Uphill...

Walking uphill is hard enough, but the wind doesn't cool me from the blistering heat. It assaults my body with dirt and whips my neck and face with my hair, stings my eyes with my sweat. I sit to rest and grass that should be soft and welcoming is coarse and covered in burrs, leaving me scratched and bloodied, a fool for seeking rest and refuge from my labor. 

I continue up the hill, pestered by insects that swarm and sting and fly in my face. I tear my sleeve from my shirt and tie it around my face to keep them from invading my mouth and nose, but they're constantly in my face, buzzing in my ear.

Driving me insane with their buzzing.

Night comes, but it would be foolish to hope it comes with relief. The heat may have ended, but the cold is just as brutal. My clothes, still wet from the sweat of day, now cling to me as I shiver in the cold of the night. I would continue to walk, but the light from the moon isn't sufficient to light my way. So I wait and shiver.

The sun peeks over the mountain the next morning, and though I am sore, I start again. Every day. The top of the hill is just as far away. Every day. I never get any closer, but they say I have to reach the top of that hill. They tell me I should happy the sun is shining. They tell me I should be happy the grass is green. They tell me I have legs so I should be happy. I should be happy.

Should I be happy? 

The Dukes of Hazzard...

 Whilst in the meditation chamber, upon the throne of contemplation, I began to reflect upon the various and sundry television shows of my youth. There were many to chose from and many that I enjoyed; Perfect Strangers, Night Court, Punky Brewster, Bosom Buddies, so many awesome shows!

Then the wheel of mental confusion spun again and settled on the Dukes of Hazzard. I've never really thought the deep thoughts about the Dukes, but it's kind of a sad situation. Bo, Luke and Daisy are three cousins who lived with their uncle Jesse in Georgia. Jesse is about a hundred years old and it seemed he's raised these three young adults, who I repeat, are cousins. Why does that matter? 

Because that means Jesse has not one, not two, but THREE siblings who couldn't raise their own children for whatever reasons. After Bo and Luke left the show, they were replaced with two other cousins making in total FIVE siblings whose children Jesse had to care for. 

Then there's the county commissioner whose name is Boss Hogg. He had a lacky sheriff named Roscoe P. Coltrane who either has a stutter or a catch phrase (good, good, good)? Another office names Enos who I think dated Daisy Duke and her very short short for a while and a mechanic called Cooter who seemed morally opposed to sleeves.

I remember an orange car (I was a kid back then) called the General Lee with a confederate flag and an obnoxious horn. I don't think that car even had doors as those Duke boys never EVER used them. I'm pretty sure they didn't believe in walking if it took them around the General Lee either. It was over the hood or not at all.

That reminds me, I loved the Goonies something fierce, too. You know, watching that as an adult opened my eyes to how absolutely innocent I really was! Holy dumpster fire, Batman! That flick was filled to the gills with dirty references. Don't get me wrong, I think they're funny as heck, I just don't know how MY parents were able to watch these things with a straight face.

I watched the Goonies with my kids and I was PRAYING they wouldn't remember, let alone understand some of those references. I'm truly hoping they don't remember because there is something magical about singing a song (or watching a movie) you've sung (or watched) for years and finally truly understanding what was happening.

Mine was Little Red Corvette by Prince. The shock I felt as I sang about the "Trojans and some of them used," then "thinking 'bout the Jockeys that were there before me." Oh my poor heart! It was WONDERFUL!

I hope my children get that adrenaline rush at least once in their lives. It's AMAZING! Eenie said her Come to Jesus was Stacey's Mom by Fountains of Wayne.

Did anyone else have that revelation? Wanna share with the group?

             

 

Education For The Real World

One of the things I've been in to this last two years is going back to school. I started back to work last year and decided I wanted to go back to school to learn the skills needed to help me to be better at my job. It was amazing!

Miney graduated from high school leaving Moe the lone homeschooler and we both knew it was time to change things up, so he started at the public high school in August. It was rough for the both of us and I was really really thankful to have my job to keep me busy. 

So I'm plugging along with goals and purpose and everything is moving forward until April when I start feeling like my time at my current employ is fast coming to an end. There are various reasons and many of them I could have ignored, but the main reason was knowing it was a prompting. I don't mess with promptings. I don't ignore promptings. I sometimes resist them, but only to my detriment. 

One week after I resigned my position, Babe went out of town for a week and four days later, Miney got into an accident that totaled her car. Babe was supposed to be home two days after that, but the Lord wasn't finished testing me yet. The weather in DFW kept his plane from landing and diverted them to Oklahoma City, literally three hours away, just far enough out and late enough in the evening to be annoying. He couldn't drive home, and would have been royally pissed if I had come to get him so he got to sleep in a nasty hotel instead. 

He finally made it home Friday morning and Miney's wrist, which we were told was broken, wasn't even a little bit broken (thank goodness). We're still down to two cars because apparently I am the reason our insurance premium is now an insane amount. We haven't settled with the insurance yet, but even after we have, I plan to walk everywhere for the rest of my life. We can't afford me. I'm a freakin' liability!

Meanwhile, in 2023...

 Guys,

Can you believe we're already halfway through 2023?! Where has the time gone? And what have you done with it? I feel like I have just done a whole lot of nuthin'. That's not true, but that's what I feel like. 

So what have I been doing?  Writing books!

These books!

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-D-P-Davidson/dp/B0C5PJRH4X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=334A85TXG2LF4&keywords=legacy+d.p+davidson&qid=1686672669&sprefix=Legacy+D.%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Henchman-Short-D-P-Davidson-ebook/dp/B0C7S6M4TW/ref=sr_1_8?crid=3FAYCB1N1SMPT&keywords=Diary+of+a+Henchman&qid=1686672718&sprefix=diary+of+a+henchman+%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-8

Guess what I JUST found out! There's already a book called Diary of a Henchman on Amazon! That doesn't look sus AT ALL!!! 

Wow! This day just took a turn for the worse. 

In other news, there are just a metric ton of movies and books called Legacy and that's okay as that name is a little less on the nose.

In other, other news, I finally settled on covers (and names) for my first two books. They are now Dark Horse (Push) and Still Waters (Push Back) and the covers are wicked awesome if I must say so myself...and for now I must because I haven't gotten a lot of feedback. One day that might change.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Horse-Push-D-P-Davidson/dp/B0C1HZYTGQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21QUVWL6SJ6YD&keywords=Dark+Horse+D.P.+Davidson&qid=1686673492&sprefix=dark+horse+d.p.+davidson%2Caps%2C220&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Still-Waters-Push-Back/dp/1724077813/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WY71AE8MFPYJ&keywords=Still+Waters+D.P.+Davidson&qid=1686673521&sprefix=still+waters+d.p.+davidson%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-1

One day.

I have some other fun stories in the works and if nothing else, they make me happy!

Joy!

My hat...

COVID, COVID, everywhere.

Think I'll just destroy my hair.

This pandemic has been just...awesome. Babe has been working from home since March...last year. He first planted himself on the couch in the living room, but we home school and live here all day, so he made his office in the classroom (did I mention we home school?) and just recently moved into a bedroom that had earlier been vacated by another of our children because she's nineteen and that's enough of a reason. Thankfully, I really like that guy, so it only annoys when he snaps at us (as much as Babe ever snaps) if we get too loud, which happens sometimes because, and I can't stress this enough, we home school and also live here. 

As a result of the way we were already living our lives, the pandemic and resulting shut down of all the things hasn't been as traumatic for us as it has been for the rest of America. My kids continued their educational pursuits without needing to transition from anywhere, but the classroom to the kitchen. See above paragraph for reference.

I decided the best way to treat COVID fever (not the actual virus) was to experiment with my hair, and have done so with reckless abandon. I've pinked it, blued it, blonded it, pinked it again, silver toned it, blue silver toned it (for Ennie's wedding) and then copper-toned it. I've loved every iteration of my lovely locks, but this treatment has caused a lot of damage, as you can well imagine. Thus I have made it a point to keep it well managed.

It ain't cheap to fiddle with one's hair if one desires to keep said hair locked onto one's noggin, so I was getting the work done by competent individuals, because I know what I am and it ain't competent. So, because I sometimes make poor decisions, and hadn't made one in a while, I decided to get my hair cut at a place that shall remain nameless because 1. I'm embarrassed I sunk so low and 2. They should be embarrassed by what they did to my hair.

The air head who cut my hair had a far away look and was humming to herself for the duration of my hair cut. Why didn't I stop her, you ask? Because sometimes you have to trust the process. This was not one of those times. 

When she "finished" the cut, she asked what I thought. I showed her the picture of the cut I had asked for. Note that this:

Does not look like this:

Not even a little bit, yet she seemed to think it was spot on. She called her manager over and this lady must have suffered from the same myopia because she seemed confused by my insistence that no, it wasn't the cut I wanted. No one in their right mind would ask for this on purpose.

The manager apologized and said she would comp my haircuts until it grew back. Jokes on her, I'm NEVER going back because I have learned my lesson.

I slunk back to my hair dresser and asked her to do what she could to fix the mess on my head. The photo above is what she was able to fix. There were long pieces and short pieces and pieces that I'm still trying to grow out and this happened in October. 

While I appreciated what my hair dresser was able to accomplish, it was still not cute, so I decided to make a hat...some hats. I made so many hats.

I wore a hat every day for months. 

It's nine months later and my hair still isn't long enough for the the style I wanted, but at least it doesn't look like I've got a raging case of the mange anymore. Lesson learned and little victories are still victories. Email me if you would like me to make you a hat. I still have plenty of yarn.

Musing...

I've been reading a lot of opinion pieces or "news" lately, and I've decided if other people can post unverified, inflammatory or 100% wrong swill, then I can too. And if I write enough fluff and foolishness, maybe some of those new sites will find my writing "hard hitting" and "on the nose" (whose nose by the way?). Maybe they will be so enamored by my ability to write farce with a straight face, they'll be beating down my virtual door! Then, I can be a freelance writer. Heck, I won't even have to proofread (I'll be starting right now) because if they aren't interested in fact who the heck even cares about misspellings, poor grammar or proper formatting. Even if I wasn't a grammar Nazi (and I'm not) my little pea-pickin English lovin' heart has clutched the pearls so often I'm afraid to wear jewelry. 

Anyone who knows me knows I have opinion to spare, so why not get paid to spew? Does anyone out there care what I think?

No, but why should I let that stop me? 

Hey There Stranger...

 I know it's been a while since I posted, but maybe some one is still out there, eager to hear my newest tale. Let's get started shall we...

 On July 4th, Babe took Miney and Moe out to see the fireworks. They stopped along a bridge with approximately 700 other people to watch said fireworks. I didn't go because I didn't want to. About an hour after they'd left, Babe calls me up to ask if "I'd heard". To which I replied, "heard what?"

"We've been in an accident," he tells me.

Fabulous.

But it gets so so much better. Babe was parked facing South. Dude comes up the road headed North and just wandered to the other side of the road. He hit our car in the back passenger door and because my daughter is ten feet tall, her head grazes the ceiling at all the times and she hit the window, causing a slight concussion. Dude being the gem he is, tries to drive away, but his car was busted too, so he got out of his car and jumped the railing! Dude straight up ran away. Also, the car had paper tags...that were expired.

Captain A$$hole's Stolen (probably) Car

Heartbroken Babe's car.

I hopped in our Teenmobile and rushed out to pick them up. The police showed up, a wrecker or two showed up, people gawked as they passed and weren't terribly concerned about there being minimal space on the road with a wrecked car on either side because apparently there is only one way in and out of Fort Worth and this was it.

Now, I'm not angry about the car. No one got too badly hurt, we have insurance and it's just a car. However, I am nursing a new kind of irritation over the whole thing that I am going to call General Ineptitude or How To Have Someone Else Do Your Job.

It starts like this. Babe called on Monday to find out what was happening with the repair estimate on the car. He is told it's probably about 10K. The next day, the total is higher. Yesterday, he calls again and they tell him they haven't even had a chance to look the car over. So where did those first two estimates come from? He asks if they've includes the damage to the interior. Guy apparently hadn't even considered checking the interior. Babe helped Guy do his job.

Babe has also been following up with the police department. First, they can't find the police report. Then, they find the report, but explain that it has been rejected from the system because of some error. The police department then invites Babe to call the officer and let her know the file was rejected. Seriously? The officer in question works nights and doesn't have a voice mail. I beg Babe not to tell them about the voicemail for fear they will ask him to set one up for her because we're having other people do our jobs these days.

Then he contacts the detective...

Listen, I know no one is perfect and we all have off days, but this has crossed the threshold from ridiculous to enraging. Just do YOUR job. It's one thing to follow up, it's another thing entirely if you can't be bothered to inform your employee of a mistake in her report so instead ask the customer to inform your employee of the mistake in her report. Who does that?! 

Well, three of the companies involved in this accident, that's who.