​From what I’ve been reading, almost everywhere, apparently. But I haven’t been spending time in Portland, OR or Seattle, WA. I’ve been lounging about at the bottom of Arizona, sweltering.
 
The heat was worth it to see babies. Although, I must admit, I did check with my hostess to make certain her A/C was working again before I made the trip. I’m very happy to report, the air-conditioning unit worked very well – and almost constantly. The only time I realized the temperature had hit 113 Fahrenheit (45° Celsius) was when I went outside.
 
Consequently, I quit going outside.
 
If you’re wondering, as hot as it felt, this temperature is NOT hot enough to fry an egg on a sidewalk. According to Southern Living, eggs need to get up to 158 (F) to cook thoroughly and sidewalks top out at 145 (F). As a person, I’ve discovered that I top out at 113 (F). A couple of days ago, walking from my car to the house, I’m certain I cooked thoroughly.
 
On a side note, let me wish my USA-readers a wonderful Fourth of July this Sunday because July 4th is, of course, our country’s Independence Day… and “National Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk Day.” Like you, I’m amazed that I’m not kidding. In celebration of NFAEOTSD, Oatman, Arizona (population 43) holds a yearly egg-frying contest, bringing hundreds of tourists to the town, as well as a significantly smaller number of amateur chefs. As long as the contestants stay away from electricity or fire, they’re allowed to use whatever they like to produce their finest-looking fried egg.
 
Oatman, AZ has been doing this for 30 years. When they commit to a joke, they really commit. 

​From egg to larva to pupa to adult, a fruit fly’s life cycle runs about 10 days. They can last as long as fourteen days, but that’s only if they cut down on smoking, watch the alcohol, and exercise regularly.
 
Worker honey bees go for about six weeks before they give up the ghost, working themselves to death as they do almost all of the labor needed in their beehive. The queen bee, eating royal jelly and having lots of sex while the worker bees exhaust themselves, can live as long as five years. Let that be a lesson to you.
 
My guy’s Darn Tough Vermont’s “Men’s Stride Over the Calf Ultra-Lightweight Running Sock” – the ones with an unconditional lifetime guarantee – had a lifespan of less than three months. This corresponds roughly with the life cycle of the Beaver Pond Clubtail Dragonfly. One striking difference between the socks and the dragonflies is that my partner didn’t spend $71.52 for two pairs of flying insects under the assumption that they’d be in his sock drawer for the next twenty or thirty years.
 
I tried to warn him. I told him that Darn Tough’s “lifetime guarantee” didn’t guarantee that their socks would last a lifetime. It sounds like that’s what they’re promising, I agree, but it isn’t quite, is it? There’s some wiggle room there.
 
Although, c’mon, less than three months?
 
As you can see from the photo, one of the two pairs he purchased already needs to be replaced. (Also, as you can see from the photo, someone I know is never going to be a foot model.) Since the other pair of socks has survived to date while being worn once a week, maybe he just got unlucky and received a bum pair.
 
I hope so, because replacing these socks is more of a challenge than it needs to be. Here’s how it works: The unfortunate customer has to go online to submit a warranty claim. He or she has to document what was bought, where it was bought, and when it was bought. Then the paperwork has to be printed out, the (freshly-cleaned: it’s a rule) socks have to be put in a padded envelope or sturdy box, and then taken to the post office. The customer pays to send the socks to the Warranties Department and then waits to be notified that the socks were received. If that happens – it hasn’t yet – the customer picks a new pair and DVT ships it to them. Weeks will have passed.
 
A couple of thoughts here. Why does it matter when the socks were bought if there’s a lifetime guarantee? “It was bought within my lifetime,” would seem to be good enough. Why do the ruined socks have to go a padded envelope or sturdy box when they’d easily fit inside a regular manila envelope without padding? Also, since it’s DVT’s shoddy merchandise that needs replacing, why aren’t they paying for return shipping?
 
You know what I believe? I think DTV want to make the process as much of a pain in the ass as possible to keep people from requesting replacement socks. I’ll bet it works, too, for a large part of the time. Not with my man. He might be a little gullible, but he hates to be taken for a sucker. If his future pairs of Darn Tough socks survive for as little time as the last one, he’ll be in line at the post office again… and again… and again… until the Warranties Department knows him on a first-name basis.
 
One way or another, those socks are gonna last him a lifetime.
 
Darn Tough of Vermont, you disappointed my guy. 

​Temperatures are rising in this part of Arizona – I know, it’s June. What did I expect? – but, like the Phalaenopsis orchid, I don’t enjoy the heat. And… excuse me. Like the Phalaenopsis orchid, I’m easily sidetracked. So, let me take you down that particular track for a moment.
 
If you follow the link, it will take you to a site called JustAddIceOrchids.com. This website features a two-part article on “How Will Heat Affect My Phalaenopsis Orchid?”, which feels like one part too many. I am going to get to the gist of it right here **Spoiler! Spoiler!**: your Phalaenopsis Orchid will not appreciate extreme heat. Or cold temperatures, either. It’s a picky thing, the Phalaenopsis Orchid. It wants to be kept between 65-85F, thank you very much.
 
While you are at the JustAddIceOrchids.com website, a pop-up will appear that says, Hi there! I’m Bertie the Plant Care Bot and I’m here to answer your plant care questions. You should know that Bertie is not a live person (Bertie has bolded this information so that visitors won’t get confused) and he won’t tolerate any foolishness with the questions he’s presented. You can’t ask, “Why doesn’t my Phalaenopsis Orchid return my texts?” or “Should I maybe dump my Phalaenopsis Orchid for that little heat-tolerant tramp, the Penstemon?”
 
These were the things I wanted to know, but Bertie wouldn’t let me ask. Such a robotic spoilsport.
  
Like a certain orchid I know, I thrive in moderate conditions and, yet, I was sweet-talked by a certain life partner and ended up in Arizona. During the months of June, July and August, no sane person in Arizona takes a long morning walk past 8:00 AM. As a result of this, me and my certain life partner get up WAY too early to take our morning stroll, up and down hills.
 
The other day, we found that someone had dragged a sofa out to curbside and was offering it, per the picture above, absolutely free. While we marched up the incline, and in the sofa’s general direction, my life partner said, “We’ve been wanting a new sofa.”
 
Never in my life had I told him, “I’ve been dreaming of getting a sad-looking curbside sofa to infest the living room. Do you think we’ll ever be lucky enough to find one?”
 
I told him, warningly, “It’s free.” His optimistic response was, “The best things in life are free.” With apologies to the Melbourne Ska Orchestra, what a crock.
 
Drawing closer, this is what we found:

​“What happened to the cushions?” my guy asked. "What are those stains?"
 
I knew what the stains looked like, but I didn't care to share. Then we trudged home and poured a couple of mugs of not-free iced coffee.
 
One last note: Although Amazon Vella has yet to launch, we’ve completed our first storyline for the service. Because serial fiction takes its cues from television, this is considered Season One. Forty-three episodes, nearly 70,000 words, and we’re very pleased with how it came together.
 
Once we can offer it to the reading public, the first three episodes will be… free.
 
You have been warned.
 

I want to talk about the actor/writer/director Daniel Levy, then do a little humble-brag without the humble, and then I’ll go away. It won’t take long.
 
Dan Levy and his father, Eugene, are most recently known for having co-created a television show by the name of Schitt’s Creek. When the sitcom first appeared on Netflix, I avoided it like a televised plague. That title. (I almost called this week’s blog, Always give a Schitt’s, but decided against it. This was the right call.) I still wouldn’t have seen it if people we liked hadn’t kept saying it was funny, that we needed to watch at least one episode, so one day we did. A couple of days later, we saw another. The show was good-hearted and we sometimes laughed, and what else do you want from a sitcom? Glynn and I made it through season three before the thrill faded and we wandered off in search of other entertainment.
 
Three seasons of viewing any program is pretty good for this household. We enjoyed both seasons of Better Off Ted on Netflix, wished it had more episodes, but didn’t complain because we knew we wouldn’t have watched them. We had a great time with the first season of Stranger Things, heard that more episodes were coming, couldn’t find the enthusiasm to add them to the queue. When it comes to t.v. shows, I’m particularly fickle and my partner usually plays along.
 
Anyway, whether we made it to the end or not, we liked Schitt’s Creek. By extension, we liked the characters on it and the people who played them. So, when I read that Dan Levy was delivering the virtual commencement address to the Savannah College of Art and Design Class of 2021, I thought it would be worth a listen. He wrote a good show; maybe he knew how to write a good speech.
 
I couldn’t find the commencement address online (SCAD seems to have blocked it), but Bustle.com was able to provide a transcript of his closing words. It started with Dan saying, “The one thing that I would say is: follow through. That’s the greatest advice I could give because so few people actually do it.”
 
This struck a chord with me. Making promises is easy, but keeping those promises can be pretty tough. For example, I promised to do a weekly blog for an entire year even though people no longer read blogs and my life is not blog-worthy. It’s a deadly combination. Not wanting to disappoint Dan, I guess I’ll continue posting this blog for the 52 weeks I’ve promised.
 
This, by the way, is week #17. Yes, I’m counting.
 
Back to the transcript: Dan went on to say, “If you have an idea for something, in whatever form of the arts it is, if you have that painting you have in mind, and it gets tricky, and you are given that crossroads of ‘Do I give up on it or do I keep going?’ always keep going. If you’re a writer and you want to write a book, or a book of poetry, or a television show, or a movie and it gets a bit daunting and intimidating and you get that writer’s block, don’t give up on it. Because at the end of that experience, you will have something. Ninety-nine percent of the people out there have all the ideas in the world but never follow through on it.”
 
“Always keep going.” This is where Dan and I aren’t quite on the same page. What if someone knows they’re doing a lousy painting? I’ve done that. I was midway through a too-many-weeks painting and I knew it was only getting worse. I didn’t want to spend more days in an effort to finish that catastrophe. I gave up and started a different painting. I like how that one turned out.
 
And, although I no longer get writer’s block, thanks to something Nora Roberts once said, that doesn’t mean I’ve never given up on a writing project. I have a pair of half-finished manuscripts in a trunk in the garage. In one case, the story took a turn, I didn’t like where it was going, and I couldn’t get it back on-track without starting from scratch. I dumped it. In the second case, my life took a turn and I couldn’t get that back on track before I’d lose interest in what I was writing. I dumped that one, too. When I was able to come up for air, I wrote a different manuscript, instead.
 
That’s not all. I’ve spent more than a couple of hours today, trying to see how I was going to transition from Dan’s well-meaning but bad advice into my not-so-humble brag. I’ve tried all kinds of ways, and it’s just not coming together. According to D.L., I can’t stop in the middle of the thing and simply walk away. I have to keep pounding away at it, rewrite after rewrite, until some sad string of sentences finishes the thing. I don’t see how this benefits any one of us.
 
“Never give up, never surrender” appears to be the Levy family motto. (In our house, the family motto is, “We will gladly feast on those who would subdue us.”) Sometimes it is better to stop in the middle of something and walk away. If you stop and think about it, there is

​Well, I do. Don’t you, at least on occasion?
 
When I’m with my brother or cousins, the people I grew up, I don’t watch the words I use. Frankly, on those occasions I can swear like a drunken sailor on leave. (This is not meant to imply that all sailors get drunk or swear while on leave. This is an unwarranted stereotype. The only reason I’ve used it is because (a) it’s easily understood by the people who read my words; and (b) I have it on good authority that there are no sailors who read my words. They’re too busy getting drunk and swearing.) My brother, cousins, and I learned a variety of swear words early in our lives, were rarely discouraged from using them when we were on our own, and we’re all quite comfortable giving our thoughts and opinions a special swearword-emphasis when the right occasion arises.
 
There are times when a good swear is indicated. It’s not satisfying to say something like, “Gosh, the darn toilet has backed up and sent poopy everywhere.” Glynn doesn’t speak nearly as colorfully as me, but even he wouldn’t say that. Consequently, when Glynn does release a swear word, it makes a real impact to the people around him. If the darn toilet was sentient and heard him cuss, it would refuse to release its poopy into the wild.
 
Now, if you were considering inviting me to the Royal Gala but this blog has given you second thoughts, you needn’t worry. I can be polite in social settings. I don’t even say, “Gosh”, to strangers unless I notice they have a plumbing issue.
 
As it happens, we avoid using Earth-based profanity when we write fiction. For Aly’s Luck, we used alien profanity liberally. It was fun, making up new and non-offensive swear words like “chund”. In our historical romances, even the bad guys rarely curse. People did curse in the good ol’ days, and they used most of the same swears that someone would hear today. That doesn’t seep into our stories, though. No one has ever asked us to censor our words; if they did, I’d color the pages blue with every obscenity I could think of. People haven’t, though. That’s just how we have chosen to write.
 
This might change in the near future.
 
I think it’s time to try something different. Tired of waiting for Amazon Vella to get going, we revamped one of our contemporary romances for submission to a different serial fiction app. (Serial fiction, as you’ll recall, are stories told in short installments and intended to be read on cell phones. The installments are released on a regular basis, one or twice or five times a week, with the most popular stories relying heavily on drama and cliffhangers.) This new take on an old story involved a change in perspective – Third Person to First, and that was an interesting experience – as well as an increase in romantic heat and a fresh boldness in the speech of our characters. In this “new” story, some of them speak like I do when I’m with my cousins. Except a couple of them want to have sex with one another.
 
I think it sounds right for the story. So does Glynn, and so does the editor who contacted us shortly before the Memorial Day holiday. If we like the contract they’re offering, we’re in.
 
Gosh darn it, I’m excited just thinking about it.
  
**Note: Jonathan Cooper of Unsplash provided Teddy’s image that’s above. Teddy’s shirt wasn’t blurred in the original photo. Thank you, Jonathan.