My shocking cart extravaganza . . .

Happy Halloween! Ghosts goblins . . .Walmart? Yes indeedy, folks. I was at Walmart and trucking along with a cart when I felt a little zap go through my hand. I stopped—near automotive in case you're wondering—flexed my fingers for a moment, then headed on. Zap! I stopped again, tapping my hand along the cart handle to see if there was indeed static electricity coming out of the metal. Everything was fine. Once agin I pushed forward. CRACKLE. Holy shnarky man, this cart is creating an electric charge when I move it—like a generator! The plastic sheath mixed with the metal of the handle were building up a charge, using me as the conductor.

Old Wallyworld needs to check this stuff out. Seriously.

Maybe they're trying out a low-grade shock treatment to keep their patients in a 'happy' state of mind—if you get my drift. Don't think about the cost, or where this stuff came from, just buy, buy, buy. Shock, shock, shock.

Or maybe my cart was haunted by a former employee. Hey, I used to be a former employee. I'd be pissed if I had to spend an eternity there with no break and low pay, just zoning the heck out everything. Shocking people would be the least of my joys.

Any spooky things happened to you yet today? Don't forget to stop by the Fig. It may be bare, but there's some good stuff in there and more yet to come!

For your consideration

Good evening, folks. A new photo taken by a good friend of mine has been added over at the Fig. Take a look if you can. It's the kind of photo that makes you want to take the day off and just drift away. At least, that's what I thought when I saw it!

Katia by Marshall Rimann

Have a beautiful night.

To be or not to be . . .

I am really lagging behind today and it feels like there's a heavy weight on my back. Man, so tired!! I don't know if it was the funeral or the travel or just life in general, but man, just man.

A funeral is always a strange experience, and of course, so sad. At the memorial I sang two songs, and that went pretty good. I thought learning two songs and having to perform them with only a day's time was the most of my trouble. Wrong. Julia was. She feels things so deeply, loves so hard, cares too much. There she stood by the open casket, deep in thought. By the time the eulogy was rolling, she was in full tears and blurt out, "Oh, why did you have to go!" Then later, "You let go of my hand! Oh please, don't die!" I, fresh from singing Amazing Grace, begged her with whispers to please be quiet. Cry later, kid. LATER. 

A few more, "She's dead," and, "In death, she leaves us forever," so loud the whole chapel could hear, Julia finally settled down, performance over. My little Anne Shirley had given an Oscar worthy performance and now it was time to go out and have a nice lunch. Sheesh.

Anyone else have a funeral story to share? Please, tell me I'm not the only one who always has to go through this stuff.

Morning Report

Fig's very first story is up and it has something to do with fig leaves . . . so very fitting. Also, there's a photo for your morning pleasure.

I'm off to a funeral today, so, yeah, not fun. And I have to sing, one of the downfall's of being known as the "singer." But, if it brings peace of mind then I can't complain.

And on that note, well gee, have yourself a good day! If you're in the path of Sandy then batten down the hatches. Seriously, take care. Maybe it will make a good story. Take an awesome picture and write up something exciting to match—might be Figs' next new entry!

Saturday Night Haunts

Last night I took the kids to a VFW Halloween party. Liam put on his Ghostbuster shirt which is fifty sizes too big for a little boy, a Spiderman mask and his cowboy boots he got three years ago that finally fit. Julia wore a pink My Little Pony shirt and tons of mascara. I guess that was her costume. Pretty pony girl?

Following my daft sister—who forgot I was following her all the way out in the country and pretty much left without me, but if you know my sister you'll understand—we headed across winding roads where trees had been made naked and black by the wind and open fields lay underneath a ribbon of purple twilight. It was the perfect atmosphere for a Halloween party, complete with full pale moon staring down at us like an omniscient cyclops.

My nephew Tommy, who wants to be called Thomas, was to man a basketball game table, only he didn't seem to want to do the actual work, so my sister and I stepped in. She was the 'barker' and I the ball collector. Not an easy job. Those things shot everywhere and I had to race around like a squirrel picking them up.

Meanwhile, Julia and Liam walked around the carnival. There was a graveyard set up, a psychic tent, a Japanese dragon where you stuck your hand in and mysteriously received candy, a fish tank . . . free popcorn and pink lemonade. Julia salted the heck out of her popcorn because she loves salt. After eating an extremely saliva-stripping piece I asked her if she'd gone in the psychic tent yet and she said, "Yes." I asked what her fortune was and she said, "That I'd be rich someday. Yay!"

A teen boy dressed in black hoodie and wearing a scary clown mask with wild, protruding orange hair began to follow Julia. Now, if you know my girl then you know she can't stand still. She walks and walks, drifts, dances, runs—even in a crowd. She can artfully weave her way through any mass of human population in a beautiful Pavlova style. Well, this boy had caught on to her little weaving pattern, popcorn in her hands, eyes wide and full of wonder, and he began to stalk. I watched from a distance, ready to jump in and defend if needed. Liam was off somewhere else scoring candy. The clown-boy seemed fairly harmless, but still my mommy radar was in full alert. Finally, Julia turned around. She gave a little gasp and a laugh and almost lost her popcorn, then came back to hang out by the basketball table. My sister and I told the boy to knock it off, but alas, there were more scary teens looking for vulnerable little pretty pony girls to scare. Julia did us proud by finally sticking out a hand and yelling, STOP. After that all the boys left her alone.

At the evening's end I had grown tired of chasing balls—no jokes please—and anyway, it was time to go downstairs for the haunted walk. Ghosts, zombies, bloody doctors with severed body parts on a grill, screaming, moaning, flashing lights. Hands clutched mine in fear, faces pressed into my side. When is it going to end? But when it did, "Let's do it again!"

Julia, Liam and cousin Tommy, er, Thomas (as the Slender Man)

A new concept

The other day I started an online literary journal and am in need of submissions. The best place to start is here, with all the talented artists and writers I have come to know and love! If you have any little pieces hanging around—photos, pics of artwork, etc then send them to figlitmag@yahoo.com. All work must be original, no reprints please.

The concept is to create an atmosphere of voices, like the party lines they used to have on the old phone systems. That sort of thing. If you have an old photo of yourself and a cool story behind it, or a town fable that was legendary, a travel story, a remembrance of a night that has stayed in your memory forever, then send it in. But it doesn't have to be any of that, Fig Literary Magazine wants the best of fiction: short stories, flash, abstract, surreal, funny. The point is, it should be your best work and written with honesty. For more information, visit http://figlit.blogspot.com

I guess this an answer to the question I asked last week. Should I get an MFA? With much consideration I realized it would not be wise to go and spend countless hours and money pursuing something I already have right here. Literally. What sealed it for me is when I opened a college textbook I had purchased a while back from a book sale. It was like a mini-MFA course right there in my hands, and what I found out was this: I already knew everything it was teaching. I got this. I need to use this. No one's going to be able to teach me how to write better because I already write better every time I open a new document, read a new story, book, article. Once I figured all that out I thought, well, what's next? I've had this longing lately to go back to the little library my mom ran in the town I grew up in. I can still feel its creaky floors, can still see the dim light filtering through dust-curtained windows, can still hear the patrons, smell the books, the beautiful, burgeoning sense of hope, yet longing that followed me as I sat there so young and expectant. I wanted to be there again, have my own shop, start something new. So this project is that shop to me, that something new. I hope you'll join me in making this little shop and big success!

P.S. I already stuck a poem on there to start things off, not from vanity, but it was just darn bare! 

Operation Earlobe

Some girls in eighth grade had cool moms, the kind who took them to Merle Norman for their first ear piercing. The kind who even threw in a tube of lipstick and half-hour color consultation without hardly a blink of the eye.

I had the uncool mom, the kind who made me beg for everything related to a developing body, leg hair removal, underwear that didn't have the name of the week on it (which my sister and I shared so I was always ending up with an off day). I remember having to beg for a bra. Many weeks I begged. We ended up at K-mart for that one. No bra was small enough to fit my skeletal pre-pubescent body. But I just had to have one, even if the cups sagged inward like two mini-peaks of Mount St. Helens post-eruption.

One day after school, when the rain trickled down the windows of Mom's silver hatchback, I built enough nerve to ask about getting my ears pierced. "Absolutely not!" she said, and I looked out the window as she went on and on about how young I was and how sixteen was just around the corner. I could wait until then, when I had my own money, more responsibility. Sixteen was the year a door opened for dating as well. It was going to be a big party, apparently overloaded with tons of naughty, risky, full on hormonal delights that magically made sense only then. But not now. Right now I was thirteen. I held back tears, and anger, and made my own decision right there that I would have holes in my ears soon. Real soon.

For the next few weeks operation Pierce Your Own Ears was in full affect at school. In science class I sat and listened to my lab partner whisper all the factoids. Do numb your earlobe with ice. Do look in the mirror. Don't worry when you hear a POP noise, it means you've made it through! Don't worry about the blood.

Yikes. Blood.

Girls started coming to school with earrings dangling from swollen earlobes. They seemed happy. I grew worried. I sat hypnotically watching guppies chase each other in Mr. Schneider's murky tank, and thought about if I was really brave enough to do it myself. And what would I tell my mom afterwards? The compulsion was too strong for me to care. I would do it. That very day.

The house was empty because Marshall stayed at Savior Of The World seminary during the week, and Cathy wasn't home because she always hung out with her friends now that she'd hit Freshman status. I put my things down and headed upstairs. Mom had needles and pins hanging around everywhere. Her sewing experiments left trails of prickly minefields throughout the house. All one had to do was step barefooted across a patch of carpet, wait for it and voila! a needle. I stared at myself in the mirror. Me, pale me. With shaking hands I held a cube of ice behind one lobe and the needle in front. The needle hit skin, causing a level of pain no sane person would ever inflict upon themselves. I straightened my spine and tried again. Nope. Pain.

More and more girls showed up with pierced ears, happy expressions on their faces. Sophisticated expressions, like they knew something important. Something I could never know.

I grew miserable. What a chicken I was, an unpierced chicken who would have to wear ugly, clunky clip-ons for the rest of my life. People on television, people on the street, heck, even people in National Geographic a million miles away in some jungle, they all had their ears pierced. I just had to get it done.

In secret I saved up a good lump of cash from my weekend babysitting job, the one with Ryan the terrible, and called in my own secret appointment at a local beauty salon. "I'd like to get my ears pierced," I whispered into the receiver so sure and so not sure. "Do I need my mother to sign anything?" Nah, they said, just come on in at twelve.

The shop had a few middle-aged bouffant laden town matrixes hanging around, magazines in hand. Bells jangled and Bruce Springsteen blasted from a wall radio as I walked inside, cold waft of air behind me like some ominous whisper. Retreat, retreat. No. I have money and earlobes. I'm doin' this.

A beautician named Dusty with a short cut and chunky blonde streaks told me to set my things down, then led me to a counter with a display of ear studs. Diamond, gold, silver. I chose the gold, even though I hate gold. Maybe a punishment for my wild excursion. Catholic upbringing makes such thinking rational. Do something bad, punish thyself. Repeat.

They all watched me, those highlighted, bouffant queens of my small town as I sat in the executioner's chair and waited for the first pierce. Dusty used a gun tool that gripped both sides of my lobe like a doubled-tailed brass scorpion. I heard a click and pain shot through my ear. It sizzled, ran, threaded all down my neck. Tears stung inside my eyelids, but I didn't cry. I didn't yelp or cry. I just sat there. One down.

It was worse, knowing the pain about to come. And it came. Boy did it come. But once it was over, and Dusty led me to her beauty product adorned mirror with fancy lights and pictures of her buck-toothed kids, I smiled. The gold studs looked pretty, even if my lobes were bright red. I felt older, wiser, stronger.

"Your mom didn't want you to get this done, huh?" Dusty asked me, standing behind.

I shook my head.

"Well now, I never did what my momma wanted, either. We never could agree on anything. I moved out at seventeen, got married, had a few kids. Now I wish I could be young again. But I don't regret none of it. Not really." She patted my back. "That'll be ten dollars."

When I walked home, alone, the wind blew hard and brittle against my throbbing earlobes. I wanted to put a wool mittened hand up to protect them, but one touch of the scratchy material made things a million times worse. I just walked and winced and battled back the tears, not from pain but from the damn wind and made my way home. A new girl.

Perhaps it was a rite of passage. Other pain would come, other decisions would be mine to make all with consequence or glory. They would come and I would face them, make my own decisions, choose my own path.

Sitting still and ghost hunting

The other day I went to parent teacher conferences at school, where I heard about all the lovely things my children do every day and what a good parent I am. Not quite! What I heard was that Julia is greatly improving in her school work, but has trouble sitting still. Also, that at recess, she's out picking flowers in the far reaches of the playground—so far that she fails to hear the whistle or her name being called. Her teacher told me she's had to chase Julia around, as I'm sure I've done many times. Of course I sat there and felt awful over my wild daughter who won't respond to her name being called, hair and wildflowers flying as she runs and teacher runs behind, stumbling, crying out her name, "Julia!" It's funny and not funny. Proper punishment shall ensue.

Then in Liam's class, I found out he was the perfect example of a good little boy; respectful, obedient, patient. And I'm thinking, right. Is this the same kid who comes home every day at lunch and barks orders to make a sandwich, get him something to drink, cries, tears all the heads off his sister's barbies? I smiled politely through that teacher/parent meeting as well.

With a few days off of school I strapped them in the car and we drove around town to witness these windy, brilliant days of fall. Despite the drought, all woodland life has decided to be generous and blaze out in full red, yellow, orange all against a grayish, gravestone October sky. I'd read about a real haunted house in town so we drove through the older section pausing at crumbling Victorians and shady-looking bungalows. No ghosts appeared, but the kids sat in perfect silence as we scanned windows and doorways for paranormal existence.

Any ghosts in your neighborhood?

Peeking In

It's been such a long time since I posted. I think my focus has on my kids lately, yet at the same time it feels wrong to let things slip career-wise. Still trying to find a good balance.

Having said that, about a week ago I went to an appearance by Laura Moriarty, author of The Chaperone and creative writing professor at KU. The library was packed with people—a good sign. I went because I wanted to speak to her about getting an MFA, but I ended up enjoying her chapter reading, especially as it dealt with the Orphan Trains. I've told you about my grandmother, who was a mere baby when she travelled the trains from New York to Missouri. Not having read The Chaperone yet, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Ms. Moriarty touch on this subject. It, in fact, brought me to tears. While taking questions, I raised my hand and told her about Grandmother Marion. Afterwards, many women came up to me expressing their interest in the story. I think it's a good sign I should be writing that book one day! I've always meant to, wanted to, but it's a delicate subject in our family, and you can imagine my desire to handle it with the utmost care.

Then came the book signing I almost didn't get in line for because I didn't want to bug Ms. Moriarty, but I just had to ask about the MFA. I stood in line and finally got my chance to ask about the whole thing. Apparently one must have a degree, which I don't, to qualify for the MFA program. She said something about sending in a writing sample, and also about taking writing classes on the side. Anyway, the deadline to apply is December. I just don't know what to do, really. Right now I'm so focused on finding ways to make money to take care of the kids, and I just don't see that pursing an MFA would be the right thing to do. Maybe later. I think when it comes down to it, my kids need money for clothes and food and the dentist more than I need to go to college. When Liam starts all day school next year I'll most likely try to get a full time job. At least I have one book to be proud of.

I hope everyone is doing well. Fall is here!