Mary Did You Know?

Christmas is coming up fast, it seems. I feel like I am so far behind and totally not ready. Maybe it’s because it’s so warm yet. My brain thinks it’s still October. Anyway, I thought I would share a little exercise that I am doing with my friends from church – it is helping me practice gratitude and reminding me of the joy that came with the birth of Christ.

The holidays are busy for everyone and some of us fly south for the winter (not me, in case you were wondering – although with El Nino upon us, I’m not sure you can tell the difference between Florida and Wisconsin right now) so we are participating, via email, in prayerful reflection (lectio divine) over a single scripture.

The scripture we are reflecting on is this:  And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. Luke 2:1

Yeah, what a fun one…government and taxes.

But of course, we all know the “rest of the story..” (read in Paul Harvey’s voice for best results).  Because of this decree, Joseph and Mary have to schlep from Nazareth to Bethlehem of Judea – 80 odd miles via roadways made 2000 years ago (translation:  really crappy roads).  On foot.  For over a week.  During the rainy season.  Wearing layers of woolen cloaks.  Up and down and up and down hills.  Sleeping outside.  In the mud.  And the cold.  Carrying all of their own provisions.  With Mary 9 months pregnant (NINE MONTHS!).

Oh wait – they had a donkey.  That makes it so much better.

I just realized that Mary had the perfect labor and delivery story to use on Jesus.  “I had to walk 80 miles!  Pregnant!  In the rain!  Uphill!  And after we got there, we couldn’t find a hotel and ended up having you in a cave.  And then a bunch of smelly shepherds piled in and then those singing angels!  Oy!  The singing!  The noise!  The smell!  And the next day we had to go pay taxes.  TAXES!  You should be so lucky.  So don’t tell me you’re “too tired” to heal the sick.  I’ll give you “too tired….”

Meanwhile Jesus is rolling his eyes and picking at the food on his plate, wondering why all the OTHER kids get to go to the camel races.

I remember my ninth month with both of my pregnancies. I don’t recall it as being a “good time”. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a time for an 80 mile hike – with or without a donkey.  I couldn’t see my feet, which is surprising because they had grown a size and were swollen to the point that the only shoes that fit were Dave’s slippers. I had to pee every 5 minutes which meant I had to somehow negotiate the physics of sitting down and standing up without tipping over into the bathtub.

I couldn’t stand very long without my stomach muscles threatening to flee the country and when I sat down, my pelvis felt like it was burrowing it’s way to China. Laying down was marginally better, except the having to pee every 5 minutes thing and flopping around like a big ole fat fish trying to get out of the waterbed (a sight to see, mind you. And stop raising your eyebrows about the waterbed. This was the eighties. I’m old, remember?).

So the very idea of poor Mary and Joseph spending the last week of her pregnancy hiking thru the hills of Galilee and Judea gives me a new appreciation for my millennial comforts.  I think I shall go out in the garage and hug my car now, thank you very much.  And my accountant.  And my nice hospital where I gave birth to my children in my fancy birthing suite.  And that county road worker over there, laying down the new asphalt so I can drive my car on nice smooth roads.  Oh wait…he’s running away.  Why is he running?  Wow, he is fast!  Fine!  Don’t get your hug then!  Your loss, buddy!

So “it came to pass” that cars were invented and hospitals and accountants and yoga pants and cute maternity tunics and Skechers.  And women sometimes took these things for granted until they read about Mary and then became ever so grateful that God had allowed them to be born in a time that did not require 80 mile hikes and riding on donkeys and giving birth in caves in front of smelly shepherds because it was weird enough having half the nursing and intern staff staring at her nether regions.

May the peace and joy of our living Savior follow you throughout this holiday season, as we celebrate His humble birth.

Joyous-Grateful-Christmas-Tactically yours,

Sue

PS.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.  And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. – Luke 2:7-14

 

Come In Orson

It is now the end of my NaNoWriMo experiment. I did not write a novel. I did not write 50000 words. I did not pass Go. I did not collect $200. But I did write almost every day, and I tried to get at least 500 words in when I wrote. I came close enough to this goal to be happy, and to call this experiment a “win”.

As a bonus, I learned a lot about myself and about how I write.   I can tell you are all just dying to know, so in the words of the great Samuel Mo-Fo Jackson: “Hold on to your butts.”

I LIKE TO WRITE.

That seems less monumental now that I see it in print. I mean, “Duh”, right?  But I was getting to the point of dreading my time at the keyboard.  I wanted every line to be perfect and I wanted everyone to believe my writing was perfect and I wanted to fit my square-ass peg in a round-ass hole.  Over thinking and editing every line lead to slow and painful writing, and when I couldn’t keep up with what I thought my imagined pace should be, I wrote less and had less joy doing it.

NaNoWriMo, however, is all about writing without editing.  Just letting the words fly out onto the paper, all willy-nilly and higgley-piggley.  I about had a coronary the first few days.  But then I got into it.  It became fun.  Nothing made sense at first, but I didn’t care.  I was writing, and as I wrote, I found golden nuggets along the way.

My main golden nugget?  Writing is a whole lot more fun when I’m not being such an anal asshole to myself.

MY WRITING STYLE IS MESSY.

I write the same way I clean my house. I make a fantastic mess and then somehow, in between looking at old photos and reading long forgotten sales flyers, I organize it into place again. I also leave cupboard doors open while I am cooking. I don’t know if this is related, but it drives certain people in my life crazy. So if leaving cupboard doors open is a pet peeve of yours, feel free to rant about it in the comments. It won’t change anything, but I know it will make you feel better.

I am much happier and more productive when I make a big writing mess, and then go thru it all later and puzzle it into a single, flowing, beautiful, angelic document of pure bliss and perfection. It is absolutely just as time consuming as my old way of writing one sentence and then editing it to death, but I get to write a lot more and I am editing less. I believe speed and overall better writing will take place over time and if it doesn’t – who cares?  But it will. And you know why? Because of…

PRACTICE

Why am I so old before I am finally understanding the concept of practice and not perfection?

When I was a teenager, my friends and I were Steve Martin fanatics, to the point of purchasing banjos and taking banjo lessons. Serious groupie behavior. However, to play the banjo with the same skill as Steve Martin involves years of dedicated practice. YEARS. And I wanted perfection, and I wanted it yesterday. I still love Steve Martin, but I no longer own a banjo.  I sold it when I realized that I would never dedicate enough time and energy to being that good.  It was a desire, but it wasn’t a dream I was willing to fight that hard for.

Writing has been a similar experience for me – I believed I was supposed to be perfect right out of the gate. Except I wasn’t.  And my writing was all over the place.  And I kept switching my genre.  And writing became a chore.

But this WAS my dream.  And still is.  I refused to give up.  And still do.  I will be in Kristin Lamb’s 5% of 5% of 5%, even if it takes me until I’m 90.  Even if I suck.  Even if no other living human ever reads another word I write, although that would be terribly depressing.

Because my new attitude is practice.  I can’t get better if I’m not writing.  I can’t find open doors and opportunities if I am not actively learning and participating in the writing world.  And I now know that it will always be “practice” and not “perfection.  And I am so very okay with that.  Finally.

THE BLOG

Photography is a lot of fun, but it’s not my first love.  I have time to be either a really good photographer or a really good writer.  I have to pick one and commit (which also relates to genre).

So I am going to stop muddying the waters of my blog, and will be pulling away from photo challenges and instead focusing on humorous posts as they relate to day-to-day living. I will publish every two weeks. On a Monday. With a full elvish moon.  Carved into stone by Wolverine at high tide during the festival of Shirtless Jackman, while Steve Martin plays Foggy Mountain.

THE NOVEL.

I will write one. But not this year. This year, I will be focusing on practice, establishing permanent writing habits, doing a few workshops, reading books about writing – that sort of thing.  Oh yeah and maybe realize my dream of being the next Sue DeGroot.  Who is great, by the way.  In case you missed that.

Of course I will still be biking and hiking and rolling around in the dirt and picking wood ticks off the dogs and eating butt loads of cake, and then coming back here to tell you about it – humorously of course. But I think…I think it will finally all make sense.  At least to me.  You guys are probably screwed.

Writingly yours,

Sue

PS.  Thanksgiving was awesome and pie filled – it’s the one time of year pie is an acceptable alternative over cake.

PPS.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you all gained as much weight as I did.  Because I’m considerate that way.

PSS.  I would like to thank all of you who have inspired me and encouraged me to keep writing.  Some of you know who you are.  Some of you have no idea.  I was going to name names, but chances are I will forget someone significant and then feelings will be hurt and wars will rage and all of mankind will cease to exist.  So instead, here are the letters of all the initials of all of you.  A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.  And the entire Klingon alphabet, just for good measure.

 

Mork Calling Orson

  

My hat’s off to any and all participating in the full 50k word NaNoWriMo.  You are dedicated, hardworking, inspirational…and if I may be so bold and not too horribly offensive…mentally deranged.

I tried one day to hit 1700 words (the average word count needed per day to hit a 50k goal over 30 days) and my last paragraph read something like this:  Because I’m trying to find things to write about to get all my words in so I can stop writing. Ok really don’t need to get all my words in. Need to write for 5 more minutes. This isn’t very fun. Tomorrow I will actually write something resembling a blog post. I had the idea for 50 shades of brown – poop color coded underwear that hide skid marks depending on if you picked the right shade of brown for that day. This idea sounds like a Tommy Halvelford (Parks and Rec) idea. And I think I just spelled his name wrong.

I was supposed to be writing my “story”.  However, I came into this challenge with no characters, no plot, no ideas.  Oh wait – I had one thing – the name of my protagonist.  And you know how I picked out that name?  My name spelled backwards.  Yeah, because that’s the level of skill we are dealing with here:  Bits and pieces of weird and obscure information that randomly pop into my head.

On a side note:  I have noticed lately that I write in puns.  Usually unintended, although I will often notice them when I am editing and may point it out with a “see what I did there?” in case you aren’t Belgian and didn’t notice.  I just re-read my 1700 word travesty and found this: I wonder if I should try fleshing out my character more. Like, make her fat.  Really, Sue?  This is why mommy drinks.

My subsequent writing has been a mix of blog ideas, adding more to my “story”, such as it is, and journaling.  And I am keeping to my original goal of 500 words a day, 15 minutes per day except weekends, where I try to get in an hour so I can do editing on all the garbage I wrote earlier, because I almost had a mental breakdown the first day of writing without editing.  My OCD was on FIRE.

Even taking that into consideration, this has been a very positive experience so far.  Number One – I’m writing every day and Number Two – I’m having fun.  Now, how many of you who read “Number Two” instantly thought of poop?  You are my target audience for “Fifty Shades of Brown”.  If you think I’m not writing that, you are so very wrong.  That shit’s gonna be a best seller. <—- Pun alert for you non-Belgians.

And yes, I realize that if I have to point it out, it’s probably not that funny.  But then again, I think, “What if they miss it?  It’s so funny!  I’m so funny!  Sue is great!” so I always point it out.  WHEN I NOTICE IT.  If you see any I haven’t deliberately noted, please let me know.  You will be given a large reward of Nothing, but you will have bragging rights and I will respond to your comment with “_________ is great.”  allowing you a nanosecond of being greater than the greatest person in the universe:  Me.

Poopingly yours,

Sue

NaNo! NaNo!

This month I am semi-participating in NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month.  This is a writing challenge that spans the month of November, and the goal is to write 50,000 words towards a single work of fiction.

I am going to be a bit of a NaNoWriMo rebel, however. First of all, I don’t write fiction (yet) and second of all, I can’t commit to 50,000 words (yet). However, I do want to establish better writing habits and eventually write an actual book – whether it be a work of fiction or a collection of anecdotes or the Adult Book of Pooping (hey, write what you know).

My main goal in this challenge is to create a new writing habit, which I will achieve by hitting 15,000 words for the month, and committing to writing at least 15 minutes each week day, and an hour each Saturday and Sunday.  And I am publicly signing up via my blog as a way to hold myself accountable – if I tell you about it, I will be more likely to follow through.   Feel free to send encouragement.  And if that doesn’t work, send cake.

One of the other points to NaNoWriMo is to try to write without editing.  To give you an example of how excruciatingly hard this is for me, realize that I retyped this very paragraph 6 times.  Obviously, my inner Mrs. Editor is a raging lunatic.

Getting caught up in editing on-the-go and rewriting the same paragraph twenty times until I get it just right (or just “write”…hahahahhaaaaaaa!  I kill me.) is not conducive to word count or creativity.  I really want to learn to just write without worrying so much about how pretty it sounds. Making it pretty can come AFTER I get the actual idea on paper.

Participating in this challenge means not as many hours watching Parks & Rec on Netflix, lurking on Facebook, or playing Spider Solitaire (I have won using 4 suits.  Yeah, I’m kind of a big deal.).  I feel kind of sad about that, actually.  I mean, this could be an entire month of no Andy Dwyer falling in the pit or Leslie Knope eating waffles.  Dave does a killer Ron Swanson imitation though, and we live with April Ludgate, so I guess I will survive.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that’s what’s goin’ down.  On the down low.  Fo shiz.  WERD.  Wait, no – WORD.  Or PAGES if you are on a Mac.

Your favorite dork,

Sue

PS.  Every time I see “NaNoWriMo”, I hear Mork from Ork saying “Nano, Nano” in my head. And yes, that is a little distracting, especially when I am supposed to be writing and not digging around on the internet for Robin Williams photos.

PPS.  Shazbut!

PPSS.  Mork calling Orson.  Come in, Orson!

PPPSS.  I miss Robin Williams.

FitBit Round 2

“You look like a weirdo bouncing around out here,” said my husband from his open truck window. He had that look on his face. The one where he thinks I’m adorable on the one hand but doesn’t want to admit our marital status on the other. I grinned and leaned in the window, planting a kiss on his cheek, hoping that would sway him closer to “adorable” for the day.

I refrained from ‘bouncing” while he continued on his way to work, but as soon as he was out of sight, I began jogging in place again – I had to get some steps in before I was chained to my desk for the day.  Every morning I take the dogs for their “poop walk”.  The main goal is the production of outdoor tootsie rolls and not indoor tootsie rolls camouflaged on our brown carpet only to be found by an unsuspecting bare foot. Not a pleasant way to wake up.

However, our oldest dog, Lucky, is like a fussy old Englishman when it comes to picking his outdoor bathroom:  “Shall I poop here? No, no, no – doesn’t smell right. Shall I poop here, then? Hmmm. No, not quite right yet. Perhaps this spot? Drat! Still not right….Oh?  What’s this?  A delightfully dead worm!  I think I shall sniff it for 10 minutes and then roll madly about all over it!”

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST POOP ALREADY!!!

In the past, I just wandered along behind them, slack eyed and drooling before my first cup of coffee.  But, since climbing back on the FitBit pony, I realized there was a wealth of steps to be made on this walk, if only I was willing to look like the neighborhood idiot.

Seriously.  I look like that chick on the prancersize videos, only in the bustier Clydesdale version. Now, imagine seeing that come by your window when you first wake up in the morning. You can kinda see why Dave might want to deny all knowledge my existence.

Thankfully, I am NOT wearing revealing white pants.  Instead, I don the clothing of my people:  A Packer sweatshirt and pajama pants.  Hey, it’s 6:30 in the morning.  Be happy I have on a bra.

A bit of history: I bought my first FitBit Zip last year – you can read that story here – and proceeded to destroy it via wash machine. At it’s untimely demise, I fished out another crisp $100 bill and laid it down for the next step up – the FitBit Flex. Which I lost within a month because I had the great idea of attaching it to my shoe while I rode my bike (Note to self:  You are a bonehead.  That is all.).

I decided then that i was too irresponsible (and now too poor) to own a FitBit and I hung up my obsessive compulsive I MUST STEP ALL THE STEPS shoes.

Until, one day, I saw this beauty – the FitBit Charge HR.  Besides counting steps, it counts calories burned, flights of stairs climbed, and miles walked.  It has a sleep mode and an exercise mode.  It’s a watch and it pairs with my phone and buzzes with an incoming call.  Oh yeah, and it has a heart monitor in it!  Be still my geeky heart.  Nevermind that it cost more than both of my other two put together.  IT HAS A HEART MONITOR!!

FitBit Charge HR

So now I have this new FitBit and I’m in about a thousand challenges a week and let me tell you I am kicking FitBit ASS.

Some might say it’s become a little life controlling.  “Some” would be wrong.  I can quit anytime.  So what if we don’t have any clean underwear and I spend my evenings walking around the kitchen table until midnight?

Dave was downstairs watching TV and I had been marching around the kitchen for about 20 minutes when he came upstairs and glared at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Um…getting my steps in?”

“For the love.  It sounded like a herd of elephants from downstairs.  You need to get a grip.”

Fine.  I’ll walk outside.  In the dark, dark, dark outside, where we have no streetlights or sidewalks, past the woods and the cornfields, and pray I don’t get hit by a car.  Or attacked by a werewolf.  Or snatched by the Children of the Corn.

Now, if you will excuse me – I have to go find my crucifix and garlic cloves so I can go for a walk.

Until next time,

Werewolf Bait Sue

PS:  I have since learned from other people that FitBit has indeed sent people new units even if they have lost them in incredibly stupid ways, like drunk swimming, bungee jumping, wearing them during an alien abduction, leaving them in 1986 during a hot tub time machine incident, etc.

PPS.  I only bring this up because my very wise oldest sister told me to contact them both times and I didn’t follow her very sage and intelligent advice.

PPSS.  And it pains me to say this, but YOU WERE RIGHT, TERRI!

PPPSS.  Sue is still great.

 

Hot Tub Time Machine

Once upon a time I was going to write a blog post about the odd phenomenon of abandoned shoes found lying on our streets, county highways, and interstates.  I mean, it’s weird- right?  Because it’s not even pairs of shoes.  It’s single shoes.  And most disturbing, sometimes it’s a toddler shoe.  Like, what even happened here?  How did some baby just randomly lose a shoe on the interstate?  And it’s not like you’ve only seen them once or twice – IT’S ALL THE TIME.  Anywhere in the US, you can hop in the car, drive down your local highway and find at least one shoe within the first 10 miles.

That alone is enough to call Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine – time to bring in those meddlin’ kids.  But my discovery this morning really takes the cake.  And you know how I feel about cake.

On my way to town, I noticed a large, round object in the ditch.  I was running late (shocker, I know), so I only glanced at it, thinking it was a big spool of construction wire or maybe a big new cement culvert or something.  But on the way home, I was driving at a much more sedate pace (translation: speed limit), and noticed that what I had originally thought was a culvert, was actually an abandoned hot tub.

Wait.  What?

A hot tub?  How does one go about littering a hot tub?  It’s not like chucking an empty pop can (or baby shoe) out the window.  This is a fricking hot tub.  A HOT TUB PEOPLE.

Abandoned Hot Tub Time Machine. 1986, anyone?

This is by far, the weirdest, random, piece of trash I have ever found on the side of the road.  Like, whoever threw this out deserves a 5 million dollar littering fine, and maybe a medal because how did they even lift it out the window.

Okay, I’m sure it was on the back of someones pick up truck but still.  “Gee, I don’t want my hot tub anymore.  I think I’ll just go leave it on the side of the road.”   Who does that?

Just to prove I really did find it on the side of the road, here is a photo taken a little farther out.

Seeing it reminded me of the movie, Hot Tub Time Machine – a predictable but somewhat funny movie where 4 guys get drunk and go back in time to 1986 via faulty hot tub and bizarre Chevy Chase cameos.  It was tempting to make a “FREE- HOT TUB TIME MACHINE” sign for it and con Dave into sitting in it with me just for the photo-op.  But then we’d have to haul over some booze bottles, make the sign, fill the tub with water, find Chevy Chase….  Plus, maybe it really is a time machine?  Did I really want to chance 1986 hair?

So I just snapped this plain old boring photo and you will all just have to be happy with that.

Hot Tubbingly Yours,

Sue

PS- this post is in participation of Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge.  Click on the icon to join the fun!

 

Clean Your Plate. #CFFC

I’m way behind on my blog and wanted to do a quick little blurb so you all know I’m alive and kicking.  Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge (#CFFC) this week is about our Sense of Taste so I figured it was the perfect venue for something short and sweet (see what I did there?  Now that’s talent.)  Grab a quick couple of food photos, pop them in my blog and viola.

Do you have any idea how many food photos I have?  Neither did I.  Holy cheese on a cracker.  Apparently I like to eat.  And before I like to eat, I like to photograph it.  And then eat some.  And then photograph it again.  And then photograph the empty plate.  No starving children in China at my house, that’s for sure.

It took me forever to whittle down my food photo collection to a few that are actually in focus and have some sort of visual aesthetic.  So not only do I take a lot of pictures of my food, I am so excited to eat it I can’t seem to take a decent photo. Even so, I still had over 20 photos to consider.  Man, do I like food or what?

I finally decided to go with tasty regional treats – food items that fairly scream “WISCONSIN!”

First up:  Booyah.  And not the “BOO-YAH!” yelled as an exclamation.  Booyah as in Chicken Soup That We Don’t Call Chicken Soup Because It’s Really Called Booyah.

Most booyah is made with chicken, potatoes, carrots, and cabbage, along with other random vegetables like onions, green beans, celery, etc. and then maybe some beef stock or something – hard to say seeing as most recipes are family secrets handed down from generation to generation.  It all gets chucked in a ginormous iron kettle and cooked outside over an open fire, and served Burn The Top Of Your Mouth Off Lava Hot.

Summer church picnics, local festivals and family gatherings are where you will find booyah, often sold as a fund-raiser so bring your empty plastic ice cream buckets and be sure to buy some to take home.  It’s best eaten with a cold beer in one hand and a handful of saltine crackers in the other and perhaps a piece of homemade bread on the side slathered with real butter.  Follow that with some Belgian pie or raspberry torte and a hot cup of joe.  Or another beer.

Booyah! Served at the Belgian Heritage Center in Namur, WI.

Speaking of beer…..that just happens to be my next photo.

Yeah, yeah – Wisconsin cliché’ but at least I didn’t photograph it with a brat (“brat” – pronounced “braht” -meaning delicious regional sausage that you set on fire with your grill while praying you don’t burn down the neighborhood and then eat it’s charred goodness on a bun with onions, mustard, ketchup and sometimes sauerkraut depending on your ethnicity).  But only because I didn’t have a photo of one.  I must eat all my brats before I think to photograph them.  This also happens a lot with cake.

Wisconsin is the land of sky blue waters and a LOT of beer, but New Glarus Spotted Cow is the best beer in all the land.  IN ALL THE LAND I TELL YOU.  Do not argue with me on this, beer heathen.

It’s also only available in Wisconsin, so if you want it, you gotta come here to get it.  It will be worth the trip.  I promise.

Ice cold Spotted Cow on a hot sunny beach.

And for my final entry:  Friday Night Perch Fry.  Because A) we are as regionally Catholic as they come and B) the Great Lakes and Green Bay have a strong commercial fishing industry, with much of the catch being yellow perch.  Which are delicious deep-fried in batter and bathed in tubs of tartar sauce so you don’t actually know you are eating fish because fish are gross.  I do like perch except when they get ‘fishy’ and you never know if you are going to get fishy perch so I usually just get fried cod instead or better yet a steak.  In fact I think my photo is actually cod, not perch.  But who cares.  My point is that we eat a lot of fish on Friday’s, and perch is super popular and most people eat it except me because I’m a weirdo.  And fish are gross.

Friday night fish fry at Gibraltar Grill in Door County, WI

And that’s a wrap, people.  Oh wait – here’s a collage of cake just because you can never have enough cake.  The two people in the one photo are my parents.  You can tell the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.  Nobody in our family will get kidnapped.

Caketastically yours,

Sue

The more you weigh, the harder you are to kidnap! Stay safe! Eat cake!

PS.  My apologies on my short blurb getting sorta long, so I guess I should have explained that I meant “short” by Sue Standards.  Cuz ya know, I always gotta write a book.

PPSS.  Don’t forget to check out the other entries at Cee’s Photography!