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humor

Queen For A Day

November 16, 2016 By Barbara 1 Comment

With all the depressing, angry news lately, I thought I’d share a little light-hearted story for your enjoyment. Happy Wednesday! Hope you all enjoy!

Cute funny fashionable glamour pink small princess piglet in queen crown standing indoor in studio on wooden background, horizontal picture
Photo from Fotolia

Queen for a Day

She was Miss South Dakota twenty years ago. The life-sized portrait in the sitting room was proof of that. In her silver and white gown and jeweled tiara she reigned over the small farmhouse with a $3000.00 orthodontic smile that put Marie Osmond to shame.

When she cruised down Main Street people still stared as she drove by in the red, Pontiac Firebird given to her when she won the state pageant. It was a little rusty around the doors now, but she had touched up the writing on the side so everyone could see it was Miss South Dakota’s car. She knew it excited them when she raised her hand and gave them her special wave. She enjoyed pleasing the little folks.

She said the two things she wanted most in life were world peace and to marry a pig farmer. Her love of pork had secured her the title of Mrs. Daryl B. Cimpl. She still needed to work on that peace thing, but she felt sure in time even that would be fulfilled. Besides, it was hard to believe that on their quiet little farm the world was not at peace.

She and Daryl had two wonderful twin boys, named after their father. She made sure they were educated in all the right areas. She taught them to tap dance by the time they were four. They would tap around the new pine floor of the barn while Daryl gave the baby piglets their shots and snipped off their tails, distracting the mother sows long enough for him to get out of the pen without a chunk missing from his rear-end.

When they were six she started them in organ lessons. They would never be in the marching band, but they would definitely be asked to play at all the weddings and funerals for miles around. That’s where the fame was. In South Dakota, folks congregated at family gatherings.

Daryl gave her everything he had promised, a home, kids, and all the pork she could freeze in a 24 Cubic foot freezer. He wasn’t much to look at, but she loved the man inside the thin, stooped, shell. His blonde hair was still boyish when he combed the long pieces across the top of his shiny pate, and the way he looked at her when she wore her tiara to bed could send her pulse racing. She had everything she ever wanted.

One day while dusting the frame of her portrait and watching General Hospital, she realized something was missing in her life. Somewhere along the way, she had lost her purpose.

She tried to pinpoint what it was she wanted. She loved her husband and sons, and taking care of their every little need. She loved helping out part-time at Black’s Funeral Home, where she applied makeup to the sunken eyes and withered cheeks of the deceased, making them appear 10 years younger or almost alive again. But these things weren’t a challenge to her talents, and that’s what she needed.

The new batch of baby pigs was born, shots were administered, tails were snipped, and Miss South Dakota had an idea. She picked the cutest, most perfect piglet of the litter and made it her protégé. She named her, Ambrosia.

Ambrosia was hand-fed with a bottle, while listening to classical music played on the organ by a Daryl Jr. Every evening she was bathed in ham-scented water and patted dry with a white terry-cloth towel. She was given a bed of pillows on the back porch where she lay with her hoofs pointed to the ceiling and her little snout wiggling as she dreamed piglet dreams. She was fed only the best corn, which she learned to eat from a silver doggy bowl. She was walked each day down the gravel road to the end of the section and back, eagerly pulling against the diamond-studded leash in anticipation of the meal that awaited her on their return.

Finally the day came for the family to pack up the truck with 400 lb Ambrosia in the back and head for the South Dakota State Fair. This was what being Miss South Dakota was all about, using the talents she had learned along the way by giving someone else a leg up; or a cloven hoof in this case.

The judges looked the pigs over, checking for flaws inside and out. Ambrosia stood docilely as they pulled on her ears and stuck their fingers in her mouth. She held her head high as she had been taught and kept that happy gleam in her eye. The judges were amazed by her posture, nodding to one another as they checked off their lists.

At one o’clock the ribbons were to be awarded. There was even a sign on the pig barn announcing that she, Miss South Dakota, would be attending the pig judging. It surprised her that they knew. She had only informed a couple dozen people that she would be there. When the judge slipped a blue ribbon over Ambrosia’s head and she gave an excited squeal of victory, Mrs. Daryl B. Simpl, Miss South Dakota 1985, cried tears of pure joy, even though it made the mascara run down her cheeks in rivulets.

As she led Ambrosia from the judging ring, she saw a crowd of people standing around a red car outside. On the door in large scrolled letters it said, Miss South Dakota 2006. She stopped and stared as a young, blonde woman stepped from the vehicle and turned to wave at her adoring fans. The blonde turned toward the barn and their eyes met, then her gaze dropped to Ambrosia.   Her smile froze in place and her eyes widened in shock. Ambrosia oinked a greeting as she took a pose, her jeweled tiara tilting crazily over her snout.

~~~

Thanks for stopping! Feel free to leave a comment below.

Barbara

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Barbara Ellen Brink, fiction, humor, short story, south dakota, state fair

Up all night with Lady Luck

October 6, 2016 By Barbara 3 Comments

2016-09-26-09-11-00Last week we took a trip to The Black Hills in South Dakota. Vacations can be relaxing, adventurous, or even educational. We prefer a mixture of the three. My husband normally gets up at 5:30 every day to exercise before work, so an extra hour or two of sleep in the mornings was a luxury. We also enjoyed hiking mountain trails and trying to get a selfie picture with a bear (Don’t worry. We never actually saw one). For the education part, quick stop-and-looks at points of interest along the highway (those plaques are loaded with historical information), made for a well-rounded vacation.

Some people might say we are boring, but they don’t know the extent of our adventures. One night we actually stayed in Deadwood at a cheap motel called the Bunkhouse. The windows didn’t lock and the walls were as thin as paper mache. Can anyone say, “Danger zone?”

After an exciting evening of eating pizza and listening to really bad karaoke at the nearby casino café, we turned in. On2016-09-25-16-54-02 a bed so hard it would have been an improvement to add nails, I finally fell asleep around midnight. About an hour later, I was abruptly awakened by loud voices outside our open window. Lucky for us, someone had called the police…

The officer questioned the drunken suspect, (still unclear whether he was the victim or the perpetrator. According to him, he was attacked.) I may have missed the very beginning of the scuffle as I was in a Tylenol PM induced coma.

Officer: Why do you think he did that?

Drunk: Well, he lost some money at the casino and he was mad.

Officer: How much money did he lose?

Drunk: ‘bout a hundred dollars.

Officer: Why was he mad at you?”

Drunk: I don’t know.

Officer: Why do you think he was trying to kill you?

Drunk: ’cause he was yelling, I’m gonna kill you, you stupid _____!”

Officer: How was he holding the broken bottle?

Drunk: Like this, over his head.

Officer: What did you think he was going to do with it?”

Drunk: (louder) Kill me! He yelled, I’m gonna kill you, you stupid _____!

Officer: Is that when you pulled the knife?

Inaudible Mumbles

Officer: Why do you think your brother wanted to kill you?

Drunk: Because he was mad!

Officer: Okay, now come over here. My partner needs to check you for weapons.

More grumbling.

The officer basically repeats all the questions again with a little different wording, still right outside our window.

A woman’s voice in the background.

Officer: Ma’am, has he hit you? Did he hit you?

Incoherent voices arguing.

Officer: Did he hit you? Do you want to press charges?

Drunk grumbling

Officer: Sir, go in your room and don’t come out again. I don’t want to come back here again tonight. Understand?

More drunken mumbling.

Car doors shut. Patrol car drives away.

Comparative quiet… for about an hour and then…

A man speaking in a low ominous voice: So… did you win any money at the casino? How much?

thump, thump, thump, thump. The sound of feet slapping pavement as the lucky winner flees for his life.

Another hour or so of quiet and then… loud raucous voices laughing and cackling like a bevy of 1800’s saloon girls coming in to roost for the night.

I probably won’t ever stay at the Bunkhouse again, but I made sure to get my money’s worth. I took the tiny bar of soap and shampoo bottle even though I had brought my own.

~~~

Thanks for stopping! Leave a comment and tell us your most terrible, horrible vacation experience or just say hi!

Barbara

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Barbara is the author of The Fredrickson Winery Novels, The Double Barrel Mysteries, The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy, and other suspense novels. She lives in Minnesota with one very patient husband and one very spoiled dog.
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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Black Hills, Deadwood, humor, lady luck, motels, vacation

Braced for the Future

September 3, 2016 By Barbara Leave a Comment

2016-09-02 16.25.09

You’ve probably heard someone accuse a parent or spouse of going through his or her “second childhood.” The middle-aged or elderly sometimes journey through this phase as they either lose their minds or their inhibitions and become more childlike again, longing to fulfill some bucket list of things they would have had a hard time doing twenty or thirty years ago. But now they think it’s a requirement to have fun before they die… even if it kills them.

Shrinking with age is not a myth. My shrinking appears to have started in my mouth. My second childhood came in the form of braces. I’m now living the childhood I never had or wanted. I wasn’t forced to wear braces when I was young. My teeth were rather straight, which was good because my parents would not have been able to afford the extravagance of putting me through that rite of passage.

Braces are meant to be worn by the young. With time, the pain fades and after a while children may even let go of the hostility they feel toward their parents for allowing a doctor to install metal brackets in their mouths that were probably invented by a diabolical torturer during the dark ages.

Adults don’t have that flexibility. We are rigid. We hold on to things. I may never forgive myself or sleep through the night again. Even as quickly as time seems to fly by these days, twelve months of self-inflicted torture seem much longer in reality than it did on paper.

Granted, the TMJ problem I’ve dealt with for the past few years was my main concern and hopefully having my teeth wired and my bite stretched into shape will relieve some of that. Thankfully, straight teeth are an added bonus.

I don’t have a bucket list, but if I ever do I will write “get braces” and then immediately cross it off with a permanent black marker. Smiling–with my very straight teeth–I will know that I am now at the age of wisdom and past my spontaneous second childhood. I swear on a stack of dental floss and wax that nothing will ever convince me to join beginner’s gymnastics or buy a skateboard. One bad decision is more than enough.

In the future, when I’m an old woman, please don’t let me forget this vow. If I’m looking for something exciting to spark my dreary life, just let me play with a Butane lighter.

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Segway phobia

June 2, 2016 By Barbara 1 Comment

balltower

If you are married to a techie kind of guy who works on computers all day number crunching, and comes home to relax with a computer and cell phone in his lap while he watches the SciFi channel, you might understand my predicament.

meMissionMy husband and I went on a short trip to visit San Antonio recently, and so my taller half did a little research on “things to do” while we were there.

Apparently, Segway tours are popular in some cities. And San Antonio is no exception.

Personally, I find the thought of riding around on one of those machines only slightly less nerdy than wearing a pocket protector and knowing all the dialogue from Lord of the Rings.

RiverWalkme

Now to be clear, I have no problem riding motorcycles, bicycles, or even going the easy route and mowing with a riding lawnmower – if we owned one – but a Segway? Standing up and looking like you’re on your way to visit Darth Vader at the other end of the Death Star?

Okay, truthfully, those things also scare me a bit. They look like a very tippy, unstable sort of machine. And if I’m going to die I’d rather not do it by being thrown off a Segway into busy traffic, and/or launched into a city runoff pond where I’ll drown in sludge. That sort of death just begs for a stand-up routine at the funeral.

I don’t want to be the butt of the jokes at my own funeral.

Yeah, she just Segwayed right into eternity!

That Segway tour vaulted her career. Now she’s swimming with the leaches.

Sadly, we did not find time to take the Segway tour. Perhaps next year…

LCockrellTheatre

~~~

Thanks for stopping! Ever take a Segway tour? Leave a comment and let us know how it went.

Barbara

Barbara is the author of the Fredrickson Winery Novels, the award winning thriller, Split Sense, The Second Chances series, The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy, and The Double Barrel Mysteries, Roadkill and Much Ado About Murder. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and pups.
Barbara is the author of the Fredrickson Winery Novels, the award winning thriller, Split Sense, The Second Chances series, The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy, and The Double Barrel Mysteries, Roadkill and Much Ado About Murder. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and pups.
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Amish spooks for Halloween

October 30, 2015 By Barbara Leave a Comment

THE FALL BOOK BASH just got spooky!AVSslider2015

Halloween is the perfect time to read a book about vampires and dreadful things. CHOSEN has both, along with plenty of laughs and snarky dialogue. It is the first book in The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy and it’s totally free! So, pick up a copy today!

CHOSEN was optioned for screenplay last year and is now being marketed about the film industry in search of backers. Don’t be left out of the loop when the movie is finally released. The Amish Bloodsuckers has it all. Friends, family, Amish, vampires, a priest who teaches hand-to-hand combat, and of course, Jael, the slayer with ancestors who go back to Bible times.

~~~~CHOSEN (excerpt)~~~~

Her mom tugged the blanket back down and placed a hand over her forehead. “You don’t ChosenRGD5.5have a fever,” she said, as though exhaustion from being out late every night hunting vampires wasn’t a good enough excuse to skip school.

“I might have a fever later.”

“You can’t keep skipping school just because you’re the Chosen. Even vampire slayers need an education. You’ve already missed four days in the last two weeks.” Her mom sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Jael’s hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She bent and kissed her cheek, then got up and moved to the door. “I’ve got pancakes cooking. Hurry up.”

Jael heard the door pulled closed. She forced her eyes open and sat up, dangling her legs over the side of the bed. The bright yellow walls of her room shone like fairy dust in her sleep-deprived vision. She rubbed her face and stood up, then groaned when she moved toward the bathroom. The muscles in her thighs were a bit sore after last night.

If she weren’t so tired, she’d want to go to school. She hated staying home with nothing to do, and missed seeing and talking to Brianna everyday. But it wasn’t the same anymore.

They used to be able to tell each other everything. Brianna knew that she worked out with her dad in the basement every night and weekends, that she was proficient in five different forms of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, even that she could kill a scarecrow at twenty feet with a five-inch-blade after doing a double back flip. What she didn’t know–and Jael didn’t think she could tell her–was that she was a modern day vampire killer. A slayer of the undead. She could no longer truly share her life with her best friend. And who could she talk to about that–the school counselor?

The drive to school was uneventful. Jael didn’t feel like talking and her mom seemed to understand for once; she turned on a soft rock station and hummed along, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat. Jael leaned her head against the side window and tried to steal a few more minutes of sleep. When they finally pulled into the school parking lot and up to the doors, her mom just smiled and gave her the token send off, “Have a nice day,” before driving off as though she had somewhere important to be. Jael felt a bit underappreciated. Nobody knew she was saving the world from bloodsuckers except her family, and they just took it all for granted.

“Hey, Jael!” Brianna stood by her locker with the door open, rearranging things into an orderly mess. She flipped blonde hair over her shoulder in that absent-minded way she had, oblivious to the fact that it brought every boy’s attention her way. “Missed you yesterday. Glad you’re back.”

Jael smiled and opened her own locker, two doors down. “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I was sort of busy right then,” she said with a slight shrug. A definite understatement.

She had a different ringtone for every person in her phone directory and Brianna’s was a song from her favorite movie, A Knight’s Tale. Fighting a slippery, little, teenage vamp in a back alley was bad enough but right when she thought she had him cornered, he grabbed a metal garbage pail lid and slammed it against the side of her head, jumped up on a dumpster and tried to scale a twelve foot wall to get away. With her head still ringing, her phone started playing, We Will Rock You, and the pity she’d felt earlier for the little sucker drained right out of her.

She’d grabbed hold of his baggy-butt jeans and yanked him down off the fence. He stumbled and fell against a dumpster, then rebounded like a jack in the box, going for her neck with a feral snarl. She dodged to the right, and landed a karate chop to the back of his neck. He went down on his knees and she slipped the stake out of her waistband. Blood-shot eyes glared up at her when she yanked his head back by a thatch of shaggy hair and planted the stake in his cold, dead heart.

Just for a moment she’d felt regret. He slumped to the ground, an innocent looking young boy now, the fight gone out of him, his fangs withdrawn, his eyes closed in final death.

Jael waited.

If he were very old he would disintegrate within seconds to the state of decomposition normal for his originally dead body. She could tell approximately how old a vampire was by the odor. Vampires that had survived long enough that their bodies should have turned to dust, smelled like moldy socks, but a newer vampire, say perhaps a month or so undead, would smell like the rotting corpse they really were.

The boy didn’t change and he had no strong odor. She pulled out the stake and stood there watching him for a good five minutes before she realized his death must have been very recent. Perhaps just days or hours since his funeral and burial. It was sad. She wondered about his parents and whether they knew he’d gone missing from his grave? Or perhaps he’d been killed by another vampire more recently and his parents didn’t yet know he was dead.

Now they never would. He would disappear, turn to ash in the morning sun, and they would assume he had run away like so many teenagers were reported to do.

“Jael?” Brianna was watching her with a puzzled expression on her face. “Are you all right? You seem sort of out-of-it.” She closed her locker, her history book in the crook of her arm.

“Yeah, just tired. Up late last night,” Jael said, dropping her book bag in the bottom of her locker and sliding out the book she needed for first class – Trigonometry. Ick. She’d rather smell a rotting corpse on a warm night than solve math problems.

“Okay…well… I’ll see you later, right?” She backed up a couple of steps, holding her gaze as though Jael would disappear again as soon as she let her out of her sight.

“Sure.”

Brianna smiled, then turned and hurried down the hall toward Mr. Stanton’s history class. Jael watched her go, feeling as though she was losing the only real friend she’d ever had, and there was nothing she could do about it. She saw Marti stop Brianna outside the history classroom to say something and then they both laughed and went into class together.

Jael slammed her locker shut and twisted the combination lock. She couldn’t go on this way much longer. Kicking vampire butts at night and pretending to be an average girl during the day was taking too much out of her. She wasn’t cut out to live a double life.

Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Kobo   Smashwords   iBookstore

~~~

Hope you enjoyed this excerpt of Chosen. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Happy Halloween! 🙂 

Barbara

Barbara is the author of The Fredrickson Winery Novels, The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy, Second Chances Series, and the award winning thriller, Split Sense. She hangs out in Minnesota with her husband and their pups.
Barbara is the author of The Fredrickson Winery Novels, The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy, Second Chances Series, and the award winning thriller, Split Sense. She hangs out in Minnesota with her husband and their pups.
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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Amish Bloodsuckers, Chosen, excerpt, Fall Book Bash, halloween, horror, humor, young adult

My dream (nightmare) kitchen

September 28, 2015 By Barbara 2 Comments

You may have been wondering what happened to me. I haven’t put up a blogpost in ages. Sadly, it is not because I was so thoroughly engrossed in finishing book two in The Double Barrel Mysteries. Although, I am working on it now. I was actually in the middle of some home remodeling and sort of fell into a rabbit hole. It all started in June. Here’s what happened… 2015-07-21 20.55.23

July something:

Having men in my house, tearing things out and putting new things in, is stressful. Especially for someone like me, who truly appreciates solitude.

I now have NONE. No quiet. No solitude. No peace.

The tromping back and forth of men’s boots, banging of hammers, the high whine of drills, loud voices yelling over the drone of saws, radios, and various power tools, totally destroys my ability to think, write, or relax.

2015-07-21 14.40.24
non-english speaking electrician

I am like a pilgrim in my own house, wandering from room to room, trying to avoid the commotion and stay out of the way. It feels like I’m living my own version of The Money Pit.

In hindsight, selling the house and moving across the country to raise sheep in a quiet little valley in Montana, living simply in a doublewide with no neighbors and no need for renovations, is looking better all the time.

The IDEA of a new kitchen and new windows was bright and cheerful, like that song Never Been Kissed. It promised something exciting and romantic, something to look forward to with great anticipation. Then the reality of construction hit like a sledgehammer to the temple and I realized that anticipated first kiss may just be my last. This project could surely kill me!

2015-09-08 08.40.53
Sept 3rd: still no sink or countertops

The men who have been here working are great. I’m very happy with the quality of their work. It’s What Lies Beneath that causes distress. When they tear out one thing, they reveal the secret mistakes that came before. Things that now have to be fixed before they can go on. Things that will cost at least one arm and one leg. Perhaps even more limbs will be sacrificed to the shoddy work that lies beneath.

I’ve learned that without a kitchen, I am a woman unfulfilled. I never thought of myself as the perfect homemaker, bustling about cleaning and baking and whipping up Martha Stewart type decorations for every holiday, but I did enjoy having a sink to wash dishes and a counter to chop on and a stove and microwave to whip up my husband’s dinner in twenty minutes or less. Now I am living like the Amish, but without the beautiful comradery of fellow Amish ladies to suffer through the hard times with while we boil lard or have a quilting bee or watch the men raise a barn. I have to suffer alone.

September 8th:

It’s over! Hallelujah! I have a kitchen again. A real working kitchen with appliances and running water, electricity, and countertops! It’s like winning the lottery when you’ve finally adjusted to the idea that living in a cardboard box and eating McDonalds three days a week isn’t all that bad as long as you have the love of your life beside you… oh, and puppies. Puppies make soft, warm pillows.

My new kitchen is a wonder. Almost too pretty to cook in, but I’ll get over it. I’m so tired of eating out that I may cook every day of the week from now on. Except maybe Sundays… and probably Saturdays because we are often running around… and maybe Friday nights since we have to have a date night, and who cooks on date night, right? 2015-09-08 10.34.14

My new windows open and close and keep out the heat and look great and everything.

Now that the trial of construction is over I can say with sincerity that it was all worth it. Just like childbirth. Well, not exactly like childbirth. My pain was more of a mental anguish rather than a physical cramping, but as an analogy it works fairly well. I have birthed a kitchen and I wouldn’t give it back for all the tea in China. Especially since I really don’t like tea that much. I might trade it for a doublewide in Montana though with a horse and a helicopter.

~~~

Thanks for stopping. Leave a comment and tell us about your construction woes or just say hi! Until next time…

Barbara

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