Me and Dolly. We both were up at 3 a.m. this morning.
 
I was awake because I didn’t like what I’d written for this blog on Tuesday. The post was loaded with too many uses of “I” and “me” and “my”, which is ever so boring, so I decided not to share it with you. Yesterday, I couldn’t think of a decent substitute for what I’d written, so I did some other writing before puttering away on my gourd racer.
 
More about gourd racers in just a minute.
 
This morning, guilt brought me out of bed. Don’t you hate it when your mind decides you shouldn’t sleep? Now that I was two days behind schedule, I needed to get this blog written and up. Since I don’t want to wake up at 3 a.m. again tomorrow morning, here we are.
 
Dolly Parton gets up at 3 a.m. every morning. Willingly. At 76 years of age, she probably sings “Jolene” as she kicks off her covers. She says she prefers to start her day this early because she welcomes the quiet. Three in the morning is apparently a great time to do a little writing and a good hour to spend some time with God.
 
If I was God, I’d recommend we get together a little later in the day. Maybe after I’d had a cup of Joe or two.
 
It came as a surprise to me, but I like Dolly Parton. I didn’t expect for this to happen. She seemed like a lot, if you know what I mean, but years ago, I went to a concert. She was the opening act; a performer I didn’t want to see. I wished the promoter had picked someone else, anyone else; and, from the surrounding voices, it sounded like the rest of the crowd felt the same way. There wasn’t a lot of applause when she came on the stage. By the time she left the stage, she’d gained a legion of new fans. As a performer, she was warm, friendly, funny, and self-depreciating. She gave a performance that left the entire audience on their feet, cheering.
 
The headliner that followed did all right, but it was Dolly that won our hearts that night.
 
# # #
 
I have a favorite new term: “Word loaf.” I was listening to a wonderful ASMR when she stated that the poorly written, horribly constructed novel she was reading was a terrible mishmash of words thrown together without sufficient thought or purpose. The book was a “word loaf.”
 
# # #
  
“Slow and steady is definitely going to lose the race,” my life partner told me.
 
“You don’t know that,” I replied to him. “During a gourd run, anything can happen.”
  
Have you noticed that you can’t spell “replied” without including the word “lie”? We both knew I was lying when I said we didn’t know his gourd racer was going to do badly in the upcoming Running of the Gourds.
 
“Is there a prize for the slowest racer?” he asked me. I wish there was. Roll a rock down the racetrack, it’s gonna beat his gourd.
 
If this is all new to you, a gourd run is fun to watch. If you were once a Cub Scout or raised a Cub Scout, their Pinewood Derby is not dissimilar to the Grande 500. In the Pinewood Derby, per Wikipedia, “Scouts build their own unpowered, unmanned miniature cars from wood, usually from kits containing a block of pine wood, plastic wheels, and metal axles.” The only notable difference for the Grande 500 is that there are spruced-up gourds riding on top of the pine wood cars. On the day of the race, the Gourdsters are timed as they’re sent down a 32-foot ramp. After everyone has had their turn, the times are compared and the fastest Gourdster wins.
 
Having taken part in the Grande 500 once before, I knew what to expect. My whale racer (entry name: Thar She Rolls) is small, sleek, and heavily weighted around the rear axle for maximum speed. You bet I took notes the last time. Thar She Rolls has an excellent chance to make a better showing than my last racer.
 
In the spirit of fellowship, my guy decided he’d enter the race, too. This from a man who has no experience with gourding, Gourdsters, or clay work. Having been a Cub Scout, he’d taken part in the Pinewood Derby before. It did not go well. That was another occasion when he wished there’d been a prize for the slowest racer.
 
I suspect he regretted his offer to enter the Grande 500 the moment he made it. But, once the words were said, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He picked out the biggest gourd allowed—“It called to me”—joined me in my work area, cut himself on my tools, and literally bled to make his creation. His snail racer (entry name: The Snail Trails) will stand out from the other competition. It’s maxed out in size, weight, and wind resistance. If you say his creation is enjoyably ugly, I know he wouldn’t disagree.
 
Will he build another racer for next year? You don’t have to wonder, he’s already told me: “Oh, hell, no.”

​The Good Witch has asked me to join her in fulfilling a series of New Year’s Resolutions. She came across this article from realbuzz.com and thought it would be fun if we gave it a go. “We” because she knew this isn’t the kind of list you tackle alone. It’s more fun with a partner.
 
The Realbuzz Team came up with “10 Unusual New Year’s Resolutions.” Honestly, that’s who is listed as the author of the piece: the Realbuzz Team. This means, one person did most of the writing, but four of others threw out some suggestions and demanded credit. Or so I imagine.
 
Broken down to the basics, the list reads like this:
 
Do something nice for others every day. My favorite of their recommendations, so I bumped it up the list. They listed things in their order, I’ll go in mine.
Being nice is a lovely idea. Feels even lovelier for this particular year, doesn’t it? Can I stick with niceness for 365 days in a row? The Good Witch knows it would be a struggle. Even if I managed to do it, at some point, niceness would feel like a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore.
 
Try a new food each week. If you’ve wondered through these blogs at all, you’re aware of how much I hate spending time in my kitchen. If the coffee maker wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be, either. I don’t need a new food each week. God created pizza.
 
Break a record. Either a personal record (something like, “This is the most hot dogs I’ve eaten in a day!”) or a world record (their idea? Go for the fastest mile ever while running in swim fins). I would have loved either idea at 16. I’m not 16 any longer.
 
Get your photo taken in five interesting places. That’s a straight-out “Absolutely not!” for me. With the pandemic still raging? I’ve had to travel by plane twice recently and would rather not do it again for many, many months.
It stings because there’s one country in particular that I’ve been dying to see. I just don’t want to see it and die.
 
Learn a party trick. Team Realbuzz offered a couple of suggestions here, neither of which appealed to me. Contort myself? Again, maybe if I was a teenager. Learn how to recite the alphabet backwards in less than 10 seconds? I could do this. takes me 6 seconds to run through the alphabet in the correct order—I timed it. I’d have gone faster if I didn’t slip into doing the alphabet in a singsong voice—so 10 seconds to flip the order sounds doable.
There are two problems with this, though. One, with my memory, it’s going to take time to learn this party trick. Is this party trick worth the time I give it? Second, the Good Witch will want to try the backwards alphabet trick, too. Since we attend many of the same parties, I’ll become the “not as good backwards alphabet woman.” That sounds awful.
 
Make a new friend a month. Not acquaintances, but real friends? I’m lucky to make a friend once every five years. And I count myself lucky when it happens.
 
Develop a good relationship with your body. My body and I get along just fine. As long as I do as it tells me—no caffeine, limited sugar, watch the fats—it doesn’t punish me too harshly. Yes, I know, there’s a real S&M vibe there.
 
Learn something you never learned as a child. The Team suggests learning a handstand or riding a bike. As an alternative, learn how to correctly spell a word that you never quite got right when you were young. I used to do handstands and ride bikes, but I’ve always had trouble with the word, “embarrass.” It’s those two r’s, those two s’s, they trip me up. I only got it right today because of Spellcheck. But what if I never learned how to write the word without Spellcheck? How embarasing.
 
Make the usual the unusual. By now, the Realbuzz people are struggling to get to 10 items on the list. They suggest I eat fancy chocolates and then wash them down with champagne. There’s not one piece of that sentence that’s any part of my life.  
 
Sort out a financial worry. Because of realbuzz.com, I spend too much money on eating fancy chocolates that I then wash down with champagne. It's crazy expensive. Only Realbuzz Team members can afford such a habit.
 
I wished the Good Witch well with this ambitious agenda, and she immediately decided to go for something else. (If you must know, she is limiting her contact with the Bad Witch to once a month. Once every two weeks. No more than once a week. Which is a very good idea.) I went for something more achievable. Three things, actually.
 
Resolution #1: Put The Awful, Terrible NO GOOD Mail-Order Bride into book form. I’ll leave the chapters on Vella, too, even after I do. No one reads the story on Vella, as I hope you know, but Amazon keeps sending us monthly bonus money, anyway. It’s like we have our own wealthy, but befuddled, grandmother sending us birthday checks every 30 days. We’ve always had luck publishing books in February, so that’s my target.
 
Resolution #2: Complete these blogs. I promised to write a blog a week for one year and I’m almost there. This is Blog #50.
 
Resolution #3: Change my author’s picture on Amazon Central. I haven’t had blonde hair for a while, to my life partner’s regret, and the photo needs an update.
 
I don’t like how I look in pictures, never have. I think I may have found a solution to this. The image above came from a cellphone app known as Sketch Editor. There are several similar apps, like Sketch Master, Sketch Drawing, Pencil Sketch, but this was the first one I found, so I used it.
 
You can see from the drawing that the app struggles with shadows—what’s going on with the top of my head, anyway?—but the bags under my eyes, the wrinkles, the unsightly bits all got penciled away. Pencil-me looks better than real me has looked in ages.
 
Glynn says this is a cheat. I say, life can use a few cheats.
​ 
The topic remains under discussion. 

​Whoever’s in charge at your electric kettle company, let’s discuss a project rate for me to come in and work for you. I promise, I’ll be better at copywriting than whoever it is you’ve currently got.
 
I believe the electric kettle industry could use my help. The folks at SMEG Brand, makers of the SMEG electric kettle, are one of them. I mean, c’mon, they named their big dollar electric kettle ($169.95) SMEG. When they come out with a brand of dishware, they’ll probably label it PUKE.
 
There are better options. I can provide them. But, once again, I see I’ve gotten ahead of myself.  
 
First, let me tell you about my sudden interest in electric kettles. When I was visiting with family members last week, I was looking for a teakettle to brew a little Earl Grey.  The homeowner told me she didn’t own one. If I wanted to use it, though, her electric kettle was right there on the countertop.
 
For those of you who own electric kettles, why didn’t you tell me about this modern miracle? An electric kettle heats water faster than a conventional tea kettle. It turns itself off when the water is ready. It doesn’t whistle. Oh, how I hate that whistle.
 
I loved that electric kettle. I drank more tea more often just for the pleasure of using it.
 
When I returned home, I told my personal Boy Wonder that I wanted an electric kettle of our own. He didn’t see the need for one until I told him it would heat the water for his ramen more quickly. It would heat the water for his oatmeal faster. It wouldn’t whistle while he was on the pot (and not the teapot, if you get what I mean).
 
He can't stand the sound of a tea whistle, either. When we didn’t find what we wanted locally, I turned to Amazon. That’s where I discovered that the electric kettle industry needs someone who can polish their copywriting. A job—to remind you—that I’m ready to do. I won’t be cheap, but you don’t want cheap. When you go cheap, you end up with this ad line: Make boiling water fascinating (Topwit Electric Kettle).
 
That’s a flat-out lie, Topwit organization. When people want to impress other people, they are eager to find something extraordinary to share. There is no one on the planet who would bring a date to their kitchen, just so that he or she could watch water boil. In your heart, you know that.
 
A different ad line drove me away from the CHINYA Store. There, they claim, Complete Your Kitchen, Better Your Life. With that one line, I realized we don’t share the same life philosophy at all. If they’d posted Bulldoze Your Kitchen, Better Your Life, we could have been friends.
 
The words “kitchen” and “life” were also part of the Miosal Brand’s sales pitch. They said their kettle was a Warm Helper For Your Kitchen Life! while also promising that Safety and Quality Is Our Top Concerning!
 
Miosal Brand, you’ve got my email address. Use it.
 
But the client that really needs a hand is the EcoRealx people. First of all, did they mean to call their company EcoRelax, but someone scrambled the letters? If so, I say, let’s get that fixed. Second, the EcoRealx slogan is keep clam and drink coffee. Yes, you read that correctly. For reasons only they know, this company supports in-home clam adoption and coffee bean consumption at the same time. It’s a bold and unexpected approach to marketing.
 
For the right price, I can make it work. Hire me and I’ll contact clam providers, establishing easy clam access for those customers who are clam-deprived. I’ll advise people on how to care for their clam and provide suggestions on feeding, entertaining, and socializing with their clam. Bring me into the organization and I can be All Clam, All the Time.
 
That’s not all I can do for you, EcoRealx. In an effort to sell your $80 electric gooseneck kettle, you told Amazon shoppers everywhere, In 2021, EcoRealx travels through time In an “Eco” way, take you shuttling back and forth between delicious coffee and Relax life. No periods, random capitalization, run-on sentences… ProWritingAid and I have some issues with what you’ve written. Worse still, no one knows what this means.
 
Yes, you’re right, these are words in English. I give you that, especially since English is (hopefully) not your native tongue. you can do so much better. Well, you can’t, apparently, but I can. I’ll give you a tip for free: Forget the whole “Eco” way thing, whatever that is, and lean hard on the clam aspect of your presentation. Trust me.
 
It’s a winner. 

​I know the blog has dropped a couple of days late, but family life takes precedence over web life. I realize this pic isn't the best, either. What can I say? Sometimes you have to make do.

I'm not so much "on the road" as "in the airport" today. Being a proper little doobie, I arrived two hours before my flight. Once I reach Phoenix, I'll wait 90 minutes for the shuttle to arrive, then nearly another two hours before I reach home. *Sigh* This is not the most enjoyable way to spend a day.
 
As almost everyone knows, there's no longer much fun to be found in an airport. The "two hours early" rule seems about an hour too long. Security measures have improved—not that going through a security checkpoint isn't a special level of Hell, in and of itself—and crowds seem to be herded through the process more quickly than ever before. But Google Assist informed my phone that I needed to hit the road at 0738 if I wanted any chance to meet the recommended two-hour pre-flight deadline… and here I am. Blogging.
 
It's something to do while I sit, sit, sit and wait to be cattle-driven into the great metal bird. Despite Federal rules and regs, I notice some male members of society refusing to keep a mask over their mouth and nose. This isn't meant to be a sexist comment. It's only that, while on the trip here, I only saw men using chin-masks. On the way home, I only see men using chin-masks. Perhaps they're worried about chin-COVID. If that's a thing, I'm okay. My mask covers my nose, mouth, and chin.
 
I'm feeling a little grumpy. Can you tell? On the way here, the stewardi also appeared grumpy. It seems that no one is enjoying air travel any longer. We're all sharing this ordeal together, and all anyone wants is to be done with it and get home.

If it didn't take so long, I'd have gone by car. Driving from Point A to B, in my opinion, is frequently enjoyable. Generally, I can leave when I want and travel with people I like. (On the trip here, I sat beside a man who sniffed constantly. Speaking from behind his mask, Drip Nose assured me he had allergies, not a disease. Before staying with ancient relatives, I used a home COVID test, just in case.) Driving, travelers can stop and enjoy the sights as we go, riding in companionable silence, or listening to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, as the miles roll past.

I love listening to that decades-old radio mystery drama. Bob Bailey wasn't the first Johnny Dollar, and he wasn't the last, but he was the best. He sounded 6'2" tall and nicely muscled. In the television pilot that he filmed as Johnny Dollar, Bob turned out to be 5'9" and thin as a rail. Less of an action hero than the action hero's accountant. It's no wonder it never went to series.
 
It doesn't matter. His voice is marvelous. If you're wondering, the "transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account—America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator" can be downloaded free and legally, all over the internet. If you haven't given it the program a try, you're missing out.

I wish I'd loaded a few episodes to help this day pass more quickly. I will next time. Oh, Johnny Dollar, take me away! 

​For all of its not-goodness, 2021 ended nicely for me when I assisted in the construction of a gingerbread house. The kit came with already-baked walls and roof panels, somehow edible until June of this year, that only required a minimum of assembly before the goodies were applied. After I did the set-up, it looked like this:

​Yes, that’s load-bearing icing and plenty of it. Then the little ones came in—six-years-old and nine-years-old, girl and boy—to finish the hard part of the job. The decorating! The finished product lasted long enough for a couple of photos and congratulations from Mom and Stepdad. 

​Then the devouring began. My devouring days are over, but the wee ones attacked the house, gorfing the gumdrops and pretty bits just as quickly as you’d imagine. I wish I’d taken an after pic of the destruction.
 
2021 hadn’t quite concluded when, returning home, my guy and I did a store run. Christmas items were already discounted by fifty percent of their original price. Yes, this means shoppers could pick up the Holiday Time Toilet Golf Game for a sweet five bucks.

Grabbing my phone, I discovered that there are multiple companies that make toilet-based putting games. I know, right? Amazon is missing out on the Holiday Time version, but they’d be happy to sell you the Potty Putter Toilet Golf Game for a hefty $19.99. The toy has almost 4,000 ratings (4.5 out of 5 stars), there are nineteen answered questions—Q: Do I have to tip the caddy? A: Depends on how bad your game stinks—and it’s Amazon’s #1 Best Seller in Golf Putters.
 
I was astonished. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever until I saw my writing partner reach for his wallet.
 
He said, “I wonder how long it will take me to play eighteen holes.”