micheleksdare

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Dirty Thoughts and Stories – Hot Takes and More

First, a brand-new story in what I am now calling ‘Steamy, Spicy, Sexy’ stories. It’s called ‘Fool in the Rain’ and it’s about a couple on the verge of separation but instead reunite in a passionate encounter in the rain. You can read it here (link opens in new window) The ‘Steamy, Spicy, Sexy’ banner is a way of getting around algorithms because it seems the internet overlords are afraid of…

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When No One Wants to Buy Bags of Pretzels Anymore

Early yesterday as I was on the road at o’dark thirty in the morning, I was thinking about how conservative Republican Trump-supporting voters might be feeling as they begin to feel the rising tide of rage and contempt for their support of a pedophile President and a ton of shitty legislation along with an economy slowly beginning to sink. And as I was working through that, a thought came to me…

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The Difficult and Liberating Process of Formatting Poetry

Over the last couple of weeks or so, I’ve been formatting my first book of poetry. There will be seventy poems in total of varying lengths and topics. The difficulty is formatting of course as Microsoft Word loves to misbehave by checking boxes off automatically and scrambling stuff. But as I go through these poems, it’s been like visiting old friends you don’t see because you don’t live in the…

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Trying Not to Worry About What Other People Think

Today’s blog title is probably a bit provocative considering how often I talk about compassion and empathy and all that good stuff. But if you’ve read my stuff for a while now, you also know I have no tolerance for people who are mean, cruel, insensitive, uptight, conformist, or who just act like assholes and shoot their mouths off without thinking (and then get all butt-hurt when they get called…

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Poem - One Hundred Days of Hope

In honor of the one-year anniversary of the campaign of Kamala Harris for President, I wrote a poem about those glorious and wonderful days. Poem – One Hundred Days of Hope pdfDownload

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Conversations From the Road – Presidential Health and Well-Being

WARNING: INCOMING RANT THAT WILL BE VERY RUDE, CRUDE, AND AS NASTY AS I WANT TO BE. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL. Every time I see some bullshit piece about former President Joe Biden’s ‘decline’ and the ‘cover up’ and I put both term in single quotation marks because the people that use those terms have their own personal axes to grind on an old man who came out of grieving retirement to try and save…

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Conversations From the Road – Pardon My Cynicism, The Epstein Files, Edition

For those of you living under a boulder somewhere, the Epstein Files are the case files of the late Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire pedophile who died in federal prison under somewhat murky circumstances (official cause of death is listed as suicide but recent analysis of the tapes from his cell the night he died show they have been heavily altered with several minutes of footage missing…

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Conversations From the Road – Burnout

No, I’m not feeling burned out right now. But I’ve been thinking about the term ‘burnout’ and what it means so I want to share some thoughts on it. To me, burnout is when you’ve just got nothing left in the tank as my father used to say. You’ve got nothing left physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sometimes it’s just a culmination of years of almost non-stop activity and stress viciously…

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Conversations From the Road – Two Lives

Yesterday I had a thought: I feel like I’m living two lives at the same time. I know that may sound dramatic and overwrought, but let me explain where that thought came from. My day usually starts around three a.m. or so, in the dark, in the middle of the night when most everyone is sleeping (or sleeping it off if it’s a weekend). I hit the road in the dark and am mostly alone with my thoughts…

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Conversations From the Road – Live Aid at 40

“Children of the Eighties, this is your Woodstock.”  Joan Baez, July 13, 1985, JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA Today is the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid, two main concerts (London and Philadelphia) that were put on to raise money to feed the starving people of Ethiopia in East Africa, a famine created by war and drought. Live Aid was the culmination of an effort that began several months…

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Conversations From the Road – Blogging Through My Female Mid-Life Crisis

I just had an idea about writing: to write in what I will call ‘blog style’ on my non-fiction projects because it’s frustrating for me to see those projects sitting on my laptop and nothing being done to them. Because for the time being, I’m going to need to put a lot of time in on the road to generate income that I need not just to survive, but to replace this laptop and do other things. And if…

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Happy Independence Day, America…. Wherever You Are (2025)

Last year, I wrote a blog piece on the Fourth of July that was definitely not a ‘rah rah rah’ special (you can read it here). Last year I was down in the dumps on the Fourth because President Joe Biden was getting hammered from all sides to drop out of the Presidential race. He later did with a grace and dignity that no one really acknowledged or cared about. And then for one hundred days, Kamala…

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Dreams of the Road (poem)

A new poem that I hope you will like, about what I dream about a lot these days: life on the road. Poem – Dreams of the Road – pdfDownload

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America Is an Ideal

This poem took me a little while to bring together, but once I got the first lines it came together. Because America is an ideal that hasn’t lived up to its’ reality, yet it is worth believing in and fighting for. Poem – America Is an Ideal -pdfDownload

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Conversations From the Road – Pardon My Cynicism

Last night, the United States bombed three sites in Iran alleging they were nuclear sites where nuclear weapons were being built. Today the Iranian government has announced they will be closing the Strait of Hormuz in which over twenty-percent of the world’s total oil supply and other major shipping passes through. Yes, gas prices are expected to rise sharply if the Strait remains closed for any…

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Conversations From the Road – Full Circle and More

Yesterday on my morning run, I had a thought: to publish a book of poetry as my first book. Why? To come full circle because the first thing I ever wrote on my own was poetry. Now if you think I’m nuts for doing this, whatever. I’m not doing this to get rich or anything like that. I’m doing it to put my words out into the world and in way, defy those who think I am crazy, or stupid, or whatever…

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Conversations From the Road – How Does a Nation Get Its’ Soul Back?

This past Saturday, over ten million people across the United States took part in the ‘No Kings’ protest against the current Presidential administration, namely a President who wants to be King (though in reality I don’t think he knows what’s going on most of the time.). The protests were believed to be the largest single-day protest in American history and more are planned. Also on Saturday,…