Friday Stuff: A Haircut and Red Writing Hood

Posted by Missy in Books and Writing | 24 comments

Hair today, gone tomorrow. Har, har, har. But I’m not laughing.

Very short hair going on over here! I wanted a change. Isn’t that how it always starts? I was about to burst into flames, thanks to Central Texas August weather, and my long hair was annoying me. So I exercised zero judgement and told my hair stylist to cut it off. To her credit, she did exactly what I asked. And now I have no hair.

My mantra: it grows, it grows. This is not permanent! Thank God. If hair did not grow I would still be stuck with the near-mullet, complete with partial perm, that I begged – begged – my mother to let me get in the fourth grade. Let’s just say she allowed me to exercise my independence at exactly the wrong time. She should have put her foot down on that one!

I wonder, do you have a favorite haircut story?

*********************************************************************************

Please visit The Red Dress Club for a description of this week’s Red Writing Hood exercise. All I can say is, yikes. (And ladies, I cannot get that button to post here. WHAT am I doing wrong? Help!)

Oh, and I think we were maybe supposed to write a non-fiction, first-person piece, but I didn’t re-read the directions before I wrote. Clearly, I mis-remembered the assignment. This is a fiction piece. Oops. And I don’t have time to rewrite! So… not exactly following the rules, but it is what it is this week.

Completely ridiculous. Embarrassed. Angry? There are more feelings rumbling deep down, at gut level, but ridiculous and embarrassed are the most prevalent emotions. Angry is right there with them.

The water is running cold. It’s soothing, listening to water rush out of the shower head and gently splatter as it hits the tile floor. If only that sound could drown out mortified internal dialogue.

How did this happen? One minute, a night out with girlfriends. The next? Joey’s apartment. Joey. Joey! Damn everything, this was not supposed to happen.

A graceful hand reaches for the water, checking the temperature, and then it stays, allowing now warm water to cascade and create a small waterfall.

Drinks were involved. There’s a headline. Was there anything else, though? The cocktail glass, shimmering with beads of condensation, was in view all night. There’s no way anything was slipped into a drink. Is there? As horrifying as that would be, at least it would be an excuse. It appears that this whole event is going to be inexcusable.

Perfectly pedicured feet carry a compact body, practically flawless, into the shower. If only the inside matched the outside. Hip flexors, aching and tight after last night, complain about having to assist with stepping under the hot water.

An internal play-by-play unfolds while water pounds tense shoulders, also sore from God knows what kinds of acrobatic passion. A memory materializes. Instead of getting in Jen’s car, a drunken decision led to Joey’s car. Joey! Damn.

Steam fills the small shower stall. At least the stall is clean. That’s one thing Joey does right. The condo is neat, almost compulsively maintained. Most men have showers that make a girl long for shower shoes. Not Joey. There’s no mold, no hair, and a squeegee hanging in the corner must be responsible for the sparkling glass.

“Good morning!” Damn, damn, damn. Joey is up. “There are clean towels on the shelf, and pancake batter ready to throw on the griddle.”

Oh, now what? Is it unacceptable to stay in the shower all morning, letting unbearably hot water scald away this mistake? Unfortunately, the water is cooling down; a hot water heater can only go so long. The same cannot be said for Joey. Chalk that up to another thing in the pro column. Aching, fatigued muscles say last night was no exception.

The plumbing sputters a bit and cold water hits red, overheated skin. People pay big money for this at spas, but it’s not an especially pleasant sensation. The irony is not lost. Time to face the unpleasantness. Time to get out and say good-bye. Again.

24 comments

Red Writing Hood Meme: It’s a Guy Thing

Posted by Missy in Books and Writing | 2 comments

Yeah, I’m late again this week. Cannot blame the internet this time, though. Just a busy week. I initially decided to bow out of this week’s Red Writing Hood meme, but once life calmed down again I decided to give it go. I really want to read the other submissions, but couldn’t bring myself to do so until I wrote my own… Kind of felt like a loser reading other people’s efforts without having put forth some of my own.

This week we had to write about running into an ex at the grocery story. And we had to write it from the perspective of the guy. Here goes…

********************************************************************************

Brad stopped to catch his breath. The parking lot was a madhouse and he had to park on the very last row, next to the road. The walk to the grocery store entrance might as well have been a marathon. A half-marathon at minimum.

I’m so out of shape, Brad thought. How did I let this happen?

The former high school basketball star heard giggles and then, “Uh, excuse me?” as two petite, current high school cheerleaders made their way past him.

The sweat rolled down Brad’s face. And his chest. And back. And legs. Only sixty-five degrees out, yet it was as if he had forgotten to towel off after the shower. His XXXL tee shirt stuck to his body, revealing curves a man was never meant to have.

Brad jerked, and a cart reluctantly broke free from the line of shopping carts, all parked snugly inside one another. He fished the list out of his pocket, as if he actually needed it. Every week, same purchases, the total price varying by only a few dollars, depending on what was on sale.

As he made his way out of the produce section where he picked up a bag of potatoes and little else, someone caught his eye. No, that could not be Lisa, could it? Brad thought Lisa was married to some financial genius and living the high life in town. What would she be doing way out here, in the farthest outpost of the suburbs?

He realized he had been standing still too long; moving or not, he was kind of hard to miss. Just five inches shy of seven feet and significantly more than his high school weight of two-fifteen, Brad stood out. And up. Lisa stared at him for a second more. “Brad?”

“Lisa? Hey, hey,” Brad laughed, as casually and cooly as he could. “I haven’t seen you since the Grad Night party fourteen years ago. You look good.”

But she didn’t, really. Look good, that is. She looked tired. Her body could still stop traffic, but her face looked like road kill. Lisa had been the tallest girl in their class at almost six feet. But she wasn’t ever gawky. No, Lisa had been a goddess. A total knock-out. Strong, curvy, completely at ease in a body that would have made any other high school girl completely self conscious.

Lisa, though, well she was in control of that body. Brad felt the color rise in his cheeks as he let his mind wander back to that Grad Night party. Oh, the things she could do with all five feet, ten inches of her body.

“Thank you, but you’re lying. I look like hell. My mom is sick, so I’ve been living here and taking care of her. And my husband left me. Took the dog. Sold the house without asking me…” Lisa trailed off, looking embarrassed.

“Lisa, I didn’t know. About your mom. I don’t talk to many people from high school. Nobody, actually,” Brad confessed.

After leaving high school as a star, he’d gotten hurt freshman year, lost his scholarship and finished his degree at a small, unremarkable state school. The looks on his former classmates’ faces that summer after freshman year, the looks of smug satisfaction that Mr. Wonderful was finally dealt a crap hand? Well, he couldn’t take it. Brad withdrew, finished his geology degree and went to work for the state highway commission. He never talked to another high school classmate again.

Suddenly aware of how pathetic he must look to Lisa, Brad shifted gears.

“I mean after high school I moved on. Bigger and better. Bigger and better,” he said, totally unaware of the irony. “Got my degree, got a job, have my own life and plenty of money.”

Lisa smiled, and even Brad could sense the pity there. Here she was, sick mother, no husband, and she felt sorry for him.

“That’s great, Brad, really. I’m glad you’re doing so well. We all knew you would make it big,” smiled Lisa, and Brad knew the pun was absolutely intended.

Nothing ever changes, thought Brad. Eighteen or 32, they are all still just assholes. I’m the one who won two state championships for those assholes. I deserve a little more respect.

“Well, I have to run. Big party tonight, don’t want to be late. Hope your mom gets better real soon, Lisa. Good to see you.”

Lisa started to say something, but Brad turned, leaving his cart and bag of potatoes, and walked away. She watched him haul his body through the automatic doors, holding his head high.

Brad tried as hard as he could to make the rest of his body follow his head, but no matter how far out on the horizon he gazed, across the road and into the fields, his thoughts turned inward. As he shuffled heavily to his car, he felt his shoulders sag.

The next morning as Lisa read the community’s newspaper to her dying mother, she skipped over the one-paragraph notice in the high school sports section about a former school basketball champion who was found at a rest stop, three miles from the grocery store.

2 comments

Red Writing Hood: Pick a Number

Posted by Missy in Books and Writing | 8 comments

Once again, it’s Missy Tries to Write Fiction Day , hosted by The Red Dress Club. So if you’re one of those people who hates this day, please feel free to move along. The rest of you, welcome and thanks for reading!

I’m a day late posting. My apologies. The internets have not been kind to me this week and Wonder, Friend has spent more time in crash position than a test dummy. I managed to get some posts out there, but it’s possible nobody read them since the site was mostly out of commission. To those who made repeated attempts to visit Wonder, Friend, I thank you.

So, the writing exercise. This week we were asked to pick four numbers, between one and ten, and those four numbers correlated to what would be our character, location, time and situation. I picked numbers that represent special dates to our family. Here’s what I ended up with:

Character: A new mother
Location: A restaurant
Time: Summer
Situation: Someone has just gone to the doctor

What follows is my attempt at a short piece of fiction that meets the above criteria. You can click on the Red Writing Hood link at the top of this page to read more stories from some talented women. Go visit!

*********************************************************************************

“Shhh… shhh…,” Sadie tries to quiet the baby while she fumbles with a BPA-free, plastic formula dispenser. She has no idea what BPA is, but every plastic item she received at the baby shower was covered in the words “BPA Free!” It must be a big deal.

She wants to mix a bottle as fast as possible so her wailing daughter doesn’t disturb Mickey’s other patrons, earning her a lot of dirty looks. The word patron doesn’t fit the motley crew eating lunch at sticky, vinyl booths and greasy counter seats. Such a fancy word. Such a sweaty, low class crowd. Sadie once thought she would be the one to make it out of here and go places, places where patron is the perfect word to describe people in the nice restaurants she planned to visit.

Finally, bottle made and inserted into a bawling mouth, Sadie uses her one free hand and a burp cloth to wipe the sweat from her brow. She also dabs at the tears pooling in her eyes. This is so damn hard, she thinks. Why is it like this? Three months. Three long, fucking, sleepless months.

Sadie’s pale blue eyes, once bright, have dark circles under them and she’s skinny, a lot skinnier than she was before getting pregnant even. She can’t seem to feed herself these days, and that’s probably why she couldn’t make enough milk to feed her daughter, April. Breast-feeding is kind of weird anyway, she thinks, and this baby, this baby is always hungry. Bottles seemed like a good idea, but formula sure is expensive. Even the Wal-Mart brand costs more than twenty dollars.

“What’s the deal with the tears, hon?” Marlee throws her notepad on the table, and flops into the seat opposite Sadie and the now quiet April. Marlee’s dark brown hair is up in a swingy pony tail. The 1950′s-style diner waitress get-up hugs her youthful curves in all the right places. Every eye in the place was on Marlee as she walked over to Sadie’s booth.

Sitting down, Marlee is thinking about how she and Sadie have known each other forever. Not technically forever, but long enough that you could call it that, and only an asshole would point out that knowing someone since you were both five does not count as forever, technically. They used to go out almost every night, even school nights, and party. It’s not like they had curfews or anything. You have to have parents who give a damn to have curfews. Sadie and Marlee had mothers, but only technically. There’s that word again. Anyway, that was all before. Before April.

“I’m not crying. I’m just frigging hungry, so instead of quizzing me why don’t you go put my order in,” snaps Sadie. Even as she denies it, the tears roll down her cheeks.

“I already ordered you a BLT, hold the L, fries and a milk shake. So why don’t you remember who you’re talkin’ to and tell me the truth. Why the tears?”

Sadie doesn’t know where to start. She is so exhausted. It is possible that she’s crying because she is hungry. Because she is starving. Every minute of her day is spent feeding, rocking, bouncing, bathing, feeding, and rocking some more. April is perfect, just like the spring day when she was born. It’s July now, though, and perfect as the baby is, her mama feels like she can’t take one more step.

“We just had April’s three-month check up, and…” Sadie trails off.

“Oh God, what’s wrong with her? Is she sick?” Marlee tries not to sound freaked out, but she is. What would 17-year-old Sadie do with a really sick baby?

After so many years, Sadie can read Marlee’s mind. She knows her best friend has jumped to the absolute worst possibility. Sadie almost wants to laugh. For their entire lives it has been her job to talk Marlee off of the ledge. Marlee, the good time girl, always smiling on the outside. Inside, though, that girl is a mess. Sadie has always been an honest to goodness sunshiny girl. In spite of crappy parents and never having enough money, Sadie sees the bright side, no matter how black the situation appears. Until now.

“No, Marlee, God. She’s not sick. She’s perfect. Not one thing wrong with her.”

The tears start again, fat, round tears, rolling over once perfect skin, now sallow and looking 10 years older than it should. Just as Mickey appears from the kitchen with her lunch, Sadie looks up and sweeps her greasy blonde hair off of her forehead. Mickey starts to say something, but one look from Marlee and he hightails it back to the kitchen.

“I’m kinda lost here, hon. I thought we had this all figured out, how you are going to put April in the school’s day care and finish high school and then we have our plan for next year, after graduation,” Marlee is starting to ramble. She can feel herself getting wound up, ready to rehash their plans to help Sadie get her diploma, and then help her create a nice life for April.

“Stop. Just stop, okay? I don’t want to talk about the plan anymore. I can’t do it. I’m crying because April is perfect and I’m a screw up. How the hell am I supposed to take care of her?” Sadie isn’t crying anymore. She is yelling. To hell with all the other losers trying to have a peaceful lunch. Sadie doesn’t have any peace, ever. Why should anyone else?

The baby finishes her bottle starts to get kind of wound up, too. Sadie puts April up on her shoulder, patting the baby’s back until a man-sized belch escapes. Looking over the table at each other, Marlee and Sadie exchange weary smiles.

Marlee gets up, slides into the booth next to Sadie, and takes April, who gives Marlee a gummy grin.

“You can’t do this, Sadie. You’re right about that.”

Sadie is picking at her lunch. She finally has her hands free to eat, only now she has lost her appetite. Dropping a piece of limp bacon, Sadie glares at Marlee, “Excuse me?

Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I damn well will figure this out and you’re going to shut up and help me. No more pep talks like that, please. We stick to the plan, which starts with you gettin’ your butt back to work. I don’t need some dead beat, jobless best friend to take care of, too. Go. Before Mickey fires you for sittin’ on your ass all day.”

Stunned, but pleased, Marlee gives Sadie a mock salute, “Ma’am, Yes, Ma’am,” hands April over to her mama, and goes back to work without another word.

April doles out another one of her trademark gummy grins, this time for Sadie, who is still tired and still a little hungry, but who also feels a lot better. Maybe I need to come in here and yell at Marlee more often, she thinks. She grins back at April, who has a knowing look in her giant blue eyes, like she understands Sadie’s thoughts, and says, “No, baby girl, that’s not it. Yellin’ at Marlee is fun, and I will probably do it again one of these days, but that’s not the secret. The secret is that you are perfect, and I was a screw up, but now we have each other and I promise I will figure this out.”

For the first time in weeks, Sadie cleans her plate and feels full.

8 comments

Confessions and Stuff

Posted by Missy in Books and Writing | 12 comments

I mentioned changes afoot and told you I’d be back with more news. Then I never mentioned it again. Today I share with you some of the changes; when I’m damn good and ready, I’ll tell you the rest. Really, I just need to figure out what it’s all going to look like first, and then I’ll tell you.

To begin with, I’m writing a book. Yeah, baby, a book. If you’ve known me for any amount of time (outside of blog-land, that is), I’m sure you’ve heard how I plan to write a book. And plan is all I’ve done. Planned and planned and planned. Why write when you can just think about how you’re going to write? The thinking is so much fun and so little work.

Well, I decided enough with the thinking already. There’s a bit more to this story – divine intervention, blah, blah, blah – and I’ll probably post about it one of these days. The short version, for now, is The Red Dress Club (TRDC for short) came into existence precisely when I decided the time for planning had ended. The time for writing had begun. So I’ve become a card carrying member (hey Red Dress ladies, can we get cards?) of The Red Dress Club, an on-line writer’s group for those of us who write, or want to write.

Periodically I’ll be doing some writing exercises that need to be linked up to TRDC’s web site. I thought about starting a seperate writing-only blog for this purpose and then I got real. I already – barely – maintain two blogs (this one and another one that’s a private affair, chronicling our boys’ lives – or at least it chronicled them until April. Ahem. Updates coming… one day.).

What that means is I’ll be posting writing exercises here. I will warn you IN BIG BOLD LETTERS when it’s writing exercise day. I understand – I really, really do – if the idea of reading my attempts at fiction and whatnot makes you feel a little nauseated. And bored. Please move along with your day and come back to read next time I post about regular, old life stuff. You are excused.

If you choose to read, I’d love to hear what you think. If you feel the need to be exceedingly critical or mean, please have the decency to do it behind my back and not in the comments section. Helpful criticism is always welcome, though. As is heaping amounts of “oh, you’re so wonderful,” even if it’s insincere.

The first exercise for TRDC was to write a short piece of fiction, starting with the words, “Your mother.” A note to my mother and anyone else who cares: this is fiction, make believe, not true. My mom has her own brand of crazy, surely. Don’t we all. But this story is not, I repeat, not about my mom. At the risk of protesting too much, we’ll get to it.

One last note: the “link up” for these writing exercises will be posted on Friday. Visit The Red Dress Club to read more works of fiction. (A link up, for you non-blogging people, is just another way of saying you can go to one blog, and then click on lots of links to read stuff at other blogs…)

***************************************************************************

The Farmer’s Market

“Your mother was on the news again today. Lead story.”

I gently place the bag with the eggs in it on the counter. Then I let the others drop, less gently, to the floor. There’s an angry red mark across the crook of my elbow, created by the weight of three grocery bags. I had exactly enough energy for one trip from the car, nothing more. The weight of the bags and the insufferable heat make me want to lay my upper body on the cool, marble counters. Cheek to counter, arms out straight like I’m pretending to fly.

“A little help unloading and putting away, please?” I try not to sound put out. It’s not his fault I want to crumple and sob quietly into the stone counter.

“Did you hear me? About the news?” He’s quiet, gentle. But clearly, he’s not letting this one go.

“I heard you. I thought maybe there was enough going on the world right now that they would forget the whole thing.”

A raised eyebrow and slight smirk. “It’s a small market. They live for stuff like this. This, they can talk about. The big stuff, the real stuff, like corporate responsibility, environmental disasters, well, I don’t think our local news team can really wrap their heads around it. Better leave that to the national news. Around here people prefer gossip and hype.”

He’s right, of course. A former journalist, he probably understands exactly what went on in the morning meeting. He knows they all pitched their stories and talked about what was going on out in the world, and then they decided to lead with the crazy.

“It’s not even that interesting anymore, is it?” I work in numbers, facts, a very literal world. Accountants get too little respect; people say we’re boring. Perhaps. But I think we just prefer to look at what’s real. One plus one always equals two. Most accountants feel this way. It’s a very small percentage of the field who do shifty stuff with the numbers. They give the rest of us a bad name. I digress.

We’ve made an assembly line of two, passing groceries from bag to refrigerator or pantry. I’m too hot and tired to eat anything. Why did I buy all of this?

“Maybe to you it seems pedestrian now, but you have to admit the whole incident was entertaining, in a disastrous way,” he says, with equal parts sympathy and humor. What a gift he possesses, to be able to say such a thing without making me want to hurl a bag of dried pumpkin-ginger flavored brown rice noodles at his head.

“Did you mean to make a joke? Pedestrian?”

“Oh, no, honey. I really didn’t. One of those mind tricks. I guess I was thinking about the incident, so the word naturally made it’s way to my tongue.”

Again, I should be irritated with him for the mildly insensitive slip of the tongue, but I can’t be. My mother and her infernal selfishness have rained down a small town media blitz on our entire family. He didn’t ask for this. Of course, it’s no secret that she’s a bit eccentric and completely self absorbed. He knew what he was getting into when he married me, but I guess we all thought the crazy would be contained to the family.

“Nobody got hurt. Insurance is going to pay for the farm stand’s loss. Her license is suspended indefinitely. Court dates set. Excitement over. Can’t the news just move on?”

Why does my mother insist on acting like produce is at fault here? She could at least pretend to be remorseful. Then the media would probably leave us all alone. Where’s the fun in covering a contrite grandmother of three who made an error in judgement?

Groceries put away, we wordlessly agree that it’s a wine for dinner kind of night, our appetites all but erased after this week. As I reach for the corkscrew, one of those outrageously expensive numbers that does everything short of select the wine for you, the phone rings. I check caller I.D. and signal to my husband to keep the wine-opening-and-pouring process moving. Unidentified caller. Reporter.

“Want to turn the ringer off again?” He asks, smiling, holding out one of the glasses we bought on our last trip to the city, now filled with inexpensive wine from a bottle with a cute label. I’m a sucker for a cute label.

“Yes. No phones. Two words my mother should learn to employ when driving. That and no smoking.”

Inexplicably, we start laughing. A chuckle at first, with a shared eye roll at the situation. Then, suddenly, perhaps inappropriately, we’re howling, tears rolling down our cheeks. We tell each other the story again. Only this time, the absurdity bubbles up and overflows, like so much wine, allowing frustration to finally subside.

“How she managed to get the car in a pedestrian only farmer’s market is beyond me. Where was the traffic officer?”

“And she never hung up the phone!”

“Just kept talking to my sister, like nothing happened. Meanwhile, there’s rhubarb hanging from her hood ornament.”

“Then she tells your sister to hold on, and asks the owner of the stand for a light. For a light!”

12 comments