Reflections by Mary Anne Graham
Howdy sweeties, it's the angry old husband here, been awhile, nice to talk to you again, yadda yadda yadda.
Thanks to Facebook, I found the video that is the pinnacle of ecstasy for my dear wife, the Crazy Duck Lady.
What few of you know is that not only does she revere ducks (especially baby ducks), she likes to talk randomly about fish as well.
Well, the video below was practically tailor-made for her. Check it out - a baby duck feeding fish.
Let me tell you about this so-called War on Women.
The people who yell most about it will tell you that they just want women to be equal to men. What they really want is equality of behavior, not equality of worth. They want to eliminate the natural, God-given differences between man and woman, the male and the female. The differences are there for a reason, and they are not just physical.
And these differences are what I find to be the most beautiful things about women.
Just to show how old and wise the recognition of this difference is, look at the Tao symbol, which existed 1,000 years before Christ was born.
Opposites intertwine to make a perfect whole, each dependent on the other and each one taking shape inside the other. They have true equality - EQUALITY OF WORTH - but are still opposites that touch and fold inside each other.
I came to this epiphany while watching videos of soldiers coming home and reuniting with their families. While every family member had emotional reactions, it was the mothers and daughters who drew my attention.
They would break out in tears and cover their mouths as they ran to their loved one, and I realized they were trying to contain their literally overwhelming joy.
The capacity for that much joy and happiness, and the other feelings of life's experiences, were so beautiful to me. And it will be a horrible, hellish day should that ever be eliminated.
Winning the lottery is a dream. Making a living as a full-time romance novelist is a goal.
There's a huge difference.
A dream is that fuzzy, happy, pie-in-the sky place we visit to escape reality. For example, I've often imagined that a long-lost (very, very long and very very lost) relative would pass away peacefully at the age of 100+. His or her team of lawyers - all wearing suits that cost more than my families' entire wardrobe put together, would show up at my office and tell me that Great, great Uncle or Aunt Mega Money had passed, leaving me everything. It's a nice, nice thing to imagine, but I come from a very long line of poor folks, so it's a whopper of a dream.
Goals are different. Goals are dreams wearing work clothes.
A goal is a target you plan and plot to reach. And you put substance to the planning and plotting by working your little (or, in my case, not so little) tushie off. That's where the danger comes in. It's awfully easy to slow down on the work, ratchet up the fuzzy dreaming of the day when........ I might check Amazon and find my books are selling by the hundreds of thousands, or I might get that phone call from a movie producer wanting the rights to one of my books. That day is never coming unless I work twice as hard at night and over weekends pounding the keyboard, doing social marketing, and then doing more keyboard pounding.
I've still been writing at nights and over weekends - don't get me wrong. But I haven't been intense enough about it; I haven't been working hard enough. Sleep is for folks who are happy piddling, playing and dreaming.
It's far too easy to allow depression at my current circumstances to drain my will and energy so that I want nothing more than to laze around after a full day at the office, and crawl into bed and stay there and sleep all night. My day job is an intense, hard, grinding rat-race filled with nothing but pressure, deadlines and reasons that I'm not doing my job well enough. Instead of using that to feed my will - I think I've been using it to feed my won't.
Sometime, when I wasn't looking, my goals sneaked back into my closet and put on a fuzzy robe and slippers.
It's time for me to refocus; to put my nose back on the grindstone and to superglue my fingers to the keyboard.
Whatever your dreams are - do you want to keep them in fuzzy robes and slippers or do you want to suit 'em up and put 'em to work? And if you think your dreams are already goals - be sure to take frequent time to check up on yourself. Keep your goals in work clothes because no one ever crossed the finish line in fuzzy slippers.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
- Isaiah 9:6 KJV
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
- Luke 1:31-32
Merry Christmas!
A new study claims that women who take charge at home have less sex than those who don't. It looked at women who made household decisions like managing the budget, shopping, handling doctor's appointments and scheduling social activities. It says that women who take charge of such things "can find themselves waiting 100 times longer for passion than those who do things jointly with their partner."
Researches say that there's a sliding scale - the more decisions women make on their own, the less likely they are to have sex.
The co-author of the study, Carie Muntifering said, "‘Understanding how women’s position in the household influences their sexual activity may be an essential piece in protecting the sexual rights of women and helping them to achieve a sexual life that is safe and pleasurable."
The study claims that for men, making decisions by themselves does not relate to the timing of sex. So it's only the little women who are expected never to make a decision. Men, apparently, are expected to be "bossy."
I guess the authors of the study want women to stop making decisions. Women who don't make decisions clearly can't work outside the home. They also can't work inside the home. They can't drive, do housework, or raise children. What's left? Women could sit, smile and look pretty I guess.
Oh, no - wait. Women couldn't do that either. They'd have to decide what to wear, how to make themselves up, how to do their hair and they'd even have to decide to sit down. In the era of Pan Am and The Playboy Club, this study seems to fit right in.
Sexist, much?
The Fat Man here. Let me tell you something that's pretty awesome.
That's taking an idea, typing some things on your computer keyboard, moving and clicking your mouse around, turning that idea into a bunch of electrons and photons, then sending those electrons and photons to a place where those infinitesimal little particles (that originated from an even more immeasurable set of things) are transformed into a solid, tangible, molecular thing.
Behold such a thing. Mary Anne's latest work, The Duke of Eden, is now available in paperback. She and I (mostly she) finished up work on it a month or so ago. Her ideas became words, then became text, then became electronic signals and magnetic spots on a hard disk.
I listened to her ideas, found some collections of photons recorded by other nice people, took some ideas of my own and manipulated the photons into a form I found to be pleasing. I created magnetic spots on my hard disk from the photons, then sent an electron stream that was a copy of Mary Anne's magnetic spots and my magnetic spots over to CreateSpace. There, they decoded the electron stream, put ink and other chemicals on various thicknesses of paper as indicated by the stream, then cut the papers, glued them together, and sent us back their product, which was really our product in a solid, material form.
That's pretty damned awesome in my opinion. I would say dare say it was verging on magic. All things considered, the 21st Century hasn't delivered everything that was promised to us a few decades ago, but I'm still impressed with what it has delivered. I guess I can wait on the flying cars and jet packs a little bit longer.
Now that the paperback is out and the e-book is available via a few other distribution channels, pick up our ideas incarnated today, mmkay? You'll be glad you did.
Unless you serve in our heroic armed forces, being an American is generally more about privilege than price. Today is different. Today is the day we do our job as citizens of the best country in the history of the world.
Today we decide our country's direction by choosing to re-hire the politicians who've been working for us or by letting them go and hiring someone new.
Today is NOT ABOUT your political persuasion. Today is about being an American. GET OUT AND VOTE!!!
Lovely sex will rev your engine.
Sexy love will drive you home.
Don't jump. Get off the ledge and look for an easy chair.
It's Friday.
Stress:
It's not just for breakfast anymore.