I've been included in a Minnesota anthology "Under Purple Skies", now available on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Best Lookin’ Guy at Walmart

If you know me, and frankly, it certainly seems like you do, then you might suspect that I have opinions. Go ahead: give me a subject! I’ll bet I have an opinion on it – and if I don’t, I’ll bet I can make one up, right here on the spot.

I mention that so that I can mention this: I don’t like Walmart.

And I mentioned that so that I could mention this: Willie and I got a $50 Walmart gift card from his mother for Christmas.

I dislike Walmart. Cheaply made stuff; low wages; multiple lawsuits, both decided and pending, seeking to enforce, oh, the laws in the U.S. regarding overtime and benefits; the futile efforts of small towns to keep the Walmarts out in order to save their family-run businesses and keep their downtowns alive – those kinds of things get to me.

Hey! If you don’t like it, don’t go there/work there, right?

But then we got a $50 gift card.

Oh, sure. I could’ve bought $50 worth of toothpaste or something. But honestly, our house was built in 1904 – which means that we have no closet space. Where would I stockpile these sorts of things? On the porch?

But what we bought is not important.

What size I am in clothing made by tiny, tiny women in Southeast Asia is not important, either.

What’s important – and we’ve quite enjoyed this, Willie and I! – is that Willie was the best-looking man in that store.

What does it take to be the best-looking guy at a Walmart? Well, all your own teeth, to start with. Willie’s got that. He also does not appear to be in the third trimester of a pregnancy; he doesn’t wearing saggy old sweatpants; nor does he holler from one end of the store to the other, as one man did, that the “shit paper’s over here!”.

That's all it takes.

I’m one a lucky woman, people. 2009 is absolutely brimming with possibilities.

Hands off, ladies! I got me the best-looking man at Walmart!