Day Three: Home Finder

            I find the title of this little blurb amusing because it’s pretty close to the name of my landlord and they are the reason that we are now looking for a new place to live.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving our fridge went out.  As soon as I figured that out, i.e. the next time I reached into the fridge, I called our landlord.  No answer.  It took us seven and a half days to get a fridge.  In that time neither the people from the emergency line nor our landlord ever called to apologize for our inconvenience.  I had called on Tuesday to ask if we would be receiving any compensation.  Now, I didn’t expect them to pay for all the food we lost, but the last time something like this happened to us they knocked a little off our rent.  It was a certain percentage per day.  The woman who answered the phone said she would have to talk with the manager and she would call me back.  Raise your hand if you’re surprised to hear they didn’t call me back.  Any who, I  had to go Thursday to pay my rent so I brought up the compensation.  The woman went, “Oooh, yeah that, I just talked with her this morning and she said no compensation.”  Then I get pissed.  I not so subtly asked when we would be able to turn our thirty days in, in the event that we decided to move.  She let me know that we could let the landlord’s know any time as long as we gave thirty days.  Fantastic.

            Now comes the slightly more complicated part.  As I was explaining this story to my friends, I mentioned that I had already been looking around on the internet.  I said I had found a really cute one that I would like to go look at.  My one friend said, “That’s good, but you don’t want to buy here do you?  I mean you don’t want to stick around this area.”  Damn.  She’s right.  In some ways Clarksville has become my home.  By saying some ways what I really mean is I’ve just been here so damn long that it’s become home.  I have some other plans rolling around in my brain and not many of them involve settling down in Clarksville TN for the rest of my life.  So that leaves me not sure what to do.  Finding another place to rent wouldn’t be hard, but that would mean we would need to come up with security deposit and all that good stuff.  I realize when you buy a house there’s closing costs, but last time we were able to roll those into our loan.  We have to stay somewhat close to Clarksville because of our jobs (it gave me a thrill just then to write our jobs, I have a job!)  Staying in this house is not a very feasible idea.  I decided to wait until after the holidays and then see where we’re at.  After all, “There’s no place like home!”

Day Two: Giving Back

           Last night was one of those really great nights.  With the help of some of my close friends I was able to take one step closer to understanding myself, understanding my husband, and understanding the relationship that we have.  I feel truly blessed to have friends that will sit and listen to me blather on about an argument I had with my husband about a light switch.  I had lasted four hours, (the argument not the conversation with my friends) and it was so stupid.  I could see where I made mistakes and put my husband on the defensive and unfortunately I did that right away so not a good start for us.  My one friend, let’s call her J.B. understood my husband’s position and was able to explain it to me.  She pointed out that she would have done/said the same thing.  The whole conversation gave me clarity, but when I woke up this morning I was thinking, I hope I gave the same back to them.
            In any relationship I feel there needs to be an exchange.  Last night my friends helped me see things from a different perspective.  It’s my hope that I was able to reciprocate that.  I don’t want to be that crazy friend who is always sucking her friends dry, going over the same issues over and over again.  Number one I hope I can move on at some point through growing and learning, and number two I want to be a sounding board for me friends.  After all it’s not all about me.  One problem that I have is an inability to shut up sometimes.  This usually occurs when I am really excited or when I’m really pissed.  My mouth takes control.  There have been times when I am arguing with my husband and thinking to myself, why can’t I shut up?  So I hope that I shut up long enough to help my friends, to give them the tiny nudges that they are looking for to move forward in their growth.  If not, I give them permission to duct tape my mouth shut so they can get a word in edgewise. 

Day One: Take Two

            Building a new habit can be a pain in the ass.  Funny how I’m doing this by choice.  I started to wonder if this was a bad time to start trying to write every day for thirty days, but then I thought, when would it be a good time.  When I missed day three, I planned to make it up on day four.  Of course, then day four got away from me.  I was feeling pretty down.  I thought geez I can’t even make it past day three?  Really?  Yes, I have a lot going on in my life but the more I thought about all those things the more I thought, those are just excuses, they are not the real reason that you (meaning me) are not writing.  I was going to give up, that’s the truth.  I thought well if I can’t even do three days in a row how am I going to do thirty?  That’s when I got mad at myself and thought damn it this is my blog I can restart this damn experiment as many times as I need to and more than that I am GOING to restart it until I get thirty days in a row.  So if I miss a day I get to start all over.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to do this, hopefully some part of me will kick in and realize how important this is to me and to my writing.  I’m just going to keep shooting this scene until I get thirty in a row.  So here we go folks, Thirty Days take two!

Day Two

I was hoping to have something inspiring to say on the second day of writing, but the truth is I’m just a teensy pissed off at the moment.  While I sit trying to meditate on the oneness of all things the world keeps blowing up in my face.  Every time something happens I do my best not to become one with my overwhelming emotions, but so far I’m not succeeding.  So just for tonight, I’m going to let myself be pissed off.  Tomorrow will be a better day.

A Little Something New

Today I’m starting something new.  I’m making a goal to write every day.  It doesn’t have to be much, just a couple of lines or a paragraph or two, but I must write every day.  I haven’t posted on this blog since April, so I doubt too many people are going to notice if I start writing on here again and that’s fine by me.  Mostly because I’m afraid I’m going to fail in this goal.  I am going to try this new fangled concept of writing a little each day for thirty days.  It’s doesn’t matter what I write as long as I am writing.  So here’s what we will start with for today.
The past two days depression has been creeping up on me again.  I hate the way I feel when it starts to overwhelm me.  I don’t like sitting around moping, it’s just not my thing.  I look for ways to improve my situation like happy music or inspirational books, but I haven’t been having much success.  There are a lot of changes coming in my life and honestly some of them scare the crap out of me.  One major thing in my life is my writing or my lack thereof.  So that’s why I’m starting this experiment.  I’m a writer and I need to be writing.  Sometimes I wonder if my lack of writing is what causes some of the depression.  It’s the denial of my own creativity.  I don’t allow myself to write because I am afraid of my own potential.  I have several journals that I write in but one is my emergency journal.  It’s the one I write in when I’m sobbing uncontrollably and can’t seem to get a handle on life.  It’s the one where I talk to God/Spirit/the Universe whatever name you want to give it.  I realize I’m not the first person to have a conversation with God, but when I do sit down and give in to the experience I always come away with some measure of peace and the motivation to keep going one more day.  At the very least (and I would certainly not count this in the least category) I know that I am loved and loved unconditionally. 

Sucks To Be Me (Long Ridge Assignment)

Here is the complete story for my assignment.  Needed to be 750-1000 words.  Managed to hit exactly 1000 words on the first try.  Go me! 

“At the light, turn right onto Seventh Street.”

“Bloody, GPS.  I already turned onto Seventh Street and then you brought me back here.”

Obstinate, yet obedient, Misty turned the wheel guiding the car back down Seventh.  She slowed to a stop allowing a pair of pedestrians to cross the street illegally.  One of the men had bright green hair, shaved into a Mohawk.  The remaining hair had been twisted into spikes protruding down the middle of his head, greatly resembling some prehistoric dinosaur.  The other man wore saggy pants and an equally saggy shirt, that revealed more than one tattoo carved into his person.  Misty was careful to avoid eye contact with the men, peaking out of the corner of her eye at them, while double checking to make sure the car doors were in fact locked.  The car was moving again before the men had stepped onto the sidewalk, soliciting an appraising look from both men. 

Just ahead was Cadwell Street, one of downtowns main drags.  It would have been a comfort to turn down that street, even with all the traffic it tended to produce.  If the GPS insisted on repeating the same set of directions it had given Misty the first time, and it looked like that was more than a good possibility, Misty knew she would turning down Pinehurst.  Not only was it an unfriendly street, but it was also temporary home to a broken down car that Misty had already passed by once. 

“No,” Misty reassured herself “I’m sure they’ve gotten help by now.”  Misty didn’t want to be considered a gawker, nor did she want to feel guilty for passing the family by, again.  On her first pass a middle aged man, with dark hair, had waved at her, obviously asking her to stop.  He was wearing a red flannel shirt and blue jeans, nothing too menacing there, but you couldn’t be too careful.  Axe murders seldom look like axe murders, though they rarely toted their families around either.  Misty’s knowledge of axe murders stretched no further than the movies she had seen, but those were enough.  Fiction or no, the possibility seemed real enough, especially on a dark street, in a bad neighborhood.  On passing the car, Misty had seen a woman in the front seat of the car bouncing a very unhappy baby in her lap.  Instead of stopping Misty had accelerated. 

“Sorry, but it sucks to be you.” She said without any rancor.  It wasn’t meant to be a comment of cruelty, simply one of fact.  Still, guilt pricked her as she recalled her words. 

That had been her first time around this circle, though one might suppose the course she took was actually more rectangular in shape.  The GPS gave the order to make the turn onto Pinehurst, shaking Misty back to the present and her own unfortunate situation.  Being lost was one thing, being lost in an endless loop was quite another.  Misty turned down Pinehurst, hoping in vain that the GPS would somehow magically produce the correct set of directions to the conference.  For the last ten minutes her cellphone had been beeping at regular intervals.  Text messages from her friends, no doubt wondering where she was.  Misty hadn’t bothered to check the phone preferring to allow her friends to blow up her phone, while she kept two hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road.

As she made her way down Pinehurst she could see the broken down vehicle once again.  The same man was standing on the curb, the same look of distress on his face.  As she neared the vehicle, Misty saw a look of recognition register on his face.  Given the general lack of traffic on this street Misty knew it was probable that the man recognized both car and driver.  Recognition changed into hope and the man stepped from the curb once more, probably assuming that Misty’s return signaled rescue, it did not.  Misty shook her head at the man, and once again hit the accelerator. 

Why didn’t the family have a cellphone, Misty wondered to herself.  These days it seemed like an anomaly that someone not have a cellphone.  The beeping of her own phone had finally ceased and she gave it a small reassuring pat.  Glancing at the GPS, Misty could see that she was in fact going to be making a circle.  She decided to find a place to pull over on 27^th Street, her next turn.  It wasn’t much better than Pinehurst, only slightly.  Misty’s inability to parallel park made life difficult in an area that demanded both residence and guests to be able to squeeze a car into the smallest spaces.  If things continued the way they were in GPS hell, Misty knew she would take a right on 27^th, then a right on Nantucket, then right back onto 7^th.  As if to confirm her fears the GPS piped up again.

“Travel 2.7 miles staying in the right lane.  Turn right at the second stoplight onto Nantucket Street.”

In frustration Misty smacked the steering wheel with the flat of her hand.  Damn it, now she would have to call her friends, how embarrassing.  She had been so sure she could find the conference hall.  She reached for her cellphone, but no sooner had she taken her hand off the wheel when an unfamiliar and somewhat frightening thunk noise starting coming from under her hood.  Steam immediately followed the sound.  By the grace of God, she managed to slide into an open spot, without too much squeezing and wheel turning involved.  Disgusted Misty popped the hood only to release a plume of steam into the air.  Cursing, she retrieved her cellphone. The phone, however, was black.  The beeping she had heard earlier was not the comforting texting of friends checking her progress, but the sound of her cellphone alerting her to its impending death.  Standing on the side of the road Misty thought, “Sucks to be me.”

Bit

I've got a short, short story due for one of the multiple writing classes that I am taking.  This is the first 157 words. 

“At the light, turn right onto Seventh Street.”

“Bloody, GPS.  I already turned onto Seventh Street and then you brought me back here.”

Obstinate, yet obedient, Misty turned the wheel guiding the car back down Seventh.  She slowed to a stop allowing a pair of pedestrians to cross the street illegally.  One of the men had bright green hair, shaved into a Mohawk.  The remaining hair had been twisted into spikes protruding down the middle of his head, greatly resembling some prehistoric dinosaur.  The other man wore saggy pants and an equally saggy shirt, that revealed more than one tattoo carved into his person.  Misty was careful to avoid eye contact with the men, peaking out of the corner of her eye at them, while double checking to make sure the car doors were in fact locked.  The car was moving again before the men had stepped onto the sidewalk, soliciting an appraising look from both men.