presents. Everybody gave presents. And Christmas Carols in Church.

But time goes on. You grow out of believing in Santa Claus. You even grow out of believing in Andy Williams. Perry Como was better. And it was getting so commercial. And Christmas shows we loved as kids seemed so simple and lame when watched again as young adults.

And then I married a Jehovah’s Witness. If you are not aware of it, Christmas originated as a pagan holiday, the Roman Saturnalia. It was a night of feasts and orgies and excess. And Jehovah’s Witnesses believe their beliefs are the only true beliefs, and celebrating Christmas is of Satan. I celebrated Christmas for the last time in 1994. I married in 1995.

For the next twenty years I did not celebrate Christmas. At least, not out loud where Brothers and Sisters in the Truth could hear. And the season became very austere and sanitized for me by the religious integrity of those around me in the faith.

But there were friends in the faith that lost their faith and left the congregation permanently. And the people around me changed. And I was beset by illnesses, mine and my family’s. And Jehovah’s Witnesses are very good at helping the sick. But, apparently only for others, not me and mine. They began turning away.

I am probably disfellowshipped now. They have turned away from me, and I am now isolated from all those who used to be friends and acquaintances. My wife is still a member of the congregation. And this is good because she desperately needs to believe. It is a good life for her and keeps her relatively well. But I know they disfellowshipped me, even though nobody told me so like they always do in such cases. My wife barely talks to me now. And this is probably because members of the congregation are supposed to shun the disfellowshipped, even if they are family.

But I bare no one ill will. That may be part of the problem. The Bible directive is to “Hate what is bad.” And blood transfusions and psychiatry are both bad things according to the Witnesses’ understanding of Bible commands.

I didn’t need any transfusions, and though I have significant stress and diabetic depression, I was never hospitalized for that. But I did kinda fake some disfellowshippable offenses so that I would be the one, and my wife would still be able to be a Witness. She needs it more than I do.

And, to be quite honest, I need to feel a little bit of Christmas now in my old age and infirmity. After all, it is a holiday all about making sacrifices in order to give gifts to others. I know that this post will make Jehovah’s Witnesses cringe. But now that they are shunning me, I guess they won’t be seeing this anyway. And I wish them a Merry Christmas in spite of it all.

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Filed under feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, magic, strange and wonderful ideas about life

December 14, 2020 · 8:34 pm

‘Tis the Season…

Yesterday I posted one of my patented conspiracy-theory posts which was intended primarily to give my three kids more practice at using their Eye-fu skills. You know, that ancient Chinese martial art of using the dramatic eye-roll to combat the embarrassing way elderly parents have of saying what they actually think for the sole purpose of humiliating their much-more sensible offspring. So, today I need to humbly contemplate the many reasons I will not get any Christmas presents this year and begin to generate some holiday spirit to lighten the mood of what is likely to be a rather lonely Christmas season.

So, here’s a selfie from old Grumpy Klaus, wearing the aggravated countenance of the Jolly One looking at the Naughty List to determine who gets the bricks and who gets the lumps of coal… and who gets referred to Old Krampus.

Ho ho ho… kinda…

Having married a Jehovah’s Witness twenty-six years ago, I have gotten mostly out of the habit of celebrating Christmas. The Witnesses believe that holidays with pagan origins are from Satan, and bad for you. But it has been almost seven years now since they decided I was from Satan too, and so I stopped believing in knocking on doors and trying to get homeowners to reject their own form of Christianity because we are somehow more right than they are, and if they don’t swear off celebrating Christmas they are doomed. Among the many other things you have to swear off of for that religion. Like swearing.

Don’t get me wrong… Jehovah’s Witnesses are wonderful, loving people who care about others and whose religious teachings are more helpful than harmful over all… just like all other Christians who aren’t ISIS-level radicals. (The Westboro Baptists leap to mind for some reason.) If you really need religion, it is a good one to have. But even though my wife still needs to be one, I have begun to feel like I do not.

I personally cherish the holiday traditions I grew up with, and I really wish I could have shared those with my children. (This is another point for practicing Eye-fu right here.) I fear however. that like most devoutly religious parents, we managed to raise three devout agnostics and atheists. I have trained them in the last four years to like the tradition of making and eating gingerbread houses and gingerbread men. That’s probably of pagan origin too, but it’s too late now to save my sorry old soul from gingerbread.

Anyway, I am trying to look forward to the season of Peace on Earth once again. And though I will be celebrating mostly alone and ill and condemned by gingerbread, I do have pleasant memories. I can still reach my sisters and my mother by phone. They share some of those memories. And my kids will be around enough to eat the gingerbread castle I bought for this year.

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