​However, it’s working for me at the moment. As I work on this blog, I’m listening to the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s A Very Scary Solstice Christmas album. Counting today, I have three shopping days until the big event—I once went shopping on Christmas Eve. It was a nightmare I won’t relive—and I still need to buy presents for two people who are dear to me. One is an elderly neighbor who tells me she doesn’t need anything but, as I learned a couple of years ago, will be sad for weeks if she doesn’t get anything; and the other is a newly-minted teenager who says he can’t think of anything he wants, but knows he doesn’t want gift cards or money.
 
His mother says she can’t help me. She doesn’t know what to get him, either.
 
I’ve wasted so much time online, trying to find the exact right things. Along the way, I’ve learned that Wirecutter’s list of “The 27 Best Last-Minute Gifts for the Holidays” has no value for the average consumer. It only exists so that people will click on its plethora of links and generate some income for its parent corporation. Some of the links go to sold-out items, others won’t get delivered until January. Besides, has anyone ever compiled a Christmas list that started with a squeeze tube of moisturizing cream? Is there someone with skin so dry that they all they wanted in their stocking is a three-pack of exfoliating scrubbers?
 
At this point, it’s too late to buy anything online and hope to receive it on time. I’m going to have to venture into the local shops to find something. It didn’t help earlier this year, but… I’ve gotta try. At this time of year, many of my fellow shoppers are bereft of the Christmas spirit. I couldn’t exchange a smile with them if I wanted to do so. With our faces hidden behind masks, we all look like we’ve gone to the store to rob their payroll.
 
Is it any wonder I turn to music to find a small measure of comfort? (If you weren’t aware, the links here generate no income for my parent corporation. Click on ‘em if you like, ignore ‘em if you like.)
 
The HPLHS has produced two albums, A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice, and I own them both. The 46 songs on the combined song list were Christmas presents for me. When I first got the CDs, these were some of the titles that caught my eye:
 
All I Want for Solstice is My Sanity
Away in a Madhouse
Do You Fear What I Fear?
The World in Terror and Madness Lies
Harley Got Devoured by the Undead
I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog Sothoth—you get the idea.
 
If you’re wondering what the lyrics are like, this is the opening to Death to the World (sung to the tune of Joy to the World):
 
Death to the world! Cthulhu's come
Let Earth abhor this thing
Let every mind prepare for doom
As anguish and woe he'll bring. (And anguish and woe he'll bring.)
As anguish and woe he'll bring. (Anguish and woe he'll bring.)
As anguish, as anguish and woe he'll bring

Up from the sea, R'lyeh did rise
The cultists awestruck dumb
With ancient rites so wretched and perverse, (So foul and base.)
Cthulhu's time is come. (Cthulhu's time is come.)
Cthulhu's time is come. (Cthulhu's time is come.)
Cthulhu, Cthulhu's time has come
 
Unlike Santa, Cthulhu is imaginary, so I can listen to this silliness and laugh. Considering the shopping ahead of me, it might be my only laugh of the day.
 
I’m running out of time to find a present for a 13-year-old. It has been years since I’ve had to find a present for a 13-year-old. My elderly neighbor? She’d probably like a squeeze tube of moisturizing cream and a three-pack of exfoliating scrubbers.
 
If you have any suggestions in regards to the teenager, let me know. In return, I’ll ask for Cthulhu to eat you first. No, no, that’s a good thing.
 
Happy holidays!
 

​One single eyelash. An eyelash that refused to go away. Therein hangs my sad tale.
 
(As you can see by this image, I’ve always had a fascination with eyes. I finished this painting, “Devil’s Claw”, forever ago. There’s a surprisingly small number of buyers who want to hang a skull with an eyeball in it on their living room wall.)
 
Let’s start at the beginning. Waking up and barely stirred by two cups of decaf, I sat down to work on today’s blog. As has happened before, I had no idea on what to post. I was hoping inspiration might strike.
 
Sometimes inspiration steps up and does its job. Other times it gets all shirty and refuses to play. I only knew the blog wouldn’t be about our current projects. My writing life is currently busy but not especially interesting to outsiders. Or insiders, if you must know. It’s a wonder I struggle along.
 
Instead, I thought I might lead with The Indian Express’s article on why so many South Korean women are going out and about with hair curlers on their head. (**Spoiler alert** For these ladies, it’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination. They don’t care how they look on the subway as long as they dazzle their audience at the end stop.) It was vague-ish to me how I was going to segue from hair curlers into anything else but, since my South Korean audience is so limited, I wasn’t too concerned. For me and you, it’s always been about the journey.
 
I’d just wasted 30 seconds chasing down a gotcha link—"Jennifer Grey is 61 and the Most Beautiful Woman Alive”--**Spoiler alert** Jen is 61 years old and attractive. That’s plenty good enough. Would I have been intrigued if the headline had read “Jennifer Grey is 61 and Not Bad for Her Age”? Not for a second. I hate how the clickbait people know this about me—when my left eye started to bother me.
 
It had been a little irritating the night before, but I’d assumed my eyes were dry. When I checked in the mirror, I found a single eyelash clinging to the white part of the eye, the sclera. It felt a little scratchy.
 
Blinking didn’t move the lash along. Neither did eyedrops or bathing the area in filtered water. Relying on the advice of WikiHow, my partner in crime took a Q-tip and gently encouraged the lash to go away.
 
It steadfastly refused to budge. By now, I’d lost an hour I could have devoted to researching “Facts About the Brady Bunch You Won’t Believe.” (We almost had a different Mrs. Brady! Cindy’s lisp was real!) I was getting a little anxious. The ophthalmologist’s office person said he could squeeze me in later that day.
 
“Don’t use another Q-tip on your eye!” the scheduler chastised me. But…but…WikiHow….
 
Once I arrived for my appointment, the first thing the assistant did was take a Q-tip and try to dislodge the stubborn eyelash. She didn’t do any better than we had. When the doc joined us, numbing my eye so that he could use a pair of forceps to pull the lash out, he told me that it was unusual to see one trapped under the eye skin. Not “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” unusual. More of a “It Sucks to Be You” unusual. Then he told me to put medicated eyedrops in the injured area for the next week.
 
Does the eye have skin? It seems unlikely. The doctor was probably dumbing things down for his audience. He hurried away before I could ask him.
 
I’ll bet this kind of thing never happens to Jennifer Grey.
 

​As I expect you know, I like to paint and gourd craft. (No, no, I'm not going to go on and on about it.) This Christmas ornament was an early holiday gift for a friend and I loved making it. With this, I got to do both! I gave it to her in a fancy gift bag. Back in the ancient times, so long ago that there was no internet, I used to wrap some Christmas presents in the paper from the Sunday comics. Those were the dark days of three television channels and newspapers that were actually printed on paper. If you’re wondering how people survived during those terrible days, you can take your Bitcoin and go elsewhere.
 
Oh, who am I kidding? If you’re reading a blog on a website, you’re too Old School to be into crypto currency and NFTs. Or maybe that’s just me. Let me go on.
 
“Why does Santa use the comics to wrap his presents?” one of my children asked one Christmas morning. I answered the question with a question: “Why shouldn’t Santa use the comics to wrap his presents?”  It was a satisfactory non-answer. Santa is inscrutable. This is the guy who watches everyone to see if they’ve been naughty or nice. The same guy who has the power to be everywhere on the same evening, delivering gifts or lumps of coal. Thinking about it, Santa’s a pretty odd duck, using his superpowers in rather bizarre ways. Who’s to say he wouldn’t subscribe to The San Jose Mercury News to get his daily scoop and, later, force his elves to wrap some of his giveaways in the color newspaper comics he’s collected?
 
No one, that’s who. Not if they want to stay off of the Naughty List.
 
For those of us who could barely afford to buy presents, much less wrapping paper, the color comics collected from friends and family helped stretch the budget. Much like I need these opening paragraphs to stretch this blog. These opening paragraphs serve a second purpose as well. They’ll allow me to test my ProWritingAid app before the 30-day return window has vanished.
 
Last month, ProWritingAid had a 50%-off sale on its lifetime plan. For only 199 Black Friday dollars, I could use PWA forever. Yes, I’m relying on science to discover how to extend human life beyond a few measly centuries. I need the time to get caught up on my cleaning.
 
Half off is a deal. Hesitating, waiting until the last day of the sale, I bought the thing. I’ve been wanting a basic writing program for years because I’m tired of my writing partner pointing out my grammatical errors. I mess up on commas all the time. If I have to be corrected, I’d prefer a software program point out my errors.
 
When my partner asked what I was downloading, I told him I’d bought an early Christmas present. Then I left it on my computer, dreading the idea of using it. Let me try it out—right now—on the words I’ve written for this blog so far.
  
In only a few seconds, PWA has kicked up twenty-five different reports about my 500 words. Grammar, style, “readability enhancements” … I can see how some of this might be useful. Other parts of the program don’t see helpful at all. I learned that “0% of (the blog’s) sentences start with a past participle. You might consider adding some.” No, not me.
 
The app also reassured me that I hadn’t used any offensive language. Just wait until I try it on one of my manuscripts.
 
Despite all of those reports, PWA isn’t quibbling about much of what I’ve written. It is unhappy that four of my sentences started with the word “I” as this “can lead to boring writing”. Me am sorry about this. This writer will try to do better in the future. It also warned me against using the words “Christmas presents” so closely together in the opening of this piece. It was suggested that I use “Christmas displays” or “Christmas gives” as a substitute.
 
Clearly, it’s not a perfect program.  I’ll give it another couple of weeks and see if I’m returning my early Christmas gives.
 
It wouldn’t be the first time.

​Years ago, when my partner and I first start donating to Kiva.org, the microlending site, we didn’t understand how it really worked. We believed in the little diagram that you see on the upper. Because of that image, we thought we’d find a borrower on their website, read her story -- about 80% of the borrowers are women -- and donate to her directly once we hit the pay button. Since each borrower had a specific goal amount tied to a time limitation on the website, we always tried to donate to those people who were only days or hours away from running out of time. We didn’t want anyone to miss out.
 
The Kiva group knew the diagram wasn’t strictly accurate and that the time limitation wasn’t hard and fast, but they didn’t mind if the actual lending details were a little fuzzy. They understood that a good story tied to a sense of urgency helped people open their pocketbooks.
 
We didn’t question any of this for quite some time. Now that we have a better understanding of how it all goes down, we no longer focus on the time countdown when we look for someone to help. This week, we donated to Corazon from the Philippines. She needs a loan of $100 in order to get a sanitary toilet. A sanitary toilet doesn’t seem like a lot to ask but, as I type this, there are several other people on the website seeking the very same type of loan. According to Kiva, “This loan is special because it helps protect families who are most vulnerable to waterborne diseases.”
 
So, how do things really work with this type of microloan? If the internet is telling us the truth (the little scamp has been known to fib on occasion), our latest donation didn’t go to Corazon, not directly. She’d already received her needed funds from Kiva’s field partner, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF), an organization created “to help women achieve self-sufficiency, particularly in the province of Negros Occidental’s low-income communities.” NWTF has already vetted Corazon, completed the paperwork, and given her the money. The money we’re donating goes to Kiva, who gives it to NWTF. This is better for Corazon, who doesn’t have to worry if a last-minute computer hiccup will kill her deal.
 
In time, she’ll likely pay back the money she owes. Not everyone pays back their loan, but 96% of the borrowers will. Corazon will repay NWTF, NWTF will repay Kiva, Kiva will return our donation, and we’ll lend it out again. Our donation withers in time because we also donate a few bucks to keep Kiva going. They say it cost them $3.75 to process a loan, so we cover that and throw in a little more. Every now and then, we add a few dollars to the donation kitty so that we can stay in the game.
 
Since we believe this is how the system work, why do we bother reading the individual stories and picking someone to receive our donation? Because the Kiva group is right. Reading each story makes the cause seem more real, more urgent, and it gives us a better sense of satisfaction when we participate. We donate to other causes, almost all of them locally, but that’s for our immediate neighbors. For the neighbors that are several thousand miles away, a good tale is a strong motivation.
 
This coming Thursday is the USA’s Thanksgiving. Since we can’t be with family, we’ll be with friends that day. I’m thankful for so many things, including having a sanitary toilet. If you celebrate the holiday, I hope it’s a good one for you.
 
I don’t extend those same good wishes toward The Walt Disney Company. Despite having another banner year, they continue to cheat the little guys. #DisneyMustPay. No Disney+ for us, no Disneyland for us, no Disney World for us, no Disney toys for the babies I love. If Mickey Mouse comes to the house, I’ll slam the door in his face.
 
You, I like. Mickey and company? They’re dicks.

“The writing life” is a frequent topic in one of the writer’s groups I attend, but I contend that there’s no such thing. There’s writing and there’s life and, even for someone who spends too much time on Word, they aren’t the same thing.
 
It would be a mistake to be so consumed by writing that someone forgot to enjoy the blessings of her or his life. And one of life’s greatest blessings is BABIES.
 
When it comes to seeing my babies – maybe not mine by birth, but mine, nonetheless -- distance and the pandemic and life events kept getting in the way of a visit until I couldn’t stand it any longer. Wednesday, I called the babies’ actual mother, saying that Glynn and I needed to see them. Soon. Golden Throat agreed with me. (No, that’s not her real name. It’s what the Good Witch calls her.) Plans were made, I returned to working on chapter fifteen of the latest, and then the phone rang.
 
It was Golden Throat again. Asking if Glynn and I could maybe arrive one day early to attend her surprise wedding. Distance and the pandemic and life events kept getting in the way of the grand wedding she and her soulmate, the Great White North, had hoped to hold, and they were tired of waiting to be a legal couple. Since we were coming to see them, they wanted to go to the courthouse on Friday and have two people who loved them very much witness the union of two people who were in love. In a year or so, with luck, they could still have a glorious reception to celebrate their togetherness and invite all of the people who didn’t get to enjoy the actual event.
 
This is a couple who belongs together, so, of course, we agreed. They were excited, we were excited, the babies were excited… but there was so much to do and so little time to do it. They had to get their marriage license. We had to find a proper wedding gift. What to do, what to do? Chapter fifteen was put on hold.
 
With less than two days to find the wedding gift, we decided to not worry about until the upcoming glorious reception. Instead, we bought a bottle of Costco’s finest champagne and picked up the grandest two-layer chocolate cake that Albertson’s had on hand. It was a marvelous pairing.
  
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a courthouse wedding, but it’s a different kind of betrothal. With our group, we went with masks and dress clothes for the men, masks and pretty dresses for the women. We arrived at 4:00 pm, knowing that the courthouse doors lock at 5:00 pm. We were the only people on the third floor before, slowly, more couples began to arrive. Most of the women wore masks and pretty dresses. Most of their partners… well, they were in more casual attire. Masks, blue jeans all around, and the occasional t-shirt.
 
For their wedding. There are times I shake my head.
 
When the clerk finally came out to greet the couples-to-be, there were six weddings to be performed. The elderly judge, dressed in a long, black robe (and thankfully not in jeans and a t-shirt), had a warm and welcoming manner. He encouraged Golden Throat and the Great White North to take their time, give their own vows, and “kiss one another” as he pronounced them married.
 
It was a lovely ceremony, and Glynn and I were proud to be there to witness it. Then we enjoyed a full weekend filled with babies.
 
Life is good.
 
Gilligan’s Island factoid: During season two, episode 31 (Mr. and Mrs. ??), Thurston and Lovey Howell discover that they’re not legally married. If you’re wondering how the show played out, Gilligan Fandom.com has the full scoop.
 
The takeaway from the Howells’ monumental misunderstanding? "It takes an occasional thorn to remind us that marriage is truly a bed of roses."
​

Oh, the things I learn in this job. Yesterday, I learned the full name of “Gilligan” of Gilligan’s Island. This has haunted me for years and I expect it’s been on your mind, too. Gilligan’s proper name isn’t mentioned on any of the television show’s 98 episodes or during one of the three movie sequels that followed. It only exists in Sherwood Schwartz’s original treatment for the program.
 
And, now, we can put the mystery to rest.
 
You probably knew, but I didn’t, that Gilligan’s bucket hat has been all the rage, fashion-wise, for the last three years. How long before the Gilligan Shirt becomes a thing? If you didn’t realize it, the words that are underlined are clickable links. The first brings you to wear-next.com, where they talk about bucket hats as a fashion trend, and the second ferries you over to Amazon.com, where the seller pretends that their “Island Castaway Costume Shirt” isn’t the Gilligan Shirt. I receive no form of anything from anybody if you happen to click the links. I only provide them because they amuse me.
 
Not that you asked, but if my partner ever saunters into the house wearing a sexy grin, an Island Castaway Costume Shirt, and a bucket hat? He gets locked out of the bedroom.
 
In my final October blog of this year, I promised to share why all future posts would include some mention of the classic sitcom, Gilligan’s Island. Then, distracted by a family emergency, I failed to keep that promise the very next week. If you were paying close attention, you probably noticed that I failed to mention any classic sitcoms, much less write anything about the Skipper and his gang. Let me correct this oversight.
 
When I returned to regularly posting blogs here, I saw an uptick in website visitors. Not bunches – no one except me and thee read blogs these days – but some. Then, having written a post about Condom Girl, the weekly traffic to the site suddenly doubled. There are only so many blogs any one person can write about Condom Girl, however, so I didn’t return to the subject. It was a one-and-done and, during the weeks that followed, my number of website visitors returned to normal. They did, anyway, until I wrote about Lawrence Block and featured a prominent photo of his naughty novel, I Sell Love. Again, the very next week, my website traffic numbers doubled.
 
I had to see the results twice before I realized that sex sells. It shouldn’t have been a revelation. I did think, if I had provocative bits to include every time I posted, I could build an impressive audience for my two websites. I don’t have the energy for this. It feels too much like work.
 
You might be wondering what this has to do with the island castaways. It turns out, it isn’t only sex that draws a crowd. The first week in October, I used my website to discuss Gilligan’s Island and the “gotcha” ad lines that I had mistaken as news items. These are those “news” items, along with their subheadings:
 
You Might Be an Old Fart if You Still Do This We are sorry to tell you that these things were never cool.
 
Always Place a Crayon in Your Wallet When Traveling I was all set for my trip. That’s when my friend told me to place a crayon in my wallet when traveling.  
 
Man Denies Female Soldier Her Seat in the Plane Once she sat down, things got even worse.
 
Once this went up, I had a record number of people dropping by the website. Even more than visited the sexy blog posts! At which point, I wrote that I’d be namedropping Gilligan every time I posted.
 
I didn’t keep that promise for even one week, and I decided that’s all right. If the website became really popular, I’d feel obligated to continue blogging past Post #52 (this is #39) and I’m not certain I care to do that.
 
But, this one final time, let me return to the island and used the last portion of “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” (lyrics by Sherwood Schwartz, music by George Wyle) to name all of the sitcom’s favorite characters:

With Gilligan: Full name, Willy Gilligan.
The Skipper, too: Full name, Jonas Grumby.
The millionaire: Full name, Thurston Howell III.
And his wife: Full name, Eunice "Lovey" Howell (née Wentworth).
The movie star: Full name, Ginger Grant.
The professor: Full name, Roy Hinkley, Jr.
And Mary Ann: Full name, Mary Ann Summers.
 
Here on Gilligan’s Isle!
​
 

I’ve had a hard week and, I’m telling you, one blog isn’t nearly enough to share all of the details. A few of the particulars: A beloved family member suddenly and unexpectedly was sent to the hospital, we scrambled to find last-minute plane tickets, an available hotel room, any kind of rental car as quickly as we could. Then we did the airport dance – airports used to be fun; not any longer – and it all came together at the end, but I was on tenterhooks, expecting the smallest loose thread to cause everything to fall apart. We were told to expect the worse, but the worse thankfully didn’t happen (such joy from EVERYONE) but, because the worse hadn’t happened, we were no longer allowed to visit our BFM. Not for days, we were told, possibly for weeks. The hospital had COVID-19 restrictions were in place, and those restrictions were not unwarranted. The hospital has at least one entire floor of COVID-19-stricken patients.
 
(In the paragraph above, I first wrote, “I was on tenderhooks”, only for Microsoft Word to flag the word as incorrect. Mignon Fogarty, the Grammar Girl, has advised us all that correct word in my situation is “tenterhooks.” It’s one of those long-ago words that makes little sense today. It references the metal hooks that, once upon a time, were used to hold cloth as it dried. While drying, the cloth stretched and grew taut. The people in the 18th century decided that when someone felt stretched or appeared taut, they were kind of like the cloth left on tenterhooks. You need to remember, it was hundreds of years ago. Lacking all electronic escape in those days, people eagerly gathered around the tenter to watch their cloth dry. Good times.)
 
We returned to the airport yesterday morning, ready to return home, only to discover that our American Airlines flight was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Then delayed once again. One we were allowed onboard, I didn’t hear anyone complain about our additional leisure time in the airport terminal. We knew we were lucky that we were able to fly out at all that day. According to Business Insider, well over 1500 AA flights were canceled on the 31st.
 
When my partner and I finally made it home, it was dusk. I was so weary that, as night fell, I didn’t have the energy to watch a horror movie on Halloween night for the first time since… forever. I did eat some Halloween candy because I was, after all, still breathing, but that was the highlight of my evening.
 
So, no Slaxx for me, the movie about possessed evil designer jeans, no Freaky, the movie about a serial killer swapping bodies with a well-intentioned teenager, either. And no regrets about this lost opportunity. I may save the flicks for next year. Or I may watch them on Thanksgiving or Christmas.
 
Who says we shouldn’t watch horror movies on Thanksgiving? Who says we shouldn’t eat Halloween candy at Christmas? I’ll have to get more Halloween candy, though. After all, last night’s bag barely survived the night.
 
There’s no chance it survives the week.