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Amy
November Writing Challenge, Day 8 Dot, dot, dot… I have approximately 779 stories bouncing around in my head right now to elaborate upon. I know that it’s not necessary for me to only tell one, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome. Not everybody has hours upon hours to loiter online reading ramblings of the resident redneck. So let’s get down to it. First of all, I have several prayer requests on my mind. And I know y’all count on me not to get all religious but one of my very-good-oldest-friends in the world lost her dog today. Well, technically it was her husband’s dog first, but she knew Buster from his earliest days. Emme and Buster were buddies when M&M’s relationship was blossoming. (This is also poignant-Emme had a last visit today with her old friend. And this is getting complicated, but the reason she doesn’t live with them is because she was a little short on patience when the girl children came along, so Emme relocated the grandparents farm). Anyway, the children are understandably upset-it’s their first close death experience, I’m sure MBM is distraught, he’s had Buster for like, fifteen years, and M is quite miserable with her own grief plus dealing with the girls’ trauma. So there’s that. Next is a lady I…
November Writing Challenge, Day 7 Sculpted. Meet Oliver. Oliver hails from Newport Bay, Oregon. He was bought on a windy, rainy June day in an art gallery housed in a hundred year old building. I loved him at first sight. (As opposed to Johnny’s reaction when I trotted him out for their meeting: “Cool. Where’s the pot go?”) Oliver was promptly named after the acquisition and I was terrified his tentacles would break off if I left him packed up and stored in my checked baggage, so he endured a cross country flight nestled in my lap. He was sculpted by Michael Hopko in 2005. He has several brothers and sisters I would desperately like to acquire so I could have a whole octopus family here in Appalachia, but alas, I can’t hardly justify that kind of expenditure. Oliver is one of the coolest and most beautiful things I own. I wouldn’t say I’m into art, but I do love gorgeous pieces as much as the next hillbilly. Sometimes you need something perfectly weird to offset the mundane…
November Writing Challenge, Day 6 The carpet. The carpet was ugly, and it would have to go. The sooner the better. The living room carpet had long since been torn up and thrown out, exposing golden Clear Grade oak hardwood flooring. It wasn’t beautiful and perfect anymore, though. After almost 40 years of being suffocated by a truly hideous parade of carpeting ranging from a puke green to what was once a burnt orange shag, the hardwood was marred by spots where the rubber backing had stuck and countless staple holes. But it cleaned up okay, and until I could afford to have it refinished, it would have to stay. Strategically placed rugs were lain. The first rug was almost as bad as the carpet-a blood red rose design knockoff Oriental that what it lacked in beauty made up for in size. But it would have to do. I had been promised that the hardwood floors ran the length of the house, except in the kitchen and bathrooms. I was fixing to find out. Next was the bedroom I was taking over, due to it having an en-suite bathroom. I had stayed in the master bedroom for years, but there was no discernable difference in size. The closet was the main attraction in there. I enlisted some help and it didn’t take long to rip the decades old carpet out. We got the hallway while we were at it. Indeed, the same hardwood greeted…
November Writing Challenge, Day 5 Holy. How fitting that it’s Sunday. But then, not everybody worships on Sunday. Not everyone worships at all. I’ve fallen out of church, myself, I’m sorry to say. The reason isn’t because I’ve had second thoughts on religion. No, nothing like that. More like laziness. And I guess the best way for me to keep today holy is to stay away from other people. Because, face it, people annoy me. So anyway. I’ve known holy rollers and I’ve known spiritual people who have more compassion in them than people who are self proclaimed born again Christians who go to church every time the doors are open. Of course, we all know sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. Of course I should be witnessing to readers instead of bashing people who are probably doing more than me to get right. So. I’ll tell you about the time I was baptised in the Spirit. Never heard of it? Neither had I. (Mark 1:8 touches on it, along with a few other passages). We were attending this little church in South Knoxville-in Vestal-to beat all…Shug likes the tiny churches. And I will admit to feeling more in touch with the Lord in them little places where your…
How many times can one have a mishap in the kitchen in two weeks’ time, I ask you? Well, I’m gonna tell you about three…that happened to this girl I know. You might say a friend of a friend. A perfect stranger, really. Scenario One: You sit at work daydreaming all day about what you’re going to have for supper. You have the menu all planned out and you’ve starved yourself nearly to death by 3:00. You come home and begin making the supper you’ve carefully thought out, in this case broccoli and cheese soup and Red Lobster cheddar biscuits (buy yours HERE, they’re fabulous). You’re reading the back of the box to make sure you’ve got your butter/ cheese ratio correct and see a plug for their new Parmesan-Rosemary blend biscuits. While they sound appetizing, it’s not something you would pick up. Or maybe, but not in the bulk box the first time. They’d probably be tasty with pork chops, or herbed chicken. You begin to mix the water and dough mix. Something doesn’t smell right. It doesn’t smell bad, it just doesn’t smell like it normally does. You turn the box around slowly. Sure enough, you have accidently bought the parmesan type. Crap on a cracker. You’re not having chicken, you’re having cheddar…
I‘m a hopeless optimist. Ask anyone who knows me well. I stay to the bitter end, hoping against hope things will get better: my jobs, relationships, food. You name it. Don’t fault me for wearing orange. I have no more say in the matter than I do over my skin or eye color. It’s game day Saturday? Bet your best watch Amy’s wearing orange. It’s almost indeliberate and automatic. If we’re not in attendance, we’re watching from wherever we are (including the Walking Horse Celebration and a bar in Florida) and looking for the checkerboard with every play. Sure, I’ve lost hope several times this season. It’s depressing. I’ve said for a long time-it’s hard work to be a true fan. Anybody can root for a winning team. But to support a program when they’re down and out takes a special kind of loyalty. Some may call it stupidity. But Rocky Top does something to me. And orange is never wrong. Additionally, you can always cheer on whoever is playing Alabama or Florida. Lots of ways to keep occupied as a Vol fan. If nothing else, I can be proud of our band. Pride of the Southland never makes a false step. They’re the majority of the pageantry: the Power T that the team runs through, the…
November Writing Challenge, Day 4 Tweeting I have never tweeted in my life, save for singing that old tune “all the little birdies on Jay Bird Street, love to hear the robin goin’ tweet-tweet-tweet”. I once Facebooked that I was too long winded to tweet, which was ironic, since that was one of the few posts that could have been tweeted. I think our President has no business tweeting, but maybe that’s over since the disgruntled employee evidently deactivated his account. A wise move for all, I say. My cousin collects Tweety Birds. I can’t whistle. Maybe there’s a parallelism there. Didn’t they call Conway Twitty Tweety? I don’t know. I was young. I don’t know a thing about Tweeting. I’m really out on this subject, if you couldn’t tell. I kinda dread sharing it, but I’m committed now. And it will keep me accountable to improve. (See? I almost wrote “do better”) Sorry to disappoint you with this one. Not much to draw on…
November Writing Challenge, Day 3. Clarity. I gained the clarity of sight in fifth grade. I didn’t realize I was squinting, but one of my teachers did. Nobody in my family had connected my debilitating headaches to poor vision. But what a relief it was to be able to read road signs easily and distinguish cows from…well, blobs. The migranes disappeared, never to be repeated in my lifetime thus far. And believe it or not, I prefer myself with glasses even though so many people feel the need to tell me I’m so much prettier without them. These are the same people who like it when I have straightened hair. #sonotworthit Shopping for glasses every year is both a blessing and a curse, as so much of my life is. It’s a blessing to be able to afford high quality lenses and the ability to have them so quickly and *almost* effortlessly, compared to many countries that have no availability to them at all. And the selection! It takes me forever to narrow it down to just a few pairs. I always make the saleslady pick, as I am a hopeless Gemini. But contacts are out of the question. I nearly have to be hog tied to get eye drops in (I’ve found rolling them off the side of my nose is almost endurable) and I can barely get an eyelash out without crying or melting down from an anxiety…
November Writing Challenge Day 2 Wind. Once upon a time, in a land full of dirt roads and gently rolling hills, there was a cabbage plant. And under its largest leaf quivered a small winged grasshopper. The grasshopper wasn’t sure what had happened for him to be separated from his 392 siblings, but here he was. He was scared, but he wasn’t cold. He was lost, but he wasn’t blissful. He was green, but he wasn’t jealous. His yellow eyes darted anxiously as he chewed his bottom lip. He flicked an antenna and waited. Pretty soon he heard the chirrups of friends and neighbors 40,000 strong and he ventured out from under the cabbage leaf. He stretched out a leg and eyed the sky for swooping sparrows. The golden wheat rustled and he warily watched the high grass for other uncertainties. He climbed a stalk and munched thoughtfully on a tender sprout he’d found on the way up. It was green like him. The stalk shifted slightly. He gently swayed in the wind. He spread his wings to shake the dust out. And he remembered being lifted, the sensation of being weightless, and this was it, it was wind. It was wind beneath his wings. And he was flying away, to the next cabbage patch, on the next wind. I never gave much thought to wind until I went out west. It’s not like…
Instead of doing 30 days of Thankfulness I’m switching it up this year. I think it will be good for me. All twelve months are listed on Pinterest. I need to get back in the habit of writing. Time is so hard to come by, though, between working, keeping house, cooking dinner, my own maintenance (which seems to grow by the day), reading my self imposed goal of sixty books this year, and catching up on social media. But anyway. So. Day One. Heartbeat. Well. The obvious is when your heart starts beating, you’re here, and when it stops, you’re not. But I’m not normal and the first thing that comes to mind is Brian talking about wood fences that don’t lay with the land and have “heartbeats” (bumps). But for the sake of a good story, we’ll track back to the customary usage. I see more hearts stopping than I do starting. My heart stopped the first time I laid eyes on Johnny. I know it did. I’ve seen heart stoppingly gorgeous creatures; horses at play in fields and working cattle, their muscles rippling and manes flying away from their necks as they turn on a dime (my heart has stopped when I became separated from said equine in a grand fall). I’ve witnessed panthers pacing and stalking prey, their gorgeous shining coats showing…
