Daily writing prompt

How do you celebrate holidays?

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Alert! Alert! Bad Question Alert!

Who said we celebrate holidays? Well, depending on the holiday, of course. How does one “celebrate” Veteran’s Day for instance?

Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, we do all the standard stuff. I guess the only way to answer this broad, vague question is to say that I celebrate holidays with family. Jen at least, but the kids come home for the big ones. There are some holidays we more or less ignore. Easter, for example. We don’t celebrate Easter at all.

So this was a bad question. Too broad and too vague and just bad. It’s been a while since the daily prompt was as rough as this. Here’s hoping they follow it with a streak of good, fun prompts. Fingers crossed.

Daily writing prompt

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

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I haven’t thought about this in a long time and some of the details are hazy in my memory, but there is one epic cooking fail that jumps to mind, partly because it was a sort of public event.

I can’t remember if we were still living in the Duplex on Ashland Ave, or if we had already bought the house. Was it before or after Fall of 2010? I don’t know. I think it was in the old place. We invited our friends Larry and Nawal over for a cookout. The plan was for me to try to cook chicken breasts on the grill for the first time ever. Jen and I found a recipe online for a marinade that sounded really good so we went for it.

We whipped up the marinade and let the chicken breasts soak it in for however long the website said. Then, with our friends already on their way over to us, I popped them onto the grill in the back yard and followed the grilling instructions to the letter. I may have the timing off, and I may be over dramatizing the events, but I seem to remember needing to open up the top of the grill to flip the chicken for the first time coinciding with our guests pulling into the driveway. I could be wrong about that.

There was a healthy amount of smoke billowing out from under the closed grill’s cover, but nothing that seemed unusual. When I opened the top though… the entire interior of the grill was engulfed in a conflagration the likes of which I had never seen before. There was so much fire and so much crushing heat that I expected the very universe itself to start melting. The four gloriously marinated chicken breasts were burned to black cinders, though I do recall they still smelled really good. Our friends came into the back yard and saw me staring blankly at the inferno, unable to process what was happening.

I believe we ended up ordering pizza that night.

Daily writing prompt

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

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I’m late getting started this morning and I have a ton of things I want to do in a short amount of time so let’s make this one quick, m’kay?

The one thing I wish I had learned earlier in life is something that I am still trying to learn today. It’s simple. Don’t be afraid of everything. Don’t let fear run your life. So many things I didn’t do when I was young. So many things I missed out on just because I was a little afraid of them. If I have just let myself step out of my comfort zone, even a little bit, I would have experienced so many things. I don’t really believe that my life has lacked anything, I just let a lot of things slip past that would probably have turned into positive life events.

Stop being afraid, Robert. Let things happen and see how it goes. That’s what I would tell my younger self. I don’t know if it’s something I would pull off, but I would try to get that point across to my own dumb ass.

I’ve mentioned this before. In my post-gastric bypass world my food focus is on protein sources. Chicken, mostly, but also eggs and beef and various supplement type things. I just had lunch and it was just a protein bar.

Chicken might qualify for my current favorite, based on volume, but at the moment the true favorite is an example of me getting in touch with my Irish heritage via a silly stereotype. It’s potatoes. Anything potato based. Mashed, baked, French fries, home fries, hell even tater tots, which I never really liked much before. If it’s made out of a potato I’m loving it these days.

Another food in the running for current favorite is Ritz crackers. I feel like I’m regularly filling up my tiny new stomach pouch with them, though I suspect I’m really in it for the salt, and the crackers are just a salt delivery unit.

Also, a dark horse candidate is pizza. I don’t like tomatoes and I loath cheese (even the thought of cheese makes my skin crawl) but I do like cheese pizza. We’ve had it a couple of times over the last few weeks and each time has been basically heaven.

I was planning on having some chicken and either French fries or mashed potatoes for dinner tonight…. But maybe we will send out for some pizza.

Daily writing prompt

How often do you walk or run?

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The answer to this question is two-fold. I walk or run both every single day and very rarely. It depends on your definition of walk or run.

I get my daily exercise in every day by running in place for 30 minutes. If that’s legally considered running then I guess I run every day. If not, then I haven’t run in a couple of months. I started a couch to 5k training but stopped after a couple of weeks. I want to get back into it but I really don’t enjoy the whole running for really reals part of it.

Walking is similar. I close my Apple Watch Activity App’s exercise ring every day with those morning faux runs. That’s not enough exercise to close the Activity App’s calorie goal so I’ll often do either a second faux run or I will walk in place for a while, while doing something else, to get that ring closed. So if the faux walk counts as going for a walk then I do it often. Otherwise, not very often.

So the answer to this question is both confusing and dumb… and also silly. What can you do though, right?

Daily writing prompt

Do you see yourself as a leader?

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I do not see myself as a leader. Not even a little bit.

The rest of the world however, has shown me evidence that maybe they do see me as a leader. I don’t get it, but there are signs of it.

I think I was 12 years old and I was a Boy Scout. We were at our week long summer camp and our scoutmaster for some reason decided to split one of our troop’s patrol groups into two. I was moved to the new group. We had to elect a patrol leader and an assistant patrol leader. There was one kid in the group who was older than the rest of us and he was the unanimous pick for leader. Weirdly, I was the pick for assistant. Why? I had no idea. Shortly after that summer camp ended the older guy/leader left and I became the patrol leader and I held that spot for a year or so until I left as well. Years later one of the guys who voted for me told me that everyone picked me as assistant because I was the one they all thought could handle it. Huh? I was clueless.

Decades later I was promoted to supervisor at work. The current supervisor was moving to a new group and I had been there the longest and had expressed some interest in moving up the ladder so they promoted me. 10 years or so later I am still a supervisor and everyone, both staff and higher management, keeps telling me I do a good job. I don’t really see it. I have a serious case of imposter syndrome on most days. I keep getting good performance reviews, and I keep getting positive feedback from my group, and… well… no one’s fired me yet. Maybe I am actually doing a decent job leading my group. Hard to believe, but maybe it’s true.

The question though is do I see myself as a leader, and the answer is an emphatic nope. Sorry, Charlie. That’s just the way it is.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite word?

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It’s 2:23am and we are in our hotel room in Orlando. It’s hot and muggy out but the air conditioning is freezing in the room. Well, I think it’s freezing. Jen thinks it’s comfortable. Whose to say who has the accurate assessment? She’s accurate. I am some sort of frozen freak.

Anyway, it’s the middle of the night but I am still awake (and freezing) so I will write today’s prompt post.

What is my favorite word? There are a lot of options. Lots of candidates. How about a list of current favorites to start with?

• Love
• Jen
• Marriage
• Wedding
• Wife
• Step kids, though that’s technically two words
• Family
• Vacation
• Travel
• Warmth

Yeah, those are near the top of the list but we all know what the favorite word is. The one word to rule them all. The single most wonderful, flexible, variable, jack of all trades of a word.

Yeah… it’s fuck.

Thank you, goodnight!

Daily writing prompt

What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

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There are a lot of personality traits that act like warning beacons for me. Lack of empathy, selfishness, unwillingness to pet cats when the opportunity arises. There is one that stands out above all others though. Really, it’s not a personality trait in and of itself. It is more like the result of a series of red flaggable traits.

The red flag of which I speak is being a trump supporter. Those stupid red MAGA hats are literally red flags that they stick onto their own heads. Thanks for that, I guess.

If you are a trump supporter then in the best case you are someone for whom racism, hate, greed, sexism, nationalism, selfishness, and full on fascism are not a deal breaker. That’s enough for me to avoid you at all cost. Worst case, of course, is that you are just a plain old run of the mill fascist and that’s enough for my country to go to war with you, as evidenced by that little blip on history’s radar from back in the 1940’s. Remember that? When half the West was conquered by nazis and the other half banded together to eliminate them? That little historical event? Yeah. That’s where your trump support leads.

That’s it. Simple. Support trump and set off all of my red flags.

Daily writing prompt

Describe your ideal week.

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This is probably going to sound a little on the boring side, but just remember… I’m old.

Right then, the ideal week…

• Monday through Friday
  • Spend some quality time with Jen
  • Help one of my staff members figure out a complicated issue that helps a customer provide quality healthcare to their patients
  • Play some guitar
  • Take a couple of fun and interesting photographs
  • Hit all of my exercise, diet, and vitamin goals
  • Pet two cats
• Saturday and Sunday
  • Spend some quality time with Jen
  • Play some guitar
  • Take a couple of fun and interesting photographs
  • Hit all of my exercise, diet, and vitamin goals
  • Go somewhere or do something fun. Take a drive, see something interesting, explore something new, it doesn’t matter what or where as long as Jen and I do it together
  • Pet two cats

And there you have it, gentle readers. My ideal week. Or should I say, the somewhat boring ideal week of a 52 year old red head in Massachusetts.

I hope you enjoyed that. You’re welcome.