Little Thoughts About Books and Stuff

   Photo copyright K.S. Brooks.  Do not use without attribution. Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge It was the same thing every year. I trek out to a cemetery no one else I know is buried in to pay my respects to someone I didn’t even know on New Year’s Day because someone I love asked me to, which was all fine and good when she was alive, but she’s dead now too.  Yet here I am, kind of hungover, freezing my butt off going to pay my respects to a stranger.  The ice-covered snow crunches beneath my Uggs as I maneuver my way between headstones and plots, carefully trying not to walk over someone’s resting place. The sound is muffled as if every other sound once you cross over the property line. The cars on the street not even 100 feet away aren’t as loud as you’d think they should be. It’s like the whole cemetery is under a sound-dampening dome or something.  The flock of geese flying overhead should be a racket, but yet they are entirely silent. It’s k...

    Okay so not much has changed from my last Monday post except that I finished one book.  Currently Reading: The Girls in the Stilt House  by Kelly Mustian Date Started:  September 8 Goodreads Summary:  Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must com...

This week I'm doing a 5K Your Way for Libraries to help raise money for EveryLibrary - You can donate by going to my page here - Amelia's Team Page for Lit Chicks I'm doing my 5K by writing 5 thousand words.  I was going to do a 5k word short story, but it might end up being a series of flash fiction/short stories. Sunday, September 26  - Word Count: 807 Morning in the Library It started off like any other Monday morning. I unlocked the side door to our building, disengaged the alarm, and then locked the side door.  You would think patrons wouldn’t attempt to enter the library through a staff-only door before operating hours, but you’d be wrong. I dropped my stuff in my office before making my way to the break room to start the coffee.  It’s the unofficial rule of the branch, first, one to come in in the morning starts the pot and everyone needs to make it the same way, one scoop per 1 cup water.  Coffee started; I headed out into our small brick branch of a lar...

So wasn't really thrilled with either thing I wrote last week, but at least I'm writing! Prompt: Dear Mom D o you remember that pool party you and dad were hosting when you dove into the pool, fully clothed to rescue the doll I pitched into the deep end on a whim when I was three?  I wanted to see if she could swim, you wanted to prevent a future meltdown when I no longer had her to cuddle to sleep. E very observant, I’m still not sure how you noticed I had thrown it in when you were over on the other side of the backyard talking to Mrs. Cress.  But there you came out of nowhere to leap into the pool to rescue Masiey, causing quite the stir as all the guest turned to look at the commotion.   A dmittedly, I did know better than to throw her into the pool. You had warned me not to throw my toys into the pool after the incident with the barbie, and that one time with the princess crown.  They always sink to the bottom and get stuck in the filter on the floor of the...

  So trying to get back into this blog journal thing I've got going. I always start strong at the start of the year and then mid way through I stop.  But since the title includes and things, I thought I'd start to share some of the things I do in the kitchen.  I recently started subscribed Persnickety Plates newsletter list and one of the first ones I got was for these Easy Garlic Bites . I instantly pinned it because I am always looking for easy recipes to make after work and this one fit the bill. The only thing I needed was to pick up steak at the store as I had everything else in the pantry.   I served the steak bites with Knorr Pasta Sides - Stragonoff noodles.  It made for an easy and tasty meal 5 out of 5 will make again!

  So I've started a number of books, and have yet to finish them if they haven't been an auido version. But I'm going to hunker down and finish all three of these physical books!  Currently Reading: Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen Date Started:  August 25 Goodreads Summary:  Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.   While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic exp...

 I'm only sharing the one prompt today because I wanna work more with the other one and I'm not ready to share it yet.   Prompt: Only human He kept humming the bars of a song. The earworm was stuck firmly implanted in his brain as he tried to work on a budget report, a memo about quarterly spending, and reformatting a spreadsheet his coworker had messed up. But what was the song? He caught himself humming it while alone on the elevator at work and wondered again for the thousandth time what the song was and why it was stuck in his head. After lunch, he put his headphone in and tried to drown it out by listening to any other song on his playlist. When that didn’t work he decided maybe he should try to find out the song title. This way he could eradicate it by listening to the real song. He opened up the app on his phone to identify songs and hummed. Yea, that didn’t work. Maybe Jessica knew what song it was, he sent her a text explaining the situation and t...