This week’s episode of LOVING THE STRANGE is all about the things we do for luck:
Carrie has all these rituals on New Year’s Eve:
Eat Hopping John
Eat 12 grapes at midnight in a minute or less.
Kiss someone you love or can tolerate.
Smashing the peppermint pig.
Wear yellow underwear for good fortune.
Burn our wishes the night before.
No cleaning on New Year’s Day.
Carrie: My Portuguese grandmother would throw water out the window and sprinkle sugar outside. I don’t really do that anymore. I probably should.
Dee Harris wrote in that she was always told not to wash clothes on New Year’s Day because you’d wash away your good luck, so all her laundry is done by 10 p.m. on Dec. 31.
We also talked about where some of our superstitions come from—especially Padiddle—and how to attract good luck.
According to bakadesuyo to attract good luck,
Listen to hunches
Turn bad luck into good
Expect it
Maximize your opportunities.
We also talked about:
Knock on wood
Throw salt over my shoulder
Lucky pennies
Oh, and what’s a padiddle? Apparently it originated as a kissing game, but in our family when we’re in the car and we see a car with one headlight, yell “piddle” and punch the ceiling.
We are who we are and we choose how we live and how are lives work out. That is the bottom line really
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun Farrar
Do you believe in luck? Do you believe in karma? Do you believe that bigfoot is really an alien being in a less than carefully chosen disguise?
Well, if you have an interest in any of these topics, you should start listening to Loving The Strange, a live podcast that Carrie and I do every Friday evening at 7 o’clock Eastern Standard Time. We love doing it and if you listen, we hope that you will love it as well!
Luck, what is it? Is it a predetermined experience that is so wonderfully timed or fortuitous that we think that it can’t possibly be natural and therefore must be attributed to some supernatural force that has blessed us in a timely fashion? Is it something that we bring about ourselves due to how we think and how we act in our daily lives? Is it sheer coincidence of an occurrence during a time when we are so down that almost anything with a positive lean seems impossible?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, and I am not going to bother researching the philosophical definitions or musings of luck. I don’t really need to for the purposes of this blog because, in my worthless opinion, we are all lucky. Luck is not a singular or a repetitive happening in our life, it is our life.
We are ALL lucky!
We are lucky to be here.
We are lucky to be who we are and exactly how we are born.
I know that some of us were born with seemingly everything against us. I also know that some of those people have made the very best of their lives and have complimented other people’s lives with abundant positivity during their life, even if it was extremely short or extremely hampered by some obstacle of physical or mental acuity. We are who we are and we choose how we live and how are lives work out. That is the bottom line really.
Tragedy of the greatest kind has befallen many and they have dealt with it and decided to turn it into a positive moment or opportunity. There really are no excuses, we are all human and we all choose to deal and spread love and kindness or we choose to wilt and die off. Choose to spread love and kindness people! Choose to be somebody else’s good luck! Choose to take a chance that any random kind act that you perform can be somebody else’s good luck for the day!
Peace people and remember to always Love Your Way through It!
Shaun
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
But, you know what? Prior to COVID, and I am sure that it will be the same after, there were millions of people whose everyday existence was not far off from what mainstream society has been so truly shaken by this past year. Remember this!
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s.
An adorable Florida man who moved to Maine
Some days are not like the others. Some days are days you never really thought that you would have to live out. Carrie and I got our first round of COVID vaccination today and I don’t think that we are going to post about it on social media, we are just not that kind of people.
Getting the vaccine is exciting in a way, but mostly just having a sense of security that if we do get COVID, you know ten or more days after our second dose, that it may not be that bad and most likely won’t kill us.
However, I must say that it was really a great experience and the hospital running the setup at the Cross Insurance Arena in Bangor, Maine really has it down. We were there a total of 45 minutes and 15 of that was waiting for the doors to open because we were the first appointments of the day. So, a big shout out to all of those professionals and volunteers making that happen!
Basically we had a good morning. Then this afternoon we had to go see our tax man.
Bummer dude!
I think this particular visit fits under both categories, days not like the others and days you never really thought that you would have to live out. I shall say no more other than we are fine and really, we are truly lucky that we owe Uncle Sam so much money. We are lucky that we are not having to choose between food or rent this month. We are lucky that we have friends to talk to on Zoom meetings once or twice a week. We are lucky to have another human being in our house to say, “thank you, I appreciate you and I love you” to us and for us to say the same to them!
It has been a very strange year and hopefully we are coming up on an incredible turning point.
People need a break! People need to work, go to school, get out of the house, travel and just be able to socialize like before COVID.
But, you know what? Prior to COVID, and I am sure that it will be the same after, there were millions of people whose everyday existence was not far off from what mainstream society has been so truly shaken by this past year. Remember this!
Remember that there are people who need you to say hi and smile at them for no reason.
There are people who need to socialize and have friends.
There are people who need to feel loved.
I truly believe that if every single person would take the opportunity to say hello and say one thing nice to a stranger every day, the world would be a much better place!
Not only do such actions make the receiver feel better, they most definitely help the giver feel better as well. I challenge you to try this every time that you are out in public or have contact with someone whom you do not see on a daily basis for a week, or a month if you don’t get out much, and see how much of a difference you can make.
Thank you for reading my feel good post, which I really do believe in, and I hope you will give it a go.
As always, Love Your Way Through It!
Shaun
almost dead book by carrie jones
HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON
On one of my Patreon sites I read and print chapters of unpublished YA novels. THE LAST GODS and SAINT and now ALMOST DEAD. This is a monthly membership site (Hear the book chapters – $1/month, read them $3-month, plus goodies!). Sometimes I send people art! Art is fun.
On this, my second site, WRITE BETTER NOW, you can do a one-time purchase of a writing class or get two of my books in eBook form or just support our podcast or the dogs. It’s all part of the WRITING CLASS OF AWESOME.
It’s a super fun place to hang out, learn, read, and see my weirdness in its true form.
This post about Friday Writing Life is basically about me almost dying thanks to the devil and an ankle brace.
I go through most of my life feeling pretty lucky. I have a place to live. I have food. I’m not under constant threat of violence. That’s all pretty sweet and it hasn’t always been that way for me.
And part of the way that it’s happened is that I just keep working and doing and going after things, but not in a despot way, but in an “Everyone let’s make this world better together!” kind of way.
Part of determining what you’re passionate about is asking yourself if you’d do what you’re doing even if you made no money at all. For me, being a writer, is just something I do. I can’t imagine not doing it. And I feel lucky and blessed that I get to do it for a living and also help other people do it, too.
I like that so freaking much.
I like it when I get to witness other people shine.
And it impacts me way too much when they suffer, or make mistakes, and recently a scam call made such a horrible mistake that I thought I’d share it with you.
This week, I got this phone call from “headquarters” about how I had “four complaints against me” and the “local cops” would come get me unless I called a specific number back in 24 hours.
And here’s the thing – people in positions of power who are threatening you with jail time for ‘four complaints,’ don’t call the local authorities, ‘cops.’ They call them police. Or law enforcement. But not ‘cops.’ Word choice matters. That’s your writing lesson of the post.
But….
The call made me think of the other interesting and randomly threatening phone calls that have happened in my life. I think my favorite ones are where I am threatened not by ‘local cops,’ but by the actual devil himself. Because honestly? If you’re going to get threatened why not by the ultimate in evil, am I right?
Or just a devil duck?
So, anyway, those of you who are my friends on Facebook heard how I got this crank call on another Monday night awhile ago.
That time, the caller said, “Prepare to die, Satan claims you, Carrie.”
And I was all, “Hm. Wait! Can you not hang up so quickly, creepy-voiced man, because I would like to try to discuss this and maybe argue Satan out of it!”
But he hung up.
Apparently, Satan does not like to argue with random children’s book writers? Who knew?
And I was all, “Man, that was so creepy it was kind of funny.”
This is pretty much my response to everything creepy. Floating apparition? I laugh. Possible UFO? I laugh. Weird man running away after ringing my doorbell? Hold on, while I giggle. It’s sort of my defense mechanism for all bad things; I fight them with humor. It’s either that or screaming and screaming hurts your throat if you do it for too long.
I have other defense mechanisms. These are called dogs.
So, for the whole night I was basically all, “Dogs. Come Velcro yourselves to my sides.”
Gabby’s normal expression when she’s not barking
Gabby: Carrie, we are always Velcroed to your sides. Geesh. *shakes doggy head*
And then because I had no attention span I kind of forgot about the call from the devil because I was busy writing and living and writing more.
But two days later, I almost died.
Really.
I was driving to this cool conference of librarians in Maine and I was on the turnpike and wearing the ankle brace from hell. That point of origin is just like the devil I guess, although originally he was from heaven.
The brace, which was on my left foot, suddenly flopped onto the brake. Now, basically the ankle brace from hell was so heavy and thick I could stand on a puppy and not notice. So, when the car lurched and lost 40 mph (like I was going 70 and then was going 30) JUST AS I WAS PASSING A LOGGING TRUCK (because – Maine), and the car’s tires made this weird noise AND the car behind me wiggled all around to avoid the collision (Nice Driving, Mr. Car Driving Guy, btw), I realized that something was going on.
Fortunately, the brace was not on a poor little puppy.
Unfortunately, it was on my brake.
This is a brace about 1/4 the size of my monster.
And I yelled, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” because obviously all the Friday nights that the Albertsons brought me to Pioneer Girls at Calvary Baptist Church in New Hampshire had conditioned me more than I realized. They were trying so hard to save my first-grade self’s soul. Apparently, Satan thought they failed.
Anyways, I moved the brace and kept going and then got to Augusta (where the conference was) and totally cried. I mean, I sobbed.
Seriously. I was a total wuss because:
1. I did not want that crank caller to be right.
2. I did not want to die because of my stupid ankle brace from hell.
3. I almost got the people in the car behind me hurt, too, and that’s something I couldn’t have lived with.
So, yeah. If you feel like someone is about to crank you and tell you that you’re about to die and that the devil has claimed your soul: DO NOT PICK UP THE PHONE!
That’s my brilliant life lesson here. Don’t pick up the phone if the devil is calling, or even if you just think it’s a scam caller who is going to send the ‘local cops’ after you. Life is too short to have the evil beside you or in front of you or blabbering on into your ear. Put it behind you where it belongs.
WRITING NEWS AND APPEARANCES AND STUFF:
Okay. I hope you don’t mind me sharing this, but I earned out my picture book biography of Sara Emma Edmonds!!!!
This is such a huge thing for me that I can’t begin to tell you how cool it feels especially since it’s with this picture book. Sara was this cool woman who dressed like a man so she could fight in the U.S. Civil War, but then her superiors asked her to dress like a woman and spy on the other side. So, she was a woman dressed like a man dressed like a woman and taking names the entire time. So amazing. Thank you so much to everyone who bought it!
THE CLASS AT THE WRITING BARN
The awesome 6-month-long Writing Barn class that they’ve let me be in charge of!? It’s happening again in July. Write! Submit! Support!is a pretty awesome class. It’s a bit like a mini MFA but way more supportive and way less money.
PRAISE FOR CARRIE JONES AND WRITE. SUBMIT. SUPPORT:
“Carrie has the fantastic gift as a mentor to give you honest feedback on what needs work in your manuscript without making you question your ability as a writer. She goes through the strengths and weaknesses of your submissions with thought, care and encouragement.”
I swear, I did not pay anyone to say that. I didn’t even ask them to say it. The Writing Barn just told me that the feedback had intensely kind things like that.
FLYING AND ENHANCED – THE YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION SERIES
These books are out there in the world thanks to Tor.
What books? Well, cross Buffy with Men in Black and you get… you get a friends-powered action adventure based in the real world, but with a science fiction twist. More about it is here. But these are fun, fast books that are about identity, being a hero, and saying to heck with being defined by other people’s expectations.
This quick, lighthearted romp is a perfect choice for readers who like their romance served with a side of alien butt-kicking action–School Library Journal
Flying
TIME STOPPERS THE MIDDLE GRADE SERIES OF AWESOME
Time Stoppers’s third book comes out this summer. It’s been called a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, but with heart. It takes place in Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. I need to think of awesome ways to promote it because this little book series is the book series of my own middle grade heart. Plus, I wrote it for the Emster. Plus, it is fun.
Time Stoppers Front and Back Covers – US versions
Time Stoppers
Time Stopper Series
Dogs Are Smarter Than People – the podcast.
Shaun and I are total dorks in really different ways. You can tell when you listen to the podcasts, which come out every Tuesday.
We give writing tips, life tips, random thoughts. Occasionally, the dogs bark. Thank you so much to the thousands of people who have listened already. You guys are really amazing and our minds are basically blown by all of your support.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
