The Crotchety Old Man

Category: My Life

  • My New Steam Mop

    Buying gifts for me is a challenge. I don’t want much, and am perhaps a teeny bit hard to please. When I do want something, I tend to just buy it myself. If I’m not happy, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. Devoted readers of this blog may recall I get off on clean floors. My vacuum cleaners…

  • A Crotchety Christmas

    A Crotchety Christmas

    Christmas is a very special time of year. Competing with the grandeur and spectacle of the yuletide celebration is a tall order. No other holiday celebration even comes close to the month-long festival of parades, television specials, religious services, community events, parties, dinners, and gift exchanges taking place in the Christmas season. Bah humbug! I’m over…

  • Life After Fifty

    My mother is the baby of eight, and my father was one of the later arrivals among ten children. Throw in the folks they married and the children the respective couples had together, and I grew up around an awful lot of people with widely varied views about what makes for a good life. All influenced…

  • Writing: Career or Hobby?

    Getting the contract for my first novel was like winning the lottery. Rather than the years-long, rejection-filled path traveled by most writers, I’d found success right out of the gate. Until Thanksgiving was going to make me rich! My preconceived notions about publishing a novel were a tad off. Two years, two more novels and a short…

  • The Nature of Change

    I’ve kept a personal journal since 1979. Writing in my journal is a hobby of sorts — a place to express myself without worrying my words will offend or hurt someone else. Believe it or not, the entries — while documenting my particular style of crazy — are repetitious, pedestrian, and boring. Writing stuff down helps me figure out what…

  • He’s Back…

    Six years ago — for no good reason — I started blogging as the Crotchety Old Man. My musings revolved around things that pissed me off, like pet owners leaving dog poop on my lawn, bad drivers, and poor service. Writing to entertain was a lot of fun and a nice change from the kind of writing I did for…

  • Five Steps to Becoming a Successful Author

    On this date just two short years ago, with a lot of encouragement from my friends in the Athens Writers Workshop, I submitted a query for my first novel. I waited for the “not what we’re looking for at this time” message to file with the rejections I’d already received for Glass Houses — my still unpublished memoir.…

  • My New Fireplace

    Fireplaces have never impressed me much. I can’t even recall my first indoor encounter with burning logs. Until I was older, none of my relatives had working fireplaces. My first childhood home didn’t have a fireplace. The second — the house my father died in — didn’t have a fireplace when we moved in. A…

  • My MVPs

    I am not a hoarder. The neat freak in me couldn’t handle the mess. If anything, I err in the opposite direction, tossing stuff others would probably keep. Whether the result of nature or nurture, I can’t say. As with most traits, I suspect both play a role. My parents were both OCD control freaks. At…

  • Gone, But Not Forgotten

    I lost my father a year ago today. This picture was taken a few weeks before he died, during my last visit with him. In memory of a man I never really understood, here’s my post from that fateful day: My father passed away this morning. My sister called me to tell me the news.…