Okay, I’m actually a cat person, but I do cohabitate with five dogs. Yes, they’re loving and have their own unique personalities, but I actually prefer cats because they’re…assholes. I laugh at their disdain of their human slaves. However, dogs are special, too. Most of my family prefer dogs because they come when they’re called and are affectionate, and not just when they’re being fed treats. They’re loyal. Yeah, I’m pretty sure my cats would eat me if I didn’t keep their food bowl filled. I just think cats are smarter and rule the roost. I respect that.

However, today is Dog Appreciation Day. I know there are a lot of dog lovers out there!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle then tell me about your wonderful, loyal, furry friend.

I learned of missionary teacher, Maria Fearing, this year while posting Black Presbyterian facts during Black History month. Once again, I came away awestruck by the resilience and determination of another 19^th century African American woman who refused to let circumstances or the dictates of others determine her destiny.

Maria was born enslaved on the William O. Winston Oakhill Plantation in Gainesville Alabama on July 26, 1838. She served as a house slave there.  She learned bible stories and about missionaries in Africa alongside the children of her owner. Thus, were planted the seeds for what she hoped and dreamed to do with her life if she gained her freedom.

After emancipation, her father, Jesse, took the surname Fearing for his family from a former owner. She learned to read and write when she was thirty-three years old and became a teacher through the Freedman’s Bureau School in Talledega, Alabama.

In 1891, Maria responded to an appeal for volunteers from the presbyterian African American missionary, William Sheppard, to work in Luebo, the Congo (now Zaire). However, she was rejected by the denomination because of her age, fifty-six. Undaunted, she went anyway as a self-supporting missionary in 1894, thanks to her own finances and support from the women of a local congregational church.

She labored in Luebo for two years before finally receiving full missionary status and a salary. While there, she learned the Baluba-Lulua language and helped to translate the Bible into it. She also founded the Pantops Home for Girls. The Home provided shelter and support for orphaned girls and girls she helped rescue from enslavement. She continued there for more than twenty years, finally retiring from the mission field at the age of seventy-eight.

She returned to Selma, Alabama, where she taught in a church school until age ninety-three. She never married or had children and died in 1937 at the age of ninety-nine. For her achievements, she was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000.

In her poem, “Still I Rise,” Maya Angelou describes herself with the line “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” Maria’s story proves that not all slaves left their hopes and dreams to be fulfilled by future generations. Once freed, she lived out her hopes and dreams in her own time. She made her life her legacy.

In the face of societal attempts today to erase the achievements of people of color and women of all races from American history, I’m proud to be among those spreading the accomplishments of women like Maria Fearing far and wide.

Contest: For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, leave your impression of Maria and/or other women like her that you know of in the comments.

Put It In A Book
Inside Stranded: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology

Trapped in a book by a sorcerer for rejecting his sexual advances, an ex-slave’s daughter discovers her one hope of rescue – a nosy thief.  

Excerpt:

A multiple volume encyclopedia stood on shelves at chest level in a far corner. Morlu would want his wealth within easy reach. Sekou pulled down the first volume and rifled through the pages. Paper currency of all types fluttered to his feet like leaves whirling from the branches of bombax trees in winter.

Clever, Dibia. But not clever enough.

Sekou chuckled and rifled through volume after volume. By the time he reached Z a pile of money lay on the floor. He scooped the cash into his swag sack, laughing quietly at his haul.

He thrust the last volume back into place, knocking a slender manuscript off the shelf.

The Story of Aziza.

He recognized the title of the book with which Morlu had taunted him. He picked it up, fanned the pages with his thumb. A sigh drifted past him. Startled, he crouched and looked left then right. Only the night breeze disturbed the silence. He fanned through the pages again. This time a scent – light like rain, sweet like honey – graced the air.

He stared at the face of a withered old hag on the book’s cover. The image had repulsed and fascinated him. The gaze in her eyes shone with intelligence and defiance, so unlike the villagers lionizing the dibia at this moment.

Sekou opened to the flyleaf. There the image of a black beauty stared back at him. Her skin was as smooth as the hag’s was wrinkled, but the same intelligent defiance shone in her eyes. He traced the outline of her chin jutting forth with pride.

“So, ladies…” He feathered his fingers along her full lips then examined the woman on the cover again. “To which one of you does this story belong?”

Buylink: Amazon – https://amzn.to/3dLd9rM

Pluto Demoted Day!

Science nerd here, so I had to mention this special holiday! This is the day in 2006, when the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto from “planet” status to “dwarf planet” status. I remember my outrage (okay, so maybe it was a bit milder, we’ll say “dismay”) over the change. I was raised knowing there were NINE PLANETS in our solar system—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto! Suddenly, there were just eight, and poor, tiny Pluto was pushed out of the circle of cool kid planets. Due to that change, there are now five officially recognized dwarf planets in our solar system—Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

Another cool fact about Pluto…? It’s named for the god of the Underworld, and it has five moons of its own with very cool names: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx.

Report Card

Last week…

1. I completed edits for two authors!
2. I continued reading entries for the Burn: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology!
3. I swam every day except for one stormy day!
4. I completed some small paintings.

This next week…

1. I have no manuscripts to edit for other authors at the moment. I am waiting for one to arrive, hopefully this week.
2. I’ll turn my attention back to Ignition and try my best to finish it by the end of the month.
3. I’ll finish reading the Burn: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology entries!
4. I have an echocardiogram scheduled this week.
5. I’ll continue to work on organizing & cleaning up my art room.
6. I’ll swim every day the weather cooperates, although the weather is rapidly cooling! — I might not have many days left to enjoy the pool. 🙁
7. I’ll paint when the mood (or insomnia) hits me.

Open Contests

Be sure to check out these posts and enter to win the prizes that are still up for grabs:

1. Memory Game: Some of My #100Day Faves (Contest) — Last day to enter! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Gabbi Grey: My Gay Cinderella (Contest) — Last day to enter! Win a FREE story!
3. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: Just a Girl and a Dragon — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Word Search: Heroic Qualities (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
5. Sliding Puzzle: Orb Fisher (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
6. I love Fridays! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
7. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: The Black Moon — Win an Amazon gift card!

Tonight is special to astronomers and those who follow the moon cycles for certain rituals. Tonight’s a Black Moon. It’s a rare-ish event—a 2nd new moon in the same month.

A new moon is always a time for restarts/resets. A time to grow or sluff off the old for the new. When it’s a black new moon, it’s super-charged with mystical energy.

How can you try to harness it? Stand outside to soak up the darkness. Prepare a Black Moon essential oil or moon water and set it outdoors to “soak up” the energy. Perform a ritual where you burn a paper or a bay leaf outside with a written intention for what you want to throw off and manifest anew. I’ll be preparing moon water and burning a cutout of a handprint with my wish for continuing recovery.

 For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me whether you want to participate in a renewal ceremony of your own tonight!

Especially now that school is back in session!

The kids have had their first full week of school since it started back up. They’ll be ready for a break. Ha-ha. Mama has a chore list a mile long awaiting them. Okay, it’s not that bad, but I have some things I, too, want them to help me with out at the pool. It’s funny to me how eager and joyful they are about getting into the pool at the start of summer, but how quickly they get bored with it. I’m still out there every day, scooping up leaves, watching the chlorine, brushing the surfaces… Yeah, I’ll guilt them into helping sometime this weekend.

But, I know, their lives are just so hard, getting up early, doing homework…interacting with their friends… So hard.

Just wait until they’re juggling part-time jobs, too, like their college-girl older sister who is also on the dance team and an officer in her sorority. She’s had to maintain a high grade point average to hold onto scholarships. Now, that girl has learned how to hustle.

Anyways, I don’t really have anything to talk about. I’ve already finished up one editing gig this morning. I have another to wrap up this evening. Then I intend to take a break and watch some Asian reels—that is, after I hit the pool. The water temperature is already dropping. Give it a couple of weeks, and I’ll be gasping as I force myself to dip my toes in.

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether Fridays still mean something to you! And do you have weekend plans?

As an incentive to give the puzzle a try, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me what’s in those orbs! Have fun with this!

Just days after I was first diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, a little over a year ago, my daughter and SIL ordered me one of these.

She knew I was going straight into chemo, and that it was going to be rough. She and I googled the effects it would have on my body—the aches, the weakness—and she determined right then and there she was going to gift me with one of these to help me get my tired ass up. After my surgery to remove my cancer-riddled organs, this chair was also my bed because getting off a bed on my own was beyond my capability. Even though I’ve recovered a lot of my strength (not all) after my chemo ended and after my surgery, I still rely on it those days when my infusions make me fatigued. So, hell yeah, I endorse this product. You can find them for as little as $299, but the money will be well spent.

The other item I will endorse for its aid and comfort to me during this entire process is this—a bidet.

This is one you fit to your existing toilet. And it’s completely affordable. I think I spent $35 on it, and my SIL installed it in less than half an hour. When you’re weak or reaching to clean yourself properly, a bidet can save you having to rely on others to perform that kind of intimate care. Especially, after my surgery, I couldn’t reach or twist, which meant wiping my own a$$ would have been a problem if not for this device. TMI, I know, but a bidet has been…lifechanging, actually, and I wonder why we didn’t install one sooner. Not only do you save money in toilet paper and wet wipes, you are cleaner than if you used either. Not that it removes the need for either of those other products, but you use so much less. Not only does it wash your intimate areas, but, and I’m sorry if this really is TMI, but when you have difficulties with either constipation or diarrhea (which chemo and immunotherapy cause), it can really make a huge difference. The stream can stimulate you to release hardened stools and it’s a no-brainer that diarrhea can more easily be washed away.

I know, I know. Who wants to read about this? But I promised transparency. These two items were and are vital to my independence and self-care. I just thought I’d let you know that.

One more thing helps, too. Adult diapers. I resisted using them, still do. However, if I have to leave the house for any length of time, it helps me with the anxiety of whether I will make it to a bathroom on time. Pull-ons are more comfortable, and they make them so they don’t show through your clothing. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

So, that’s my PSA (public service announcement). You can go back to plugging your ears (or closing your eyes) and ignoring uncomfortable subjects, but I thought this might be helpful to someone else out there.