Catfishes not Cat Calls

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: minnows, subvert, sultry, seeding, graffiti. They were submitted by: http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

I wasn't too sure how to make all these work, but eventually a little fiction worked its magic in my mind. If you read between the lines, it's more or less a commentary and how easy it can be to respect a woman's right to space in the world without being hit on no matter where she is or what she's doing while simultaneously being internally complicated. The world is rarely as simple as we would like it to be. Thanks for reading! Links to the other contributors' works at the end. 

_________________________________________________

He stares across the water at her. She’s sitting on the edge of a dock, toes swirling in the water, and he’s parked in his boat a little ways off fishing for, knock on wood, some catfish for dinner. He had been in the zone once he had found his spot. Pulling out his rod and reel, baiting the hook, checking everything…then he happened to catch her walking down the dock in his peripheral.

Mesmerized doesn’t really cover it.

He watches her a moment more imagining the minnows scattering every time one of her feet dips further into the water. He doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable or feel unsafe. He wishes he could respectfully subvert the system in place—the one that has made too many men feel the need to conquer and that has made women into victims all too often. A big part of him wants to catch her attention, to call out to her, troll over, and start a conversation. In those brief moments, he feels a longing so intense that he almost does it, his mouth opens just a little threatening to break the silence of the day, but he reigns it in knowing that beyond all else that woman is sitting on her own dock wanting to enjoy the peace and quiet in her own little world. Her sultry looks are not an invitation for him to invade her space and infringe on her alone time.

She looks up just before he turns to check his cork and catches him staring. He feels his face turning 10 million shades of red wondering if this moment, pregnant with tension, is seeding her mind with worries, with fear, with irritation, frustration, with rightfully placed indignation. The air is painted with imagined words, graffiti on the space-time continuum. In a flash he sees red daggered words, interactions he imagines she has experienced a thousand times from cat callers and dates and exes and everyone in-between.

Her face shows her surprise at his presence. She stands quickly tucking a lock of her long brown hair behind her ear. He starts to speak searching for the right words to convey that he just got caught up for a second and he didn’t mean for her to feel uncomfortable, that he can leave this spot and go on further inward on the lake, that he’s sorry for it all…

But she interrupts him.

“Hi,” she says.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I can go to another spot if you want. Either way, I promise to quit staring.”

“Whatcha fishing for?” she asks.

“Catfish. I think. Hope, anyway,” he laughs nervously.

“That’s a good spot for it. You don’t have to move on my account.”

And with that she sits back down, toes in the water intriguing and terrifying both the minnows and him.

________________________________________

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/06/use-your-words-beer-and-martinis.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/06/10/always-shake-out-your-clothes/

My Brain on Kids http://mybrainonkids.net

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

The Angrivated Mom http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch

She's Notorious

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap! This week 12 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My subject is: Who would you pick for WCW - women crush Wednesday and why?

It was submitted by: http://mybrainonkids.net

________________________________________

As someone who is not exactly straight, it would be easy for me to pick a #wcw that I am simply

attracted to for any number of reasons. On the Purple-Red Scale of Sexuality, I am somewhere between an E2 and E3. This area is a ruddy reddish color and represents both my attraction type and orientation. E means I have primary sexuality. Sexual desire is the initial attraction whether acted upon or not for E types. E2 is a person who is mostly attracted to the opposite gender but still has attraction to the same, and E3 is a true bisexual/biromantic individual. I’m not all that into labels, but if forced to pick one that more or less aligns with how I work, pansexual would be closest. Pretty much, for me, it all depends on the person. So, in a nutshell, you can find me crushing on people who identify as women quite often, and I’m not really hard-pressed to supply an answer to this question without much thought. But, in the spirit of secret subject swap, I wanted to dig a little deeper and pick someone who is more than just of sexual interest as it seems most people do for #wcw.

Outside of initial sexual attraction, to keep me interested a person has to challenge me mentally. Intelligent conversation, political debates, feminism, social and economic inequality, books, films..oh the conversations we can have. And for that reason, I am choosing Notorious RBG--Ruth Bader Ginsberg--for my feminist crush Friday. 

For one, the woman is gorgeous. I don’t want to add on “for her age” because that’s a bullshit notion—women her age can simply be beautiful without people resorting to tagging on an age-based clarification. On the surface, she is an attractive woman and has been all throughout her life.

But, it doesn’t end there by a long shot.

Ruth Ginsberg is a phenomenal human being. She is intelligent, compassionate, and boundary breaking. She saw obstacles to her chosen profession due to her gender and said fuck that. She is a patriarchy-smashing badass who inspires women every single day to push for equality, to dream bigger and to keep pushing for the things they believe because that’s what she does. Time and again she has stood up for women’s rights and spoke out against racial discrimination and been on the side of LGBT+ rights even when it wasn’t exactly popular among people in her position to do so.

So, I will leave you with some quotes and photos to soak up some of the radness that is RBG.

· [W]hen I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court]? And I say ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.

· I’m dejected, but only momentarily, when I can’t get the fifth vote for something I think is very important. But then you go on to the next challenge and you give it your all. You know that these important issues are not going to go away. They are going to come back again and again. There’ll be another time, another day.

· I – try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

· Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent.

· Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

· It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.

· In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am.’ And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor–we’re very fond of them or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.

· The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.

· I think that men and women, shoulder to shoulder, will work together to make this a better world. Just as I don’t think that men are the superior sex, neither do I think women are. I think that it is great that we are beginning to use the talents of all of the people, in all walks of life, and that we no longer have the closed doors that we once had.

· The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity,” she said simply. “It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.

· Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.

· Generalizations about “the way women are” and estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.

ok so I know this is photoshopped but I couldn't resist. 

Who would your crush be? Also be sure to check out the rest of the submissions. Links below. 

______________________________

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/06/secret-subject-swap-all-wine.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2016/06/make-jules-billionaire-june-2016.html

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/06/03/time-for-a-change/

My Brain on Kids h ttp://mybrainonkids.net

The Lieber Family Blog http://www.thelieberfamily.com/2016/06/birthday-party-planning.html

The Angrivated Mom http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/05/june-secret-subject-swap-my-awesome.html

A Little Ranty Thing

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: pollen, allergies, last day, help, boxed wine, school. They were submitted by: http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

___________________________________________

It’s the season for pollen and allergies and apparently crippling sinus infections. For a little over a week now, I have had a raging fever and the type of pressure in my face that makes me feel like a balloon filled to nearly bursting. It’s been a snotty week, and it’s the end of the school year for Evan, so we have been a bit slack on things. I can’t exactly say that’s a great development as we edge closer and closer to the last day of the year because Evan is already a bit antsy like a caged animal when it comes to doing his schoolwork.

I know exactly why I chose to homeschool him. There are reasons stacked upon reasons, and for the last year and a half it has mostly been a decision that I don’t question, but there are times like the last few weeks that I wonder exactly what kind of nut I must be.

Is that the key factor in good parenting? Wondering about your sanity?

Evan has ADHD, but I have chosen at this point not to put him on medication. Exercise before he works on schoolwork, frequent breaks for more exercise, tips and tricks, and some extra supplements have been the choice treatment so far, and most days that seems to work. Most. Certainly not all. There are days when he spaces out every lecture, hands in worksheets he never touched, can’t answer a single question about what the work involved that day, or finds a way to do anything and everything else besides what he has been assigned. I won’t lie; those days are fucking trying, and with both of us alternating being sick and it being the end of the year, they have happened a bit more frequently.

The fact that I have an ugly and severe case of generalized anxiety disorder doesn’t really help things either. The tough days are the days I question every little thing I do. If I am ruining him, if he will be fine and be able to still make something of himself, if I expect too much, push him too hard, make him feel loved… My head fills with worry and stress and questions and freaks and bends and shakes and I feel like everything I try to do crumbles in front of me.

Then I pull through it, recognize what’s going on for what it is, and I flip anxiety a double bird. Anxiety can eat a bag of dicks. Really. It’s enough to make a girl want to sit around in her pajamas watching shitty tv and drinking boxed wine.

There’s such a stigma with asking for help, with admitting you have a problem and need to lean on someone for awhile, so mostly I have kept this to myself trying to deal with it all, trying to find my own way.

Anxiety is a little like being obsessed with Justin Bieber. It’s a big deal for you and it affects your daily life in innumerable ways, but it’s absolutely horrible having to tell anyone about it unless you find someone else that’s obsessed with that little twatwaffle too.

By the way, I am absolutely not obsessed with Justin Bieber. Even my guilty pleasures would probably turn their noses up at that. But, if I were a closeted Bieleber, I’m fairly certain admitting so in public would be as painful as asking for help with the anxiety that often leaves me crippled by my own thoughts, unable to sleep, and wondering just what the fuck I am going to do with myself.

So here I am nearing the end of another week still with a fever having explained adding decimals for like the 60.45th time and hoping that maybe my pulse rate will drop below 90 some time before the a.m. so I can get in bed at a decent hour.

If it doesn’t I may just opt for whiskey instead of wine.

_____________________________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/05/use-your-words-change-is-chocolate-cake.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2016/05/pig-on-pig-take-2-bacon-wrapped-pork.html

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/05/13/saving-money-with-freezer-meals/

My Brain on Kids http://mybrainonkids.net

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Climaxed http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/05/use-your-words-jump-rope.html

The Angrivated Mom http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

Page After Page

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

If you ever had an imaginary friend, tell us about them. If not, make one up right now and tell us what they'd be like.

It was submitted by: http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

_____________________________________________________

I never had an imaginary friend in the truest sense though having a Drop Dead Fred in my life wouldn’t have been all that bad all things considered. Childhood wasn’t exactly an easy time, and I found myself living in books, escaping the world I lived in with its darkness and chaos and taking up residence in the creative constructs of others rebuilt in my own mind with any tweaks I saw fit.

The characters from Louis Sachar’s Wayside School series were regular guests along with the kitties from Snot Stew (Bill Wallace). Ramona Quimby made me want to be a little sassier with all the times she made me laugh. Amelia Bedelia first made me wonder what it might be like to have a maid working for me that made me think about my words more carefully, but I stopped having to wonder so much when I had silly conversations with her in my own world spun so carefully out of pieces of others’ imaginations.

I had adventures with Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth wondering through the Doldrums because that’s a place I was most familiar with and I wanted someone to be there with me. I never cared much for spiders in real life, but Charlotte’s Web ensured I had an immortal one that crawled onto my shoulder whenever I needed a friend of the most understanding variety.

I made up mysteries to solve with Nancy Drew and turned my parents shed into a boxcar with The Boxcar Children and shrunk myself to just a couple inches tall to hang out with The Borrowers.

The older I got the fewer real friends I had and the more I lived in books, in the imaginary worlds I constructed and demolished and changed. The more alone I felt the darker my tastes became. I picked up Dean Koontz (who I never really liked) and Stephen King. Characters like the little kid from Firestarter and Carrie started showing up which sounds morbid, and it absolutely is. But, these were dark times in my life. An abusive addict of a parent, my parents divorcing, death threats from my dad against my mom, mom’s new boyfriend beating the absolute shit out of my dad, sexual assault… I mean, it’s a bit more than a 13/14 year old can handle. Not to mention I started drinking and smoking pot which, at that age, probably didn’t help the depths of my gloom.

Even as an adult, I can’t give up on those characters. Some have remained through time, and I have added more with every character I connected with in a major way. Rob Gordon from High Fidelity was, for the better part of 2 decades, the love of my life, though more and more these days I see glimpses of him when I look in the mirror more than anything. The narrating voices of Chuck Palahnuik, Minty Fresh from one of Christopher Moore’s series, so many of Tom Robbins’ characters, Hunter Thompson’s inner voice (sans his love for guns and every illicit substance known to man) all influence who I am the same way an intimate friendship changes you in some way.

In no way do the books I read really replace human intimacy, to real connection, like any imaginary friendship would be, but I honestly wouldn’t be the woman I am today without those friends and those loves.

________________________________________________

And that, my friends, is my swap. Hope you will check out the rest of the submissions. 

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/05/secret-subject-swap-i-take-village.html
Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/05/06/read-if-you-dare/

My Brain on Kids http://mybrainonkids.net

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Climaxed http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-secret-subject-swap-exchange.html

The Angrivated Mom http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

Starting Over

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: risk, reward, reuse, claim, quit, quiet. They were submitted by: http://Bakinginatornado.com

____________________________________________________

I’ve been quiet lately. Seemingly.

My mind has been anything but, though. Outside I am a placid lake on a windless day, but once you peek beyond that surface illusion, you find a roiling storm of a sea amid a civil war of merpeople. Monsters from the deep joining forces with mermen and mermaids battling each other to rule my brain.

Anxiety.

Burn out.

Stress.

Renewal.

Rebirth.

I’ve spent the last few months evaluating every goal I have ever had. It wasn’t an all of a sudden review, but I started noticing how much passion I lost for the career path I have been working towards for a decade now on and off, longer than that if we talk generalities. Anxiety about it began to stake its claim on the beaches of my mind and before I knew it full burnout set in. I have zero desire to learn anything knew, zero desire to do assignments and find myself figuring out just how many papers I can miss to still pass the class. That’s not me or, at least, that has never been me, and I began to see just how unhappy I was looking forward for the first time in years.

Being a not so small personality in a village, looking forward was everything. That I was working towards something better than small town goals made life worth living. It was a reason to keep going, to deal with the drudgery of daily life. Helping others, working miracles, saving lives…it’s all I ever wanted, and finally, maybe, it would alleviate some of the stress of living check to check.

For nearly a decade now, I have wanted to work as a counselor for inmates. I wanted to work with inmates who had life sentences, but I also wanted to work with offenders getting ready for release to give them some kind of chance, hopefully, at actually leading a legitimate life one day. A criminal record destroys that opportunity. Jobs are harder to get as well as loans, housing, credit cards… Everything a person needs to move forward in life crumbles to impossibility with a record.

I have also been writing people in prison offering what help I can for the last, oh, 9ish years. My goals and my writing have always sort of coincided. I wrote because of my goals and my goals evolved the more I wrote.

And then they evolved into a puddle of shit.

The more people I have written and helped and talked to about everything under the sun including the feasibility of my goals the more I have seen how idealistic it all was. I have had to do a risk and reward evaluation. The risks are high--burnout, being overworked and underpaid, little appreciation, budgets, red tape, managed care, stress, violence, real threat of injury or death. No matter how sincere I was with clients they would likely always see me as a part of the institution imprisoning them, as a cop as I have been told. But what of the rewards? Maybe potentially helping a handful of people over a long career in which I make little money and use most of what I do make paying off student loans while I continue to rack up debt from for-profit schools that have predatory lending practices.

That doesn’t leave me with many options hence all the anxiety and stress and a bit of burnout already, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to quit school. I can still work in the justice field if I want with the bachelor’s degree I already have. Maybe. I can still help people the same way I do now—quite honestly it is easier to help people through writing than it would ever be in an institutional setting. It’s not the end of my dream to help people but an overhaul of the way I plan on accomplishing that. Currently, for example, I am trying to get someone into a CDL school for when he gets out in a few months.

Either way, it has been a battle learning to let go which has taken quite a toll on me. Right now, I want to get a part time job in the next 6 months or so, keep on homeschooling the kiddo, and maybe write a little more than I have been in a few months. I came to the conclusion that I would rather work a job where my biggest stressor was an asshole customer that day who reports me to the manager for not letting her keep her coupons to reuse later (though I hope it doesn’t actually come to that) than counseling a convicted rapist who keeps assaulting fellow inmates. I mean, I can’t even do an assignment on handling a rape victim in crisis without getting triggered and having a near panic attack myself. How the ever loving fuck am I supposed to handle that in real life?

If Sharknado and 2012 were combined into one film, that chaos would still pale in comparison to my thoughts, every shark a pang of anxiety driving my pulse rate through the roof and keeping me from getting any sleep. Finally, though, the inside is starting to quiet down to match the outside. I don’t feel like I’m a quitting, like I’m giving up. A weight has lifted and a feel a little more free than before. Starting over at 34 has its benefits.

______________________________________________

Here are the links to the other participants. Enjoy: 

http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/04/use-your-words-social-experiment.html Baking In A Tornado

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-fading-of-friendship.html Not That Sarah Michelle

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2016/04/bacon-wrapped-bbq-pork-chops-and-uyw.html Spatulas on Parade

http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com The Angrivated Mom

http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/ The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/04/15/organizing-his-bedroom/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com/2016/04/spreading-wings-poem-nationalpoetrymonth.html Someone Else’s Genius

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/04/use-your-words-ummmm.html Confessions of a part time working mom

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Never Ever Give Up Hope

http://mybrainonkids.net My Brain on Kids

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham Chronicles

The GFE

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 14 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My secret subject is: Tell us about these April showers. It was submitted by: http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com


This really isn't my kind of prompt (no offense to anyone). I don't really give two fucks about Spring. Allergies, rain storms that keep me from being able to dry the clothes, and the fact that I kinda live like a vampire pretty much means Spring is not my season. My legs cause snow blindness if I am in direct sunlight. So, here's a story about a sex worker instead. Enjoy. 

____________________________________________

April Showers. Hmmm. That’s a cheesy name for an escort, Morty had thought. He was sitting in a Vegas hotel room. It wasn’t a 5 star kind of place, but it wasn’t cheap either. The first time he had come to Sin City he had gotten himself one of the cheapest he could find. It was one of those hotels where most of the people were renting by the week for a place to live. He thought he could save more spending money for gambling, but it was the shittiest choice he made that trip. He could see the appeal of living in a hotel by the week if that’s all you could afford, but add Vegas in the mix and most of the folks there were gambling addicts with a side of at least alcoholism and a healthy dose of meth abuse. From the looks of ‘em anyway. That place made the hotel room in Fear and Loathing look like a pristine surgical suite. 

Anyway, this time he had saved up a bit more money and sprung for a better room which must have brought him luck because he had won pretty big playing Craps the first day there. He was up 30 planned on playing it safe. He had no intention of being one of those schmucks who won big, lost it all, and left in the hole.

Instead, he had wanted to treat himself to something he would never have done at home in his regular life as an IT guy for a car and home insurance company that pretty much screwed its clients as often and hard as they possibly could without lube or mercy. And for vacation he wanted to get screwed as often and hard as possible but certainly not by his insurance.

That’s what had lead him to scrolling through images of escorts online. Treat yo’self, he thought, and giggled a little. Always a Parks and Rec fan. It was April Showers that stopped him. She looked to be a bit petite, bleached blonde, smallish lips, smooth calves… She was pretty but not in a conventional sort of way. She wasn’t, by far, the prettiest one on the sites he perused, but she offered something different than most of the others. A girlfriend experience.

“Looking for something more than unrequited passion? Craving intimacy? Want to share more than an hour of naked sweating? Let’s have an adventure together you will never forget.”

In the fine print, the ad stated Ms. Showers would stay for a night for a couple grand or for a week for $10,000. He was only in town for 6 more days but a week with a good-looking woman that promised more than a quick shag. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since college and that had been a bit fleeting. She hadn’t been able to deal with his hours upon hours of World of Warcraft every weekend. Morty felt like he needed that sort of connection with someone for once before the loneliness drove him insane.

So, he had dialed the number on the ad with his hands shaking and a bit clammy and hoped for the best.

“hello?”

“uh…April Showers?”

“Yes, honey. Can I help you?”

“Fuck..I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just I’ve never done this before and I…well…I don’t know how this works.”

“Don’t worry about that. You just give me your address and how many days you’re looking for and I’ll be on my way. Someone will come with me, a bodyguard of sorts to vet ya, but then he’ll be gone lickety-split, and we can get on to having our adventure.”

“Alright, okay… I don’t know the address, but I’m in Room 313 at the Rio on Flamingo Rd.”

“See you soon, doll.”

And with that she had hung up the phone.

Something like 2 hours later, he finally heard a knock at the door. He had been nervous at first, but at this point, it had already been dragged out so damn long, he didn’t care anymore. Then he had opened the door and… what the fuck.

She was there, but it wasn’t exactly what he expected. He had known when he saw her that it was the same woman--petite, bleach blonde--but, she didn’t look ANYTHING like the photo. She had her hair pulled back in a messy bun, no makeup, sweats, socks with Crocs. Still pretty but not at all what he had expected. A guy that had to be like 6’7 and 400 lbs flanked her and blew past him into room. That guy didn’t make a sound, didn’t introduce himself, took a sweep of the room, dug around in Morty’s suitcase, and pushed his way back out just as abruptly as he arrived.

April waltzed her way into the room with a dance of her hips that hinted to the vixen that was pictured online. She stopped in front of him, close, and leaned in to give him a hug that was far too intimate for someone he just met.

“Hey, sweetie, how was your day?” she asked before parking herself on the tiny couch in the room and covered up with a throw she pulled from one of her bags. He had no idea who the fuck needed a throw in Vegas in the middle of summer whilst wearing sweats, but whatever.

“Uh… fine. Do you want me to pay you now or….?”

Her face changed then. That sweet smirk wiped right off and was replaced by something quite similar to a possessed witch high on meth with a side case of PMS. “Don’t fucking interrupt me when I’m in character. Sampson will be back to take your payment. I’m staying all week, and you’re going to love it.”

That innocent look was back before he could blink. What are these goddamn animals, he thought, and smiled at his own joke (well not techinically his joke since it was Hunter Thompson’s words but still…)

“Where’s the tv remote, babe?”

His brow furrowed at her question, and he had hoped that maybe she was putting on porn…

She had grabbed the remote as soon as he pointed to it on the end table and flipped it to Dancing With the Stars before patting the spot right beside her beckoning him to come sit down. He did as requested, but before his ass could even make an impression on the cushion, she was on her cell phone playing Candy Crush. That’s how it stayed the rest of that night, too—the two of them on the couch with her on her phone pretty much ignoring his existence unless she made a snide remark about something she saw on television. If he dared to fall asleep, she let him know in a hailstorm of swears that she wasn’t with him tonight to watch him sleep. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SPENDING TIME WITH HER, FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

That’s how it had gone really for the next 6 days of that trip to Vegas, his last trip to Vegas. The guy who was supposed to come back and collect never showed. April only had sex with him maybe once the entire time, and it wasn’t…well, passionate. It felt like the two of them had slept together a thousand boring times. He bought her tampons, took her to dinner, watched her pop her zits… once she even came into the bathroom while he took a dump and acted like she had seen him on the toilet every day for the entirety of their lives, like it was no big deal. He hadn’t EVER dared even pee in front of a woman before much less dropped a deuce.

5 years ago that was. 5 years. And here she is, still in the bathroom with him popping her zits while he takes a shit. The girlfriend experience packed up and left to go home with him even when he insisted he couldn’t get her a flight out. They rented a car and drove instead with her freaking out about his driving and the two of them fighting the whole 18 hour drive home.

Married, they are. And now she calls herself May. May Flowers-Holstein.

________________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:


http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/04/secret-subject-swap-what-did-i-ever-do.html Baking In A Tornado

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-laughter-through-our-tears.html Not That Sarah Michelle

http://www.thelieberfamily.com/2016/04/g-genies-atozblogging.html The Lieber Family Blog

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2016/04/bacon-bbq-chicken-swirls-and-sss.html Spatulas on Parade

http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com The Angrivated Mom

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/ The Bergham Chronicles

http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/ The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

http://dinoheromommy.com/2016/04/08/april-showers-bring/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com/2016/04/denying-my-inner-truth.html Someone Else’s Genius

http://mybrainonkids.net My Brain on Kids

http://http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-secret-subject-swap-memorabilia.html/ Confessions of a part time working mom

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Never Ever Give Up Hope

Psychedelica

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words are: stolen ~ parrot ~ coconuts ~ excited ~ drum

They were submitted by: http://dinoheromommy.com/

I just wanted to say this is fiction. Sometimes I get a group of words that seem like they belong together and would be easy to take in a certain direction which means I have to go as far away from that direction as possible. ha. 

________________________________________

“Down at an English fair, one evening I was there
When I heard a showman shouting underneath the flare

Ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts
There they are, all standing in a row
Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head
Give them a twist a flick of the wrist
Thats what the showman said”

I’m not sure why that song plays through my head as I work my way through the flea market tables looking at this and that. Maybe it’s the blue and gold Macaw perched atop a fellow patron’s shoulder that triggers the association. The Lion King and that blue asshole Zazu singing in his little cage…

This blue asshole is tethered by one of its legs instead of caged with the leash attached to the turquoise belt buckle of the mustachioed, cowboy hat wearing gentleman it was perched upon. And instead of a catchy Monty Python tune, it was randomly belting out lyrics to Salt n Peppa’s Push It.

“Ah, Push it. Push it real good” is quite strange coming from a parrot, I think, but I continue on my way digging in dusty record crates and checking out tie dye mushroom incense burners.

Excited, my heart begins to drum in my chest as I considered the possibilities for the day. It is just shy of 9 a.m., early for me, and the infinite possibilities of a quasi-spiritual exploration of the heart of humanity in this dirt-floored market full of potentially stolen goods, other people’s trash, and hand-picked produce has me tingling.

But perhaps it is just the mushrooms kicking in.

A wave a nausea hits me hard and I know that must be it. All I have to do is power through that little bit of discomfort… Buy the ticket, take the ride. I look around me, every little speck of dirt standing out like my eyes have suddenly gained some sort of superhuman magnification power; I see everything so much more clearly than before, every detail catching my attention and holding it long enough to caress my brain before releasing me to enjoy the next tidbit of life. The hazy afternoon takes on a glow, and the crowd of sounds seems to separate clashing like Spartans in my brain and threatening to overwhelm me. My legs work, barely, and I manage to put one foot in front of the other while giggling at something I couldn’t possibly explain (maybe it was still that damned parrot). I stagger outside between two tables while a couple of wary hagglers work down the price of a beaten box of VHS tapes.

A few people who hadn’t been able to reserve inside tables have stands outside selling the same lost treasures, but the air out here is crisp, clean, alive. I can almost feel it rolling around in my lungs with every breath and for a moment I think I might cry at how amazing it is to just breathe. Then I’m giggling again lost in another moment flitting from this thought to that like a hummingbird feeding on the nectar of the day, finding its sweetness scattered among this field of human flora.

The giggles override all sensibilities again as I picture each person with limbs of green and a petal halo like that Daffy/flower hybrid in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. For a moment I wonder if maybe I’m seeing everyone’s true form. I am horrified and awed all at once until I see a patch of grass all by itself away from the clamor and the dirt, a solace of greenery waving in the breeze that calls me to it begging for my company.

Sprawled in the grass letting the sun hit my skin, I am a badass queen. Every pore soaks in the heat, and I feel alive in ways I never have in my entire existence. This is l I v I n, I think, and I dissolve into another fit of giggles picturing Matthew Mcconaughey in a petal halo saying Alright, Alright, Alright when I say yes to his Aerosmith invite.

Who is this person, I ask myself. It’s me I’m talking about. Who is she? I think long and hard about that while images of my life float in and out of my stream of thoughts. What does this girl want? Who will she be?

And I think to myself this girl wants to live not exist. She wants to get her hands dirty and her heart broken. She wants to love too hard and run too fast and lay in bed until late afternoon. She wants her stories etched into her skin like a fine art storybook, and she wants to be completely unafraid to be her true self despite everyone’s expectations. She wants to wear mismatched socks because who has time to match them and bathe in nostalgia. She wants to eat too much sugar and be a little bit fluffy, and she wants to love every inch of herself down to the very last dimple on her thighs. She wants to drink too much whiskey and indulge in other vices because life is short and when it’s all over, hair still purple, she wants to look around at her loved ones or her cats and say, my god wasn’t it beautiful.

I realize in the day glow cacophony of this day that she is me. I am her.

And I smile.

______________________________________________

http://bakinginatornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/ The Bergham Chronicles

http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/ The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com Not That Sarah Michelle

http://mybrainonkids.net My Brain on Kids

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Never Ever Give Up Hope

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/ Confessions of a part time working mom

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com Spatulas on Parade

http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com The Angrivated Mom