I’ve looked at the covers of some of the top selling books and I’ve found a trend.  Put a half, or fully naked lady, or a guy with a gun and or knife, him sitting on a motorcycle makes it even better, and that book is going to fly off the shelf.  I don’t think it matters what’s in the book on the front end, that book is going to be at the top of the list.  Don’t get me wrong, it may be a perfectly good book, but let’s face it; naked ladies, guns, and knives are what is going to catch most people’s eye.
 You can have the greatest book that was ever written but you better have at least two, better three, of those elements on the cover if you want it to sell.  I’m thinking about taking one of my books and putting a lady with nothing on but her skimpy undies running away from a gun pointing at her back.  I’ll title it Dead Ringer and see what happens.
 Oh no, I just got tickled.  Something evil this way comes.  My horribly mean little mind has come up with the most ridiculous idea ever and I’m just the one to do it.  I am such an ass.  I can’t stop laughing.
 OK, five minutes later, I’m still tickled but the laughing is under control, I am going to do this.

 That is the understatement of the year folks.  I won’t go into everything that has been happening but let me tell you this, sometimes life hands it to you in spades.
Most of these things have been due to family members and what’s going on in their lives but one in particular did involve me.  I got my eyeball shaved.  Yes, you read that right, I got my eyeball shaved.  If you want to do something for shits and giggles, don’t do that.  It will honestly make you consider committing suicide.  Yikes.  Hey, and I still have to get the second one done.  I’m thinking about waiting about twenty or twenty-five years for that and maybe I’ll die before I get around to it.  Yes, it was a medical necessity.  Once I can fully see again, if ever, I’ll let you know if it was worth it.  Am I being a bit of a brat about the whole thing?  You bet your sweet ass, but that too is another story.  I will say I have an awesome eye doctor, but I hate my eye surgeon.  You get this done; you’ll hate yours too.
What really sucks is that I have this awesome convertible that I can’t really drive and can’t even put the top down on when I’m riding in it because my eye is going to be light sensitive for about another week.  Screw this shit.
OK, I’m finished with that.
Since I can’t go into all the other things that have been happening, I’m not blasting family members business all over the internet, there isn’t much for me to tell you.
I do have a couple of things in the works that could be exciting, but we’ll just have to wait and see.  Well, hear about anyway.
I hope you are all well and happy, surprisingly I am right now, and hope to have something more interesting for you in the near future.  Sorry for the parting shot I’m about to upload on you, but what the hell.  If you’re reading my work, then you know it’s all about the scare and shock factor.  Hehe.
 Yes that is my eye the day after when I went for the 24 hour follow up.

 Below is a copy of an email sent to the Kennedy Space Center Gift Shop.  After sending that email, I took a better look at the book and found the book to also be damaged because of lousy packaging.  Yes, they got a second email because of that.  Don’t try to call them.  You get a voicemail that says leave a message.  You have to wonder if maybe they fail to launch a lot of the right things.  Oh, as for the book I wanted.  In paperback it was actually $6.00 cheaper.
***
I recently ordered the paperback book The Darkest Dark published in 2018, what I got was the hardback book published 2016.  I could have ordered that book for nearly $4.00 cheaper on Amazon Prime if that had been the one I wanted.  It wasn’t.  Now I have to decide whether to return the book you sent and try to get the one I actually want somewhere else or keep the one you sent me.
Here’s the problem.  I ordered this book for my grandson for his birthday and that happens to be this Saturday.  The other problem is that by the time I pack this damn book up and return it the shipping fee will cost more than the difference in the price of the book.  Nice work.
Time of my next blog:
07/25/2019
Please be watching for it at cathypacematthews.com, I’m sure you’ll find it most interesting.
***
Please don’t get me wrong, I have always been supportive of our space program.  When I was young, when it was still unheard of for a girl to even think of going into space, I wanted to be an astronaut.  So, for me to be this upset with anything to do with the program and anything affiliated with it is no small matter.  Now my grandson wants to be an astronaut so I was trying to be a good grandmother and get him something that I thought would be fun and interesting for him.
The Kennedy Space Center deals with some of the most complicated, thought-intensive, dangerous procedures launching things into space, but they not only can’t get the right item out the door they are incapable of appropriately packing something to get it across a couple of states safely?
Humm…

 Lately I haven’t found a lot of things funny.  Sad, crappy, scary, even confusing, but not funny.
I’m a person who can usually find something funny in almost anything, but lately, no.  Now is this because of me or is it the rest of the world that’s gone to Hell in a hand-basket and refuses to entertain me anymore.  I go for the second one personally.  I just thought of an old lady tumbling down the steps and it gave me a chuckle.  I pictured myself as that old lady, that part was sad, but yet, I had managed to amuse myself.
I can manage to amuse my daughter when I stump my toe.  No matter how bad it might be, damn, I could knock the thing off, and she would still probably find it amusing.  Not because she finds me hurting myself funny, at least I hope not, but because of the way I respond when that happens.
No, I don’t jerk my leg of the injured toe up in my hands hopping around on one foot, can you imagine the deadly ramifications of that action, nor do I plop down in the nearest location to nurse and whine over the injured appendage.  I also do not expel a long line of expletives in a loud cackling voice or spill out shrieking noises of pain.  I simply go ow in a low monotone manner and keep going as if nothing has happened.  I don’t care how bad it might be, that is always the response.  Seriously, I could probably knock off the whole damn toe and the result would be no different.  Hey, I’ve jammed the damn thing and that was still the response.  Now you know why my daughter finds it amusing.
What’s not amusing is why I usually have this happen to me on such a regular basis.  My dear hubby leaves toe mines all over the house.  Don’t ask me why, maybe he is trying to take me out one toe at a time.  What can I say, I’m Diabetic, so it could be a thing?  I also remember that I have in some way addressed this issue before, but from a different perspective and for different reasons.
No, the problem is definitely you guys, or at least some of you.
Below is a list of things I don’t find funny. I do find them sad, scary, and horrible.

1. “Your car is faster than mine, I don’t like that.”  Bang, you’re dead.
2. “You disrespected me; I don’t like that.”  Bang, you’re dead.
3. “You don’t believe the same things I do; I don’t like that.”  Bang, you’re dead.
4. “My other classmates are going to school and learning something, I don’t like that.” Bang, bang, bang, a whole bunch of you are dead.
5. “You didn’t get my dinner right; I don’t like that.”  Slap, punch, stab, you’re dead.
6. “This very small child won’t shut up; I don’t like that.”  I can’t even finish that one.

So, think about this a minute.  If me accidentally hurting myself is the only thing I can find amusing these days…you should consider all the things I’m finding sad, crappy, scary, and confusing.  Let’s start finding ways to try and stop these things instead of all of us bickering over all the stupid shit in this country?

   To say this past week has been a bit of a challenge is the understatement of the millennium.  Four emergency room visits, no not me, emotional meltdowns, again not me, me spending a good deal of time babysitting from one to three children four days this past week, and a five-year-old’s birthday party.  Added to this I’ve got a project that I’ve been trying to get finished for two weeks now and It’s just not happening.
To give you an idea of what I mean, I was going to write this then go to work on that when my hubby steps through the back door, when I say through the back door I mean out of it not in, and says, “I’m home.”  Really?  My husband has to be at work at six in the morning so I thought I would have at least four or five hours to work on this project, it is a very important project, before he would walk through the door this afternoon.
No, that isn’t happening now.  If my husband is up and moving about the house I can’t work.  He is a distraction.  He doesn’t mean to be, but he is.  I had everything set up on our deck out back and of course with him being home he will be running in and out that back door.  That’s a big distraction in and of itself.  Part of what he’ll be doing while running in and out of that back door is working on a lawn mower that belongs to our youngest daughter.  That will be a great big distraction. The icing on the cake will be our five-month-old puppy who is already the size of a small elephant who when it is just me and her is a little angel, but with daddy home, she turns into a little hoodlum.  That can end with me pulling my hair out.
What it boils down to people is I’m sinking here, and I don’t know how to tread these waters little on swim in them.  HELP!
So now I will take another twenty to thirty minutes to load up my stuff, move it all back inside and call it a day.  Actually, I’m thinking of parking my little, OK, not so little, butt in my car and heading for regions unknown, where I will spend the day hiding from my family.  Yes, I have a cell phone but that doesn’t mean I have to answer it.
If you never hear from me again that means I have disappeared into the nether regions of some distant parallel universe and I like it there.  Actually, if you don’t hear from me, call the police because I’m lost.

Last night feel asleep early, I do mean early.  My husband and I had a rather rough day with a sick daughter and two grandkids that needed babysitting.
Now this is just a little sample of what the past few days have been like.  Yes, they have been a bit hectic.  While writing this just got a text from the sick daughter and I have a feeling that things may take another turn for the hectic once again.
Another text so yep, another turn.
Anyway, I hope I can continue this now.
I had literally passed out on the couch, no drinking involved, just tired as hell.
Now imagine you are in this deep sleep from pure exhaustion and suddenly you are awakened by the most gosh awful crash, rumble, thud that ends with the house shaking and your husband going oomph and you open your eyes to your hubby trying to crawl his way back up to his feet, no, there was no drinking there either.
“What the crap just happened?”  I didn’t ask if he was OK, my bad, I just wanted to know how my usually very coordinated hubby nearly brought the house down.
“Nothing, go back to sleep.”  He responded.
“Go back to sleep: after you nearly shook the house off it’s foundation.”  I couldn’t imagine him thinking me sleeping after that was possible.
“The house didn’t shake, OK, maybe it did.  Thanks for letting me know that I’m fat and my large ass nearly brought the house down.”  My shock at this alone would have kept me up the rest of the night if it weren’t for the fact that he was suffering from humiliation from his close encounter with the floor.
“You’re certainly not fat and your ass still looks great so how about telling me how it happened?”  OK, I admit my sympathy wasn’t very high at this point, but remember, I had just been awaked by my couch jumping across the floor.
“I tripped, OK.  I was putting on my shoes and somehow managed to get tripped up by them.”  You could tell he wasn’t happy.
Now there might have been another reason why I wasn’t particularly sympathetic to his misadventure.  A few months ago I was going through the house and I managed to trip over something of his he had left on the floor, no I don’t remember what it was, and I not only tripped but went flying across a room and landed head first onto the top of my desk.  I’m quite certain the house shook then as well but at the moment that happened, I didn’t give a crap.  Also, we had a couple of quest at the time and they were standing next to my desk looking at something and it was a small wonder I didn’t take them out like a couple of bowling pins.  So, sympathy be damn you ass, that was payback for what happened to me because of you, so suck it up.

Yesterday I got to spend the day with my youngest granddaughter.  Mia turned three last month and is going on 300.  Yes, I said three hundred.  This child has a very old soul as they put it.  I’ve never been really sure what they mean by that, but I know what I think it means.
Already she is a very opinionated individual who will let you know really quick how the cow ate the cabbage as my mother used to put it.  This becomes much funnier when this three-year-old has the vocabulary of a child over twice her age.
For the most part she is an extremely well-behaved little girl when she is with me, but she does have her moments.  When she decides to dig in her heels about something, the fight is on and I suggest you don’t take bets that she is going to lose when she does this.  She can be quite tenacious when she gets like this.  Yesterday she pulled one of those moments with me, but I know I’m bigger and a hell of a lot more stubborn, so it was a short contest.  I won.  Outside of this one moment the day was awesome.  She was a total delight.
The fun started however in the early afternoon when I told her she could get the hose out in the front yard and pay in the water.  I know have a fairly large mud flat where earlier in the day there had been a nice patch of green grass.  Oh well, it will grow back.  Below is a link to a video on YouTube showing a little of how that happened, and I was fortunate enough to catch one of those moment when a kid does something that makes you lose it.  I mean funny.  So, I hope you watch the video and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the moment and the whole day with this awesome and very funny little girl.

Saturday I was babysitting my eight-year-old granddaughter so my daughter and her feller could go throw axes for her birthday.  Yeah, for those of you who didn’t know it, that’s a thing now.
Savannah and I were having a wonderful afternoon together.  We went to eat then decided to go for a short drive with the top down on the car.  We simply took a right turn instead of a left turn and away we went down these beautiful two-lane backroads.  We weren’t going fast, just enjoying the drive and talking.  It was great, until…
Right in front of us was a car stopped cross ways of the road diagonally.  Over on the right shoulder of the road were two men that appeared to be pulling something from a ditch.  Stopping, I think great, this is a bad accident and I have to keep my granddaughter from seeing something horrible.  I held up my left hand and told her to keep looking at it and no matter what don’t look at anything else.  Of course, as with all children, she asked why.  I told her to simply do as I said.  Turns out I should have told her to put her hands over her little ears.
My first indication this wasn’t what I originally thought it was, was when a white truck had to pull over onto the shoulder of the road and part way into a ditch and went around the black Mitsubishi and went by me with this look of pure outrage.  You see, it wasn’t a wreck but a dumb asshole who must have backed out of his driveway where two men were putting in a brick mailbox and he was giving them hell before going on his merry way.
Yes, by this time I had noticed the moron in the little black Mitsubishi, and he waves at me to do the same thing as that four-wheel drive truck had just done.  Me, in a small sports car, was supposed to put my life, my granddaughter’s life, and my car in this idiot’s hands to accommodate him.
My response was to point at him and then with my left hand pointed back over my shoulder with my thumb for him to move his ass out of the middle of the road.  He did.
He pulled up on me so fast and in such a way to block me and proceeded to call me a dumbass and told me I could have gone around him.  Most of you will understand the term body space.  Well, in this case he had violated mine with his car about as close as you could get.
I understand that maybe some women would have been intimidated by some large baboon three times their size, but I’m not one of them.  Did I feel that my life and more importantly my granddaughter’s life might be in danger?  Yes, and I reacted accordingly.  I started out by calling him an asshole and asked if he saw my granddaughter in the backseat and was he really stupid enough to think that I was going to take a chance on her safety on his gesture then he was totally mistaken.
Then he really started cursing me and that’s when I sort of lost it.  I have had to apologize to my granddaughter numerous times for the things she heard come out of my mouth, but I have to say the asshole didn’t get the last word in.  If I could have come out of my car without climbing up and over the side of the car, this guy was so close I’m still surprised he didn’t scratch my car, I would have.  You might be three times my size, and you might take me down, but I guarantee you that you will feel the hurt.
The thing is, this guy was a bully.  He thought as a woman I would drop my head and go I’m sorry.  Fuck you.  I’ve never run from a fight and even at my age now I’m not about to start doing so.  So, to that asshole in Shelby Forest in the black Mitsubishi, the next time you think you’re some big intimidating man, think again.  Also, you might want to rethink picking on women in general because if I run into you in public, I will embarrass you and I won’t have to resort to the language I used Saturday.  Oh, this might seem a little childish here and honestly it is, but I have to do this.  If I were you, I would go take an anatomy class.  Your brain, what little you might ever had, may have sunk to your ass but mine, like most peoples, is still located in my cranium.

   When you say a company goes out of its way to take care of its customers, clients, or patients there is one place that takes that to the ultimate extreme.
I    have two daughters who work for the same optometry group.  One of them spends a great deal of time on the phone because she has a voice and way of handling people that is put to good use.  Now this seem like a big deal, but it does bring out the fact that I’m a nut case and likely to make a fool of myself.
   Now I’m not the kind of mom who drives her girls crazy at work and try to keep from contacting them at work unless there is a real need.  What follows some may or may not think was a necessary call. but it happened.
The daughter who is really good with people on the phone is also a walking, talking encyclopedia of dog care, food, treats, and pretty much anything you want to know about them.  We have a three-month-old Black lab.  I have been seeing the doctor’s over where my girls work for a while now and I like the doctor I see.  He’s a hoot.  He is also straight up, no holes bared, no sugar coating when it comes to your eyes. Picture set up so far?
   Since my daughter usually calls me regarding anything to do with my eyes and she usually answers the phone I called her the other day about something to do with our new pup.  She answered the phone and as usual I call her by some pet name and proceed to ask her about something I had just bought for our new addition.  The conversation goes as follows.
   “Sweetheart, I just bought such and such for Sophie and now I’m wondering whether or not to give it to her?”
   With slight hesitation she comes back with, “Well, did you read the ingredients on the package?”
   “Yes, I did.  I’m still not sure if it’s a good thing to let her have.”
   “Do you want me to look it up for you?”
   “Would you please sweetie?”
   “Sure, hold on a second.”
   This second turned into a couple of minutes but I’m patient.  Finally, my daughter gets back on the phone.
   “Ma’am, where did you get the treat?”  this is not an unusual way for my daughter to address me when she is at work because she thinks it’s funny.
   "I got it at so-an-so.”
   “Then you should be fine and Ma’am, who am I speaking with?”
   Now this is just taking things way too far in my opinion and I’m not thinking it’s cute.
   “Your mother, who else do you think you’re talking to?”
   At this point my daughter bust out laughing and I’m not getting any happier.
   “Mom, everyone in this office has been trying to figure out about this damn dog treat and what to tell you.  No one knew who you were.”
   “Honey you couldn’t tell it was me when you answered the phone?”
   “Mom, I wasn’t the one who answered the phone.  So-and-so answered and she has been running around everywhere trying to find out anything from anyone she could to help you with this.  They finally said give it to me because I know about these things.  I thought I recognized your voice, but I couldn’t even be sure it was you.”
   “Oh my God.”  At this point I want to crawl under the table but there wasn’t one handy.
   “Look the treat is fine for Sophie.”  Shortly after we hung up and I didn’t hear from my daughter until later that evening when she got off work.  She called.
   “Hello.”
   “Mom, I have to tell you that you gave everyone the biggest laugh today.  Phones were ringing all over the office with everyone talking about you calling about a dog treat.  When I got off the phone with you, I just yelled out it was you and they understood.  We laughed over this one for hours."
   I’m not real sure how I should take that but the next time I carry them treats, I do whenever I can, they may all be dog treats.

   I’ve often been asked where do my stories come from?  It’s funny that a writer friend of mine who is also a horror writer often refers to one of my stories as the scariest thing she ever read.  The name of the story is ‘Hidden Within.’  I never quite understood that until today.
   My husband and I were talking about some renovating a house we own that the subject of a table came up.  It’s an old original Formica and chrome dining set.  In great condition.  It has been in my hubby’s family for a while.  Outside of the fact it doesn’t go with what I want to do in that dinette area, that set has got to go.  This is open for debate, there is compromise, this set is going out the door one way or the other.  If I have to take an as to the damn thing I will.  I hate it.
You might think this has something to do with my decorating style, and actually it does, that doesn’t enter into this.  I hate that table.  Every time I had to sit down to dinner at that table when my mother-in-law hosted a dinner there and we had to sit at that table I cringed.  I did everything in my power to keep my eyes from looking at that instrument of nightmares for me.
   Yes, it is something that reminds me of things I never wanted to think about or revisit.  Today I did.  That table reminds me of my father’s mother and stepfather.  To my knowledge the old man was harmless, but he walked with a limp and used a cane.  I was terrified of that man.  After his death when I was a small child, I had nightmares about him for years.  I was told it broke his heart that I was so afraid of him.  The sound his limp and that cane made would send me into screaming, crying fits every time I heard him coming through the house.
   How bad was that fear?  When I was in my thirties, I was having lunch with some friends from work and suddenly from behind me I heard that same sound.  I went white as a sheet evidently, tears began to roll down my cheeks, I started shaking, and I had to fight off the almost overpowering urge to crawl under the table we were sitting at and hiding.  It scared the crap out of the friends I was sitting with and they thought they were going to have to get me to a hospital.
   Yes, it was a man with a limp and a cane; he never had a clue the effect he had on me that day.  Can I tell you that I feel like an ass for responding to that man the way I did?  It wasn’t something he caused but that fear wasn’t something I caused.  This is a memory that goes back to when I was no more than six or seven months old.  The poor man died when I was about two and evidently, I never got past that with him.
I was small enough to crawl up under the chair my mom was sitting in and grabbing her leg and holding on for dear life.  I think she finally was able to pull me out from under the chair and get me to go to the man, but she didn’t have any luck with that.
   The other part of the story was that my father’s mother was sitting at that table when the strongest of those memories come flooding back in on me.  That woman I wasn’t just afraid of, I hated her.  To this day I can not and will not refer to her as anything other than my father’s mother.  She hated me too.  She didn’t die until I was about five and the few memories, I have of her are of her being mean and spiteful to me.  Actually, it was so bad that my mom and dad did everything they could to keep me away from her and never left me alone with her.  She loved my brother, treated them great, but me, that was a whole different ball game.
  So yes, I hate that table.  I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with the monsters hidden within I’m about to tell you.
  Children, like adults, are capable of hating but at early ages we aren’t able mentally or emotionally understand that emotion, especially when it is that strong.  I think it also damages out ids.  For those of you who might not know what that is a part of our psyche residing in our subconscious where our instincts and impulses reside.  We all have one and from that little part of our psyche we can and will create our monsters.  I think that is why that story scares her.  Somewhere inside her she understands what that story portrays.  The monsters inside of ourselves.  Don’t think you do?  I tell you what, the next time someone really makes you angry stop and think about what is going through your head at that moment.  I promise you it won’t be sunshine and roses.
  So where do my stories come from?  From that dark corner of my psyche that I keep hidden from the world.  You know, hidden within.