Stories - FD Thornton

Cave Drawings from France I often sit here in my cheap little chair, staring at my cheap refab computer, drinking my cheap Wal-Jack decaf coffee; and I ask myself. D why don’t you write articles about living cheap? To be honest my minimalist lifestyle comes more out of necessity than a lifestyle choice. If I had the choice I’d have a place on a lake, or on the beach, or maybe on a cliff with some fantastic view of something. Instead the view I have is of a cabbage patch, a church, and my neighbors jungle of a yard (can someone say lawnmower?). My point is we all dream. Several years ago I set out to redefine my situation by setting some goals for myself. And although I had tried and failed to do this on a number of occasions; this time it was different I found the right resources and had a better mindset to achieve my goals. The funny thing about dreams is that over time they tend to change. In my case I had a pretty clear agenda set and a pretty specific idea of where I...

Good After-Christmas morning. Yesterday was an interesting day; on Christmas Eve I text my daughter to see how the day was with her in-laws. What I discovered was she was running a fever and felt like going to the emergency room. Mind you she has a toddler, so I said if she needed to go I’d take her and her mom could stay with the grand baby. She decided to wait until the morning so we went over and watched the monkey while she went to the clinic. Long story short, our plan to come over for a few hours ended up having us babysit most of the day; much to the delight of my wife, Granny.   Life sometimes has a funny way of turning bad news into good news. For instance, our daughter getting ill and having to watch a toddler is bad. (It's no fun, been there, done that.) But what was good was to be able to spend some quality time, if for a few hours, with our little bug. Besides whatever I lacked in giving my bride a gift, babysitting the grand baby more than made up for it in...

Often times I lay here in bed my mind so caught up in whatever's bothering me that it's become routine. For me to stressing about things beyond my control is a way of life. Stress can be such a bitch to live with. In my situation it seems the things I used to thrive on like the dreams and goals I set for myself; now only stress me out to the point they cause physical harm. For the longest time I survived on calming practices and downright isolation to calm my nerves. But lately even simple things are stressing me to the point of sheer exhaustion. You have to ask yourself, what do I do now? The things that once worked to relieve to pressure are now less effective. I mean I can't just drop everything in my life; there are still people that depend on me. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to come up with any solutions to this in one simple post. Especially since it’s my over thinking that is at the root of the problem. At the moment I guess the best thing to do...

 I’d be a damn fool if I were to say loving someone was perfect act. I mean despite all my obvious flaws please don’t get me started about my wife's. Needless to say, me and her both could make a laundry list of the imperfections we see in each other. Marriage, coupling, living in sin; whatever you want to call it, being in a committed relationship is never easy. I mean it's very easy to look over at my bride in the soft morning sun and think sweet happy thoughts. It's a little harder to do that when she bursts into my office unannounced ranting one of her famous half-complete statements. Believe me it drives me crazy. My point is love = work. And without the work, love can easily turns into tension, distrust, and even hate. Not everyone is currently in a relationship that is meant to be THE relationship; I can raise my hand and testify to that. The thing is if there's mutual commitment and respect, then maybe you got a fighting chance. There's only one perf...

Last night I was speaking with an old friend and as usually we were trying to “out poor” each other. (It’s a Southern thing.) As our conversation continued, I brought up my friends older brother and asked how he was doing. She supposed he was doing well and that in fact he and his family were planning a holiday trip to the Caribbean. This comes as no surprise; I mean he has a really nice job at a major manufacturing plant back home. It’s just that as we talked, I can recall when he and I run around as teenagers with little more than the change in our pockets and mischief on our minds.     We both came from single income families; our dad’s both worked at the same stinky paper mill; although he grew up on a beautiful river, at least my home had indoor plumbing. So I don't begrudge my old friend's success, in fact that I’m happy he’s successful. It’s just that after the conversation I had with has little sister I have to wonder; how happy is he really living in that...