Life Update: So Much to be Grateful For

I just wanted to quickly let you know that things are going extremely well for us lately.

Dan’s job has been close to ideal. And my loved one with cancer has had a successful surgery in which they were able to remove the tumor.
2019 has been one of the hardest years of my life, but it’s ending as lovely as it could have. Each trial has been equally matched with a miracle and I’m leaving this year with even more than I started.
The biggest take away for me is the responsibility I feel to give back to others. Good and lucky things don’t happen to everyone every time. I want to remember my good fortune and work hard to help others.
So anyway! Thank you so much for the prayers and positivity. I really believe in my heart that it has made a difference and I’m so grateful to each and every person who has taken the time to read and care.
Love you.
PS Sorry for the quick and hasty writing but it is NaNo season after all. 🙂

Trying To Remember: The Indian in the Cupboard

This is a series where I try to write the synopsis of a movie BASED SOLEY on my ratty childhood memories of it.

 

cupboard

THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD

So there’s this kid… I don’t remember his name, but I remember it’s a really French-sounding name so I’m just going to call him Andre. Andre has, what I assume is a birthday party, where he is given a mysterious stand-alone cupboard by probably his eccentric grandpa or something. He also receives a set of small toy cowboys and Indians.

I’m pretty sure he’s disappointed about these presents and says something like, “I’m not a baby, I’m TWELVE.” Or something. I’m also pretty confident that he is quintessential 90s, with a big drowning shirt, chunky watch and center-parted Backstreet style hair.

90s

So, he’s looking through his plastic toys and for some reason, he puts the *Native American* in the cupboard. He turns the magical and mystical key and when he reopens the cupboard he discovers that his toy has now become a real boy.

realboy

Andre figures out that the Native American’s name is … Blackfoot? Little Blackfoot or something? I think he has to figure it out by pantomime. I don’t think that Little Blackfoot speaks any English. Okay so after the whole hey I’m a giant but I come in peace or whatnot, they become the best of pals. And he takes him to school in his pocket and everything. When Little Blackfoot gets hungry he puts a toy deer in the cupboard and even lets him build a fire in his room to eat it. I think he converts a little toy teepee for him to sleep in.

So someone, probably some dopey friend of his, accidentally puts a toy cowboy in the cupboard and turns the magical key. And this cowboy starts to fight Little Blackfoot and wounds him with his tiny toy rifle. Pierre… or Andre… or whatever the heck that kid’s name is, uses the cupboard to convert a toy soldier medic guy. He dresses the wound and saves Little Blackfoot. And I also feel like the cowboy comes around and they all eat the deer together.

indian31

I know there’s some dramatic scene that takes place in the front yard… and I don’t really know how this movie ends. I’m pretty sure, it just ends with him putting the people back in the cupboard one at a time and turning them back into toys. And I think it’s like this emotional good-bye for Andre because it’s permanent somehow??

Or maybe he continues to see Little Blackfoot every once and a while and they remain friends whenever it’s convenient for Andre to bestow him life. That’s probably the ending, I don’t know.

 

GOES AND READS THE REAL SYNOPSIS

Okay, “OMRI” and “LITTLE BEAR”. So I was close-ish.

The Parking Meter Dork as told by Alex Ness

What happens when you meet a poet on the internet and he tells you some random guy’s embarrassing story? YOU POST IT ON YOUR BLOG OF COURSE!

 

parking meters

 

THE BIGGEST DORK a Twitter DM composed by Alex Ness

“The biggest dork ever was a guy who refused to believe he was a dork.

He would go to lectures (this was back in college) and after a guest lecturer would discuss a famous epic movie, he’d get in line to ask questions and he’d drop the “Where do you get your ideas from” bomb. People would groan any time his hand would go up, and tell him, “You dork”.

So, despite his being called a dork he didn’t see it.

We were walking downtown on a Sunday night in late summer (before the new semester was to begin.) The roads are nearly empty and he starts asking why he was a dork. He perceived dork to mean clumsy, which of course, fits but is by no means the complete example. So he looks at the three others of us, and says “Could a dork do this?”

And he starts leapfrogging road parking meters.

Every five feet he’d leap and do it well. He had a rhythm. It didn’t look dorky at all. Until he leaped before he looked and on his way down to his normal landing position he saw a former parking meter shaft, cut off, at about 4 feet tall, and about 2 inches from his crotch. He screams in a child’s most high pitch fear voice, he can only slightly adjust his descent, and he gets hit straight in his family jewels. And for the next two hours his voice was high pitch, and he was crying.

I didn’t laugh, much, because I thought he ruptured his scrotum or individual nuts.

I offered to take him to ER. He cried for two days almost and told everyone how he was so great leaping the meters. Well, he neglected to tell the whole story, and while I avoided laughing at him and others finished the story, he couldn’t see how he slam-dunked the last chance to not be seen as a dork.

He was not only a dork, he was the Dork King.”

 

Alex Ness is a writer of prose, poetry, and sequential fiction (comics). From the state of Minnesota he shivers and writes in the basement of his home, covered in cats, and drinking Diet Mountain Dew. He loves myth, legends, and the power of words to tell epic and universal truths. His work can be found here https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Ness/e/B00TYW7724