Vlog #2!

Nessie

Whoa, week 6 of Flash Fiction Fridays already? That's amazing!

In case you haven't caught on yet, I'm working on alternating between children's stories, and grown-up stories every week... and we're back to kids stories this week! But that doesn't mean that grown-ups won't enjoy this story, any more than it means that kids won't like my grown-up stories. It's just a style of writing thing. 

A quick reminder; these stories are likely to vary greatly, so if you have younger readers with you, you may want to screen the posts before sharing. I won't write anything kinky, I'm really not that type... But I may write slightly intense stories from time to time, or I may simply have some content that you don't want to get into with your kids right now... I will try to include a "common sense rating" for my stories every week though.

As I said above, this book was written for children, and as such it's basically clean. I even geared this one towards a slightly younger audience, anyone 3 and up are likely to be fine with this one.

This week's story is simply called Nessie.

Hi there, I’m Nessie. Some people call me the Loch Ness Monster, but I don’t think I’m a monster… do you?

I’m a Plesiosaur… a kind of dinosaur who has long limbs, and a super long neck, kind of like an underwater giraffe. My home is in Loch Ness, a huge lake in the Scottish Highlands, and up on the shores, there are the ruins of a castle! How cool is that? 

The only thing is, I’m a little shy… I know that I’m SUPER big compared to you guys, and I don’t want to scare anyone! And… sometimes when people saw me before, they yelled and I got scared, so I hide most of the time now.

Some people think I don’t exist, or even that I died! But that’s not true, I’m as real as Bigfoot. 

I talk to the fish, so I know when it’s safe to come to the surface… I guess I’m a little naughty… because every once in a while, I come up when I know people are around, but I make sure that they don’t have a camera first so that I can look at them and tease them a little. 

I’ve heard lots of strange stories about humans… but I don’t really believe them; after all who would want to spend all of their time inside a building? Or even WORK all day instead of playing?

I guess you’re wondering why I wanted to talk to you, especially when I said that I’m so shy. Well I like my home in the Loch well enough, and all of my fishy friends… but sometimes I get lonely… Fish don’t tell the best stories… And I was wondering if you’d like to be my friend? I might not fit in your bathtub too well… but maybe we could be pen pals?... Oh wait, your letters wouldn’t last very long down here…

I heard that you are all stuck in your houses right now, so I’ve been spending a lot of time at the surface, it was fun to start with, but now I want someone else to play with too.

Unless… you are scared of me too… sometimes people are scary to me… but I’m sure that you are very nice, and that you wouldn’t be scared of such a little monster like me, would you?

I know that you live a long way away… but maybe you’ve read a book about me before… or watched a movie about me? And maybe… if we imagine really hard, we can play together in our minds! 

I know that it’s not very fun to be away from your friends; after all, I’m the only Nessie there is! My mom is a full-grown monster, not a little one like me, but it’s a lot of fun to imagine. And I even heard that you can talk to your friends on the computer. I don’t have one, or else I would talk to some of my cousins… I tried to use one once, but they don’t work too well when they’re wet… and my flippers are too big to push the buttons anyways… but maybe I could make friends with the sheep, and they could run the computer for me… although I don’t know how well their hooves could press the buttons either. 

Anyways I hope that you can play outside again sometime soon so that I can go back to playing hide and seek with the people over here. And that you can tell everyone that I’m real! 

Bye-bye!

Thanks for the read!

If you have any ideas for a story that you'd like to see me tackle, please share it below!

1940s bakeday

Welcome to another historical bake day!

This time around, I decided to choose the 1940s, specifically post-war, for my time. I currently have a noir horror novella in the works set in 1947, so that’s when I pulled my recipes from! My main character spends most of his time in a diner, so I chose recipes with a diner influence.

As always I tried to keep to 2 big rules.

1. As much as possible, keep to tools that were already around. Although due to the later date of this bake day, this was a much smaller hindrance then normal!

2. Use authentic recipes as much as possible. Being one of two vegetarians with two gluten sensitivities as well as living in a house FULL of lactose intolerances, some things did need to be tweaked.
   

These recipes were taken from “Out of Alaska’s Kitchens” released in 1947. Just like the last 2 times, I had a marvelous kitchen elf named “mom” to help me out. 

Here is my menu:

Breakfast: Sour cream waffles with cherry pie filling and fresh vanilla whipped cream. 

Lunch: Golden rice with scalloped apples and cheese.

Dinner: Vegan veggie burgers prepared with a recipe from a french’s mustard ad dated 1948, homemade barbecue sauce, and rolled potato salad. 

Dessert: Chocolate pudding.

Let’s start with breakfast.

I got up at an unearthly hour so that everyone would be able to eat breakfast, (my brother worked the morning shift) and set to work on one of the oddest waffle recipes I’ve ever seen. It called for whipped egg whites, (How often have I written that in regards to bake days?) but this time I had a trusty mixer that I was actually allowed to use! The batter was muffin-mix thick, but despite the odd texture I chucked it into the electric waffle iron, (yes they existed, but no, mine isn’t exactly the same as a truly retro one) Once cooked up, this odd batter resulted in the best waffle recipe we’ve ever found! They were oddly fluffy, but this just meant that we didn’t die of a carb overload after breakfast.

Spirit also liked them!

After a nap, I set to work on lunch. 

“Golden rice” in case you were curious, turns out to mean carrots with a little bit of rice, covered with cheese. But despite being a little sparse on seasoning, it was quite yummy and pretty easy to prepare, if a little odd. As for the scalloped apples and cheese, I was doing pretty well with the recipe until I ran into the instruction of “cover with milk,” I wasn’t sure if they meant to pour a bit of milk over the top, or to drown the mess until it was truly covered. And in a moment of panic, I split the difference and soaked it half-way. It was pretty soupy, but quite tasty as well. 

Dinner was… an adventure. 

The burgers and barbecue were easy enough to prepare, but the rolled salad… didn’t quite go as expected. There was much more filling then I had anticipated, so I had to smash it into the potatoes so it wouldn’t just spill out the sides. We made an executive decision and tried to roll the salad with paper vs a cloth, which basically worked… until I broke the end off and dumped it on the floor. (Yeah, I’m a klutz.) I was instructed to slice the salad… this did NOT WORK! It smashed, and we ate smashed piles of mushy potato salad instead. However everything was quite tasty, and we were all stuffed afterward. 

Last but never least, we had dessert. 

I’m gonna be honest here, I’ve made pudding from scratch before… and the instructions looked VERY strange. They called for making it in a double boiler and letting it sit, covered and untended, for 20 minutes. I didn’t want to risk burning sugar, so I kinda ignored them a little bit… I used the recipe (with the sugar cut) but I just made it like I would any other pudding. It was delicious, much richer than a store-bought pudding, and we decided to serve it with the last of the hand-whipped vanilla cream… because it’d be a shame if it spoiled. ;)

Thanks for the read!

Unicorn island

Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday number 5!

A quick reminder; these stories are likely to vary greatly, so if you have younger readers with you, you may want to screen the posts before sharing. I won't write anything kinky, I'm really not that type... But I may write slightly insense stories from time to time, or I may simply have some content that you don't want to get into with your kids right now... I will try to include a "common sense rating" for my stories every week though.

This week's story is pretty innocent, although there is a little bit of "human darkness" along the lines of animal abuse/borderline slavery as (Spoiler alert) the unicorns are sentient, although there is nothing graphic. I would honestly say that any kid older then 8 should be fine reading it, but as always, pre-read it if you are unsure. 

Whoever said that unicorns aren’t real? They are completely real, they’re just a bit shy… and dangerous.

If you have ever read a book or watched a movie which included a medieval battle scene, you know about warhorses; large, muscular horses clad in some sort of protective gear, who carry the knights into battle. Well, unicorns are kind of the original warhorses, complete with a freaking spear of a horn on their heads, and the swirling pattern in it, assures that the wounds they leave behind can’t be easily stitched.

How did I get to such a be a self-appointed expert on unicorns? Well… I discovered them a year or so ago. Why didn’t you hear about this earth-shaking discovery? I never told anyone; they are far too precious, and dangerous for the rest of the world to know about.

I was exploring the wilderness on a tiny South American island, hoping to catalog a few new plant, insect or bird species, as well as find some peace and quiet. I was a biologist, although I dabbled in botany, and I loved to explore lesser-known locations, from the inside of dormant volcanos to the depths of rainforests. There’s nothing basically wrong with a lab, but there is also nothing like walking among creatures who have never learned to fear humans, and plants which have never even been photographed.    

I had just taken in the lay of the land; from the toe-roasting sand of the beaches to the craggy cliffsides, and the thick humid rainforest. I had already taken maybe 50 photos of critters and plants that I hadn’t recognized offhand, and I was ready for lunch. 

I had no interest in eating in the middle of the forest, and with as small as the island was, I decided to head towards the cliffsides; I knew from experience that there was nothing like eating a packed lunch with your feet dangling over the ocean. I had been walking through the center of the forest for maybe 15 minutes when I stumbled upon a small, picturesque clearing.

If you’ve ever been in the middle of the countryside and stumbled across an abandoned plot of land where flowers have taken the place of crops, then you may almost be able to imagine the mystical beauty of that clearing. I sat on a fallen log, covered with soft spongy moss; the scene around me was such that I would have hardly been surprised if a handful of pixies had been picnicking under the blanket of flowers, but I still couldn’t have predicted what happened next.

I saw 5 horselike shapes galloping into view. I thought that they were wild ponies at first, but once they had galloped to within 10 feet of me, there was no denying what they were, even if common sense itself was telling me that unicorns were a myth, I couldn’t ignore or deny the beautiful creatures which stood playing in the long grass before me.    

They weren’t all white, like the unicorns I had seen in books as a child, but instead, they looked like appaloosa horses, dappled and slender, with ivory-like horns growing half-way between their ears. I sat in awe for a few minutes, before remembering that I had a sliced apple in my lunch… and the unicorns looked enough like horses and were standing near enough that I hoped they would be willing to eat a slice or two from my hand.

I held out a small slice, hoping that I would be able to stroke their silky-looking mane, when, to my surprise, I began to hear voices; not aloud but in my head.

“A human!”

“I’ve even never seen one before.” 

“What is she doing here?” 

“How did she get here?” 

“Why don’t you answer them?” 

This voice took me by surprise, as it appeared to be directed at me. I had been focused on the unicorn nearest to me, but when I raised my gaze, I could see that the oldest of them, with a silvery mane, and wise looking eyes, was looking straight at me. 

“Me? I…” I was suddenly struck by the fact that I was speaking to a unicorn, in the middle of a clearing which had never even been found before. “I must have cracked… I smashed my head… or I got bit by a snake… and I’m hallucinating this.” 

“No, you aren’t. Now answer their questions.” The voice was kind enough, but it was also rather abrupt, and whether this was a hallucination, or not, I didn’t want to mess with anyone who had a voice like that, so I answered her.

“I… I’m here taking photos of the plants and animals that we don’t know about where I’m from.” 

“Why?”

“So that we can learn about them.” 

She seemed satisfied by this, and they had, what I could only assume was a conference, but this time, they communicated through typical horse noises, mostly neighing, with the occasional nicker. After a few minutes passed this way, they told me that I needed to leave, when I refused to do so without an explanation they told me about their storied history.

“Once we lived with humans, hand in hoof so to speak. We would gallop with them, both in everyday life and on the battlefields, but in time this changed. We began to gain a reputation as symbols of good luck, as we could communicate with our riders, and serve them better wherever we went, but this made us a valuable commodity. People would trade, or sell us for high prices, but we had never been possesions… we would only stay with men or women who treated us as friends. No one had ever thought to take a whip to a unicorn… until we began to run away from poor homes, and then this became a regular sight. We were kept in chains, never allowed to leave lest we took our luck away from their households. We decided to leave the humans, and come back here, where we were originally from… but they wouldn’t let us leave us so easily, and we couldn’t exactly run a boat by ourselves. It took what I can only call an uprising for us to escape and many unicorns, and humans alike died… we didn’t wish to harm them, but we couldn’t stay with them any longer, and they wouldn’t let us leave.”

“How did you escape then?” I asked, rendered almost breathless by the tale they were unraveling for me.        

“Not all humans are evil… I guess that you know that… and a handful of kind individuals took us home, and stayed with us here… but they died long ago, and no one had seen us since… until you, that is.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat. Their story had been so intriguing, and tragic, that I had temporarily forgotten that I was a human… an interloper in their affairs and I knew that they were now waiting to see how I would react to this fact.

“I… I won’t reveal your secret.” The words came difficultly, as this was the exact opposite of my job, but I knew that they would never be able to allow me to share the news of their existence, and besides that, I couldn’t betray them, after hearing about how they had already been betrayed in the past. “But how did you know that you could trust me with your story?”

“We can hear your thoughts remember?”

“It’s almost impossible to hide your true being from someone who can hear your every thought.”

“We knew that you were a good person, but we also knew that you would never leave us alone until you had heard our story.”

“Honestly, we took a bit of a gamble, as we already knew that you were a good person.”

“... Thank you.” 

I returned home, claiming that there was nothing of interest, and far too many venomous creatures and ankle-twisting drops in the forest floor to justify a trip there. I hope to return soon, but I need to figure out a way to get there that won’t attract any attention first and figure out a way to convince myself to leave after a few weeks, rather than giving in to a thousand childhood fantasies and moving there permanently. 

Thanks for the read!

If you've got a story idea which you would like me to tackle, please share it below!

5 rules for working from home

With so many people working from home now, and me working from home all of the time; I thought that I would share 5 tips for a productive home-based working experience!

1. Keep to a strict dress code. I personally choose to dress formally for a typical workday- you know, PJs AND slipper socks, sometimes I even stretch to a bathrobe!

2. Set yourself a rigid schedule. I find that putting approximately 1,200 different things on a list and then getting upset when you can’t possibly finish all of them works best. 

3. Balance work, chores, and life carefully. Make sure that you do this by constantly questioning whether you are spending your time well, and trying to decide which task to start with.

4. Don’t forget to socialize. I recommend doing this by ignoring the outside world as much as possible, and only speaking with people outside of your household when it’s absolutely necessary.

5. Don’t forget to have fun. For real, it’s easy to forget to have fun when you think of your house as your office… You can see that I haven’t lost my sense of humor though, and neither should you.

Keep sane ya’ll, be productive, and don’t forget to have fun!

Thanks for the read!

Nice Mice

Welcome to week 4 of my Flash Fiction Fridays!

This week I decided to revisit another of my first stories, tweaking it a bit, but mostly letting it shine for itself... This was a school assignment as well as a fun project, and it's the first time I ever combined my love of history with my love of writing. I would even stretch to saying that this book is part of what brought me where I am now in regards to my writing.

A quick reminder; these stories are likely to vary greatly, so if you have younger readers with you, you may want to screen the posts before sharing. I won't write anything kinky, I'm really not that type... But I may write slightly insense stories from time to time, or I may simply have some content that you don't want to get into with your kids right now... I will try to include a "common sense rating" for my stories every week though.

This story was written by me when I was a child and is meant for children; though there is an intense moment or two, you should be fine reading this to almost any age of kid.

This week's story is called Nice Mice and is about Amelia Earhart.

“Hello, I’m Squeaky the mouse and this is my story.”

“Hey!” Oh yes, and Fuzzy’s as well.

“Mrow, Mrow!”

“Okay, okay, I’m here!” It was about 7:30 and my friend Fuzzy the barn cat had come over for a visit, just like he did every night. At that time I lived in a hole in Amelia Earhart and her husband, George Putnam’s house, in a hole in their bedroom wall. 

“How are you doing Fuzzy?” I asked.

“Fine. How about you Squeaky?” 

“I’m okay... but Amelia hasn’t been spilling a lot lately.” 

Oh, I’m sorry… You see I had chewed a small hole in her dining room table; this was for little bits of cheese or bread that she spilled. And I kept a thimble under one of the dripping pipes under her bathroom sink for water.

“Mrs. Cow won’t let me have as much milk anymore either.” Fuzzy replied with a sigh. 

“Oh well, I guess neither of us is getting as much food as normal, lately,” I commented.

Fuzzy’s huge brown ear twitched as a fly buzzed by his long whiskers. 

“Can we go to the barn yet?” I asked impatiently. I was going to see his barn for the first time!

Fuzzy nodded, humoredly, and we set off. I squeezed underneath the door as Fuzzy leaped out of the window which he had entered from. I then climbed on his back, so that we could reach the barn before the sun rose. After a short walk through a field of cows, we were almost there.

We almost ran into a large chicken coop full of noisy chickens. But Fuzzy leaped over the top of it, as I screamed in terror; I wasn’t used to being that high in the air!

Then we were at the barn. The red and purple barn seemed gigantic to a little mouse like me, and there was hay everywhere. It smelled good and sweet, and it made me feel sleepy.

“Hello Mrs. Cow,” Fuzzy commented to a tired, kind-looking brown cow, who was staring at a mountain of hay, with a goat standing on top of it.

“Hello Fuzzy. What do you think the goat is doing up there?” Mrs. Cow asked with a large, hay-scented yawn. 

“I think it’s a mountain goat!” Fuzzy replied eagerly, before adding, in a calmer tone, “Mrs. Cow, this is my friend, Squeaky the mouse. And Squeaky this is Mrs. Cow. She gives me all of my milk.”

Mrs. Cow bent her long neck down to look at me with one of her gigantic sleepy eyes, and commented, 

“Hello Squeaky, what do YOU think the goat is doing up there?” I thought for a moment before replying,

“I don’t know, but why are you so sleepy?” 

“Every time I’m about to go to sleep, this goat bleats at me.” Mrs. Cow replied, in a tired, slightly annoyed tone.

After a short, but fun visit I said good-bye to Mrs. Cow, and Fuzzy brought me back home. 

When I got home, Amelia was sitting at her desk, noisily making another dress. 

You see, Amelia was BOTH a dressmaker AND a pilot!

I said good night to Fuzzy and headed to bed and tried to fall asleep through all the racket she was making with her big cast iron sewing machine.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up to hear her talking about circling the Equator in her plane; the Electra. I listened closely to hear what this “Equator” was and soon learned that it was the funny red dotted line running around the middle of the globe on her desk.  Suddenly I knew just what I had to do. I was going to be the first mouse to fly! I was going with Amelia on her plane to see this giant belt.

I packed up all of the stuff I thought I would need into two little dollhouse suitcases which I had found under the floorboards a long time before. I put my spare cheese and bread and an acorn-cup of water into one of them, and some blankets and my pillow into the other one. 

The next morning before setting off I said my good-byes to Fuzzy and Mrs. Cow. Fuzzy said that he wanted to go with me if it was possible. And I told him that I thought Amelia was bringing a small bag and that maybe he could hide in the back of the plane with her bag and me, and we decided that was as good a plan as we could hope to come up with.

So Fuzzy hopped up into the back of the plane while nobody was looking, just after Amelia had put her bag in, while I held onto his collar. 

We whispered about how soon we would be as high as the birds. And sure enough, very shortly afterward, we were in the air. And I was shaking so hard that I could hear my water sloshing inside my bag. After many hours of staring at the birds, we fell asleep to the rocking of the plane. 

After a couple of months passed in this way, we learned that we couldn’t really SEE the Equator after all. I awoke to hear Amelia talking to her navigator; Fred Noonan about running out of fuel. I shook Fuzzy awake to tell him the news. 

Fuzzy almost exposed our hiding place with his shriek of horror at the mere thought of going down in a whole ocean of water! Fuzzy said that we had to at least try to save the plane. So we looked around to see if there was anything that we could do to help.

I saw a small, red gas can behind the luggage and knew what we had to do. I quickly told Fuzzy my plan- I would remove the top of the gas can, and Fuzzy would open the window, and then he would tip the gas can so that the fuel would spill into the tank.

I started to remove the cap but it was very hard because it was pushed on very, very tightly but I managed to get it off just as the engine started to rumble and the plane began to rock. but Fuzzy had to open the window which was also very hard to do; and even after the window was opened, the hardest part had only just come. 

Fuzzy dangled from the window by his tail as I inched the gas can slowly forwards. I heard a yelp from the window. 

“My tail hurts!” Fuzzy cried out to me.

“I know, hold on just a little longer.” I cried back.

The gas cap is unscrewed. I’m coming back in now.” Fuzzy said, falling with a thump on the floor of the plane. 

“Hurry up Fuzzy! We need to pour the gas into the gas tank!” I screamed as the plane sputtered and shook.

“Okay, okay I’m up here again. You stand in the windowsill and I’ll pour. You tell me left or right okay?” Fuzzy wheezed. 

“Yes! Sure! anything! Just pour!” 

 Luckily Fuzzy’s aim was right on, and soon the gas can was empty. “Okay Amelia, it’s all up to you now,” I whispered to myself. 

Great pilot that she was, she flew us to safety on an island… somewhere. After she had looked over the plane, Amelia said that she could fly us back home… If she had more fuel. 

Luckily the locals were friendly and spoke English, so they sent out a boat for more fuel and after several days on that lovely island, the boat returned with enough fuel for 7 planes. When they asked if they had enough fuel Amelia laughed and said yes, and they laughed together merrily.

We had a rather boring return trip, the highlight of which was when we were almost home and saw one of our friends, who was a sparrow, who had heard that the plane was missing and was ecstatic to see that we were alright. 

When we got home, Amelia settled down at home with her husband, and made WAY more dresses, and piloted WAY less. She even went by the name Samantha Green most of the time when she was in public because she didn’t want to be constantly pestered for interviews by people wondering when she would try to circle the planet again. 

You see she wasn’t normally timid or easily scared off, but this experience had put her off of piloting quite a bit, she DID have many more adventures but most of them were on the ground. I even went with her on some of those other adventures, (many of which took place on horseback as she was an experienced horseback rider.) 

And as you can see that I’m telling you this story, so I lived happilyish ever after.

“Wow grandpa, tell us again!”

“Yeah, grandpa!” 

“No, no, no my little mouselings you have to sleep now. Good night.” I chuckled to my favorite little mice.

“Aww. Okay, good night grandpa!”

The end.

Thanks for reading!

If you have any story ideas which you would like to see me tackle please share them below!

Response to covid 19

Hello again, and welcome to a post which is not what the name suggests.

This is not about covid 19, there are thousands upon thousands of people who have already spoken about that, and I am in no way qualified to do so. This post is quite literally about the RESPONSE to covid 19… our response as humans, and in particular the response of Christians to this crisis.

I am going to start out by saying that this is meant to be a positive post in a worried world. I could easily fill this space with criticism of toilet-paper hoarders, or all the people who continue to refuse to social distance, despite stay at home orders. I could write about that, and it IS important to acknowledge that we need to do better… but that’s not what I want to talk about right now.

I, like pretty much everyone else, have read about plagues, pandemics, and global/Country-wide disasters, (wars and economic ruin come to mind,) and like most people, I never had any desire to live in those times, and although I knew that a big war could come, I never expected to live through a pandemic… “in this day and age.” None of us know how to respond to this, and that’s scary, but if you study history as I do, you may note that during huge problems, people change, and that has always fascinated me, and now I can see it myself. And as many other Children’s Church children I never quite grasped what “God isn’t in the event, He’s in the response” meant… Until now.

Among all this uncertainty, worry, and upset, there is a spirit of hope. You can see it when people make masks to help fill that growing need, when online businesses start running sales to keep you home, (is this a marketing tactic? Yes, but in the same way, that chicken-feed sellers started selling feed in printed bags so that mothers could clothe their children without as much shame, during the Great Depression… Look it up!) You can see it when people reach out to their elderly relatives when they might not otherwise do so. People are working on making sure that their friends are sane, and just being kind when they may otherwise be too distracted to do so. All the time now, I see posts from people who want to help and let’s be honest, that doesn’t happen as much in a normal year. Individuals and even businesses are going above and beyond, and that is, dare I say, beautiful.

What about the Church? For my Church at least, we have been using this time to praise God’s power above everything else, to refine ourselves and to remember that God is all-knowing. He WILL do what is right, even if we don’t understand the timing. It’s easier than normal to see our need for an all-knowing, loving God, and that we all, Christians and non-believers alike, need the hope right now that only God can provide and that is amazing.

We may not know the way through this, but God does, and that is incredibly awe-striking, humbling, and just peace-filling. 

We’re all imagining what we’ll do when we’re “free” again right now, and I think that is quite natural, but I can’t help wondering if we can “break” history a bit, and work on keeping this goodwill going, even after we can go back to our lives; if we can actually grow through this terrible tragedy, and whether we will be able to remember the way we worried about our fellow men, as well as the pain when we look back on this year.

Thanks for reading, 

Stay safe, 

And keep loving.