Monday mornings around my house are my personal cleaning days. I get up early so that I can get a long nap in before work that night. This usually involves doing laundry, cleaning up web site messes (I manage the website for not just this blog but the local Santa organization, www.northstarsantas.com,) doing dishes, and generally picking up the mess I’ve created in the past week.
This morning I finally got around to putting away the scale I’d dragged out to weigh some large packages. I took it back to the basement and set it in its place next to the furnace. Just out of a morbid curiosity I hopped on to see just how enormously fat I’ve become since my last weigh-in three months ago. OOOOOOOOOOOOh, I’d lost ten pounds. I looked up with a smile on my face. Maybe something was going right after all.
As my eyes came level with the horizontal, they landed on the storage shelves next to the dryer. Yup, four boxes of candy bars. Ah, what the heck.
Three candy bars later I’m contemplating my next workout. I’d better double it.
During my trip to Haiti in February of 2013 I had the pleasure of getting to know the people of Healing Haiti. Part of their mission there is an orphanage known as Grace Village. It is my pleasure to present one of the children from Grace Village each week to my readership in the hope that you will take them into your heart and sponsor their care and education.
Schneider wants to be an engineer when he grows up so he works hard in school, particularly math class. When he’s not studying, Schneider likes to pull together a team to play soccer or basketball. Schneider learned how to ride a bike before coming to Grace Village and would like to have one of his own some day. Schneider’s prayer request is that he can continue to learn and finish school.
Schneider came to Healing Haiti in July, 2008. Schneider was abandoned by his mother and his father is unknown.
Birth Info
Birthdate: November 24, 1997
Place of Birth: Delmas, Haiti
It is my hope that one of you will find your heart touched by this child and take up a bit of Christ’s work by sponsoring them for an extended period. My wife and I are sponsoring a pair of sisters. Healing Haiti will do the right things for these children and I have full confidence in their work. I am not affiliated with them, they don’t endorse this blog, nothing like that at all. I just love kids (can’t be Santa and not love children) and know that Grace Village is the difference between life and death for many of these children. Please open your heart and prayerfully reflect on the opportunity God’s giving us to sponsor these children. Some of them have come out of slavery and have some of the toughest lives you could imagine prior to Grace Village.
Just click the link and it will take you directly to the page where you can sponsor this week’s child. And if God is particularly good and that child is sponsored when you get there, please grab another smiling face and change their life instead. My goal is to put Sponsorship Sunday out of business as quickly as possible and take that day off each week. Thank you. God bless you for your generosity.
Some of the finest people you’ll ever meet. The hands and feet of Christ.
Today I’m holding a little celebration. And my gift to you is another installment of Flash Fiction. Today it goes out to all, no subscription required. The rules changed again (I’d think there might be no rules…) and today’s entry is a bit of whimsy I thought up while at work.
***Without Further Ado: I Should Have Bought More Cookies.***
“Your Honor, I’d like to explain this whole thing if I might be allowed to do so.”
I figured it was worth a shot. The look on his face as he rumbled through the line of idiots was unpleasant but not outright hostile. I was just another one of those idiots standing in his courtroom at five minutes to six in the morning. If he listened I might get out of here before Consuela got home from the church.
“Mr. Rodriguez, I’ve seen your booking photo. That’s the only reason I’m letting you speak your piece. I was intrigued to say the least. I am also under the impression that the city had other charges but dropped them all. If your story is as entertaining as the picture I have on your file you might just skip out with a pristine record. So go for broke.”
I didn’t really need another syllable of encouragement. If nothing else, I could tell this story without any embellishment and walk out of here a free man.
“Thank you, Judge. I’m not really sure where I should start…”
He interrupted me with a bang of the gavel. “I want every bit of this from the moment you got up until you’re arrival in this room. Get on with it, I’ve got a date for breakfast.”
I knew I had him.
“The story actually starts before bedtime for me…
I left work at 9 in the morning. It was another night of frustration and boredom with a boss who had a little less sense than a chicken. I’d sweated over the latest software upgrade all night and about half the network was still crashed. The only reason I’d left work before noon was that my boss was upset about the overtime. He’d given the cleanup to the day shift.
My two stops on the way home were the drugstore and the bakery. Stop number one was easy: pick up the prescriptions waiting for us. One each. 30 seconds in the drive through and on to the bakery.
Halloween is not the best day of the week to spontaneously decide what you’re handing out that night. I love cookies and figured that I’d put a platter of them out and let the kids each grab one as they rang the bell. I could sit on the couch and watch zombie movies and they could get their loot. I planned to be sitting on the porch two feet away. What could go wrong?
Plenty. I hit the bakery only to find less than twenty cookies left. This was bad. But last year the number of kids was down, and the same the year before – ever dwindling numbers. I’d probably get by with 18 cookies. I didn’t have a real choice. Next year I’d order ahead. This year I just cleaned them out. I did get a dozen crullers for work the next night.
My wife was buzzing around the city of Pascagoula somewhere when I got home. Nothing but a note on the television reminding me that I had door duty while she was at the church lock-in Halloween party. The Pastor was trying to turn the best night of the year for candy fiends into an evangelism event. Best of luck, I’m sticking to Tootsie Rolls.
Anyway, I grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and got up just in time to put on my werewolf costume and wait for the first trick-or-treaters. My head was killing me. Another migraine. I left the cookie tray unattended and went into the kitchen to grab some of my pills that I’d picked up earlier in the day. I grabbed three of them and headed back to the porch just in time to hear the door bang shut and see two kids running down the sidewalk.
Horace, my cat, was sitting under the porch swing hissing. He was staring at the jack-o-lantern next to the cookies. Problem was, there were no cookies left. Those two thieving little goblins had cleaned me out. The first and last of the night unless I could come up with something.
Well, back to the kitchen for the crullers and a cola to wash those stupid pills down. I crunched them up between my teeth and swigged down half the can. Bitter little things, but they sure put the kabosh on a headache like mine.
I flipped on the television and settled in for the long haul. I had a couple of Snickers bars in the freezer if I ran out of crullers.
Twenty minutes into the movie I was down to one cruller. But the headache was gone. I was sweating like a pig inside that mask but it didn’t seem to matter. Not much at all mattered. Not even when the last cruller was gone and three urchins stood begging for their loot.
I floated to the freezer to grab the candy bars and found that my wife had nicked a few of them. This was really trouble. I grabbed what I had left and lobbed them like grenades at the kids. Seriously. Sound effects, pulled the pin, the whole deal. They ran off to the sidewalk leaving the bars on the lawn where they landed. I felt fabulous. Overheated but fabulous none-the-less.
Here, your honor, is where I went slightly off the rails. I’d made the decision to keep up the evenings festivities but I’d run out of treats. I’d also taken three very large Valium by mistake. They look just like my migraine pills and without my glasses I never noticed that the prescription was for a Mrs. Fred Mertz. At least that’s what the cops tell me.
So, out of candy, out of donuts, and really way too hot in that stupid mask I did the only logical thing a man under the influence of too much diazepam would do: I went upstairs, changed into the mankini my wife got me for my birthday and made up a big bowl of pancake batter. Not only would I be handing out my favorite food next to bacon, but I’d be very comfortably cool while I did it…
“That’s the thing you’re wearing in the booking photo, isn’t it Mr. Rodriguez?”
“Yes, your honor. Kind of a horrible look when I think about it, but one of the side effects of valium is feeling a bit hot. May I continue?”
“Oh, please do. It’s just getting good.”
And continue I did.
“As I was saying, I went to the kitchen and grabbed the box of pancake mix. I fired up the griddle I’d gotten for Christmas and started to make a batch. I decided to triple it, because once you run out of treats you’re in trouble. Due to the effects of my erroneous medication I wasn’t thinking all that clearly.
But I did get five truly beautiful hotcakes ready in record time. I bopped out to the porch and grabbed the tray I’d been using and brought it to the kitchen. Loaded it up with those five beauties and headed back to the porch. That’s when the screaming started. Or, maybe I should say it was the first screaming of the night. At any rate I calmed the kids down and gave them each a lovely pancake. I smiled and waved and didn’t really think all that much about the looks on mom’s face. I should have.
I settled down on the swing and got back to my movie. It was getting better all the time. The pills I guess.
I thought someone was doing a great goblin shriek and looked up to see who was so talented. It dawned on me that it was coming from the house. I grabbed the empty platter and held it up like a shield. I didn’t need to: it was the smoke detector in the hallway. I’d forgotten the pancakes and they were smoldering.
My poor griddle was ruined. I guess I’d dozed off. No more pancakes tonight. About that time the smoke detector quit sounding and I heard voices calling from the porch. No options left, I grabbed the bowl of pancake batter and the ladle and returned to my post on the porch.
Horace just hissed as I walked by him. Finicky cat. The kids on the steps went silent. I told them to hold their bags open for a treat. I think this is where it took the jump that led me here. In my addled state I filled the ladle with batter and poured exactly one silver dollar pancake sized dollop of batter into the first bag. The second bag was already moving when I reached to hit it, and instead covered the poor child with the rest of the batter in the ladle.
I guess my apologizing wasn’t enough, Dad took a swing at me. That’s when the police showed up. I ran back up the stairs to get away from the kid’s father and felt a sting in my – posterior. One of the cops had tazered me from behind.
I’m not sure which had impacted my motor skills more, the valium or 50,000 volts, but I pinballed into the table I’d set up and it launched the bowl of batter into the air. The officer who’d tazed me was right behind me and shared the bounty. Both of us were covered in the stuff.
I don’t remember a lot after that, but they did stick me in the shower and give me these orange jumpers before I went to the cell. I appreciate that kindness – the mankini wouldn’t have been such a good thing to wear in the cell. Did you know some of those guys are psychotic?
“Mr. Rodriguez, have you called your wife to let her know you’re here?”
I stared at the floor. “No. And I’m hoping she never finds out. I used my call to call in sick to work last night. If you take mercy on me, Judge, I might just skate out of this little misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to do any of that stuff, and I’m the only one really hurt by any of it. I’ll pay for the officer’s dry cleaning. But I’d really appreciate the break.”
That’s when the judge lost it. He looked at that picture, then at me in my orange jump suit, and finally at the pancake batter covered mankini in the plastic property bag. I’ll admit that at 400 pounds I shouldn’t even own one of those things, but that was kind of a cruel tone in his laugh.
“Mr. Rodriguez, go forth and sin no more. I will seal your records and expunge them if you don’t get arrested for 1 year. You’re truly on double secret probation. Happy Birthday, Mr. Rodriguez.”
O.K. That was a nice touch. After all, it is my birthday.
“Thanks Judge. And I promise you that next year I’ll get three dozen cookies and order them in advance. You can keep the mankini.”
One of the great things about working nights is that I’m usually one of three people in the Cub Foods near my house. This morning was no exception.
At a dark and dreary hour in the misty rain I got to the store and had unimpeded access to the aisles. I wandered around, very much a happy idiot, as I gathered the ingredients to bake a cake. The old Donna Summer tune, Mac Arthur Park, played in my mind as I left the store.
As I left the store I did my usual paranoid thing: I checked all the shadows. Bunches of habits from my previous life have never left me, and it’s rare that I don’t do a sweep before venturing into the dark. Off to my right I detected a shadowy figure down low. I gave a closer look and it was a man in a wheelchair. 46 degrees, light rain, O’darkthirty in the morning and he’s just trying to keep a little dry.
If he was a hustler he’d call out and ask for something. But he just sits there focused on the ground in front of him. Darned interesting sidewalk. No petition for succor, no greeting. Just a soul at the end of the road in every respect I could detect.
I took my groceries to my car (big armloads, too hard to rejuggle if I set them down) and grabbed one of my envelopes. I keep a couple of these envelopes in my car year round. It’s part of my pledge last year to do a good deed once a week. Each card has a Santa Card that I posed for some years ago, a message of hope and love, and a McDonald’s gift card that will get you a hot meal and some time to enjoy an unanticipated gift. Nothing big, but I love giving them out to the folks who are dying by inches on the streets. Perhaps that message lifts them just far enough to make it back to where they want to be in life.
I walked back to the store and said, “I hope this brightens your day a bit, Brother. God Bless.” He looked surprised and reached for the card with his left hand. His right arm was just a stump inside a worn and dirty sweat shirt. His eyes were dead but he did say thank you.
I went back to the car and pulled out of my spot. His wheel chair was hidden behind a post, most likely to avoid having to deal with the police for loitering. As I started to drive by he shouted thanks. And then a minor miracle took place: his smile lit my world from end to end. He had the most beautiful look on his face. Someone had taken a minute to do something for him beyond treating him with contempt or disdain. I pulled the car over, hit the flashers and went around to the back hatch.
In Minnesota you keep certain supplies with you for the winter. Since it never ends around here I keep spare clothes in the back of my Explorer all the time. I reached in the back and got out one of my spare hoodies. I got two of the exact same one for gifts about five years ago and keep the nice one in the car for emergencies. This qualified.
I approached his chair and he thanked me again. I said, “You look cold. This might help. Can I drape it over your shoulders?” He was frail. Somewhere between 20 and sixty, yeah, that kind of look. He agreed. I gently put the garment over his shoulders and said, “Can I pray for you?” He hung his head and said, “Yes.”
And in that moment, in a parking lot just out of the rain underneath the grocery store sign, the two of us spent an eternal moment. The moment that Christ calls for in the Gospels when he says in Matthew 25: 31-46 that he expects us to take care of our brothers and sisters. Please go read the citation at the link, it’s important.
I quietly prayed over this man and placed my hands gently on his shoulders. I asked the God who has given me so much to take care of this brother in his hour of need. And I told him that I loved him and he wasn’t alone in this world.
I got back in my warm car and drove off while he sheltered out of the rain. Like the cake in Mac Arthur park he would have melted in the rain. Perhaps my moment’s respite kept the sweet green icing from flowing down.
I’m not anything here but obedient. I stepped out of the normal comfort zone of most people and did my best to live the life of a follower of Christ this morning. I’m a failure most days, most hours, most minutes. But I do try to follow Him.
This morning I’m asking you to do the same. It’s not the dollar amount, it’s not the garment, it’s the show of love and kindness that all of us need. I feel loved right now. His smile will stay with me for a long time.
Can you reach out today? Can you follow Christ’s example in some simple way?
Today I’m talking about the kind of proposal that a writer has to do if they wish to sell their book.
I have been blessed with two really great editors that have worked on my book for me. No matter how hard you work on self-editing, it’s still likely to be a stinking mess when you are a new writer. Only after my a lot of editing and beatings *(my agent throws a vicious punch – but I needed it)* was I really close to the point where the book could be sold. Agents/editors have an insight into the whole process that I currently lack. I’ve talked to more than one author who now largely self-edits, but I think that’s about book #3 for most people before they can do a creditable job. I am much better editing other people’s books. The reason is simple: my brain is seeing it the first time. I’m not filling in blanks and eliminating the dreck that I stuck on the page without fixing it in writing.
You might think that once the book is really good that you’re done. Nah. Now you get to do a proposal.
One of my best friends, Larry W. Timm, recently embarked on this journey. He had to swear off bacon to get the task done. I was blessed to have help from my editors. Both of them worked on my proposal and added a huge amount of content and polish to the beastie. It’s almost ready.
But now it’s in my hands again. And I’m slowly dying. I’ve put in 4 hours on it so far today. A really good proposal is a synopsis of the book, a list of characters, a description of who might buy it, why someone should pick this rather than another author’s work, how you plan on marketing it, who is your current audience (which reminds me, please go like the Facebook page on the right – that’s part of the plan,) what books are comparable, a biography, why your book is better than the comparable books, endorsements from subject matter experts, endorsements from other writers, a picture of your face (mugshot submissions not appropriate,) and a great tag-line.
I’m dying on the comparable books. I’m really not ready to say, “Alton Gansky’s book was nice, but my book is better because…” or, “Raymond Chandler’s book was an exceptional experience but I can do better marketing because I’m still alive.” (Besides, I’m kind of hoping Alton will write a forward or something and I don’t want to cheese him off.)
It’ll come to me. I’m sure that time will fix the issues. Part of it is a simple need to go back and look at some of the stuff I’ve read and then do the comparison. For some reason I’m not enthusiastic about the reception I’d get with the Christian publishers if I said, “Lee Child is the master of this sort of story, but my hero is far more violent and bloody minded than Jack Reacher ever dreamed of being in his entire life.”
