The end of a rather intense year!

And I am very eager to see what unfolds in 2026 and, while I don’t want Time to gallop away from me any faster than it already does, I don’t mind saying farewell to 2025!

ME (waving): “Bye, see ya!”

***********

Here’s this!

The other day was the anniversary of Rowland S. Howard’s death. He passed in 2009:

And here’s this, because I’m in that kind of mood today. “Autoluminescent,” Rowland S. Howard, from his album Teenage Snuff Film, 1999:

*************

And Phyllis Stein does it again!

She posted yet another great photo of Willy (Mink) DeVille!

And here’s this! “Cadillac Walk” from the album Cabretta, 1977:

************

And I loved this photo–

Marc Bolan, in 1971:

And why not this?? From the above-mentioned album, the legendary “Bang A Gong (Get It On)”:

(And knowing me, gang, can you imagine me in my bedroom at age 11, hearing this amazing song for the first time??? Yes, I was only 11 when songs like “Brown Sugar,” “Maggie May,” “Walk On the Wild Side”, and “Bang A Gong,” among hundreds of other amazing songs, were on the fucking radio in my room!)

**************

Okay!! Anyway.

You are lucky ducks today!

James Tabor posted an edited version of the lecture from Sunday on Theophilus of Antioch to his YouTube channel.

Why You Probably Have Never Heard of Bishop Theophilus of Antioch! (47 mins):

***********

And another interesting read from Dr. Eli’s blog if you’re into it. This one is a 7-minute read:

Galatians within First-Century Judaism: Rethink Apostle Paul’s argument for Gentile Inclusion without Proselyte Conversion.

“In this article, we reread Paul’s letter to the Galatians—one of the earliest New Testament writings—from within the diverse landscape of first-century Judaism, avoiding later Christian supersessionist (replacement theology) assumptions. The letter addresses a crisis in the Galatian communities, where certain Jewish Christ-accepting evangelists were persuading Gentile believers that full membership in the people of God required adopting Torah observance in the manner of proselytes, including markers such as circumcision and kashrut. Paul vigorously opposes this view, arguing that Gentiles are incorporated into the Abrahamic promise through faith in the Jewish Messiah alone, without needing to become proselytes….”

[full article here]

**************

All right.

And it is with a heavy heart that I have come to the following decision!

I had a long conversation with Sandra on Monday about the best way to approach everything we need to focus on in 2026 and while it is going to take a TON of concentration and time to move forward with all 3 projects at the same time…

I also had a talk with my accountant on Monday and, even though, technically, I could retire if I really, really want to, I really will have to live frugally. More frugally than I had anticipated.

And while it’s doable, I’m worried that that’s going to cause me more stress than simply trying to juggle everything the way I always do. And it could put a serious damper on trips to NYC whenever I feel so inclined to go.

So, for now, I’m going to keep on working part-time, and just try to focus on everything at the same time — until I’m actually getting a significant paycheck again from something besides being a caregiver.

However!

Although I make no money from it at all, I still want to say thank you AGAIN, for all the downloads of my FREE erotic eBooks in the Smashwords Christmas Sale!

Today is the final day of the sale, and you guys have been just amazing. I think there have been more downloads during this sale than there have been in a couple years. So thank you, again, for all of the interest in all these really, really old books and stories!

********

In other good news…

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I have had trouble finding a church out here in the Hinterlands that I actually want to attend.

Some of you know that there is a (200-year-old!!) Methodist Church literally 3 minutes from my house. You can see it from my window. And the woman who works at the local Dollar Store has invited me a few times over the years to stop in at the Wednesday night suppers.

But for some reason, I have always felt hesitant about going there. I didn’t really know why. My Ministry Degree is in an evangelical denomination, so Methodist is a cake walk compared to that. Still, for some reason, I had an aversion to going in. Although the little church is quite lovely:

Well, also on Monday, I was in the Dollar Store, as usual, and for some reason, I asked the woman about the Methodist church and she was very excited and said it’s no longer Methodist. It’s just a Christian Church. They have a brand new minister, and she was just very enthusiastic about all of it.

So I decided to finally check it out! After living 3 minutes away from it for almost 8 years…

**********

Okay, I think that’s it for now. It’s snowing out there and I have to head to town to see my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man!

Have a happy and healthy New Year’s Eve, wherever you are in the world, gang!

Thanks for visiting! (And, yes, for some reason I have gotten more visitors to the blog in 2025 than I’ve had in about 10 years… not joking about that!)

Anyway. Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

**********

Let’s leave 2025 with this!!

I know I’ve posted it here just recently, but here it is again, gang.

From my wee bonny girlhood, and the sort of “theme song” from my upcoming memoir, Joy; The Shortest Season.

“Joy” by Apollo 100. Enjoy, gang.

Jesus, it’s ridiculous out there.

The winds are so strong that I can barely push the kitchen screen door open to get out to the porch.

So far, though, my PTSD is totally in check.

AND–

It’s looking like the snow they predicted has disappeared, so we’ll see how that goes.

*********

MEANWHILE!

So the escalation of silver seems to have finally toppled one of those “big banks” we’d been warned about (BOA? I don’t know!).

Check out Phil’s post from yesterday (plus he seems really happy in his car video…)

Also, as you might have already seen, a lot of stuff going on with Shanghai silver the last several days…

All of this together, well —

Don’t quote me on it, but it seems like everything they’ve been predicting is finally happening.

It looks like 2026 will indeed be the start of some really great stuff — in the US, for sure, but likely world-wide. I’m hearing NESARA by Jan.1st, gang. We shall see!!!

***********

Okay!

In other good news.

Regarding Brigitte Bardot (see post from yesterday)–

Warren Ellis also posted some nice photos of Brigitte with her beloved pets! Here’s one of them:

**********

And here’s a few of Keith– mostly stuff people posted around his recent birthday:

***********

I’m posting this late because I was notified that the post office had a package for me — my dad’s stuff!

So I went over there to take care of collecting that.

It turns out it is not really anything that my dad was saving for sentimental reasons. It’s documents — passport, birth certificate (!!), etc. But the birth certificate stuff is fascinating. It has my grandfather’s signature on it, for one thing, and I never got to meet him. He died in Cleveland, a month before I was born/adopted. But I have always felt oddly close to him anyway.

(And I was named after him — in Hebrew. Meaning my Hebrew name, Moshe (מֹשֶׁה – Moses), is in honor of my grandfather. My English name, as we all know so well by now, was in honor of Marilyn Monroe.) (Yes, I’m oddly named after both Moses and Marilyn Monroe.) (And since my grandfather ran the local movie house in Cleveland, and also built/owned a drive-in movie theater, he would probably be oddly satisfied that I was named after a leader of Judaism and a movie star.)

Anyway.

My grandma always kept a beautiful framed black & white photo of my grandfather on an end table next to “his” easy chair. The chair is long gone but the photo is in my room…

In the box, there are also some very old home movies that were transferred to a VHS cassette! It will be cool to watch it but I don’t think I am on it. I think the home movies pre-date me. I want to watch it and see what’s actually on there. It will be cool to see all the old relatives that have been gone such a long time now. All of them were Jewish refugees from Poland. They came over to America in the early 1900s and settled in Cleveland, Detroit, and NYC.

*************

I want to quickly mention that the Zoom class with James Tabor yesterday, for his new course, “Christianity before Paul”, was amazing. Wow. I am just loving this course.

The class was a little over 2 hours. It was mostly about Theophilus of Antioch, a Bishop from around 180 AD, and it was really just kind of staggering. Along the lines of the Didache, which pre-dated him by about 120 years (?).

I was sort of shaking when the class was over. Only because when we see all this stuff from before the Council of Nicaea, we get closer and closer to what Jesus was actually teaching before they put the New Testament together and made Christianity “official”.

************

Anyway. Sorry this is so disjointed but as of right now, that’s it!

Keep your eye on the banks.

And enjoy your Monday wherever you are in the world.

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

************

I leave you with this.

In honor of the James Tabor course, I think.

It oddly (!!) came up on my playlist last night, on my way home from being with the retired Minister and his lovely wife and cat.

I’ve posted it here before, but here it is again!!

From my wee bonny girlhood in Cleveland, my absolute favorite song from Hebrew School. “Hinei Ma Tov (Behold How Good)”, this version by Paul Wilbur. Enjoy, gang.

And now it’s just rain.

And now it totally doesn’t feel like Christmas. It doesn’t even feel like the New Year is coming up.

Not sure what it feels like, but I’m tired. I know that.

Yesterday, when I arrived at my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man’s house, a Christmas card addressed to “Marilyn” in care of his address was waiting for me. From his kids in Florida:

“It was such a pleasure meeting you, Marilyn. Thank you so much for taking such good care of our dad. He is so blessed to have you. Have a very Merry Christmas.”

Wow.

It broke my heart in the best way, you know? How beautiful. But then right away I feel guilty because I know that I’m retiring… it is going to completely disrupt his entire world. At least for a while.

So that’s part of why I feel so tired today. I’m emotionally worn out. And I’m heading right back over to his house this morning.

*********

Okay.

I don’t really have much to post about today.

Well, there is this!

Just one from a bunch of photos I found on Instagram yesterday, of Keith and Patti’s recent wedding anniversary.

I liked this one best because it shows how sophisticated they are, and that means a lot to me!

Oh, and I also thought it was cool that I was number 909 who hit the like button!

I always loved this song when I was a wee bonny girl in Cleveland!! (The Beatles, though, not the Stones.) And it’s still fun:

*********

At some point after I get home today, I want to finish listening to Lecture One in the new James Tabor course “Christianity Before Paul,” because tomorrow at 12:30PM, right before my shift with the retired Minister and his lovely wife and cat gets underway, the first live zoom meeting for the course will be happening and I don’t want to fall behind.

I’m hoping that this course can keep my mind busy until after the New Year, when I have my first real meeting with my accountant in NYC about how I actually go about retiring and then, you know, retire.

And Sandra is just sort of waiting there in NY, tapping her foot, looking at her watch, waiting for my retirement to begin so that she can send a fucking truckload of NOTES my way!

When we spoke a couple of weeks ago, she already had 60 pages of notes just on the TV project!

I’m excited, you know. I really am. This is the point of retiring, so that I can go back to my writing projects full-time.

But I am so tired, I need a vacation, but Sandra and I also need to get back to work. (And I need to get back to NYC!!! Just because I miss it…)

So that’s sort of why my energy is all screwy right now. I’m happy, I’m excited, I’m eager, but my heart is breaking all at the same time.

Meanwhile… smoking and drinking don’t actually exist for me anymore so that sorta sucks…

I have to rely on the power of my magnificent mind.

OOOPS! I meant:

***********

Okay.

I guess I’m gonna scoot and get this day happening.

Have a lovely Saturday, wherever you are in the world!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

***********

I leave you with this!

Without getting too personal about it — I think I’ve mentioned here before that my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man used to know Yoko Ono, back in NYC in the early 1960s. His first wife, who was also Japanese, and Yoko were friends.

He was asking me about Yoko yesterday. He wanted to know if she was still alive. I said yes. And so I googled her and we looked at current photos of Yoko on my phone. (He was delighted to know that she was still alive.)

So let’s leave with this! “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, by The Beatles. 1969.

Enjoy, gang. I love you guys.

Wow, has my Christmas gotten off to a really wonderful start.

Johnny left around 9:30 last night, so I got to bed a little bit late for me. And I was planning to sleep in — I have absolutely NOTHING to do today!! Yay!! No laundry, no housecleaning, no cooking, no meeting any friends in town for lunch, no errands. No nothing!! Yay!!

So I was going to sleep in a little late.

UNTIL–

At 4:33AM, I slowly awoke and just barely heard a teeny-tiny “meow meow” sound and realized that somehow Huckleberry had managed to get herself closed up in my bedroom all night.

And now she was either asking for a little water, a little food, the litterbox — and likely all 3!!

So I got out of bed, opened the door and let her out and about 10 other cats & kittens came barreling in!

So I got back in bed — with all of them happily pouncing all over me. And I just laid there for awhile, thinking about how happy I am.

(And something else really cool happened yesterday afternoon that it is too soon to post about on the blog, but wow, did it make me feel delighted, gang. I can only say that it has to do with my novel The Guitar Hero Goes Home.)

Anyway, I took my time getting out of bed, but, still, I was out of bed before 5AM. Took care of the many cats & kittens, indoors and out on the kitchen porch. It’s very mild today, so Tiki did not want to come inside, plus she had one of her fluffy friends with her.

But for the first time in weeks — perhaps months, really — I felt totally relaxed, happy, joyful, peaceful. All those great feelings.

And I decided to have my breakfast in the family room, all the Christmas lights on, and get snuggled into all the fleece blankets on the couch, and watch a rerun of “Perry Mason” on TV. One of my all-time favorite shows. While I took my time, for once, and had my breakfast.

It was just so nice. To have nothing to do but relax. I had one of my retro TV tables set up in front of me. A small glass of juice. My piping hot cup of coffee. My bowl of fruit and cereal with plenty of organic milk, on the little TV table…

And then–

Freddie McFee suddenly came leaping up onto the TV table!! Even if I hadn’t had a bunch of liquids on it, it isn’t big enough for him to leap up onto!

And yes!! Juice was in my lap. Coffee was everywhere. My bowl of cereal was a close save. I was so fucking pissed off!

I had to immediately change into a clean nightgown, a dry robe. Throw everything –including most of the previously snuggly fleece throws — into the fucking washing machine.

And begin again.

By now it was 5:50AM and Perry was showing Lt. Tragg and Burger the Prosecutor, who had really done it. So it all happened pretty quickly.

But wow. Merry Christmas. But on we went!!

**********

Last evening was very nice!

This was the table before the pizzas and salads (and before Johnny arrived), so there was plenty of food!

And as luck would have it, about 10 minutes before Johnny arrived, Saffie decided to go into heat!

Yes. Thank you very much.

She got along splendidly with Johnny but she did not stop her high-pitched yowling throughout the entire evening. (We basically stayed in the kitchen the whole time he was here.)

And then her brother, Cuddles, came into the kitchen. And Angie McGee came in — she liked Johnny, too. And then Bobby McGee came in and he was wild about Johnny.

Even Tiki came inside for a quick bite to eat.

So they were all getting along splendidly. Christmas music and cat-in-heat-yowling. And lit candles, and Christmas lights. And a ton of food.

And then, at the end of the meal, Johnny said the funniest thing:

HE: “Well, I guess I’ve met all the cats now.”

ME (loud guffaw): “Johnny, there are 15 cats in this house. You haven’t hardly met any of them.”

He couldn’t believe it.

That just cracked me up. But, literally, most of the cats hide whenever anyone comes into the house. Which I appreciate because it makes me look like I’m not some sort of crazy cat lady…

But, anyway. We had a really nice Christmas Eve.

********

And there is a ton of food leftover, so I don’t have to even think about cooking until maybe Monday.

And this morning, after “Perry Mason,” I watched a couple more Christmas reruns of “Mrs. Brown’s Boys” before heading back upstairs to my totally comfy bed — with another cup of coffee– and I stayed in bed, reading and listening to Christmas music on the Oldies FM radio station, until 9:30AM!!!!

Can you believe that, gang?? It just felt so great.

And now I have no real clue what I’m gonna do, but it’s going to involve a lot of doing absolutely nothing. Upstairs and/or downstairs on the couch (where the snuggly fleece blankets are clean, dry, and snuggly once more!).

********

Okay!

I hope that wherever you are, and however you spend this day, you are joyful, peaceful, and happily expecting something terrific to come your way!!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

********

I’m gonna leave you with this!

And I’ll dedicate it to my friend, “Shezaboss”!! When I unearthed this song again in 2023, he really helped me learn to just love this song all over again.

It’s a song I wrote in 1984, as an homage to the Rolling Stones, and all those great Glam Rockers that I loved so much in the early 1970s.

My original demo of “Since the High-Heeled Boys Came Home” .

(And the photo below was taken in the hallway just outside the door of my E.12th Street apartment, and the guys in the photo were my band at the time: Suri and Rubin, from Argentina, and Lloyd, from the East Village. And they’re playing on the demo.) (Photo taken by Valerie in Brooklyn!!)

It’s NYC in 1984 all over again. Enjoy, gang!

Okay, gang!

The final day off before Christmas Eve!

I’m going to spend most of today cleaning the house (again!!). (Vacuuming, mostly, because that is a never-ending process with so much carpeting and all these cats.)

But I do have to say that the kittens have been so great about all the Christmas decorations. They still climb the tree occasionally, but all that does is sort of rearrange the lights. No big deal.

But NOTHING has broken!! Their furry little selves have been so well-behaved!!

********

Other than cleaning house, and doing yoga, and washing my hair… and making another pot of soup for the week… oh, and doing laundry, I will probably chat with Johnny in the afternoon and then maybe take some time just for myself, to sort of contemplate everything that’s coming up in 2026.

However, I have still not watched:

• “A Christmas Carol” — the very old black & white version
• “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” — isn’t Christmas without that
• “The Bishop’s Wife” — original black & white version
• “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” — also isn’t Christmas without that
• “The Thin Man” — might wait ’til Christmas Day for that one
• “It’s A Wonderful Life” — non-colorized version!!
• “A Charlie Brown Christmas” — absolutely is not Christmas without that!!!

So, you can see that I’m way behind in my Christmas-watching. I’ve seen about a bazillion repeats of all the “Mrs. Brown’s Boys” Christmas episodes — while continuing to laugh over and over even though I know all the jokes by heart. But that was all I could manage so far this season, before falling dead asleep at night.

I’m planning to just keep the movies going while I clean the house today. That way, I can at least hear it all in the background and then cross everything off my list! Yay.

*************

Okay.

I don’t know how she got this — she didn’t elaborate. She just said “photographer unknown”. Hmmm… (a strange thing to get so quickly, without knowing who took the photo…)

However.

From Phyllis Stein’s Instagram page last night!! Keith and his birthday cake, from Thursday!!

**********

Okay.

From last week —

Simcha Jacobovici – Hanukkah: Not a Jewish Christmas (4 mins):

From Ross K. Nichols on Sunday–

What Do the Shapira Fragments Really Say? (1 hr):

And from James Tabor & Myth Vision–

Yes, I couldn’t wait to order this course almost 2 weeks ago, and yet I still have not started it!! Anyway.

An overview of the new course:

Christianity Before Paul: Rediscovering the Jewish Jesus Movement (18 mins):

***************

And I think that’s it for today, gang.

I’m gonna get things started here. Remember: tomorrow is 10-hr. Tuesday (a 10-hr. shift PLUS last minute insane grocery shopping!!), so I likely won’t be posting here.

Have a splendid pre-Christmas Monday, wherever you are in the world!!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

***********

I leave you with this!

Nothing says Christmas like Jose Feliciano and “Feliz Navidad”!!!

Enjoy, gang!!