No, no, not that one!
I’m talking about manly housework tools…
For example, it’s the season of leaf blowers for those of us that live in a world with trees. For me, they are one of the more seasonally irritating aspects of urban dwelling.
Leaf blowers create an environment where your day is spent listening to a constant whine or roar that goes on for hours as some guy blows leaves from one bit of the pavement to…why, yes, to the next bit of the pavement and so on, ad infinitum.
Mostly, leaf blowers are used where a broom or rake would work fine, and rarely involve actually collecting the leaves & placing them into a receptacle to be removed.
Mostly, they just get blown into the neighbor’s yard, the sidewalk, the street. Where, naturally, they can just get blown back to wherever. Progress!
In fairness, there are places where a broom or rake won’t work—plantings, or fragile growth areas that might need to be de-leafed in the fall. But for that, there are leaf suckers—yes, they do exist—that vacuum the leaves into a bag, so they are active a small fraction of the time leaf blowers are on (because they actually remove the leaves).
So I’m thinking: Why?
And the realization strikes that no self-respecting guy would want to take a broom to the sidewalk. Women’s work! But when it comes to marching about with a giant dongle waving about in front of you (nearly reaching the ground! How cool is that?) and making a lot of noise, it’s acceptable. Even desirable & fun.
Think about the creativity that has gone into lawn mowing equipment—the advent of the riding mower transformed cutting the lawn into a macho experience. What male wouldn’t like to sit on a big, vibrating, noisy machine that gets driven around the Indy 500 track of your front yard? Beautiful.
So for those women who wish men might contribute a bit more to household chores, the solution is simple: guy-ify the appliances.
Imagine if the dishwasher had a starter switch like a outboard motor pull? Ideally it would be a bit fussy, perhaps requiring a certain weight within the dishwasher (like, there have to be some dishes in there & soap). A couple of strong yanks, a loud whirr, and they’re off! There would not be a dirty dish in the house.
And how about a washing machine set close to the ceiling, where clothes have to ‘make’ the basket? The floor around could be weight sensitive and a robo voice (like the self-help supermarket monitors) would make rude remarks about their skill, forcing them to pick up misses. Now detergent comes in little tossable balls too, so that could work well. Another outboard pull or perhaps some drumming patterns that activates the starter. I think it’s viable.
So instead of trying to reverse Henry Higgins famous line: Why can’t a man be more like a woman? we need to re-engineer our attitude and create the ultimate housekeeping video game…
Vive la différence!
Isabel Swift
This has been a year of challenges for me, since I started seriously indie publishing. I’ve learned it’s a lot harder to do everything myself, even though it has been rewarding. The one thing that has got me through it is the support and camaraderie from the romance community, including OCC.
Two of the challenges and rewards have involved group projects. Being part of the Romance Super Bundle brought me together with a group of wonderful indie authors: Amy Gamet, Dale Mayer, Donna Marie Rogers, Edie Ramer, Kate Kelly, Pamela Fryer, Lois Winston, Barbara Phinney and Wendy Ely. I’ve learned a lot about marketing and promotion from these ladies, including my first ever Facebook Launch Party.
Monday, Nov. 18, is the Facebook launch party for the other project. I was honored when Debra Holland invited me to be part of her second holiday anthology: Sweetwater Springs Christmas: A Montana Sky Short Story Anthology (Montana Sky Series) by Debra Holland and Friends, namely E. Ayers, Linda Carroll-Bradd, MJ Fredrick, Paty Jager, Jill Marie Landis, Trish Milburn, Linda McLaughlin, Bev Pettersen, Tori Scott, and Cynthia Woolf.
Writing my story, The Best Present, was both challenging and rewarding. It’s not easy to write in another author’s story world, plus I was unfamiliar with Montana in 1895 (or any other time.) Some research was required. (That was okay since I love research.)
For once, I shed my romance persona and wrote about a ten-year-old girl having the worst Christmas of her young life. I drew on some personal experiences, including my memories of my tenth Christmas, which took place two weeks after the death of my grandmother. Allison’s story has a different ending than mine did, but it’s the most personal work I’ve ever written, and it was an emotional experience. I was reminded of the old saw about opening a vein.
Sweetwater Springs Christmas: A Montana Sky Short Story Anthology releases Nov. 18 on Amazon but is available for pre-order now.
I hope some of you will join us on Monday to celebrate the release of the anthology at Facebook. It runs from 9AM to 6PM, Pacific time, and I will be there alone (gulp) from 10-11AM.
Happy Thanksgiving and happy writing!
Linda McLaughlin
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UPDATE: A Soldier’s Italian Christmas is now for sale on Amazon.
On this Veterans Day, we honor those who have served in all wars. For that, we say thank you. As we approach the Christmas Holidays, I’ve often wondered what it was like during World War II for the boys so far from home. In A Soldier’s Italian Christmas, the first of the O’Casey Brothers in Arms series, we meet Captain Mack O’Casey, the oldest of four brothers from Brooklyn who join the fight.
It’s December 1943, one of the coldest winters on record, and the Allied advance to Rome is bogged down on a long stretch of road leading from Naples to the Eternal City.
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If your Christmas reading is on the spicier side (as in erotic), check out A Naughty Christmas Carol about a modern day Scrooge named Nick Radnor. A New York Wall Street hottie who has it all…except the woman he loves.
www.jinabacarr.com
www.facebook.com/JinaBacarr.author
https://twitter.com/JinaBacarr
http://www.pinterest.com/jbacarr/
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More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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