Facebook Page now Live

Due to the number of people asking about my blog or Facebook or contact information at the Tiny House Jamboree, I've created a Facebook page the public can follow and use to contact me. Apparantly, I should have business cards with this information. Lesson learned.

Travel Frames from Texas to Colorado

70mph Scenic Frame - B&W - Samsung Galaxy s6

70mph Scenic Frame - Color - Samsung Galaxy s6

Coal Train & Wind Power - Color - Samsung Galaxy s6

Freedom School - B&W - Samsung Galaxy s6

Freedom School & Storm - Color - Samsung Galaxy s6

Road Construction - B&W - Samsung Galaxy s6

Road Construction - Color - Samsung Galaxy s6

Ranch and Storm Front - BW - Samsung Galaxy s6

#2 Postcard - Modern Magic

Tyrone’s sister watched shocked as he slipped into their boss’s office towards the gated computer. Getting through the password guards was a matter of understanding resources, standard company IT password protocols (word length, caps, numbers and special characters) and his boss’s phobic forgetfulness.  Shaking the mouse bared a screen image of orange and black butterflies. Easy. “Manoarch100.” 

Tyrone opened Outlook for the second shield. Chewing his lip, he spotted an old email queued to the top. The subject: “Town on Friday. 2 nights stay. Back on Friday?" I know this one. “Fr1day1sH0rse!” 

Skin tight, Tyrone searched the emails for proof. The file labeled “Originals” was sealed with a bizarre riddle. Tyrone blanked. As a professional journalist, he knew writers would always find help with an O.W.L. (the Online Writing Lab). Tyrone opened a chat and typed, “What's the shortest sentence in the Eng lang?”

“Go.” pinged back. 

Tyrone entered capital ‘g’, zero, period. His original email with the attached article, “Magic Mirrors – Revealing True Selves,” and a headshot of himself in drag was the latest in a host of pirated articles. Determined, Tyrone composed an email to the editor and attached the file as the door thrust open.

“Move away and your sister goes free.”

"It's done.”

“Doesn’t matter. I won't get fired for one article. But you will.”

"Will they for 28?"

~JRogers

7.27.2016

***

Prompt from Fairytale Plot Generator on Springhole.net:

"The story is about a brave queen who must defeat a tyrant, find a magic mirror and solve 3 riddles to save the kingdom. Things are complicated by the villain kidnapping the main character’s sister. Assistance comes in the form of a magic owl.”

This prompt made me question my ability to write anything on an adult level. Then I remembered the fairy tale writers I enjoy now are Jasper Fforde of the Thursday Next series and Seanan McGuire of Indexing series. These authors and others like them take literary/fairy tale tropes and turn them into something excitingly new. Using some tips from Miss Literati's blog Write, Share & Shine!, I took a stroke at modern day fairy tale writing. 

Miss Literati's first suggestion is to bring the fairy tale into the modern world which meant I had to change the way I defined things in the prompt.

"brave queen" = "Drag Queen"

"tyrant" and "villain" = "boss"

"magic mirror" = "reflection of true self"

"magic owl" = "O.W.L. (Online Writing Lab)"

Word Count: 219

#1 Postcard - Unnecessary Reminder

Starting in the early hours of high school days, Mom grouched into her coffee while I awoke with a smile. I'd check my math homework or practice a piano tune, waiting for her brain to hum along. Why not start the day smiling? Like I told her, nothing bad has happened yet.

Today I rolled to the edge of the bed opening Facebook notification on my phone. My mother turned 53. Would I like to wish her Happy Birthday? Scripted platitudes fanned her wall.

The stunted glazed urn next to the bed held my mother’s ashes.  I do not want your thoughts and prayers; our grief is not the same. Why won’t you all leave me alone? I curled fetal into the sheets and tasted the sea on my pillow. 

~JRogers 

7.26.2016

***

Once I decided on the project for my 72 postcards, I blanked on what to write. I have books which suggest different writing prompts, but they were at home and I was eager to start NOW! Instead, I turned to Google for writing prompt generators and found page after page of suggestions.

The first Writing Prompt Generator came from Adam Maxwell's Fiction Lounge. The generator kicked out: "I was sad to see in the phonebook that he still existed."

I had trouble with this prompt because a) phonebook, who uses that today? b) I can't relate to being sad that someone is still alive. So I changed it around to: "I was sad to see on Facebook that he/she had died." That I could write about.

Since I'm doing this postcard fiction challenge, I thought it would help me to sample some of the advice the internet offered. Here's one I enjoyed: Stories in Your Pocket: How to Write Flash Fiction - the author described postcard fiction as "stories that took less time to read than to suppress a sneeze."

After I finished writing the rough story about grief, I realized I had an outline. Not a story. I turned back to the internet for more advice and found Writer's Digest "Writing Effective Grief in Fiction."

1. Make the reader care. "Help the reader get to know the character before you rip their hearts apart." => Provide some background to the mother/daughter relationship.
2. Grief has conflict because those grieving desire isolation and often can't get it. => Use Facebook notice to break the isolation and provide a grief trigger.
3. Additional conflict arises when grieving occurs at the worst possible times or places.
4. The story doesn't need to end when the character stops grieving.

Word Count: 131

72 Postcards Project

Postcard Fiction or short fiction are known for their extreme brevity. One would think short fiction was a self explanatory term. However, there are many different categories of short fiction based on word count, though these labels are arbitrary. Here's a rough cataloging:

Sudden Fiction, 1500 word
Flash Fiction, 1000 word
Micro Fiction, 300 word
Drabble, 100 words
Nanofiction, 55 words
Twitterature (Twitter Fiction), 140 characters, about 23 words

In the 1970s, a science fiction magazine editor, George Hay, presented a challenge to Arthur C. Clarke to write a short story that fit on a postcard, a micro fiction approximately 250 to 300 words long. The result was Arthur C. Clarke's micro fiction "Quarantine" which is 188 words. 

It just so happens that in the course of minimizing my life by slowly dismantling my scrapbooks and digitizing the contents, I am now left with 72 postcards from a 1998 trip to England. They are perfectly good postcards and I could use them to write notes to friends and family but it feels weird to send a UK postcard from within the US. 

I've decided to assign myself  the 72 Postcards Project and write microfictions to mail out into the world. I'll also publish the Postcard Fictions on the SummerTroll blog. 

Can a Fat Girl Climb?

Yes, I can!

I've been interested in indoor rock climbing since my best friend took it up a few years ago but the idea of strapping my significant weight into a harness and trusting someone not to let me plummet is a deter for me.

A month ago I discovered through mutual friends a different kind of rock climbing called 'bouldering' which does not use a harness or belay system. This was something I was willing to try if the opportunity ever arose.

You may be scratching your head as to why I would be more willing to try something that might be less safe. It's all about the illusion of control. The harness and belay puts the control in the hands of the person on the ground, or so my brain argues. Whereas, I'm in complete control of the climb in bouldering. I know it doesn't make sense but my brain believes it.

Opportunity arose two weeks later with a $5 coupon (including shoe rental) for a Friday evening climb at the Summit Climbing indoor facility. I was committed and antsy.

Could a fat girl like me actually climb? Naturally, I started to research and found a piddling of articles.

• Fat Girl's Guide to Indoor Rock Climbing - The best of the bunch but not really a "guide".
• No Excuses: Two Heavy Climbers Who Crushed - About male climbers.
• Do I Weigh Too Much to Go Rock Climbing? - Has some good advice.

These didn't help with my anxiety because everything I read said the same things whether for a fat person or an athlete.

1. Stay as close to the wall as possible.
2. Push up with your legs.
3. The shoes are supposed to be snug and uncomfortable....

I was disappointed that there were no pictures of the climbers or acknowledgments of weight/size/height because I know there are different categories of corpulent figures which may or may not affect the successful of a climb. 

Though I have insecurities about confessing my size (and feel the need to defend myself by saying that I am working on losing the excess weight slowly having lost 2 pant sizes since January), I hope the information below will benefit anyone else who goes looking for information. 

I am currently a size 22 (Lane Bryant Short Pants), 5 foot 4 inches tall, I'm guessing about 250 lbs and I climbed a wall. My goal was to just get off the ground and on the wall. I think that's a good beginner goal to have and it's surprisingly hard to do. With some trial and error I figured out what works best for me. My highest climb was 3 handhold and 2 footholds before I fell off and bounced. 

Lessons Learned:

1. Look for the wall that is 0 degree or as close to vertical as you can find because gravity is a bitch who is going to be pulling hard on your butt. I actually started off on a slight overhang, about 20 degree angle, and was only successful in pulling myself up on to the wall two times before gravity yanked me off as I reached for another handhold.
2. Make sure you stick to the easy paths as mapped out - "V0" or "VB"
3. The average beginner who has been through orientation or with experienced friends will try to start by grabbing the first handhold with both hands and hang down, thus putting all their weight on their shoulders. Then you are supposed to maneuver your feet onto the footholds and push up with your legs while balancing with your arms. I was having significant trouble doing this. Finally, my friends and I decided that the position was putting too much weight on my shoulders.

   

   All the weight on my shoulders and hanging so low to the ground made it difficult to push up onto the wall.

   Instead of using the lowest handhold, I secured myself to the wall using the two higher handholds that were a little more than shoulder width apart. This helped because it evenly distributed my weight and I was not hanging quite so low to the ground. 
4. The boobs, the belly, and the thighs will get in the way. Embrace it. When you are trying to reach for the next handhold or foothold, these things will physically block you and visually block you. You will want to push away from the wall so you can look down to see why your foot hasn't found the next foothold. You will also need to push away from the wall so your boobs or belly doesn't catch on the wall holds. Then the bitch gravity starts pulling on you hard. (Lesson 5 will help combat these issues.)
5. Plot out your climb and take it step by step, hand by hand. When you fall off, don't give up. Sit down with your friends or other beginners and talk about what to do. If you try something that doesn't work, try something else. For instance, I was trying to step up on the left foothold which is actually higher than the right one but my belly was visually blocking me and I would miss it. After sitting down, I noticed that the right foothold was lower and decided to try that foothold first, push up with my right thigh and then lift up my left leg onto the left foothold. This worked and then I fell while trying to reach the next handhold. Sit back and repeat.
6. When you're tired take a break and when your hands hurt, you might need to stop.

Indoor rock climbing is surprisingly low-key, socially engaging activity. I felt no pressure to perform at a certain level and no shame in bowing out sooner than my more active counterparts. Though I was no longer approaching the climbing wall, I was still welcome to sit with my friends and discuss climbing techniques or observe climb paths and movements. You don't have to be climbing to continue to engage in the activity. These factors will entice me to go climbing again and the climbing will motivate me to increase my strength and flexibility workouts.  

IKEA & Tiny Houses...

IKEA  FRIHETEN sleeper sofa
in my tiny house

In a pique of boredom last Thursday, I posted a random question on DFW Tiny House Enthusiasts: "Does anyone like to go to the IKEA showroom to wander and get ideas?" The comments exploded across Facebook like I'd popped open a can of robustly shaken soda.

Roaming the showroom of IKEA is one of my favorite solo adventures. I go to be inspired, test new ideas, and see practical applications at work. Much of the furniture in my tiny house is from IKEA. Even though I don't need anything else, I still like to peruse the showroom and I was gleeful to find that others shared a similar interests. Though, my eyes popped in shocked that there were people in the #tinyhousetribe who had never been there before.

That's all about to change because the reigning king of IKEA, Cory Hagen of TinyModernHomes.com, will lead the charge and introduce those untutored commoners (and fellow amateur aristocrats) to the wonders of IKEA products. This is, of course, after the Tiny House Jamboree if we all still have legs to charge forth.

But why IKEA? It was clear from the comments section that many of the #tinyhousetribe were enthusiastic with the idea. Every tiny houses I have personally toured has featured IKEA products or IKEA inspired products. The use of IKEA furniture and products in tiny houses is due to several factors:

1. It's versatile.Just because they advertise a product for the kitchen, doesn't mean it can't be used in the bedroom, bathroom or living room. Also, many of the styles are streamlined, so it provides cohesion of design when compiling similar products that perform a variety of different room functions (i.e. bedroom, kitchen, bathroom) in a studio like space.
2. It's relatively affordable, depending on what your budget is. I also find it to be a good quality product for its pricing.
3. It's malleable, a.k.a. you can 'hack' it. IKEA hacks are quite popular because the products are relatively easy to modify and repurpose for your own personal needs, designs and styles. 

My favorite site for IKEA hacks is IKEAHackers.net. There's a lot available on the site and when I first found it, I scrolled through the gallery of ideas. However, if you searching for a specific solution for your tiny house... like hanging clothes without using a closet. I typed in "clothes" for the search and got several results. My favorites were using the EKBY ROBERT bracket and the SKUGGIG curtain rod to create space for hanging clothes. 

EKBY ROBERT bracket
from IKEAHackers.net 

SKUGGIG curtain rod
from IKEAHackers.net

The ideas seem endless and somewhat overwhelming if this is a first time exploration. To ease into the idea of IKEA products and their versatility in small spaces, I suggest the site  About Small Spaces which consistently utilizes IKEA products, ideas and hacks for small space design and storage. Below are a list of their 5 most popular IKEA ideas articles with great accompanying pictures and links to tutorials should you decide to tackle the project.

• 5 Ingenious IKEA Furniture Hacks that Save Major Space
• 23 Ingenious IKEA Billy Bookcase Hacks (see slide 16 for cat jungle gym and slide 18 for a Murphy bed that rocks!)
• 9 Tidy and Stylish Storage Hacks Using IKEA Shoe Cabinets (I like slide 5.)
• IKEA Storage Hacks and Ideas for Small Bedrooms
• 13 Easy IKEA Hacks You Can DIY in a Weekend (or Less)

These are just the top suggestions that come up. For a complete listing of About Small Spaces' IKEA articles, I stole Jet Regan's search method. (All credit goes to her!) Go to the Google search bar and type the below in exactly.

site:smallspaces.about.com "ikea"

Voila!

I'll be curious to see what my fellow Enthusiasts come up with as we follow our reigning king through the IKEA showrooms. For more ideas about IKEA product ideas and hacks, Pinterest and YouTube are two other places worth checking out.