Monday, December 29, 2008

Just what exactly...

...is a broaster chicken slushee? Must be something you make out of Christmas dinner leftovers, I guess.

Friday, December 26, 2008

One way to spend a weekend

My aunt and her sisters and my cousin spent a weekend making cookies to share. The end total was 497 dozen. Yes, you read that correctly. 497 dozen. That's 5,964 cookies. And that's only counting the ones that turned out, not the rejects or samples. Thirty-two different varieties. I'm gonna go try some now.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Sunday, December 21, 2008

A long-lost cousin, perhaps?

I was wondering why this new nutcracker stamp looked familiar.






Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Love triangle

Here's a little story for Three Word Wednesday. This is for my grandma, who gets fed up with romance novels because the men are always filthy rich, the women always weigh ninety pounds and their hair always falls in “tendrils.” The words are hesitate, jealous, and neglect.



Bertelina heard the flowered arm of the couch creak underneath her weight as she peered out the smudged window of the double-wide, wondering if Felix would return. He’d left hours before in a rage, jealous of the attention she lavished on her apricot toy poodle, Hector. But before left, she thought she saw Felix hesitate, like he didn’t mean it, like maybe he could make room in his life for Hector, too. She'd left the storm door open, as if only having a screen between them would make the distance easier to navigate.

In the glass, she could see that her cropped gray hair was thin and messy with neglect. Hector’s curly blonde coat was fluffy and clean with the effects of a special grooming from Marna’s Pet Palace, which cost Bertelina what she had left in the Folgers can she kept underneath the quilted toaster cozy her Aunt Agrapine had made on her secondhand Singer before she died. That toaster cozy meant the world to Bertelina.

But it meant nothing compared with how she felt about Felix. But Hector had come into her life first and she had an obligation to him. She was his mother, after all. How could she give him up? How could Felix think she would? She’d taken Hector to Marna’s to make him presentable in the hopes that he’d charm Felix with his adorableness. But instead Hector had nipped at Felix’s ankle and that’s what had led to the argument.

What really irked Bertelina is that Felix had acted like she was losing the catch of the century. She owned her double-wide, after all, and Felix rented one at the other end of Silver Haven Trailer Ranch. She was retired and lived off more than her Social Security; Felix claimed to be retired but had really been out of work since he lost his job at the packing plant where they met three years ago. Bertelina liked to play the nickel slots now and then; Felix treated gambling like an Olympic sport. He’d asked to borrow money from her more than once.

Hector nuzzled Bertelina’s chunky ankle and whimpered. She reached down with some effort, rubbed Hector’s head, and, with a last glance out the screen, closed and locked the storm door.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Deja Vu

Hunkering down in a theater with smuggled candy, giggling over vampires with my friends.

Sleeping in my old bedroom. Eating dinner every night with my parents. Driving a pickup that slides around every snowy corner, just like before.

Catching up with high school friends. Feeling giddy about the future. The stories I'm working on keep me up at night, make me forget to eat lunch. Sort of like being in love.

What year is this again?

Except it's different. Better.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Words I Made Up While Doing Schoolwork in a Hurry #14

I can't believe there were no takers on "frevolutionary." It's someone who launches a frivolous revolution, of course. Here's a new one: "impoxxible."

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Road trip

Here’s a fiction tidbit for Three Word Wednesday. (I made it a one-sentence Wednesday.) The words are shatter, enemy, vague.




He set the empty drink glass down in the slippery ring and scooped his wet keys from the bar, tripping a little on the lounge's patterned carpet, shattering any vague sense that he wasn’t his own worst enemy.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Zoning out

Been thinking about a lot of things lately. In a good way.

Had enough distance from the weight of things now that clarity is replacing the mind clutter. I’m being flooded instead of drowned.

It’s so cool.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Monday, December 1, 2008

Words I Made Up While Doing Schoolwork in a Hurry #13

Please define "frevolutionary."