HOW I KNOW GOD IS REAL . . .

. . . Because He [God] never lets me get smug. Never. Ever. That’s how I know. Just about the time I get to thinking I’ve got some street stuff or cool juice, God enjoys serving me up some humble pie with an extra helping of humiliation on the side. 

Here’s how it always goes. I do something pretty keen, even dazzling, and then bam, one of my shoes falls in the toilet, and I have to dive in and fish it out. True story. Don’t ask. 

I’m pretty good at saying the words that people hear with their ears. My college speech teacher remarked that “Linda is just this side of an inspirational speaker.” This side of what he never clarified.

It might be the Irish in me. It might be all the practice I get talking to myself. Either way, I can put the words together pretty okay when in front of a congregation, class, or captive audience. Recently, I spoke at a Saturday night church meeting with some excellent feedback from those that attended: I was passionate. I was sincere. I was loud. People said nice things to me afterward. I believed them.

Not going to lie, after giving my rousing speech I felt pretty pumped, stoked, and a bit up-tempo. My esteem of self enjoyed a moment of highness. 

It was nice . . . while it lasted.

But then I set the table for the following Sunday dinner, and God put me back in my place where I belong.

I covered our giant dining room table with an enormous oversized tablecloth smoothing, de-wrinkling, straightening and finally removing the gigantic lump under the cloth. It was a pair of my scanties, clinging to the back of the tablecloth like a cocklebur in a dog’s tail.

I should explain. Scanties are a genteel southern term for a girl’s under clothing or as my mother used to say, “Foundation garments.” Sort of like a cement slab holding up steel girders, I guess. Or in this case the bit of clothing that comes before the mom jeans. All right. Fine. My underwear. My underwear was balled up in the tablecloth from the dryer.

With a crackle of static, I pulled my scanties free and stuffed them out of the way in a bookcase next to the table saying in my head, “Now, Linda, don’t put those there. You know you’re going to forget them, and that will not end well.”

I was right. Sunday dinner commenced, and before the green beans had made their way to the end of the table, someone was waving my underwear over their head saying, “Hey, YaYa, what’s been going on around here?” Mad laughter boomed off the ceiling.

What could I say? It was humiliation mixed with goofy embarrassment. Great. 

“Hey! Ask me how my speech went last night. I was dazzling. Ask anybody.”

But it was too late; my triumphant Saturday evening dissolved into my humbling Sunday afternoon, and that’s how I know that God is real because just when I think I’m big stuff someone finds my underwear stuffed between Ben Hur and The Turning of the Screw.

Sigh. Now I know that there may be a few skeptics who don't believe that God throws shoes in toilets or prompts the leaving of underclothing in bookcases and to you, I say, "Just when that Samson guy thought he was pretty hot stuff he got a bad haircut and things went south--fast." 

Linda (Smug Muffin) Zern 

MOTHER NATURE BITES

Majestic Bald Eagle Tearing a Newborn Goat to Shreds While Mommy Watches

Last year at this time on the calendar, our property was under water. It was a rainy spring. It's happened before. A dozen years ago it rained every single day for twenty-eight days during the Easter season. Knee high rain boots were all the fashion rage around here.

This year we are dry as a dust bowl. There's a burn ban. There's a wildfire alert. There's a lot of crunchy grass.

But isn't that Mother Nature for you? The answer is yes.

Too much. Not enough.

For a dame that gets a lot of adoration and awe, Mother Nature is a real biddy. For those not of the Southern persuasion a biddy, or old biddy is an ugly, frightening old woman: beldam, crone, hag, witch.

When I hear people worshipping at the feet of their Earth day protest signs about how lovely Mother Nature is I have to laugh, thinking, "Have they ever met the old witch."

For example yesterday, I was shocked to see a huge, mature bald eagle standing in my next door neighbor's pasture. Mother Nature dictates that eagles don't walk about unless they're sick or eating something. This one was eating something. It was eating a newborn baby goat.

The kid's mother was bawling her guts out as the eagle tore her baby to bloody bits. I sighed. The mother goat continued to cry as she trotted over to her little herd. Frantically, she stirred up the other goats, until they galvanized themselves into a juggernaut of retribution, turned as one body, and charged the bloody-beaked raptor. They drove him off. 

And then the goats promptly lost focus, forgot what they were about, and wandered off to try to find something to eat that wasn't deep fried by the sun. The mommy goat continued to bawl her lungs out as the eagle returned to his feast.

And that is the real Mother Nature, the old biddy that requires the "graphic content" warning on the Discovery Channel. 

Sitting under our ancient oak tree that is showing signs of death and dying (also Mother Nature at work) something natural stung the back of my arm. Theories abound - wasp, scorpion, flesh-eating butterfly, T-Rex.

Whatever it was left a welt the size of a softball, felt like liquid lava, and hurt so bad I couldn't sleep . . . until I took unnatural drugs created in a lab.

And that's the real Mother Nature, not the sissy worshiped by humans who've never met her in person. 

Linda (Nature Skeptic) Zern 

LIST MANIA

I signed up to be part of a four-day Book Lover’s Book Fair two years ago. I had no idea what I was doing then. I have no clue what I’m doing now. I’ve missed my self-imposed deadlines. I won’t have a new book to highlight. I can’t quite figure out how to stand out in a crowd of authors that do these book fair deals one-hundred-weekends of the year. 

Then there are the classes I’ve been attending at every writer’s conference and seminar with titles in the form of lists. Lists of everything that a writer should not do, or they’ll die a dozen poorly plotted deaths before they’ve gotten out of bed—not to mention when they’re at book fairs. The endless, negative lists that mean well but confirm every deadly fear you’ve ever had as a writer/author/artist/dream weaver/scribble monkey. 

Because, you, my friend, are doing it WRONG! 

Lists! They’re the worst. For example . . .

Seven Mistakes Authors Make Before They Pee In The Morning 

Twelve Horrible Book Covers Authors Should Reject Before Anyone Sees Them, Including You!

Thirty Biggest Writing Goofs That Scream, ‘Silly Amateur Writer Person Trying to Write Some Good Word Stuff Very Okay!’

Twenty Secret Things Every Reader Wants, But You’re Not Stuffing In That Story! 

Ninety-Nine Ways To Make A Cardboard Character HOT Enough To Catch Cardboard on Fire!

Sometimes, I’m not only afraid to think outside the box, but I’m afraid that the box has already swallowed me and is now digesting me in its sleep. But I swim on: typing, backspacing, re-typing, printing, experimenting, trying, retrying, and thinking, “Take your lists and go fold a box.”

So, off to the book fair conference I go. It’s going to be a fact-finding mission if nothing else. I might dress up as a survivalist and hand out chunks of hard tack with a list, Top Ten Ways To Eat Hard Tack, as an introduction to Prepper Fiction. How’s that for thinking outside the box?

Linda (Listing to the Right) Zern