Thirsty Thursday: Synopsis for The Ballad of Gerry Clifford and a Shout-Out


Ornery Owl
Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

Hello Fiends! For today's Thirsty Thursday, I'd like to offer the synopsis from the first book in the Fetch series, The Ballad of Gerry Clifford. The Fetch series is the lynchpin of the Yadira Chronicles. The book is slated for publication on the Fourth of July. So, without further ado, let's swing the synopsis!

The Beginning of the End

Diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease that has progressed to the point where his family can no longer care for him without help, sixty-two-year-old blues-rock pioneer Gerry Clifford’s family has placed him in a facility for the memory impaired. Candlelight Ridge Care Home is housed in a repurposed 228-year-old mansion in London’s storied Crouch End, the borough where the Clifford family moved from Glasgow on St. Patrick’s Day, 1963.

Although his physical body and mind are deteriorating, Gerry’s remarkable mystical abilities and past life connections have made him a target for various unscrupulous supernatural powers that will stop at nothing to force the modest musician to support the destruction and restructuring of the Cosmos. Gerry has several helpful friends, both corporeal and non-corporeal, working to protect and assist him. But will their devotion be enough to save the Universe from Nyarlathotep and his powerful daughter, the sorceress Yadira Root?


The e-book will be available on Kindle and a PDF version will be available from LBRY. The PDF version from LBRY will be priced at about 50 percent less than the Kindle version. If you don't have a LBRY account, sign up through the following link. You can earn LBC, a form of cryptocurrency, by watching videos and selling your own work as well.


I would like to give a big shout-out to Elephant's Child for supporting my work on Ko-Fi. Please make sure to visit her blog at http://myjustsostory.blogspot.com

If you support my work through a donation or on one of my subscription platforms, you'll get a shout-out at the end of the month. Think of it as low-cost advertising for your page!

Keep your eyes peeled for more information about The Ballad of Gerry Clifford and all the other stuff I'm working on too.

~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~

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


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What Pegman Saw in R'lyeh + Blow Your Stack Saturday + Weekend Writing Warriors

Image found at Yanni's Inner Sanctum

While the battle for the souls of all sentient beings raged silently in the background of the lives of those too busy to even know whether or not they had a soul, Pegman dove deep into the South Pacific Ocean until he reached the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh. Pegman recalled the words from his friend H.P. Lovecraft's tale, "The Nameless City."

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."

"Howard, you had no way of knowing how your words would impact the generations to come," Pegman thought as he reached the green, slimy vaults where dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. "You believed yourself to be a meaningless and forgettable man when you were anything but. You had the power to see and record incomprehensible and terrible truths. Oh, you gave credence to some ludicrous and unpleasant beliefs when you were alive, but this was driven by your fear of the unknown.

"Sadly, people in this time seem incapable of recognizing another's faults with compassion rather than disdain and see only your errors in judgment born of your strange circumstances rather than your better qualities. I wonder if it is possible for humanity to discriminate between right and wrong action without resorting to disdain or outright hatred in every case. As Martin Luther King said following the assassination of Malcolm X: 'we haven’t learned to disagree without being violently disagreeable.'"

~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~


Ornery Owl
Free use image from Pixabay by Open Clipart Vectors
Fat. Ornery. Nerdy. Basically me as an owl.

Sly Fawkes, my politically-minded alter-ego
Image copyright Julia Henze purchased from 123rf.com

What Pegman Saw is the creation of J. Hardy Carroll, who has stepped down as the host the Pegman blog hop, but you should check out his other work. http://hawesescapes.com/
The logo was created by me using a stock image at pixlr.com



This graphic was created by me at pixlr.com using one of their stock images.
It is free to use, no credit required.

And now, the notes!
Cthulhu and R'lyeh are the creations of H.P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937). They appear in his story "The Call of Cthulhu," first published in the June 1928 issue of Weird Tales.

The Nameless City is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. It was first published in the November 1921 issue of The Wolverine.

The quote by Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968) comes from a press conference held 24 February 1965 following the assassination of Malcolm X (1925 - 1965). 

I was 9 days old at the time of this press conference.

 I was sad to see that J. Hardy Carroll will no longer be hosting the Pegman blog hop, but I certainly understand needing to take a step back from one project to focus on others. I made the decision a couple of months ago to dramatically restructure my blogging process and, let's be real, it's been a rough ride. 

I am unofficially adopting Pegman. I don't have the organizational skills or the energy to run a proper blog hop, but the Pegster has become an integral part of my world, so he will continue to appear here and I will always give credit to J. Hardy Carroll with a link to his blog. Visit him here. http://hawesescapes.com/

I am no longer adhering to the 150-word rule that is traditional for Pegman prompts. Instead, I am adhering to the Weekend Writing Warriors eight to ten sentence rule. For the foreseeable future, I will be sharing my Pegman stories with Weekend Writing Warriors because I am working on numerous projects and my ADHD brain has a tendency to complicate things. So, we'll keep this part simple-ish. That being said, the notes will include Shameless Self-Promotion of my projects for Shameless Self-Promotion Saturday. However, Self-Promotion Saturday is being pre-empted today to accommodate a special broadcast from Blow Your Stack Saturday.

This piece went in a much different direction than I originally intended. I was going to have Pegman pay a visit to R'lyeh and maybe have a chat with Cthulhu, but then I remembered reading a post on Facebook where people were railing about what a horrible transphobic transphobe J.K. Rowling is, and, of course, someone had to jump on the "I Hate H.P. Lovecraft" bandwagon, stating that they "love the writing but hate the writer."

I have a lot of trepidation about doing what I'm about to do because I'm a very shy person with a high level of social anxiety who hates conflict. However, there comes a time when one must speak one's mind, and I'm about to speak mine for better or worse, knowing that it's probably going to be worse.

J.K. Rowling did not say that she hates transgender people. She said that women experience sex-based oppression. She denounced the use of dehumanizing terms such as "menstruators" and refuted the frankly ludicrous idea that people can literally change their sex. The conflation of sex and gender in recent years has led to a myriad of misunderstandings and a lot of unnecessary vitriol. 

Sex and gender are not the same things. A few radicalized trans rights activists started touting the erroneous idea that "biological sex is a social construct," and a plethora of W0KE souls wanting to prove that they are up in the now and super-duper not transphobic (unlike those transphobes who believe in equality and tolerance for everyone including trans people but know that biological sex is an empirical reality) jumped on that misdirected bandwagon. One can utilize medical treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery to alter their secondary sex characteristics to more closely resemble the sex that they identify with. One cannot, however, literally change one's biological sex. This statement is not hateful, it is simply a fact. 

I live with my son and a housemate who identifies as a transgender woman. My housemate comes from extreme poverty and was living in her car. She has not had any surgery or hormone treatments and does not dress in "women's clothing." She is a friend of my son's whom he met on Discord. When she introduced herself to me, she said "you can call me Sally, or you can call me Kevin, whichever you're more comfortable with."

I have no problem calling my housemate Sally or using the pronoun "her" when speaking of my housemate. My housemate knows that she is biologically male. There is really no reason why this should ever come up, except in cases where medical treatment is necessary. There are certain medications that are helpful to males but harmful to females and vice-versa. Further, medical personnel caring for a transgender person would need to have this information in order to avoid potentially devastating drug interactions if the transgender person is receiving hormone therapy. 

I am a gender-critical feminist, and this earns me a lot of hate on social media.  I get called names like "TERF c**t" and told that I should be raped or murdered.  (TERF stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist.") There are people who say that being gender-critical is "transphobic." There are also transgender people who are gender-critical, and they get hate and death threats heaped on them too. This includes transgender activists such as transman Buck Angel and transwoman Miranda Yardley, two intelligent and thoughtful people whose work I greatly admire.

For further evidence of the violent rhetoric directed at women who disagree with the radical "trans rights activist" agenda, check out  http://terfisaslur.com. This collection of screenshots showcases the misogynistic hostility that women who have been found guilty of wrong-think are subjected to. 

Here is what being gender-critical means to me.

I do not think that anyone should have to change their personality to fit their biological sex. I do not think that a man should have to act stereotypically "macho" or a woman should have to present herself in a stereotypically "ladylike" fashion. I think that if a man likes to wear dresses, put on makeup, and call himself Sarah, it's all good. Or if a woman wants to wear her hair short, dress in straight-leg jeans and cowboy boots with a white t-shirt, fix trucks and call herself Jimbo, that's perfectly fine. I will refer to Sarah as she and Jimbo as he if that is what they would like me to do. 

I also do not think that anyone should feel that they have to take hormones or have surgery to take on desired secondary sex characteristics. I have extreme trepidation about these measures being employed in the cases of those who have not yet reached adulthood. The idea that a girl who likes blue, prefers to wear trousers rather than dresses, and enjoys playing with trucks and building things is "actually a boy" or that a boy who likes pink, enjoys dressing up as a princess, and enjoys playing with dolls is "actually a girl" is regressive and destructive. 

To sum things up, this is what being gender-critical means.


This is the wicked set of beliefs that many women, including J.K. Rowling, are being subjected to rape and death threats for espousing. There are numerous men and trans women who have told J.K. Rowling to suck their dick because they are offended by her beliefs. These words are sexualized threats directed at a woman who has dared to disagree with the screed that a very vocal minority has insisted that she must parrot or risk being silenced in a violent fashion.

Now, you may be wondering at this point what the hell any of this has to do with H.P. Lovecraft, who died in 1937.

H.P. Lovecraft and J.K. Rowling have more in common than being authors who use their first and middle initials in their bylines. Cancel culture prescribes that both of them are too problematic to exist. They and everything that they have ever spoken, thought, or created should be erased. For their Thoughtcrimes, they should become Unpersons.

(Thoughtcrime and Unperson are terms coined by British author George Orwell (1903 - 1950), appearing in his dystopian novel 1984.)

I realize that Lovecraft had xenophobic beliefs. I neither defend nor adhere to those beliefs. However, I do not deem it necessary to express hatred for him in order to prove that I am W0KE so I can obtain my Get Out of Cancel Culture Free card. 

I feel compassion for Lovecraft as a fellow tortured soul while refuting his xenophobic ideas. Lovecraft was raised in very peculiar circumstances and had a crippling fear of the unknown. Those who came to know him over the years describe a kind and gracious although deeply troubled man.

"I Am Providence" by S.T. Joshi is a well-written biography of H.P. Lovecraft. I recommend it highly.


In order to create a better world, we need to move away from the current trend of name-calling and thought policing. When fighting monsters, we need to be mindful of our own actions to ensure that we don't become monsters ourselves. We need to learn how to disagree without becoming violently disagreeable.

Peace.



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


Content copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press

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West Holpry: An Urban Nightmare


As the citizens of West Holpry, the capitol of the totalitarian realm of West Zecor watched, King Qweh paraded a new victim through the streets towards the city’s notorious Ktenology Center, a building from which no prisoner emerged alive. Qweh was an imposing figure, nearly eight feet tall with muscles hard as stone. His complexion resembled the gray slate cliffs of Rdegjma on a starless night and his long, silver hair swept behind him like a comet blown on stellar winds. His ears terminated in sharp points and it was rumored that his auditory acuity was ten times that of the average person. Arched silver brows drew attention to glimmering golden eyes, and each bystander prayed that the brutal king’s gaze would never fall on them.

By contrast, the prisoner being led by a chain fastened to a thick, silver collar was a willowy elfin man who stood no more than five feet three inches tall. He had long, dark brown hair, a pale complexion, and eyes that changed from blue to green depending on the angle of the light. He was one of the scavengers who lived in the abandoned ghetto on the outskirts of West Holpry. His rough-hewn, angular face bore lines and scars revealing a difficult life.

The prisoner seemed oddly sedate for one being led to certain death. His acute hearing picked up whispered speculation regarding himself and his projected fate.

“Do you not see that he’s an Ahprizite?” an observer whispered. “Ain’t many of ‘em left, you know. His Majesty likely wants to experiment on him a bit, see what makes him tick before plucking out his eyes to see if the Princess can make them regrow or nailing his feet to the floor or whatever other game strikes his fancy.”

“This bloody place is an urban nightmare,” the prisoner thought. “I think maybe the deities are tired of the way things have been for the last five generations under the rule of the Pasaws. The light has had an unsavory cast to it for the past three months, and there is something ominous in the zany dance that the suns are doing of late. In truth, I care not. Were the suns to engulf this wretched world in fire, it would all be the same to me. The only reason I didn’t tease the volatile King into a rage, so he’d eviscerate me on the spot and end my miserable existence, is because you advised me not to, Joub.”

“Do not fear, Serab,” a quiet voice responded in the prisoner’s mind, accompanied by the vision of a boy in early adolescence with curly golden hair and bright blue eyes. “You are my best friend. I would not steer you wrong.”

“Brother, my only wish for the past twenty-nine years has been to join you in death,” the prisoner thought, willing away the tears that welled up in his eyes. He did not want the tyrant king or his lackeys to believe that he was weeping out of fear, and he did not wish the discomfort of salt-water drying on his face in the wickedly hot air.

 “I’ll bet that Madam Yadira wanted the King to bring this chappie to her in good working order,” the prisoner heard a woman’s voice whispering. “Rumor has it that she’s the real power in this realm and Qweh ain’t naught but her lackey.”

“Best you shut your trap with them rumors before His Majesty hears you, Suwzod,” another woman hissed. “I’ve a feeling the King wouldn’t treat you near so delicate as this fella. Though it’s impossible to see in his common appearance, there’s something special about him. Whether that’s a lucky thing, I have my doubts.”

The King led his prisoner to the fearsome and marvelous Ktenology Center, a building carved from slabs of Opqros, a jet-black stone embedded with chips of mineral dust resembling stars. The building had been constructed to resemble the Peaks of Tvych, which no living being had ever been able to scale. The Peaks were said to be the entryway to Nuwy, the place where the spirits of the lost ones who had done no evil but had never known love were taken. There, these unhappy souls would rest and dream until they became part of the planet.

As the prisoner contemplated the gateway to hell that stood before him, he listened to further whispered speculations from the crowd.

“Well, we’ll not see him again.”

“Odd-looking bird. Wonder who he was.”

“Nobody. Ain’t nobody. Only a common thief.”
“Must be a canny bastard to have survived to his middle years. Qweh’s family offed most of the Ahprizites a centum gone.”

“He can’t be full Ahprizite. They’re even smaller than he is. Besides, Giraq announced that the last one of ‘em died in captivity a good twenty-five rotations ago now.”

“Never thought I’d say it, but I miss Giraq. Qweh is far worse than his father.”

“For the Ahprizite’s sake, I hope the lovely Ondina sees fit to release him rather than keeping him around as her brother’s toy.”

“Qweh is like a cruel child pulling the legs off nawa.”

“Watch your mouth, or you’ll be the Nawa!”

“Think you that things would have gone better for us had Ondina agreed to marry her brother?”

“No better for us and worse for Ondina.”

The prisoner was yanked from his reverie as the King jerked the chain around his neck, causing him to lose his balance. The King lifted the little man up, laughing.

“It is your lucky day, Thief,” he announced. “I like the way the suns dance in the sky, so I am bestowing upon you a unique opportunity to serve your realm. Should you prove worthy, your life will be spared. Should you fail, you shall serve as a subject for my experiments. Either way, you shall serve at your King’s pleasure.”

988 words


~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~

And now...the notes!

This piece is part of The Yadira Chronicles and will appear as a chapter in one of Naughty Netherworld Press' forthcoming novels. We don't know how or when just now, so, when you're least expecting it, expect it.

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


Content copyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’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 LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

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This post was made available to paid subscribers on BitPatron, Ko-Fi, LBRY, and Patreon on 13 June 2020. The free post became available on 17 June 2020.

Find out how to get more from Naughty Netherworld Press here.

Tardy to the Party IWSG



Ornery Owl
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

First things first. Let's get this out of the way before the post begins. I swear. A lot. If you have problems with profanity, let this serve as your warning not to proceed with this post, 'cause it's about to get salty in here. So, strap on your life jackets, and buckle up, Bitches.

Okey dokey, now that's out of the way, so let's hit the Insecure Writers Support Group question for this month. (I swear, I'm always tardy to this party.)

Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

Let me answer this by saying that I really don't know how to answer this. On one hand, I tend to be pretty transparent, although, on the other hand, I don't really feel like I owe anyone any explanations ever. Unless I crash through the front window of your house while holding a jug of moonshine in one hand and a bong in the other, in which case...well, there again, the explanation for my bad behavior, in that case, is probably pretty obvious.

Anyway, here's a list of the shit that's abnormal about me, in alphabetical order because that is the way I roll.

Attention deficit disorder
I didn't know this until I was in my 50s, but it explains a lot, and I have been very misunderstood because of it.

Bipolar disorder type 2
I was almost 40 before this was correctly diagnosed.

Diabetes type 2 
An ailment that is highly stigmatized, and fuck a whole lot of that. I think the name of the condition should be changed to hypopancreatism. It would be a more accurate description. Diabetes is an obscure Greek term that is kind of meaningless at this point.

Elevated Triglycerides
A common companion with diabetes. Other than this, my cholesterol levels are very good, which is neither here nor there.

Female Reproductive System Glitches
Endometriosis and fibroids, which have hopefully resolved now that I'm three years beyond menopause. 2018 was the Year Of A Lot Of Bullshit With My Reproductive System Which I Don't Even Use But Still Didn't Want To Undergo Major Surgery To Remove It. 

Doctors are very keen to do hysterectomies on older women, but the condition I was experiencing (simple hyperplasia with normal cells) only increases my chances of developing endometrial cancer by 1.6 (that's one point six) percent. I saw no reason to undergo the risks of surgery for such a slight increased risk. Sometimes hysterectomy is the lesser of two evils, but there are reasons to leave the business intact, even if it's dormant.

I also had polycystic ovary syndrome, but my ovaries are now atrophied, so I guess that problem has resolved. I was always told that I'd never be able to have children. Shows to go ya that doctors don't know everything.

I had horrible periods for 40 years, starting at twelve and ending at 52. I didn't bleed, I hemorrhaged. Other than the endometrial hyperplasia, menopause was a walk in the park. I was fortunate to have the longer-lasting but less intense "ember flashes" rather than the nuclear blast hot flashes that some women describe. I refer to menopause as my "red giant" phase. I am now a large white dwarf.

Fibromyalgia
I'm one of the lucky ones. I have low-grade, widespread chronic pain rather than excruciating pain. I can do a lot of things that fibromyalgia sufferers with severe pain can't. However, people like me get misunderstood and passed off as "lazy" or making excuses. Being in constant pain drains a person's energy and causes brain fog. I sometimes joke that if I did have dementia no-one would know, because walking around in a fog is my normal state of being. 

In truth, neither dementia nor fibromyalgia is funny. My joke is a bit of gallows humor. I've lost people to dementia, and I will top myself if I am ever diagnosed with it. I don't want to go out that way.

Glaucoma

Hypertension (idiopathic)

Hypothyroidism
My thyroid burned itself up when I was 15. Oh, bliss. Oh, joy.

IBS
I'm usually fine as long as I take Lactaid before eating ice cream or pudding and as long as I avoid foods with MSG or Splen-don't. It really helped to stop taking Metformin. I was kind of tired of having explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea.

Neuropathy
Not diabetes-related. I have neuropathy from back problems and a severe injury to the median nerve in my left arm. I was in such severe pain for a month that I considered suicide to find relief. If it hadn't been for the fact that I knew Medicaid was going to kick in at the beginning of December 2017, I don't think I'd be here writing this. I didn't have insurance, so I couldn't afford to get treatment.

Here is the fun of being a member of the working poor. I had a job. I often worked more than 40 hours a week. I was a contractor. I couldn't afford insurance on my salary. This is the job that fucked up my arm. I had to wait a month for Medicaid to kick in. In the meantime, I was in excruciating pain. Every time I went to sleep, I hoped I wouldn't wake up.

The thing about harshly judging people who become addicted to pain medication is this. When you are in severe constant pain, you will do ANYTHING to stop that pain. Both chronic pain and addiction are conditions that are stigmatized. 

I have lived with low-grade chronic pain for most of my life. It tires me out and a lot of the time I feel like I'm operating in a fog. 

Obsessive-compulsive disorder
For some reason, everyone always thinks that OCD = germophobe neat freak. It actually has a broad spectrum of presentations. Hoarding disorder is a subtype of OCD, and I really have a problem with exploitation shit shows like Hoarders. Next up, what will those whacky Schizophrenics do, amirite, Kiddies? There's nothing like ridiculing people struggling with a major mental illness! Yeehah.

I was going to say there's your answer to what people would never know about me from reading my stories, but I actually do address it. Now, here's the plain truth. While struggling with severe depression and still holding a full-time job, my hoarding problems got severely out of hand. I have never hoarded animals, only items. In all honesty, becoming unable to work a normal job is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was finally able to address my very serious hoarding problem. 

My old mobile home has taken more than six months to deal with because the only ones working on it are my son and me, and I can't do any heavy lifting. My son is high-functioning autistic. He lives with a degree of agoraphobia (which he can manage as long as he is able to maintain control over the situation), anxiety, and major depression. He's always gotten a ration of shit from my family for not being able to hold a regular job. They refuse to believe that he's autistic because he is able to engage in normal social interaction. My mother says that my son is just "timid" (he isn't timid) and my brother thinks that my son needs to just pull himself up by his bootstraps and "man up." 

If you ask me, my son is a goddamn rock star. Hell, he's better than most rock stars. He's the most humble person you'll ever meet. He puts other people's needs before his own all the time, and when he sets his mind to something, it will happen. Maybe not on someone else's timeline, maybe in a country minute rather than a New York minute, but on one thing you can rely; if he says it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

My love for my son is obvious in my stories. Most of my major female protagonists have sons, nephews, or young male friends whom they would die for if it came to that. Sometimes I throw in a daughter as well, just to mix things up, but if people read between the lines, it's probably obvious that I don't have a daughter. The character tends to be an adjunct.

Moving on with Cie's Health Bullshit...

PTSD
The complex variety. I've endured a lot of abuse in my life. It took me a lot of years to come to the point where I know I may never be able to "love myself," but I sure as hell am going to respect myself enough to not let people abuse me anymore. If you're the sort of person who thinks that I, or anyone else, deserves to be shit on for having a body that you don't find attractive, fuck you. What the hell makes you think I care if you find me attractive? Believe me, I ain't into you.

Then there were all those great guys who preyed on me because they wanted someone with low self-esteem that they could treat like crap, that they could belittle or hit or rape to their shriveled little heart's content and I should consider myself lucky for the abuse. Because crazy chicks are great in bed, amirite? And for anyone who feels the need to tell me that "not all men are like that, and there's a great guy who will love you just as you are," please stow that noise. I'm simply not interested.

I had PTSD after my car was hit by a wave of water washing over the road during a flood, and I eventually overcame it. I don't think I'll ever be over the PTSD caused by bullying and abuse. Hell, let's call it what it is. Bullying is simply another term for abuse.

It took me a lot of years to be able to say that I have been abused, that I did not "ask for" the abuse, and to take a stand that I will not put up with further abuse.

Abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is a common theme in my writing.

In the past, I would have put "borderline personality disorder" on this list, but I have come to the belief that "borderline personality disorder" is a sexist diagnosis, like "hysteria." It is overwhelmingly applied to women. "Borderline personality disorder" is actually a subtype of PTSD. 

People who are given this diagnosis are people who have been abused, often sexually. The tendency for self-injury in women diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder (a problem that I struggled with from my early teens) is a tell. 

Suicide Ideation
Part and parcel of the other mental health stuff. I've had less of it since moving to a little rural town in the middle of nowhere with my son. Sometimes I even feel hopeful and inspired.

And now, the big reveal.

Urinary incontinence
Yeah, I just love this. It started when I was in my late thirties and by the time I was forty, I was using the Ultra Maximum size of incontinence pads. It was great when I had my period, and by great, I mean it really sucked ass. Between the heavy bleeding and the urine leakage, I had to wear Depends plus an Ultra Maximum incontinence pad. It felt like I was wearing a mattress. 

It's not clear why I developed this lovely problem, but it's probably a combination of neurological and physiological fuckery. Anyway, I have it, and I think that it's one thing that I don't write about, not out of embarrassment but because where the hell would I fit it into one of my stories? 

There are a lot of adults who deal with incontinence. We aren't emotionally immature or losing control of our functions on purpose. I count myself lucky to only be dealing with urine loss. Metformin gave me a taste of what it would be like to have bowel incontinence, and that's a whole other beast. 

Here's the thing: incontinence isn't a joke, and people who live with it still deserve respect. That's why I'm honest about it. 

Those things that you may think it's somehow your birthright to ridicule people for, like their size or their health problems either physical or mental? If you're doing that, you need to be asking yourself why you need a scapegoat. Chances are, you're dissatisfied with yourself and are looking for someone who has it worse to make yourself feel better about your own lousy lot in life. That's called schadenfreude, and it isn't a good look.

So, there you have it. I came to the party. I brought it. And now you know that pretty much the only thing I don't write about is incontinence. 




Ornery Owl is Round and Real and apologizes for nothing
Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay



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


Content copyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’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 LBRY. 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.

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An Olive-Green Gown and Malachite Shoes #8Sunday #RainbowSnippets #SnipSun

    Genre: Poetry plus a supernatural coming-of-age story (vampires).  Buy Link: https://amzn.to/3vz8uXw   Publication Date: February 15, 20...