The Music Man

I mentioned in an earlier post that there's a "sister" (probably more like a "brother") blog to Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides that gives several writing prompts each week. It's called Promptly and is written by Zachary Petit.

Monday's prompt was:

PROMPT: Morals and Movies
In 500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring: You have just purchased tickets for a movie, and someone approaches you, tears in his eyes and something gripped in his palm, and asks a question—one that leaves you speechless.

Here's my 500 (exactly!) words. Not exactly Pulitzer Prize writing, but a good exercise to get me going:

We settled into our chairs, taking up almost half of one row in the dim theater. Letting out a deep sigh I rested my head briefly on one shoulder then the other. I felt some of the tension release that had been accumulating all day, like dark thunderclouds. It was such a relief to be with friends in the cool theater, hidden away where no one could find me to ask a question or demand a need. Lisa had called just as I was leaving the office with an invitation to join her and four other friends for a girls’ night out. We were seeing The Proposal, a reportedly hilarious chic-flick that none of our husbands deemed worthy of their testosterone-laced attention.

Seated at the end of our row, I relaxed into the chatter and laughter and waited for the previews to begin. I must have dozed just a bit because when I felt the hard tap on my arm, I jumped.

“You’re in my seat. I have a ticket,” a small elderly woman with a wrinkled face like a walnut looked down at me with watery eyes. “The number is right here. You’ll have to move. This is my seat.” She was shoving what I guessed was her ticket stub in my face.

“Wait, ma’am,” I said, fully awake now. “There’s no seat numbers here. You just sit wherever you like.”

She pushed the stub at me again saying, “Here, look, I have this seat. It’s mine. Do you want me to call the attendant and have you moved?” Her voice began to rise and the white cardigan draped over her thin shoulders slid off on one side. She pressed the ticket stub into my hand and I could feel the slick pads of her fingertips rest for the briefest moment in my palm. They felt like something expensive, like silk or fine china. Her knuckles were large and swollen like the sugary gumballs my girls begged for every trip to the grocery store.

“George ordered these tickets a month ago. It’s a special day – our anniversary – and all I want is to see this show. Now get out of my seat!” By now everyone around us was quiet, watching the exchange between me and this fiery little woman. The cardigan slipped off her other shoulder and fell to the greasy theater floor.

“Mrs. Marble! There you are! You’re in the wrong movie. Lord, you scared me.” A large woman in nurse’s scrubs came up the aisle, swooped down rather agilely for a woman her size, and picked up the cardigan.

Gently taking Mrs. Marble’s arm, the nurse leaned over and said with a small smile, “Thinks she at a Broadway show. The Music Man. Sorry she bothered you. We’re here for a little outing with the nursing home and Mrs. Marble got away from me. She’s a slippery one.”

As they were walking away I heard Mrs. Marble say, “George is meeting me. He came straight here from work. He’ll be worried.”

CONTINUE READING...

Seventeen Minute Writing Prompt #4

Here's another Seventeen Minute Writing Prompt from Judy Reeves:

You're in the grocery store...

1. Set a timer for 17 minutes. (You can use the one on my sidebar.)
2. Write, write, write...poetry, fiction, nonfiction, whatever.

3. You don't have to stop at 17 minutes if you've got a good flow going.
4. Read what you write aloud to somebody.
5. Let me know how it went....ie, leave a comment, email, etc.

Now, go!

CONTINUE READING...

Waiting

Here's my writing from the 17 Minute Writing Prompt #3: You're waiting...

Delia likes to say that there’s a whole truckload of things she’s not good at and only a cupful that she is. Public speaking is in the cup. Her presentation at the conference this morning couldn't have gone better and now she's feeling relaxed, happy, and very ready to be home.

Waiting, which she finds herself doing now, is in the truck. Delia supposes it’s an indication that she is simply not a very patient person. She is in the Atlanta airport, sitting with her legs crossed, black pump dangling from one foot, swinging her leg up and down, up and down, waiting – impatiently - for her delayed flight to board. Delia had just barely made out the words “maintenance delay” from the clerk's garbled announcement an hour ago. Not something that she really liked to hear about a plane she was just about to trust her life to. At the moment, the said plane was being “repaired” and would soon be released to the gate. She wondered exactly what was being repaired…the air conditioning system? The fuel intake? The landing gear? It made a difference.

Delia found a spot at the end of a row of scooped out hard plastic chairs and put her briefcase on the empty seat to her left. She rolled her red suitcase close to her right, making a sort of privacy fence. She told herself that if the waiting area got crowded she would open up the seat, but for right now, Delia wanted to seal herself off and get lost in the novel she had picked up earlier in the Minnesota airport. Taking a sip of room temperature soda from the bottle she’d purchased at the same time as the book, Delia opened the paperback and picked up where she had left off on the previous flight. Before long she was blissfully lost in the story.

Delia reached that zone where she was barely aware of her surroundings, imagining in detail the intrigue that was happening in the book. After only about five or ten minutes, though, a sharp voice nearby brought her back from the streets of Washington DC to the loading area of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

“Jenny, get over here right now!”

She looked over the top of her book and saw a large man, maybe ten or so years younger than her, in blue jeans and a red Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He wore a stained yellow golf shirt, untucked and hanging loose from a rounded belly.

Jenny was a beautiful child, maybe about four or five years old, with long light brown curls. She wore a red sundress printed with white daisies and white buckled sandals. There was a matching red bow clipped in her hair. Delia assumed the man was her father. The sharp tone of his voice had penetrated Delia’s concentration and she found herself unable to get back to reading. She kept reading and rereading the same sentence over and over.

She sighed and put the book down in her lap, taking another sip of soda. Jenny, Delia soon noted, had a younger brother. She heard Jenny call him Davie. He must have been barely three and was dressed very much like the man – jeans, little brown cowboy boots, and a baseball cap that he kept taking off and throwing up in the air. Jenny would squeal with each throw and chase after the hat.

Jenny let out an exceptionally loud shriek of delight and the man got out of his chair, strode three long, hard steps to her side, and jerked Jenny’s arm so hard brown hair flew out behind her.

“I said Get. Over. Here. Right. Now!”

Delia could see the muscles flexing in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. He roughly picked her up and sat her firmly (too firmly she thought) in the chair next to him. Jenny bowed her head and covered her face with chubby white hands. Her hair became a curtain. Delia expected to hear muffled sobs coming from the girl after such rough treatment, but Jenny remained oddly silent and still. Davie, who continued to run up and down the aisle between two rows of seats, bumping into luggage and knees, seemed oblivious to his sister’s plight. And the father didn’t notice the little boy, either, but put his full attention on Jenny. Now that Delia thought about it, she hadn’t seen him correct the boy the whole time she had been watching.

He leaned down over the girl and said something too low for Delia to hear. Jenny vigorously shook her head, the red bow loosening and beginning to slide from her hair. Delia began to feel a knot in the pit of her stomach and a tightening in her throat. This was wrong. The man’s words were too harsh; he was hyper-focused on Jenny, waiting for her to make a mistake. There was something in this guy’s eyes that made Delia want to get up and punch him. Or at a minimum bawl him out.

The man finally let Jenny get out of the chair and rejoin her brother, but within just a few minutes, she was jerked back to her chair, this time with a loud, “I’m gonna blister your butt, girl!”

The waiting area was getting more crowded now, and several passengers stared hard at the man and then shook their heads and averted their eyes. An older lady leaned over and whispered into a man’s ear that Delia guessed was her husband. The man raised his eyebrows and nodded.

Jenny and Davie and their father finally boarded a plane to New Jersey at the gate next to Delia. It had passed through her mind a couple of times to confront the man and indeed she had found herself tensed and on the edge of her seat. But, in the end, she thought better of it, thinking that it would probably cause more harm than good to Jenny. Instead, Delia offered up a prayer for Jenny as she watched the swishing red dress disappear down the walkway to the waiting plane. She prayed for Jenny’s safety, that Jenny had a mother who was kind and loving, even that she was mistaken and this man was not Jenny’s father, just an uncle or family friend that her parents had poorly chosen as a chaperone on the flight.

CONTINUE READING...

A Well-Packed Suitcase

Here's my take on the prompt from earlier this week: Write about a disappearance…

My grandmother disappeared once. It was years before I was born. Actually, my mother, her daughter, was a mere three days old when she pulled it off. Effie, with help from her sister, efficiently packed a large brown suitcase on an October afternoon with enough clothes for herself and six children to begin a new life. My mother, the sixth and being a newborn, had only a very few things to contribute: a couple of blankets, two dresses, four pairs of tiny socks, and a small supply of cloth diapers and pins.

It was 1933 and Effie lived in a small paper mill town in southern Alabama with her husband and six children - Pat, Lorraine, Gwen, Helen, Jerry, and just recently, my mother. Effie chose Mildred Delores for the baby’s name - quite an albatross to hang on an innocent infant. I always thought you could tell the frame of mind my grandmother was in at the time by the horrendous name she chose for her baby. (My mother never went by Mildred, thankfully, but Betty instead. That’s another story.)

At some point in her sixth pregnancy, so the story has been told to me, Effie discovered that her tall, dark, and somewhat handsome husband, Leroy, had a second family – complete with wife, children, and even a dog. They were living just one county over from Leroy’s home with Effie and her brood. Sometime in one of those months of crankiness, swelling, and nausea, Effie decided that this was not a situation she was prepared to live with. My mother was born in late September in the Deep South – sans air conditioning – so I can imagine the ill moods and bad tempers that must have visited my grandmother upon finding out about her husband’s adultery. I’m only surprised she didn’t kill him.

So, with my mother just a few days old, Effie enlisted the help of her sister who, as an aside, was married to Leroy’s brother – the “good” brother family legend has it. Great Aunt Lorna, watched the children and rocked the baby while Effie packed. Once finished, my grandmother hid her suitcase beneath her bed, cooked her husband’s dinner, and waited for Leroy to come home from his work at the paper mill. I imagine they slept together in their bed one last night, Effie scooting as far away on her side as possible, lying over the well-packed suitcase. After my grandfather left for work the next morning, Effie grabbed the suitcase from under the bed and Mildred Delores from her cradle, told the other five children to link hands, and darted off to the bus station heading to Louisiana, her older brother, and a new life.

Once there, Effie quickly rented a run-down white clapboard house with her brother’s help. She found a job as a sales lady at the local Sears & Roebuck store (from which over thirty years later she retired.) Let me mention again – this was 1933 – when few women worked outside the home and even fewer dared to leave their husbands, even no-good husbands, with six children in tow.

I like to imagine Leroy when he came home from work that afternoon expecting to find Effie still convalescing yet managing to cook his dinner in her small, hot kitchen. He probably thought he would find the baby sleeping in her cradle and the other five children doing their chores and homework. Instead, he came home to a stuffy, empty house. I wonder if she left him a note. If so, it was never part of the story passed down to us grandchildren. I wonder if Leroy was even aware that Effie had found him out? I can’t imagine she would have been able to keep her mouth shut in those long miserable summer days carrying both the heavy burden of his sixth child and his infidelity.

From the little I know of my Meme (as we called her) from my childhood, I think she more than likely did manage to hold it all in, that even as her belly tightened and her ankles thickened, her heart must have hardened with quiet resolve. I like to think that her leaving was a total shock to him and that that was part of what he deserved.

Effie never remarried though my mother tells me she did have a persistent suitor, a wealthy widower, who repeatedly asked for her hand. I guess one marriage – one man – was enough for my grandmother. I can’t say that I blame her.

Also, my mother never saw her father again. He kept in touch with, and even visited, the other children, but never showed an interest in little Mildred. I wonder if he somehow blamed the birth of this new baby, instead of his own appalling unfaithfulness, as the cause for Effie’s disappearance.

I keep a small portrait of Effie in a sliver frame on my mantle. She died when I was only eight so I was far too young to have discussed any of this with her firsthand. My mother and my aunts have fed me the story in bits and pieces through the years. (Oh, the questions I would ask if I could have just an hour with her now!) In the photograph her eyes are squinted and she has a sharp, harsh nose. A slight smile plays across her thin lips but never quite makes it to her eyes. One would not call Effie a beautiful woman. But I would call her brave.

CONTINUE READING...

Writing Prompt #3

Here's your prompt for today: You're waiting...

Remember to set a timer for 17 minutes (you can use the one on my sidebar if you'd like - turn up the sound on your computer for the alarm), write and write and write, read what you've written out loud, and finally, let me know how it went!

Here's a link to Judy Reeves' (author of Writing Alone, Writing Together) explanation of why you should do timed writings.

CONTINUE READING...

Writing Prompt #2

I had one friend take me up on Writing Challenge #1 and she produced an absolutely wonderful piece. It was a prose-poem, I think. I'll have to teach her how to post a comment so she can share her writing with others out here in bloggy-land.

Here's a second writing prompt for you today:

Write about a disappearance....

Remember:
1. Write for 17 minutes (see the timer on the sidebar)
2. Write....don't EDIT! Just get your thoughts down - you can clean it up later.
3. Read it out loud to SOMEBODY...your dog will do in a pinch!
4. Leave me a comment and let me know how it went. I'd love to see what you wrote.

CONTINUE READING...

My Writing Prompt #1

Here's my writing practice from this morning's prompt. I cleaned it up a bit....Delia just "appeared." Not sure who she is or what she's planning to do. We'll see if she makes an appearance again...

Prompt: Write about awakening early

Directed away from the bed, the fan purred, blowing out white noise while they slept. Delia rubbed her feet back and forth across the smooth sheets, trying to soothe herself back to sleep, knowing there was really no chance. Once awake in these small hours of the morning, there was usually no hope of going back to sleep. It was best just to give in to the day and let it begin.

Walking unsteadily to the bathroom, tripping over discarded clothes left on the floor, she flipped on the light and examined her face in the mirror. Her eye was still swollen. Lovely, she thought. Delia flipped off the bathroom light switch and closed the bedroom door behind her. She headed downstairs to the kitchen to get something for her headache. Her mouth felt like cotton. She knew better than to drink red wine that late at night. Good grief. No matter how little she drank, there was always a headache waiting for her the next morning, perched on her head and crowing like a fighting rooster. She shook two pills out of the bottle and slurped some water from the faucet, throwing her head back to wash them down. Very unladylike.

Popping a pod into the coffee maker, Delia opened a cabinet. Choosing the right mug for the day was important, she thought. It set the direction that things would move. Will it be a serious, thoughtful day and require a cup stamped with a moving St. Augustine quote? Or maybe something more lighthearted like her yellow happy bumblebee cup? Or will it be a knock-a-round-the-house-wear-your-tacky-clothes day more fitting for the garish South of the Border souvenir mug? She opted for the solid black mug with the flat matte finish therefore, she thought, leaving the day as yet undefined. She placed the cup on the stand to receive the dark and so wonderfully fragrant stream. A splash of milk and one packet of sweetener, a quick stir, and…ah…she felt so much better now.

Carrying her coffee to the downstairs bathroom, Delia looked more closely at her eye now that things weren’t quite so blurry. Good grief. The swelling was definitely down, but she still thought people would find it distracting to look at her as she stood to speak. She supposed wearing sunglasses was not an option which the committee would approve. Sighing, she went to the large overstuffed chair in the living room that was considered “hers.” Picking up her laptop that had been left on the chair’s oversized floral-upholstered foot stool, she turned it on and waited as the machine shifted through its own groggy morning gears. It could probably use a virtual cup of coffee, too, she thought.

The sound of the tap-tap-tapping of dog’s nails on the hardwood floor came from the hallway, so she sat her computer back on the stool and rose to greet her.

“Morning, love. Need to go out?” she asked the little black dog as if talking to a child.

Delia cracked open the back door just wide enough for the dog to squeeze through and then returned to her chair. She knew the dog would slip back inside when finished. She would get up later to shut it all the way but didn’t mind the freshness beginning to drift in now through the house. She loved to let the downstairs slowly fill with the damp early morning air when no one was around to complain about being cold.

Placing a blanket over her legs, she picked up her computer again and clicked over to her email account. Nothing too exciting - a few pieces of junk mail, a short note from a friend asking her to dinner, a message receipt confirmation from a co-worker, and several more concerning a new project she had just started. Delia left the project emails unopened and made a mental note to attend to those later when her brain was working better.

Snapping the lid shut and putting the computer back on the stool, she propped her legs up and crossed her ankles as she took another sip of coffee. Holding the cup to her swollen eye and letting its warmth seep into her, Delia leaned her head against the back of the chair and sighed. Thankfully, her headache was lifting, flying away to find a new roost. The dog was back in the house now and had wedged itself between Delia’s thigh and the arm of the chair, already asleep and breathing deeply. With her free hand she petted the dog, twirling the velvety ears and estimated how much longer she could sit here before she would have to get up and take a shower.

This was secret stolen time, snatched from the edges of the day when no one seemed to be looking. But suddenly, Delia felt someone was looking.

CONTINUE READING...

Writing Prompt #1

I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing writing practice everyday. I just finished a great writing book (review forthcoming) that gave some really good writing prompts. Here's the one I pulled out of the hat (or Ziploc baggie, actually) for today:

Write about awakening early.

Here's what you do:

1. Set a timer for 17 minutes. You can use the timer on my sidebar. There's an audible alarm when it goes off, just make sure your sound is up. Or use this timer I found online. Or do it the old fashioned way with your watch or kitchen timer. But 17 minutes is your target writing time.

2. Write, write, write! Write with your computer or with a notebook. Write with a pen or pencil. Write standing up or sitting down. Write inside or outside. However you're the most comfortable. Just start with whatever comes first to your mind after reading the prompt. It could take you anywhere! Write fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. It doesn't matter.

3. Read what you wrote out loud to someone you trust. You're not looking for feedback so much as just hearing what you wrote.

4. Leave me a comment if you gave it a go and let me know how it went. If you wrote something you want to share, please do!

CONTINUE READING...

500 Words: Nighthawks

A great way I've found to get myself writing is to use an image as a prompt. I love this painting (Nighthawks) by Edward Hopper. I used it to write from this morning. Give it a go yourself, or choose your own favorite painting or photograph to write about. Let me know how it goes!

CONTINUE READING...

First Lines

I did my 500 words this morning.

Pat-pat-pat. (That's me patting myself on the back.)

I used an idea from Naming the World. It suggested getting started by using a great first sentence. There were a couple of suggestions, but...I was feeling rebellious so I made up my own.

This was mine: It was time to get to work and go to sleep.

It made me think of looking up some of the best opening sentences from famous novels. Here's one for your pleasure:

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

Grin. You have to love G.K....I bet he was a lot of fun at parties.

CONTINUE READING...

Seven on Saturday

I used to write little blurbs for a website called Six Sentences. You could write anything you wanted as long as it was done in six sentences. Colons and dashes abounded! I haven't done it for a while, but it was a great exercise. So, here's seven sentences for your consideration:

C.S. Lewis once said that in some ways we are like fish except that we swim around in time, not water. The oddity, though, is that unlike fish who will die if taken out of water, we seem most uncomfortable darting around in the sea of Time. How many times have we said, "How time flies! Is it really already that late?" Or, how many times at work have you watched the time crawl by, like honey dripping from a spoon? And aren't we so often shocked when we have been away from someone for years and meet them again to find that they haven't been frozen away somewhere, but have actually grown older? Children especially surprise us - how many of us have exclaimed when seeing our blushing niece or nephew, "I can't believe how much you've grown!" Lewis thought this uncomfortableness we have with time is evidence of it not being our natural media - we were created as eternal beings meant to live forever without the deadly ticking away of time.

Write Seven Sentences about anything and let me know! It's a fun challenge.

CONTINUE READING...

Writerly Wednesday: F

To get me writing some time ago, I started an "Alphabet Series" of essays based on unusual words starting with each letter of the alphabet. I made it to E.

The words so far have been:

arrogate – v: to claim or seize as one’s right (something one is not entitled to.)

bummel – n; stroll; leisurely journey

cloot – n; one division of a cloven foot

deliquescent – adj a. To branch out into numerous subdivisions that lack a main axis, as the stem of a myrtle or elm.

elysium n. Any place or state of perfect happiness; paradise.

I've been neglecting any purposeful writing lately, so I thought it might be a good idea to try to work on 'F'. Here's some of my choices:

fain - (all archaic) Preferably; Gladly. ~adj. 1. Ready, willing. 2. Obliged or require [...]
febrile - Pertaining to fever. Feverish.
feckless - Feeble. Lacking in purpose. Also 'Feck' - one who is feckless (and an amusing [...]
feculent - Full of foul matter, dregs.
fishtailing - (archery) Said of an arrow that flails from side to side in flight.
fledge - To take care of a young bird until it is ready for flight.
flense - To strip skin or blubber.
foetor - Strong stench. (variation : fetor)
Force Majeure - An unexpected event which releases one from ones obligations. Lit. superior forc [...]

(From http://www.extelligence.co.uk/dictionary/)

So - here's your 'writerly' challenge for the week: write an essay, short story, poem...anything...based around one of these f-words. (Or ALL of them if you're really good!)Leave a link in the comments section to your blog so we can all enjoy and be inspired!

CONTINUE READING...

Writerly Wednesday: The One Minute Writer

The One Minute Writer was a 'Blog of Note' this week. It's a great concept and I'm glad to have found it. Thanks C. Beth! With everything going on in my life right now, one minute a day to write is probably all I've got.

Here's her prompt for today: Write about something nice a stranger did for you.

The idea is to only write from the prompt for one minute. So, here goes for me:

The only thing that comes to mind on this one is once when E was very small, maybe two or so, we were in the checkout line at a grocery store and she was throwing an ever-loving-hissy-fit to have some candy. The store manager quickly opened up a closed register and let us go first so I could get her out of there. It was probably more for his sanity than mine!

Give the One Minute Writer a try yourself. Good way to get your writing kicked off for the day!

CONTINUE READING...

Friday Photo

Instead of Five Word Friday, I've decided to do this Friday Photo. Write a short story, essay, or poem that is inspired by the photo above and using these three words: sidewalk, drop, creamy. Have fun!

CONTINUE READING...

Five Word Friday: Inseparable

Here's my very late Five Word Friday with last week's words: club, metamorphosis, meow, sightless, befuddle

Inseparable

When I was around 11 or 12, I was inseparable from three girls: Tonya, Anna, and Jenny. (Not their real names.) We were all in the same sixth-grade class and three 0f us lived within a mile of one another. Tonya and Anna were cousins; Jenny was the daughter of the pastor at the Baptist church I attended.

It was the typical love-hate relationship girls tend to have at that age. We would adore each other one day, laughing and playing, imagining we were part of a secret club with covert codes for entry into Tonya’s tree house: “knock-knock-meow-hey-kitty-kitty.” And then the next day we would pair up two against two - or worse, three against one - whispering and snickering behind each others backs at school, passing nasty notes when our teacher wasn’t looking. We were such mean little things!

But in the end we would always make up, and four of us could be found at one house or the other for a weekend sleepover. I can’t imagine how many hours we spent riding our bikes between houses, heat monkeys from the hot Louisiana asphalt licking at our bare feet. Or how many nights we spent singing and dancing to the Grease movie soundtrack, imagining we would grow up to be as glamorous as Olivia Newton-John one day. Or how many gallons of lime sherbet and bags of M&Ms we ate.

It was a time of changing from girl to teenager, the first stages of the painful metamorphosis into womanhood. Hormones were beginning to surge and befuddle our simple girlhood realities into lives so much more complex. And, horrors upon horrors, some of us were finding that we actually liked boys.

I’ve pretty much lost track of all three of them now. We drifted apart in high school, each finding our own niche. Me the dance team, Jenny music, Tonya her boyfriend, and Anna…well, I’m not really sure. I did go visit Jenny about five years ago, though. She finished nursing school, married, moved to a lovely house in Texas, and has three beautiful children she home schools. A good life, I think. It was great to see her, but the little girls in us were barely there anymore and it seems we’ve lost each other again.

Tonya left home her junior year of high school to live with her boyfriend’s family when she and her mom’s arguments got to be too much for either of them. Her father killed himself shortly after she graduated. I was told he had been an alcoholic. I never knew; Tonya never told us. I was away at college and didn’t go home to the funeral. Tonya married her high school boyfriend and, the last I heard, they were still together. I hope he’s good to her.

I think Anna still lives in her childhood home and is a teacher. Anna’s mom became pregnant with her out of wedlock and never married. She lived at home with her parents, finished nursing school, and raised her baby girl with their help. So Anna grew up with the shame of having a single, never-married mother and no father in the picture. She never talked about being different, and none of us girls ever brought it up, either. By today’s standards it would have been no big deal. But at that time, and in our small community, it was a scandal for a couple to get a divorce, much less for a woman to have a child and never marry. I would have expected Anna to move far away as soon as she could. I wonder what has kept her in our little town, even in the same house. She’s the only one of us still there.

I turn 40 in a week…egad! I’m trying to remember all of the other girls’ birthdays, but the only one I know for sure is Jenny’s – December 10th. I think both Tonya and Anna had birthdays earlier in the year; they should already be 40. So, I’ll be next and then finally Jenny. I wonder how they’re handling it – which one is struggling with aging, which one could care less, which one has too many other things going on in her life to even think about it. I wonder if any have battled cancer, gotten divorced, or lost a child. Funny to think that I don’t know these things about them….Funny how time has a way of marching on, sightless and without feeling, breaking those bonds that you once thought could never be severed.

Happy 40ths, Tonya, Anna, and Jenny…wherever and however you are. I find myself missing my three girlfriends today.

I think I'll take a break from Five Word Friday for now....so no new words. I'll have to come up with something new! Cheers! :~}

CONTINUE READING...

Five on Friday

Here's my five from last Friday: Crime, Nastily, Ado, Inconsistent, Foot

My Mice

I came across this fable from Aesop the other day. It’s called The Mountain in Labor. Have you ever heard of it before?

A MOUNTAIN was once greatly agitated. Loud groans and noises were heard, and crowds of people came from all parts to see what was the matter. While they were assembled in anxious expectation of some terrible calamity, out came a Mouse.

Don't make much ado about nothing.

It reminded me of mice I’ve birthed with much groaning and complaining. How often my reality is so out of whack with what is truly a ‘big deal’ and what is just simply, well, not. How I do whine about the sins committed against me, yet so quickly overlook my own crime. The whole speck and beam thing, you know?

I am so inconsistent…The sin of the woman at the checkout register who nastily replied to my simple question today is much more offensive than my judgmental attitude and lack of grace toward her, right?

God – forgive the many mice who scurry out from the foot of the groaning mountain that is me! Help me to see the beam in my eye that grows from my very judgmental heart. Keep complaining and whining out of my mouth and fill it instead with praise and thanksgiving to You – Amen.

And five more for next week:

Tightrope
Sweep
Countless
Zero
Beneath

CONTINUE READING...

Haiku!!

OK - here's my first go at Haiku from Wednesday's challenge! My subject was 'science' and I picked an atom as the first subject and then the Earth as its opposite. (I've always loved the similarity of the simple model of the structure of an atom with that of our solar system. Geek - I know!) It was fun. Let me know if you give it a try...

The Atom
Electrons whizzing
round and round a small hard heart -
secrets left to tell.

The Earth
Spin and turn and fly -
follow the ancient path as
angels watch in awe.

CONTINUE READING...

Writerly Wednesday

Some random writerly things:

Here's a site on writing contests....go ahead, I dare you!

I love personification in writig. Here's a fun personification writing prompt to try...The one I'm going to try is "The trumpet peered." I'll let you know how it goes.

One of my most favorite authors, Kathleen Norris has a new book out: Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. Also - Here's a short snippit on her from USA Today with links to an interview and excerpt from her book.

I've always wondered about Haikus...Here's a definition on their structure and a challenge to write two of them. You can do it!

Finally, here's the link to the bookstore that the picture above came from. It's The Book Barn in Pennsylvania. Hmmm...haven't been to PA in a good while! Anyone up for a trip??? ;->

CONTINUE READING...

Writerly Wednesday (Late!)

A little late on writing challenge #126 from Sunday Scriblings....Can you tell I've been home trying to get the house clean this afternoon?

Somewhere...

Somewhere there is a home where no one leaves the last bit of milk in the jug so someone else can throw it out.

Somewhere there are people who put new rolls of toliet paper on the holder instead of sitting it on top of the empty cardboard tube.

Somewhere there is a pristene laundry room with neat, folded, clean clothes and matched socks.

Somewhere there is a mom who can keep her bathrooms and floors clean.

Somewhere there are children who eagerly clean their rooms.

That somewhere is not here. Sigh.

:->

CONTINUE READING...

Five on Friday (A Bit Late!)

Hey, all! Been gone all weekend...more on that later...but here's my Five on Friday from last week's words (straw, ochre, gravel, crumple, crash) and some new ones for you:

Eavesdropping

I stirred the dregs of my chocolate milkshake with a long straw, all the while listening intently to the women seated at the table behind me.

“I don’t understand why Betty would do such a thing. Paul has always seemed to be such a good husband. I suppose you never really know, do you? I mean, what goes on in someone’s mind?” The woman’s voice sounded like gravel free flowing from a dump truck. A stringy cloud of smoke had drifted over my seat.

“No. You don’t. You don’t know what someone lives through, either. He’s a real creep – just knows how to put up a good face,” the other woman in the booth said. Her voice had become high-pitched, anxious.

“Here’s your change, ladies. Have a great day and please come back again,” this was the singsong voice of our young blond waitress. I waved her away silently as she moved to my table. I didn’t want to miss any of this conversation – it was beginning to look like it was well worth the wait.

I heard a sound like paper being crumbled, probably the receipt. “Really, Agnes. What do you mean a creep? Harsh, aren’t you? The man was practically crying.”

“No more harsh than he is. And the long face was just an act for all of us. As far as I’m concerned, Betty should have left him a long time ago. And she should have taken the kids and everything else the sorry SOB has.” There was slight tremor in her voice now.

A loud crash sounded as a water glass from their table hit the floor. “Agnes. What’s wrong? Wait! Where are you going? I didn’t mean…”

A very attractive middle-aged woman in an ochre-colored suit clutching a black purse to her chest ran past my table, but not so fast that I couldn’t glimpse the red eyes brimming with tears. Agnes, I presumed. An older woman with a cigarette clamped between her bright orange lips followed quickly after, stepping around the broken glass on the floor, calling to Agnes again.

Yes, these eavesdropping sessions were proving to be very profitable. I put some bills on the table and eased out of the booth. Two men at the table across from me stared as I limped to the front door but today it didn't make me angry. I was too intent on wondering how I was going to get Agnes to tell me more about why she thought Paul was such a jerk. I had my own hypotheses, but I needed her to tell me herself before I could take the next step.

Here's five more:

Perceived

Tidy

Cliff

Meat

Drain

More later!

CONTINUE READING...