Saturday, December 15, 2018

In The Warming House...

...children lace their skates...

From the poem "Ice", by Gail Mazur ( read it here )

In the little scene above that graces our living room coffee table there is no warming hut...just a pretend fire in a barrel to the right of the stone pillars, where two skaters warm their hands.

I often sit in our living room at night...
...enjoying the ambiance and the warmth of the fire, thankful I'm able by God's grace to live indoors on cold winter nights.

Not everyone can...a reminder as we approach year's end that organizations like Mel Trotter Ministries do good work with the homeless population all year 'round and need our support.

Another great ministry that could use your year end gift is Forgotten Man Ministries   They work with jail inmates here in Michigan, helping them find hope, purpose and direction again during a time of crisis in their lives.

For many people, a stint in jail can either be the spark to a reformed life or the stepping stone to prison.  Forgotten Man Ministries stands in the breach, offering a spiritual path back to productivity and usefulness for those who have stumbled onto the wrong side of the law.

However your passion for helping may express itself, may we all be generous...as we're reminded in Luke 12:48, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required..."

And as Mr. Dickens points out in his timeless classic, A Christmas Carol...
"We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices."

Merry Christmas, y'all...
Our bathrooms in this home have sunken showers...you step down into them...
...and our master bathroom also has a skylight, same as in our kitchen.

So imagine you're buck naked, about to step into the shower when you hear something above you.

In this day and age of drones, it's not outside the realm of possibility someone could decide to take a little unauthorized peek.

You quickly cast your gaze skyward...and what to your wondering eyes should appear...
...but a view, overhead, of your cat's furry rear...

...here's a little closer look whether you want it or not...
...this is why you should have dogs, not cats...strange doin's over at the Hare place...
I've been casting about for ideas for my next writing project, and just over the last few days things have really started to coalesce around a couple of themes...so I'm itching to get started on Papa's Model T: The Dipper...
Yep, that's Satchmo on the top right, but in his early days he was called The Dipper...it wasn't until the '30s that he got his handle of "Satchmo".

And those are WWI doughboys crawling through trenches near "no man's land"...almost 2 million Americans fought in the Great War...
...and many of them returned home physically and psychologically wounded...suffering from what's known today as PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Toss in a stint for Papa X and Ike as silent movie makers...
...but using a scaled down, inexpensive, modern day equivalent...
...and you have all the makings of what is guaranteed!* to be the greatest book ever written...

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*not a guarantee

Don't miss it while you can.


10 days, folks...
...you've already missed the narrow window of opportunity when you could have legitimately panicked...now it's simply too late and all is lost...if you haven't bought gifts, sent out cards, sung carols, communed with your inner Santa, eaten figgy pudding, suffered an allergic reaction to mistletoe, decked the halls and cursed the 1,000th repetition of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", there's only one reasonable course of action left open to you...
...buy a pair of Groucho Glasses and assume a different identity.

It's easy and it's foolproof; I do it all the time.

Whenever I need to skirt some important deadline I've missed due to circumstances completely beyond my control (how was I to know time would pass and I'd be expected to actually DO something?) I just don my Groucho Glasses and voila!

No one recognizes me and I'm off the hook.

Definitely a winner; and it's your only hope of having a Merry Christmas after screwing things up so badly.

No need to thank me; it's tidbits of wisdom like this that keep you coming back to The Atomic Monster Cafe.

later, mcm fans...

* Crass Commercialism Corner *

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