Sometimes you just need to vent for the relief you get from releasing all that extra fart-gas that builds up in the brain from too much politics and environmental stress.
Have you noticed that there seem to be certain pests that you just can’t seem to get rid of? Mosquitoes? Rats in the attic? Fairies in the garden? In-laws who need money?
The St. Louis Cardinals seemed to be poised, based on late-season improvements, to make a bid for a World-Series surge in the playoffs. But they were taken out by the Los Angeles Dodgers in a one-game wild-card playoff. Wait till next year again.
We find out more and more bad stuff and crimes from Trump’s Presidential Administration (Prexydental Apeynation?) every single week. And the criminal is still not in prison yet? If this were a true banana republic, he would’ve been executed after the coup failed.
I keep taking careful steps to improve my health and become physically fit enough to stay alive. And yet, I can’t seem to get healthy enough to visit the Bluebonnet Nudist Park for a second time. I called them and found out that they are very willing to take Covid precautions and help me out. But blood sugar balance and a number of small wounds that won’t heal keep me from going au naturel.
I am too old and irritated to go for very long without ranting about the general unfairness of the universe. I am mindful that people like me can easily become annoying and are no fun to be around. So, I try hard to limit the Mr. Grumpy vibes I give off in this blog to only a day or two per week. But I often fail. So, dang it! I just have to spout out a little more today. That fart-gas in the old brain cavity really builds up fast.
Today I have a low-grade fever. A slight cough. No sign of Covid yet, and I am fully vaccinated. But I have been to Walmart without a mask and get regular flu regularly. And it could also be a sinus infection again due to high pollen counts and neighborhood grass-cutting.
But the truly frustrating thing is that I had planned to go tomorrow to Bluebonnet Nudist Park, give them a copy of my nudist novel, and meet some of the members of that establishment that I didn’t meet in 2017.
The frustrating thing is that this marks the fifth time that I had planned to go back to Bluebonnet for a second visit. And now the plans are canceled yet again by illness.
As ever, I remain mostly a closet nudist. Me being a nudist now in the twilight years of my life is mostly a joke I tell, only loosely based on reality.
Part of the problem is the fact that I simply waited too long in my life to give in to the urge to be a nudist. I was one from childhood onward, but always too afraid of the unknown to try it openly. Especially after being assaulted at the ripe old age of ten.
My real opportunity came when I had a girlfriend in the 1980’s whose sister lived with her husband and children in a clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin. I met nudists there fully committed to the lifestyle and who encouraged me to join the movement, even after I broke up with that girlfriend. There were limited opportunities to become a nudist then. A park near Houston, a park near San Antonio, a nude beach on Lake Travis (Hippie Hollow,) and clubs in the Austin area that met in members’ homes. I only ever visited those places with clothes on. I never actually tried it. And now that I am old, I regret the opportunities missed.
Now I am old and ill and unable to express my love of nudism and naturism except through art and fiction. Of course, it has always been a very visual-only experience for me. No touching was ever involved. Whatever sexual feelings there were were always sublimated and deeply buried or strictly controlled.
And, as always, I didn’t absolutely need to share these normally private sort of details, but it seems my art and writing make me far more naked to the world than walking around a nudist park ever could.
I never actually planned to become a representative of Naturism and Nudism on the internet. It just sort of happened. I am now a writer of naturist fiction. Not all of my books feature nudism. But apparently enough of them do to qualify me to get positive attention from nudists on Twitter and nudist readers looking for good books that also include them.
The books I have written and published that include nudist characters and nudist plot points are;
Superchicken
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever
A Field Guide to Fauns
There are also some stories and mentions of my own history of being a sexual assault victim that encountered naturism and nudism by accident and gradually found psychic healing by reading about nudism, talking about naturism with actual nudists, and late in life trying social nudism for myself in my two books of autobiographical essays, Laughing Blue and Mickey’s Rememberries.
That is really the sum total of nudism in my 20 published books. A Field Guide to Fauns is the only book that is completely about nudism. Most of my other books are comic adventures featuring middle school kids from a small town in Iowa.
And being a writer of naturist fiction, books with naked people in them, is something of a mixed blessing. Being a Young Adult novelist, a genre often confused with “children’s books.” you get scrutinized by all sorts of prudes, activists, and judgmental people that assume kids younger than 18 should never read about or think about people not wearing clothes. I have gotten a couple of blistering reviews that suggest that what I write about, especially involving characters with improper motives toward naked people and nudists, makes me suspect as a potential child molester or corrupter of youth. Evil characters with evil intentions and imperfect characters that make questionable choices obviously means there is something wrong with the author. He can’t be simply writing fiction, right?
And that is the very reason I waited to publish some of these stories until after I had left teaching. I always try to write truth from the heart. But that leaves you naked even when you are not being a nudist or writing about naked people. As a child-victim of a sexual assault I have gone through periods of my life where I blamed myself for what happened to me, feared that I was doomed to become a child predator because so many of them, when caught, are revealed to have been victims themselves, and I even considered suicide to be a possible solution at one point. But I dealt with it by becoming a teacher, actively trying to protect adolescents from potential abusers, counseling them and teaching them. Never touching anyone inappropriately. Often not even allowing myself inappropriate thoughts. In fiction you can actually tell your own truth and facilitate healing even when you are basically telling the world lies to make that be truth.
I also know from some of the more enlightened reviewers that many readers do understand what I am trying to tell them in my stories. I am surprised sometimes at how deeply some of them are touched by the sensitive parts of my work and amused by the parts that are intended to be funny.
I have gotten many looks from WordPress viewers and Google users because I draw naked people and use the word “nudes” as a category and tag. They come looking for erotica or porn, and not finding any, move on.
But, in August, I started getting numerous hits on a nudism article called, “Nudist Notions.” (https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2017/11/08/nudist-notions/) which skyrocketed views as high as 388 in a single day. It became my most-viewed post ever and made August 2021 my top month ever on WordPress. That post even has first place so far today, a month later, with 20 views when last I checked. Of course, all of these thousands of views had no corresponding likes. I wondered about that. Then someone suggested that it might’ve been posted and viewed on Reddit. Or possibly Instagram. I am aware of two former students who read my blogs when posted on Facebook. They are a couple (either married or soon-to-be married, I don’t remember which,) who both got a kick out of me becoming a nudist after I retired and stopped being their teacher. They were both at my retirement party in the classroom, and both have Instagram accounts.
And, who knows? Now that my students apparently know my naked truth, the twin girls who used to tell me about going to nude beaches in Mexico and Texas may actually recognize themselves in the Cobble Sisters, the nudist characters in Recipes for Gingerbread Children, and sue me for writing about them, even though there is very little about the fictional characters that resembles them in any way that is actionable.
In a final note, I finished my novella, Horatio T. Dogg : Super Sleuth last night. It is headed for publication soon. And it doesn’t have a single naked person in it who is not a dog, rat, or chicken.
I was a boy back when the milk man still came around in his blue-and-white panel truck delivering bottles of milk with Elsie the Cow on them. I don’t remember clearly because I was only 4 years old back when I first became aware of being a boy in this world instead of being something else living somewhere else.
There were many things I didn’t know or understand back then. But one thing I did know, was that I loved Elsie the Cow. And why would a farm boy love a cartoon cow? There were many not-so-sensible reasons.
For one thing, Elsie the Cow reminded me of June Lockhart, Lassie’s mom and the mom from Lost in Space.
Lassie’s Mom, June Lockhart
It may be that June Lockhart’s eyes reminded me of Elsie’s eyes, being large, soul-full eyes with large black eye lashes. It may be that she starred in a TV commercial for Borden’s milk in which Elsie winked at me at the end of the commercial.
Or maybe it was because Elsie had calves and was a mom. And June Lockhart was Lassie’s mom and the mom of Will Robinson, so I associated both of them with my mom, and thus with each other.
Elsie gave you milk to drink and was always taking care of you in that way. Milk was good for you, after all. My own mom was a registered nurse. So they were alike in that way too.
And she was constantly defending you against the bulls in your life. She stood up to Elmer to protect her daughter more than once. Of course, her son was usually guilty of whatever he was accused of, but she still loved him and kept Elmer from making his “hamburger” threats a reality.
And you can see in numerous ad illustrations that Elsie’s family were basically nudists. Although she often wore an apron, she was bare otherwise. And though her daughter often wore skirts and her son wore shorts, Elmer was always naked. And that didn’t surprise me, because no cow I knew from the farm wore clothes either. From very early in my life I was always fascinated by nakedness, and I would’ve become a nudist as a youngster if it hadn’t been soundly discouraged by family and society in general.
Proof that Elsie’s family lived the nude life.
Puppets from a Borden’s commercial
So there are many reasons why I have always loved Elsie the Cow. And it all boils down to the love of drinking milk and that appealing cartoon character who constantly asked you to drink more.
You reach a point after a hard month has lingered long where you have to eat the leftovers and accept what is. I face challenges in the new year at least as large as the challenges of 2017. When faced with such a situation, I need pie.
So here are some of the things left in my January file for use in this blog. The only reason they are here is because I haven’t used them yet and the ideas have not been knitted together for any rational purpose.
This will be a crazy quilt blog post. But crazy quilts keep you just as warm in winter as any other kind.
My newest Facebook friend is the daughter of my wife’s cousin. I have only known her as the sweet-faced little smiler at Filipino-American family gatherings who sometimes gets my attention by squirting me in the ear with a water gun. Her father is from Greece and teaches Math in San Antonio. Her mother, like my wife, is from the Philippines. I won’t tell you her real name, but we used to call her “Sweetie” because of her resemblance to the little pink Tweety-bird character from Tiny Toons Adventures.
I have also spent considerable time writing to and for nudists I have connected with through their various websites and on Twitter. These two lovely works of nude art were shared with me on Twitter. I have collected a number of nude pictures from Twitter nudists that I can’t use on WordPress because I am still entirely too modest to be the unrestrained naked person that some nudists are. I can’t really claim to be a complete nudist myself. But I do have stories to tell about naked people, and I have been working on them diligently.
Of course, I still miss being a teacher. I was a teacher of English for 31 years. I taught reading and writing in English to over 2,000 kids. I also learned how to stare in Klingon. It is a useful skill for keeping students in line and keeping them from becoming a disappointment to the empire. I miss teaching kids, especially talkative kids. Far fewer people talk to me during a day of retirement than used to talk to me in a single class at school. Those interactions were precious.
And several things are just too confusing for my old brain to explain.
But I do like this picture I found on Facebook of Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, playing with multiple kittens. I don’t know why, but it makes me happier.
**Please note** This is a fiction story. It absolutely did not happen in real life. So, no real-life school administrators should be fired over it. And the author is a RETIRED school teacher, so it is not necessary to hire a hit man to protect future students from evil ideas like the ones presented in this story.
Rudy was miserable as he sat in the counselor’s office staring at the note from his teacher. Miss Nactarine. the sympathetic young counselor, sat behind her desk praying silently that the poor boy would be able to overcome his extreme shyness for long enough to explain what the problem really was.
“Well, um… you see, Miss…. I, uh…”
And then, once again, he simply stopped talking. She waited for several minutes.
“Rudy, just take a deep breath and let it all come out. You were sent here for sleeping in class. Tell me why that happened.”
“Okay, Miss. I been having bad dreams.”
“Oh? They’ve been keeping you from sleeping at night? What are the bad dreams about?”
“Um, well… In my dreams, I keep forgetting to put my clothes on before coming to school. I end up having to give a speech in Miss Burkett’s class standing naked in front of everybody. And the girls were laughing.”
“Oh, I see. Hmm. And what do you suppose is causing these dreams?”
He didn’t hesitate even for a moment. “P.E. Class!”
“Why P.E. Class?”
“Well, because… when it’s over, sixth graders have to take a shower. You have to get naked and go into the shower room where everybody can see.”
“But there are only other boys in there.” She knew as soon as she said it why that didn’t matter to Rudy. Even as she said it, she could see this shrinking-violet child trying to disappear in his chair.
“What do you think we should do about this problem?” She was thinking swim-suit for showers or something.
“Can we cancel P.E. Class?”
“Honey, that’s State-mandated curriculum. You can’t pass to the seventh grade without taking that class.”
“Can we cancel showers?”
“Young men in the sixth grade begin to have body odor. You know how that smell would affect learning?”
Rudy was dissolving in front of her.
“You are a vary brave young man. The best way to overcome this problem is to simply make up your mind not to let it affect you. The next time you have to take a shower, just face your fears head on. Take your clothes off and act like you want everybody to see you naked. Once you have endured the worst that can happen, you won’t have that bad dream anymore. You will know that you can do anything by being brave enough to try.”
Miraculously, Rudy seemed to brighten up, as if he had finally come to terms with the problem.
“Thanks, Miss. That helps a lot.”
As she dismissed him back to class, she couldn’t help but congratulate herself on saying the right thing at the right time.
The next morning, as students who walked to school from the neighborhood gathered in front of the school, Rudy showed up striding purposefully towards the front door wearing only a hat.
Most of the girls squealed in response, and then broke out into laughing conversations.
One of the most popular seventh-grade cheerleaders said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I think he looks really cute like that! I wish all the boys were brave enough to come to school like that.”
“We would if all the girls did too!” hollored some invisible boy from somewhere in the back of the crowd.
Principal Eirohnee quickly brought both naked Rudy and Counselor Nacterine into her office.
Rudy was very comfortably nude as he stood in front of the principal’s desk and explained.
“It really cured my problem,” Rudy said. “From the time I made up my mind to do this I have felt nothing but confidence. If I can come to school naked, I can do anything!”
“Intend to go to all your classes today naked, do you?” asked the Principal.
“Yes, if you let me. If you don’t, it was still worth it.”
Full of pride for her part in Rudy’s transformation, the Counselor said, “I think we should allow it.”
“Well, isn’t that precious. Why don’t we just change the dress code for the day and have everybody go to school today naked?”
“I’d be willing to try that,” Miss Nacterine said.
**Author’s note** You could argue that the Counselor was fired for not understanding what sarcasm was, but, more likely, it was because of how the majority of the students showed up the following day.
One of the side “benefits” of having diabetes is that it often comes with an extra helping of diabetic depression. I had the blues really bad this week. I am not the only member of my family suffering.
So, what do you do about it?
Or, rather, what does a goofy idiot like me do about it?
Especially on a windy day when the air is saturated with pollen and other lovely things that I am absolutely, toxically allergic to?
Well, for one thing, I used the word toxically in this post because it is a funny-sounding adverb that I love to use even though the spell-checker hates it, no matter how I spell or misspell it.
And I bought a kite.
Yes, it is a cheap Walmart kite that has a picture of Superman on it that looks more like Superboy after taking too much kryptonite-based cough syrup for his own super allergies.
But I used to buy or make paper diamond kites just like this one when I was a boy in Iowa to battle the blues in windy spring weather. One time I got one so high in the sky at my uncle’s east pasture that it was nothing more than a speck in the sky using two spools of string and one borrowed ball of yarn from my mother’s knitting basket. It is a way of battling blue meanies.
And I bought more chocolate-covered peanuts. The chocolate brings you up, and the peanut protein keeps you from crashing your blood sugar. I have weathered more than one Blue Meanie attack with m&m’s peanuts.
And I used the 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination to bring my novel, The Baby Werewolf,home. I wrote the last chapter Monday night in the grip of dark depression, and writing something, and writing it well, makes me a little bit happier.
And I have collected a lot of naked pictures of nudists off Twitter. Who knew that you could find and communicate with such a large number of naked-in-the-sunshine nuts on social media? It is nice to find other nude-minded naturists in a place that I thought only had naked porn until I started blogging on naturist social media. Being naked in mind and body makes me happier than I ever thought it would.
And besides being bare, I also like butterflies and books and baseball and birds, (the Cardinals have started baseball season remember) and the end of winter. “I just remember of few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!” Oh, and I like musical movies like The Sound of Music too.
The monsters of deep, dark depression are being defeated as we speak.
I decided to be lazy today. The work I am sharing with you only took a week to accomplish.
She was inspired by a cartoon character in an old animated TV show. But the model for this idea was fully clothed and not a fairy. I don’t know why I felt it necessary to portray her nude.
But drawing clothes made from leaves and acorn caps is hard. So, this little 3-inch-tall fairy girl decided to pose nude.
This is a second drawing. The first one was a little too revealing and I felt the need to give her a longer braid.
This, then, is Derfentwinkle, a fairy resident of the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia. Specifically she is the apprentice of an incompetent necromancer known as Old Bumble Bones.
Once I had the drawing scanned into a jpeg, I decided to enhance it with the basic paint program that came with the computer back when I bought it.
I am not overly fond of this kind of coloring. My old laptop is quirky and unreliable, and my arthritic fingers still prefer a pencil to a mouse or a keypad. So, I may recolor it with colored pencil, But for now, here she is in all her glory.
