Day 3: Flowers? I dont think so.

Ahhh...work. Today at work, among other things, I was asked to weed part of the back garden. Why only part of the garden, you might ask? Well...it was because the garden was SO weed infested, that it took about an hour to clear a 3 by 2 foot square.

  Thus, I was confronted with New Thing Number Three: How do you tell a weed from a plant? You would think this would be easy to do...the plants are the pretty ones and the weeds are the little sprouts of pathetic green stuff growing around them, right? Wrong. You have never been more wrong.

  These weeds were freaking monsters. They had stems about three inches thick and two feet long, and had roots that went six feet into the ground. They were hulking, huge, monstrous and fought back tooth and nail every step of the way. And, yes, they had teeth and nails.

How do you garden a plot of land that is more weedy than flowers? You grab a hunk and pull, hoping and praying that what you are pulling is not an iris. 

Day 2: Toxic Paint Fumes

So...believe it or not, I have never spray painted before. Although my cousins who live up the hill from me went through a "grafitti art" phase (the "art" part being negotiable) which resulted in the pictures on various trees and building surfaces throughout our property, I never joined them.
  My dad also never trusted me enough with a spray can to let me help him, which, I cannot say I blame him for. However, today's new thing: Spray Painting. (aka inhaling toxic paint fumes.)

So, when my employer at the Bed and Breakfast I work at told me we were spray painting the lawn furniture today, I got very excited.  Thinking of the "cool" spray paint artists I had seen on those home makeover shows, I was up for anything and very ready to turn rusty old deck chairs into works of green art...and hopefully not turn myself into the jolly green giant.

  As anyone who has ever spraypainted is probably thinking right now, spray painting is not quite so romantic. It was hot, sweaty, I developed what my employer calls "trigger finger" which basically means your pointer finger cramps up so badly that you can't hold a glass of water properly, and somehow, although I did not look like an asparagus by the end of the endeavor, I managed to turn the hair on my arms green. (How the skin didnt turn green as well...no clue)

 Also...spray painting makes fumes. I forgot that part too. And you know those nifty little masks you can wear (either the ones that look like hospital masks or the ones that make you look like you're preparing for a nuclear blast). Well...we didnt have either. I think that I got slightly drunk of paint fumes, if thats possible.  Can I get some form of poisoning from that?

Who knows. Either way, new thing #2 was accomplished, and the lawn chairs are no worse for wear either.

But, I would like to report that I will definetely not be skipping the meditation part of today's yoga, because I dropped another glass today. I swear that bad karma is out to get me. (or maybe its that trigger finger thing). For now, I'm relagated to plasticware, until my good karma returns.

Days Left: 96    Posts Left: 97

Day 1:Yoga

"And start with three exhale's, each time saying the word "om"."

So I did. 

New Thing of Day 1: Yoga

Basically, to be quite honest, I've done yoga before. But not in a long time. And not in the morning. And not with my cat, helping...actually, not really helping. The "new" part is that I'm going to TRY to do it every morning. We'll see how that goes. I just found a class on YouTube (which is a website that I love, quite honestly). Here is the link, in case you're inspired and want to check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xctBhj7TVc

I was sititng in some pose that is called something I cannot pronounce, but I think of it as the "indian style pose" or the "criss cross applesauce pose", because that's all it is. I was sitting on my nice new green yoga mat, with my legs crossed and my hands resting on my knees, breathing deeply, listining to the fan that was spinning madly in the ridiculously hot air, and trying not to think about how stupid I sounded saying "Om."
(I thought about just skipping it, I mean really...who would know? but if you're going to do something, I figure you'd better do it all the way)

And then my cat, George, pictured here with my new green yoga mat and flip flops:

decided to come and join me. He likes my yoga mat, apparently. I ignored him, and concentrated on "my breathing", and he just walked in circles around me, trying to get my attention and rubbed himself against my hands to try to get me to pet him. When that didnt work, he flopped into cobra pose and proceeded to claw my knees. I then proceeded to focus on my breathing while throwing him out the door and shutting it, before returning to whatever Indian style pose I was in before.

While nearing the end of the morning yoga practice (I believe I was in Proud Warrior pose), an ant crawled onto my mat, so naturally, I brushed him off, accidently ripping one of his legs off and causing him to squirm...you know, the way that bugs do when you accidently squish them that makes you feel HORRIBLE and like a bloodthirsty, uncaring murderer. Yeah, that way. So I got out of Proud Warrior and grabbed a box of graham crackers (which just happened to be the first thing I saw) and put him out of his misery,  and then jumped back into Proud Warrior without missing a breath.

   Somehow I dont think that yoga and killing ants correlate, exactly.

Long story short, yoga actually did feel very good, besides the cat part and the ant part. It didnt hurt too badly, and I actually felt more calm, although I can never sit through the whole meditation part at the end. I always just start thinking of things I need to do, and then go and do them.

After Yoga, because it is such a ridiculously hot day, I got myself a glass of ice water, feeling very calm and poised and centered after my 42 minute class (minus the meditation). And then I broke the glass all over the floor, so I had to vaccuum it up while yelling at my dog to stay out of the kitchen, much to his dismay.  Maybe skipping the meditation part gave me bad karma.

Days Left: 97   Posts Left: 98

98 Days, 100 Posts: Day 1

Ahh...summer. The time of doing nothing.

Oh my gosh.

 I am NOT a doing nothing person. I need stuff to do. And while I am working (at a bed and breakfast, no less)  I dont have NEARLY enough hours to keep me occupied. I think that I'm going to go crazy.

So...I've decided to revamp my old blog (which used to be called "Don't we all want to change the world?") and turn it into this.

Then I counted all the days from now until the end of August, which, yes, did involve a calendar and a calculator, and the total came to 98. So I decided to do 98 blog posts, one for each day.  What the heck is with the 100 then, you might ask? Good question. I'm an even number person...kind of OCD, so I decided that somewhere along the line i'll squeeze in an extra post or two...maybe more. Who knows?

Either way. 98 days. 100 posts (at least). And...here's the hard part. But hopefully it will cure my summer boredom.  Hard Part: Through the course of blogging, I have to do one new thing every day. And write about it. At least it will keep me occupied.

Either way, today will have another post, highlighting what my "new thing" for today, Day 1, was, and just about the day in general.

So there goes one of the extra posts I needed.

Days Left: 97. Posts Left: 99

LUNCHTIME!!!

This is my midterm piece for creative writing. It's based on the story I wrote before, but its longer and A LOT diffferent. ENJOY!!!

“Living for Lunch”
By Meredith Perrin

Gretchen found her liberation at lunchtime. She put her feet up on her desk, pulled Tracy Chevalier’s newest novel out of her bag along with her lunch and watched through the slit window in her door as her co-workers scrambled around the office while she ate food and read.

She had volunteered to stay behind in the office during the “normal” lunch hours to man the phones and take her break when everyone else came back. She hadn’t minded the idea when her boss approached them at the last office meeting; she never took quite as much pleasure in sitting in one of the four restaurants on the tiny main street and gossiping as everyone else.

The first time she had brought her food and eaten at her desk instead of going out with her coworkers she felt awkward, like she was drawing a line between herself and them, but now she relished in that line. She relished in the fact that she was eating proper portions of the right number of whole grains and fresh fruits while they laughed over the appetizer special at Applebee’s and had no idea that it bloated them with more salt in one snack than they should eat in two days. She relished in the fact that while they talked about how Melinda from the Mail Room wasn’t sure the baby she was expecting was her husband’s she read through the New York Times bestsellers.

***

At the end of her hour Gretchen placed her feet back into the heels that she had slipped off under her desk, put her book back into her bag and walked to the kitchen to rinse out her dishes and get a cup of coffee.

“Hey Gretch.” Judy said as she walked into the room while Gretchen was rinsing out her bowl.

“Hey Judy, how was lunch?” Gretchen replied without looking up from the sink.

“Oh it was great. Best dessert special they’ve had in forever. Hot apple pie with Vanilla Ice Cream. You should try it. We could bring you back one tomorrow if you want. Beth-Ann and I split it, but man….I’m going to be paying for this for a week. ” Judy chuckled and patted her full stomach as she spooned sugar and cream into her coffee.

“Sounds good,” Gretchen replied, “but I’m not much of a dessert person.”

“Oh come on”, Judy said, “you cant tell me you’re not at least tempted.”

Gretchen shook her head. “Sorry, I’m just boring.” she lied.

Judy sighed and leaned back against the counter. Gretchen frowned. After taking a whole hour off for lunch, you would think that when they got back from their break people would actually take time to do their work. It had been the same way at her old office. After transferring to Seattle last month she had hoped working at the corporate office would mean that people were more focused on getting work done. Instead they just got paid more because they faxed insurance copies to more important people.

“So how’s your daughter doing?” Judy asked, interrupting Gretchen’s musings. “Did she make the cheerleading team?”

“Hmmm?” Gretchen was confused for a moment at Judy’s question and then remembered what she had told her on Friday, “Oh, that’s right. No…no she didn’t end up making it.”

“That’s too bad.” Judy said.

“She’s not that upset.” Gretchen replied, “it would have taken so much time away from her schoolwork, anyways. I don’t know how she would have done it all.”

Judy nodded.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “When Karen was in high school I felt like I was either picking her up from volleyball practice, dropping her off at practice or watching one of her games. Not that I minded, of course, but…well, you know what I’m talking about.” She laughed.
Gretchen nodded, her fingers fumbling with the cap of the skim milk she had taken out of the fridge. She hastily added a little to her black coffee and made an excuse to go back to her office.

***

Gretchen plugged her MacBook into the power cord and sat back on her new leather couch with the remainder of the bottle of wine she had received as a housewarming gift from her previous job in a glass. She had splurged on the new furniture after her cat spilled a cup of coffee on her old corduroy sofa a few days before moving, figuring that one of the benefits of not having a husband was getting to pick out the furniture you wanted instead of the furniture with the best recliner included in the set.

A crash from the kitchen made her jump.

“Julie, what are you doing in there?” Gretchen called out, setting her tea on the mahogany table and walking into the other room.

She flicked on the light. “Where are you?” she asked.

A small yellow cat looked up at her from the floor next to a container of almonds that she had knocked off the counter.

Gretchen righted the container and picked the cat up. “Julie, you are the most troublesome cat I have ever had.”

Dropping Julie on the couch next to her and picking up her laptop, Gretchen stretched her feet out, took a sip of her wine and typed “teenage girl with brown hair and blue eyes” into Google Images search and browsed through the pictures until she found the MySpace account of a girl who looked like she was picturing.

She was medium height, on the skinnier side, with short brown hair that was chopped off at her shoulders and a smile that made her eyes stand out. She was gathered by a group of friends outside a movie theatre. Gretchen stared at the picture before printing it out and slipping it into the picture frame she had bought after work at Wal-Mart.

She put it into her purse so she wouldn’t forget to bring it to the office the next day, and then went into the kitchen to put her wineglass in the sink before heading up to bed.

On the way back past her bag before walking up the stairs, she pulled the frame out again and ran her thumb along the edge of the girl’s face.

“What do you think, Julie?” She asked the cat who was brushing up against her legs. “Do you think she looks like an Abby?”

The cat looked blankly at her.
“I agree. She looks like an Abby. Abigail is such a formal name, but Abby fits her just fine.”

***
Gretchen couldn‘t say when she had adjusted to office life. Somewhere after her senior year in college the summer job she had taken to give her something to do before joining the Peace Corps had turned into her life, draining away 30 years before she even knew that they had disappeared. She had worked there up until last month when they offered her better pay here in Seattle.

Her father had died that summer, and his passing destroyed her mother and her future in one fell swoop, even though she didn’t know it at the time.

While her friends took off in the plane headed for rural Indonesia to build schools she had stood in a cemetery next to her mother, wearing the obligatory black dress with shoes that looked nice enough for calling hours but had heels that didn’t sink into the wet ground around the grave.
At that point in time, she had still wanted to change the world.

“Everyone takes their jobs so seriously!” she had complained to her friends when they called her collect from halfway across the world. Her friends spent the long days stacking bricks on top of each other and hammering boards together, work as tedious and mindless as filing papers and faxing insurance certificates, which was what Gretchen was spending her time doing now. Their work, however, offered a slightly better end result.

Gretchen’s felt her purpose in life at that point had still been focused towards doing something that would improve the lives of people everywhere, that would give little kids drinking water and a chance at an education. Living at home for another year was just a minor setback, a chance to earn some extra money while she stared at the plane ticket taped to the bathroom mirror next to pictures from graduation and bought clothes that would last in places where you wore the same thing for two weeks straight and no one looked at you strangely.

That had been her plan thirty years ago.

***
At work the next day, the picture in the frame appeared on Gretchen’s previously bare desk, sitting next to her inbox where her co-workers were sure not to miss it.

Beth-Ann stopped in her office five minutes later.
“Hey Gretchen, I was just checking to see if that fax came in last night after I left.” she said, leaning against the doorway of the office.

“Oh yeah, it did. One sec.” Gretchen dug around in her bag, her eyes following Beth-Ann’s gaze as they rested on the picture frame that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“Is this your daughter?” Beth-Ann asked, pointing.

“Yeah, that’s Abby.” Gretchen replied, pulling out the fax and sliding it across her desk towards Beth-Ann.

“She looks so much like you! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of her before, you know.” Beth-Ann said, taking the insurance form.

“Yeah, I just got them unpacked yesterday.” Gretchen replied.

“She is a pretty one,” Beth-Ann chuckled. “You’re gonna have to keep an eye on her when she gets to high school. But, you two really do look a lot alike. There must be none of your husband in her at all.”

“No, she takes more after me than him.” Gretchen said dryly.

“What does your husband do again? Actually, I don’t think I ever asked you.” Beth-Ann added as an afterthought.

“Oh, ummm…he’s in construction. A manager for a firm in the city.” Gretchen replied.

Beth-Ann had opened her mouth to ask something else when miraculously, the phone rang at her desk.

“Hold that thought.” Beth-Ann said as she ran out the door.

As soon as she left Gretchen picked up her own phone and held it to her ear while she checked her e-mail, so that if Beth-Ann remembered her question after finishing her call it would look like Gretchen was on hold with someone.

“My husband is in construction. Of course he is. What else would he be doing?” Gretchen muttered in her head.

A daughter who didn’t make the cheerleading team. A husband who was a construction manager. A cat knocking a roll of paper towels off the shelf the only noise in the house besides her own breathing. This was her life now. She couldn’t say when she had adjusted to it, but here it was, just the same.

***
That night, after finishing the last of the Elizabeth Kostova novel on the couch downstairs, Gretchen stood in the bathroom taking her makeup off before bed. As she ran the washcloth under her eyelids, practically pulling the skin back away from her face in an attempt to get every trace of mascara off, she let her gaze rest on the plane ticket she had taped to the corner of the mirror. She told herself when she moved she would put it away, pack it up, throw it out, paste it into a scrapbook or something, but here it was. On her mirror.

Her friends from high school still called every now and then. They had each moved onto their own lives after the Peace Corps. One was married with twin girls who both had children of their own, another was divorced twice, with a son from the first marriage and half-a million from the second, and another was already expecting her ninth grandchild. None of them had stayed in Indonesia forever, they had all come back to the states after a year or two of service.

About a month after her best friend had gotten back, about thirty or so years ago, Gretchen had met her for coffee at a chic little café in the city where they had talked for hours about Indonesia, the children and the schools that her friend had helped build, Gretchen hearing about her dream through someone else’s reality.

“I’m still planning on going, of course.” Gretchen had told her, sipping at the skinny latte while she talked. “Mom’s just in such a rough state right now…I couldn’t leave her yet. In a couple years she’s going to move in with her sister in Maine. I’ve got the application for a two year commitment saved on my computer, I just hope that I can get into the program still.”
That file was probably still on her mom’s old desktop, Gretchen thought, staring back and forth between the plane ticket and her reflection, one eye covered in mascara and the other red from cleaning. She reached her hand towards the plane ticket, but then stopped and dropped it to the counter to pick up the washcloth and finish washing the makeup off the other side of her face. She needed to get to bed if she wanted to be awake at work the next day.

***
It was her lunch hour again. Gretchen pulled a new book out of her bag along with a salad and swiveled in her chair so she could put her feet up on her desk. She cringed when she saw a run up the back of her stockings.

“Thank God it doesn’t show below my skirt.”, she thought, opening the Tupperware container along with her book and settling back to enjoy her break. Her foot brushed against the picture frame of the girl from MySpace, knocking it over. Gretchen stretched to put it back in place.

“She really does kind of look like me.” Gretchen thought, “We’ve got the same jaw line. I wonder how old she is?” She stared at the picture for awhile and then lowered her gaze to her book and dug her fork into a piece of tomato.

When she had been working at the first office for a little less than a year, back after college graduation, Gretchen had gotten up from her mother’s kitchen table one morning to rinse out her oatmeal bowl, finishing her rant on how corrupt working at the office was and how she couldn’t wait to leave and join her friends and “change the world.”

Her mother had looked at her from across the kitchen table and said “Gretchen, while changing the world is a wonderful thing to do, sometimes simply surviving in it is enough.”

That was what Gretchen was doing now. She was sitting in her swivel chair watching her boss and co-workers pass by the door, eating celery and musing about the history of the girl on her desk. She was surviving.

Creative Writing and Colored Pencils

So in Creative Writing class we were put in groups and given colored pencils and paper. The first thing we had to do was picture a person who intrigued us. Then we had to DRAW their biggest fear. (And no, im not telling you what I drew). Then we had to think of that person's best friend. Then we had to pretend we had asked that best friend to pick one animal that reminded them of the person we picked. Then we drew the animal.
Next we had to draw one "prop" the person was never without. Lastly we had to draw the "craziest day of that persons life." I know, wierd right?
Best part: Then we had to switch drawings with someone and write a story based on their drawings. Aqui esta:


Caleb sat in front of the glass aquarium that had once been full of water and angel fish that had been interesting to watch swim back and forth. Their tails had made interesting shapes in the water. Now it held a gecko who sat on a plastic rock under a heating lamp all day and warmed himself.
Caleb tapped on the glass, trying to get the lizard to move, but his stepfathers pet just opened one eye and then closed it again. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and even when they were open weren’t very interesting to look at, so Caleb sat back and watched the cartoons on TV instead. When he heard the boots stomp up the front steps and the key click the lock open he turned it off and looked at the gecko again, his eyes avoiding the hallway where he knew Ron would walk by.
Caleb didn’t like boots. He liked dress shoes. He wore them everyday, along with jeans and a striped shirt. The boots stomped up the steps, dragged through the hallway and then eventually thudded quietly as Ron sat in his recliner and turned the T.V. on to watch pro wrestling while he kicked off his shoes.
Caleb didn’t like Ron. He didn’t like the sound of his boots or the smell of his shaving cream or the way he brushed his hair. He hated the way he never burped at meals and his habit of eating two mints every day after dinner.
“How was school today Caleb?” Ron asked. Caleb shrugged, staring at the gecko. “Have you come up with a name for him yet?” Ron tried speaking again, “Remember you can name him anything you want.”
Caleb shook his head. “No” he said. He didn’t want to name the lizard.
That was all they spoke until Caleb’s mother and Ron’s wife got home from work. Her heels clicked on the linoleum of the hallway and the plastic shopping bags crinkled in her arms as she first went to set the bags down on the kitchen floor and then came in and bent down to kiss Caleb and then her husband.
Caleb liked his mother. He liked the way her hair was always pulled back away from her face with the gold barrette he had picked out for her, liked the way her skirts matched her shoes, liked the way her breath always smelled like apple cinnamon tea. He didn’t like the new perfume she wore, though. Ron had picked it out for her and it smelled like a flower.
She used to wear perfume on her wrists that was called “summer day.” Caleb didn’t think it smelled like summer, he didn’t think that summer had a smell at all, but he had liked it better than this new stuff.
His mother sat on the edge of the couch between him and Ron for a few minutes and then stood up and walked into the kitchen to make dinner.
“Want some help, dear?” Ron asked, and stood up from the recliner. He always asked this, and Caleb’s mother always said “No thanks, honey.” Ron then would move his shoes from the chair into the mudroom off the entrance and then sit go into the kitchen and pull the chair away from the table. It made a weird sliding noise against the linoleum as he sat down.
Caleb stayed in the living room and watched cartoons and the gecko. The lizard smelled like a turtle. Caleb didn’t like turtles.
For dinner Ron and Caleb’s mother had chicken parmesan with wheat spaghetti and red chardonnay wine. Caleb had white macaroni noodles with mozzarella cheese sauce, mashed cauliflower and milk. Ever since he turned seven he had refused to eat anything that wasn’t white. For awhile he wouldn’t even eat around foods that were other colors. The first time she had bought corn on the cob to make for herself for dinner Caleb had thrown it off her plate and across the room. Sometimes Caleb’s mother wished that he had picked some other color, because food could always be dyed. It was nearly impossible to get all white food, and bleaching stuff added way too many chemicals and took out way too many vitamins. At least Caleb wasn’t picky, so he would usually eat what she gave him as long as it didn’t have any color to it.
The only white thing that Caleb had ever outright refused were Ron’s mints, but Caleb’s mother figured that one can’t be too picky. You take what you can get.

Creative Writing Story 2

So I guess my blog posts are all going to be either about my newfound love for Oatmeal or a story for Creative Writing...haha.
Anyways, here is the second story I had to write. Our goal with this story was to encorperate the idiosynchratic detail (see a couple posts ago) along with scene and summary. What is the difference between the two, you might ask? Glad you did.
Scene is SPECIFIC. A specific thing happening to a specific character at a specific time in a specific place...you get the idea. Summary is like the backstory. Which is better? Neither. Both. Whichever way you want to look at it. Both are effective, and both add to the story. Enjoy!

Here it is:

Gretchen found her liberation at lunchtime. She put her feet up on her desk, pulled Elizabeth Kostova’s newest novel out of her bag along with her lunch and watched through the slit window in her door as her coworkers scrambled around the office while she ate food and read.
The first time she had chosen to bring her food and eat at her desk instead of going out with the rest of her coworkers she had felt awkward, like she was drawing a line between herself and them, but now she relished in that line. She relished in the fact that she was eating proper portions of the right number of whole grains and fresh fruits while they laughed over the appetizer special at Applebee’s and had no idea that it bloated them with more salt in one pre-meal snack than they should eat in two days. She relished in the fact that while they gossiped she read best-sellers.
She couldn‘t say when she had adjusted to office life. Somewhere after her senior year in college the summer job that had meant to give her something to do before joining the peace core had turned into her life, draining away 30 years before she even knew that they had disappeared.
Her father had died that summer, and his passing had destroyed her mother and her future in one fell swoop. At the same time her friends took off in the plane headed for rural Indonesia to build schools she had stood in a cemetery next to her mother, wearing the obligatory black dress with shoes that looked nice enough for calling hours but had heels that didn’t sink into the moistened ground around the grave.
At that point in time, she had still wanted to change the world. Her enthusiasm for life still was focused on doing something that would improve the lives of people everywhere, that would give little kids drinking water and a chance at an education. Living at home for another year was just a minor setback, a chance to earn some extra money while she stared at the plane ticket taped to the bathroom mirror next to pictures from graduation and bought clothes that would last in places where you wore the same thing for two weeks straight and no one looked at you strangely.
Then one day Gretchen got up from her mother’s kitchen table to rinse out her oatmeal bowl and head to work, finishing her rant on how corrupt the office was and how she couldn’t wait to “change the world” when her mother told her that while changing the world was a wonderful thing to do, sometimes simply surviving in it was enough.
That was what she was doing now, sitting in her swivel chair watching her boss and other workers pass by the door. She was surviving.
After that day her enthusiasm for life became focused on smaller and smaller things. First it was on her husband and her wedding, then on her pregnancy and then on her kids. Now it was on her lunch.