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Monthly Archives: November 2017
November Writing Challenge Day 30 Her couch. My couch? Well, my couch is dark brown cushy leather with nailhead studs, scattered with red damask pillows and a monogrammed blanket. It will take you hostage on chilly winter days or rainy summer ones. It is slowly beginning to show wear that I like to think gives it a little character. I say this because I can’t afford to buy new stuff for at least five more years. When it was new, if I sat back on it, my feet wouldn’t touch the floor. I’m short, sure, but it made me feel so petite. Now I’ve wallered (wallowed, I suppose is the correct spelling) it down and the cushions have compacted some. I remember picking out the furniture before a bithday dinner one night. It wasn’t my birthday, it was one to be endured because my friend’s family was coming and I couldn’t get my drink on. So I pre-gamed with a different friend. Somehow shopping for living room furniture seemed like the thing to do to fill the little bit of time before supper. I knew what I wanted, so it didn’t take but a quick perusal of the showroom until I happened upon the set. I got a “free” TV with my purchase and my salesman could not understand when I flipped my hand over the choices. “Whatever, it…
November Writing Challenge Day 29 In the fridge. My refrigerator is enormous. That’s good, because I cook a lot. I eat a lot, too. Here it is before Thanksgiving. I took a picture to show Taj, because he was all about me marinating my turkey and I’m like, but where am I going to put it after I marinate it? It’s not like Ziploc makes bags that big. And while he was all sealed up I could pile stuff around him. If he was in a pan, well, that ain’t gonna work. Yes, that’s a ham and turkey. No, I don’t feed twenty. Just me and Shug and my friend Brenda this year. I don’t know how to cook “small”, I don’t even know what that means. The best part of staying home for Thanksgiving is the leftovers. (And no bra. And the wine. All the wine.) It’s a long story of why we stay home and why family doesn’t come, so I’ll spare you. So anyway, today it’s full of leftovers. I’m so sick of looking at them, eating them, trying to create recipes…ugh. One more meal and I will freeze what I can and the the dogs will feast. Or gorge. Bug acts like he doesn’t know where to…
November Writing Challenge Day 28 I turn the page. I have not had a book in my hand in dayyyysssss. Days, I tell you. I’ve been too busy decorating, cleaning, cooking, and working. I’ve even done a little shopping. I can’t concentrate long enough to read, because I’m so far behind on blogging. (For instance, it’s the 30th. I just finished the 27th and now here I am on here). Our book club is meeting here tomorrow night and I haven’t even cracked open the first page of this month’s selection. I have been working on the Holly Madison book for over a week. I figured I would have it read in two days, I’ve been looking forward to reading it forever and a day! Not to mention all the others I’ve started and abandoned. I’ll mention them, maybe someone can tell me whether It’s worth pressing on: The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace, Eve, by William Paul Young (same guy who wrote The Shack), Dragonfly in Amber (2nd Outlander…they’re just so enormous It’s daunting), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, and the Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. It’s shameful! I can only console myself in that I’ve been very busy doing worthwhile or necessary tasks. I’ll catch up in February when I leave…
November Writing Challenge Day 27 I have plans. I’m also a liar. I have no plans. It’s something I say in jest, like girls in the 80’s said they had to wash their hair. Whenever someone asks me to go do something outside of my hermit shell, they probably get this stock response. I mean, I have general plans, like, I’m going to write a blog every day for a year, whether I have pictures to go with it or not, I’m going to read a minimum of 52 books a year (I’m not above cheating. If I knock out a Stephen King, I’m probably gonna read something short and sweet to counterbalance time lost), and I’m going to see my stylist Friday. I’m gonna need a new vehicle within a year or so, so I’m kinda planning on going looking at Nissans soon. I’m already married, so I don’t have plans on the romantic front unless you count where we’re going to eat Friday night. I’m fairly content in this house, so I don’t have plans to move. I even like my job just fine, so I’m not looking for anything elsewhere. I haven’t carried a day planner in years. Of course, I don’t have much to plan. Board meeting once…
November Writing Challenge Day 26 Liar. I know a whole bunch of ’em, don’t you? One in particular springs to mind that would have cost me my job if Co-op if there hadn’t been so much evidence to the contrary of what he was saying. You’re supposed to live your life so that if anyone ever said anything bad about you, no one would believe them. Well, this guy did…so it didn’t look so good for the truth tellers (already enemies) when the chips began to fall until the truth came out. “The truth will stand when the world is on fire.” People who had known me for ten years shunned me. For months I was truly an outcast among friends and FAMILY. But I kept my head high and my eyes straight ahead as things got worse. I spoke the truth and I knew it and God knew it and that was all that mattered to me. I remember going to lunch by myself for weeks because no one would have anything to do with me and I just cried and cried. People thought I cost him his job. No, that was years in the making. A file an inch thick. I’m sure there are people who still don’t believe what was proven but that’s fine. I threatened to have t-shirts printed…
These emails that say “get ready for best deal/sale of the century/ deepest discount” etc. make me wonder exactly how I need to prepare. I mean, I’m just reading. Nothing has ever came through the phone/ tablet/ computer/ pages for me. What’s fixing to happen? How do I get ready? Read under a table or desk? Hide in the closet? Bite my nails and take a Xanax? Maybe a gin and tonic? I’m just not sure…but I do like that last idea. It’s almost alarming. BLACK FRIDAY!!! They shout. Support Small Business Saturday! tout Facebook pages. Cyber Monday all day Sunday!! And don’t forget about Giving Tuesday, coming in at the end after you’ve effectively spent all your money, your end of year bonus, your grandfather’s war pension, your childrens’ college funds, and the tax refund you haven’t even applied for yet. Then all the sales are prolonged. It goes on forever. Well, I must go brace myself before opening my emails. Ta-ta for now. …
November Writing Challenge Day 25 Smoke. Not an easy one to write about, as we’re nearing the one year mark for the Chimney Tops Fire, but I’ll do my best. Last year on this day there was smoke in the valley. There was smoke on the hills and hollers, both. There was smoke everywhere. It’s a year later and nobody can believe it. Friends from out of town ask how things are…and I don’t remember until I’m reminded. Life has gone on, pretty much as scheduled, since summer and green once again took over the hillsides. For me, anyway. But I’m not in Gatlinburg every day. I’m not in Gatlinburg at all. I don’t see the devastation or the rebuilding in person. I’m not depending on the generosity of others to help me face another day as I struggle to have half as much as I used to. I was talking to one of my friends who works for dispatch the other day, and she brought up a new kind of post traumatic stress disorder that hadn’t even occurred to me. People who were right there in the smoke and the fire and the mayhem are having trouble being around it again. As you would. So here we are at the anniversary, and everybody’s memories are being jarred again and again by news…
November Writing Challenge Day 24 Something was off. It’s understandable. Everything had been so on for so long it was a relief, actually. It was the TV. Thank God. It seemed as if I had watched every sporting even for the past ten years. It could have been worse, it could have been hunting shows. The only thing more boring than watching men sit in blinds all day was watching men hit little bitty white balls all over gently rolling green hills. And golf I could sleep through, so really, it wasn’t that bad. So the TV was off, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized something else was off…the house had a very distinct abandoned feeling. I crept down the hall. There was dust on the floor. How long had I been asleep? Not just the TV, but everything was off. No whirring of the fridge, no air unit thermostat clicking. Then I noticed the windows were open. No, that wasn’t right, they had been blasted out. Glass shards lay everywhere, like they had just exploded from…what, exactly? And then I remembered. Oak Ridge had been bombed. But…I had survived? How was that even possible? I had counted myself lucky since I was little that if something happened at the Lab, I wouldn’t know it. Life is but a vapor, indeed. I was secure…
November Writing Challenge Day 23 Whispers. It had been a challenging day. The house was full of relatives and their noise and needs. But that’s what Thanksgiving is all about, right? Everybody under one roof, pitching in or watching football, opinions about everything possible being vented. The sisters were into it in the kitchen, this time over mashed potatoes. One wanted them creamed, because the others made them too lumpy, one kept adding more salt much to her siblings dismay, and one wanted more butter to the point they would be yellow. The sisters never agreed on anything, from to where to eat to what their husbands were thinking. The husbands in question were scattered around the living room, watching them placidly. They knew better than to get involved in any debate-those women would eat them alive. The only one that could do anything with them was their blessed daddy, who was snoozing in his armchair. Their mother just made them worse. Dinner eaten, too much wine consumed by one sister and her husband, and now they were having a whispered conversation about her by the sink. Three were grouped together, talking low and clandestine while the fourth cleared the table of crumpled napkins and smeared dessert plates. She didn’t know her sisters had noticed. She wasn’t aware the sisters knew about the affair. She was oblivious to the worrisome glances they kept shooting her way while…
November Writing Challenge Day 22 Distorted sounds. When you’re sitting at work and there’s a crash-boom-bang and it’s 50 pieces of toprail rolling off the pile after the guys cut the band. Or you’re there by yourself and something keeps popping and you think somebody is messing with you but it’s just the metal roof contracting as the sun melts the frost. Or you’re home alone and something falls in the closet and you jump out of your skin and belatedly reach for your pistol, even though you would be dead by now if someone was coming in. Distorted sounds will make you crazy if you let them. …
