Is there a difference? Yes. A true denturist makes dentures. That is their main business! Not like many of the Dental Offices available now.

A denturist specializes exclusively in the design, creation, fitting, and maintenance of dentures.

Now that you know what a denturist is, here is the bad news: Denturists are only allowed to practice independently in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. Those in Maine, Arizona, and Colorado can practice under the supervision of a licensed dentist.

What I have observed of the practice of the profession of dentistry is so much different from the definition.

My first set of dentures was created by a dentist in Maine! He pulled the remainder of my teeth and took impressions. I was living in Hartford, Conn. Two weeks later, my full set of dentures arrived in the mail. I wore them for one miserable month, enduring the sores in my mouth. I returned to Maine, and this miraculous dentist ground them in the places where I had sores. I went back to Hartford and within a week all the soreness was gone, and I had a perfect fit. I could bite into an apple with no pain. They lasted for close to 20 years.

Since that time, I have had many who claimed to be a “denturist” make new dentures, but alas, none fit as well or lasted as long.  

My current set has been laid to rest and replaced by an older set. This set was made by a local dentist, who shall remain nameless. I answered an ad in a local flyer for a “Family Dentist” who “specializes” in dentures and offered a $25 reward card. They had me drive across town so many times I lost count for fittings, pictures, etc. Finally, the premiere of my new teeth!

I admit they looked pretty, but they didn’t fit and were so paper-thin that I was afraid they would break the first time I bit down. BTW, they agreed to send them back to the lab for a reline. A week later, there was no change! A week later, I received a bill in the mail for an additional $200. I called my insurance company, and the office agreed to cancel the bill.

A word to advertisers: If you offer a gift card for any amount, don’t make me beg for it! AND if you advertise as being the best, do your job to match your advertising.

Now for my daily advertisement:

If you’re interested in my books, my publisher, D2D, distributes them through the following channels: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

My eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  

Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and Books.by/brendacolbath, where my paperback books are available for shipping worldwide for only $5.

I am really not a writer; I share my dreams and nightmares.  Some you will like, and some you will hate a little, but I hope my honesty helps you feel connected and understood in your own experiences.

Much of the blame belongs to the lovely retired teacher, Mrs. Additon, who lived at the end of the road, before I entered the bus for a ride to school.  She liked me and shared her beloved hardback books. We discussed the contents of each one after I read them. I was a voracious reader then, and as I read them, I became drawn into the love of adventure contained within those magical pages. She insisted that I protect her treasures with the same care and love she held for them, which made me feel valued and inspired to cherish those meaningful connections.

She opened up a wonderful world to me. She saved me from feeling sorry for myself while living on our little farm and attending the two-room schoolhouse.  She made me believe that there could be great things in store for me.

I may not have achieved the many great things she dreamed for me, but what I did achieve is a lifelong love of adventure and knowledge that are hidden in those pages of books. And the wonderful thing is that they are waiting patiently for you to discover, at the libraries, and it’s all free, unless you forget the due date.

Any time I found between chores and schoolwork was spent writing short stories in my trusty notebook. Until I finally got to High School, no one was interested or aware of them. My sophomore English teacher was different! He required five handwritten pages (computers had not been a household item) every week. We could copy from a book if we noted which book.

I chose to share a story, and most times I filled the five pages and had to write ‘Continued next week. ‘It drove him crazy, at least he said it did. He was one of the people who told me, “Do something about your writing!

I am a little late to the game, but I have over 20 books published. I think I tell a good story, and I either like or hate my characters, and when they have to die, I sometimes cry a little.

Will tell you more about my writing journey later; now it is time for a small commercial.  My books are available at your favorite booksellers, including Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

They are available in paperback from my bookstore Books.by/brendacolbath They are shipped free or for $5. Worldwide. They are also available as eBooks and in paperback on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com.

And soon they will be available in eBook for from many Book Stores!

Here is a partial list:

What I want is to hear that you actually did SOMETHING!

I receive dozens of solicitations from the DNC every day! And they are from every state, needing just $1, $7, $15 or more to help you DO YOUR JOB!

A question! Why can’t you do your job for your salary, which provides you with much better benefits than I get on Medicare?

Want to know the best part of all the emails that fill my email folder? None of them allows me to comment or return comments. Why don’t you want my opinion? Just my hard-earned $$$$$!

Are you afraid of what I would say, or do you not give a damn about my situation or opinion?

I am a writer, and I wonder why you employ the most idiotic themes for your solicitations? Some of them are so poorly written that you should be ashamed.

It appears you cannot stand up to the pressure not to vote for bills you know are wrong on so many levels for your constituents, yet you give in and vote, knowing what the results will be.

I do not expect you to win every time, but I do expect you to FIGHT! LOUD LONG AND HARD!

Here is an example of just two of the solicitations:

Republicans are finally admitting what we’ve known for months: their Senate majority is vulnerable. Growing controversies and deepening divisions with Donald Trump are exposing real cracks in their hold on power.

Another one: 

$7 so Democrats can prevent more cruelty and authoritarianism from the Trump administration. Will you chip in $7 to the DNC today to help take back control of Congress?

Those aren’t the worst of them. I love the ones that say: “Brenda, you are one of the most valuable members, and we are counting on you!

Excuse me! You don’t know me and care even less about me!

I love the one about not reaching your goal. Are you required to meet that goal every month? Week?” What happens if you can’t meet it? Why even mention it? Tell me what you did this week and this month, and maybe you will garner support more willingly.

Just asking for money without showing what you are working on and what you’re accomplishing isn’t a good start!

Here is my solicitation: I have published over 24 books, from Children’s, Sci/fi, Murder Mystery, to Young Adult! They are available in eBook and Paperback on the following sites: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

On my website www.brendacolbathbooks.com and on Books.by/brendacolbath Check them out, and by the way, you can comment.

Thanks for listening to my rant today! Let’s talk again…

When you were young and full of energy, didn’t you wonder why those old people slowed down and just “sat”?

Many people worked so damned hard to get everything they thought they needed for now, but lost sight of what they would need in their retirement.  And many worked hard to provide a future for their kids, putting their own future on the back burner! Retirement hit them in the face before they had time to secure their own future.

They, like many older folks, got stuck depending on Social Insecurity! And if they worked in low-paying jobs, they are out of luck! Their monthly check will not do much for their security. Everything goes up and up, and their check doesn’t! If the COLA is raised 2% or 3%, the cost of the Medicare Insurance Premium goes up!

BTW, that cute little card you get from your Insurance Plan to help you pay for your drugs and other things you want on your quarterly stipend, or to pay for your drugs, is a Credit Card. They will not admit it is a credit card. But the name of the Bank is on the back; it should be a giveaway, and if you do a little computer work, you can discover the interest rate.

If you are lucky and smart, you own their home free and clear! And if you are smarter, you live within your means and keep it free and clear. That may mean not a $100 dinner every week and no DoorDash dinners every night, but it will mean cooking at home. I will also mean last year’s movies, not premieres.

Here is another RED FLAG: All the Mortgage Companies advertise a HELOC as if it is the most wonderful thing ever! And it isn’t bad if you know what it is!

It is a loan secured by the equity of your house! If you treat it like an unsecured credit card, you will buy your house again soon, or lose it in foreclosure.

I just saw an ad on FB! Just for viewing your rate on a Home Equity Loan you are entered in a Home Equity Loan Sweepstakes! Guess what your chances of winning the 50K are VS the million emails and calls trying to sell you on the value of the HELOC?

Enough about the trials and tribulations of business, let’s have some fun!

My first book was written in 2016, but the inspiration was in 1975 when I started in real estate, and many of the people are characters from that time; I just changed the names to

protect the guilty!  Maye West Mysteries Book 1: Murder on Lake Haverly

This book tells the story of what it was like being a woman in the Man’s world of Real Estate in the 70s! I was met by the men with the statement, “Great, a woman to cook for us!” And this tall drink of water meant it. He had a large salmon filet on the counter waiting for this “little Woman to cook it for them.

They went hungry that day and all the other days. Read the book to find out the fun I had dealing with them and other men in the business.

It is available on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and books.by/brendacolbath, and is distributed to the following platforms: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

I got this email today!

BTW, here’s the link to getting a passport card. Mom, if you want to vote, you are gonna need one of these since you changed your name when you got married. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html

Get a Passport Card

Correction!  The State of Maine changed my name. I was not consulted!

My question to my Beloved Government is: Why now, after 85 years, are you requiring me and ALL other Women to prove that we are residents of the United States and are valid American citizens, in order to vote?

When I married, I did not ask, nor was I consulted, to have my last name discarded, and to take my husband’s last name, nor did I agree to become a non-citizen! It was not a government order to discard me! We were married in a church.

I understand that in the eyes of most businesses, I am a second-class citizen, or more accurately, a second-class human being, just because I piss sitting down!

In the eyes of every employer, I was considered and treated as such. When raises were offered, I was skipped over or told that I had a husband “to take care of me.” I’ll bet that sounds wonderful, especially for those women who were left by their” free to do what the hell they wanted to do men,” many of them had no means of support and kids to raise on their own!

I really LOVED the one where I was “given” a 25-cent an hour raise, and the MAN was given DOLLARS AN HOUR because he had a family to raise. AND he was allowed to harass me every day we were cooped up in one room. To my credit, I didn’t tell that Woman-Owned company precisely where they could insert that 25-cent raise. I was the inside salesperson, and he was the outside salesman. The fact that I was the top salesperson went unnoticed.

The week I got my Real Estate license was the last day of working for someone else! Of course, there was the Owner/Broker, but if you produced, you were left alone, and I produced! I loved, loved, loved Real Estate! For the first time in my life, I was paid what I was worth!

Of course, I still had to contend with most of the brokers being of the male persuasion, and many tried to treat me as a secretary or maid, but that was discouraged by little old me.

BTW, on that same vein: The IRS also treated me like a non-citizen! I was only credited with the earnings of the companies where I was employed and paid wages, not ANY of my Real Estate Commissions. Don’t tell me to contact and try to get anyone to listen to me! Did that, and was given a large package of printouts of wages earned from employers, and amazingly, not one of the real estate companies. 

If I sound bitter, that would be an understatement! I suspect many more women feel like me: like many modern women, I make good money and feel free. Don’t look over your shoulder, because Big Government may look at you, too!

Now, I am enjoying my life, sewing for friends and writing books! If you want to learn a little about what life was like in the earlier days of Real Estate, try “Murder on Lake Haverly” and “Option.”

Visit my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, where eBooks and paperbacks are available.

Or visit books.by/brendacolbath to purchase paperbacks, with worldwide shipping of only $5. This month on books.by/brendacolbath, my latest book “Volcano” is free shipping worldwide!

If you have been following Ruby & Nolan’s adventures from childhood, in book 1 through this book you have been there when they discovered a “pretty rock” and decided to keep it safe in their playhouse designed by their Dad to resemble an old time western fort.

They thought it would be a good scentific project. And it was! There was no need to inform their parents! It was only a pretty rock! Right?

When it became obvious their rock was growing, they became nervious about what would hatch from it! But, not enough to fess-up!

The “children” are breaking the rules again, showing young readers that daring to be different can lead to exciting adventures, or just fun!

The ‘adults’ plan their grand rescue of Ty, Robin, and Donzereli, “after” the volcano stops erupting!

Lives hang in the balance!

Nolan and Shamus shake things up a bit by stealing a car again, embarking on a secret rescue mission!

The adults are blissfully unaware that the explorer “children” have made astonishing discoveries about their world’s history and shocking truths!

New continents, islands, three new groups of people, and a fascinating group of Fairies!  

Don’t you wonder how thrilled the adults will be when their “kids” go soaring into the unknown in spaceships courtesy of Donzereli’s new best friend Angel?

This book is available at my bookstore books.by/brendacolbath and ships in 2 days and for one month FREE shipping world wide.!

Happy Reading…. We’ll talk again soon.

It is fun and exciting to go on vacation, fly away, spend quality time with friends and relatives, and meet new people.

This time we actually flew! I am not sure how or why we decided to fly from Las Vegas to Seattle for a whirlwind visit with our Daughter and friends.

We considered renting a motorhome and driving, but the time it would take to drive that distance ruled that idea out.

Then we checked into taking the train. It sounds glamorous in a Sleeper Car, and it looks wonderful until you start booking. The good thing was we could board right here in Kingman, but from there it got pretty dicey! No throughway on a train; we would have to change several times, including a bus for part of the trip. The time might have been faster than in the Motorhome, but it didn’t sound like much fun.

When we finally decided to fly, we were late as usual in booking, so we paid more than we would have if we had planned months in advance. Since we were in for a penny, we decided to go in for a pound and booked First Class from Las Vegas to Seattle. Sounds fairy tale-ish! But First Clash ain’t what it used to be! It is four rows of seats in the front, separated by a flimsy curtain, with the same seats as in coach. We did get to board first, so we could watch everyone carrying huge carry-ons down the aisle, and fortunately, none landed in our laps.

I ordered two watered-down drinks, and we were served a hot sandwich and a puffy bag of potato chips with five chips inside. I will admit it appeared as though the in-flight crew catered to us, and they did a good job with what they had to work with!.

We decided that would be our last first-class plane trip, and probably our last any kind of plane trip. It appears that the planes spit out the passengers and luggage, then, within minutes, are loaded again and off to the next location. When do they have time to clean, even a little?

The highlight of our trip was the Airbnb house we rented. It was located on Lake Washington with an amazing view day and night! We could see across the lake to the Christmas lights of Ivar’s! This was a new house, freshly decorated, and the small lighted Christmas tree was a thoughtful welcome touch. We had one glitch: the oven didn’t work properly. When we mentioned it to the owner, he immediately offered compensation and promptly sent it through Airbnb to us.

Our trip home was interesting. We paid to park our car at a Las Vegas hotel with a shuttle running every half hour to and from the Airport! Sounds great, right?

The airline changed our departure time to more than an hour later than our already late one. We also forgot the one-hour time difference between Arizona and Las Vegas, so we spent more time in airports than in the air! The hotel informed us that the shuttle ran only every hour and stopped at 11:00, so we arrived too late and had to take an Uber to our car, which was parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage. But our Uber driver drove us right to our car. He got a good tip.

We kinda wish the Airline was as considerate of our troubles as our Airbnb. We sent a letter of complaint, and so far, we have had no response.

We went to Ivar’s for dinner the first night, and my Daughter scheduled a full body massage for me, which was wonderful! I think I will look for one here in Kingman.

We played many games of Cribbage and shared meals, and laughed! Our daughter and son-in-law planned a dinner at their favorite Mexican Restaurant and invited some of our friends we hadn’t seen for 10 years or more. Lots of hugs, great food, Margaritas, and we met sweet Rosemary, too!

We spent one day driving to Elma to have lunch with relatives and to stop by the Elma RV park for many hugs and cookies from Rea!

Like most vacations, we were busier than we were at home, working, but it was a blast seeing old friends and laughing. When we finally drove into our yard in the wee hours, we sighed, dragged our luggage inside, locked the doors, and fell into bed. We spent several more days just resting.

I just read another article about an ultra-rich person who gave away an enormous amount of money to improve other people’s lives!

Starting a foundation to help him give away money to help underserved people and communities! $12 billion to reduce poverty! $23 billion to different political campaigns to beat George W. Helping start the Democracy Alliance to support progressive causes. $35 billion to New York State to be given to underprivileged children and parents. Donating to the Center for American Progress. Supposedly, he has given away $35 billion and still has $7 billion left to survive on.

My question after hearing about many billionaires who have given away an enormous amount of $$$$ is, why is there still so much poverty and famine? Is it just publicity and a lie, or is only a fraction of that $$$ actually getting to the people who need it so badly? Do you suspect that a large portion is going to those who are distributing it? And pennies get to the deserved.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but wonder why there is so much poverty, even here in the supposedly richest country in the world, when so many have and are giving so much to solve the problem?

I am not suggesting stopping giving, but we might want to look at who is in charge of dispersing those valuable funds, whether they are giving the lion’s share to those who need it, and how much is pocketed as cost or “overhead”! I’m thinking of giving closer to home, to local charities.

Enough about that kind of giving. Let’s all try to give a little love at this special time of the year! I love to see the light in those little eyes when they spot the bright lights on the tree and on those houses decorated with thousands of lights and fun holiday scenes.

Now that our children are grown up and are far away, it seems like too much to decorate for a holiday when it is just the two of us, so we celebrate in other ways, like our twice-a-month video call, which is like being in the room together.

One year, when we were going to be alone for Thanksgiving, we got creative and made a poster of all of our family we missed and set it up around our Thanksgiving table. It wasn’t quite the same, but we posted pictures of it and got a lot of kind comments.

Hope your traditions are Happy and Safe travels to all who are “Going home for Christmas!”

If you get one of my books for Christmas, please be kind and leave a review. You will never know how much an Author appreciates your kind words.

See you next time….

Just wanted to say hi and hope your morning is as good and happy as mine. I finished several sewing projects that have been cluttering my sewing room and giving me a headache.

Now on to several other projects that have been knocking around in my head, wanting to come out to play.

I have a series of children’s books that have been getting way too much attention from every “wanna-be promoter” in the world. So today I’m protecting them by copyrighting all four. I know that alone does not protect them, but it does give me a legal leg to stand on.

Sleep Travelers was conceived at the suggestion of my daughter, Dawnzella! When she was little, she had three imaginary playmates. As an adult, she couldn’t remember what they were; only their names: Ning, Dog, and Boss! She said, “Mom, why don’t you write a story about my Imaginary Playmates?”

I decided it would be fun to write about all four of them, going on sleep adventures!

The first one was written introducing ‘Little Dawnies’ playmates. Ning, a Siamese cat, meeting Dog, who is a big shaggy dog, over a delicious piece of Salmon, which they both desired for dinner. Both were willing to fight for it, but Dog decided to offer to share with her, rather than fight!

Boss was perched in a tree above the stand-off, ready to fly down to save Ning from herself. After they all met and became friends, Dog invited them to spend the night in his ‘digs’! They decided to see what his digs were like and were delighted to find it snug and next to a stream, where Dog and Boss could score a fish or two for food.

Ning wouldn’t go near the water unless it were to watch the ‘guys’ fish and from a very dry, and as clean as possible, rock.

That’s the premise of all four books in this series:

Book 1: The Story of NIng, Dog & Boss

Book 2: The Amusement Park

Book 3: The Dude Ranch

Book 4: The Train Ride!

There are more bouncing around in my head, waiting for my fingers to get better acquainted again with my keyboard.

I hope you like the premise, and I believe they would be fun to read and also to read to children, as I purposely created much dialogue between the children and the animals they meet on their adventures.

All my books are published with Draft2Digital and distributed to the following platforms: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

Gotta go now and get busy with those things that make me happy. Find something that makes you happy, too! Hope your day brings you happiness, too!

Just when you thought you knew what health care was all about, a new monkey wrench is thrown at you! This is a true experience, but it will seem like a joke. It isn’t!

After months of feeling like the Doctor that I was seeing was not listening or caring a “tinker’s damn ” about my health, I decided that something had to change. This is my story.

Some time ago, my husband decided to switch to the doctor I was seeing. After his first visit, the doctor transferred him to the nurse practitioner, and he was happy with her care.

I had a stroke and, after my rehabilitation, decided the same nurse practitioner would be a good fit for me, too!

I called the office for an appointment with the nurse practitioner and was told, “You have to call your Insurance Company and formally change and get a new card with her name on it before you call for an appointment. I was a little confused because my husband didn’t have to change his card. But I called my Insurance and had the name change. BTW, my husband did not have to make this change; he was just moved to her by the same doctor who insisted I change, before an appointment could be made.

I called to schedule an appointment and was given a new appointment at 4:20 on a Friday. When we walked up to the office, I remarked to my hubby, “It looks like they are closed. There aren’t very many lights.”

The front office was dimly lit, and when I told the woman at the front desk behind the glass that I had an appointment with the (PA ). I was told I needed to make a new appointment because I was more than 5 minutes late. I looked at the clock on the wall, and I was only 4 minutes late. But it didn’t matter. No appointment! I was turned away, and unless I am wrong, it felt like a punishment.

I have to admit I left in a huff! Without making another appointment and intending to never ever call! And I haven’t!

Here is the problem: I have only one month left on my Insurance with this company, as they do not offer the Advantage Plan. I picked a new company with the Advantage plan, but I still have one month left. I felt like I was left in the wilderness with the wolves howling at my heels!

Today I called my current Insurance Provider, and the person I spoke with was very understanding and helpful. She agreed it looked strange and asked me if I wanted to file a grievance against the Doctor. I thought about it and concluded that since nothing could or would be done, I said no.

I explained that the doctor had stopped refilling my Colostrol medication, and I felt that I should get it filled. But, of course, I needed a new doctor and an appointment to get a prescription.

She then emailed me a list of doctors and practitioners in my neighborhood to pick from. I tried to call one and got a recording. I forgot that this is Sunday! Sunday is my husband’s first day, so it felt like Monday. But I am on the way to getting some help.

If you are close to my age, take good care of yourself, because you are the ONLY one, many times, who really cares. Insurance Companies and Doctors are only doing their job! Some are better than others!

Now for my commercial! I am an author with many books available on various sites in eBook and Paperback formats. Some of those sights are; Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

You can go to my website to see the covers and a short synopsis for each.

Tomorrow I plan to put the first chapter of my latest book, which will be published soon. Thanks for visiting, and have a Great Christmas. Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, too.

Hi, back again to say Hi, and good morning.

Today I wanted to touch on my writing skill, or lack thereof. About a year ago, I had a stroke. It was on Christmas Day. Not the present I wanted under the Christmas tree, but we don’t always get what we want.

I refuse to think of it as suffering a stroke. It was a block in my progress in life. Yes, I lost momentum, and it put me down, but not out! I lost much of the use of my left side, but with regular exercise, I got much of it back. I walk with a cane, but I can walk! The one thing I miss the most is my typing and handwriting skills. I used to have very nice handwriting, and if I slow down, it isn’t so bad.

My typing speed had slowed from 80+ wpm on the manual typewriter I had after my typing class. After the stroke, I was zero; with much work, I can type a little, but not well, and I would not want to take a typing test.

I love to write, and have created 24 books and two series that I have self-published. My “Ruby and Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space” was and is a blast to write. They are about real people and were originally written as Christmas Gifts, but evolved into books, just for the love of reading.

The second series, at my daughter’s request, was to create stories about her imaginary playmates. She had three! After much thought, the “Sleep Travelers” series was born! There are now four books in the series, and places where they might want to go are dreamed up, and they will go on more dream adventures.

I love my characters, and I clearly picture them in my mind, that they become almost real to me. I sometimes cry when I have to let them go.

I do pay attention to the writing gurus’ techniques, but I am just someone who cannot help putting characters into precarious positions and struggling to find their way out!

I admit that I am a Pantser writer! That is, I start with a written premise of my total story idea, then I go off the rails as each problem presents itself to them and help them figure a way out, hopefully in one piece. Now that you know what I do, I invite other secret or well-known writers to tell me what they do.

I just finished Book 9 of the Ruby and Nolan series, called “Volcano,” and it should hit the distribution points next month. I loved putting some good friends in the precarious position of possibly dying in a fiery furnace of an erupting volcano while trying to rescue a group of Faraies!

My next project is to copyright a series of books. I have been approached by a company that wants to promote me. I would love to do that as long as I am not obligated to finance it for them. I did the hard part by creating them.

Well, that’s all for today, hope your day is as fun as mine will be….

See you next time. All my books are available at the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Have you ever said that? You wouldn’t be alone. Did you say there are so many things I wish I had done, and wish I had done more fun things?

I can’t say that, because we did have a ton of fun in our youth. In the market crash of 2008, we were one of the couples that lost our house to greedy lenders. I won’t go into the ugly details, just our solution!

We sold everything we owned, bought an overpriced Motorhome that was way too expensive to maintain, and took off traveling the western half of the US. We took workamping jobs to keep us on the road!

Before you start feeling sorry for us, think about this! We got to see this amazing country through our huge front window, met some wonderful people, and experienced a different type of life.

We spent one summer in South Dakota working at Mount Rushmore! We saw the magnificently carved statues every day! Ate Buffalo burgers, and played slots in our laundromat, winning more than enough to pay for it!

The other workampers were wonderful, and when we needed help, they were always there to pitch in and help us, and we did the same. When one of our workampers had surgery, we worked double shifts for two weeks, until she was back. Many times when a workamper was seen working on their rig, they would look up, and two or three helpers would be there to help.

Life on the road was different and could be hard at times, but waking up to deer and wild turkeys foraging in your front yard ain’t that bad!

Any work on the motorhome was three times as expensive as a stick-built home, but being road warriors was exciting!

We are happily settled in our Home Sweet Home in Kingman, Arizona, and sometimes we think back to those travels and long to get on the road again. I have roadmaps in my veins when I dream of that time in our lives.

Many of those dreams show up in my writing. I started writing while I was on the road, with my spare time, and continued when I became a landlubber. I have somewhere around 20 self-published books.

You can find them at: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Thanks for listening, See you again, soon….

We are typical Americans who are ashamed that so many good people were fooled by the racist propaganda spewed by the media about how wonderful it would be to have Trump as president again.

We DID NOT VOTE for him and DO NOT SUPPORT any of his ridiculous policies he has rammed through his hand-picked Senators, House, and Supreme Court Members! We are appalled at the stupid Tariffs! he is indiscriminately throwing willy-nilly with no thought or concern that tariffs vs TAXES are the same thing.

He is destroying our Democratic way of life as fast as his scribbling signature can be affixed to stupid rules!

He lies every time he opens his mouth, and unfortunately, it is open ALL THE TIME!

We know every leader of every country who confronts him with his lying, boasting rants is not so secretly laughing behind his back!

We would love to be laughing too, but it is hitting a little too close to home, and our pocketbooks.

Don’t count us out, yet! Remember, we won a non-winnable war to be free from a king’s heavy hand. You saw the millions of ordinary citizens take to the streets in protest of “NO KINGS!” It could happen again and again, until we de-throne the make-believe wanna-be King!

See ya, next time…

My books are available at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

I just received a post on our local neighborhood site that our town is planning to fine anyone caught stealing shopping carts $1000. fine!

I answered: How can a poor (as former Church Mice,) devil’s be able to pay that fine for stealing a shopping cart that they will put all their worldly possessions, from a Corporate Millionaire?

She answered me with the statement of; “Stealing is stealing!”

I said, “What is wrong with our Government? When any of our citizens are starving?” And desperate enough to steal one friggen shopping cart?

Do you think that any one of our Billionaire or Trillionaire Corporate Giants will starve at the loss of one or a thousand shopping carts? Even several thousand? Do you really?

Maybe if they volunteered to pay the minuscule amount of tax dollars anyone in their high style of living, could certainly afford, more of the poorest of our people, and they are people, not statistics, could find work and live the good life! The Billionaires have the advantage of calling on any of the many benefits of the Police, Fire Department, Emergency Personnel in case of accidents, Hospitals, Air Traffic Controllers, and many more people who work harder for much less pay than they deserve, because they want to help.

Most of the above will NEVER be able to retire on their yacht and travel the world. Most of them can barely afford to save enough for their children to attend one of the major colleges. Their children will have to work to help pay the exagerated tuition to just get by.

It can never be justified to give so much to so many who do not deserve it!

Enough Ranting! I am an Author and my books are available on the following sites; Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon or you can find them on my website: http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com.

Thanks for listening and will talk again, soon!

That was the last thing I just said to a Salesperson pretending to be a Publisher. And she was calling from a pseudo-publisher that would LOVE to “help” me become a million seller!

All I have to do is the hard work and write the book and pay them upfront buckos, and they promise to “fix” my manuscript and distribute it to many outlets, and the sales will come rolling in. I know where some swampland is for sale! ONCE BURNED TWICE SHY!

I bit on an offer to include my book “Sleep Travelers” in a show in California, and it only cost me more than $700. Not one book was sold! At that point in my life, I morphed into a natural skeptic.

Since they sold my name to everyone, almost every week, I get offers from various “Publishers” that want to become my partner, and can get me a contract with and up to $80,000 for the rights to guess which book? You got it; “Sleep Travelers”.

I wonder what makes them think my self-published book needs help when they have NEVER read a word of it? It is probably my ego talking, but I am not aware that my manuscript needs fixing, and to the extent of several thousand dollars!

I love that book because it is the brainchild of my daughter. When she was young she had three imaginary playmates. Most kids have one, but she had three.

She asked me one day, “Mom, why don’t you write a book about my playmates?”

She couldn’t remember what they were, only their names, which were, Ning, Dog, and Boss! I created characters for them; Ning became a Siamese Cat, Dog became a huge shaggy dog, and Boss became an African Gray Parrot!!

The first book tells the story of when they met and became friends! They all decide to go to he Zoo, where they meet Ella Elephant, Tigger Tiger, Orchid Orca, and Harold Hippo, and more. The animal can talk and are not confined to cages. I write a lot of conversation between them and feel this book would be fun to read to children and use the voices of the animals.

In this book Daddy Shirl shows up as Ranger Shirl to help cook burgers and fries, because Little Dawnie is too little and the animals, well you get the idea! After everyone got filled they have a food fight with ketchup and mustard. They have a problem!

Daddy Shirl to the rescue! He reminds them that all they have to do is “think clean” and everything is spotless again. Remember, they merely had to “think Zoo” and they were there. When Little Dawnie is tired, everyone says goodnight, and they magically snuggle into their various beds for a good night’s sleep.

I love to write Sci/Fi because it allows my mind to take flight and imagine anything. Murder/Mystery is also fun, as I love to figure out, “Who done it?” before the end. Recently, I have delved into Sexy/love. That is fun, but at my age, I have to use my imagination. And my grown-up daughter reads what her mother writes, sexy/love it is, with her eyes closed!

I write for myself because something inside makes these stories bounce around inside my head until I can’t stand the pressure and have to let them out.

If you want to read one of my books, here are a few of the places where you will find them in eBook and/or Paperback: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

If we meet at a craft fair in Kingman, AZ, I will be happy to sign one for you. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to talking again. Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathboooks.com where if you click on one of the books, you will magically be taken to a store where they can be purchased.

We will talk again soon…

I have been so ashamed of my country….

We are assaulting protesting citizens on the street, and those who only want to go to work! Some are only guilty of being a minority! And some who are U.S. citizens. But that doesn’t stop those well-armed, masked, and with no openly displayed signs of being authorized to arrest, handcuff, and throw into vans and other vehicles, never to be seen again! If you think you are safe being a White Male, think again!

Keep in mind that the other Despot started with hatred for Jews, but as his paranoia grew, he designated other groups of people to be rounded up and thrown into those railroad cars destined for the gas chambers.

You may think that those who are attacking our most fundamental rights will stop at only those of dark skin and hard-working people, but you are sadly mistaken.

Have you noticed that lately, those who speak openly about the many safeguards of our society that are being systemically dismantled in order to spend that money on billionaires’ tax breaks and ballrooms that all of us will never step foot in? Are you happy that this administration dug up the Rose Garden and laid a concrete slab for the President’s admirers to lap up the hundreds of lies that will be spewed forthwith?

The thing that really makes me the angriest is that we are trading our children’s lives for no restrictions on who can purchase guns! NO ONE wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens!

I am so grateful that my kids only had to contend with ice on the roads. There were no shooters of children in confined school rooms. Teachers only needed to teach them, and not to be a target to save their lives.

This is my first time contributing to a political campaign, but if you are on the fence, now is the time to join!

It is now or never!

If these elections go badly, we may never get another chance to turn it around!

I am an author and enjoy discussing my books. My latest book is nearly ready to self-publish. It will be available in eBook and paperbook on many sites here in the U.S. and Europe. Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Also, on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, you can find covers with a brief synopsis of each book. When you read a book, a review tells authors to keep writing!

Thank you for reading my blog today. We will talk again.

Do you like the cover?

I remember flying from Hartford, Conn., home to Maine for Christmas when I was 18 and working at Hartford Fire Insurance Co., and the price for the trip was $20, and I got a meal! Also, when the refreshment cart was wheeled up the aisle, there was room on either side to walk by to go to the restroom. Unlike flying today on the elegant Sardine Airlines. With the seats so close and so small that you must become good friends with your neighboring passengers, because everyone was in everyone’s business.

Oh, well, there is not a chance in hell that I would pay the ungodly price to be crushed into one of those flying crashes “waiting to happen!”

I recall that the pay was a pittance, not just at Hartford Fire, but any place that hired us “girls” compared to what it is now, and I had to room with someone to afford an apartment. Our apartment was over a liquor store. I have to admit it was fun! I was a keypunch operator, and if that sounds interesting, the most exciting thing I did was to re-create the cards that the machines mangled so that the “computer operators” could mangle them again. BTW their pay was considerable more than us “girls” pay.

I suspect that they didn’t have to go through the humiliation of the “6-month review” from the big boss with my Manager in attendance. We were told not to say anything except “yes, sir or no, sir.” My Boss Mrs. Bill usually drank her lunch and wasn’t expecting a little hick from the sticks to break the rules.

Surprise! When Big Guy told us that we hadn’t been doing good enough work to deserve a raise, I spoke up and told him how I had been put on the machine to make new cards from mangled ones and had been told by my Boss that I had several “perfect batches,” so I think I deserve a raise. As you might expect, that went over like a lead balloon. Mrs. Bill told me in very clear words that I was lucky to keep my job. The reason I had the brass to speak up for myself was because my Mother said to “always see in your mind the big boss with only his underwear on. And that was one sight I never want to see again.

That is not the last time my mouth got me in trouble, and I might share more later. Ask me about “dating” and our “apartment” conveniently located over the liquor store.

Gotta go, this week, I am trying to finish Book 8 in the Ruby & Nolan series and revise the synopses of my books on my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com. I do that every two or three months to keep them fresh.

All my books are available in eBook and or paperback on the following places here in America and Europe: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Of course, if you are perusing my website and something catches your eye, simply click on it and you will be taken on a magical carpet ride and can make it your own.

See you next time…

The Evening News was just that! Does anyone but me remember voices of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Edward R. Murrow, and let’s not forget Leslie Stahl, Barbara Walters.

I remember the announcement of the end of World War 2 on September 2nd, 1945. I was 5 years old. I remember the Red Cent, and the plastic bags with the Red dot, that we pretended was butter! It was really lard, but we were grateful for anything. Everything was scarce, but nutritional food was nowhere in sight!

When we went to the Saturday afternoon movies, newsreels were shown of the newly released prisoners from the death camps in Germany. We all cringed in our seats, and many of us cried. I still cry when I see that it may be happening all over again. Did we not learn anything????

Come on, Leaders; Use your Head and Heart to stop the insanity!

Speaking of crying, if things in this country do not change direction, we will all be crying and hungry again! Don’t believe me? Well, Google and read about our Country and many others coming together to take down that despicable regime and reclaim Democracy!

Forgive me for my short lapse into my fears. If you are not afraid….

Onto more fun things: I am almost finished with my new book called “Volcano,” which is the 9th book in the “Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in my 24th book I have self-published, and they are available in eBook and Paperback at the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

Of course, if you live in Kingman, AZ, or happen to go to a craft fair, where I have a booth. I would be happy to discuss them with you and will be happy to sign your copy. My website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, has all my book covers and a short synopsis of each.

Thanks for reading and look forward to another “I remember when!”

Take care and see you later……

When, as an adult, you bought a bottle of aspirin and, after a hard day and a pounding headache, you decided to open that bottle. It took just a couple of seconds to unscrew the cap and pop a couple into your mouth. A swallow later, your headache was already better!

Not so today! Now EVERYTHING is packaged with Child-Proof caps! Now, if you want relief, you need to round up a child for help to open the Dang things. How is that saving them or me?

Go ahead and open any item and watch your blood pressure spike! A box of cereal! The glue used to close the very thick cardboard box is leftover spaceship glue! Then try to tear open the super-duper strong sealed plastic bag! How many times has it exploded in a shower of flakes covering the kitchen floor for a fun tiptoe to the broom and dust pan?

And by the way, have you noticed that the packaging is getting smaller and the price is getting higher? Happy Corporate Greed!

I know, I know, we adults and children are being protected! From what? Oh yes, I remember when one Wackadoodle poisoned a few pills in one or two bottles, and that was deadly serious and scary! But now the bandwagon is full of bottles that can’t be opened easily. Everything is sealed!

Our fate is also sealed if we do not turn around from the present path we are rushing down, with the end clearly in sight! At the end of that path is a future we should not covet! It will end badly. We will have order! But at a staggering high price that will be paid by our best and brightest! I will leave you with this thought! Freedom has a price, and it needs to be paid continuously!

Now commercial time! I am an author of around 24 books. I self-publish with Dragt2Digital, and they are distributed to Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon in eBook and Paperback here in America and Europe.

At http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, you will find covers and a short synopsis of each book. Thanks for looking, and if you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing, we could become friends.

Our trip to the grocery store was as exciting as a tooth ache. Usually Mom went alone, but on the rare times we were allowed to go with her, we knew better than to ask for ANYTHING! Her list was something like this: 25lb bag of flour (not enriched ground from wheat) bag of potatoes packed in heavy paper bag, Sugar, milk (unless we bought whole milk from a farmer), salt & pepper. No pre-packaged items to heat and eat! Everything was cooked from scratch.

We had a garden. When we bought a small 15-acre farm, Mom had a one-acre garden. I hated helping with the canning, but did it anyway. She canned EVERYTHING that grew. EVERYTHING! We had a cellar that stored all the glass containers for winter. Of course the cellar hid a big crock or home brew, which us kids never dared to try!

One of the fun things about our farm was that it was right between three lakes, all of which had pickerel and black bass, and we had a small boat with oars. At night, we could fish in the lake off the bridge and catch catfish! They were fun! They were fun to catch and a pain to clean. Another name for them is Hornpout, they got that name for the painful horns that could cause problems when stuck, and we got stuck a lot.

The owners of the land across the road permitted us to “tap” the Maple trees, and we made gallons of maple syrup. Back then, in the winter we make maple syrup candy by pouring a little on snow. Couldn’t do that now, the snow wouldn’t be good for you.

We had chickens and raised a bull for meat, too! Our only pets were one dog and cats that appeared from time to time.

Well, that’s it for today, hope your youth was as fun as mine. Today, I’d like to introduce you to one of my children’s book series called “Sleep Travelers.” Most kids have one imaginary playmate. My daughter had three! One day she said, “Mom, why don’t you write a story about them?”

So I did! She couldn’t remember what they were, just their names: Ning, Dog, and Boss. Ning became a Siamese Cat, Dog became a big shaggy dog, and Boss became an African Gray Parrot!

When they go to sleep, they go on adventures together! On these adventures, they can talk to the animals, and they can talk back to them. I love writing fiction because children can be anything they want to be! And they always win. They cannot ever be hurt, and if they find themselves in danger, they wake up snug and warm in their beds. And sometimes Daddy Shirl visits!

This series is available as eBook and Paperback. You can find them at the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon in America and in Europe.

Of course, if you live in Kingman, Arizona, and you meet with me at a craft fair, or if you are one of my sewing customers, I will sign one for you.

Let’s talk again, soon….

There was Insurance through your workplace sometimes if your company offered it, but if you weren’t lucky, you could visit a Doctor’s office for $20 or less. That “good old Doc” could put a leg or arm in a cast, put three or more stitches in a cut. Some even had X-ray machines.

And they could draw! blood. When I married my husband 64 years ago, you had to have a blood test. Don’t ask me why, Google it if you have a burning desire to know. Old Doc. Taylor tried so many times to get blood that I had bruises from my wrist to my elbow, and I finally said, “Doc, I really don’t want to get married this bad.” Then he got blood.

When our Son got his foot jammed between the front wheel of Dad’s bike wheel and the frame, we took him to the doctor’s office, no emergency room in sight. Doc cleaned the ankle, which was skinned, and said “Keep it clean, and it will form a scab. Bring him back if it becomes infected.” And it didn’t cost an arm and a leg (pun intended)!

The only time we are willing to go to the emergency room is for a life-threatening emergency, which I feel that is the normal, although I wonder if that is true.

As a kid, when we were playing outside, and we got thirsty, we drank water from the hose. We also cooked off under the sprinkler in the dog days of summer.

When we were older, we were allowed to go to Lake Sabastacook to go to the “Old swimming hole,” and our guardian was our faithful dog, Rex. There was no lifeguard! We knew we were supposed to stay in the shallow water, but of course we didn’t! our favorite place was over my head and if I gor into trouble, which I did because my brothers threw me in, yelling, “Sink or swim!”

Rex jumped in and swam to me, I held onto his tail, and he brought me to the rocky ledge the guys used as a diving board.

That’s all today. I wanted to mention the first book I wrote and self-published back in 2016, called “Murder on Lake Haverly. ” I’ve written over 20 books since.

It was a pseudo-history of the beginning of my real estate career. The main character, Maye West, might resemble me. Most of the other characters were taken from real life I met in that business, but the names were changed to protect the guilty!

Sparks start flying from her most difficult client and from bodies floating in her new buyers’ Shangri-la! to bodies showing up riddled with cross-bow bolts is just one thing after another, keeping Maye and her friend-with benefits, James, a Sheriff Deputy in hot water!

This and all my other books are available in eBook and Paperback are these sites in America and Europe: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

Let me know if you read it and liked it. Thank-you!

Being a kid was FREE! We stayed outdoors playing games until it was dark. That was a hard and fast rule. The games were kick the can, hide and seek, baseball, and basketball, if someone was lucky enough to have a store-bought net. If not, we made do with what we had available. The rules and equipment were beat up or invented by us kids.

Sometimes we fought, stayed mad for ten minutes. Rarely longer than overnight.

I lived on a street named Middlesex Ave. Honest. It was right behind the stores and next to a small river. We stole everything that wasn’t nailed down in the back of the businesses, for our games. What we didn’t know until late, it was destined for the dump. Those Refrigerator boxes made great hideouts!

We had toy guns, bows, and arrows. However, we were taught NEVER to shoot to hit anyone; you had to not hit them, ever. If you made a mistake and the kid went home crying, you had to explain and apologize in front of the parental units! Scary, and not a lot of fun.

On the hill behind our house ran a train track. And I can guarantee putting a penny on the track will not cause a train wreck! Of course, we were told NOT to play on the tracks, so that is exactly where we played as often as we could.

You could go to the Saturday afternoon movie for a quarter and get a box of popcorn, and a pop, too! Of course, quarters were few and far between, so most of us had to find enough empty bottles to turn in and get nickels for them. I remember seeing “The Wizard of Oz” when it came to our little theater. We all wanted to sing like Judy Garland and loved being scared to death by the Wicked Witch. And we breathed a sigh of relief when she finally got back to Kansas.

Stay tuned for another chapter and please if you like to read sci/fi, murder mysteries, check out my books;

Maye West Mysteries Book 1: Murder on Lake Haverly Maye West Mysteries Book 2: Options The Spirited One Book 1: The protector The Spirited One Book: 2 James The End of the Road Immortal Enemies Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 Science Project Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 9 Volcano coming soon Sleep Travelers Book 1: The Story of Ning, Dog, and Boss Sleep Travelers Book 2: The Amusement Park Sleep Travelers Book 3: The Dude Ranch Sleep Travelers Book 4: The Train Ride

These are available at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Let’s categorize the failings of life since the BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL! So far, it has been a raging success! The one thing it has produced, is more RAGE for the people to chew on and they are raging about being cheated, on a daily basis. Jobs ain’t there! Taxes are going up! Prices are going up so fast that it is impossible to budget at all!

Add to that the STRANGE GROUP OF INCOMPETENT BUTTHEADS THAT ARE RUNNING THIS COUNTRY! If they were only running it into the ground, it could be tolerated! From the top of the triangle of 3rd graders’ intelligence, imagining that they know what is good for us! They broadcast their lack of intelligence so loudly that one needs to plug their ears and close their eyes.

Have you noticed that more of them are sporting orange painted faces? Sorry guys, the orange paint does not disguise your actual deeds!

It is hard to make even the dumbest believe you know anything, when you shoot yourself in the foot every time you open your big mouth and try to lie so unconvincingly!

IT IS TIME FOR ALL DEMOCRATS to start FIGHTING, and I mean quit being NICE!!! I know you used to think and say, “When they go low, we go high.”

Sorry, guys, but do you finally realize how well that did for you? We now have a government? Filled with incompetent fools about ready to tear up the Constitution! Too many of the competent, intelligent leaders have been fired by the infamous DOGE, and many others have “retired” in protest of the disgusting mess the spoiled brats are making of our once great Nation!

A suggestion: Get on the Governor of California bandwagon and shout out their flaws with humor that stings them right where it hurts: THEIR EGO!

THERE IS STILL TIME TO WIN OUR GOVERNMENT BACK!

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country!

There are so many things that bug me that my mind is a little jumbled. If this is your state of mind, you could join the club?! That is the old fart’s club (unable to understand the “why”) club!”

Why are people complaining that food prices are going up every day? You voted for that buffon and his cronies, and you are surprised?

You cheered when he told you that he would bring in Trillions of dollars in Tariffs from all the countries that are cheating us, didn’t you? Well, he did bring in lots of moola into the treasury, but guess what? When your friendly car company imported those shiny new cars, they paid more $$$$at the dock for those cars, and you didn’t think the American dealers were going to take a loss, did you?

Also, in that “Big Beautiful Bill your Republicans raised the deficit to 8 trillion dollars. Do you think your tax bill will decrease? The Billionaires who are flirting with becoming trillionaires will pay one more penny in taxes than they did last year? Their Yachts are getting bigger while your hovel is getting smaller.

To really put you in the dumps, let’s talk about Healthcare, or the lack thereof. Now that the Buffon has put all of his unqualified dog catchers in charge, do you think you will have any? I would tell you to not hold your breath, but on second thought, maybe that would be a good idea.

Well, see you in the funny papers, but don’t look for the Epstein Files to be published.

Now for a commercial break! Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathsbooks.com. When you read the synopsis and it sounds like something you want to read, click on the cover to order it. I always have several of each at craft shows to sign for you, too.

I publish with D2D and my books are available at the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon

I will be back again with more observations of age and its flaws!

Cover of the latest book that I am now in the process of editing! For most writers, this is the most grueling, time-consuming, and pure hell to do for yourself. However, allowing someone else who doesn’t know and love or hate your characters to cut and dismiss your scenes is cruel and heart-wrenching. I hate every second of it, but that is what has to be done, and I am doing, or will be doing, the minute I have finished this post.

I am a Pantser Writer! That means I write by the seat of my pants. No notes, synopsis, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, outline, or anything else. Sometimes I dream a scene or two, and when I wake up, I rush to the computer to get it typed as fast as I can.

Writing stories is my passion. I am not a million-seller, and I do not desire to be, or I would spend a lot of money hiring a professional editor, Graphic artist, and advertise a lot more than I do. I would love to have one or more Beta readers, but alas, they are hard to find. I have had several who only wanted to read stories for free and occasionally correct spelling or grammar. I have Grammarly for that; what I need is someone who can catch a timeline problem or a character flaw.

I don’t write very fast. Sometimes I have a scene forming in the back of my head for days, especially when I am busy finishing a sewing project for friends or making cute things for a craft fair. Right now, I am making witch hats and bucket hats. I don’t have time for a lot of that either, as I make lunch for my hubby, since he is still working part-time. Shirl says I try to do too many things, but what’s a gal to do when she has so many things of interest?

By the way, the book shown above will be published next month and will be available at the following locations: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my books are available in both eBook and paperback formats. On my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, simply click on a book cover to be directed to one of the stores that carry it.

Thanks for listening to my rambling. We will talk again soon.

In these warm (hot) days, it is hard to think of the coming cold weather! But they are coming a lot faster than you think. However, the good thing about that is that we can all look forward to the fun of Halloween and the festive holidays.

I really got involved in making costumes for my kids. I constructed many costumes over the years. The hardest was the T-Rex with a stuffed tail! It turned out great; the only problem was moving around with the rather large tail. Another was the Adam and Eve costume for my daughter and her then-current boyfriend. It was easy, just tons of fig leaves sewn strategically on bikinis. It was the talk of the party they attended.

There were many dance costumes for recitals! The one that I tried to refuse was a KKK costume. But knowing the person it was for, they would not have given up on it, so I said, “Okay, but it is a bad idea! You do know what this stands for, don’t you?” We had a lengthy discussion about that era and the potential repercussions of wearing the costume, to no avail. He wore it for about 20 minutes before it was stuffed in a backpack and never worn again. Sometimes you have to let people make up their minds about what is acceptable in polite society!

I am not a costume type of person. So if you see me in a costume, I was forced into it, or it was a big concession.

I do have shirts with some of the covers of my books. I will wear it next weekend at my table at Mohave Markets, located at 2600 Fairgrounds Blvd, in Kingman, AZ, on Sunday from 9:00 to 3:00. This is a big step for me, as I will be there alone, since my husband has to work. He will go with me on Saturday to help unload the car and set up. The owner of the Market said his sons will help me load the car on Sunday, so I am good. I will have hand-sewn grocery bags, totes, Jean purses, etc.

I will have some of my books, and will sign them if purchased at the market, or if they are from the Smashwords sale. The sale is available online at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BrendaColbath. Alternatively, you can visit my website at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and click on any of the book covers, which will direct you to the sale at Smashwords.

It should be fun. Hope to see you there.

When there was very little difference between the seasons, traffic congestion, and the price of renting a smidgen plot of land under a mobile home, we leaped into purchasing a stick-built, resale home in Kingman, a small town compared to Phoenix, but we are liking the small town living.

This life-style isn’t for everyone. Stores aren’t open all hours. And as my shocked kids said, ‘My God, there aren’t any street lights!’ That’s okay with me, we stay home most of the time. We only go out at night once in a while.

Much of my time is spent sewing for neighbors, reading, and writing. My writing slowed a little after the stroke at Christmas this year. However, I now have the use of my left hand for writing and typing, albeit a little slower than before, but it is still functional.

I am currently working on Book 8 of the Ruby & Nolan series, titled Volcano. It wasn’t completed in time to be included in my big sale on Smashwords, but it will be released later. All my books are priced at 50% off when you look for them at : https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BrendaColbath

I publish my books with Draft2Digital and they are distributed to the following Book sites: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Time to get busy and complete Volcano, sewing jobs, and playing with my Roses. They are tolerating the heat and wind quite well.

We’ll talk again, soon..

Today is shaping up to be a good day! Yesterday ended up being a semi-disaster. Everything that could go wrong with my sewing went wrong. My day of sewing ended with me shutting everything down and heading to my office to write a few pages in Book 9 of the Ruby & Nolan series. It beats the hell out of fixing it with a hammer!

Today, I am going to take time to relax and recharge my batteries before I tackle anything more challenging, anything more difficult than cleaning the kitchen. I might paint the bird house. I can’t go wrong! If I look out the window and see a dozen birds laughing so hard they fall off the fence, I will know it was a success!

Well, unless a few more Republicans wake up, by the 4th, we will have the “Big Beautiful Bill passed and will start sinking into a Third World Country, and poverty for all but the already now wealthy billionaires. It is a shame that a beautiful idea like we had will go down in defeat without a whimper! If women had had a hand in writing the Constitution, it might have had a different theme. There is still time to change, but the time runs short, and it will take some strong actions, more than words, to defeat the fascist organization that has seized our once beautiful FREE Country!

I hope you all have a safe, happy Fourth of July! I am going to enjoy some family time and try to relax. The plan is to eat tons of ribs, play many cribbage games, and laugh long and hard at Dad Jokes.

Don’t forget that for the whole month of July, my books are all 50% off on Smashwords, which is part of Draft2Digital.

Draft2Digital publishes my books and distributes to: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

We will talk again, later….

I do sewing for friends for fun and to keep my hands busy.

Today, I cut about 16 inches off a dress and hemmed it for a nice lady. When I called her to tell her it was done, she was surprised, as she had brought it to me yesterday. I am not always able to complete an item, but it is always nice when they are happy with the job. I try to do the job like I am doing it for myself.

I also repaired two American Flags that the wind was making a mess out of the hems. And in between those, I worked on two pairs of pants for Hubby. He deserves a little TLC. When I came home after the stroke, he waited on me cheerfully. In addition to preparing meals for me, he did the laundry and dishes. It feels so good to be back closer to my pre-stroke self. My typing is nearly as good as it was before, of course; I wasn’t a speed typist anyway! It is good to be able go get back to my writing. I am close to finishing book 9 of the Ruby & Nolan series. I hope to get several sequels done that are knocking on my head, asking, “When??”

I was having so much fun that when Shirl came in to check on me, I realized he wasn’t on break, but had done work. Woops, what for dinner? tonight it is tacos! Shirl is cooking and I should hurry and at least shred the cheese.

Well, this was short, but you know how time flies when you are having fun.

Will talk again soon. I hope you have a good day, too!

All my books are published with Draft2Digital and distributed to the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

I will be posting about the 50% sale on all my books next month, which is very soon!

Take care, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

I’ve ranted enough for a day or two, so today I am introducing you to a NEW BOOK that I just published at Draft2Digital. This one is available only in eBook form. My children’s stories are fun to read to your children, as I purposely use a lot of dialogue, and they are short. I loved reading to my children, and by the time they started school, they had learned to read. Not a bad thing!

Little Dawnie has a special treat in store tonight! Daddy Shirl reads her an exciting story about a Dude Ranch with real cowboys, horses, cows, and bucking broncos. She couldn’t wait to crawl into her little bed after her bath and go to sleep, and wake up her Sleep Traveler friends. She excitedly told them about the dude ranch! They were a little skeptical, but Little Dawn was so enthusiastic, even Ning, who you remember hates to get dirty or wet, agreed it would be fun. The Dude ranch was, ‘In Yucca, Arizona!’ They put their heads together and thought, “Dude Ranch in Yucca, Arizona,” and voila, they were there. Daddy Shirl showed up for the big dinner, accompanied by entertainment from The Spin-Offs. The lead singer, Miss Dawnzella, sat with them at dinner. And Daddy Shirl sang My Funny Valentine with Dawnzella. They watched the cowboys perform. When it was time for a “night on the Prairie,” they rode on horseback until dark, then they had beans and biscuits cooked over the fire. When Little Dawnie became sleepy, she shared Miss Dawnzella’s sleeping bag.  Little Dawnie thought Mis Dawnzella’s eyes looked like hers.Little Dawnie loved that Sleep-Traveling trip so much that next time, she took her baby brother on a train ride across the country to the Grand Canyon, and California! Again, her friends were concerned with how they could care for the baby, but Little Dawnie knew Little Chris would love it, and he did!

This eBook was published with Draft2Digital and is distributed to the following sites, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

And it will be included with the 50% off sale through the month of July on Smashwords Sale!I

Check out my website http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Have a great day, will talk again…..

Well, not quite paradise, but living in a rural community in Kingman, Arizona, our little piece of land with our home, held together with love and determination.

Life would be grander if the interest rate were just two percentage points lower. To all the Mortgage Companies, I was a Realtor and can see right through your attempts to get us to refi! And a HELOC is a credit card secured by our minimal equity in our castle. Without a rate reduction, the only one that makes $$ is you! All of your offers are filed in my circular file. Thank you, Rocket Mortgage, for selling my name to EVERY MORTGAGE BROKERAGE in the God Dammed world!

My next rant is in regards to the current supply of representatives that we voted for in the silly hopes that they would give a damn about our welfare after they were elected! Really? Do you not get a salary? So, what is the donation that you are begging for that will do for me? Can you not do anything until my little $10? donation, gets into your tiny, greasy grippers? Additionally, could you please let me know why you don’t allow comments from us? The hundreds of solicitations daily from EVERY person ANYWHERE in the US are clogging my mailbox and they cannot be unsubscribed!

And please do not continue to try to make me believe that you “need 10,000 signatures by Midnight to prove the American people will fight extremism every step of the way.” Why do you need money to sue the president? Sue away! He has done it for years and NEVER pays the attorneys, and they keep coming back again and again.

My final rant is about the packaging of everyday items. I understand that you must keep them closed so that they reach their designated place on the store’s shelf thousands of miles away. But do you have to use glue to seal them so that they would pass inspection in space? How about the instruction printed in English or translated and large enough for human eyes? Add pill bottles to this rant! Is it really necessary to put those large capsules in a tiny bottle to keep the pills fresh? Many times they get stuck and to get them out you have to empty the bottle! Not fun! Enough!

Just a reminder! My books are published by Draft2Digital and are destributed to: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon or on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk again soon.

This is scary! I should NEVER allow my brain this kind of freedom! I am a left-handed Gemini, and we all need keepers! After you read this, you might agree.

First, let me say, I abhor anachronisms! It pisses me off to have to think for 20 minutes, what they mean! My typing skills are not in the same category as a racehorse, and recovery from a stroke took my speed away, but I can still type. I will use emoji’s, but want some that can be used to show the average person’s real feelings!

And speaking of emojis! When someone takes the time to type a thoughtful piece about the world and its condition, would it take too much of your valuable time actually to type something back to them? Be it good or bad! They will appreciate a few words a hundred times more than a quick, thoughtless emoji for ‘like or love’! I will admit that sometimes, I skim read if the piece looks like a hundred pages long.

Enough of that! Does anyone want to weigh in on the latest lunacy of our pseudo-government? When did we, the people, authorize the President to start a war? Didn’t the WAR have to be approved by Congress? And why bomb places where the nuclear preparations have been moved?

Another thing is, why do we keep trying to grow our vegetables at home when we know the only way is to have an air-conditioned greenhouse or be a mega-farmer with access to mega gallons of water? At 100 degrees, everything I plant cooks before it sprouts!

My last thought for today is: read your labels on all those “ever so easy” packaged goods! If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it! Read the labels! Many of those additions are only to allow them to be shipped across the country or ocean, and be stored in a warehouse until ordered. Cooking is not a dirty word. You might want to look up “Natural” and “Organic” before you spend more for less!

Okay, commercial time! I am a writer, and I love to read other authors’ books! I publish with Draft2Digital and my books are distributed to the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon, and they are on my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Have a wonderful day! Thank you for reading my blog, and I will talk to you again later!

I waited by the bridge for the boat to navigate the water lilies and bump against the side of the dirt road. Lloyd hopped out and secured it until I could climb in and take the middle seat.

The minute I was seated with the oars in my hands, he pushed off and hopped into the front seat, smiling, his blue eyes twinkling, as he loved the time with his two favorite women. My Mom and I! Mom occupied the back seat, wearing her usual fishing outfit: a faded blue shirt, faded blue jeans, and bare feet. Her cigarette was clasped firmly in her mouth.

She held her Zebco fishing pole ready to do battle with the waiting Black Bass and/0r Pickeral! As we slowly floated out to the middle of the pond in front of our 100-year-old house, she asked, “Row me over a little closer to Mr. Additons’ boat landing?” The minute we were in the right spot, she cast her line with the silver spoon and triple hook out and laid it in front of the stand of lilly pads and tall weeds. It had not hardly made a splash on the water when a huge Black bass shot out of the water and smacked into the ripple of the lure.

Mom loved battling with a wily fish, and in the next few minutes, Lloyd and I sat motionless, admiring this battle of wills as she was successful in landing this monster, in reality, was beautiful!

She then directed us to the very back of the pond, to the shallow end, and many tall reeds and traps for unwary anglers. Hidden underneath were dozens of anxious fish waiting for an angler to drop a juicy worm for lunch. They didn’t go hungry, and several were added to our dinner bucket.

After a leisurely day on the water, and with me getting my exercise, we called it a day.

My day is just starting, as this story is a dream that I have every time I row on my Rowing machine, part of my daily exercise routine. Today’s total was 500 pulls and a little over 20 minutes.

I am still working on my book, “Volcano” and hope to release it soon.

My books are published with Draft2Digital and are distributed to the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon, they are also featured on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Enjoy your day and take care of yourself on this bumpy road of life. Will see you again soon…

I mentioned that I am working on a new book in the Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space series. This one is called VOLCANO! Before I tackle the editing of the book, sharing a page or two of the first chapter might be fun.

Chapter 1. Donzereli to the rescue!

“What the heck! Donzereli is flying into the mouth of that exploding volcano! We brought everyone back, didn’t we?” Shamus shouted, too close to Nolan’s ear for comfort!

“Of course we did! Wait a minute! That’s Mom and Dad’s car right beside the opening! They’ve got to get out of there! What the heck are they waiting for? They’re way too close!”

“There are sparks and chunks of rocks shooting out of the opening right next to them!

 “OMG, now there’s fire and lava!”

“We’ve gotta go, Now!” Shamus whispered into the mic.

“I’m with you. Go!” Nolan whispered, nearly running into Shamus.

Everyone stood spellbound, watching the show, mesmerized by the explosive eruption —a spectacular display visible to the naked eye.

Shamus and Nolan were racing for the recently gifted large cars! The two stopped for a second, but their breath caught in their throats when they saw Donzereli fly out of the volcano and swoop right back down, again. The sight spurred them on, and they raced full speed for the cars.

They heard Sunset announce to the group, “Ty mentioned that Queen Tanisha said several of the older fairies who chose not to come to the dinner might be trapped in their hovel in the volcano. Ty and Robin will be bringing them here as soon as Donzereli flies them out!  We offered to fly over to help, but Donzereli just contacted me and said they were almost done and that it would be too dangerous for us to fly with or without a car, and he says they will retrieve the fairies and return safely, very soon!”

“Can you see them?” Rainbow asked.

Before Sunset could answer her, several loud bangs nearly deafened the onlookers! They were stunned, standing with their hands over their ears, as the top of the tunnel exploded, sending huge chunks of rock and lava over much of the island and igniting most of the surrounding trees. Some hot, flaming rocks were reaching as far as the beach that Shamus and Nolan had designated as the site for their beach party!

Counselor Walkegon loudly announced, “By the fierceness of this initial explosion, it looks like much of the flaming rocks might reach this continent where we are standing! We strongly suggest that you move back! The elder council members were moving the group back and setting up shelters to protect them from the possible storm of hot, flaming rocks.

The humans huddled together eyes locked on the island, waiting and hoping to see the flying car speeding toward the continent at any second.

This is an excerpt from the first chapter. If you have read any of the previous books, it will be much clearer who these people are and what Shamus and Nolan are planning to do.

When this book is completed, it will be published by Draft2Digital and will be distributed to the following places: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

This is the last book in this series so far, and I tried to make them easy to read as stand-alone books while also linking them together. I totally enjoyed writing them. You may not know this, but the main characters are REAL PEOPLE, who so far live in Seattle and have not gone into space, yet!.

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 9 Volcano coming soon

Have a great day and will see you later…..

I was very lucky that my insurance awarded me 6 weeks of in-home rehabilitation three times a week.

I looked forward to those kind but insistent workouts. They praised me every time I exceeded my goal. I wanted to get back to my former self, so I worked hard to do everything they suggested. I did all of the exercises on the days they were not here. I also started working out on the rowing machine and now do 20 minutes, not every day, but several times a week. Additionally, I continued the chair exercises.

I have to admit that I was horrified to realize I had forgotten how to write! I am a writer, and my goal for those first weeks was to be able to sign my name. The second thing that horrified me was that my left hand couldn’t remember how to type. With a ton of practice and my handy-dandy typing book and with a lot of help from Grammarly, I can type well enough that I am finishing Book 9 of a series called “Volcano”. I love telling stories in books. I may never be a NYTimes bestseller, but I have stories in my head that are beating me up, wanting to get out.

Watch for my sale of my books on Smashwords at 50% off on most of my ebooks!

In addition to writing, I continue to sew for friends. I have tackled challenging sewing jobs in the past, but now I am a little more selective, as I want to ensure my customers’ satisfaction. Many are now friends, and sometimes we have tea.

I self-publish with Draft2Digital, and my books are distributed to the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Gotta go, see you later……

I’ll bet you think the designations above are identical! They are a million miles apart!

A Dentist works on your natural teeth to keep them healthy.

A Denturist works to make “false teeth” function as your natural teeth would if they could. Don’t let anyone tell you, “It is your fault that you do not have beautiful, healthy teeth.” I was told more times than I care to remember that, “ir you had brushed your teeth!” and “you have buck teeth because you sucked your thumb!” Bull Pucky!

I had Rabbit Buck Teeth because nature decided to play a joke on me!” I don’t know if back in our history, some poor devils also had buck teeth, because we are English and English don’t talk about anything important.

I have the distinction of having songs written about my teeth! My favorite went something like this: Oh! Buck Teeth Jones, she rattles her bones. ”

And because those lovely teeth were in such bad shape, they were extracted, and bone surgery was done to give me a normal bite. I was fitted for a partial plate, but I had to heal from the surgery.

I was greeted with interesting comments upon starting high school toothless. IN the olden days, most schools celebrated Freshman Reception! I was “selected” to sing “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!” Our Freshman Reception was in the Town Hall, thus the whole town could attend, and it felt like the whole town was present!

Since I couldn’t get out of it, hamming it up would be more fun, I lisped through the whole thing.

Most things in life are better with a smile! Later in my illustrous life I had to have all of my teeth removed and live with dentures!

That adventure will have to wait until later. I want to finish book 9, “Volcano,” of my series, Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space.

I hope to have it ready for publishing next month, which will coincide with Smashwords’ big book sale.

If you are interested in my books, they are distributed at: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Fyi:

Maye West Mysteries Book 1: Murder on Lake Haverly

Maye West Mysteries Book 2: Options

The Spirited One Book 1: The protector

The Spirited One Book: 2 James

The End of the Road

Immortal Enemies

Young Adult and Children’s Books

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 Science Project

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 9 Volcano coming soon

Sleep Travelers Book 1: The Story of Ning, Dog, and Boss

Sleep Travelers Book 2: The Amusement Park

Sleep Travelers Book 3: The Dude Ranch

Sleep Travelers Book 4: The Train Ride

Is there a difference? Yes. There is supposed to be a difference, but that line has been narrowed down so much that denturists no longer exist.

A denturist is a specialized dental care professional who is trained and works exclusively with patients requiring tooth replacement solutions. This is the definition found on the internet.

I, and most people who have lost ALL of their teeth, need a denturist, but alas, every dentist proclaims themselves to be a denturist.

I have a drawer full of dentures made by dentists pretending to be denturists!

My story begins around 85 years ago.

I was horrified to find out that I was endowed with Buck Teeth! Mine were real big Rabbit Teeth! There were songs and poems written about them in school. I hated them!

When I was around 14, a dentist (I suspect he was a denturist) pulled my six front teeth, and under novacaine, he did bone surgery. I was fitted with a partial plate until I was 18. Fun extra fact:  I started high school with my front teeth missing! That was in the days of legal hazing! I got to sing in front of the entire town, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!” I survived!

At 18, the rest of my teeth were extracted and replaced with dentures. Since I had surgery, I had an unnatural bite, and the dentist embedded steel wires in the plate for strength.

Those dentures lasted for over 20 years.

I could bite into an apple!

I have a box of dentures made by dentists since then, who proclaimed themselves to be the best.  None of the dentures fit well, and every dentist ignored my statement about the surgery and the unnatural bite. Like, I didn’t know my history, and it didn’t happen!.

Most dentists advertise that they make dentures. They do! But do they know anything about how they are supposed to fit? Absolutely not! Nor do they give a damned! The last set I had made took a dozen visits to not get them even close to fitting. The DENTIST popped in ONCE and never saw him again. His helpers sort of knew what they were doing! Theose are in the box of misfit toys!

Don’t like them? Have permanent teeth made at $30,000 or more per jaw! I gotta tell ya, Medicare does NOT cover permanent teeth!

I am now using my handy-dandy Dremel to make an older set that hurts like hell to wear, and eventually, I will be able to eat without pain.

Stay tuned, I will tell you more about my teeth saga later….

If you’re interested in my books…

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

I publish through Draft2Digital, and my eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  With these outlets, my books are available worldwide.

I posted this a few days ago, but it bears repeating…

I get three or more of these alerts weekly, and sometimes daily..

You think your Mortgage Company has your best interests at heart! Right? Well, it only has its own bottom line in its little heart of hearts!

It appears that EVERY company you do any business with has an agenda! And Baby It Ain’t you!

The minute you close escrow, THEY SELL YOUR INFORMATION TO EVERYONE in the world!

Today, I got an official-looking letter in the mail informing me that I have $2682.64 available funds. They had a very official File Number, and I needed to have my file ID ready when I called to take advantage of TFSB programs.com.

I checked it out for you! I called the “gentleman,” who answered very formally, asking for the file Number, which I gave to him. The interest rate he quoted was not sufficiently lower than what I now have. We bought the rate down a tiny amount for a lot of $$$ when we bought the house.  I continued to ask more questions, and finally, after I grilled him for several minutes, he admitted that the “refund” quoted in the email was my escrow account with Rocket Mortgage. A refi would result in a new escrow account! Thanks a lot!

 Rocket Mortgage, Thanks a lot for selling my information to every Tom, Dick, and Harry!

Goodbye refund!

They would re-fi and establish a new escrow account, and he hedged a bit and he admitted there would be recording fees. I asked the big question: What will the total cost to me be for all this wonderful money?

When I revealed that I had been a realtor for 30 years, he hung up!

If you get one of these letters or phone calls, do what I am doing with mine!  Just say, “Sorry Sucker, keep on trucking,” and hang up or file it in the circular file, also known as a waste basket.

Interest hasn’t dipped even a small percentage point and will not for a while. In my humble opinion, you need at least a 1 percent rate decrease to justify a refinance. Two percent would be better! Three percent would be golden!

The big Corporations need time to milk us as dry as they can before it goes down for you and me.

By the way, do not succumb to the HELOCs! They are a credit card in disguise, with a credit card attached to your mortgage, likely with a considerably higher interest rate that applies to all your equity and beyond. Definition: HELOC – Home Equity Line Of Credit

I’ve been there and now I know better! Live within your means, and only purchase expensive items on a credit card if you can afford to and will pay it off before charging more. Do not pay one credit card off with another; it creates a vicious cycle that you will never escape from.

Thanks for reading, and I will see you later….

If you’re interested in my books…

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

I publish through Draft2Digital, and my eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  With these outlets, my books are available worldwide.

When you read an author’s books or blog, you often quickly like or heart them. Most of the time, you will not take a second or two to write a comment. It is personally disappointing and discouraging to the writer. Taking a second or two to encourage them may make a big difference to them.

Writing a “review” is not like a grade school book report where you nervously stood in front of your class of torturers and skeptics, shuddering in your boots, while trying to read your handwritten report of an assigned book, knowing that they and the teacher will grade you! Writing a book review for a book you loved or hated is a one-way street! Most of the time, the author will never know who the person who wrote it is, as most book sellers only publish the first name. It is unlikely that anyone will comment on your review. But they might decide to buy or not buy the book you reviewed.   

As a point of interest, Indie Writers (Independent Authors) are often determined DIYers (do-it-yourselfers). Our tiny brains conjure up an idea of a story; we think it over and decide whether we want to spend a year or more of our lives allowing the idea to germinate and blossom. Once we commit, we put our blood, sweat, and tears into our book! 

We each approach writing a book in a different way. Some writers meticulously prepare every word of their manuscript, paragraph by paragraph, page by page, chapter by chapter, and some line by line. Some of the rest of us are Pantsers. We write by the seat of our pants! I am afraid I fall into the latter group. I almost always do a quickie synopsis and follow it somewhat, but the story often evolves into something quite different from my original idea. Sometimes, a character that I place in the story for just a quick thought or action develops into a semi-major player. It can happen in reverse on a whim.

Many of us indie authors do not have the money to hire a graphic artist to create a fantastic cover, dozens of people to read and make suggestions, and editors to polish our stories. And more than a few of us have not been accepted by a Publisher to produce and advertise our books professionally. There is a good chance you most likely will not see them in bookstore windows. Nevertheless, we are writers! And our hearts bleed!

My books are a “family affair,” meaning the whole family can get involved if they choose or have the time. My Hubby, of 64 years, works full-time, but always makes the time! Bless his heart, he struggles to navigate Gimp and produces the best replica of the cover that I dream up! I do not currently have any beta “readers,” although I would welcome one. I do that job myself, and my books are my babies, and I take good care of them.

I am recovering from a stroke, so I hired Grammarly to review my writing and suggest corrections for spelling and grammatical errors. Sometimes I take its advice, and sometimes I don’t. Not all my characters speak perfect English. I create a timeline for each book and keep track of the chapter lengths. I also create a cast of characters, including a physical and characteristic description of each. Several of my serial books feature numerous characters, so I list them by importance first and minor characters at the end, rather than alphabetically.

My final thing is reading it “out loud” to see how it reads. If it reads easily, I’m happy; if not, I make changes and re-read it out loud again.  Usually, my Hubby reads the manuscript too, and makes suggestions. It is amazing how a second set of eyes can see things that pass right by the writer.

By the way, I have been contacted by most of the companies that “guarantee” to make me a million-dollar seller. I bit on a minor dollar amount, and my philosophy is “once burned, twice shy!” Call me if you must, but the more forceful you become, the more I will match you. When they call you, remember that it is a salesperson trying to find the way into your pocketbook, and they don’t care about your bottom line. They care about their own.

Draft2Digital publishes my books and is available at the following places: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Additionally, my new website is dedicated solely to my books. Books.By/bendacolbath, books are shipped worldwide at only $5.00.

Y’all take care now, and I’ll talk with you again later…..

Can I go pee, please?

I would like to weigh in on the so-called Gender Bathroom Controversy. I think it has been blown way out of proportion! Let’s get serious just for a minute, okay?  Does it really matter which bathroom a human being uses?  I don’t know about you, but when you gotta go, you gotta go! And any port in a storm will do!

After communicating with Spock (he is that logical alien), you know, with the pointed ears and extremely intelligent brain! We had a long, logical conversation about this and many other things I will talk about later. We came to the same conclusion, why is it any of your business where I or anyone else pees or poops! 

If you decide to use the women’s bathroom, you will find that there are no urinals! At least not yet! Suppose a man dressed as a woman goes into the “Ladies Rest Room to do his thing. In that case, he will quickly see that his usual mode of elimination, i.e., urinal, is not present.  If he is a reasonably intelligent human, depending on his urgency, he will do one of two things.  He will leave and search for a room that has the facilities that he desires.  Of course, he might have to endure the astonished stares of the manly men and possibly get tossed out on his ass. 

Or, being a girly girl, will use the stall just like other women.  Of course, he could pee in the sink, but most men are a little shy about whipping their tallywacker out in front of women.  Actually, I have been told that some manly men are shy about that around other men! Here’s a cheery thought!  How would you know how they are peeing?  Unless you are peeking over or under the stall, you would not know if they have a tallywacker or not. 

Men’s bathrooms usually have urinals and cubicles, unlike the ladies’ rooms, which have stalls, and never enough of them! There are the same number of stalls in the men’s and women’s rooms.  A woman dressed as a man doesn’t have the “equipment” to use the urinal; they will have to go into a stall.  You would not know if they have a tallywacker or not unless you are a  strange Duck and peek over or under the stall.

Personally, my dears, I don’t give a damn which one you use; as long as you wash your hands, don’t peek at me, and for heaven’s sakes, be so kind, and unlike at home, please put the damn seat down.

If the upshot of this is that more stalls will be built in the women’s bathrooms to accommodate transgender urinators!  I see that as a necessary innovation because the long lines waiting for a stall are infuriating, and in some cases, necessary or too late!  Are you aware that there is the same number of cubicles in men’s bathrooms as in women’s bathrooms?  As unfair as that is, more stalls in women’s bathrooms would be a good thing. 

Imagine a world where you do not have to explain to anyone where or how you do your business because it really is nobody’s business!

It would be wonderful if there were enough facilities so that oblivious men could stop complaining, “What took you so long?” to their wives when they don’t seem to, or try to understand that the women’s restrooms need to be upgraded to match the efficiency of the men’s restrooms!

This was written just for the fun of it! Don’t take offense, just laugh a little. We all need a laugh right now!

You will find my books on my website http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, or your favorite site in eBooks and Paperbacks.

Thanks for listening and will see you later…..

In the good old days, you had a clear idea of the work you wanted to do, and you worked hard to build your business from the ground up with your own hands.

Buying and selling new widgets. Repairing them from your garage gradually evolved into a store, and you put signage in the huge window.  You rented or bought a cash register and bought a truckload of widgets on consignment, including repair parts.

You never dreamed of becoming a conglomerate and owning hundreds of stores and/or factories.  You wanted to “make a living” for your family.  Many times, several of your family members worked with you, and life was good!

You never had to borrow money; you invested your savings right back into your business. 

Then the Internet burst onto the horizon, and it became cost-effective enough that many households owned one or more computers. It became necessary for your company to upgrade to computers. Then credit cards entered the horizon, making it easier and faster for consumers to purchase.  Soon, it became normal business practice to purchase everything from soups to nuts. Advertising on the Internet brought more customers to your store, and life was good!

But suddenly, buyers started purchasing online. Some online purchases were shipped directly to the consumer. Then, the world turned upside down! A brilliant entrepreneur realized that you could bring customers into your store via the Internet. You could sell widgets to them online and ship products without ever having to see or meet them in person.

Customers liked the convenience of having their packages delivered right to their front door. But they also wanted to purchase from people they knew and trusted! They remembered meeting store clerks and sometimes the owner face-to-face, and liked getting to know them. So now you had to invest in computer programs that convey to your customers pictures and videos of you and your business. 

 At least once during this time, you probably said, “Hell, I don’t need to know my customers; I just want to sell to them!” However, the Internet was designed to connect you with your customers. 

Your customers could see pictures of you, your employees, and your business. You started selling many other things in addition to your usual Widgets because your website had hundreds and sometimes thousands of items. New start-up companies started competing for your business.  Entrepreneurs created sites where mom-and-pop shops could sell used goods online, along with those who just wanted to get rid of unwanted items. And it was good!

Eventually, the “Big Auction Companies” realized that they didn’t need Mom and Pop’s resale items; they could sell directly from the factory to a purchaser, making bigger profits, so Mom and Pop were cut out of the deal!  Big-box stores were happy to have their products online.  Fulfillment centers were created to expedite the delivery of packages from A to B.  Everyone with a computer jumped on the bandwagon and created an online storefront.  Most failed because putting up a storefront didn’t cut it; you had to bring the customer to your site.

The Big Box Stores saw that their stores were more often empty, while “discount” stores were thriving. Many investors had invested early and heavily in the Internet and sophisticated computer systems, discovering where to ship bulk inventory by learning how often someone bought a particular item at a specific store.  This took a lot of money!  Everyone hated the discount store except the consumers!

We now have big discounts and luxury stores in the same growing metropolis, built via Credit but still profitable.  Mom-and-pop stores started becoming nearly extinct. I know it is sad, but the customer demanded, and corporations listened! Some think they listened too well.  That’s for you to decide, but they are here to stay.  Sorry, folks, but you can’t put the Genie back in the bottle.

I loved the old way, too, but you must adapt to survive. I only hope to survive long enough to see what the next big thing is! 

Do you have any idea what it will be?

I often wonder why an “over the hill” old fart thinks they can write?  If you asked or didn’t ask, here’s the answer! Because I want to write stories, I need to write stories! I have stories bouncing around inside my head, and unless I let them out, they will drive me crazy, or crazier than I am if I let them out!

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a pitcher for the New York Yankees! I practiced every day pitching at a circle chalked on the barn door. I was 12 before it was revealed that girls aren’t allowed to be in professional baseball, as a matter of fact, girls weren’t allowed in ANY PROFESSIONAL sport! That sucked big time!

I escaped into books where I became the main character. My sex was not a problem. What adventures I had! I could be anything I wanted to be.  I lived in those books!  A funny thing happened to me when I stuck my nose in a book: my ears would turn off!  Literally!  Everything around me disappeared, and I flew away to other worlds and became beautiful, strong, and the best thing of all, I always became the heroine and the main character! It was a wonderful thing to never hear “you can’t, because you pee sitting down”.

This amazing ability got me into a lot of trouble! When my mother asked me to do something, I didn’t hear her or anyone else, I definitely heard her when she slapped me on the side of the head.  I wrote stories in a steno tablet when I didn’t have my nose stuck in a book. I was determined to graduate from High School because at that time, it was supposed to be my ticket to success! In 1958, employers demanded it. Guess what? It was another dream crushed, damn! 

When I was in the 6^th grade, we moved from Dexter to Corinna, a different world. We were bussed to a two-room country schoolhouse until the last month of the 8th grade. The teachers taught “readin’, written’, and rithmetic; they were not interested in or had the time to teach grammar. In the last month of the 8th grade, the school district closed the old country school, and we were shipped off to the school in town. 

The first day of English, the teacher started talking about diagraming sentences and a whole lot of other things that I was totally in the dark about. It never made any sense to me, and to this day, it still is somewhat of a mystery. Amazingly, I was passed into High School! I remember a conversation with my English teacher. I told her that I hadn’t a clue about diagraming sentences. She said, You will have to learn the answers to the quiz by heart, and I did, at least enough to pass. And might have learned a thing or two!

Want to know something funny? I learned more English in French class than in English classes and could write and translate French as well as anyone.

One of my other English Teachers required that we submit five handwritten pages of anything we wanted to write, be it prose, a story, or even copy something from a book (with acknowledgement). I couldn’t help myself, I had a little fun with him; I wrote stories that always ended in a cliff hanger, and when he asked (in fun, I am sure) what happens next, I would laugh and tell him he would have to wait till next week. Near the end of the school year, he took me aside and told me that I should do something about my writing. The sad thing is, I have forgotten his name.

No matter!  I have self-published over fourteen books and am still writing! I usually work on two or more books at a time.  One year as a Christmas gift, I wrote a book with a whole family as the characters and sent them as colonists to a newly discovered planet in another galaxy.  Oh, there are Dragons too!

Another book is based on my 30-year Real Estate Career. It is a murder mystery, and if some people recognize themselves but with different names, they can relax and laugh, because I changed the names to protect the guilty. Some will laugh, be proud, and be unhappy at my portrayal of them, even though it is accurate. 

I have a series of children’s books called Sleep Travelers. I enjoyed writing these because the main character is my baby girl. Little Dawnie takes her three friends, Ning (a Siamese Cat), Dog (a big shaggy dog), and Boss ( an African Parrot), on adventures when they are asleep! They are short, so I have combined two stories. They will be self-published soon.

My Christmas present this year was a Stroke, so my writing slowed down in favor of rehabilitation, which is coming along quite well.  I can now write okay. I practiced signing my name so I can sign books.

BTW, These are the places that my publisher Draft2Digital distributes:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com is another place you can find my books.

You think your Mortgage Company has your best interests at heart! Right? Well, it only has its own bottom line in its little heart of hearts!

It appears that EVERY company you do any business with has an agenda! And Baby It Ain’t you!

The minute you close escrow, THEY SELL YOUR INFORMATION TO EVERYONE in the world!

Today, I got an official-looking letter in the mail informing me that I have $2682.64 available funds. They had a very official File Number, and I need to have my file ID ready when I call to take advantage of TFSB programs.com.

I checked it out for you! I called the “gentleman,” who answered very formally, asking for the file Number, which I gave to him. The interest rate he quoted was not sufficiently lower than what I now have. We bought the rate down a tiny amount for a lot of $$$!

I attempted to ask more questions, and finally, after I grilled him for several minutes, he admitted that the “refund” that was quoted in the email would be my escrow account with Rocket Mortgage.  Rocket Mortgage, Thanks a lot for selling my info to every Tom, Dick, and Harry!

BTW, I would have to set up another escrow account!

Goodbye refund!

They would re-fi and establish a new escrow account, and he hedged a bit and

admitted there would be recording fees. I asked the big question: What will the total cost to me be for all this wonderful money?

When I revealed that I had been a realtor for 30 years, he hung up!

If you get one of these letters or phone calls, do what I am doing with mine!  Just say “Sorry Sucker, keep trying” and hangup or file it in the circular file called a waste basket!

Interest hasn’t dipped even a small percentage point and will not for a while. You need at least 1 percent to justify a refi. Two percent would be better! Three percent would be golden!

The big Corporations need time to milk us as dry as they can before it goes down for you and me.

By the way, do not succumb to the HELOCs! They are a refi in disguise, with a credit card attached, probably with a considerably higher interest rate for ALL your equity and beyond.

I’ve been there and know better now. Live within your means, and only purchase expensive items on a credit card if you can and will pay it off before you charge more. Do not pay one credit card off with another; it is a vicious cycle that you will never get out of!

Thanks for listening, and will see you later….

If you are interested in my books….

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

I publish through Draft2Digital, and my eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  If you live in Kingman, AZ, I will keep stock available and sign them for you. s

My husband, Shirl, had heart surgery; he now has a new Aorta valve donated from a very giving cow (we were never told whether it was Daisy Mae or Ferdinand) and a double By-pass courtesy of one of the best Heart surgeons in Phoenix.  He was pretty resilient in his recovery, mainly because in the previous two years, he became a whole lot more serious about his health after he had two stents put in.  He is a very stubborn man, and when he likes something, he wants a lot of it, so to give up butter (cold Turkey) was an accomplishment.  Of course, the heart-to-heart talk with the surgeon who inserted the stents helped with his decision to get on the health train. We were walking a mile a day within a month of his discharge.  We progressed to 3 miles most days.

About 15 years prior to his surgery, he had a virus attack his heart, and no, we don’t know what kind of virus it was, but basically, he died in the Doctor’s office!  Thankfully, he was revived and spent a week in the ICU. The aftermath was that he has a-fib, i.e., his heart will forever have an irregular beat.  It’s a good thing that he was never a regular kind of guy.  The part of his heart that controls the beat was and still is damaged, but the rest is in good shape now.

If you have ever had to navigate the mire of rules with Medicare Health, you can sympathize. Sometimes, the cheapest is not the best.  Too bad the government didn’t get that memo. The Insurance plan that we chose does not have a monthly premium but has a co-pay for Doctor visits, hospitalization, Urgent Care, and Drugs.  Which works great for us most of the time? Read on!

We were in Benson, AZ, working at Butterfield RV resort, which had a workout room and tons of activities in addition to a heated pool and a spa.  The neat thing about this resort is that we were within walking or biking distance of a Walmart and right next to a small strip mall with a Safeway and an Ace Hardware.  We did not have a carat at that time, so this was ideal as we could ride our bikes up a modest hill to Walmart and pack our groceries in cloth bags attached to the rack on the back of our bikes.

In January, Shirl started getting some double vision. A specialist added a prism on his glasses, which helped some.  Then, all of a sudden, Shirl started getting too tired to walk or ride, and work was getting hard.  On yet another appointment with another Ophthalmologist in Sierra Vista, we were sent over to the hospital across the road to get a blood test.  Since it was across the road, and we still did not have a car, we opted to walk.  On the way, Shirl tripped on a branch on the sidewalk and fell on his face.  Damn, we were so close that we could see the Hospital!

An Emergency Vehicle saw the accident and raced over to help.  Shirl was transported to the Hospital across the road! After an MRI, it appeared that he did not fall due to a stroke. Good news!  Unfortunately, he looked like a prizefighter who had lost the fight!  We actually made it through our contract with the RV resort, and in May, we headed for Phoenix for another visit with his Heart Doctor. His heart surgeon advised us that he needed a valve replacement surgery “sooner rather than later” The doctor’s words).  We knew what being in shock feels like.

Now the fun began!

Because his teeth were in such bad shape, he needed to have all the top teeth and some of the bottom teeth pulled, and it needed to be done before he could have Heart Surgery. If he didn’t do it before, he would have to wait at least a year after Heart Surgery to have them pulled.  Remember I told you he is stubborn?  He neglected his teeth in favor of minor things like a roof over our heads and food!

Since he was on Coumadin, he had to stop taking it and had to have two shots a day of Lovenox for a week before an Oral Surgeon could pull them.  Wonderful!  Guess what? Going to a doctor’s office to have the shots was another set of problems!

Remember when I told you we didn’t have a car? We did have our 32-foot Motorhome! No problem! All we had to do was drive every day to the doctor’s office for the shot and pay for the visit.

One other small problem! We had to make sure we could get into the lot where the doctor’s office was located AND get out! When you live in a Motorhome, that is necessary. We calculated the cost of driving the Motorhome at that time was $.50 a mile.

The logistics of Shirl giving himself the shots were not ideal.  Soooo, I was drafted to do the deed!

  It took me two days of a lot of “self-talk” to get mentally ready because I am not a Nurse and usually pass out when I have a blood draw or a shot.  I guarantee that from that experience, I do not aspire to be a nurse. 

The good thing was that the needles came filled and sealed, and when they were used, you only had to press on the plunger again, and the needle disappeared inside. Easy, Peasey! Not!

We thought we needed to have an Oral Surgeon pull them; however, we have since learned that you can’t bleed to death from teeth being pulled. Oh well! Too soon, old, and too late, smart! We got a lot of free quotes from Dentists who would pull the teeth and only charge $4000.00 for the set of upper dentures and a new partial for the bottom. We were starting to be afraid that Shirl may have to go toothless forever.

After a lot of fighting with the insurance company by going up three tiers of insurance representatives, we finally got the okay to have the teeth pulled and receive partial payment from the oral surgeon. When his mouth finally stopped bleeding and healed, we had another appointment with the Heart Doctor, who told us the time was now for his heart surgery. We only had to deal with the Insurance Company. Fun Stuff!

The Insurance Company told us that the Catheter that he needed to have to ascertain the condition of the heart before surgery had to be “Out Patient”, and we were responsible for the whole $15,000.00- yikes!!  We were devastated.  While we were trying to figure out how we could pay for the outpatient procedure and the surgery, our children came to town to visit.  While we were all out walking, yes, he still liked to walk, Shirl became so distressed that we took him to the hospital, and he was admitted.  Once he was admitted, it was determined that the catheter was necessary and was done, so we dodged that bullet, and it became part of the hospital bill.

The saddest thing that happened was that they had to cut his wedding ring off as it was very tight on his finger, and he probably would have some swelling during surgery.  We all almost cried when he looked up with his big blue very sad eyes, and said “I have had that ring on my finger for 50 years”!  The Nurse that was cutting it off nearly cried, too! His surgery was delayed a day because of an emergency with his heart Doctor, and when he finally went up for surgery, we were all glad, scared, and relieved!  We just withdrew into ourselves and waited.  When the Doctor finally came out and said it was a success, we were all nearly ready to collapse. Shirl was doing fine!

BTW, all surgical patients look like hell after surgery! There were many tubes and IVs hooked up to him; he was pale as a ghost! He had a wonderful Nurse at his side at all times.  She patiently said many times, “Mr. Colbath, just relax and lay still,” as the first thing that he wanted to do was get up.  I was a basket case and probably looked worse than he did!  Our Daughter was a Rock.  I probably leaned on her a lot more than I remember. She stayed with me until he was released. Our Son had to fly back home, and we communicated by phone and email daily.

Banner Thunderbird Hospital’s follow-up was excellent. As soon as he was released, a nurse and therapist visited us weekly to make sure he was taken care of. At the hospital, he was given a fuzzy heart pillow, which became his best friend. Heart patients cannot use their arms to push themselves up from a chair for months.  

Before he could leave the hospital, he had to learn how to dress and undress, get in and out of bed, go up and down stairs, and get in and out of a shower. The hospital staff was amazed at how fast he progressed. He expressed his dislike of hospital food, so I cooked food for him and brought it in to be heated for dinner. 

We walked him around the “track” as many times as he would and could every day!  By the time he was released, he was walking by himself, and they told him he was setting records.  LOL

We also found out that he doesn’t do well with pain medication. Every time they asked if he wanted some pain medication, he said, “I guess so.” At one of our visits, he told us about the dog that was biting his hand and that all of the members of the Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon Five movies were visiting him. We decided that he did not need any more pain medication and told them not to give him any more unless he asked.

While Shirl was in the Hospital, I rented a car, and when he got home, we had to return it. Wait! I got used to the convenience of having a car instead of driving the Motorhome everywhere.  We succumbed and let Bell Honda talk us into coming in to look at cars!  That experience is another blog altogether!  The result was that we bought our Red Honda Fit, which was named Red Rover by a friend of our daughter.  If you are a reader of my newsletters and blogs, you will learn about her, Miranda, and now Dolly Part-on.

We were wintering in North Phoenix RV Park, and the road inside the park was exactly ½ mile around, so we started slow. Gradually, by the end of the first month after his surgery, he was walking up to 3 miles a day..

Living in a Motorhome was a challenge, but together, we managed to make it work for 6 years.

When Shirl was released with no restrictions, we accepted a job in northern California in Lassen National Park at Hat Creek RV Park. I was supposed to work as host checking people in, and Shirl would do minor maintenance and lead Motorhomes to their sites.  We felt this would be reasonably easy work for him, even though he had no restrictions.  When we arrived, we were assigned to work in the Deli making sandwiches and Shakes.  We had an hour of training and started working full time, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week!  

We took time off to drive to Renton, Washington, to celebrate our daughter’s 50^th birthday. We had a blast! She throws a great party.  Wired, a Seattle-based band, played, and our son flew up to join the fun. It was great to spend time with both of our children. A friend of Dawn’s gave us a room in her house across from the party, so if we pooped out we only had to walk across the street to go to bed.

We were doing fine and adding some much-needed money to our coffers until the wildfires closed down the site, and we ran for our lives! We spent the better part of a day driving to Redding, CA, via Shasta Lake! We stayed in a casino parking lot until the smoke drove us further south to Sacramento, CA, and finally home again to Phoenix, where we spent the rest of the summer and the winter.

I am the author of more than 14 books, and they are available at the following:

Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, GardnersAll my books are published by Draf2Digital.

If you have questions about where to find my books, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks for reading my blog… there will be more later…

Clip on arrow to see pictures of our shoppe

I always believed that I would live into my 90s hale and hearty because the women in my family did. Great Grammie lived into her 90s after spending some time in a Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Grammie lived nearly to her 90s, but shoveling snow and falling put her in the hospital with a broken hip, and that did her in. Mom lived into her 90s but spent the last 30 years in a nursing home, victim of a major stroke.

She seemed to enjoy my calls to her at the nursing home, and she would respond with one of her three words to my jokes, stories about our travels, and the people we had met. By the way, her three words were; Ayah (Maine accent), “NO”, and Shit! She was a bad ass to the very end!

When we had our Colbath’s Paperback & Comic Bookstore, we would sometimes bring Mom to visit for the day, and she was happy to be out of the house and among young people. She would sit quietly in her wheelchair and often nap. It was obvious to the customers that she wasn’t always totally aware of her surroundings.

One young customer brought a three-comic pack to the counter to purchase, but Mom suddenly grabbed the package and screamed, “No!”

You can imagine that everyone in the store stopped and stared.

She paid them no mind and just held onto the package, refusing to let go, while saying loudly, “No.” 

She allowed Shirl to take the package from her and open it. It had two comics of good value and one of our collectibles in between. The kid thought no one saw him slip it in and would have got a better bargain than we intended if Mom hadn’t seen him.

He didn’t admit to trying to steal from us, and he didn’t get his bargain, but he left the store anyway. It was suggested to him that he not return.

Mom, however, received lots of thanks and was taken to dinner, where she had a special drink in her honor. The drink had a little alcohol, which she wasn’t supposed to have, but she earned it.

That bookstore was fun, if not very profitable! We enlisted both of the kids to help (with no pay), but they always got free meals.

We had tons of Romance Books, and the women loved to come in to pick out the newest ones. Many of them kept a small notebook of the titles they had read so they wouldn’t repeat purchases. We decorated a Refrigerator box like a castle filled with toys for their kids to play in while they shopped as long as they wanted.

The other thing we did was to fan all the books out as we sprayed Lysol on them. We have never had a single person complain of an allergic reaction to any of our used books. It took time and a little expense, but the reward was the word-of-mouth advertising we got.

We weren’t getting rich, but we were keeping our heads above water until the building’s owner decided he needed it for his own business. We tried to find a new rental, but alas, the fire codes made that impossible, at least for us.

We planned to use one of our rental houses and were in the process of preparing it for our business. But a home owner next door protested to the city that we were distributing Porn magazines to kids. NOT TRUE! We did have some Playboys displayed flat on a shelf about 6 feet off the floor. Most youngsters couldn’t reach them or see them. I never was able to understand how a few playboys could harm youngsters recovering from drug abuse, but the city sided with her, and we lost. We lost that battle, and with a rental property seemingly unavailable, we decided to close the store.

The person who sold the original batch of books and comics to us planned to file a lawsuit to reclaim all the books and comics we had traded for and purchased.  We would have gladly given her the original volume of comics and paperbacks, but she wanted it all!

To keep from the possibility of losing not only our original investment but also what we had earned, we filed for bankruptcy. We retained a considerable volume of comics and paperbacks that we sold from our garage, which kept us afloat until we sold the house and relocated to Arizona.

It’s great to have friends because we couldn’t store all our comics and Paperbacks in our single garage, so one of our friends kept them for us.

She was born before the Great Depression, into a poor family, the oldest of 7 seven children. Her name was Alice Addie Brannon, and she was one of the strongest and smartest people I have ever met, and I am so very proud to have known her. I am even prouder to be her daughter.

She was funny and kind in her own way! If she had been allowed to continue her education beyond grade school, she might have become a Doctor or one of many professional people. She was selected to quit school to help take care of her younger siblings.

I was born at home in the little town of East Corinth, Maine, and delivered by a midwife, I think. Of course, I don’t remember because of my age. I usually tell the tale; that she had me and then went to the hospital to make sure she didn’t have anymore like me.

She consistently won games of Double Solitaire and Double Nine Dominoes, and for years, she didn’t share with me her secret of how she won. It was amazing how she could pick a four-leaf clover the first time she walked into a field, while others would spend hours searching.

Growing up on a small farm, she developed immunity to many childhood diseases despite nursing her whole family through them. She passed that immunity to me, and it was nearly impossible to tell I had them at all.  However, it delighted me that my two tormenter brothers had the full range of childhood diseases and looked like chipmunks with mumps and some horribly diseased monsters with measles!

As an adult woman, she found herself alone in a small cabin with three small children in the middle of winter. She managed to keep us warm, clothed, and fed by doing men’s jobs. Those jobs were not offered to her; she had to seek them out and fight for equal pay with the men. She picked beans, peas, and potatoes and cut seed. I once watched her cut seed potatoes, and it scared me to my core. She straddled a potato barrel that had a wicked sharp knife attached and facing her! She swished potatoes on that knife, making sure each slice had an eye to seed new potato plants. At least she was sitting down, but one slip and there goes a finger or a hand.  She was very fast with her hands, and that is another thing she passed to me. I am also left-handed and ampidextrous, nearly equally good with either hand.

The job that ignites vivid youthful memories is picking potatoes! Potatoes are planted in long and wide rows and divided into sections. A picker could demand as many sections as they could manage. They were “picked” and placed in bushel baskets. The baskets had a sturdy handle to keep them moving ahead as they were filled. They were then picked up and dumped into the barrel placed at the end of each section, and each barrel would hold 4 or 5 bushels.

When she applied for the job, she was told she was hired, but at half the pay of the men. She challenged the owner with, “I will work one day for free, and if I beat all the other pickers, you will pay me the same wage as the men.” The owner took the challenge, and she beat them all with over one hundred barrels!

On a good day in my youth, I could pick 20 barrels!

By the way, she did this while keeping an eye on three kids sitting in the shade under the trees.

One of my fondest memories of her was a day when she was walking back to the field. One of the young men, who had obviously drunk his lunch, walked over to her, saying, “Hey, sweetheart, how about a little kiss?” As he swung his arm over her shoulder, she didn’t miss a step as she cold-cocked him, knocking him over three potato rows. None of the guys approached her again and treated her with the respect she deserved.

Fishing was her favorite pastime, and it didn’t matter whether she was in a boat or a brook. We brook fished as often as we could. I was 6 months pregnant with my daughter the last time. I fell into the brook a couple of times, and we caught a bunch of “Pocket” fish. If caught by a warden, we would have been busted.

We stopped at a farmhouse and asked the farmer, sitting on his porch, for permission to cross his land to go fishing in the brook. He smiled and said, “Sure, Sweetheart!” He even held the barbed wire fence up so we could climb under safely. As Mom crawled between the vicious prongs, he patted her on the ass, and I nearly fell over, trying to keep from laughing out loud. But I also knew that my turn was next! I was amazed that he didn’t get his head knocked off. 

When I laughed and told my Doctor about my adventure, he almost choked. He told me all the bad things that could have happened to me. I answered him with, “How much trouble could I get in, I was with my Mother!!!!

One day, I told her my teacher wanted to know how old she was. Bending over a ringer washer, she was not in the greatest mood. She said, “Tell her I am 104!”  That is exactly what I did!  And no amount of talking from the teacher could convince me she wasn’t.  If my Mother said she was 104, she was 104!!!

She met the love of her life when I was a very young child, and Lloyd was the best! He took on the responsibility of three little kids and a wife without hesitation! His job was working on the railroad, laying and repairing tracks. It was hard physical work! Lloyd wasn’t very tall; he and Mon were about the same height. Popeye would be envious of his set of shoulders and arms! 

They bought a 15-acre farm when I was in the 6^th grade.  The seller had sold it many times and repossessed it each time!  They were the last ones to buy it, which I am sure was a big disappointment.  We lived off that land, and it saved us!  Until that time, I was the smallest kid in class; however, the following year, I gained so much weight that I developed stretch marks.  My mother had an acre garden, and we kept a cow and chickens and raised a steer for beef.  Lloyd hunted, and we always had Deer meat. 

We sold hay from the field and stored some in the barn. My job was to stomp the hay in the mow to pack it down because I was the only child who didn’t have hay fever. Later, we shared half of the hay in payment for having it baled. I wasn’t sad to lose that job.

The farmhouse was over 100 years old, and after I got married and had a daughter, it burned down. They put a Single-wide Mobile home on the foundation and added a room.  Many years later, when visiting Maine, I drove back to our farm and was disappointed to see that the owners had allowed the field to grow up into trees.  

It was sad to see my childhood dreams gone. I now know, “You can never go back!”

Maye West Mysteries Book 1 Murder on Lake Haverly

Maye West Mysteries Book 2 Options

Immortal Enemies

Spirited One Book 1 The Protector

Spirited One Book 2 James

The end of the Road

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 The Science Project

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Sleep Travelers Book: 1 The Story of Ning, Dog, & Boss

Sleep Travelers Book: 2 The Amusement Park

Odilo, BorrowBox, Smashwords, Gardners, Tolino, Kobo, Vivlio, Everand, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Baker & Taylor, Palace Marketplace, OverDrive, D2D Print, Bibliotheca, Amazon, Hoopla

Thanks for reading my blog, see you later….

Trump told the Democrats how to beat him at his last rally and told them how to win the next election no matter how much Russia tries to mess with it.

It’s so easy; it’s a wonder that no one has thought of it before. I watched the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot time and time again in the last two elections and groaned the whole time.

 First, the Democrats ignored their best hope to win big time with Bernie Sanders because he honestly said he is a Socialist. Big Deal! So what?

 They chose to back a strong candidate, but with a handicap that she could never overcome, and in truth, women won’t and don’t want be able to overcome it in our lifetime unless there are some major physical changes. In case you weren’t listening, it’s because we pee sitting down! Women are as skilled, and in many countries, except ours, Women have successfully been elected as leaders!

I heard things like, “When they go low, we go high.” That’s nice, but it won’t win a dirty election! You have to fight fire with fire. When they are screaming lies, you had better be screaming truths along with proof, and you had better Scream at the Top of your Lungs and with thousands of voices because that is what the GOP did not the truth, but loud and with thousands of voices.

Trump has revealed the true underbelly of this nation, and it is growing stronger. He lied his ass off! And everyone accepted it because, under the polite Christian demeanor, too many are downright racists! That is a fact! If we weren’t racists the Nazi and White Supremacists would not have gained such a big foothold to be able to have major rallies and to place those bigots on the ballot.

A few years ago, the Christian Right would never have stood up in public and gave their wholehearted endorsement to a man accused of rape of children and women, or gained power by embracing Russia as an ally. He and his republicans have no remorse for their actions!

Remember the self-righteous bigoted Christians crying loudly that “Donald Trump was sent by GOD” to save our nation! When they know perfectly well he was sent by the other guy! All you Christian women who love him, when he succeeds, he will come for your rights next.

Listen up! Here is how you beat him at his own game. He tells a good story and gets his people to chant along with him! Remember, “Lock her up,” “This country needs a successful businessman!”

“I will make America Great Again.”

 “I admire soldiers that didn’t get captured.”

You need to make your chants powerful, loud, and true! Come on, don’t make me do everything for you. Hire some great PR people! Get to work! Make some noise! Don’t hide what you’re doing in the background; shout it from the rooftops.

Your next candidate must be someone that everyone respects wholeheartedly! And I mean everyone! And for heaven’s sake, don’t even think of dredging Hillary or Kamala up again! They cannot win! It isn’t that they aren’t great candidates, and it isn’t that the country isn’t ready for a Woman to be president. It is that the White Male Establishment will NEVER be ready until you make them ready!  

To make them ready, you must seize control from their hands, forcibly if you must! You must break their iron grip on our economy. It will take more brains than brawn.

I suggest you start NOW! You need to get up off your hands that have been forcibly shoved under your ass and FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE!

Now that I have made half of you hate me, here is a list of my self published books;

Maye West Mysteries Book 1 Murder on Lake Haverly

Maye West Mysteries Book 2 Options

Immortal Enemies

Spirited One Book 1 The Protector

Spirited One Book 2 James

The end of the Road

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 The Science Project

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Sleep Travelers Book: 1 The Story of Ning, Dog, & Boss

Sleep Travelers Book: 2 The Amusement Park

And here are the places where Draft2Digital published them;

Odilo, BorrowBox, Smashwords, Gardners, Tolino, Kobo, Vivlio, Everand, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Baker & Taylor, Palace Marketplace, OverDrive, D2D Print, Bibliotheca, Amazon, Hoopla

Thank you for reading my blog. See you later.

Definition of Customer Service: A Live person that serves customers. 

Do you remember when you could pick up the phone and call any Company? Your Doctor’s assistant? Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, and other stores?  Do you recall speaking with a live person? Those were the good old days, and they ain’t comin’ back anytime soon!

What’s coming is AI customer service!

There is no good excuse for not being able to speak to a real live person.  The corporations received a massive government tax cut, which they used to line their own pockets, and didn’t raise the pay of workers by one damned dime.  

In fact, they furloughed many workers and replaced them with “no one”. Go ahead and try to get a product replaced because you didn’t like it or it didn’t work as advertised.  I have been successful several times, but I have also sustained substantial hair loss. 

On Amazon, within the first 30 days, you can usually arrange for the returned item to be picked up.  Of course, after you have disassembled and repacked it.  You will get credit for it as soon as it is picked up, usually.  You may have to drop off small items at one of their sites.  By the way, make sure to wrap it in the same size box it came in, as it may not fit in the designated slot. Many items can be “dropped off” at a UPS store, and sometimes they will package. Read the instructions!

I am an author who used to format and upload my books to Amazon. I used to call Amazon and be referred to KDP customer service to resolve a problem.  Not anymore!  I had to either figure it out myself, read through millions of help pages or Google results, or watch YouTube videos. If you don’t mind waiting for millennia or two, there is a number, and when and if your call goes through, you’ll be told first that the answer can be found in the help pages.  Now, I self-publish through Draft2Digital, and the last time I needed help, there was a live person online to talk to four days a week. They also offer help menus and produce a weekly video series. They distribute to around 50 sites, including libraries.

In truth, just before Christmas, I had a stroke, and my business has been on hold, but I am back writing and will be publishing again soon.

With most companies, the corporate bottom line is bigger because it is easier to let us flounder, attempting to converse with Artificial Intelligence or bots.  By the way, they don’t mind if you yell or swear, and they won’t get offended or hang up on you.  Of course, they also don’t care if you get your question answered.  

Like most of us, I want to work with Companies that have a little skin in the game, but they are few and far between.

During the Pandemic, many “essential” workers lost their jobs.  Many continued to work because they had to, and as a result, many fell ill.  It was great that some workers eligible for unemployment received an extra $300 a week. Wasn’t it wonderful, and aren’t you proud that the GOP voted to take it away from them to “make” them get back to work because they were getting so rich and lazy!  Too bad that so many people forgot that at election time.

 Many at-risk people did not leave home unless it was absolutely necessary.  Some people had difficulty navigating the internet system to schedule an appointment to get a shot.  Then there were lotteries, and people could win $ 1 million for getting the shot.   Did anyone else think, “Where were the lotteries when I waited in my car for hours?”  Many were lucky and were allowed to work from home.  The rich Oil companies noticed a big reduction in gas usage. They started crying because they weren’t making enough money.  I felt so bad, didn’t you? 

During the pandemic, we masked up, wore gloves, and wiped down everything. We also let no one into our home during that time.  I used to do sewing and repairs for my neighbors, and during the last year of the pandemic, I wouldn’t even allow my neighbors to bring items for repair. 

With our new leadership, let us hope that flu and COVID-19 boosters will be available, again. I say this with tongue in cheek! If not, we will repeat the process of putting on gloves, wearing a mask, and hiding again.

This is the list of my current books:

I am working on Book 9 of the Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space series. I do not have a title yet, but it should have a picture of a Volcano on the cover.

Maye West Mysteries Book 1 Murder on Lake Haverly

Maye West Mysteries Book 2 Options

Immortal Enemies

Spirited One Book 1 The Protector

Spirited One Book 2 James

The end of the Road

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 The Science Project

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Sleep Travelers Book: 1 The Story of Ning, Dog, & Boss

Sleep Travelers Book: 2 The Amusement Park

Odilo, BorrowBox, Smashwords, Gardners, Tolino, Kobo, Vivlio, Everand, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Baker & Taylor, Palace Marketplace, OverDrive, D2D Print, Bibliotheca, Amazon, Hoopla

I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring and make a run for President of the United States! I understand I’m a little late to the party, but what the heck! I am retired, so time is not a priority for me.

The politicians keep shooting themselves in the foot or another part of their body; there surely will be an opening in the very near future.

After reviewing the qualifications of the few who are considering entering the ring, I believe I have a better-than-average chance of making some noise, and with any luck, I might make a strong showing. How much worse can I be than what you’ve got to choose from so far in this down-and-dirty race? And make no mistake about it, they are all eyeing the Presidency. What have they got to lose? Yogi Bear would be a better leader than this motley crew!

Let’s take a hard look at what you have to pick from! Old codgers that have seen better day, or ones that want to be king! If the truth be known, we have all seen better days, and it has very little to do with our health.

The BIGLY old one, and he is OLD, only wants to cheat at golf, eat his weight in Cheeseburgers and fries, and that is a damn lot of meat! They’ll have to kill a cow just to make him one meal! Imagine the old fool hiring a chef and eating McDonald’s and Burger King in the White House! That won’t happen with me; I don’t eat red meat, so it will have to be chicken or turkey burgers! His favorite pastime is to blame anyone else for his lack of understanding of what it takes to run a country, let alone a marriage! And he thinks he is God’s gift to all women except his wife! Someone should tell him that he missed that mark by a country mile! It doesn’t matter how much you pay for it, it is still ain’t love! And last but not least, it doesn’t matter if you shit on a Gold Toidy; it is still shit, and it smells!

The other one is slim and trim and appears not to give a damn if we live or not as long as he can get his supply of eyeliner and he says he loves his “little woman who knows her place in his life and the world. He loves cozying up to Billionaires! He isn’t a “Johnny-come-lately” to the political party game, but he doesn’t need the money bad enough to start pitching canned goods and pillows from the Oval Office! He gets more done quietly working behind the scenes and smiling than screaming and calling everyone nasty and giving downgrading nicknames! I will never know why the one that wants to make things better is not the most popular one! It has been established that the current one isn’t a dog trainer! The good thing is he doesn’t shoot them, so there is one lonely point in his favor!

Last but not least, the guy who boasts of a worm in his brain says he is all better now! He bears the same name as a former well-known political family, but that is as far as it goes. They are probably spinning in their graves at his use of the name without the wit or the brains.

I will effectively execute the complex aspects of the Office of the President of the United States. I would prefer to have a majority in the House and Senate that leans toward the blue side, but I don’t care much. One way or another, I can do it with one arm tied behind my back! It is a well-known fact that women can multitask!

Here is my platform:

1. I’m really easy to get along with, as long as you do exactly what I tell you. I am a post-menopausal former redhead and left-handed Gemini, which should tell the head of any country that messing with me would not be in their best interests!
2. I will appoint pre- and postmenopausal women as my ambassadors. Guaranteed they won’t tolerate backtalk from the male-dominated societies of the world.
3. Since I am a woman, all the old White Men will think they will automatically be in charge and will assume that I am complacent and will do as they tell me! You do know what assume means, don’t you, guys? I hit the toilet every time! It will be an unpleasant surprise that I am neither complacent nor will I do almost nothing that the old farts tell me! Unless they actually get one thing right!
4. My one and only first Gentleman and I have been married for 62 years. There will be no dalliances for either of us! 
5. I will definitely need to read from a teleprompter with big fonts! We wouldn’t want me to be running off at the mouth like so many of the nitwits who think they know what this country needs. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know who! They make fools of themselves and the country! We’ve had enough of that bull puckey!
6. Let’s talk about age! I am willing to admit I am old, but I can still walk and chew gum! And being old is not a sin; I have no desire to lead forever! No worries about me planning a dictatorship! Both our Son and Daughter are old enough to live in a 55+ community, and they have no desire to follow me unless I am making pizza.
7. I don’t come from a long-standing political family, and to the best of my knowledge, I don’t have worms in any part of my body. Don’t they have worm medicine to cure dogs?
8. And I won’t be redecorating the white house! It looks pretty damned lovely compared to what most of us Seniors own! I might not even move in, but govern remotely! We don’t need a new China; the pattern that is in the cupboard will be good enough. However, if we do need new plates, they will be made in the USA.
9. I plan on sleeping in every bedroom for at least one night, and anyone who sends a big contribution might get to sleep in one for one night! But, by themselves!
10. I will be happy to accept ALL the PAC money from everyone, as long as they don’t mind signing my little agreement that says, “Sorry, Sucker, I will do what is right for the country! I am the screwer, and you will be the screwee, for a change!
11. I expect to be a one-term President!  I am old but not stupid!
12. With the tax I am planning on slapping on the millionaires and Billionaires, there will be plenty of money to raise the minimum wage to $25.00 an hour, not that sissy $15.00.
13. With the money left over from the millionaire and billionaire tax, everyone receives full-coverage insurance, with no pre-existing conditions, and there are no co-pays. Don’t worry! They will only pay the same percentage that middle-class Americans have been paying for years, while they have been paying 0%. Medicare will forever be safe and never borrowed from ever again.
14. All laws designed to protect the environment that were reversed under the Previous Administration will be reinstated. Yay! Clean water, air, and undisturbed land!
15. Sorry, college-bound! You still have to pay for college, but the interest is low, and it is SIMPLE INTEREST. You figure the percentage on balance once, and it is added to the amount owed and never recalculated on the declining balance over and over. You will find you can pay it back before you die. AND the full amount you pay each year will be deductible from your income tax.
16. There will be thousands of steel beams for sale! Or we can build something useful with them. We don’t need a border wall; we need compassion for those who flee injustice. If we mind our own business, no one will be clammering to sneak into our country. The process of becoming a citizen will be less expensive and take less time than it is currently. Those who wish to come here will have the opportunity to work and pay taxes. It is a fact that immigrants WANT to come here because they have a chance to make a life. Come here for any other purpose, and you will be sent home!
17. There will be no bailouts for corporations and Banks that get into trouble due to risky speculation. You are on your own, pals! Just like the depositors that made you rich! No golden parachutes on the taxpayer’s dime!
18. Banks and all Lending institutions: If you speculate with your depositors’ money, be prepared to pay all of it back to them. And no Chapter 11, where you get to go bankrupt and continue to thrive on other people’s money. You play, you pay!

Did I miss anything? I want to clarify that this is intended for entertainment and is meant to be taken in a lighthearted, sarcastic manner.

No money will be accepted unless you understand and agree to #10.

Thanks for reading my blog, feel free to comment.

Maye West Mysteries Book 1 Murder on Lake Haverly

Maye West Mysteries Book 2 Options

Immortal Enemies

Spirited One Book 1 The Protector

Spirited One Book 2 James

The end of the Road

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 The Science Project

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Sleep Travelers Book: 1 The Story of Ning, Dog, & Boss

Sleep Travelers Book: 2 The Amusement Park

These are the sites where you can find my books published with Draft2Digital.

Odilo, BorrowBox, Smashwords, Gardners, Tolino, Kobo, Vivlio, Everand, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Baker & Taylor, Palace Marketplace, OverDrive, D2D Print, Bibliotheca, Amazon, Hoopla