Today's scene from Out of the Ordinary

"I waited too long, Mom."

"I know...I know." Casey could almost see the thoughts churning in her mother's head. Searching, searching...Right thing to say...Something to help.

"He called me last night."

"Really?"

Her mother sat up straight. Casey had her full attention now.

"I don't think I could live with myself if he hadn't. It's hard enough living with myself as it is."

"What did he say? What did you talk about?"

"He explained everything to me. Mom, all these weeks Lauren has been lying to me. And to Jim, too. She was doing her best to keep a wedge there. Why would she do that? What have I ever done to her?"

"I don't know why people do cruel things, but a lot of times it has to do with the power they feel when they do it. Lauren Stemple has been a manipulator since she was little. Frankly, she takes after her father who did the same thing when I was in school. It's a....a family trait, I guess you'd say. Used well, it gets them places. But they seemed to have seared their consciences in the process and that is sad."

"She kept telling me that Jim and I had nothing in common anymore, that he wanted to start over fresh and live a different life than before. She said I reminded him of his old life and that if I really cared about him, I'd just fade away. So what could I do? I care about him. I wanted him to be happy. Then all along, he's been sending her to make peace, and she's been telling him I wasn't interested."

"Well, there's your mistake Casey. Yours and Jim's. It may be easier than putting your feelings out there yourself face to face to have them potentially stomped on, but you don't send anyone to do your speaking for you. Ever. Especially when it's as important as this was."

Casey's head started to swim again. She knew all this. What was she going to do now?

"So what did he say? Did you get things worked out?"

Casey tried to swallow the lump that was filling her throat, and even though her eyes were already swollen she could feel the tears prick behind them. Funny how salty water could feel like the end of a toothpick. All she could do was nod in response to her mother's question.

"Oh, Baby." Her mother pulled her into her arms. Casey couldn't remember the last time she had rested like this against her mother, in an enveloping hug with her mother making circles on her back like she'd done since Casey was small. "At least you have that."

Which was a small consolation considering it was all she had. "How can too late come so fast?" she croaked.

Home Sweet Homes

This prompt comes via Writing Fix. For a link to the site visit the Links page on my site and look under "Creativity."

"List all the HOMES or HOUSES you remember living in. Choose several from your completed list and write about HOW HOMES AND HOUSES INFLUENCE THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU BECOME."

1. 525 Greystone Road
2. My grandparent's house
3. The old farmhouse in Glencoe
4. An apartment in Stillwater.
5. A house in Stillwater
6. A different apartment in Stillwater
7. A trailer in the country.
8. An apartment in Perkins
9. A house in Danbury CT
10. A different house in Danbury CT
11. My in-laws house
12. The Midwest City house on Phinney Drive
13. The house on 41st street on the south side of OKC
14. The house I live in now.

No wonder I'm tired.

We were shaking ourselves out of 525 Greystone Road (my dad was anyway) and headed for Oklahoma for a variety of reasons when my Mom's mother passed away. Her father had depended on her for everything--cooking, bookkeeping, etc., etc. He went out to a job every day and she ran the house. We couldn't just leave him, he didn't want to come with us, but we had already sold good old 525, so we moved in with him for a year.

From Greystone Road came my first true friends. I kept in touch with one of the girls until I was a freshman in college. And there came that first taste of "socialization" that adults love to spout on about in connection with homeschooling--rivalries, S.E. being "mad" at one of us all the time, and then she had to go to bed earlier than anyone so we got together after she was gone and compared notes. We wandered through the woods in back of the houses. I'm grateful I lived in a time when it was safe to do that. Later I heard it was the place for drug deals to go down, and since then the trees have been cut down for houses. We climbed trees, waded in the stream and ocassionally worked up the nerve to walk clear to the back of a farm on down the road and feed apples to the horses. We rode our bikes around the block and ocassionally snuck off to the "split level" division which was out of bounds and therefore always an area of curiousity. We imagined all kinds of people living down there, ready to snatch kids and boil their eyes. We went anyway.

The stay at my grandfather's was difficult. Changing schools was very tough. I kept my sites fixed on the house in Oklahoma with a pony. My father left in March to settled in and get a job; we followed in June when school was out. Meanwhile I read all about the Oklahoma Land Run and Little House on the Prairie. I knew that my grandfather was mad at us for leaving him. I wish I had been more compassionate, but I was just 10. I missed my grandmother very, very much and was ready to be out of her house without her in it.

I thought changing schools inside Pennsylvania was tough. Glencoe, OK set me back quite a bit. I talked funny, I dressed funny. Everyone knew who I was--we'd been talked about since we moved in. I know that now because we sat around and speculated about new people who'd moved in over later summers. Word gets around fast in a small town where everyone is practically related. Then I had to top all that off with being smart--schools in PA were a bit ahead of the rural one I was going to. My work was always singled out for examples of how it was done--especially when it came to writing--and I was too ignorant or prideful can't decide which--to make myself do poorly so I could stop being the center of ridicule and/or other attention. I don't think I ever came into my own in Glencoe. I started to toward the end of my high school years. I remember it dawning on me that if I wanted to wear green on Thursday (declared a no-no by the "in" crowd. They would find anything to make fun of people over!), I could do just that and let people say what they wanted to say, because in the end all that mattered was the fact that I liked green. That was a start.

My first apartment away from home came at the end of my first year of college. A young woman moved into Stillwater from Michigan to work part-time and share in a volunteer Bible education work. She was having difficulty making ends meet by herself, and I wanted to get into the same volunteer work, but the drive from my parents' house on a daily basis meant quite a bit of gasoline money. So I moved into her apartment. She wanted me there so badly she moved into the living room to sleep and let me have the one bedroom. We split a job as well--I worked as a research assistant for the Agronomy Department. Learned more about seeds there than I ever dreamed a person could know. When the grant money ended there, we threw papers for a month--HATED THAT--got different jobs, ran into two other girls who wanted to do the same thing we were doing, and so we all rented a four-bedroom house.

What a house! There I learned about lunatic landlords and counting costs FIRST. We hit the winter time, got the first power bill and nearly died. After that we only heated the rooms that had pipes in them, and kept warm at night using electric blankets. Mine caught on fire one night. That's another story.

Of course as life moves on things change. We left the house on Husband Street--without husbands I might add, and I moved in with one of the girls into a modern apartment that had CABLE! It was the first and only time I've had cable TV down to this day--it came with the rent. We lived in a two bedroom unit till my sister graduated and wanted to move in with us, then we moved to a three bedroom, but after about a year that was history and my sis and I moved into a trailer out in the country where we couldn't keep up with cutting the grass (no mower but a push one. No engine, mind you. The old fashioned push only with the blades that spin kind) and we left there after a year for more reasons than that.

From there I found my own place--by myself--in Perkins. How I wish now I had relished that alone time a little more. It was glorious without a roomie. Expensive. But closer to work, in the middle of my friends, and I could cook, clean OR NOT as I chose. I was too busy thinking I was miserable to enjoy it. I'd give my eyeteeth for it now. Eventually the roomie that I moved from the 4-bedroom place with joined me there, and we were together till I got married.

A year plus after we were married we made the leap across country following work. Landed in the the big blue duplex on Pahquioque. My oldest son was born there. When he was two we bought a house where we lived until the economy fell apart, and we were fortunate enough to sell it without losing our shirts. We headed back home to OK, stayed with my in-laws for 9 months while dh took tests to work at a post office somewhere in the state. After I found out we were expecting our second we started looking for a place of our own and settled on Phinney Drive. Our youngest was born there. Later it was sold and we moved to the south side of OKC. We hated it there. After a couple years we were back in Midwest City in the house we have now. No more babies, and no more moving.

I think I'll leave the shaping part for tomorrow. WAKE UP!

Just thinkin'

Well, I typed out a nice essay on patterns today. You'd have loved it. But I hit Publish and there was an error and it was gone and so was my mood and well....

I was re-reading here and realize that I complain A LOT. I've noticed this about my writing before and vowed to change it, but obviously didn't get very far.

I was thinking about why this is so today, and whether I need to change it or not. One way I sort things out is to write them down. As a result, there's a lot of writing that comes out as a whine or a rant, but in the end I feel better about the situation because while I'm writing I'm sorting and solving and putting the puzzle together so I can see the big picture.

So maybe I need to write more about that big picture--about the good things that happen and the problems that get solved. That might be a better balance.

Because there are too many good things in life to be complaining all the time. Like yesterday, I was sitting in the parking lot at McDonalds feeling rushed, and worried, thinking about time and money and all those little problems, and then a flock of geese flew overhead. They were in formation, heading south, southwest, and they were absolutely beautiful. The wings rose and fell--you couldn't say they were flapping. The word is too short and lacks grace. They reminded me of synchronized swimmers. Yes. They were swimming through the air. I tried to remember all the neat things I've been sent about geese and how they function as a unit, but then I stopped and just watched them swim away. My entire mood changed after that. All of the sudden, I was anticipating the fall. The weather will be exquisite, the sunsets splendid, and it's my dh's favorite time of year which means he'll be in a good mood. I can slow down, breathe, write! Who could ask for more?
I hope to count my blessings here more often. Who doesn't need the lift these days? :)

To preserve for posterity's sake, my oldest got his driver's license today. Of course there's all those feelings of pride and fear. But he's gotten the training he needs; I have to trust him to put it to use. My folks did with me. And we all survived. He passed the driving test first time out. YAY! That is indeed a blessing. The system for taking the driving test around here has turned into a nightmare but that would pull things down wouldn't it? Suffice it to say, my days of chauffeuring him to and from school/work are close to finished. Have to get tires and insurance first, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's NOT a train.

Workshop Write

Prompt: The man in the photograph is tall and thin with weathered skin. He's dressed in a suit and looks ill at ease. Who is he? Why, where and when was the picture taken?

Albert ran his finger back and forth over the glass in the picture frame, as if the simple motion might make his old man's hair lie flat. Even back when this thing was taken, that cowlick in the front insisted on sticking straight up in the air. It screamed that the suit was out of place. It was.

His father had been more at home out in the fields, among the plants, under the blue of the sky. There the wind played with his hair and it wasn't expected to behave.

The only thing he loved more than the land was his family.

They were here, too. His mother, Genevieve, his brothers, Carl, Dennis, Richard, and Joseph, his sisters Mary, Elizabeth, and Rose. It was amazing really that the picture ever got taken in the middle of the corn harvest, but it was his old man who relished these keepsakes, these snapshots in time that froze memories forever in black and white. The circumstances explained his mother's frown. It was no small feat to get eight children clean and in their Sunday best just because the photographer had chosen that particular day to make his rounds through the plains of Kansas. Then everything had to be taken off and hung up before it was dirtied. That happened so fast with young children and there was just no time between today and Mass to do laundry.

If only Mother had lightened up just a little, then instead of looking so stiff and stern there would have been that old familiar light in Dad's eyes, and his elbows would have stuck out in that same loose way they did when he saw his great-grandchildren rushing toward him. He was so thin, more like a weathered pole than a man if it hadn't been for that bit of pride that radiated stronger than his discomfort. One arm was draped around a boy--Albert himself--and Albert could still feel the warmth from him that radiated through two threadbare coats, that filled him with a contentment and pride that he would miss sorely now....

Albert was brought back to the present by a screech, giggles, lighthearted and quick footsteps over the hardwood floors. His grandkids were up to something. Had to be. Albert was grateful that their glee continued on no matter what the occasion. They had been so good through the funeral. They had a right to play now. In fact, maybe it was time to gather them all together for a picture. His father would have done it long before now.

This is my life...

I'm uninspired by my own prompt--again! :) I hope they aren't as boring to everyone else as they are to me. . So I visit my own Links page and click on through to The Seventh Sanctum and decide to try the "Story Starer" link on the right hand side (hey, no one is perfect, right?) and guess what I get? A blank screen with "Done" at the bottom. I had to laugh. It's worse than staring at the blogger pane. At least there's some writing there to distract me.

On to better things--I move all the way to the left side of the screen to click on Characters, and then scroll down to the Quick Character Generator, ask it to create five characters in a General category. They hand me:

The hypocritical sailor who lost meaning in life.

The wise, cheerful leader who is an outsider.

The moralistic philosopher with an odd birthmark.

The stingy, scatterbrained prostitute from a big family.

The athletic, depressed, predictable boatman.

Which really isn't bad. It reminds me that I'm lazy. I want more. Like a blog written for me. LOL! But hey--there's this little arrow for a drop down box beside the "General" category. I wonder what happens when I click that? (IE [Internal Editor] pipes up, "Are you here to play or write?" I'm ignoring him.) Wonder what "Fantasy: General" will get me. (A fantasy general? Hmmmm.....)

The strong, alienated, altruistic knight.
The militant alchemist who is seeking meaning in life.
The lonely, burnt-out singer.
The miserly thief.
The energetic, studious, peaceful inventor who suffers from a chronic disease.

Interesting people! Now maybe if I mix the two lists together.... (feeling like a militant alchemist!)

The strong, alienated, altruistic knight.
They hypocritical sailor who lost meaning in life.
The militant alchemist who is seeking meaning in life.
The wise, cheerful leader who is an outsider.
The lonely, burnt-out singer.
The moralistic philosopher with an odd birthmark.
The miserly thief.
The stingy, scatterbrained prostitute from a big family.
The energetic, studious, peaceful inventor who suffers from a chronic disease.
The athletic, depressed, predictable boatman.

Looks like the sailor and alchemist need to get together. They can have deep heated discussions with the philosopher that could be rather interesting. The strong alienated, altruistic knight can come to the rescue of the burnt-out singer. The stingy, scatterbrained prostitute knows more about the moralistic philospher's birthmark than she should, but she has the most in common with the miserly thief. They all find themselves on a an overcrowded life boat with the athletic, depressed and predictable boatman and the energetic, studious, peaceful inventor, who doesn't want anyone to know about his chronic disease for fear he'll be the first they toss off. He predicts that the depressed boatman will predictably commit suicide and throw himself overboard. Especially since he couldn't save the sinking ship. (Of course the captain--heretofore unmentioned--went down with the ship as all good captains do.)

I'm confused. But the possibilities are enchanting..... :)

So this is how it works. Turn the "Don't Wanna" into a ramble through possibilities, and all of the sudden that blank screen doesn't look so bad.

Combining Modern: General with Fantasy: General--hey, isn't there a musical about that somewhere? Isn't it about Pirates! Oh, boy!!!!!

P.S. DON'T FORGET workshop tomorrow!!! LOL! I'll send notes later. It's such a hassle, because I type them up on my laptop that won't connect to the internet (I know, I know, I need to get it fixed, but I HATE being without it for a month!!) and which has no A drive--only a USB port that lets me transfer the file to a Flash disk. But this computer--the only one that does connect to the internet--is too old, has no USB port. So I have to transfer the file to the laptop the kids use for school (which is always in use by--you guessed it, the kids!) which has both the USB port and the A-drive. Copy the file from the Flash Drive to the floppy, then run back here and mail it out to everyone! (Okay, I hear you--type them on the computer that connects, you big dummy! Well that's in the room where dh sleeps and the notes seem to flow in the middle of the night. He doesn't take well to clacking keys waking him up.) It doesn't sound like that big a deal when I type it, but somehow it always seems to turn into something I put off and put off. So, when you get your notes, have pity and READ them!! LOL! See ya in workshop.

Jumping in Cold

I'm not getting my groove back. Call the Emperor. How exactly did he retrieve his? :)

I started sorting through Out of the Ordinary today. I think I'm ready to pull things together. I have bits and pieces of this story scattered everywhere. I started it in first person, and shifted somewhere after the first few chapters into third person. I've changed characters names and their family make up. It's still the same story essentially but details have evolved as I've plowed through it. I think I'm beginning to like a bit more planning. But at least at this point it doesn't seem like an overwhelming job to start piecing it together. "Just work on the next segment," I told myself last night. I'm sure I told myself that before. I just don't remember when or where. I probably wasn't listening. Okay--what kind of psychological trauma does that indicate--when you talk to yourself and don't even bother to listen? I think I'm in trouble deep.

I have to say that in all the rambling I've done, I've found the lead character's voice. The first draft material I'm slogging through is SOOOO DULL, but I'm convinced the premise is sound. I'm hoping that means that while this manuscript has been stagnating in the drawer, I've been learning something.

I also got workshop notes put together. Yes, I'm trying to make it rain folks. Here. I know there are folks that don't need it in the least.

Oh, and I'm looking for favorite prompts for October's calendar. Which kind of prompts inspire you the most? Characters? Situations? Word lists? I'd love some suggestions, if you have them.

Sleep well. After reading this, it shouldn't be a problem!