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Kicking and Screaming into 2018

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Is it just normal to be this hopeful for the upcoming year or is this just because 2017 was such a bloody hemorrhoidal tissue kind of year?  2017 was like a cocklebur suppository and I didn’t much like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have much to be thankful for.  I survived!!!!!!!  2018 has got to be better…didn’t I say that about 2017?  I guess I did and 2017 was the worse year since 1968 in my humble opinion.

I don’t do resolutions…I do have ambitions like certain fitness goals, and once again I have fallen short as 2017 closes.  It’s not my fault I’ve gained weight.  My body just doesn’t absorb doughnut calories as well as it used to…could be that bone on bone rubbing in my knee slowing calorie absorption down.  It is also keeping from doing any kind of running so the marathon is probably out.

Back to the subject. I don’t do resolutions but if I did I would use the trite, too often used, “Be the man my puppies think I am.” While I am good to them, I treat them better than I treat my fellow man.  I realize that I need to be a part of something bigger than me and my puppies.

Our world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket…but in my little part of the world, I’m not sure that is true although I know there are many people suffering.  My puppies don’t think it’s true.

I watch the people I interact with and see what their love can do to improve the world I am lucky enough to live in.  My best friend, Mike Hawkins, carries blankets around to give to the homeless he runs into.  My brother, Steve Miller, saw a need and works tirelessly to support a soup kitchen. Leland and Emily Browder models what it means to be a follower of Christ and have passed on their beliefs of service to their God and humanity to their children and grandchildren.  I give thanks to them and others.

In a climate that seems to breed boorish behavior, that seems to extol disrespect for those who you disagree with.  When humility is portrayed as a weakness rather than a strength, men, and women like Mike, Steve, Emily, and Leland go about their daily business of doing good.

Watching their efforts has made me aware of my shortcomings as a caring and gracious human being.  It is time to get off the sidelines and quit watching.  We all need to start acting,  get into the game and leave our political beliefs in the stands.

I’m not going to attempt to start a movement, run for office or pontificate ad nauseum.  I’m just going to try and make a difference, one person at a time,.

For more of Don Miller’s pontifications, you might be interested in clicking on the following link:   https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Olivia

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An excerpt from the contemporary romance Olivia by Don MIller

I had the odd thought as we drove down Edessa’s tree lined streets.  This was the first time I had enjoyed the company of a woman in five years.  A real estate agent, she was attempting to sell a parcel of Florida landscape sitting on a quiet river for more money than I wanted to spend.  A very attractive redhead in her late twenties or early-thirties, her good looks would be an asset in her line of work I mused.  She had a glowing, coppery complexion with more than a dash of cinnamon tinted freckles to go with her large, brown eyes and dark red hair.  Smartly and professionally dressed in a dark blue pants suit and white shirt, the jacket did little to hide impressive attributes.  Tall, with a firm handshake and a husky voice, I startled myself as it dawned upon me I was evaluating her as a potential partner.  My evaluation garnered her an A plus.

She didn’t realize I had died a little over five years ago and only been recently resurrected.  I still walked the earth, I inhaled the sea air, bodily processes continued but I had been dead none the less.  I had been dead until the dreams began.

Olivia came to me in my dreams.  The original dream was codeine fueled after coming down with walking pneumonia this past winter.  She sat on the foot of my bed…our bed, all blond and bright.  She was the Olivia I had met and fallen in love with my freshman year in college and married three years later.  She wore the same bell bottoms and calico peasant’s blouse as when we first met.  Olivia smiled her sky-blue eyes twinkling.

“You’re looking a bit rough Big Boy.”  I was tall, she was not.  She was petite and slender.  I was built like the outside linebacker I had once been.  She was blond and pale, I was dark on top of dark with hair going gray since I found myself on the wrong side of thirty-five.

“You need a haircut.  You look like a hippy.   Jethro, you must begin to start to live again.  You’ve lost too much weight.  Shouldn’t you back off your running at least until you get rid of that damn cough?”

“Nag much?  Some people drink or do drugs to avoid the pain.  I run.  I’m alive ‘Lovey’ but I do need a haircut.”

“Jethro…you walk, you talk, you even breathe… but you are not alive.  You have all the money from the settlement and from selling the place squirreled away.  It’s not blood money you know.  You let the house and land go too cheaply.  You could have held out for more.  Just to rid yourself of memories you can’t get rid of.  Memories you don’t want to let go of.  You could retire and move to another state.  You’ve got twenty-five years in.  Your dream was to be on the water and to write.  Why don’t you move?  They are not making any more shoreline.  There are plenty of teaching jobs in other states.  You could coach…or not.  And Sweetie, you don’t need to be spending all of your time alone…especially in the bedroom.”

I smiled.  Olivia was the progressive one in our union…especially in the bedroom, inventing new and wonderful ways to…she noticed my reaction and smiled.

“See, you still think about it.  You should date.  I’m dead and that’s not going to change.  You are still a young man.”

“I’m forty-six and I’m not sure how young that is.”

Olivia may be downloaded on Kindle at https://goo.gl/yc6FyC