Sunny Bunnies

Happy Easter!

~ click image to make biggerer ~

Sunny Bunnies 20091031 (c) vanessa v. kilmer

digital photograph of cloth cutout bunnies on stone tile floor

Chop the Corn

* journal entry - comments closed *

I got nothing this morning. So this post is going to be very boring. I’m bored already. Right now I am just putting down words because I need to make my 500 word quota. It’s taken me about two hours to remind myself that I just need to start. I struggled with the whole, “I’ve got to wrote something important and entertaining.” Poodiddly.

The sky is very blue today. What are the cliches for blue skies? Robin’s egg, baby, cornflower, watercolor, sky. I can’t think of any that are not cliche. Just one is all I need before the end of my journal entry.

My dog is very hairy. When my daughter wanted a dog, the one stipulation I made was that it wouldn’t shed a lot of hair. Have I mentioned before how well my plans work out? I am surprised that The Codes has any hair left he loses so much. I wear mostly black so his hair stays with me wherever I go. The Codes is a cross between a golden retriever and a border collie. He is about half the size of a golden retriever. Whenever we walk anywhere, people always want to pet him because he is so cute and very sweet. He’s twelve years old now. He had lots of problems with his ears. We spent thousands on him. Finally, our previous vet want to cut his ears and change the shape of his ear canals. That would have been another five thousand dollars. We took him to a different vet for a second opinion and she straighten him out with medicine. He has some sort of allergies. We just had a hard time thinking we had to radically change his life at his age. He would have been deaf and there was no guarantee the problem would go away.

I have two more days that I get to waste however I want without guilt. Monday is April 1st and the beginning of my new life. I have consciously made no choices during this past month other than knowing I must write for a living. How that will manifest itself is yet to be determined. I just keep reminding myself to be as brave as I was when I was in my twenties. I wasn’t afraid of tomorrow, then.

When did I become so afraid of everything? I really can’t pinpoint a time. It was gradual. And as overused as the excuse is it comes from my middle class parents. You need a job that gives you steady income and health insurance and vacation days. If it kills your soul, so be it. It’s your duty to suffer. It’s our purpose in life to sacrifice all of who your are for others. In fact, we should use who we really are to uplift others to be themselves.

How about, “The sky is the blue of sea glass, soft and translucent, polished by waves tumbling it through surf and sand.”

OK. I am done torturing words out of myself for now. Off to do some dishes. That always encourages the words to flow.

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When One Door Closes - Second Edition

So I wrote the correct ending for this story. The first one was wishful thinking and a cop-out because I was getting sick. Yeah, that's my excuse and I am sticking with it. I hope you like this ending better. I know it's too late for the Trifecta contest but I needed to fix it. It is exactly 333 words long.

* * *

She went home with tears in her eyes, unshed as yet, locked behind the shock of the moment. She had no idea how he would react. They’d never be able to pay their bills with both of them on unemployment. She just knew they’d lose the house. Who was going to hire people in their mid-fifties? How did a person go on after working for the same company for fifteen years?

She opened the front door and their gazes met.

“I got laid-off today.”

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

“No.”

He started laughing. She began to cry.

“It’s not funny!”

He held his stomach.

“You’re right,” he said. “You don’t know it, but we’re lucky this happened.”

She sniffed and took a breath.

“I think you’ve finally lost it. We’re going to lose everything we have.”

“Who cares? Let them have it all.” He waved his arms like a game show model. “We are free.”

“If you call living in our car freedom.”

He rose from his chair, danced over to her and grabbed her in a bear hug. She pushed on his chest.

“Let me go, you mad man.”

“Never.” He kissed her. “Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her towards the door. “I thought about going to kidnap your from work. That would have been romantic.” He tugged her onto the porch. He pointed at the bags she had missed on the way in.

“Are you leaving me?”

He hugged her more tightly.

“We always talked about just getting in the car and running away to see the country.”

He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. She looked at the bags again and saw her green ones next to his black ones. She looked at his face. Really looked at his face. The frown lines were gone from his forehead. The worrying lines between his brows were erased. His smile lit up his eyes.

Her chest hurt.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

She took a deep breath.

Pull the Plug

* comments closed of journal posts *

I have been wallowing. Since I don’t have to get up to go to work, once I got sick on Monday or Tuesday (I don’t really remember as the days are running together) I have been doing nothing except taking naps. My sinuses are clogged and that makes me cranky and I can’t think.

It must have been Monday, because I copped out on the ending of the mini story I wrote for Trifecta. I took the easy way and ended it with wishful thinking instead of a proper ending. The story with the correct ending will follow this journal post. I think it’s more realistic and more heroic.

Wednesday was the last of the doctor’s appointments for my father’s prostate procedure. It looks like we are all good. He’s running around like a spring chicken. Out getting his daily fresh rolls and lunchmeat for their lunches. I think he’s having flashbacks to living in Austria. Shopping was done every day.

I had to take my father to an appointment at 08.00 which meant I had to get up by 06.00 so I set my alarm for 05.00 and I slept like crap all night. I am truly a sick person. How is it normal for someone to have high anxiety of such rediciulously mundane circumstances. We got done in ten minutes (the nurse took out the catheter.) I went home and took a nap until 13.00 when it was time to take him back to see the urologist. I dropped him off as they surprised me by telling me I had to take my mother to Boscov’s to get Tag-Away. Boscov’s sells all of the As Seen On TV items. Mt mother and I had the “Why don’t you like shopping?” talk, AGAIN. I hate shopping. I don’t like to browse. Stores are like torture chambers to me. I am a grave disappointment to my mother.

But guess what? She told me she loved me the other day. I didn’t say it to her first and it wasn’t a High Holy Holiday or my birthday or anything. I still don’t know what to make of it. First and only time so far in my life. You like that little bit of hope there on the end of that last sentence? I am always full of hope, though it is quite guarded. Certain things just can’t be expected. I’m 55. The odds of her saying “I love you.” to me first again in either of our lifetimes is slim. That’s ok. I’m used to doing things first, or for myself, or even alone. I have decided to hear her voice telling me she loves me in my head from now on instead of all of the other stuff she usually says. I think I will be happier. I gave up my grudge against my mother years twenty years ago when I realized I wanted her in my life but I could not change her. This may seem a meager reward to you but I think it was worth it. I was re-reading this papagraph and the first few sentences remind me of the joke men tell about their birthdays and blow jobs. It’s funny because it’s true.

I struggle so hard to build and maintain a routine and it just doesn’t go well. QV went to work, last night. the project he’s on is all night work. I am way way happy he’s working but now there’s another change to my routine. I’m thinking it was a mistake to take the butterfly (and the constant change it represents) as my avatar, sigil, sign, totem - way of life.

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The Thrill of Thunder

I feel like crap. The back of my throat is sore. I have a headache. I’ve been taking Airborne for two days so it hasn’t gotten any worse but even a little bit is too much.

The kids are on their way back from Florida. They didn’t want to come back. They plan on moving down to the Orlando area this year. The Pirate wants to be a Disney artist and The Snoogs just wants to live in Florida.

I have to go take an aspirin so I can think. Be back. I’m sucking on a Ricola, too. That always helps. And it did.

Thunder is one of my most favorite things. I love the feel of it rumbling through my chest when thunder sounds overhead. I’ve wondered where that love came from and it came to me as I was sitting here trying to think of something to write. It feels like my childhood. I spent my time until I was ten at my Oma’s apartment in Hallein, Austria. The apartment building was made out of alpine stone, walls two feet thick. It was located along side of the Salzach river and in the shadow of the Untersberg massif. When storms came through the mountains, I would sit in my little room, leaning out the window and watch the water rise in the river, white topped waves moving into whirlpools around the boulders that ancient waters had brought down from the mountains. Thunder and lightening galloped around the walls of the valley bowl and I dreamed of other people, places and times. Castles and kings and peasants played in my mind while the river rose and roared below my window.

The thunder was dragons calling to each other and the lightning was the flames they shot from the sky to toast their evening meals of long horned cattle. The caves they lived in were lined with crystal and salt. I saw the fairy tales when I looked out that window.

Hallein is more than 4,000 years old. Founded by Celts for the salt deposits in the mountains. And the only place that ever felt like home. Now, everyone that ever was is no longer so home only lives within my heart.

That little room is why I like small spaces where everything is all in one room. If I had my way, I’d live in a one room cottage. And it’s why I like it very cold at night (no heating except in the kitchen of that apartment) and lots of blankets (we slept under lots of feather blankets.) My Uroma (great-grandmother) lived in a multi-family farmhouse apartment with walls three feet thick, a shared outhouse and an actual washroom where everyone went to take baths and wash clothes. The stairs to the second floor were made of solid stone worn down by centuries of feet. Across the hall from my Uroma’s apartment was the dark attic room where my mother locked me when I annoyed her.

My Oma (grandmother) would take me to the butcher’s shop where I would get a warm Leberkäse sandwich and we would stroll through the ancient streets and strangers always said hello.

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