THE EAGERLY ANTICIPATED SISTER MARY OLGA SEQUEL IS OUT!

Fans of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" have said, “We couldn't put it down! When it was all over, we wanted more. We can't wait for the next book in the series!”

Fortunately, you won't have to wait long. The sequel to Misadventures is out. Whether or not you've read Misadventures, you'll be able to dive into the deliciously zany new tales without missing a beat.. Of course, you'll undoubtedly want to back up and read the first book, so that you can find out what outrageous stories have come before. Let me tell you a little bit about the new book.

"Babes in Bucksnort" is the sequel to the highly praised "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude". Once again the unconventional bourbon-swilling, chain-smoking nun will spin outrageously funny new tales about the residents of Bucksnort, Wisconsin while she tests the will of a reformed prostitute who just happens to be her Reverend Mother.

Unfortunately there is trouble brewing in the Snortlands. The nasty and notorious town busybody, Priscilla Bunhead, goes on a crusade to stamp out what she calls the gay menace. That's when she convinces her millionaire friend, Mildred Mayflower, to give away her fortune in order to bring the Reverend Billy-Bob Blunthead and his Born Again or Burn Forever Disciples for Jesus to town to do the job. It will be an uphill climb for them as the closet doors of many gay people in the Snortlands burst open.

Billy-Bob and his wife, Pinky Poo, will have another battle on their hands when Dimples Dufus, the heiress to the Mayflower fortune, arrives on the scene. They'll also have to reckon with a mysterious woman who channels an entity who challenges the hateful and hypocritical agenda of this spokesman for Jesus.

In between the laughs, Sister Mary Olga continues to dispense nuggets of spiritual wisdom during her classes in Beginner's and Advanced Holiness. Just don't take seats near the flatulent child named Fartley Dinkledorf or his lecherous one-hundred five year-old grandfather, Poopsy. The bottom line is that everyone is welcome in Sister Mary Olga's classes. Join the diverse cast of characters for a joy-ride that will tickle your funny bone until it aches.

Look for "Babes in Bucksnort" through Amazon.com. In the meantime, I am polishing up the next books in the series. Sister Mary Olga promises to be with you for one home run after another.

HUMOR IN MY LIFE - - - Part 1

Okay, folks! I'm going to make some lemonade out of lemons. Yesterday was my birthday. It just happened to be a big one. I turned fifty-five and I'd started to come to a place of acceptance that I might now be middle-aged. It's just that I usually feel as if I am still in my thirties. Such was not the case on my birthday!

I've just crawled out of bed, having experienced a temperature of 103 degrees last night. I felt every single year of my age and then some on this birthday. I was as weak as a kitten.

Do I hear someone asking, “Where's the lemonade?”

There's a simple answer to that. After years of bemoaning the seemingly negative experiences that life can bring, I've come to realize that everything happens for a reason which is for the greater good. The challenge for me is to look for the silver lining in the dark cloud; in other words, to look for the hidden blessing. Once that can be found, it not only changes my attitude, it can lead me to look upon the experience I might have otherwise bemoaned and find some relief through humor.

Okay...I wasn't laughing last night. Truth be told, I was a pitiful mess! I slept away the afternoon only getting up to let my partner feed me a bowl of chicken soup. After a few more hours of sleep, I was rewarded with a donut and told that I was grumpy. I figured I was entitled! What a way to spend my birthday!

Today I can see through new eyes. I can even laugh at the pitiful circumstances of yesterday. Of course, it always helps to feel a bit better.

The last time I made a big deal out of my birthday was when I turned fifty. That also turned out to be the second worst birthday of my life. Yesterday ranks number three on the totem pole. Maybe I'll tell you the story about my fiftieth birthday another time. Better yet, why not now!

Here goes...The year before I turned fifty was a hairy one. I went through a number of dramatic life changes. I lost my best friend to cancer and my two beagles died. I broke up with my partner of twenty-four years, bought a new house, and took a long weekend off from work in order to move. That's not what happened. I never returned to work. I got pretty sick - sick enough to qualify for a disability retirement.

There were some beautiful things that happened. A caring new partner and his mother came into my life and took care of me when I was at my low point. I became more dependent upon God each day which opened new doors to my increasing spirituality. I also came to see that my life had a purpose; that was, to tell my story.

I decided that I would begin my memoirs at the exact moment of my birth, fifty years after the event. I did so while my partner was having a hissy fit and banging doors in the background. Perhaps he was entitled. He'd just had surgery a few days before and he wasn't feeling his best.

The way my ego saw it was that he was disrupting my big plans for my big day. Things had to be just so. I proceeded to write the foreword to my book and it still reads as some of the best writing I've ever done. I'm just grateful that I haven't needed banging doors and screaming to motivate me since then!

The day only got worse after that. I can only blame myself for that. My threatened ego continued to get in the way. After all, I'd thought, I was celebrating the fact that I'd survived the previous year. I'd made it to fifty and it seemed like a pretty big thing!

My dear parents arrived in time for the party with my mother bearing the birthday meal and cake. At the same time, my partner and I were involved in another showdown. I went to bed, feeling sorry for myself. Then an idea occurred to me. I figured I would feel better if I went to one of my twelve step meetings.

I gave my apologies to my bewildered family and I went to the meeting. I did feel much better afterward. In fact, I found myself laughing over my childish antics of the day. Fortunately my family was still at my house and there was left-over beef stroganoff and birthday cake for me. It also helped to see that they had apparently had a fine time without the birthday boy being present.

Where would any of us be without humor? The trick is to discover the humor in things that don't always seem to be funny. More and more, I'm learning to do that. I hope this will be the case for you too.


Author Davis Aujourd'hui
"The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" (1st of a series of books)

HUMOR IN MY LIFE - - - Part 2

Back in the days of childhood during my summers at my camp, I whiled away the hours with one of my first tender, young girlfriends. Her name was Marie and she had a deep dark brown complexion in stark contrast to my lily-white, freckled one. I only became more freckled following the lobster red sunburns I received after the two of us frolicked in the refreshing waters of our local Finger Lake in Upstate New York. Those were the days!

Even though she was one and a half years older than I, she must have thought I was an eligible prospect. One day she asked her mother if she would be marrying me some day. Her mother replied, “Honey, there are plenty of fish in the sea!” It was lucky for her that she didn't meet the fate of my first wife and only wife; namely that of marrying a very confused gay man.

Our camps were rather rustic. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. It was reminiscent of the previous century when one would need to let go in an outdoor privy. “Okay!” would say Sister Mary Olga Fortitude. “Let's call it like it is! You're talking about a rank and rustic outhouse! Just watch out for the splinters or they might bite you in the ass!”

I giggled with delight when a mutual friend taught Marie and I an old song. It was entitled “Swinging from the Outhouse Door.” I immediately decided that would be a fun thing to do. The door of my outhouse cooperated marvelously. I could swing to and fro with freedom, though it wasn't as much fun as swinging from a hanging vine on the hill above the smelly outhouse.

I eventually came to act out a similar scenario in an updated bathroom at a later point in my life. That would just happen to take place on the night before my wedding. The last thing that I remembered at the scene of my wedding's eve party was swinging from the shower rod in the hotel bathroom. The rod broke and I fell into a tub filled with ice water and beer!

Ah...those fun and crazy times back in the days of my drinking escapades! I could and will tell you stories about the drunkalogues of my life. I'll keep it on the light side by telling you the humorous stories if you will bear in mind that I'm not trying to glorify the darker side of my budding alcoholism.

The memory of that bathtub scene only came back to me from others once I'd returned from my honeymoon. During what had been a black out, I came out as the gay man I was to several stunned members of my wedding party. Then I ran down to the hotel lobby in a frenzy of crazed drunkenness only to be dragged on my back to my hotel room.

I awoke the following morning with a tremendous hangover. Fortunately I made it to the church on time even though my best man got stuck in a traffic jam on the Connecticut turnpike. That didn't deter him from his matrimonial duties. He hopped onto the shoulder of the road and sped by the angry and amazed motorists who complied with the rules of the road. He delivered this groom to the church on time.

That didn't prove to have been necessary. True to form, my bride was as late as always...too bad for her that she didn't get cold feet. When the honeymoon was over, she discovered it wasn't so funny being married to a gay man! Sad, funny, and true!

Author Davis Aujourd'hui
"The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" (First book of a series of books to come!!)

HUMOR IN MY LIFE - Part 3 - "The Party's Over"

Yes, there's nothing like a night of pure intoxication with which to create an evening of insanity! Let me tell you about one of the most bizarre evenings that my first male partner and I have ever experienced.

It began innocently enough when we ran into a new friend at a saloon during happy hour. He invited us to go with him to a work-related party, located in a small village some twenty miles away. Having had nothing to eat – not an unusual occurrence for us - we left for the party, already nicely lubricated.

It was a very boozy affair and we all got extremely drunk. The party hostess was not a lady! She could drink like a man. She was also extremely crude and she had the audacity to come onto me. Given my history as a sex addict, who I was in any position to cast judgments around lecherous behavior? Nevertheless I didn't appreciate her attention!

What followed only provoked a resentment on her part. After not succeeding with me, she put the moves on my bewildered partner. When he, too, rebuffed her advances, she finally saw “the light” through her own alcoholic haze! That's when she ordered the three of us to leave the party.

She hurled angry, homophobic, and vile slurs at us. As intoxicated as we were, we made a hasty exit! I was at the point where I was weaving in and out of consciousness, but I took the driver's seat and we hightailed it out of there.

Driving dangerously fast on a two-lane country highway, I nearly drove off the road as I swerved to avoid an oncoming car. I barely avoided the roadside ditch, as I drunkenly struggled to maintain control of the car. By the time we had reached the city's outer limits, our bladders had also reached their limits. That's when we stopped at a mall to find restrooms. Innocent or not, “the fun” had only just begun.

The rest of the evening proceeded into even more insanity. I picked a fight with my partner, raging at him over something I can't even remember. I stormed off on foot with the intention of walking the remaining seven miles home as I drunkenly staggered down the side of the busy nighttime street.

Unfortunately for my partner, our friend hadn't returned from the bathroom. My poor, bewildered partner didn't know what to do when he'd unsuccessfully tried to find him. What he had known was that he was too drunk to drive. He did the only logical thing. He lay down in the car and took a nap.

In the meantime I'd managed to weave and wobble about three long miles on foot by the time my partner pulled the car alongside me. Unfortunately our friend had disappeared into the dark of night. I argued with my partner, but he finally convinced me to get into the car and we drove home, without further incident, where we promptly passed out in bed.

Around three o'clock in the morning, the phone awakened us from our stupor. It was the police. That's when we learned what had become of our friend. They told us they had arrested him. Sometime after midnight, he'd been caught by the police as he had been running down a city street as naked as the day he'd been born. They wanted us to come down and bail him out! That proved to have been our just dessert for not having had supper. Of course, the drinking hadn't helped! Only time would reveal more of the same before we found our way to a more serene and sane life.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui
"The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" (1st in a series of books to come)

Humor in my Life----Part 4 "That's My Seat"

I eventually settled down with a nice gay man. It's said that “birds of a feather flock together.” Budding alcoholics that we were, we soon began to drink like fish out of water.

Over time we would toy with the idea that we had a drinking problem. Then we would take a few days or a few weeks off from our daily happy hour routine just to reassure ourselves that we could stop. Then it would be back to the “same old, same old.” Only time would tell the whole story.

We'd been taking a “time out” when we were enjoying an evening with a lesbian couple who were friends of ours. They suggested we visit a popular lesbian bar. It sounded okay to us. After all, we'd always been curious about the place and we thought we could handle a sober night out.
We arrived at the bar and encountered a brutish butch bouncer who proclaimed, “No men are allowed!” Our friends defended us. They advised the hostile door-person that we were their friends and they were going to take us into the bar. Phew!

Being on the wagon, my partner and I ordered iced tea. We didn't seem to mind that the beverages didn't taste like any iced tea we'd ever had. As a matter of fact, they were extremely refreshing and we quickly downed them, ready for more. Of course, by that time we'd been advised that we had been served Long Island Iced Teas which were pure alcohol. Oh well, we thought. What could be the harm of a handful of drinks!

Several drinks later and feeling no pain, we took a tour of the bar, entering an area where some more butch lesbians were playing pool. We noticed a wall of empty bar stools and we awkwardly took our perches, probably a little unsteady on our feet by that time.

All of a sudden, one of the pool players started purposefully stomping her way in our direction. With her cue stick in hand, she marched toward us as if she was brandishing a sword. We shivered in our seats. The three hundred pound lesbian with salt and pepper hair, swept back in an Elvis Presley duck tail hair style, pounded her way across the reverberating floorboards as she advanced upon two very drunk and confused gay men.

Not knowing what we'd done or what to expect, she got right up in our faces so that we could see the whites within her steely blue eyes. Then she snarled, “That's my seat!”

Needless to say, we surrendered both seats promptly – so much for our tour! Little did I know that this butch number would play an intimate role in my life some twenty years later.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui
"The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude"

Humor in my Life - Part 5

My first summer after college, I sold encyclopedias door-to-door. It became an exercise in humility. Not too many people appreciated having their dinners interrupted by a door to door salesman.

My day would start off by meeting with the other salespersons and their respective managers. We would then be driven to small towns located anywhere within a one hundred mile radius of my hometown. An appointed pickup spot, almost always a bar, would be given to each of us - what an ideal pick up point for a budding alcoholic! Then I was off on my own with my briefcase loaded with samples, knocking on doors where I hoped to get in to give my pitch. Hours later the sales manager would pick us up and drive us back to the office.

I did make some sales, but I often fell short of my weekly quota. The days were filled with endless walking and lots of rejection, though I was usually able to get into at least one or two houses a day to give my sales pitch. The one pitfall in the workday was that I often was not picked up at the appointed time. Consequently I'd feel obligated to buy myself drinks while waiting it out at the designated bars; not that that bothered me, mind you! This was acceptable behavior to management who often would reward us with boozy parties back at the office.

One night, while peddling my wares in a neighboring county, I made a sale. The one snafu was that my prospects objected to the amount of the sales tax, stating the sales tax was lower in their county. I told them I'd have to consult with my manager about reducing it and that I would return later in the evening. As it happened, this was one of those nights when I was stranded for hours at the designated pickup spot.

I sat on my bar stool next to a very friendly, elderly Italian man who kept buying me drinks – boilermakers! Well, I didn't have a good tolerance for beer and, with that added shot of whiskey, I quickly became very drunk. The “kindly gentleman” seemed to become extremely entertained and he just kept buying me more. People-pleaser that I was, I couldn't be impolite by refusing them, even though my head began to spin and I seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness.

Some hours after the designated pickup time, my sales manager finally showed up. He was also wildly drunk and, even though it was early in the morning, he insisted we go back to close my sale. We arrived at my prospect's home, but the lights were out. That didn't deter my determined sales manager. He started shouting toward their bedroom from the driveway. The disgruntled husband appeared at the bedroom window and curtly stated, “If you want the sale that much, come back tomorrow!”

My head was still spinning when we arrived back at the office, but I had to get home, right? So, I staggered to my car and I somehow managed to stay on the road for that drunken drive home. The next morning I awoke with a terrific hangover. There was no way I could even raise my head up, so blinding was my headache.

My mother showed me no sympathy as I groaned from my bed. I also knew there was no way I was going into my job that day or on any other day for that matter. I'd had enough! I quit my job and thus ended my door-to-door sales career. Fortunately or not my drinking career had only just begun!

Humor in My Life - Part 6 - Recovery

Based upon my tales of drunken adventures, you may wonder why I think there is anything funny about addiction. The truth is that addiction is not funny. It's a disease. Having found some measure of recovery from it, I am able to look back upon things that didn't seem so funny at the time. That way I am able to detach from my shame and look upon the lighter side of life.

This is what I do in my series of books. Does Sister Mary Olga Fortitude have a drinking problem? I would say “yes,” but she's the one who has to come to that understanding for herself. The same would be true for the rest of us.

People don't usually come into recovery because they are simply looking for a better way of life. They are hurting and despairing. So much of that hurt is caused by the pain which they have tried to bury by using various forms of oblivion to seek comfort that doesn't endure.

Upon coming into recovery, a new way of living is opened up before them. As has been the case for me, I realized that all God ever wanted for me was to be happy. Of course, I had to take a searching look upon my past to see where I needed to make changes within myself or amends to others. In so doing, I practiced objectivity and compassion with myself as I looked at the shadow side of myself. I came to learn how to embrace my humanness without judgment.

Was it painful? Sure it was. Yet, as time went along, I realized there had been a lot of humor to those things which I hadn't found so funny in my past. I also realized that there was a silver lining to all those dark clouds. Every piece of my past has brought me to my today and for that I am grateful. I have come to embrace a life filled with more joy and serenity than I would have thought to have been possible.

This is the message of hope that I hold out to any of you who are locked in the chains of addiction. You may not even realize that you are in bondage. That's okay. Just try to take a look at my characters and to see whether or not you can relate. Also take a good look at those characters to whom you react. There is a reason for that too. Life is full of surprises. Some of them are wonderful. Some of them don't feel so good at the time.

Underneath it all, life is all good. It is a classroom that can help us find our pathway back to joy. In so doing, we blossom as we open up to the notion that we are indeed here for a purpose. The spiritual way of life is filled with happiness. For me that is derived from helping others in need.
"If any part of my blog is of any help to anyone else, my life will have served a greater purpose. If my books can make you laugh at yourselves or the absurdity of life, then I have accomplished my objective; that is to help people find a way to look upon the lighter side of life and to not take themselves – or life – too seriously."

Author Davis Auijourd'hu

"Misadventures of Sister Mary Olag Fortitude" (1st in a series of books to come)

2nd Blog -"The Funniest Satire Series of the Decade"