Danny Mac's Blog - Posts Tagged "thoughts"

Greetings,

I have not written a blog, short story, or my next book in the past month. October started off with the shock of learning my father-in-law, Pop, has brain cancer and the neurosurgeon gave him two months to live. We spent the next week making final arrangements so his end may be comfortable with the least amount of pain and anxiety. With the help of people specializing in end-of-life care, we got him into a facility that can care for his every need, monitor his well-being, and properly manage his pain.

After settling him into his last bed, we were able to visit him just once when Tammy, my wife and his daughter came down with COVID-19. By Friday, our daughter caught the awful bug and on Saturday, it caught up to me. Barb, Pop’s wife of fifty-five years, also succumbed to this persistent virus. The whole house reverberated with coughs, sniffles, and groans of sinus pressure for two weeks.

We didn’t dare expose our sickness to Pop and others living out their last days at the nursing facility. This absence was especially draining on Barb missing her husband. This week, the symptoms cleared and we were able to visit the old man again. He barely recognized us as the growth in his brain took away his ability to comprehend.

It is cathartic for me to write even regarding our strained situation. I hope to get back into the habit of writing every day again. I ask that everyone reading this say a little prayer to help us get through the next month or so.

I have a year’s worth of dog stories in my previous blogs. I am thinking of making a coffee-table book out of the many stories to share with the world. With the pressing time we live in, I decided to change the format of my blog to something a little more meaningful.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

Here is a quick update on our home. We mostly recovered from COVID although my sinuses are still a little wacky and I feel drained all day long. It is not a sleepy feeling, more like someone beat me all night long making every muscle feel tight and weak. Pop made it through another week with little change to his status. The medical experts believe there will be a drastic change when his time is near.

Monday sees me at the computer trying to figure out something to write. Although there are many ideas floating in my head, none of them seem to become coherent enough to set my fingers to pecking. I try walking to clear my head and nothing forms into a story while aimlessly walking the yard. The struggle is real.

As the day progresses, many short stories written years ago spring forth from my memory. They make me smile as they come to mind. After sharing with friends years ago, it is my encouragement to write books today. I now have five books with a sixth in the works. A clever idea breaks across my mind to put these stories into a collection for everyone else to enjoy.

These stories are birthed from my dreams that wake me in the middle of the night. The oldest seeing twenty-five years of changes from rewrites and edits. I gather my favorites and put them into a book format. My working title is Short Stories from My Dreams. Currently, there categorized by genre with the first section called Falling in Love. These six shorts express people falling in love. The next section conveys sad sediments from tragedies of life. After that, the stories cover amusing circumstances and finally the last are tales of people finding redemption in life.

I hope to have the book ready for professional editing by the end of November. After the first of the New Year, I can send ARCs out to those of you who might like to be the first to read it. I am hoping to publish in early spring next year and would like to have at least twenty-five reviews available soon after the publication date. If you are interested in being an ARC reader, email me at dannymac@dannnymacauthor.com.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

First a quick update on my FIL. He is resting with a multitude of drugs and yet complains his headaches are increasing. We try to visit him daily but he is minimally responsive to our attendance. It is heartbreaking to see him lying there in pain barely acknowledging our visit.

I grew up in a house with a five-foot-nothing mother who ran the house with an iron fist. She raised five children to adulthood who do very well for themselves. I remember being yelled at for not moving fast enough per her command. The house ran on mom time.

Almost thirty years ago I married the love of my life. Ten years later she gave birth to a wonderful daughter and I saw Tammy develop her own mom time. Now our adult daughter sometimes faces trouble for not accomplishing chores around the house in the moment mom wants them done. On one such occasion, our childless child rolled her eyes at Tammy for not having completed a particular task and I mentioned mom time.

Mom time applies to me but I can get around it because I am quickly turning into a cantankerous old coot. Picture me cooking supper in the kitchen and mom decides that is the best time to organize the cupboard. One good growl from me interrupts the mom time and she decides maybe this isn’t the best time.

Mind you the house runs better on mom time than having everyone doing their own thing. That doesn’t mean we have to like it in all moments. The biggest problem comes from her mother living with us and having her own mom time. Sometimes the two different mom times collide with some fireworks.

Please visit my author page at www.dannymacauthor.com and feel free to share this blog with friends and leave a comment below.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Death to the Devil's Dragon: Flying People Series Book 4Greetings,

Pop made it through another week. He was up and eating when we arrived last. We made a plate of Thanksgiving meal to take over today. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us.

Tuesday brought my wife to the peak of excitement with Thanksgiving just two days away. We spent the morning with her repeatedly announcing the plans and schedule for the turkey. Then our daughter took Tammy shopping. They left the house at ten in the morning only needing a few things from the grocery store. Four hours later they returned from their excursion into shopping.

Our favorite grocery store sits twenty minutes from our house. It takes me twenty minutes to gather everything on an extensive list and return within the hour. If Tammy comes with me, it takes forty minutes in the store. She takes even longer when shopping for clothes and items for the house.

Like a good number of women, my wife is a shopper. She will pick our usual brand and compare it to other brands and sizes. After examining for a few minutes, she drops the usual item in the cart for purchase. This picky selection of goods more than doubles the time for the shopping experience. I will pick things on the list, gather them, and place them in the cart to expedite the gathering of the list.

Tammy claims I do not shop, I buy. Almost thirty years ago, I required a new belt. We stop by the big blue box store with smiley faces and buy one in under five minutes. She still holds it against me to this day that she made it in and out of the giant store in such a quick fashion. She still suffers withdrawals from the distasteful experience.

I pride myself on how fast I can get in and out of a store. For a while there, I made a list of goods on a spreadsheet to arrange them in order to match the layout of the store. One might see me weaving in and out of the lanes, around slow-moving people, just to set a new record of minimal time.

Tammy views my buying habits as distasteful and maybe even a little ill-moral. For me to follow her around a store while she peruses every item in the multitude of selections is a fate far worse than anything Torquemada could demonstrate.

My author page at www.dannymacauthor.com offers insights into my books and upcoming events. Feel free to share this blog with friends and leave a comment below.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

Pop is just as cranky as always but given his circumstances, I would be just as grumpy. We brought him pretzels and cheese-filled crackers this week which seem to cheer him up. These are his favorite junk foods and he smiled at us.

In my world, there are only eight colors. My wardrobe boasts this philosophy of blah. All my pants come are solid blue, black, or tan. I buy shirts with all the colors in my universe, some plain, plaid, and even Hawaiian style. I pull a pair of pants out of the closet knowing whatever shirt lands in my hand will match for the cool stylings of a middle-aged man barking at the door of old age.

Almost thirty years ago, I married a woman who sees the world in a multitude of colors. She claims some colors shouldn’t go together. She will ask me if the color of the shirt matches the skirt she is wearing. In the first years of matrimony, I would pick a color and she would consider it. After a couple of years, she picked the one I didn’t choose. After all these years she still asks me about her clothing. I now reply, “It depends on where you are going and what you are doing.”

Tammy is the creative one in the house. She likes taking trash and making it into treasure, thus her brand name, T’s Trashy Treasure Art. She repurposes old soup cans and glass bottles to paint them into folk art to sell. This past year, she began dripping paint over objects to make beautiful ornaments and table art. The most recent projects that bury her in the craft room reveal scenic paintings from the depths of her mind. They are really good in my humble opinion.

However, she will ask what shade of blue goes best with her base coat on the painting. They look the same to me. I suggest painting one with each hue which only gets me in trouble because that is not how art works. Why does she still ask me about colors knowing I do not know such things?

My author page at www.dannymacauthor.com offers insights into my books and upcoming events. Please follow T’s Trashy Treasure Art on Facebook.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

I heard many times from preachers that I should have a defense of my faith. As my FIL finishes his life in a nursing home, I have contemplated this more than ever. He was resting well on our last visit although the medicine can only moderate the pain of the growing brain tumor.

Many decades ago, I spent several years looking for the answers to “Who is God?” I read some of the Bible but it made absolutely no sense in the moment. I sought expert opinions in the way of preachers, elders, and other learned voices. Far too often, I heard verses thrown back at me without context. The most popular was John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

I thought to myself, “If it lacked meaning reading the verse, it had less value hearing it.” I continued my search until one day as gave up my hunt, and God entered my life at its lowest point. It was upon reading and hearing his word with the Holy Spirit interpreting it for me, that it came to life in my daily walk.

In this this experience I answer when someone asks me why I think God is real. I only saw contradictions and hypocritical statements in a rather large book of nonsense before God to feel a loving God wanting the best for me after receiving the Holy Spirit. There is a Proverb that states the fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding.

You see we do not fear objects that are not real. When God became real to me, his enormous presence dropped fully down on me. I understood his greatness and that instilled fear of God in me. This fear was quickly overcome by his love flooding into my life and with the love, and understanding of his words. I still have a lot to learn about God and his wants for me, but trust Him for the proper instructions.

My author page at www.dannymacauthor.com offers insights into my books and upcoming events.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

For the past couple of months, since my FIL went into the nursing home for end-of-life care, I found it too distracting to write anything. We visited him several times a week because my MIL found it draining to leave the house only for him to sleep the visit away. The painkillers and other meds kept him as comfortable as possible with brain cancer.

I used to write or edit three days a week for an hour or two each time furthering my latest project. The most recent was a collection of short stories from the past twenty years. However, the editing process proved to be disabling upon looking at the screen and not being able to project the words in front of me. I have tried but nothing could escape my mind into coherent sentences. My weekly writing shrunk to an hour on my weekly blog and it too, became a drain on me to an empty shell.

Tammy, my wife, wants another My Entitled Dog story. Every time I sit down to create another fanciful yarn from the perspective of our dog, all thoughts dry up upon sitting with the keyboard beneath my fingers. I would love to provide one for Christmas and will try next week for it.

The ideas for new storylines still float in my mind for future tales of humanity. Currently, there is one involving a woman reminiscing from her youth with sweetness and impending dread. She has been dating a man for six months when he makes a witty sarcastic remark about her body. She turns to see a wry smile cross his face. She states, “You are a P.I.A.” Then her mind instantly remembers her mother calling her father that her whole life and then questions if he will be her pain for the next fifty years. I cannot quite put this into story format, but the plot is thick in my head.

I don’t know if other authors have experienced this before, if so, I am open to suggestions on how to rid this funk from my life.

My author page at www.dannymacauthor.com offers insights into my books and upcoming events.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Greetings,

It is that time of year when people make promises to themselves regarding enhancements in their lives. They will sometimes share these objectives with friends and family to help their resolve to improve upon their day-to-day disposition.

Through many years of living, I have heard various laudable goals set by friends and family. The most common goal was to lose weight in the New Year. People finding a better job was projected often when my clothing was considered hip. Then as middle age settled upon my years, it seemed healthy living and eating rightly made the top of the list. Peppered throughout all these were goals of reading more, loving better, and weight loss.

I was never one to dwell on such things, but the New Year would make me reflect on my past and seek my future. I never liked making resolutions because within a couple of weeks after the celebrations, they were all but forgotten.

It was a little more than forty years ago, that God came into my life and throughout the majority of my life, I kept one resolution. That is to grow closer to Christ with every day. It’s hard to see from one day to the next, but looking back on the forty-plus years, I see where God changed me to reflect his glory.

I am still a very poor reflection akin to a dusty broken mirror, but his light shines more today than it did yesterday. And so, my New Year’s resolution for 2024 is to grow closer to God and become more Christ-like with every passing day. This year, I ask everyone to pray as my FIL lives out the remainder of his days as the cancer in his brain slowly takes his life.

My author page at www.dannymacauthor.com offers insights into my books and upcoming events.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Happy New Year,

There are moments in everybody’s lives when they exhibit impatience. For most people, this feeling of aggravation manifests itself infrequently throughout the week. There are some, where they stay calm even in the most trying circumstances. Then, we encounter people who lavish in impatience while demanding you stay patient with them. We call this last group entitled.

Living with Tammy for nearly thirty years, I find cooking tests her patience. It is seconded only to living with me and my strange thoughts tormenting her as the greatest threat to her patience. For myself, when an inanimate object fails to perform as wanted causes my blood pressure to spike. It seems situations where she has no control drives her to frustration and things that I should control and don’t drives me to exasperation.

Most recently, the can opener failed to maintain the groove for removing the lid. I tried again with bad words spoken under my breath and a much harder grip. This causes the can to flip over as I press much too hard. It is at that point I want to take the can to the garage and chop it open with an axe.

There is one who resides in our house with the attitude we are all put on the Earth to serve her every whim. If there was a picture definition of an impatient being wanting everyone to be patient with her, our dog, Ginger, would be smirking with joy over the acknowledgment. I let her out and she gives a quiet bark to come back into the house. She gives three, maybe four seconds before she unleashes a barrage of howls and yelps for me not moving fast enough.

I only know of one man to whom I can say he was perfectly patient in all things. We all have our triggers that spike the entitlement in us and we want what we want, when we want it. Furthermore, we expect the universe to bend to our will until we receive it. I know this is a daily problem for me. As I grow in the Spirit of God, I overcome this human trait.

Check out my newest book on my author page at www.dannymacauthor.com.

God bless,
Danny Mac

Happy New Year,

Sometime early in our nearly thirty years of matrimony, I bought Tammy a bumper sticker that reads “Marriage is finding that special person to annoy the rest of your life.” As amusing as this turn of phrase sounds, there is a large truth found in the laughter.

We annoy each other at every opportunity. She likes talking softly from the other end of the house to see if I can hear, comprehend, and reply accordingly. I prefer bringing up old stories like the deer incident and endless dad jokes. Most of the time we say or do something with only minor irritation. On rare occasions, these actions rise to hurt the other and yet we still come together at the end of the day. Most provocations come from unintentional actions and others from intentional words or deeds. Tammy is convinced I am the only husband who likes picking on his wife.

How do two people live together while constantly annoying each other? I am reminded of a baseball award given out every year in the name of the most losing pitcher of all time. The award is called Cy Young who just happens to be the most winning pitcher of all time, by far.

To annoy a spouse for a lifetime, there has to be an overwhelming amount of love and care through intentional actions toward each other. Paul writes how spouses should submit to each other out of reverence for Christ. It is this love of God that drives us to love each other for nearly three decades. It is our human nature to annoy each other for the same amount of time.

For as long as we live, we will annoy one another. By God’s grace, we can live with annoyance because our love is stronger than the irritation we create. It is grace that tempers our selfishness while overflowing the marriage with love.

My advice to young people looking at marriage is to examine your relationship while asking the question, “Can I live fifty-plus years with this person annoying me every day.”

Check out my newest book on my author page at www.dannymacauthor.com.

God bless,
Danny Mac