Category Archives: #Life styles and entertainment

The Alphabet Series

#Life styles and entertainment, #Writer's Block/Cure, #Writing Exercise, Uncategorized August 13, 2023
Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

D is For Disappear

D is for disappear as in the New York Times Best Seller novel, “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.

Nick and Amy Dunne, two out of work New York City writers, move to Nick’s childhood home in North Carthage, Missouri when they learn Nick’s mother is fatally ill.

Nick is a journalist.

Amy writes surveys or opinion questionnaires, e.i., Which of the following will lead to personal happiness.

A.  Caring more about others than yourself

B.  Discovering a passion

C.  Exercising and eating well daily

D.  All of the above

Nick persuades Amy to invest the last of her Trust Fund in a business for him and his twin sister, Margo. They name the bar, “The Bar”.

Amy disappears on their wedding anniversary, and Nick becomes the prime suspect.

However she didn’t disappear, she’s hiding.

Gillian Flynn has written a plot driven novel that I read quickly and was reviewed favorably, but I could have put the book down easily. The twisted ending was a turn off for me. The movie also has the same distortion of love, or love gone crazy ending. I like happy endings.

“As The Washington Post proclaimed, her work ‘draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.’ Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit with deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.”

Amy’s disappearance is not to vanish, perish or cease to exist. Her vanishing act is one of revenge and dysfunction, concocted when she discovers Nick’s infidelity. Victimized and  bamboozled Amy plans to get even and does.

I can imagine the survey/questionnaire Gillian Flynn might ask readers to take about her character, Amy.

What makes this character happy?

A.  If you can’t have the one you love make sure no one else can either.

B.  Make everyone who hurts or disappoints you suffer for the rest of their lives.

C.  Inflicting pain on others is key to personal happiness.

D. All of the above

The author, Gillian says “she was not a nice little girl,” and “Libraries are filled with stories on generations of brutal men, trapped in a cycle of aggression. I wanted to write about the violence of women”

“The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”

Have you read the book or seen the movie?

                                                                                         . . . just saying

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Writing Tips

#Life styles and entertainment, Uncategorized August 9, 2023

Note to self. . . destroy things you’ve written, when you haven’t a clue what it says or why I have a picture of it. It may have been a timed exercise? Anyhow, I thought Eileen Moynihan’s post worth sharing.

Open 3: Open Hearts and Minds with your Writing

C is for Curmudgeon

#Life styles and entertainment, Uncategorized August 5, 2023

Please let me know if you enjoyed this post. Thank you. The picture is of my husband. We’ve been married for 52 years. Yes, he can be grumpy!

The Alphabet Series C is for Curmudgeon

It’s Father’s Day

#Life styles and entertainment, #Memories, Uncategorized June 18, 2023

Sweet Memories

The pedaling of an old man riding a wide-tire bicycle grabs my attention as I drive Acoma road. The methodical around and around of the bike’s wheels is mesmerizing.  I press the car brakes, slow to a crawl and drop back, to give the senior space, as we approach the corner stop.

He wears red Keds, and a large droopy straw hat shades his face from the morning sun. He sports a long sleeve plaid shirt and hazardous baggy Dockers. The blue and chrome fender bike has no basket or hand brakes.

Behind him rides a man in a metallic Speedo shirt, and black skin-tight shorts.  He wears a helmet and mustache, and he does not pass abruptly. Instead, he moves to coast gently beside the elder, a solid traffic barrier.  They ease the corner, two abreast, like dancing a Minuet synchronized to Chopin. I stop at the corner. . . rather than go straight. I turn right. . . and follow them, absorbed in their relationship.

They are a pair. Paternal. Their head, back, and shoulders are a younger/older version, of the other.  The son deliberately peddles ahead, never looks back, but hoovers; and allows his father to ride independently. The old man’s bike wheels don’t wobble. The handlebars do not shake. There is an air of pride accompanying his movement.

As they resume their single file adventure, I drive by, see his wrinkled face, and guess the elder is eighty. I catch a glimpse of the son’s full head of peppered gray hair, and face with minimal expression lines, when passing, and guess . . . he’s nearing sixty.

My mind conjures a past Father’s Day,

I imagine it is 1958, the father wears the same plaid shirt, Dockers and Keds. The son, is dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt. The father, leads the way with subtle protectiveness and allows the son to celebrate his newly acquired skill, riding a bike.

“Daddy, look at me!” He yells with a big smile.

Today is Father’s Day 2012. I watch the pair celebrate with the simple act of being together. Pedaling their bicycles, and needing each other in a different way.

 . . . just saying

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*Post was originally published in 2012, over ten years ago on claudiajustsaying.wordpress.com

A Victory Garden

#Life styles and entertainment, Uncategorized June 11, 2023

A Smithsonian Libraryhttps://library.si.edu/exhibition/cultivating-americas-gardens/gardening-for-the-common-good

Last week’s discussion explored the silliness of buying and discarding plastic, and how to STOP. Reader’s comments that they reuse glass jars instead, does make more sense and I’ve adopted the practice.

My friend, Pat, suggested buying laundry detergent sheets on line. She’s mentioned this before, and now I’m ready to listen. Those huge plastic containers are difficult to lift, store, and estimates say; take 450 years to decompose in a landfill. Carol, my Wordle consort, said fabric softener sheets are the way to go.

Clean People offers both laundry and softener sheets at reasonable prices on line.

But when Johanna quoted a daughter-in-law’s plea “TO SAVE THE PLANET,” I conjured numerous images in my head. Eleanor Roosevelt was among them, and although she crusaded for many causes her Victory Garden stands out for me.

“Victory gardens (originally called war gardens or liberty gardens) made their first appearance during World War I (1914–1918). President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to plant vegetable gardens to ward off the possible threat of food shortages. Americans took up the challenge as a civic and patriotic duty.”

The idea wasn’t new, but Eleanor gave it momentum because people began one by one to plant a garden. And nosy neighbors, not wanting to be unpatriotic planted one too.

“In 1943, with World War II underway, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a victory garden planted on the front lawn of the White House—just one of the millions of victory gardens planted that year. Staged photographs in seed catalogs and instructional manuals often showed women and children tending victory gardens. The message: abundant yields were possible for any aspiring gardener. Today, the Smithsonian’s Victory Garden flourishes on the 12th Street side of the National Museum of American History. In the summer, the garden showcases heirloom varieties of flowers and vegetables that were available to gardeners during World War II.”

There are numerous Save the Planet organizations. All of them do good work, but none have resulted in a grass roots effort to get us to STOP USING PLASTIC. Perhaps we can do we can spread the word.

                                                                               . . . just saying

P.S. Please don’t look to me for a Victory Garden, in Florida the soil is sand, and if the deer don’t eat it a rabbit of bug will.

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