Prompt: Imagine a teen-aged girl in her sparsely furnished bedroom with headphones on, eyes closed, oblivious to anything else around her. She glides over the polished hardwood floor with fluid grace to the rhythm of music only she can hear. She dances as though she's not being watched--carefree, careless. She's dressed in black jeans that look too tight to move in and a black turtleneck sweater. Wisps of curls stick to her head at her forehead and along the sides of her face. She smells like lilacs. Why is that her signature scent?

Celeste felt like her name. Light, ethereal. Here in the safety of her room, in the company of her memories, she played music her friends would laugh at and she became who she truly was in honor of someone she had loved deeply and well.

It had been two months now since her grandmother's death, time that had gone by in fits of sadness and rage, in amongst all the day to day things that made up life. If only she had known what she had while she had it. She would have paid more attention. Developed more skill. Grew more strength. Maybe she wouldn't be hiding now--one person outside her room and another inside--if she had just had the time for a few more lessons from Gram.

She stopped moving for just a moment and caught her reflection in the full length mirror that had been her grandmother's. At her insistance they had brought this piece back in the trunk when they went up North for the funeral. The mirror had been something she'd loved even as a child when Gram would let her play dress-up and she would tilt the mirror so that Celeste could see the full effect of her efforts. Even now, Celeste liked the image that was reflected, head to toe in sleek black that met her dark hair at the neck to frame her face, flushed with her efforts, looking at her with Gram's smile.

The mirror was a tall oval on a stand--the old fashioned kind Celeste was used to seeing in movies. It was out of place with her chrome headboard and footboard and matching desk and the rock posters that had yet to be taken down. Up till now her room had held all the trappings of a modern teenager who fit in with her peers. Celeste had worked strenuously to fit in. First it was the weight struggle (to be thin like everyone else), then the athletic struggle (in order to escape the geek label that threatened to be pressed upon her because of her intelligence) and the careful balance not to be too much a teacher's pet (because she knew how to be a good student). She had worked hard to carve her niche and had succeeded. There was a personal cost, but she accepted the fact that one must pay for what one wanted.

Still, she lived for the sporadic weekends and the whole glorious weeks during the summer that she spent with Gram. There she took on a different personality. Celeste still could hardly believe how their age difference melted away. Celeste had never met anyone more facinating. Gram played Berlioz for breakfast music, spent the morning on her knees in the garden, relaxed in the afternoon delighting in peeling and eating red grapes. Never green; they didn't suit her taste. She borrowed artwork from the library, and coffee table books too. One never knew what they might find at her house, or what mood she might indulge next. She played with everything--food, painting, words, sounds, fabric, paper, plants--it didn't matter.

But there were a two things Celeste found to be unchangable in Gram's life. Her dancing and her lilacs. So Celeste learned to love those two things also. There was nowhere in this city apartment to grow lilacs as she had been taught. But with hardly a thing in it, her room was the perfect place to practice the dancing that Gram taught her.

Gram had danced professionally for several years until she broke an ankle that never healed back the way it was before. While she couldn't keep up with her former occupation, she never quit dancing. In fact, she explained more than once, it wasn't until she quit dancing professionally that she realized how much she loved it. Once she started doing it just for herself, she felt her movements were all the more expressive and graceful. It came from the heart she had explained, never tinged with the "expert" advice of the head. "Love what you do," was a phrase that Gram repeated more often than Berlioz' music, "and do it because you love it. Whatever else comes from it--money, fame, glory--is a bonus. Those bonuses might be taken away, but the love only you can let go of."

For all those years Gram had been her well. At her house Celeste could fill up on things creative and sensuous, things that made her heart lift and soar. She could lose herself in books and music, and find the greatest delight in things as simple as bread and cheese. They would do things her parents would never try--like pitching a tent in the back yard and spending the entire on a blanket with a picnic basket and telescope, naming the craters on the moon. Her world felt big and wonderous at Gram's. When she slept it was deep, with dreams like tapestry, and the chance to waken when her body said it was time instead of the clock. Gram's was heaven.

Celeste open her eyes as she spun, snatching glances of the bedroom. Here it was small and practical--not just the bedroom, but her world in general. She spent much of her time conforming to others' ideas of what she should be. For the most part, she was content with that, even eager for it at times. Sooner or later though, she'd start feeling the need to get off the stage and regroup. Celeste knew then that it was time to make a trip to Gram's.

But Gram's no longer existed. Her parents had been quick to sell the "white elephant" in upstate New York. Gram no longer existed, except in Celeste's heart and head and in the photo album she continued to organize with loving care. And there were times like these when she put on her grandmother's dancing things and listened to CDs of Berlioz that had taken so much effort to acquire without anyone knowing about them. She would drown herself in lilac scent and close her eyes and hear in her mind the light applause that would come from Gram when she finally reached that space in which she was dancing her heart.

Her room would have to become Gram's house. From there perhaps she'd find the courage to stop being an actress on a stage. Until then her oasis would be here. Lilacs and dancing.

~*~
So much for not writing today. These character things just suck me in. :)

I'll miss the rising moon tomorrow morning. It hangs low and yellow in the eastern sky, just a sliver of light, with the sun running close behind. I really don't mind getting up early. It's almost like having the house to myself for a bit before the rest of 'em are up and about. I've developed two morning routines. The first when I get up with Abe, and the second when my semi-retired dh gets out of bed later and it's okay to make noise on our end of the house.

Today was a good taste of summer. It was 80+ today. The trees are fully leafed now, though I am still in awe of the seeds littering the lawns. There is a house on the corner of Marshall and Lockheed that is almost solid maple seeds. There's more helicopter ends sticking up than grass blades. And our lawn beside the driveway and close to the elm by the garage is almost solid elm seeds. It's amazing.

The blooms have been just as thick. If you read my friend's blog about her wisteria, you can understand how it is all over this area. Nothing interfered with the fruit trees, the forsythia bushes, the lilacs (they're over already. Boo Hoo. Lilacs are my favorite), the redbuds--all of them were clotted with blooms. Late freezes generally rein in a little of the exhuberance of spring. The tulips and the azaleas are starting up now, next to the flox. I've seen hints of hydrangeas in the wings. There was a plant farm truck at WalMart today and it made my heart soar. I won't shop there--I'll go out to Warren's which is more expensive but the selection is so beyond the average petunias and geraniums. Not that there's anything wrong with petunias and geraniums. It's just that I managed to kill my trailing sweet peas over the winter and I've never seen them anywhere else. I can't wait to go shop.

Shopping for spring flowers is something my oldest son would probably kill me if I told everyone how much he enjoys going with me. (Shhhhh!! LOL!) He's much better at the mixing and matching of colors and textures than I am. I see all the choices and my brain goes into baffled mode. He sallies forth and puts together the neatest arrangements right there in the grocery cart. He won't have the time to help me this year and I am seriously considering masses of the same type of flowers in most containers. :) But I have to find just the right thing to mass. I'll find it at Warren's.

I'm rambling tonight, but it's been a good evening. It was a slow day and I needed one. Then this evening we had the leftovers of Wednesday night's shrimp boil with some sirloins that we found on sale, and some of our neighbor's homemade strawberry wine, and am I ever contented to sit here and just type while the guys watch Red Green on channel 13.

Tomorrow is ASL class. I look forward to it every week. I think I was born to be a student. Which I hope has made a good teacher for my kids.

There are other signs that the good weather is here to stay and that a new season is underway. These are the flat "flowers" that bloom on the corners at major intersections. They are red this year--square and flat with black squiggles and held up by a plain wood stalk, and the heads all point toward the yards where a variety of household odds and ends have made their way out the door to rest on the driveways and lawns. People are attracted to these like bees. In exchange for a few coins they carry these items out of one life and into another. Interesting how bees do much the same with pollen.

The lawn mowers are humming and the weed people are out enmass turning lawns an unusual blue green that means less mowing later in the season. Abe wants to mow lawns but he can't find the time to put together flyers much less distribute them, then actually do the work. He's working his heart out for this trip. I am going to be SO JEALOUS while he's in Europe. Oh, how I'd love to go with him. It makes me just a little nervous, given the climate in the world, but you know, he could get killed in his back yard tomorrow by a lightning bolt. There's no sense in giving up opportunities because of fear.

He wants to go to Illinois in June and meet the Chicago delegation that he'll be traveling with. I don't know how on earth we'll do that. I won't feel badly if it doesn't happen, but I have this feeling in my gut that he'll find a way. It's odd how he does that. He just doesn't take no for an answer until he's done everything he possibly can. I think this will stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. Provided he's pursuing the right things with such vigor.

Well, I should go look at my ASL homework one more time and try to anticipate what tomorrow will bring. I am seriously considering just taking tomorrow completely off in the writing department. I have to get some editing done and I think I need to read--to refill the well. Which reminds me I have a blog I need to read.

Prompt: (yesterday's) Take the little boy from April 10th and put him in a series of unfamiliar settings. How does he react? Make a list of places and the feelings that each might stir.

His name was Scott.

Not as easy as it seems. Unfamiliar settings....
A museum. He feels bored. When he's bored Scott starts dreaming about baseball.

On a bus. He's riding a city bus for the first time with his mother. He feels on top of the world, and loves the bouncy feel of the cushions. He's excited and nervous too because his mother hasn't exactly explained what they're doing. He wants to ask questions but doesn't.

At his father's house. He's delighted. He's anxious to make himself at home, to explore, to understand his dad a little better by learning about what he surrounds himself with.

At an upscale restaurant. Extremely nervous. His mom had to bring him because the sitter canceled at the last minute and this is an extremely important meeting. All she talked about on the way was the list of rules and regulations he had to follow in order to make her look good. He can't remember the entire list and is petrified that he will do something wrong.

At a swimming pool. He's never been because his mother is deathly afraid of water, but his father has decided it's time for him to learn to swim. He loves the feel of the water on his skin and feels like he belongs there from the start.

At a schoolmate's party. He doesn't want to be there. No one seems to want to listen to the fact that this kid picks on him about his ears and his freckles and Scott keeps fighting the urge to kick him at school. If it gets too out of hand, it might be hard to hold back when there is no gruff and stern principal to fear.

In a limosine. Scott is completely awestruck. He can't believe there could be more room in an automobile than there is in his bedroom. He keeps wanting to play with buttons.

At his grandmother's house for the very first time. This is his father's mother. She greets him as though she's known him all her life and she becomes the first adult that Scott has instantaneously felt a kinship with. He can be himself with her. All the questions he has tumble out; he doesn't have to ration or censor them.

In the principle's office. He hadn't slept well. He was disappointed that his Dad hadn't come. He couldn't sleep because he had heard his mother leave the apartment and his eyes wouldn't stay shut until she came home again. So he was tired and cranky and when that kid teased him about his ears and freckles he punched him. Squarely in the gut. Now he's feeling sad, confused, and angry with the unfairness of all of it.

I did tomorrow's prompt today in workshop because today's prompt didn't lend itself well to group writing in workshop.

Here's your launch dialog. Write for 10 minutes--whatever comes to your head is fine. You don't even have to use the phrase in your writing: "Come for tea. Will you?"

I wish I lived in a different age. I want to ask my friends over for tea and spend a lazy afternoon talking while the kids play in the yard. I want an Adirondack chair for my front porch, and I want to sit there and drink coffee in the morning, iced tea on hot summer afternoons (it's a little porch, but always shaded) or perhaps an evening just watching the light disappear and leave the dark of night and shimmering stars, and maybe, come summertime, some lightning bugs. I want the time to smell spring (without sneezing!), to enjoy my pots of flowers that I will plant soon, to generally let my mind drift and relax.

The trouble with this time period is that everything is FAST. If our instant messaging takes more than a few seconds, it's "slow." What happened to writing letters, taking Sunday drives (I know--gasoline prices!) or lazy weekend afternoons. We are on constant "go" mode, and it not only makes us cranky. We become less observant and consequently less grateful. More irritated. Less patient.

Question is, can I swim upstream? Can I create my own world in which things are slower and more restful? I don't know. Because to some extent you have to adapt to the world you live in, but in other respects you have to decide what is important and give it priority.

***********

And to continue on this evening when I'm not so distracted. Today I had child with a sudden urge to do science experiments during workshop--and he wanted me to share the excitement over the results--and phone calls after that; just didn't get much done.

I'm beginning to understand why it is that everyone has been so miserable with allergies this season. I can't help but grin when I ride down the road and the trees give me a ticker-tape welcome. The elms sprinkle roundish shapes, and the maples send helicopters sailing about. Don't let the wind come up during the day. It looks like snow the seed cases fall so thick and fast! I can't believe how much seed there is floating about in the air right now and it's not even cottonwood season yet. (Boy howdy do I dread that!) The confetti collects in piles around the tires of cars--you can see exactly where the cars were parked the night before. I've given up sweeping off my porch until the snow isn't falling quite so heavily. :) At any rate, I can't help but pretend that the trees are just glad to see me go by and want to show it.

Ah, the taxes are over!! Half my worries are gone. Now I just have to finish Abe's transcript material and get it off before....the OWFI conference!!! We're getting a refund this year so I get to stay! Wahoo! I'm soooooo glad. I need a place to change for dinner. I love having the nights all alone to plot and plan and digest. And I love having a place to escape to when I have had too much socialization. I can recharge the battery and get the most out of stuff, without feeling like I should be taking care of the family somehow like I do when I go back home. I am sooooo looking forward to this. And my mom and dad are planning to come to the awards banquet on Saturday night. I still can't believe they think it's such a treat to go through the first, second, third, and sometimes up to six honorable mentions in 29 categories, just to see if my name happens to fall in there somewhere. And the food is good. We have a nice time. I'm glad we can do it together.

At any rate, we had a nice shrimp boil dinner tonight to celebrate. My dh is feeling generous and is cleaning my kitchen (he's such a sweeties) so that I can sit here and write, and read e-mail.

Tomorrow I babysit. Actually my youngest son will end up doing most of the babysitting. The kids love him. So I ask you--do you think I can get a final edit done on a 100+ page YA manuscript and get it submitted to a contest tomorrow (on the deadline)? I'm going to try!!!!

Oh, I might have sold a short story today too! Wowsers. (There's that word!!!)

Use the ... photograph to launch today's write (To see the photo, navigate to: http://www.carolyndekat.com/april13.htm but do it after you read. See if you can guess what she's talking about.)

They are so amazing. There are four, place carefully, and they are smaller than the bright green leaf that has somehow been plucked from the tree and rests off to the side. They look old, as if they had been painted pale blue. The paint is faded in places and chipped away in others leaving brown spots with jagged edges. I want to reach out and feel what the outside is like. It looks smooth, but it's hard to tell with the mottled coloring. I wonder why they are this color. The brown flecks are almost the color of the twig bed, and the blue sort of looks like sky with high cirrus clouds drifting over a sunny springtime sky. Perhaps if a preditor thought that if it went any further it would fall through the sky, perhaps it would leave these alone, but it would have to be an almost blind preditor who could see in color. Otherwise who cares if it's blue and brown? Someday I'll have to ask someone who knows why these are blue and brown.

I am so lucky to get to watch these out my bedroom window, and even luckier today that their Mama has decided it's warm enough to leave for a few minutes while I'm not stuck behind a desk at school. With my binoculars it's like I'm right down on the branch there beside them. I have a second story window that looks down on a young oak that my father keeps threatening to cut down because it's way too close to the house; he keeps having to prune branches back so that they aren't scraping the side of the house like some huge skinny claws, especially on dark nights when the sound even gives him the willies. Today though I'm grateful that it's here and that it provides a home for some fellow creatures. I hope I get to see them when they are new, and how they change and learn as they grow, until they "fly the coop" like my big brother Samuel did last summer. I wonder if I will cry like my mother did? It's easy to get attached to things you help grow up is what Daddy told her, and it's hard to let them go, but if you keep them pinned down or caged up you ruin them.

I know that I won't be the one taking care of these creatures the way that Mom took care of Sam, and still takes care of me. But I do put food out on my window sill every morning before I go to school and every afternoon when I get home, so in a way, I've helped already. I'm sure that's why the pair decided to move into my tree. The food is great. Mom has a birdbath in the garden so there's plenty of water. The house blocks the south wind that can be pretty vicious this time of year. Can you imagine your house swaying several inches every time the wind gusts? I don't know how they stand it. Do they get sailors' legs like human sailors do? Or do they just scrunch down in a ball and hope they don't get seasick? That's what I would do. Oh, and then what about the rain! We had a monstrous thunderstorm two nights ago. I notice the house is harder to see now that the leaves are fully opened from their buds so I'm sure the leaves shield them a little, but still, raindrops are little things and I'm sure they have no trouble sliding over and through the leaves. Naturally their mom would cover them up, so maybe they never get wet. She must be able to tell when it's going to rain. My mom watches the weather. I wonder what she uses to tell that she soon must become a living, breathing, and above all warm umbrella.

So there, diary. Can you guess what I'm looking at out my window?

chuffed (chuft) adjective

Pleased; satisfied.

[From English dialect chuff (pleased, puffed, swollen with pride).]

Displeased; annoyed.

[From chuff (boor, churl), from Middle English chuffe.]

He was chuffed that she was chuffed.

How desperately we need context sometimes to sort out the meaning of words. Actually that's probably true when it comes to lots of things, not just words.

I've been working with numbers most of the day. It's been gray and cold--easy to believe that spring was all a dream. There's been quite a bit of snow in the Panhandle today. Frost possible here tonight. So glad I held off on the plants. I woke up during night before last with a frozen nose. We forgot to turn the heat back on and so the house dipped with the temperatures.

Ah folks, numbers drain me. They really do. I feel like I've done six days' worth of work in the last three, and all I want to do now is go to sleep. But not before I write. :)

The word for today got me started on a rant, but I'm mentally too lazy to finish it. The topic was something about a dinner--the first one you fixed for company. Hmm.... I know I fixed many for company before the first time my inlaws came but they all went smoothly and I don't remember them much. The best one was a surprise first anniversary party for some very dear friends. I fixed orange roughy, his favorite and dessert was--drum roll--M & Ms because that was her favorite. (I'm sure I had something else too, but I don't remember it.) However the one with my inlaws is a bit more memorable because I was frankly scared to death, way out of my element, and in the end, I didn't even do the meal. They jumped in and took over (mother- and sister-in-law) which was okay by me. I was just praying for the day to end.

It was November. My husband's family has a tradition of hunting in the fall that goes back to when they settled the area in Kansas where most of them still live. My dh got permission to hunt on a field of a friend of ours. He invited his parents and sister to come with their dogs and he was excited about my getting my initiation.

I was not.

I decided rather than argue with him about the fact that I didn't want to go in the first place, I'd just go along and watch. He couldn't quit talking about how amazing it was to watch the dogs work, so I figured at least I'd have that to do, and I'd get some exercise as well.

We took off in the morning, and I never did drum up a whole lot of enthusiasm. I'm not a wintertime outdoors person. I hate being cold. The dogs were interesting enough, just boring after the first half-hour or so. Then I had to shoot the gun. Well, it wasn't like I had never done it before--I shot at my share of tin cans on the fence. But it had been awhile, and a much different gun because the kick from this one buried into my shoulder and felt like it stuck right out the back--like in the cartoons where the skin just folds over the protrusion. It was one of the many of the hurry and do it without being fully prepared episodes that have dotted my life right down to the last skiing trip.

After that fiasco, we decided to take a break for lunch. At our house. I really hadn't planned on this. Why I don't know. I guess I was worrying about one segment at a time. I was so nervous, so embarrassed, so sore, so completely unsure of myself that I was paralyzed. I know they all thought I was an idiot who couldn't even cook a can of soup. Or maybe they understood. My mother- and sister-in-law have been overwhelmingly helpful and kind for my entire married life, so they took it in stride and helped me out.

So I don't remember what I fixed. I don't remember what we had. I don't even remember what happened the rest of the day! I just remember feeling out of place in my very own home, and I'm sure it contributed to my current predisposition to enjoy working alone in my kitchen. I prefer that to having everyone in the kitchen helping out.

If you lived through that, you'll read anything!

Use as many of the words in the following list in your freewrite today as you can. Any form of the word will do. Read through them first in case you have to grab a dictionary before you start.

crave, fantastic, nothing, time, lazy, squirm, dodge, still, nervous, authentic,
walleyed:

1. Having walleye (a form of vision disorder in which one or both eyes deviate outward.)

2. Having large staring eyes, like certain fish.

3. Having one or both eyes appearing nearly white due to white or light-colored iris, or white or opaque cornea.

Libby Temple stared out the window of her fifteenth floor office and found that she craved a lazy time.

Everything around her was in nervous motion, from the people and cars below, to the birds and clouds in the sky. Colleagues passed by her open office door--she could hear them talking to one another or humming, sighing or arguing. Any moment one of those people would dash through her door with something that needed to be done yesterday and she'd be stuck chewing on her pencil or pacing the floor while she worked on a proposal assignment that should have been handed to her last week if it were to be done properly.

Of course everyone above her would squirm and dodge responsibility if the project didn't get done. She could see her boss staring at her walleyed while she tried to explain why she was simply not able to get the proposal done to his satisfaction. He would hear what she was saying but he would not be listening. Her reasons would evolve into excuses between her lips and his mouth. He would be seeing dollar bills flying out the window and someone would have to pay! And the buck always seemed to stop in the wrong quarter--her cubicle. She was so tired of the big boys' lack of planning becoming her emergency.

How fantastic it would be to wake in the dawn, having slept soundly on a beach blanket, and spend the first few moments of the day being perfectly still, doing absolutely nothing but watch the day come to life in the rhythm of the tide. There would be no wave touting it's attributes as better than another when they were essentially the same. Everything around her would be peaceful--natural and authentic. No competition, no blame, no responsibility.

It was time for a vacation. She'd just quit. Now. She swiped the angry tears that had started, turned to grab her purse and head for the door, and practically ran into the courier. The disappointment rose in her throat and she couldn't even look at him blocking her escape. Quietly she returned to her desk, wordlessly signalling where he was to drop his package. She heard him leave, knew she needed to get busy, but all she could do was stare at the world passing by in a frenetic hurry and wonder where she would get the energy she needed to join them now.