photo of JC for new book

Food Ideas

Hi everyone I just wanted to share a couple of food ideas:

First is to add a glob of peanut butter to Breyer’s Black Cherry Ice cream and mix it around. It makes it be like a peanut butter and jelly ice cream and it is a yummy texture. 

Then the other idea is for a sauce that you can mix with noodles or use to dip pieces of cooked chicken in:  All you do is mix some cream of chicken soup with sour cream and a spoonful of barbecue sauce. It is simple but adds a creamy flavor to other foods.

The other idea is to add ginger ale to the refrigerated punch at the grocery store.

Well have a great day everyone.

Obituary for Roger the Guinea Pig

Roger the guinea pig was born in 2014 and was chosen as a pet with his two cousins from Petco named Fred and Dave. Roger enjoyed eating carrots, romaine lettuce, treat food, and water.  Roger was featured in papers for NYU social work school and visited the children at PS 132 in the Bronx on multiple occasions. Roger was an evangelical Christian and tried to live out his faith despite occasional stomach bloating, digestion problems, and flies and maggots that bothered him in his final days. Roger is now in heaven singing songs that he was unable to learn on earth because of the fall of man as depicted in Genesis 3. Roger is survived by his pet owner named Refried, a pet care provider named Nicole from Cuddly Buddies, his vets from St Marks Vet, Westside Vet, and the Animal Medical Clinic in New York, and numerous mice friends plus Fred and Dave. Roger’s photo can be visited in books or websites of Refried Bean.

Reepicheep from Narnia

lucille clifton poem

poem share credit: Pam Taylor

cream cheese and crescent rolls: a recipe for disasters

Well everyone, I just ate a yummy snack which was crescent rolls with some cream cheese.  And you might be thinking to yourself, well that is nice but it sounds like you could have really made a nice food with those ingredients and added other stuff like jam or some kind of italian ingredients or some honey mustard and ham or something, or some sugar to make it a cheesecake flaky dessert.  Well you are right about that and I thought about it but opted for just the cream cheese and I think that I will enter this new snack into the Pillsbury Bake-Off competition because it was very yummy.  And the people there will think the same thing and think Gosh there is so much more you could have done with these ingredients but then they will not be able to help themselves during the judging process and they will keep coming back to the table with the crescent rolls on it because of a nagging feeling that maybe that snack beats all the other foods and finally they will discuss it and say okay I think we have to give this to the cream cheese person. And I will win a million dollars and use it all to buy more cream cheese and then live in an indentation smoothed out of a huge mountain of cream cheese.

cookies

     Well hi everyone, here are some cookies that I made.  I think they turned out great, but I left out the vinegar and honestly I can tell the difference.  But they are still good cookies.  It snowed today and I made gingerbread cookies but it is May.  That is interesting isn’t it. I also got a birthday present that my mom sent me.  So I opened a present, too, and I have a Christmas tree up.  Well that is kind of confusing, isn’t it.  Tuesday I am taking a social work license test.  I have been studying for it and the material is familiar.  And I took a practice test and have found that I do mostly agree with the correct answers for the ones I got wrong.  So I think it is a hopeful thing that I could pass the test. I am not leaving my house until then even though I am almost out of milk.  I will use ice cream to put in coffee just as I had planned.

     I think I might make macaroni and cheese later which is what I ate yesterday.  The secret to the cheese sauce is to start with melted butter and flour.  Then add the milk, then the cheese.

      It took me all day to make these cookies because I am very lazy. But I am thankful for what I have which is schizophrenia.  One of my friends posted some photos of me today on facebook that were really group photos from a trip which is my first trip to New York in college.  One of my friends on that trip ended up moving to New York and working in advertising. It is very funny because in some of the photos I am making a funny face and I smiled that same way in a lot of college photos and if people had to guess which person in college was mentally ill, it was very apparent in all the photos.  And everyone knew anyway because it was also in the newspapers when I disappeared and found my way to Bellevue.  

    Anyway I hope you all are having a nice day in the snow or if you live somewhere where it is December then maybe it is warm weather there. 

https://nypost.com/1999/04/13/missing-s-c-student-turns-up-at-bellevue/

Blog Post May 2, 2020

     Well everyone, I hope you are all having a nice day. I am about to make some fish and grits for lunch. Then I am going to a support group in a zoom meeting led by my friend named Neesa who leads an online facebook group that I am in. I need to do some chores in my apartment which is so messy that I think there is a risk of it turning into another Wuhan lab.  Should I have said that. I do not know, but my apartment is messy and I need to do laundry and take the trash out soon. Anyway I have been volunteering, but there have been some incidents where I was rude to others because of feeling upset by inexplicable mistreatment that I attribute either to the conspiracy from Greenville, sub conspiracies or supra-conspiracies from New York and elsewhere, the Barnes and Noble legal sharks that have been following me and harassing me, a satanic counter-conspiracy which could be the same people, charitable but painful torture interventions to rebuild patience, traumatic memory re-enactments for narrative therapy,  policy expert recruitment and writing prompt assistance, social “justice” hypocrits, neighborhood activists who get me to sign a rent freeze petition and then threaten to make my name known to property management sharks, and various corporate power plays from stores who employ way too many secret shoppers and commit actual civil rights violations that could be brought to trial at any time.

    Other than that, I am a very happy person who has food and shelter and meaningful opportunities to help others.  And I am very thankful for all of it and for all my friends, so thanks everyone. I hope you all have a great day and I hope you all are able to someday read the whole book of Isaiah because it really is to me the best literature ever written even though I once considered trying to submit one of my poetry books to a poetry contest against it in heaven. I just felt like some of my jokes were really funny!

some people did not get coronoravirus checks

Hi everyone, do y'all like this food volunteering photo.  It makes me look like a covid hero but really I have been more of a covid hoarder who accumulated pancake mix and rice in a maniacal way.

But I try to direct some of my food mania to help others and thankfully have gotten to volunteer some this week and last week. If you want to donate to some of the New York organizations providing food for people in pretty much all categories of people needing food, here is a great short list of some of the best food organizations in New York:

https://www.wscah.org

http://nycommonpantry.org

https://xaviermission.org

https://www.foodbanknyc.org

http://cityharvest.org

NAMI Walk this year

Hi everyone, I hope you are getting through the coronavirus okay.  I hope they do a rent freeze soon. That does not mean I do not care about real estate people but I think that is the thing that would also benefit them whereas most other solutions would cost people more unevenly.

I am signed up to do the NAMI walk this year for the first time, so if anyone wants to donate to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, I have a donation page posted:

NAMI Walk Fundraising Page 

I have been participating in support groups through NAMI for several months after years of just knowing about that organization through more of a distance.  One year I was going to do the walk on a team called the Bipolar Bipeds, which I think is pretty funny.  But I have not really participated until this year. The team I am on is called Connection Care.

It is kind of a hard time to donate, but to me it helps a lot with getting through the coronavirus experience to do some things that I know have helped other people. It makes me feel better to think of people having food because of me, or being able to get mental health support like the NAMI helpline or support groups.

Something interesting about NAMI is at the groups I feel a certain kind of mental health that also includes people's mental illness itself.  Like you are allowed to be mentally ill, and then the health and comfort you achieve is within that context instead of some form of relief at the cost of your life participation or some kind of pretending to not have mental illness.  Anyway, their theme this year for the walk is "Mental Health for All," and I hope anyone who wants to be included with NAMI's mission will be able to in some way.

kind of like cola wars but handing out cans of soup

Well everyone, I hope you are doing okay. I have been doing some chores and volunteering and still trying to figure out how to have the right amount of groceries.  Today I went and helped some soldiers from the army pass out food in the Bronx.  I told them that they should change their camo to this:

Quarantine Activities

  Well hi everyone, I hope you all are doing okay. Some people are not doing okay right now, and it is good to keep them all in our thoughts and prayers.  I personally got discouraged yesterday after not succeeding at a boiled custard recipe, so I can only guess how exhausted grocery store workers feel and people who are sick right now and need medical care.

    I have some masks finally and think I will soon volunteer again at a food place starting next Wednesday. I think that is definitely all I can offer, and I am determined to not chicken out and refuse to do my part in helping people have groceries.

     I am okay on groceries myself and might be able to wait until next Monday to go to the grocery store. Has anyone gotten a check yet from the government? It is hard to tell how the timing is working out on that.  But for me it helps to know the cash is on the way. With this kind of delay, the schedule probably could have been staggered instead and used to prevent a rush on stores and a new wave of hospitalizations.  But I guess we don’t know what will happen. It is great to see signs of the hospitalizations flattening out, and all the work people did to make that happen is a great thing to be thankful for.

    I am working on a poetry book and almost posted it on Easter. But I decided to wait and keep adding to it while I am quarantined.  Should I call myself quarantined when I am not sick?  I do not know if avoiding the illness itself is the same thing as preventing contagion personally. Maybe it is with this illness because of how people can supposedly have it and not know it.

     Anyway, here is a picture of my book cover. It will soon be posted with my other books on smashwords, including my recent short novel called Pizza Novel, which is a kids book about imaginary mice, leaks in the abyss, and cookies.

Grocery Store Eve

     Well everyone, today is Thursday night.  It is grocery store eve, which is an exciting holiday for me. I have not left my apartment in two weeks and tomorrow I am going to try to go get some milk and eggs and a few other things from the grocery store.  One thing I am going to try to get is vanilla ice cream to use instead of milk for coffee when I run out of milk.  I think I am going to try to stay in my apartment for a whole month after this trip to the store.  I signed up for some volunteer work to help people have groceries, but I think I am instead going to try to avoid getting the virus. I think that I am actually at a pretty high risk for having trouble if I do get the virus, and I should do the best I can to stay alive.
    Tonight I played Scattergories over Skype with one of my friends from Greenville which is my hometown. It was pretty fun and I told her something funny which is that I have been so focused on groceries that whenever I think about getting the virus and going to heaven, one of my main thoughts is hoping they have the same groceries there that we have here.  I think that is kind of funny that I would mainly be wanting certain brands of packaged goods like Campbells soup instead of caring about other things in heaven like having sanity again or seeing loved ones or missing people. But I do like food a lot and I like grocery stores, and I think a lot of people will want some of the same blessings from earth in heaven. It could be kind of comical.
     Anyway I finished the third book of my imaginary mice trilogy this week and feel mostly excited about it.  I think it turned out pretty funny and all the rodents in my apartment are excited about it, too.  Well have a great day everyone. Hopefully I will be able to pray some more soon for all the hospital people and anyone who needs food.

The secret messages are saying this robot is me.

  

   I am not sure why, but it does make sense if I stop and think about space movies of the 80s. Today I ate some rice and beans and enchilada sauce. I still have some cheese and sour cream, and some cooked ground chicken, so it was a Mexican feast. I am wondering what is happening with the government coronora virus bill.  I think a simple stimulus check for every American would have been good about five days ago, and some of us probably could have found a way to help the immigrants too.  But it seems that there is another political hold-up.

   My church’s service online this morning was great, so that is good. But then some people persecuted me for having memory problems. That is why my writing is choppy.

   Speaking of choppy, a great tv show online is called Chopped. They share free whole episodes on the website from Food Network. 

   I am losing some weight from rationing food. I think that is good and I invented a kind of wacky jumping jacks to stay active during my weeks sheltering down in NYC. I am happy for all the volunteers and workers out in the city right now showing a very inspiring and sacrificial love for people, but I think I might need to stay healthy indoors and sell my e-books soon.

   Well have a great day everyone. If any of you are truly experiencing some kind of unbearable misery right now, I pray with all my heart that you are given some food and peace and hope as soon as possible in a mostly permanent or at least stable way.

I genuinely apologize for hoarding cake mix.

I probably do not need 6 boxes. I just panicked and ordered from Wal-Mart when we currently have enough food in my neighborhood. Some people in rural areas probably really need their food delivered and I did not mean to hurt anyone or myself. I just freaked out and imagined myself eating cake every day for several weeks. In order to learn my lesson I will try to eat a whole cake so fast that I am sickened by the experience. No really I hope you all have enough food right now and it you ever support charities, now is probably the time to help other people get some backup food or food at all. 

Rations

Well everyone, coronoravirus is not going to stop me from eating Easter candy every day for lent. And it seems to be a good excuse to learn how to cook beans, which I bought at the grocery store to prepare for any kind of shutdown or quarantine. I boiled some of the beans today to use for soup or chili but learned that really you have to soak the beans for several hours.  And really overnight is the goal.  But I am trying to speed the process so I soaked them for an hour after boiling them for a few minutes, and then added a mixture of cooked ground turkey with chicken soup and peanut butter and cooked it on low heat for a while. I decided to keep a lot of the bean water still in the mixture and am hoping the beans soak up the water in the next few hours so it ends up as a chili and not just a soup.  I think it is working.  I think using my other favorite ingredients of honey, mustard powder, and worschester sauce is going to create an interesting chili. I added a can of corn, too. I am not sure if all the flavors will mix in a good way with cream of chicken soup, but I think it is good experience to make a whole pot of chili. Sadly, I added garlic early on but I think I have enough other flavors for that not to mess it up. I think if this chili effort doesn’t work, I will make a normal chili next time with the next bag of beans, using more of the traditional tomato sauces and chili spices that people use. I have some sour cream and cheese so I think this could end up being kind of an indulgence instead of what I thought it was which was me cooking some beans as if I lived in a cabin somewhere and went to the general store only a few times a year. A lot of apocalypse movies and Judgement Day paintings don’t show the pots of chili and the marshmallow bunnies and chocolate sauce, which is my next defense against the pandemic.

What should you do if you see one of these:

It looks like a coronoravirus doesn't it. I found it online when I was searching for images of suction cup kooshballs that look like coronoravirus. I thought it could be good for a tweet, but the photo was blurred once I tried to upload it.  I have been wondering if there is a conspiracy where some of the tech company control freaks are doing things like costing people likes on purpose or making the faces on videos have ugly expressions captured in the freeze frame. But there is no reason to be too paranoid.  What people should be paranoid about is that tomorrow morning there is a visiting nurse from my insurance plan coming to my apartment to talk to me about my condition and medicine.  And I do not know whether it really is someone trying to help me, or if instead it is a legal shark from the barnes and noble people who have been harassing me and following me with legal intimidation.  If the visitor doesn't shoot me and instead turns out to actually be someone from the insurance program, even then are they really trying to help me or is it some kind of investigation in disguise as a way of reducing medicaid recipients.  Well this person will literally smell a rat because there are some dead mice in my apartment. But hopefully it will be fine.  I just now felt suicidal.  Medicaid paperwork and insecure benefits make me feel that way, and interestingly, a lot of the legal intimidation seems to be focused on my spending and transaction records. I think it could be a problem for them that it increases pressure about something that already causes me so much distress.  I think that could change the category of the crime, which has now been going on for over 10 years and involves many more people than I would have guessed would want to sign up to be the bad guys in a morality play that uses actual damnation.

Daylight Food Time

    Well everyone, I hope you are having a nice day. I am in New York City after a trip to visit my parents and my sister’s family in Greenville, SC. It was a great trip and I am thankful that I got to go there and to be back before the main coronora virus problems.

     My gallbladder has recently been bothering me on purpose and I will probably have to have it removed soon.  But so far I am okay if I avoid certain foods. But some things you can’t avoid, like reeses peanut butter eggs and chicken with cream sauce. And coke and coffee and jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and cookies.

    Anyway I find that the coronora fears are a nice addition to my anxiety disorder and I am not freaking out too much.  I am just going to try to wash my hands and make sure I do my part to minimize the contagion. And I am not going to scream “coronoravirus” in a crowded building.

    Something exciting right now is that I started using a lava lamp that I got myself for Christmas a couple of years ago.  It is working great and I am happy because I wanted one as a kid and now I finally have one.  It is so cool and I am glad I did not get one as a kid because I probably would have become a scientist instead of a poet.

    Well have a great day everyone. See you all at the hand sanitizer stores.

The Year of the Rat

Well everyone, it’s time for a blog post.  Today is the Chinese New Year and it is a great day because this is 2020- the year of the rat.  I was born in the year of the snake, which I am not happy about, but I love rodents and am so excited to be living in the year of the rat this year.  I think it would be a good year for people to become a born again Christian if they want to so they could be from the year of the rat after all and be very clever, wise, and financially successful as evangelical mega church pastors who need to avoid the numbers 5 and 9 and could benefit from the colors blue, gold, and green.

  

I have something else to say which is that I just tried adding peanut butter to the cream sauce for ground turkey and it turned out great.  So it is butter, honey, worschester sauce, cooking the ground turkey until it is all chopped up and cooked, and then add honey mustard just from a jar, and then a glob of peanut butter, and some heavy cream.  Then cook it for a while and then here is another crazy idea is to sprinkle cheese on it when you eat it. It doesn’t seem right to do any of that but really it is correct.

Anyway, the latest legal intimidation phone call was routed through 1(218) 285-8522 from International Falls, MN.  I interpret it as meaning that they are going to carve a Wiccan Star into my face, but I am probably reading into it too much.  You ought to be able to harass and stalk a disabled former cashier for five years without everyone thinking you are a devil worshipper.

A New Year’s Day

Hi everyone, I hope you are doing great.  Today is Sunday, Jan 5. Today has been one of the nicest days I have ever had. I am trying to figure out if I had good behavior or something to deserve it. I did kind of do the best I could in some ways, but I still feel like today’s experiences were better than I could ever have chosen or earned. I took communion at church and it was great, and then I ate cheese grits at my favorite restaurant. And a guy was watching the football game in such a sweet way outside of a pizza place. He stood there for about thirty minutes watching it on their TV. Then, at volunteer work, there was this golden blob statue on a table, and a guy who has been nice to me said he thought it could be gold, but then it wasn’t, so he left it on the table.  Then another guy talked to me about it, and he said he thought it might be something that has to do with witchcraft.  Well I had not touched it because I thought it had to do with an Eastern religion that I don’t believe in.  Then this other guy started talking to us and said it looked like an elephant. Well then I noticed that it kind of looked like an eagle or a cobra. And I think the statue is like some kind of Rorschach game where you can see different things in the sculpture.  And I think it is not a religious item or a bad trick, though the experience really reached me all the way to my mind’s eye, which I have been thinking about and trying to learn more about, because I experience some serious verve in what I mentally think about, see, and get attached to in various ways.  Anyway, the object to me also makes me think of a lot of different people I know, and I feel like the experience was right in a zone of so many associations that it was something really special.  And I would say it was one of the happiest experiences of my life in a certain way, like to me, the core of what is most meaningful and fun in life.  And the people around me were so great, and those guys who I talked to were so cool and to me part of the whole interpretation experience. My conclusion about the object is that it is an idol from a society that worships play-doh.

Extra New Years Post

     Well everyone, I am doing three New Year’s Eve posts on this blog, because the next one could seem controversial to some people, and I want to either start or end on a good note.  Do you guys have any New Year’s resolutions?  I like thinking of resolutions each year.  I think it is because I am really ambitious and feel motivated to achieve things.  One year when I was working at Barnes and Noble, my New Year’s resolution was to give people higher high fives, you know, like when you are giving someone five and you can do a high five instead of a low five or a medium five?  Well that year, they hired a really tall person named Jeff, who gave really high fives, and I almost had to jump sometimes to do a high five if something interesting happened at work.  I think that also probably has helped my New Year’s resolution stats.

     This year, I will repeat the same resolution as the last few years, which is to try not to curse at people. I actually have been doing really well and recovering a lot from the trauma symptoms that made me more provokable. As you will read in my next post, there is no shortage of people trying to bother me.  But I am feeling a lot more like my old patient self, and soon I might be in no danger at all of saying any of the slurs people try to get me to say.

   Anyway, I think I will try to have some other goals and resolutions, like taking the MSW licensing test, successfully sharing blog posts and book links on Facebook, participating in group mental health treatment somewhere, and trying to clean my apartment a little bit.  Also, I think I will go to the YMCA and try to lose ten pounds. I mean why not. That is not a boring goal, and a lot of times, you end up eating yummier food on a diet anyway.  For me, that is what always happens, and then I get excited and start eating pancakes all the time. Then, the diet is over.  Well have a great New Years everyone and please send me some cash sometime.

Happy New Year's Eve

Well everyone, I hope you are doing great and having a Happy New Year’s Eve. I am staying home as usual, and I am looking forward to eating some yummy food by myself.  I am going to make some rice krispy treats, and I just finished making a Mexican bean dip.  It is yummy, but I used a guacamole spicy dip instead of just guacamole, and that messes up the flavor a little bit.  But I think it is still yummy.  At my grocery store, people often get in my way on purpose and block the aisles as a form of harassment.  I think it is because of racism or as some kind of defense of the neighborhood.  I don’t know if it is based on other identity factors besides my race, like my mental illness, or my loneliness from autism and gender problems. It could be more political and have to do with me being an American citizen having the audacity to live in an apartment in… the United States of America.  A lot of my neighbors make dog noises at me when I walk down the street, or spit near my feet.  But the most common thing is to get in my way as I walk down the street.  Sometimes as many as twenty or thirty people can bother me on purpose within one trip to the grocery store or coffee shop.  I do not know who all everyone is affiliated with. There are a lot of “social justice warriors” in New York City, who to me are sometimes so unreasonably hypocritical that it almost seems like a psychiatric problem.  Some of that philosophy is very supported by the social work school that I went to in order to try to become trained to help mentally ill people.  So I often feel the persecution from more powerful sources when the people in my neighborhood succeed in ruining my day and life. It is sad because I do not have anywhere else to go.  I have to live in New York right now because of the emotional abuse from where I came from, and because of the seizure disorder that makes it too much of a legal risk to drive.

    Anyway, is that too depressing to share on New Year’s Eve? I usually keep it to myself because I have thought that if I got famous as a writer, my neighborhood would be in danger when some people find out how I was treated.  But I am not sure anyone would do anything. Some people view me in a category negatively with a lot of other people in this city, and they are glad to let us all self-destruct together. I just try to get some good praying done and regain some peace and happiness when I can and be thankful whenever anyone is nice to me.  

A New Year's Prayer

Dear God, please choose daily one hundred crowds of one hundred people, all from throughout their lives, and assign them a trillion scheduled happy provisions for any possible network plus all the people who watched the same shows as they did at any time, plus the people of the time periods that those people’s teachers knew about, plus ten wild card bonus group selections, and give them 44 billion salvation trail provision assortments with a hundred unlosable keys to the mountain doors of eternal store inventory assembly headquarters.  Please view the social force layer groups providing the blessings and civilization benefits with an extra consideration and create a new recipient foundation that includes those people and four hundred million people each who ever made similar choices as them, had similar interests, said something related to a topic they presented in official contexts, or hundred hundred hundred. Please rank all of the people and a thousand generations in one million lists according to a thousand criteria with concessions and future justice and role considerations, and commission a neverending blessings sequence theme for each listing, with additional recipient categories and  a distribution of bonus variations and extra interpretation resources among anyone in related societies or communities with inclusion extension and translated consumable extras. Please smatter five hundred trillion merit-based, grace-based, and mercy-based jackpots among all people ever, with friend provision and food and love prioritized and increasing in places of unacknowledged suffering, adding an inverse formula and four hundred complicated graph patterns governing extra increase and delivery of supplies in fifty categories such as intangible, common, unexpected, edible, indestructible, or recurring. Please save 500 million more people from death and hell in Jesus’s name, with faith being shared among anyone who can give more from offering the credit to also be transformed into understanding and associated or resulting yields times 5000 plus a nonmentioned restart of the most light high bright for people not included in the main route of service in four thousand city groups with connections to help provide prize package 63 space edition all-include loops given to anyone who would add that to their own surprise list ordered without possibility of skipovers. Please forgive us for all of our sins and make each quantifiable material and time-oriented label cooperation admissible into the count machine that can construct a hundred map sequence thousand thousand thousand ticker grid indicator patterns for 500 dimensional or kingdom-location unpredictable blessing generators. Thank you for all the great things that have happened to anyone and please help us do what we are supposed to and share food and love and life with all people and animals possible through the righteous faith and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

A possible new documentary series

    Well everyone, this is my third post in a row.  The other two posts I wrote were kind of traumatizing for all of us, I think, so for this post I will try to calm everyone down with some normalcy.  What should I write about?  I did not think of it ahead of time and am just writing.  Maybe this post could have to do with how I am cooking some scallops later, with butter, lemon, and garlic.  I might try to make a lemon butter sauce, which is something I tried in restaurants before. It was my favorite food- shrimp and scallops with lemon butter sauce.  I ate it about four times, at a restaurant called Bonefish and a restaurant called Carrabas.  Now I will see if I can achieve the same thing on my own.  I wonder if I should buy some shrimp.  Hmm. That could be a good idea.  The scallops are thawing in the refrigerator. I think that God is helping me get through some health problems that mean I need to try to eat better when I can.  But I have recovered some and ate some potato casserole today that has the normal ingredients that I like best, which are sour cream, cheese, and cream of chicken soup. You can mix all that together to put in a chicken enchilada, too, with shredded chicken from a rotisserie chicken, in a flour tortilla and then baked in the oven for about 20 minutes.

    Do you guys think it is good to blog about the legal sharks? I think I might start doing some videos when it happens, and share a little commentary with the legal sharks in the background.  It is a very interesting time we are living in, with everything being on video, and surveillance cameras everywhere, and people with smart phones that can record things, too, and the background of internet and social media where things can be shared with thousands of people, or a smaller number of exactly the people you would care about.  It is like a threat of any mistake becoming part of your permanent impression on anyone, but I think that in the end, we have to see it as the opposite, and as an assurance that nothing has to be permanent, and any disgrace can fade into a noisy, meaningless background as people in heaven get to know each other on different terms and with an attention that makes everyone totally unaware of things on earth that seemed like they could never be lived down.

Koala Emergency

    Ok everyone, I am writing another post that is also about a sad topic, and it has to do with the koala emergency in Australia.  There are terrible fires there, and thousands of koalas have died and are still suffering.  People estimated that 480 million animals have died.  I honestly can almost not believe that, and it shakes me up and will permanently affect my whole worldview.  

    Some people think animals don’t get resurrected like how people can, but I think animals can live again, and most people will be reunited with their pets someday. I have to wonder why God wants 480 million healed and comforted animals in heaven. Just recently I was praying and asking God to give everyone imaginary angel animals like the mice and rabbits and dogs who help me get through each day.  Maybe he is going to give a lot of suffering and stressed people some comforting koala spirit animals or guardian angel friends to help us through the next part of life.  Or maybe there are a lot of people dying and suffering all over the world, and some of the animals are going to be therapy animals for people recovering in heaven. Or maybe there is about to be a war and horrible suffering soon, and  animals are being comforted and trained to be angel animals for the living, or pet therapy animals for those who end up in heaven.  480 million is a lot.  It is koalas and kangaroos, probably mice and squirrels and birds, and definitely many of people’s favorite animals ever.

    People say it is so inappropriate to say a theory like that, but all I can say is that I do think there is a good purpose behind everything, and I won’t refrain from trying to guess what happiness could come from a tragedy like this that honestly is one of the worst, saddest things I have ever heard of.

That let down feeling after christmas and being stalked and harassed by legal intimidation from your old retail job

     Well everyone, today is Dec 28. Yesterday was the birthday of some childhood friends, Hadley and Elizabeth.  December 20 was the birthday of other childhood friends, Susan and Jeremy.  I remember those days not because of facebook but because sometimes you know that stuff when you are a kid and those days become like extra holidays in some way.

     I had a mostly good Christmas except for people hurting me in the usual ways. I genuinely don’t understand why the conspiracy does certain stuff to me year after year.  But I ate some good food and felt safe in my apartment.  Yesterday at Petco, a guy pretended to look at the pet snacks behind me and scanned me up and down for several minutes, trying to make me feel violated.  It was very similar to what people did to me when I worked at Barnes and Noble, and to the constant violation and harassment that was maximized during my last two years there.  I don’t know if that guy was one of the legal sharks or private investigators who have been following me, but it is possible.  I think another one of those people was behind me in line at Target, too, right before Christmas, with a threat of trying to track my spending and accuse me of some kind of money fraud with being on disability.  I was literally just buying pinatas to stuff with school supplies and candy for my nieces as a Christmas present.  Why would anyone try to accuse me because of that, and most of all, who in the world would be following me?  It is absurd, and I think it does make sense to view it in a religious way, as some kind of out of this world evil attack that is so ludicrous that I should prioritize whatever prayer or forgiveness could happen for a lot of people who I would otherwise never have any association with. In other words, I should view these people as being one step away from being demons.

     Anyway, that was kind of mean to say after saying I should make the most of forgiveness opportunities.  I still get mad because these people do succeed at hurting me.  I think for me, the next step is to talk to the FBI.  The fact is that it seems like there are either hundreds of legal sharks or they try to create that impression somehow.  And what did I ever do?  I was a cashier and a poet. 

    Well, time to finish this post and write another post.  I think I might write several posts in a row. Sorry for the low mood everyone. I am really tired of people hurting me and I do not understand when it comes from people who I thought would help me.

a new poem

Christmas Jam

I am happy for the people 

who are the light of the world.

My happiness for them

is a strand of Christmas lights

gleaming in my own dark soul. 

My heart is in the cold woods 

of a winter where the sun set

suddenly and soon,

taking with it my youth

as laughter turned to fear and sadness,

deepening with each year.

But the rustling leaves in the shadows

turned out to mostly be friendly gophers and prairie dogs,

roasting marshmallows over coals

that glow orange and yellow with heat from another world.

A Christmas song echoes in the night,

and everyone knows

where they can find a tree

full of bright lights,

colorful and warm

with strands of tinsel and glass 

reflecting the shimmer of hope

in the middle of a menacing wilderness

that in my mind,

has preserved the greatest peace.

Christmas at Tic-Tac Castle

have a great christmas, everyone

     Well everyone, how are you doing.  I am doing okay and am excited because I got a Christmas tree for my room and it is a real Christmas tree and so cool.  I also thought of a poem idea which is for a poem where I will say that in heaven there are going to be a lot of santa clauses competing to give everyone the best toys.  So everyone will get multiple visits from all the santas trying to outdo each other. They might not be old guys either, and could be fun Christmas animals who are friends with the Easter Bunny. It is going to be great. 

     Yesterday I also started imagining heaven differently and pictured an outdoor scene that is still in my mind, with campfires and nice people.  It is cool but I am still going to try to survive these recent gallbladder problems, and I like living in a big city. Well, that is all for today. Tomorrow I am going to try to build a gingerbread castle out of some gingerbread house kits. Have a great night, everyone, and a great christmas.

Yummy Christmas Food

Hi everyone, I hope you are having a great Christmas. I am doing okay and decided to cook some fish as health food this week. It turned out so yummy and I thought I would share the recipe:

You buy some tilapia at the grocery store. Then you heat a frying pan and add a little bit of olive oil. Then you add honey and it starts to sizzle.  Try to mix it around in the pan some and soon add the fish.  It starts cooking and then you can start adding things that seem good like squeezing an orange over the fish and adding mustard powder, ginger, and worschester sauce.  Maybe add some more honey, too.  As the fish cooks, turn it over sometimes and maybe cut it into smaller pieces as it cooks.  Let it cook a lot until you can tell the meat is white and there starts to be a caramelized flavor all over the fish pieces.  Then turn off the heat and put it on a plate.  Then eat it.  You can add vegetables and a mango popsicle to the meal if you need more food and need to be healthy.  Some people might not be able to add the extra sugar of the popsicle but often, popsicles only have 50-100 calories.  So this is a yummy meal even if you are on an extreme diet.  It is so yummy that I am not freaking out about how I might not be able to eat as much of my usual foods that often have sour cream, cream of chicken soup, and cheese mixed up in some way. Well have a great day everyone.

The Gall

     Well everyone, I hope you all are having a nice day. It is a day in the Christmas season, and I am happily celebrating Christmas.  I think this is the most carefree Christmas I have ever had except for a few recent emergencies that seem to be related to a gallbladder problem.  I am thankfully okay so far and am trying to eat different foods than usual.  I had already cut back on some things like cream in my coffee, which I replaced with milk, and I lost ten pounds to get back to my normal weight.  So that excitement of being back to normal is kind of off-setting some of my concern about suddenly having to avoid a lot of my favorite foods.  Also, I will clarify that my normal weight is not a great weight, but not that bad for someone like me.

     My trips to the E.R. recently were very interesting and educational, and I enjoyed getting to be with some great hospital people.  A few days ago, I had to call 911 and go to the hospital in an ambulance.  It was a closer call than I think should have happened, but I thought I might be okay when really I wasn’t.  I will find out soon what exactly is wrong, but I think that I might soon have to say goodbye to my gallbladder, which did nothing to me except try to digest food to the best of its ability.  So that is too bad, but I am not worried.  I think it will be okay and I will just make sure I eat what I am supposed to and try not to get addicted to pain medicine.  That is a risk but I think I could manage it.  All kinds of stuff happens to people, and that 911 incident made me more aware of certain levels of not feeling good.

    I think the legal sharks who have been following me for several years are really feasting on these recent health problems, and it is definitely bothering me. I am replaying my life in my mind and thinking about all the ways they might try to hurt me. I think they have a lot of strategies and want me to say the wrong thing in this post. I think they want me to say a threat to them, which they've been trying to trigger now with what must be hundreds of phone calls and a few sightings of guys taking photos of me or making themselves known in other ways.  I think that is their golden thing they want the most is for me to return their threats so they can say it was reasonable for them to follow me and interfere in my life. They will say it was to keep Barnes and Noble people safe from a dangerous mentally ill person.  But I feel bad for them. I am a Barnes and Noble person, and not just that, but a poet. My mental illness is a very typical part of an artistic profile, and I always made sure to keep it that way. I was a good bookseller who read a lot of books without getting paid for it, and that was probably the issue all along. Someone felt that it would be hard to get away with firing me for whatever their branding reasons are, or other power plays, or to cover up how they treated a lot of people in the company. I don’t think I should say more now, because what happened is worse than anyone would guess, even if they were told, and even if they witnessed it themselves, like the thousands of people who saw me at my worst for 12 years.  Is that an admission of some kind?  I don’t think it is. I was also at my best in some ways, as most people are, no matter how the world punishes them for not committing suicide.

    Anyway, it is probably all from the conspiracy anyway, and I am just thankful to have interesting things to think about instead of the boredom that was probably maximized on purpose during my first two years working in the Barnes and Noble music department. There was an unusual stretch of people stealing CDs during that time, and they would sell them for cash at local store nearby.  It drove me crazy as I tried to do a good job with loss and theft prevention while experiencing some prodromal schizophrenia symptoms.

    I don’t need to look back and think they did it all on purpose. The fact is that there is a lot I don’t know.  I remember a mean older white guy breaking my heart by referencing the store’s holiday incentive program as I handed him the CD he was looking for.  He said “I suppose now you want your funny money?” How cruel. The managers had told us that some secret shoppers might hand us a gift card if we did a good job.  But of course there was no gift card, and who else would know about that program but some bad person trying to make me quit. That was December. I had just started in October. I don’t know what I possibly had done to make them want to get me to quit. Who knows how hard they tried and who did it.  There was a customer who mimicked me to my face one day, making fun of how nerdy I sounded behind the cash register.  But I don’t think she was one of the Barnes and Noble constructive dismissal bullies. I think she was probably one of the good people camouflaging the abuse so I would stay naïve enough to keep the job. Was that before or after I got on the insurance?  I don’t know. At that time, if you lost insurance, you could never be insured for your medical condition again.  How horrible.  What a horrible grown up world I inherited. I think today might be even worse for not just some but most young people.  What a tragedy, and yet I know even still as these lawyers try to keep making their case against me even when I stand in a median crossing the street and text my mom about having gallbladder problems, that the real tragedy is that these guys thought they were defending a brand so good that they could do anything they wanted to the stupid people of South Carolina, and not just stupid, but poor, and even worse than that, Christian, and even worse than that, depressed, and the worst crime of all, being a good bookseller.

something very sad

    The puppeteer who was Big Bird died this week, and I am so sad. I have thought about it a lot and felt confused sometimes about whether Big Bird died or a person died, and I have been imagining Big Bird in heaven when really Big Bird is probably still a muppet on earth.

    Anyway I wanted to post this photo of Big Bird a long time ago and say that I think the design of Big Bird got messed up, and his head is way too fluffy now.  I think it compromises the cuteness which is a real thing that can be achieved in drawings and art. It is not good to go around criticizing things, but I am going to say it because I think it is very sad and I almost can’t even stand it when I see the more current images online.

    I used to read about Sesame Street and the muppets a lot, and I think that early on, the creators of Sesame Street changed the design of Big Bird because they thought his head was too small and it made him look stupid. But I think it would have been good to take that risk, and kids could see that any amount of intelligence can be lovable.

Happy Black Friday, everyone!

    I hope you all got to go shopping today, and I hope you got me some gourmet food items. I did not buy anything today except for a coffee.  I forgot it was Black Friday.  That is a nice luxury for someone who used to work retail and felt some exhaustion during the holidays.  But I also had that built in participation with each holiday so I am thankful for that.         

    Today I went to the YMCA and finished the last half of a 5K that I signed up for as a virtual race.  It is a Cookie Monster themed race, and I will get a medal with Cookie Monster eating a cookie. That is so exciting to me. Some people probably think that when it says “Cookie Monster Race,” it is referring to a race of Cookie Monsters, like a category of muppets that will populate heaven. I do not think that is what it means, and I think there will probably only be one Cookie Monster. I do not know if it will be me or not.

    Anyway, that was good religion, wasn’t it?  

    Another thing that is happening right this second as I write this blog post is that I am completing the National Novel Writing Month challenge.  This post contains my last few hundred words to get to 50,000 words during the month of November. It was an awesome experience and I finished a new novel. But the novel was only 33,333 words because it was for kids or grownups who want to read a short novel about imaginary mice.  So I used journal entries and blog posts to get to 50,000 words, which is allowed but to me not totally the same as when someone finishes a novel of exactly that length.

     Some people wrote that much within the first week.  Can you believe that?  I can’t but I kind of can.  There are also people who got to over a hundred thousand words. I think that is so cool.

    I believe in NaNo and I believe it produces good books. I think the people who participate are true creatives who can do any kind of good work in that time span.  It is true that some people might do better with a different process.  But so much can happen once people just sit down and start writing.

    I published my novel already on Smashwords and am waiting to assign the ISBN once it gets accepted for “premium distribution” at other e-book retailers.  I love that process and feel happy about it, but have worried about whether I can succeed enough without being on Amazon yet. I am proud to not depend on Amazon, but feel that it is a real risk when people can so easily download e-books with just a click instead of having to do a whole online transaction. But I think it will be okay. 

     Now I am at 500 words and have completed NaNo. Thanks, everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

   Well hi everyone, today is Thanksgiving. I am thankful for a lot of things, including current safety and a warm place to sleep and having enough food.

    Today I was by myself but was mostly okay and had some unexpected yummy coffee and made a gravy for rotisserie chicken that was even better than I expected.  Then I ate it with some bread. It was yummy and a surprise for it to be so good.

    People are still torturing me and the conspiracy still tries to hurt me every day but mostly I feel hopeful and productive, and I have a sense of meaning and purpose.

    I published a book today and feel happy about it. It is a children’s novel and I think it might turn out to be the second book in a trilogy. But I also wonder if I could end up writing a whole series with ten or twenty books.  That would be crazy.

    The books so far always have a people plot and an imaginary mice plot.  I have been shocked and happy to find that my true character and story ideas come out in the mice plots. I really thought I might have a disability in the area of fiction generation and appreciation, to the point of not being able to tell a normal story about anything that ever happens in a day or in my life.  But I have been thinking of cute little stories with very innocent mice, who have characteristics and conversations that reflect true human behavior, which I thought I did not understand.  

    This starts to sound like bragging but I think the main point is that I might have somehow gained access to a real world of cartoon mice, and that is currently where my social self is most realized. But I do not know. I talk to people and have a lot of friends who I do care about.  And I eat food and listen to music.  That is real living, too.

    Anyway, I think I am going to soon finish this National Novel Writing Month with the 50,000 words required to be a NaNo “winner.”  That makes me happy and is another surprise.

    It is times like these that it is good to look around and make sure other chores are done and to think about whether other people might need some prayer or support.
   I erased something here because it was kind of stupid.

National Novel Writing Month Blog Post

            Well everyone, today is Nov 22.  It has been an exciting month.  I got a late start but decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year with a novel, and I finished it today with 33,333 words including the introduction. It is the second novel in what will hopefully be a trilogy of children’s books. The first book was Donut Novel, and this novel features some of the same imaginary mice characters.  It is called Football Novel.  It turned out great and I am so excited. The odd thing is that I wrote it quickly and am not doing much revision. It is almost verbatim.  That is exciting to me but a little scary to think that I might not be capable of changing stuff I write now.  It is kind of cool to be happy with it and get it right the first time, though. 

            I worked hard but found that the word count that keeps pace with NaNo is very reasonable and often I could do twice as much.  But then I did need days off.  It also helped to be part of a couple of online Nano support groups. Now I am writing blog posts and working on a personal statement for an application. So I will add that word count to start a new project and try to get to the 50,000 words to win NaNo.

            Something fun that I got to do last weekend at interestingly the perfect time was the Madeleine L’Engle Writers Conference and Retreat.  It was the first one of its kind, and the speakers and panelists were amazing.  I got to meet Katherine Paterson, who wrote Bridge to Teribithia and Jacob Have I Loved.  That is just ultimate, and I still can’t believe it.  It was so fun to think about the literature from her and Madeleine L’Engle, and all the writers from my childhood and middle school years. I have an interesting “reading biography,” and most of my best reading happened in middle school, before I started having attention span problems and depression and anxiety.  I read books for school, like A Wrinkle in Time, and some other great ones like Dollhouse Murders, Castle in the Attic, and more serious ones like Homecoming and Where the Lilies Bloom.  I am also remembering Where the Red Fern Grows, and many before that like books by Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. Some of my favorites were from Lois Duncan, who wrote teen crime novels, and William Sleator, who wrote science fiction, including Into the Dream and House of Stairs.  Wow, those were awesome books!!  I think many wonderful people still have those kinds of reading experiences now, but I don’t. I lost some reading ability so it is all mostly work now.

            That is what Katherine Paterson said about writing. She said it was all gift and all work. I agree wholeheartedly about that and other things in life. 

            Now I am having a nice night in my apartment and collecting my thoughts after a few tough days of feeling trauma feelings from some of my life problems. But I went to therapy yesterday, sadly missing a memorial service for Toni Morrison, who was another author with classics that I loved and have reading memories of that are beyond sacred. What is the word for that exactly?  It is not “holy,” and it seems more substantial than “sacred.” Maybe a food vocabulary is what captures it, like when you have a meal that you will always remember, or when something really hits the spot.  But it is really is as simple as what it is, which is when you are depressed, or have a slight lost feeling, and you read a book that will always be Beloved.