Cowgirl Contemporary Fantasy

My husband and I were each getting ready for work the other day, he in the downstairs bathroom and me in the upstairs.  Our five-year-old had been instructed to get dressed in his room. From stock.xchng His bedroom and the upstairs bathroom share a wall.  I can usually tell if he's getting dressed or not because it seems to be physically impossible for him to do anything without singing or talking to himself, a habit I'm certain came from me.  If it's quiet, usually he's gotten distracted by a book or toy. It had gotten quiet, so I began to listen closely.  Soon, I heard a "MEEP!"  Not usually a sound that comes from his mouth. "Honey?  What's the matter?" I called. "Kitty's being mean," he answered, and I figured he was letting his legs dangle off of the side of the bed.  The cat loves to play with his toes while he bounces his feet this way and that. I yell, "Are you dangling anything?" "Well, I am n...

My son, who cannot read, was helping me make mac and cheese.  He picked up the blue box and squinted.  "What's step one, Mom?" I sniggered and replied, "Cut a hole in the box." "K.  What's step two?" Ummm.....I'll tell you when you're older.

Just like the incident with my Grandma's vibrator , the beaver story takes a little explanation.  "Beaver" and "human kidney" don't often appear in the same sentence, much less be tied together by a haunted house. stockfreeimages.com My mom and dad found out about me about three days before I was born.  It wasn't like Mom had no idea she was pregnant.  She just didn't know I was hiding behind my sister.  It wasn't long before the whole family realized two adults, a four-year-old, and a set of newborn twins weren't going to fit into a two-bedroom trailer house. My grandmother lived in the large ranch house at the time, and she had planned on eventually putting in a new double-wide for herself so my family could move into the seven-bedroom yellow house, what we grew up calling the big house.  She graciously offered to move up her plans to ease the housing squeeze. My brother, at four years old, noticed that something wasn't qu...

Enjoy Olive Garden Guest Post by Rachel Carrington When my assistant told me I had been graciously allowed to guest post at Cowgirl Contemporary Fantasy, I was excited. I love Scooter's stories and her sense of humor, especially her October 2011 post, Naughty Minds . So in the interest of keeping with the humor aspect, I thought I'd share my latest faux pas. In the interest of full disclosure, I was extremely busy this holiday season (as most of us are), and I was frantically trying to finish a writing goal I'd set for myself. So I was admittedly a little scatterbrained. Usually, I sent gift cards to my friends who live out of town because I don't like having to lug big boxes to the post office, and I don't know what they already have in their house. So I stuffed the cards in the envelopes, wrote an appropriately gushy note under the card's sentiment, and stuck the cards in the mail slot to await the forthcoming bouts of gratitude....

What the baclava was supposed to look like: Here's what they actually look like: NAILED IT.

No matter how hard I try, I have a filthy mind.  In fact, a group of high school kids figured it out.  They'd tell naughty jokes and speak in double entendres just to see what I'd do.  Usually, I'd choke back a snicker and reply, "That's not school appropriate!"   Chortle, chortle. My brain works against me, too.  Whenever I misread or misunderstand, my brain automatically slips dirty words into song lyrics and books.  For example: Oh, it doesn't show signs of stopping, and I brought some corn for popping... Turned into: Oh, it doesn't show signs of stopping, and I brought some porn for copping.... (A feel?) I accidentally did that into a microphone at our elementary school's Christmas sing-along.  It was a good thing many of them were dyslexic because no one noticed. So, yesterday I watched the  Conan: The Musical  video and got a pretty bad case of the giggles.  Shortly after, my husband and I read bedtime stories to ...

I came across this YouTube video.  It elicited the rare chortle/cackle/snort that annoys anyone within a 10-mile radius. After viewing the video, my husband mentioned that he'd never seen it, though I'd watched it a lot as a kid. We pulled it up on Netflix, and I soon came to two conclusions. First, I shouldn't have watched it as a kid. I suspect a few of the scenes were censored by my brother.  The servile, naked women made me want to gag, though that hadn't bothered me when I was younger.  Second, I hadn't realized how old school the filmography had been.  It felt more like a movie from the 50's or 60's. I'll be interested to see how the new movie turns out.

Internet Trolls Beware:  If you see yourself in the people in the sketch, perhaps you can see why people hate you.  Side Note:  This made me laugh.  Hard. Saturday Night Live - Internet Comments Talk Show - Video - http://www.nbc.com

And this , my friends, is why punctuation is so important.

My sister had to have a very unexpected gall bladder surgery this week.  Good thing she had it out.  Apparently it had welded to her small intestine, which I thought was pretty gross, yet cool.  My mom has been watching my sister's two girls so she can recover.  I'm going to head down and spell my mom so she can recover from my nieces. The day of the surgery, the oldest girl had been smarting off pretty much from the moment she got up.  My mom, exasperated, threatened to do something about her smart mouth, to which my niece replied, "Grandma, God made me in his image, and if he didn't want me to have a smart mouth, He wouldn't have given me one." Somewhere in Glendive, her future kindergarten teacher sleeps soundly, completely unaware of the mayhem in store for the fall of 2012. UPDATE:  Not long after the little darling popped off to Grandma, she said the following: My Niece: Mom, I can't stay at home by myself, can I? Her Mom: No, but when you...

A little while ago, I blogged on the cliches about small towns that writers seem to enjoy.  There's something I couldn't believe I left out of the post.  The other day I noticed that Netflix made the movie  Knockaround Guys  available for streaming, a movie that takes place in my hometown, though little, if any of it was filmed there. With a cast that includes names like Vin Diesel, John Malkovich, Seth Green, and Dennis Hopper, it's hard to imagine what could go wrong with it.  Plenty.  The cliches were so thick I needed a shovel.  I actually liked the way the mobsters spoke and behaved.  The portrayal of my hometown is what pissed me off. Check out this bar scene. My mom used to bounce in the bar in which this scene takes place.  So did my brother, occasionally, when he wasn't being the D.J.   A kid a little older than my sister and I once came up to her and said, "You know, I've seen a lot of scary stuff in my life, but whe...

My husband is a pretty punny guy, and even though I'm a writer, puns tend to fly over my oblivious head for a few seconds.  He was rolling them off in the car the other day, and the puns were smacking me on the forehead so hard that I was pretty sure I had a puncussion.  (A-thank you!) I wanted to share with you the best pun I've ever heard.  I do not know what twisted mind managed to come up with it, but it was told to me by my good friend, Cathy, who is another punster of the finest order. Are you ready? Soooo, Ghandi was a spiritual leader that walked a lot, so his feet grew very tough.  He was extremely thin, and his poor diet gave him a pretty rank case of bad breath and a frail body. He was a.... Super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. Do you have a good pun?  Please share!

This is a local sign that has always made me smile.  Both of my husband's parents are Lutheran Pastors in the ELCA Synod.    I think this church may be from the Pagan Synod.

Tweet I realize that the stories authors tell about all of the times they almost quit are usually coming from the I got published and now it's all worth it perspective.  My nearly-quit story is not.  I am unpublished.  I'm plowing through my edits like crazy.  I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not going to proclaim that I'm gonna be the next big thing because I fully realize it may never happen for me. I came to writing in a weird, roundabout way, mostly due to high levels of physical pain and social isolation.  I've always been a little odd to talk to, a little strange to look at, and looked at the world in a weird way.  Just ask my high school classmates, who could probably regale you with tales of apocalyptical theological discussions in the girls' locker room.  In my defense, I was going through a phase. I started writing as an adult while recovering from a surgery that wouldn't heal.  I nearly quit after realizing the first draft of my...

Tweet I teach during the school year and work at a hardware store during the summer.  The store atmosphere is pretty low key, which is really nice compared to the frantic pace of the elementary school.  Plus, I love tools and get an employee discount.  I agreed to work weekends occasionally through this school year in case they needed me. I had found out over the last summer that two other employees liked to write.  What a coinkydink!  What are the odds that 3 of the 8 employees were writers?  I thought it was pretty cool, so I asked them what they wrote.  One said, "Sci-fi," and the other, an older retired, man said, "Fantasy."  How cool was that!  All three of us write speculative fiction!  He also told me that he wrote with people he knows via the Internet.   Wow!  I write and swap stories for critique over the Internet, too!  I thought. They asked me to work a weekend earlier this month, and the store was absolut...

Tweet When I was a kid, I used words like "snatch," "gay," and "gerbil," and "tossed salad," freely and without fear of double entendres.  This continued into college, and I couldn't figure out why people sniggered and tittered when I told them about the incident with Grandma's vibrator. My mom has a very bad back and had a bad spell when I was about ten.  Being so isolated out on the ranch and with very poor insurance, Mom was trying to avoid having to go to the doctor.  Grandma thought that a few rounds with her vibrator might loosen things up. Mom used it a couple of times, then my twin and I got to playing with it.  It reminded me of an art deco Kirby vacuum that neither sucked nor blowed, a heavy steel monstrosity with red vinyl upholstery.  The vibrations were powered by a spinning disc that was drilled intentionally off-center.  Crank it up to a couple hundred RPM and the disc made it vibrate quite violently. The disc didn...

When I was a first year teacher, I was incredibly eager to please.  I still have a a tendency towards it, but at that point in time I took it to extremes. The band room at the private school I worked in used to be a morgue when it was a hospital.  There were only two teachers in the basement, myself and the art teacher, Barb.  It was a miserable place to be.  The doors didn't work properly, it flooded twice with rain or freshwater while I was there, and I was only there one year.  I had the better end of the flooding deal.  Barb's room had flooded more than once with sewage, and my understanding is that it's flooded with sewage since I left, too. One day, Barb and I were chatting.  We talked a lot since we were so isolated.  I had talked to her before about the type of art my grandmother does, which is painting western scenes on bones.  I mentioned in an offhand manner, "Wouldn't it be cool to get a whole skeleton, have a different kid pa...

My husband and I got rid of our TV service several months ago, and I can't say I miss it all that much.  Instead, we stream Netflix to our TV and love it.  Hmmm....pay for hundreds of special interest and shopping channels, or download only what I want to watch with no commercials...let me think about that for a minute. It's had a few unexpected side effects, however. On the bright side, I find that not being bombarded with ads that I have to sit through has decreased my desire to buy shit I don't need.  I'm an incredibly careful consumer, provided I'm properly medicated, and can usually talk myself out of anything.  Even as skeptical as I can be, ads can instill an inane or over longing in my subconscious, depending on the level of dissatisfaction in a particular area of my life.   If it's home organization stuff, I can just picture perfectly organized closets and drawers that would impress my husband so much that he would be inspired to put something away...

As you know, my friends, medical marijuana has been approved in Montana. I'd like to bring your attention to a little-known effect of marijuana. When ingested by juvenile bunnies, it impairs their judgment, making this look like a good idea. For our safety and that of the bunnies, I beg you, I implore you, DON'T USE MARIJUANA! The point still stands, even though the video was shot in Texas. And also despite the fact that bunnies lack the opposable thumbs to hang onto a joint.