Local Author Must Be Crazy; Offers Wacky BOGO Offer!!

Seasons Greetings!

I'm writing to announce that, through Dec. 10, I'll be offering a 2-for-1 special my book, "LIFE and Other Bad Habits." This lively little book is a great stocking stuffer and fits neatly into any carry-on luggage!!


To read more about "LIFE," click here.

Any order placed by Dec. 10 will be shipped by Dec. 17, in time for Christmas! If you're running a little late, that's cool! Just drop me a line saying the check is in the mail and I'll get your order processed!

The book retails for $19.95.
Please add $3 per book for shipping - $6 total for the two books - for a total charge of $25.95 per order.

Send your check or money order in the amount of $25.95 per order to:
Lee B. Weaver
1569 Mesquite Street
Wichita Falls, Texas 76302

Thanks! And have a wonderful Christmas!!

Lee

THERE’S QUITTING WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD. THERE’S EVEN QUITTING WHILE YOU’RE BEHIND. AND THEN THERE’S MIKE, REFUSING TO QUIT, EVEN WHEN HE’S PERMANENTLY, HOPELESSLY BEHIND. FOREVER.

The thread below is copied from my Facebook page.

It began with me re-posting a campaign button-style picture of a Republican elephant with “GOP Health Care Plan?” written above it and “Don’t Get Sick!” written below it.

I added a comment to the picture, saying “I thought it was, “We hope you die.”

Pretty typical Lee B. Weaver stuff.  What followed was the absolute perfect example of why I enacted my current zero-tolerance policy for trolls, kooks and liars on my page.  I’ve copied the entire thread below – deleting last names and a couple of non-essential remarks.

JUST TO CLARIFY MY FACEBOOK 'FREE SPEECH' ANNOUNCEMENT...

My announcement yesterday that my Facebook page would no longer be a free speech zone has created some unintended confusion.  This should have come as no surprise to me, since basically everything about my Facebook-based free speech experiment has been just one disappointing, confusing surprise after another.

I truly had no idea there were so many ignorant, hateful, deluded people out there, people without an ounce of self-doubt, people wholly lacking in critical-thinking skills, people whose every action is motivated by emotion, self-aggrandizement and grotesque rationalization.

Possessions Lost, Possessions Found

I just spent the last half hour taking a tour of my house.

Perhaps ‘tour’ isn’t the right word.  It was more of an inventory.  And I gotta say, I was surprised at the results.

Tasked by my good friend and loyal reader, Staci, to write about “a physical possession that you would be heartbroken to lose,” I set about identifying the thing or things that, if lost, would break my heart.  I browsed through book shelves and stared at pictures on the wall.  I dug through desk and dresser drawers and opened every closet door in the house.

After a while, I felt like a stranger in my own home, as I transitioned from ‘resident’ to ‘explorer.’  It was odd to regard, as if for the first time, the hundreds of wall hangings and photo albums and trophies and refrigerator art and souvenirs and report cards and scraps and relics and endless evidence of the lives being lived inside these walls.

I spent a minute – okay, several minutes – considering my vinyl record collection.  It’s not huge, maybe 150 albums, but almost all of them have an individual and special meaning to me.  I would hate to lose any of them.  But the fact is, I have lost a few of them over the years, most recently when Bruce the Beagle made off with a 30-year-old Stevie Wonder album in his teeth, irreparably gouging more than half the tracks on each side.  At the moment it happened, I thought I would, literally, throw up.  But, the loss of the vintage record prompted me to go on iTunes in search of its digital analog and, thirty minutes later, I’d not only replaced the Stevie Wonder album, but had found an Otis Redding collection I’d also been looking for.  Score!

Last year, a software-removal task inadvertently deleted several gigs of photos and videos from my laptop.  Again, nausea.  But, again, it passed.

Truth is, I’ve suffered through many material losses and many of them were painful, perhaps even heartbreaking – at the time.  But passing time takes care of hard times.

My tour also took me into the kids’ rooms.  And while I encountered countless possessions of theirs I’d happily lose – candy wrappers, ancient dishes, organic substances of unknown origin – I also noted the many toys and artifacts and doodads they cling to for god-only-knows what reasons.  Their shelves and nightstands and dressers were lined with tiny collectible football helmets, rocks they found on vacation, plastic jewelry, journals and, literally, thousands of pieces of their nonstop lives.  Losing any of these seemingly trivial items would be a crushing experience, an experience that I would share with them.  They would recover from it, perhaps even forget about it entirely, but it’s not so easy for the parent.

I don’t mean to suggest that I would carry the loss of my daughter’s Silly Bandz with me to the grave, but it’s a different kind of suffering to see your child unhappy.   Part of me (kind of) cheers these experiences, for they are an important part of growing up.  But they are more likely to leave a tiny, but permanent, scar on the parent than on the child.

So, Staci, to answer your question, I don’t think I have a single possession that the loss of which would break my heart; I have a thousand, perhaps thousands, that would leave a temporary mark.

And I have four irreplaceable possessions – their names are Margaret, Mary, Harper and Jack – whose losses, large and small, are the kinds that stick with me forever.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

[Our idiot dog, Bob the Beagle, escaped from the yard – again – last night and enjoyed a 2-hour romp around the neighborhood.  I passed the time driving 5 mph down every street in southeast Wichita Falls, while the kids alternated between panicked worry and television watching.

Eventually, Bob returned on his own, no doubt motivated by the fact that he was freezing his nuts (or what passes for nuts when you’ve been neutered) off.

Anyway, it reminded me of this story I wrote about seven years ago, just a few weeks before we got Bob.  I was right then – and I’m right now.]

Barking Up The Wrong Tree 

My kids want a dog.

They want a dog.  They want a dog.  Ohmigod, they want a dog.

They want this dog.  They want that dog.  They want your dog.

They pray for dogs.  Wish all day for dogs.  They dream of dogs.  They scheme for dogs.

Sorry, kids.  You can’t have a dog.

That’s right.  They can’t have a dog.  They just can’t.  There are a number of reasons why they can’t have a dog, several of which are even true.  But mostly they can’t have a dog because I don’t want a dog.

STAYING ALIVE. SORT OF.

I just looked up my life expectancy on the Internet.  I have no idea why I do stupid things like that.

Granted, this was the first time I’d done this particular stupid thing – and don’t ask me why I chose today to do it.  Call it actuarial curiosity and leave it at that.

Bear in mind that this was life expectancy for a male at my current age, not life expectancy from birth. And don't think for a second that's a distinction without a difference.

First of all, a newborn is neither interested in, nor capable of, ascertaining how much longer he or she has to live – which, by the way, is 74.8 years (that’s 74 years, 302 days, if you’re not fluent in decimalspeak), according to the actuarial web site, annuityadvantage.com.

And, in the unlikely event that the little baby in question could wrap his little brain around that number, he or she would probably just raise one little eyebrow in recognition that 74.8 years is more or less in keeping with the biblically promised "three score and 10" years.

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." – Psalms 90.

And when you've yet to stare down your first birthday cake, gray hair or ex-wife, 74.8 years must seem like more than time enough to touch all the bases in that baseball game we call life.

The Ballad of the Sideways P-Trap or How To Turn A Minor Leak Into A Flooded Hallway In 75 Easy Steps

(sing to the tune of the "Gilligan's Island" theme song.)

Oh, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip.

That started when my bathroom sink

Acquired a hateful drip.

SHADES OF GRAY – AND PINK --- By Lee B. Weaver

There was a time in my life when waking up to find my hair was pink would have been unthinkable.

(Of course, there was a time before that when waking up to find my hair was pink, or plaid, or gone was not only thinkable, it was right there on the short list of possible outcomes from any given night before.)

(I guess what I’m talking about here is a certain time between that long-ago era of random youthful recklessness and my current era of sober thoughtful maturity.)

(Oh, the hell with it. I’m getting nowhere with this angle. Let’s try it again from the top.)

I woke up the other day and my hair was pink.

Not all of it. Just the portion above my right ear, which for the last several years has been various shades of gray.

Oh, and my right ear. It was pink, too.