A memory of pancakes...

Trader Joe's makes these really delicious frozen gluten-free pancakes. Hey, don't make that face! They're actually really tasty.

This morning as I was eating them I had a memory of pancakes. That doesn't sound very deep does it? No, not like I was remembering every pancake I've ever eaten (boy, that would take some time) but actually pancakes my Dad used to make when we were children.

It seemed like Dad often made the weekend pancakes and he was great at it. He would make these perfect little circles of tender lightness and we would load up on the butter and the warmed syrup. I would eat my way carefully all the way around the outside of the stack, going in further and further until there was a perfect bite of pancakes left. The center of the pancakes with all the butter and syrup soaked in. A technique that only works with small pancakes because you get full too quickly with big ones and never get to the center.


I think I was remembering this today because Wednesday is both my Dad's 81st Birthday and my son's 30th Birthday. How can this be? It must be impossible.

Surely it was only a few years ago when my Dad was making his weekend pancakes, and only a few weeks ago that my son was a little fella with curly blonde hair and a big appetite for pancakes himself.

How did all this time pass?

I read a saying recently that says "you live your life like you live your days" and it gave me pause. It made me wonder if while I'm waiting for the perfect bite of pancakes, I'm actually enjoying all the outer edges as well.

Or are the outer edges what actually makes that one perfect bite of pancakes at the center so special?

Sundays with Steve - Crossing the Plains

These Sunday's segments are written by my husband, Mr. Jenny. Here's what he has to say about his posts:

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together.

Crossing the Plains

As all families who live in the Western U.S. did, ours migrated here from other places. Everyone, except perhaps the Native Americans, came from somewhere else. Below is the story of one of those journeys, a fascinating tale of a covered wagon trip from Missouri to the Washington Territory in the post-Civil War period when the U.S. population poured to the West. It was written by a distant great great aunt, Barbara Jane Matlock McRae in 1939, when she was 81. She couldn’t type, but she wrote it on her son’s typewriter. She had no formal education, but she conveyed her story succinctly. I have not corrected the typing or punctuation except for an occasional clarity point, nor her spelling, so as not to change her meaning and to preserve unspoiled the charm of this report

This story will occupy this space for the next several weeks, as it is a fascinating peek into what we often consider the pioneer days.


A true story of my trip across the plains in an emigrant wagon in 1874 and 1875.


In the spring and summer of 1874 and 75 my father began to make preparation to leave our old home in Misouri: to go west his intentions were to go to Washington territory. He fitted out two big mule teams and a new wagon. He thought to start in the fall and travil toward the west for four or five weeks and then stop for the winter. We would be that far on our road toward Washington territory. On September 24 in 1874 we started. My father and mother and ten children, seven boys and three girls, it seems to me when I look back it was some under taking with such a large family to cross that Indian infested country, I was the oldest girl I was nearly sixteen.

I had too brothers older than I the rest were all younger. We youngsters were all excited about it, none of us had ever camped out a night in our lives. Except for myself I went with my father one time when I was about twelve years old to the town of saint james, Mo. About twenty miles we went with ox team it took us for days to make the trip we took a load of grain to the rail road station. That was the only time I or any of us ever saw a rail road train except my father he had been to saint louis several times. We camped out on the trip to saint james.

The first night out when we started west there were some confusion among the young children they began to cry and wanted to go home so they could go to bed. We finely got the big tent up and our beds made and got our evening meal everything looked better to the youngsters.

Our old home was down in the south west part of misouri near the gasconade river you might say in the back woods. None of the children had even been ten miles from home in our lives except for myself when I went to the james town with father. On that six weeks trip into Iowa we children saw lots of exciting things. The north part of misouri through Salean county is a very beautiful level country with strips of timber from one mile to too and three miles wide. Large farms and farm buildings, we passed several farms that had been blown and twested to peases the past summer with terable cyclones.

In the fall of 74 jesse james and the youngers were stealing and robbing all through that part of the country; several towns had been held up and banks robed just before we passed through. Some of the farmers told my father that it was not safe traveling through the country with such desperadoes running at large they might rob us and steel our teams. But what could we do we had to take our chances. So we traveled a long and camped where night over took us at the side of the road or in the timber by the side of a little stream of water. A couple of times when we were campted in the timber too or three cowboyish fellows with wide hats and great spurs on their high heeled boots would ride into camp and talk to my father for a while and then ride away with a wave of their big hats and gingling of big spurs! They never molested us. Our mules were tied to the wagon every night. One night they got despertly freightened and almost tore the wagon to peaces, father and the boys quieted them but could see nothing. We all thought those fellows were despert looking. When we got out in Washington territory we got use to such characters. So we traveled on with out being molested. One of our mules was always alert and watchful when we were in camp.

We youngsters had been raised way down in misouri in the back woods where all kinds of wild fruit and nuts grow in abundance such as wild grapes and big jucy black berrys, dewberries and the most luscious strawberries and pawberries and wild pesinons hyckrynuts of all kinds both large and small hazelnuts walnuts and butter nuts, pecons, buroak acorns, which ripened in the fall of the year. Us being on the road traveling we missed all of those luxurys. In the wooded country where we lived it abounds. And in all kinds of game: deer wild turkey and timber squirls, lots of possoms and coons and rabbits and red timber fox and large gray and black wolves. My father missed all of that kind of sport as he was a great hunter.


When we got to Boonville Mo. there were so many Negrows swarming around we thought we were seeing all the Negrows in the world; we camped that night near a Negrow church at the out edge of Boonville. On the banks of the Misouri river they were holding church servis in a small church of all the praying and shouting and singing any one ever heard and to make things worse there was a Negrow cabin near by and the occupants got into a general quarl and fight. The same children made for our big tent and staid their. Early the next morning we broke camp and crossed the Misouri river at Boonville. The country is some hilly and some timber. The sun shown warm and bright and the autum color of there and gold and hase in the air of the fall of the year made every thing look beautiful.

The railroad ran round a steep grade on the out edge of the town. We were on a hill above the steep winding grade watering the teams and a freight train was puling the grade loaded very heavy. It was puffing and pulling and throwing up great rings of black smoke through the timber. We children both older and younger ones had never saw nor heard such a noise, neither had our mother. We all got so excited and curious to know what it was we couldent see it. My father got real peaved at us, he said we were so ignorant. That it was a freight training pulling a steep grade with a heavy load. My mother told him we had never in our lives hear a freight train pull a steep grade before nor had she. Then the next exciting thing was beautiful white ladys out for a walk with great big black Negrow men servants walking in the rear caring their lovely white babies all in pink and blew and white. It made such a contrast with the black of the Negrow. I don’t think baby carrages were much in voge in those days.



TO BE CONTINUED ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6

(c) 2010 Stephen J. Matlock
This publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected
under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.

My Saturday Centus - and a favor, please!

I wrote this Saturday Centus after I read a post that Nancy over at Away we Go has featured on Blogher this week. It is a thought-provoking post and one well worth your time to visit.

If you get a chance, please click here to visit her and leave a comment. I know she would very much appreciate it.

And now, on to Judie's wonderful prompt for the week. The prompt is in bold and my story is 100 words!

To read other links to Saturday Centus, just click here.



It was impossible for her to wrap her mind around this ugly truth. “OhmyGodOhmyGod…we told her over and over again not to keep secrets…”

An evil, little voice spoke up from the confusion of her troubled brain. “Children learn by example. Did you show her not to keep secrets?”

Her shaking hands flew to her lips. She ran up the attic stairs. With trembling hands she lifted the stack of letters from the ancient chest where she had hidden them years ago.

“OhmyGodOhmyGod,” she screamed in despair. “I showed her these letters. I told her we wouldn’t tell Daddy. OhmyGod. I showed her it was OK to keep secrets!”

Saturday Centus - She lifted the...

Welcome to week thirty-nine of Saturday Centus.

OK, I'm going to be nice this week. Actually, I should say that Judie is going to be nice this week.

Yup, you can't be irritated at me this week at all, because Miss Judie, from Rogue Artists Speak, wrote the prompt...and you don't have to do Sci-fi AND you get your full 100 words (plus the prompt)! Write in any genre in any style you wish...fiction, non-fiction, poetry or even sci-fi!

The prompt is:

"She lifted the stack of letters from the ancient chest..."

Thanks, Judie. This is going to be a fun one to work with!

You have the entire week to link your work to the meme and you can link more than one story if you like. Please try mightily to visit all the other weeks.

Please display link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

Please e-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Link anytime between now and next Saturday morning.

There is a peculiar kind of magic...

...that occurs when I am driving at twilight in Arizona...

...the road stretches ahead of me like a ribbon strewn with the diamond and ruby blurs of cars coming and going...

...the mountains form a cradle on the horizons and surround me like an embrace. I am awed by a western sky filled with fire and drama...


...and the eastern sky of velvet amethyst shading into midnight blue framed in my rear-view mirror...

The lights of houses twinkle on the side of mountains like fallen stars...

And I feel timeless and ageless...I am suspended between where I have been and where I am going...suspended between yesterday and tomorrow...

Bob Seger growls lyrics that go straight into my heart...

The air blows my hair around my face from the open sunroof...

For those few long moments I find complete and perfect peace in my life.

My exit approaches and the rhythm and click of my turning signal breaks the magic spell...

...and I am cast back into the 6:22 pm of my actual life.

But I am content.

And I feel as if I have been richly blessed with the gift of that twilight drive.

P is for ... "You know!"

While I was driving our Grandlittle, Mo, to preschool on Wednesday, I decided to get her assistance with my "P" post for Alphabe-Thursday this week.

Me: Mo, what is your favorite word that starts with the letter P?

Mo: Gwamma, you know the letter P. Pah, pah, pah, P !!!!

Me: I know that P sounds like pah, pah, pah, P! I just want to know what YOUR favorite P word is.


Mo: Well, let me think. P. Pah, pah, pah, P! Gwamma, you said a bad word!

Me: I didn't say a bad word.

Mo: Yes, you did, Gwamma. You said a bad word. You know. P? P? You see the word P?

Me: I didn't say P for potty, I said P like the letter at the beginning of a word like parachute or puppy or...

Mo: Gwamma. You already know P words. Why are you asking me?

Me: (sighing) Yes, I know P words. I just wanted to know what YOUR favorite P word is.

Mo: My favorite P word is P! You know, Gwamma? P? The word P?

Me: Never mind.

Mo: Gwamma! You know what another word is that starts with P. P! Pah, pah,
pah...going to the bathroom! Poo.

Me: Just never mind, Mo. I'll figure out my own P word.

Mo: You said a bad word, Gwamma. You said P. Like pah, pah, pah...

Me: I didn't say a bad word. The letter P is not a bad word.

Mo: You said it again, Gwamma! You said P!

Me: Look Mo! Quick! There's a red slug bug going down the street! Did you see it? There it goes...hurry, hurry, look out your window!


So I guess my P word for this weeks Alphabe-Thursday is P!

And my lesson for the week is not to have a four year old help me with my writing assignments.

And yes, I know. I said a bad word.

Sigh.

For other more intelligent P links, just click here!

Alphabe-Thursday's Letter P

Good morning class.

Today we will be discussing the particularly pleasant letter


Please link directly to your Alphabe-Thursday URL (if you don't know how to do this let me know!) and please continue to visit the five links before and after your link and leave a comment. Minimum of 10 links visited please. You can visit more if you like, of course.

I also want to let you know that each week I visit every blog. If it appears I haven't visited your blog by Wednesday morning, please let me know!

If you have any difficulties with your link, please make sure to include the number of the link when you e-mail me. It is really difficult for me to find you easily otherwise.

If you have any questions about Alphabe-Thursday or problems doing your link just post it in a comment or send me an e-mail. I'll do my best to help you as quickly as I can.

The McLinkey will be live from 1:00 pm MST time Wednesday afternoon in an effort to assist our lovely "friends across the pond" and continue through 10:00 am MST time Friday morning!

And remember.... link back to this post, you need to be registered as a follower of my blog, PG posts only, and try to visit the 5 students before and after your post at minimum. The links will stay live after the final post deadline has passed so you can even wait and visit over the weekend or whenever you have more time.

Please feel free to link your "P" post now, please. Class is dismissed.

How to not visit a Homeland Security Facility ...

So...yesterday I drove down to Florence to attend a hearing at the ICE facility there.

On the way back I decided I need a slightly more boring life.

Not totally boring, but just a teensy, weensy bit less...ummm.... weird.

...and here's why.

My GPS took me to the facility (big, brick, imposing, razor wire...gulp!). When I pulled into the driveway, guards were using those poles with mirrors and opening the doors to vehicles which seemed kind of neat. What was NOT neat, however, was that the guard was waving his arms and scowling and yelling. At me. Me! Sweet, innocent, non-terrorist me.

He did it for a little while and I kept looking around trying to figure out what had his boxers in a bunch.

Finally, when it was my turn to pull up, he started yelling at me. "Can you read?" he asked in a really loud, horrible voice. "Can you read?"

And I said, "Huh?" in a puzzled fashion.

"This is the EXIT!...can you read? See? Out! OUT!!!!!"

I said, "Oh."

He started talking to me like I was a moron (which perhaps I was because even after he told me it was the EXIT! I couldn't see a sign saying that).

He told me(very slowly like I was mentally challenged) to park my car in a certain place and to walk back up to the guardhouse.

I parked. I walked back up to the guardhouse. I was the only person there except for Mr. Crabby Pants.

He was still glaring at me. I thought he might just arrest me and throw me in the klinker for stupidity. Instead, he just decided to bully me some more!

"Didn't you see me waving my arms at you!" he said in a loud and mean voice.

"Yes, yes I did! But I thought maybe you were trying to land a plane," I retorted.


And then I got scared. I wondered if it was like a federal offense to be a smart aleck to a guard. With a gun. Who looked pretty darned ticked off.

That fear must have shown on my face, because all of the sudden he got nicer.

"Parking a plane...heh, heh..." he chuckled, "I haven't heard that one before. You looked all scared or something?"

"Yeah, do you think? Scared...I mean...geez, you don't have to scream at people! Do you? Is that part of your job? I mean when they hire you..."

I have this tendency to babble and ask wayyyy too many questions at inappropriate times.

But sometimes when I babble, it makes other people babble, too.

And as it turns out, his name was Robert, but his friends call him Bob. He'd been working for the Feds for almost 18 years. He was divorced.

After our little chat, he apologized to me. And told me what to do and what would happen next so I could get into the court room. And he was really, really nice and helpful.

Through the rest of the ordeal, four of the five other guards who checked my ID, escorted me, or looked at me with squinty eyes, were nice. One just looked constipated, so I cut him some slack.


When I was finished and being handed back through the chain of guards to the entry, I realized it was a beautiful day and I had survived. I exhaled and looked around and on the last little stretch walking up to the deserted guardhouse I realized someone was singing.

The song was 'Jennifer Juniper' and it was being sung badly. By Robert. Bob to his friends. And he was singing it to me!

He told me it was his favorite name...his daughter was named Jennifer. It was the only good thing his ex-wife had ever done...letting him name their only child Jennifer.

He told me to come back again soon. I told him I hoped that I wouldn't have to.

And then he shouted "Bye!" to me as I crossed the dusty driveway to get to my car.

Weird, right?

When I was driving back, I called Mr. Jenny to tell him about the whole experience.

When I told him about the guard he said, "I'm not surprised. People always do weird stuff around you."

Hmmm...

Is that a curse do you think?

But the good thing is that I know how to visit a Homeland Security Facility correctly now.

And now you know how to do it, too, should the need arise.

And if you have to go and Bob tries to yell at you, just tell him you're a friend of mine.

And sing a little bit of 'Jennifer Juniper' to him.

...

Sigh...

Story-Time Tuesday - Writing Fiction

If you missed where this story started just click here to read it or simply click on the Story-Time Tuesday link at the top of my blog to take you to previous chapters.

Writing Fiction - Chapter 21

Here's where Chapter 20 left you.

For a moment I was surprised, unsure of what to do. Then I realized his actions were fueled by the pain of a failed marriage. I jumped out of his car and ran after him.

I raced to the corner and saw him go into the coffee shop.

By the time I walked through the door, he was already seated at a table in the rear corner, his back to the door, shoulders hunched over.

I’d just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder, when Walden piped up, “Oh, so good to see you back so soon, sweetie!”

“Please,” I said quietly. “Please talk to me about Edgar. You don’t understand.”

He made a harsh motion with his hand. I chose to interpret it to mean, “Please sit down and we’ll talk about this.”

So I did.

And now, Chapter 21 Continues...

My motherly inclinations kicked into over-drive and remembering how my kids hated to be pressured when they had a lot on their minds, I sat quietly for a few moments observing the top of his head (slightly balding, I might add). When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I said in a soft and gentle voice, “I’m sorry you are suffering. I’m sorry your wife left you. I’m sorry I am being such a pain about Edgar but…”

“Spot,” he muttered with his head still lowered, “His name is Spot.” Then he looked up at me.

The sun came shining unkindly through the big glass windows of the coffee shop and illuminated a face tight with suffering. His brown eyes were swimming in unshed tears and misery. His mouth was a straight line drawn on with a crayon the color of unhappiness.

I looked away from the pain on his face and saw his hands tightly clenched. Ragged fingernails bitten back to the quick were another unpleasant surprise. “Uh oh, Pearl,” I told myself, “What have you gotten yourself into here? This guy is really having a seriously bad day.”

I backed off the subject of Edgar/Spot and leaned forward to touch his hand. He jerked it away. I pretended I hadn’t been reaching for him, and laid both hands flat on the warm, wooden surface of the table. He looked down

“My name is Pearl,” I tried again. “I’m a good listener. Would talking about the divorce help at all?”

I was really startled when he reached out and put his hands on top of mine. Hard.

“Pearl…or whatever your name is…listen to me very carefully. My wife did not…”

I interrupted. There was something about this guy that just got under my skin. “Yeah, I know. I know, your wife didn’t understand you, she turned your son against you, blah, blah, blah. I watch daytime TV and I know all about your kind, Mr. Mr...What is your name anyway?”

“What is wrong with you? Do you ever shut up? Do you ever let anyone finish a thought? What the hell is wrong with you?”

I’m not going to lie here. His words really hurt my feelings. I hadn’t talked to anyone in months. I’d been hiding out in my house. What the hell was wrong with me anyway? I never used to do this when my husband was still ‘among the living’. I don’t think I was wrong, though. It’s just that he wouldn’t answer me! His gravelly voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Pearl, listen to me very carefully. My name to you, anyway, is Mr. Moron. You can just call me moron. Or idiot. Or jerk. Whatever you prefer. I could care less what you call me because…”

“Oh for God’s sake,” I snapped at him, “Do you honestly think you are the only one that has problems? Everyone has problems. Yours are no worse than anybody elses.” I reached into my purse and grabbed out my cute, little magnetic note pad. “Here,” I said as I scrawled out my address, “When you check yourself into the psych ward drop off EDGAR and I’ll take care of him!”

He crumpled up the note and snarled, “SPOT! And I will not be going to the looney bin anytime soon,” he continued, “Because I couldn’t stand to be in there with YOU! Furthermore…,” (I swear to you…he actually used that word! What a pompous, self-righteous pig!) “…Furthermore, you need to be mighty careful jumping to conclusions, because…” he growled while shaking his index finger in my face.

“Jumping to conclusions?” By this time I had shoved back my chair and was on my feet pointing my index finger right back at him. “How could I possibly jump to a conclusion when you are in total denial about…”

“Oh shut up, Pearl! “ He said my name like he had swallowed a lemon. “Just shut up. You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. SPOT is my dog. You’re certifiable! I swear to God I hope that the next time you jump to a conclusion you fall and break your pompous, self-righteous neck!”

And for some reason he grabbed my crumpled up address, shoved it into his pocket and slammed out of the coffee shop. The bell jingled merrily in the sudden quiet of the sun-filled room.

I stood there shocked for a moment until I realized I was not alone. Walden and two customers were staring at me, open-mouthed in surprise.

I started to pretend nothing had happened, but Walden beat me to it. “Lovers quarrel?” she enquired perkily.

I opened my mouth to answer. Nothing came out. Obviously, I could shut up. But now he wasn’t there to witness it.

Walden continued, “Gosh, I thought my boyfriend and I liked to bicker, but you two really take the cake! Well, at least making up will be fun! Right?” She winked at me.

I opened my mouth to respond again. I had obviously been struck temporarily mute by Mr. Moron’s terrible behaviour.

I made a ‘bye-bye’ motion with my hand and made the bell jingle myself as I beat a hasty retreat out of the store. I walked quickly to my car and climbed in. What was that? What had just happened? I was just trying to be a nice person and help. ‘Lover’s quarrel?’ Thinking of Walden’s remark made me blush. ‘Break my neck jumping to a conclusion?’ What a freakin’ jerk!

I drove home ticked off. I parked my car and went into my house ticked off. I threw my coat and purse on the table still ticked off. I saw Millie coming across the driveway between our houses, so I grabbed my coat and purse and ran upstairs to hide.

I will say that Millie is quite persistent. She knocked for a long time. She walked around to the front door and rang the door bell for a long time.

Finally, after a lot of time had elapsed I realized the coast was clear and that I wasn’t ticked off anymore.

“Pearl,” With great effort, I pep-talked myself. “That is exactly why you need to just hide here in the house and write your blog. People are insane in the real world. It’s time to get to work.”

In all honesty, I didn’t want to write a blog. I wanted to do nothing. Forever. About everything.

But my mother, God rest her soul, had not raised a quitter. My Dad had not called me his little oyster for me to just hide away. I had to avoid Jessie coming to visit at all costs. If she saw me, she would know. She would know that I was a liar and that I was doing horribly. It would worry her sick. She would know that I was even worse off now then when her brother had gone to prison. She would freak out and…

What?

Yes, I said prison. My son is in prison, Okay? I don’t want to hurt your feelings here, but I can’t go into that right now. I have enough going on trying to manage the mess I’ve already got in my life that I can’t possibly go into that particular shame and pain. I need you to keep the whole thing quiet because up until now my husband and daughter were the only ones that knew about this. We told everyone that he was just working on one of those crab fishing boats in Alaska. That worked pretty good as an excuse until they made started making TV shows about crab fishing and then people started calling and asking us if he was going to be on the Discovery channel.

Lying can get pretty complicated sometimes, you know?

When Mr. Moron told me about not seeing his son, I had just wanted to commiserate with him. Obviously his anger issues superseded any possibility of accepting comfort.

I straightened my shoulders and spine and got my laptop.

Today was the day. I was going to finish the first post I had started and hit publish.

After all, denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt any more…it was becoming a freakin’ ocean in my life.

To be continued, Tuesday, February 1.

(c) 2010 Jennifer R. Matlock
This publication is the exclusive property of Jennifer R. Matlock and is protected
under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Jennifer R. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Just call me Venus...

...and you can call Mr. Jenny, Mars.

Never has the difference between men and women been so apparent to me then over this past weekend.

No, this story doesn't involve a toilet seat being left up and a butt baptism in the middle of the night.

It involves what happens when you try to sell a car...together...

We finally decided it's time to get rid of my Maxima. We rarely drive it, we want to get a truck eventually, and quite frankly I need more space in the garage to store stuff I buy at garage sales (but don't tell Mr. Jenny that last reason, please!)

So we did the usual thing...put an ad on Craigs list and answered some calls.


On Friday evening we got an unusual one, though, from a Minnesota phone number. The caller had very broken English so I passed the phone to Mr. Jenny.

His end of the conversation went something like this, "Yeah, good condition...say again? I'm sorry, I can't understand you...yeah...no, good leather...I'm sorry I can't understand what you're asking me...yeah...runs good...excuse me? Say again? I don't...well, no. I don't think I'm comfortable with that."

...and then he covered the receiver and whispered to me, "This guy wants me to drive the car by his hotel so he can see it..." ...and then he resumed his conversation...

"Ummm...yeah...no I understand you have cash but I'm not comfortable with this. Let's forget it, but thanks for calling."

Just as we started to discuss how weird this was, the phone rang again. It was the same phone number but a different person with broken English who explained that his friend had just talked to us and that they really needed a car and that they had cash and that all Mr. Jenny had to do was drive it to the hotel.

Mr. Jenny declined.

The third call came a few minutes later from the same number, but this time it was a woman with broken English. Mr. Jenny told her, "Look, I think the car is already sold, but call tomorrow around 1 o'clock and if it's still available I'll think about this."

When he hung up I said, "What are you doing?" and he replied, "I want to finish watching this educational show on PBS (OK, he actually said that he wanted to finish watching the Good Wife but I'm trying to make us look smarter then we actually are...sigh...)

Saturday morning we were running a few errands and he brought up the car issue, "Can you believe those people actually thought I would drive the car to their hotel in the middle of the night so they could see it?"

I said: Tehcnically, I don't think 8:00 pm is the middle of the night and maybe they really need a car.

He said: Yeah, maybe I really need to be robbed at gunpoint.

I said: I could follow you there and have my hand on the phone ready to dial 911.


He said: That'll help...NOT! What if they want to take it for a ride? Are you going to follow along behind me in my car?

I said: Of course I will. Maybe they just really need a car.

He said: Maybe they just need to launder drug money.

I said: That's dumb. If they wanted to launder drug money they would get a car that costs a lot more than 5 grand!

He said: How would you know? Is that how you do it when you launder money? Or maybe it's counterfeit money.

I said: We'll buy a conterfeit pen. Maybe they really need a car. Maybe their car broke down and they have no way to go back to Minnesota. Maybe they have a sick baby. Did you hear a baby in the background? Was there a baby crying?


He said: That's a lot of maybes and no, there was no baby crying.

I said: Well maybe it was asleep. OR maybe their paraplegic daughter is a student at ASU and she got her car stolen and part of her scholarship requires perfect attendance at classes AND maybe she's in a wheelchair but the wheel is kind of wonky and she can't get to school AND...

He said: Really. Stop. I'm not going by some hotel to show a car to someone who can't speak English who wants to give me a bag full of cash and...

I said: You are sooooo uncompassionate. What if they...

He said: Seriously, just stop. When they call this afternoon we'll deal with it.

So, we did our errands, I made him stop at Staples so I could run in and buy counterfeit pens (OK, I actually told him I needed shipping labels but they were practically right next to each other on aisles 1 and 13 in the store anyway), and we just avoided the whole subject.

1 o'clock came around and no call.

1:15, no call.

1:30, no call.

I went into Mr. Jenny's office and said, "I hope you're happy now! They probably had to walk to take the sick baby to the hospital..."

"They could have taken a cab, you know. They had cash, remember? And there was no baby crying in the background."

How irritating. How can he be so Mars when there is some poor paraplegic girl trying to get to school in a wheelchair with a wonky wheel?

Just...

Just...

Sigh...

PS. I didn't really think he should go...I just like to be marsumentative...you know? Keep him on his toes!

Sundays with Steve - History Meets Reality

These Sunday's segments are written by my husband, Mr. Jenny. Here's what he has to say about his posts:

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together.

History Meets Reality

We were moving almost silently downhill, through a thick grey cloud that was spitting snow. The afternoon light, such as it was, was starting to fade from its pale luminescence into near-twilight. It was cold, very cold, and visibility was no more than 40 feet. The wind was barely moving the wisps of clouds that would have been called fog if it were down on the distant valley floor. All was grey or black or white, faded white, there was no color, there was no depth, this was a nether-world of one or maybe two dimensions. The sky was the color of falling snow, and the snow beneath our feet, it was all grey.

I was moving too fast, I knew that, I couldn’t react quickly enough to anything unplanned in my path. I couldn’t anticipate what was coming, I couldn’t see more than about one second in front of my face, my leading edge. I remembered drivers’ training all those years ago, about not overdriving the conditions. I was over driving the conditions. Except I wasn’t driving. The slope was getting steeper, the slicker, and my body moving faster.

I saw movement in front of me, to the right, moving parallel to my path. I saw a silhouette, darker grey on a grey background, on a grey snow ground. It was a ghost-like, moving in parallel down the mountainside with me.

I heard a cry, a human cry, a cry of surprise, then fright. I saw something I had never seen before that, nor have I ever seen it again.

It was ghost-like, a fleeting image, it was there was for a tenth of a second, and then it was gone. The human scream lasted just a bit longer. There, there it was again, an image, frozen in the photo of my mind, a black and white still caught for a lifetime. The screamed turned to anguish.

There, again, it was just a few feet away, flying in a great fury, a roar without sound, moving down that mountainside at ever increasing speed, on that remote snow -covered mountain on the edge of the immense central Idaho wilderness area.

A ghost it wasn’t. It was a person, a man, rolling, at high speed with arms and legs fully extended hard and straight. He was doing a perfect cartwheel down the hill side. He could have been in a gymnastics meet, crossing a mat with precision. Surely he would score a perfect ten. Well, maybe not, the end was coming and it was not going to be pretty. It ended quickly, as most great crashes do, with a cloud of snow exploding into the air, an arm, a hand, raised out of the growing cloud, a single ski flying unattached to a foot, no, I was mistaken, that was half of one ski flying out that mass of snow, unattached to the other half, the other half presumably still attached to the man’s leg.

I quickly stopped my fast decent, and watched in amazement, both fearful of the coming result, and astounded by the sight.

That was my buddy Ed Koch, wearing his old wooden downhill skis, screaming, perhaps cussing. Well, I thought, at least he’s not dead, as maybe he should be. It was easy to tell that he destroyed the old skis in the crash, skis handed down from his father years before; skis that were technology good, maybe, 60 years before; skis that I had been harassing him about for some time, urging a trade in on some newer models that might be a bit safer, no, not a bit safer, hugely safer; old wooden skis that really, truthfully, look as if they had been manufactured from barrel stays.

I was sure that he was going to destroy himself as well, certainly I was anticipating broken bones, arms, legs, ankles, maybe a head. His cussing, mild cussing, coming from down the hill told me not dead. Koch was not a curser.


Koch is going to be really irritated, really ticked-off I thought: He’s going to have to buy new skis, he’s going to have to pay for a long hospital stay to fix those legs and arms he just broke, maybe even a broken head. Then there is all that home time coming up, time he can’t go to the office. Man, this guy is going to be in a lot of trouble.

It could be a lot worse, I thought, he could have cart-wheeled into the trees off to the left side of the ski run, then he would have to pay for his own funeral, instead of just new skis and a broken leg repair, or two.

Another curse, a groan, he stood up and looked a bit dazed. He was a bit dazed. “How in the world did that happen?” he asked. There was no explanation. Ghosts, goblins, a depression in the snow catching an edge, a secret desire to do cartwheels down a 7,500-foot mountain side -- one just could not say.

No broken bones, no broken head, no concussion, all appeared well. Except for his mile walk through the deep snow to the lodge where I would pick up him in an hour or so in the car for the ride back down the mountain.

* * *

Koch and I would close our office on most Wednesday afternoons during ski season. We operated several small-town weekly newspapers from our office in small-town Eagle, Idaho. The first chair-lift was just 30-minutes out the back door.


I didn’t learn to ski until I was in my mid-30s, and at the insistence of my younger brother David. He lived in neighboring Boise and needed a ski partner for this sport he swore I would love. Growing up in Lewiston, Idaho, the nearest ski areas were three and four hours away. We never even tried the sport.

A sweet little old lady named Grace took me to the bunny hill one cold winter morning and taught me to ski. After some embarrassment, including falling off the tow rope numerous times, I learned how to ski. I picked it up quickly. Within a few weeks I was on the intermediate runs, then soon I was on the hard black diamonds. They were all right, I loved the sport.


Koch and I would go most every midweek, and I would ski on the weekends with family, with brother David and his family, and often with others. There were various trips to ski areas around the West – Sun Valley, Whistler, Schweitzer, Vail, Bachelor, others.

Mrs. Steve told me of her skiing experiences in Pennsylvania: crowded small hills covered in ice. I’m sorry for this arrogance, but Eastern USA skiing -- other than that in the far northeast -- just isn’t comparable. Western skiing is deep dry snow, sharp steep vertical falls, light crowds, the mountains are large, the runs are expansive, this is where you run all day at full throttle, often on the verge of seemingly calamitous death, and where the adrenalin-rush rarely stops. Maybe that is why I loved it, knowing that death or injury was always near, but maintaining the control to beat it back.

My skiing career came to an end for many reasons: bad knees, bad finances (skiing can be expensive), blah, blah, blah, all the excuses everyone uses: Life got in the way. I haven’t skied in some time now, since moving to Arizona and then moving on to Mexico City for a number of years, and my skis and equipment are long disposed. But I’m thinking, as you know with “retirement” (whatever the hell that might mean) coming into my not-too-distant future, that skiing and me are not too long separated again. Like the golf I wrote about last week, I have this urge to find this sport again. Why I’m not sure, other than recalling the joy of skiing is compelling. I’m not sure my old fat body is up to it, but...


Mrs. Steve (Mrs. Jenny to some of you) says I can ski all I want, she’ll stay in the condo with a good book, a good fire, good room service, and her laptop computer, thank you.

OK, I think I’m about ready!

PS. From me, Jenny. We've been saddened over the past several days by the death of an outstanding young man in our community, Branson Holm, in a tragic snow boarding accident. As manager of our local Dutch Brothers Coffee, we saw Branson often. He was such a positive young man, full of life, joy and passion for his school, his sports, and his responsibilities. His wonderful smile and witty comments will be missed by us both and by so many others in our East Mesa community.

(c) 2010 Stephen J. Matlock
This publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected
under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Beam me up Scottie

Can I just say...

Who the heck wrote this ridiculous prompt and made this sci-fi week.

Whoever did it deserves to be strung up by...

Oh...

Ummm...

Ahem....

I mean...

What a wonderfully fun week of sci-fi adventure here on Saturday Centus.

I give to you my unique 100 word story with the prompt hi-lighted. I'm certain you will enjoy this satirical literary masterpiece.

Should you wish to read other literary endeavors for this prompt, please click here.

Sci-fi?...mutter, mutter. Beam me up, Scottie...curse, curse.

OK, here ya go.

Prepare to be amazed.

Or not.


Alien abductions are no laughing matter.

I have been confined to a room on the Mother Ship for so long I have almost forgotten my home.

I am cared for by strange short-legged creatures whose wide trousers trail onto the ground. Colored pictures cover their skin and many are controlled by brightly-colored rectangles with small cords that attach to their ears.

They ridicule and taunt me with inanities. “How are you today, Ms. Matlock?”

And then they bring out long syringes from behind their backs and shove brightly colored pills down my throat.

I am ready to return to Earth. Beam me up, Scottie.

PS. I hope this didn't hurt your eyes as much to read it, as it did my fingers to write it.

PPS. I'm sorry! I'm so, so, so very, very sorry. Please, please forgive me. Sci-Fi!!!!! So very, very, very, very sorry.

Sigh...

Saturday Centus - Be afraid, be very afraid....

Welcome to week thirty-eight of Saturday Centus.

I think we all need to continue to shake things up a little bit for the New Year so this week we'll continue doing that. I'll tell you more in a moment, but go ahead and curse me now!

This week, we're going to go further with a shake up and do a genre specific SC from the prompt.

This week you can have the whole 100 words (plus the prompt) BUT try writing sci-fi.

GULP!

BTW, I hate sci-fi, so I'm not picking this because it's easy for me.

I got this prompt from a galaxy far, far away...so you can't technically be annoyed at me.

The prompt is:

"Beam me up, Scottie..."

You have the entire week to link your work to the meme and you can link more than one story if you like. Please try mightily to visit all the other weeks. There are some great writers participating in this meme AND it will be a zippy quick read this week for sure!

Please display link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

Please e-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Link anytime between now and next Saturday morning.

Saturday Centus - Shake up!

OK, 25 words was tough.

But here is my little SC shake-up offering. The prompt is in bold!


Checked the numbers,
Screamed a lot.
Where’d you put it?
You forgot?
You know you won?
Hold on a minute.
To win you need
the lottery ticket!
MISPLACED?!?!?

To read other micro-fiction offerings, just click here.

Unrealistic expectations

So.

One of my New Year's non-resolution resolutions was to start playing piano again.

It's been about 30 years since I've played,but this past summer we got a great deal on a used piano and we bought it so our Granddaughters could take lessons.

I've hacked around a bit on it...you know...chopsticks, The House of the Rising Sun, Love is Blue. All the songs I memorized 30 years ago.

Mr. Jenny was impressed.

"Wow," he said, "You know how to play really good!"

So...

I went to the music store and stocked up on cool sheet music. The first song I decided to tackle was "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day. It didn't look that hard.


And after I brought the sheet music home, I told Mr. Jenny to let me warm up a bit and then I would play it for him.

Ummm...

OK.

Yeah.

Somehow along the way, I forgot how to read music. All the little dots and lines just blurred together into a quagmire of something undecipherable. Obviously playing piano isn't much like riding a bike. Although I haven't tried that in about 30 years either...

A few minutes after I figured that hard truth out, Mr. Jenny came out to the living room with a big smile on his face. "I'm ready to hear it!" he said.

Ummm...

OK.

Yeah.

I told him I was a little rusty. And it might be a few days before I would be ready to play it. And that I needed time alone to concentrate.

And then when he left the room, I dug through the piano bench and found the books our Grands used over the summer.

I turned a few pages and found a really, really cool song. After a few minutes practice I mastered it. OK, technically I haven't mastered it yet, but the notes being numbered with the correct fingers to use helps a lot!

And I think it's actually a wayyyy cooler song than "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" anyway.

Who wants to hear Green Day when they can listen to an emotional rendition of...



"The Wind Sock" is a haunting piece of music that will make your heart soar and has lyrics that speak directly to your heart.

Down at the airport, the wind sock is flying. It shows all the pilots which way the wind blows.

With great songs like this at my disposal, I may just have to wait to January 2012 to tackle Boulevard.

Sigh.

Outrageous Coconut Cream Cupcakes

If you like coconut, these are yummy.

If you don't like coconut, you are dumb.

Oops! Did I say that out loud? Yikes! I hate when that happens.

OK.

Moving on.

So...

Get these ingredients:

1. A yellow or white cake mix to make 24 cupcakes and all the stuff you need to make them (don't yell at me if you don't have enough eggs...I can't read the box from here)
2. Coconut extract
3. a 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
4. a 15 oz. can of cream of coconut
5. 1 cup of heavy whipping cream
6. 3 T. granulated sugar
7. 1 teaspoon white corn syrup (optional)
8. 1 cup or more of sweetened, shredded coconut

Take a box of yellow or white cake mix and follow the package directions EXCEPT add 1 teaspoon of coconut extract to the mix.

Underfill your cupcake tins slightly and I'll tell you why in a minute, OK?

While the cupcakes are baking stir together the sweetened condensed milk and the cream of coconut.


Take the cupcakes out when they're done and then poke them with a fork several times. Pour the thick, milk-y, coconutt-y liquid over each of them slowly. Let it absorb before you pour more on.



Cover them with saran wrap and stick in the fridge for three or four hours or even overnight.

BUT...

If you didn't want to make cupcakes you could totally make this in a 9 x 13 pan

OR...

If you wanted to take these on a picnic, you could totally make these as cupcakes in a jar. If you didn't see how to do that just click here. If you made them in a jar, wouldn't it be scrumptious to put some lemon curd on there before you put on the icing?

OK...

Now you are ready to frost the cupcakes (or the cake, or the cake in the jar, depending on what strikes your fancy!) and to do that...

Whip together the heavy cream, 1/2 teaspoon of coconut extract, 1 teaspoon of corn syrup (Karo) and the 3 T. granulated sugar.

(If I was making the cupcakes in the jar or the big cake, I might make 1 1/2 recipes of the icing, though...and that would be 1 1/2 cups heavy cream, 3/4 teaspoon of coconut extract, 1 1/2 teaspoon of corn syrup and 5 T. granulated sugar. If you want to double the recipe, you have to do your own math...sorry!)

When it's all fluffy and lovely, pipe or spoon it onto your cupcakes (cake or into the jar) and then sprinkle sweetened, shredded coconut over the top of that.




TaDa!!!!!



I'm telling ya. These are excellent. And Mr. Jenny thinks so, too, obviously, because when I went to get a few more out for a background picture, he ate the one on the plate!



This yummy, albeit slightly confusing recipe, is brought to you by Alphabe-Thursday's letter "O". Perhaps I should have linked it to the letter "C", but I didn't make them that week of Alphabe-Thursday. So there.

To see other "O" links, just click here!

Alphabe-Thursday's Letter O

Good morning class.

Today we will be observing all aspects of the letter


Please link directly to your Alphabe-Thursday URL (if you don't know how to do this let me know!) and please continue to visit the five links before and after your link and leave a comment. Minimum of 10 links visited please. You can visit more if you like, of course.

I also want to let you know that each week I visit every blog. If it appears I haven't visited your blog by Wednesday morning, please let me know!

If you have any difficulties with your link, please make sure to include the number of the link when you e-mail me. It is really difficult for me to find you easily otherwise.

If you have any questions about Alphabe-Thursday or problems doing your link just post it in a comment or send me an e-mail. I'll do my best to help you as quickly as I can.

The McLinkey will be live from 1:00 pm MST time Wednesday afternoon in an effort to assist our lovely "friends across the pond" and continue through 10:00 am MST time Friday morning!

And remember.... link back to this post, you need to be registered as a follower of my blog, PG posts only, and try to visit the 5 students before and after your post at minimum. The links will stay live after the final post deadline has passed so you can even wait and visit over the weekend or whenever you have more time.

Please feel free to link your outrageous "O" post now. Class is dismissed.

Just pour some corn syrup on me, please.

Don't get worried.

This isn't a kinky post. You know I'm all about the PG stuff.

But...

Today I was making this scrumptious recipe for Coconut Cream Cupcakes (recipe tomorrow!) for our daughters birthday, and I got to the part where you make the fresh whipped cream topping.

And since we weren't going to eat it right away, I remembered a little tip about adding 1 teaspoon of corn syrup to each cup of whipping cream before you start beating it to keep it stable longer.


And...

I don't know about you, but January so far has been all kinds of topsy turvy here and I'm feeling kinda/sorta out of balance and things definitely don't feel stable at all...

So...

I'm wondering if pouring corn syrup all over myself would help...

Although...

When I asked Mr. Jenny about this he got a strange, hopeful look on his face.

Wonder what that was all about?

Hmmm....

Story-Time Tuesday - Writing Fiction

If you missed where this story started just click here to read it or simply click on the Story-Time Tuesday link at the top of my blog to take you to previous chapters.

Writing Fiction - Chapter 20

Here's where Chapter 19 left you.

While I’d been waiting and waiting in the coffee shop, he’d been sitting in his car…probably laughing at the idea of standing me up. He’d been sitting in his warm, cozy, cocoon of a car. And that made me so angry.

I stomped over to his car door and rapped loudly on the glass with my fist. He ignored me.

I hit the glass again, harder this time. And then he looked up.

I was shocked. His face was all scruffy, covered in salt and pepper whisker stubble. But that wasn’t what shocked me. It was his eyes. They were red-rimmed. He looked terrible. He looked like me on the mornings I felt brave enough to actually look in the mirror. Well, not the salt and pepper stubble part, but the rest of his face looked the same…all puffy and beaten and old. After our eyes met, he looked embarrassed. And then he looked away.

I tapped on the window again, a little more gently. He made a “go away” motion with his hand. I saw his other hand reach for the key to start the car and without thinking I quickly ran around to the passenger’s side and hopped in. I think it caught him by surprise. I think if he’d known that’s what I was going to do, he‘d have locked the door. I think if I had known that’s what I was going to do, I’d have taken a moment to think it through.

But he didn’t. And I didn’t.

I closed the door behind me and sat. Now that my butt was firmly planted on his gray leather seat, I wasn’t sure what to do.

And now, Chapter 20 begins...

He kept his head turned away from me…transfixed on something outside the car.

I squirmed a bit on the slippery leather of the seat. It was warm inside the car. The warmth should have made it cozy, but sadness overwhelmed the space.

I wiggled around a little bit more and then, hesitantly, said, “So…did you super glue your butt to the seat or something?”

He turned towards me, eyebrows raised, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I said, “Did you super-glue your butt to the car seat? You couldn’t manage to walk the 100 feet to the coffee shop and meet me?”

“I have no idea what you’re even talking about,” he replied, “Do you know you’re insane? Do insane people know they’re insane, or do they just wander around the world trying to suck other people into the vortex of their craziness?”

Huh? Vortex? Craziness? Insanity?

“Listen buddy, I’ve had just about enough of you,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. Although I admonished myself to remain calm and kind, (after all, he did have those red-rimmed eyes) it was a heroic battle. “Crazy. Insane. Angry. Emotional. Irritational.” Just that quick, I lost the battle.

“I’ve had just about enough of your name calling too! There’s a long list of names I could call you, you know!”

“You already have,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

“I did not! I wanted to call you names! I wanted to lose my temper! But…”

“Do these ring a bell?” he asked me, “Moronic? Stupid? Ignorant? Rude? Horrible? Technically you started the whole name calling part of our conversations.”

Oops. Ummm… yeah. Maybe he was right. Maybe I had started the name calling. But what kind of a jerk and idiot says that out loud? I sighed in frustration.

“And sighing now? Sighing? I thought you hated sighing. You’re a hypocrite! Get out of my car! Now!”

“No! I won’t!” I didn’t care that I sounded like a spoiled five year old. Okay, I cared, but my frustration and anger caused more zen-like retorts to elude my grasp.

“Gee, that’s mature. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who could even care for a dog…much less Spot,” he snarled in a nasty voice.

I opened my mouth, ready to start screaming at him. But instead of words, what came pouring out was sobs. I cried like a baby. In front of this stranger. Sitting in his car for all of Main Street to see. And I couldn’t stop.

But I tried to stop. Really I did.

At one point, I think he patted my shoulder. He even shoved his handkerchief into my hand.

Can I just tell you something here? Between friends? I’m not a good crier. I’m not one of those women whose glistening tears slip down onto rosy cheeks or whose eyes glow like wounded stars in their sorrow. I am a full-on, nose-blowing, puffy-eyed, red-faced crier. It’s not pretty.

He never said anything. He just sat, looking out the window. Finally, when I’d taken a few wheezy breaths and mopped my face with his white cotton handkerchief, he said, “Okay. Now can you get out of my car?”

I kept my head averted from his gaze and felt for the cold metal of the door handle. I started to open the door, but then I thought of Edgar/Spot and how his little cookie-scented body and big, brown eyes had kept the lonely away. So, instead of running, I decided to face the whole situation head on. No dash there.

“Listen,” I said, “I really want to just ‘cupcake out’ here and get out of the car, but I can’t. I really, really need Edgar. I mean Spot. I really, really need Spot. “

“Lady, he’s a sweet dog, I know, but he’s my dog…not yours. And why are you talking about cupcakes?”

“Look. I’m not saying you’re a bad dog owner, but when I found him he was in terrible shape. He was scroungy and starving and stinky…If you were such a good dog owner, why was he out wandering the streets? Why did you let him…”

“Lady, you don’t know what you’re talking about! I looked for him everywhere. I called the vets! I made signs! I went to the dog pound and animal shelters every, single day. I know you. You just want him so you can prance around town looking all stylish with a cute, little dog. Get another dog! Spot is mine.”

I was so startled by him calling me stylish, I couldn’t say anything. Prance around? That was hilarious. Did I look like a prancer? And a stylish one at that? “I can’t get another dog. I love Edgar!” I told him in a desperate voice.

And then, in a much softer voice, I asked him, “Could you just get another dog?”

He sighed. I didn’t care.

I waited. It felt like I’d been doing that the whole day anyway.

He sighed again.

“Lady, listen. It’s complicated. I don’t want to get into this with you, but I really need Spot to stay with me.” He continued to talk for awhile but it all just sounded like a bunch of empty excuses.

“So now do you understand?” he asked.

“I don’t understand a word you said. What I do understand is, if that little metal loop wouldn’t have gotten tangled in the nasty mess of Edgar’s fur, I’d still have him. I shouldn’t have called you. I shouldn’t have done the right thing because obviously it was the wrong thing. You aren’t responsible. You let him get lost. You let him wander the streets…alone and afraid. You let him starve. You let…”

“Enough!” he yelled. He slammed his hands down on the steering wheel. “Enough! Stop it! You have no idea what you’re talking about. Get out of my car! Get out of my life! Lose my number! Spot is mine! Get your own dog!” He leaned forward a bit and then yanked his wallet out of his back pocket. He took a big wad of money out and threw it at me. “There! There’s a reward! Take it! Take it all! Take the stupid money and just leave me alone! GET. OUT. OF. MY. CAR. NOW!”

I was stunned by his anger. Geez! Talk about over-reacting!

“Listen…” I started to say and he shouted at me again! “I won’t listen! Get out of my car! Lose my number!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I interrupted him, “I heard that already, but…”

“No ‘buts’! GET! OUT! OF! MY! CAR! Spot is all I have left of my family. Go! GET! OUT! OF…”

Suddenly, it hit me; his wife must have left him. She must have taken the kids and left him. But why hadn’t she taken the dog? Why had she left Spot behind with an obviously half-crazed man? His accusations about my husband divorcing me came back to me.

In the careful, gentle voice that people often use around the mentally challenged, I told him, “Okay, I understand. Divorce can be difficult, but you can rebuild your life. Perhaps I could care for Spot while you work through these anger issues. I could help you by giving you time to think things through…”

I would have continued, but his mouth was open in surprise. “Where did you get the idea I was divorced? How could you possibly assume that? Some people, like your husband, are lucky to be divorced. Trust me, there are worst things and I really want you to GET. OUT. OF. MY. CAR. NOW.”

“No, I won’t,” I said again, more firmly this time, “I will not get out of your car until you hear me out on the whole Edgar/Spot issue”.

“Fine,” he roared at me, “Then I’ll get out.”

And slamming the door behind him, he got out of his own car and raged off around the corner.

For a moment I was surprised, unsure of what to do. Then I realized his actions were fueled by the pain of a failed marriage. I jumped out of his car and ran after him.

I raced to the corner and saw him go into the coffee shop.

By the time I walked through the door, he was already seated at a table in the rear corner, his back to the door, shoulders hunched over.

I’d just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder, when Walden piped up, “Oh, so good to see you back so soon, sweetie!”

“Please,” I said quietly. “Please talk to me about Edgar. You don’t understand.”

He made a harsh motion with his hand. I chose to interpret it to mean, “Please sit down and we’ll talk about this.”

So I did.

To be continued, Tuesday, January 25th.

(c) 2010 Jennifer R. Matlock
This publication is the exclusive property of Jennifer R. Matlock and is protected
under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Jennifer R. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Accckkk!!! I need a new excuse...

For about a year now I've been telling Mr. Jenny that I need a laptop.

"If I had a laptop I could write my novel quicker. Without a laptop it is just taking a lot longer than I thought it would."

Mr. Jenny has usually had a moderately smart-alecky retort like, "Novel? What novel?"

And I, sweet and kind person that I am, patiently explained that I am writing a novel that will put my name right up there with Stephen King and Danielle Steele.

"You are writing a horror/romance bestseller?" He would ask with disdainful sarcasm.

Patiently I would explain, yet again, that I would be happy to write a horror/romance bestseller, except Stephen King and Danielle Steele do all their writing on a laptop. I informed him that if I had a laptop I could write in the car, and while I'm waiting at pre-school to pick up Morgan, and at the doctors office and while I was watching TV.

He ignored me.

Until Christmas. And then he paid attention. And he bought me a laptop.

It's little. And cute. And red. And it looks like this.


And Mr. Jenny said, "Now you can write a best-seller and make lots of money and keep me in the style I wish to become accustomed to."

I was excited.

I was happy.

I lied.

Oh sure, I write on the little cutie-pie but for some reason it's not helping me channel King and Steele.

It's more helping me channel extra time typing stuff into the search engine on Etsy. Man, they have cool stuff on Etsy, don't they?

So I'm thinking it probably isn't me. I suspect those famous writers have other things on hand when they write, right?

Ten pound boxes of Godiva chocolates? A masseuse rubbing their aching shoulders? A live-in maid/gourmet chef?

I'm sure it's just something like that keeping me from finishing up the 150,000 word novel I'm working on.

If I had the chocolate, the masseuse, and the live-in maid/gourmet chef, I'm certain I could crank out the remaining 149,200 words in no time at all.

I just need to figure out how to break the news to Mr. Jenny.

And since it's a long time until next Christmas, I can have a lot of fun on Etsy in the meantime!

Sigh...

Sundays with Steve - Chasing the White Ball

These Sunday's segments are written by my husband, Mr. Jenny. Here's what he has to say about his posts:

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together.

Chasing the White Ball

The “whack” of a driver smashing the golf ball in the warm spring afternoon, the flight of the ball rising from the club head in a high arch, climbing and towering to an apex 300 yards away, a white ball in flight was almost breathtaking, a flight that seemed to take minutes although in reality it was just a few seconds, a flight so graceful as it climbed- out over the fence line that ran down the right-hand side of the green fairway, and finally landing on the neighboring weed covered hillside. Golf, my athletic sport of choice in high school, was for the most part a frustrating love-hate experience, both then and for years to come, although there may have been a few bright moments along the way.

Younger brother David was a bit insane: high school football was his sport of choice, a physical battle each Friday night on the offensive line, keeping the other team’s tacklers away from the quarterback behind him. David was a big kid, lean, muscular, good looking, athletic, and a ham. His antics off the field were much more entertaining than those on. While I was chasing the white ball down the green grass fairways (and weed choked roughs), David chased the brown football down field. I loved to watch the football team, to cheer on the home team, and I still do 40 years or so later. I attempted to teach David how to play golf years later, after college, but it never really “took” with him, which always surprised me, given his athleticism.

My father tried to teach me golf in the spring of the 8th grade. He wasn’t very successful. I had a hard time hitting the ball, with any club, yet alone hitting the ball down a fairway. My birthday present that spring was 12 lessons with the golf club “pro” Boyd Walker. Mister Walker was in his 60s then, and he was a patient teacher. He was probably a perfect teacher for me at the time, because I needed patience.


I spent that summer learning how to play golf at the old Lewiston Golf Club. I say “old” because the golf course was converted to a residential subdivision in the 1970s. Prior to that, the golf course occupied canyons and draws above the Snake River, lush greenery in an environment of black basalt rock and copious amounts of knee high weeds that would turn brown with the summer heat. On one side of the course was a towering cliff that rose 1,200 feet or so to a plain that housed the county airport and more housing beyond that. It was a nine- hole affair, shared with ground squirrels during the summer months, squirrels that lived in the adjunct rocks that would feed and water on in the fairways. I never hit one with a golf ball, but some did. If you wanted to play 18 holes of golf, as is customary on most golf courses, you went around the course twice.

The course was not very challenging, but I didn’t know that then. I thought it was horribly hard to conquer in those first years of learning the game. There was just one other golf course in our town then, the Clarkston Golf & Country Club across the river. It seemed to be a nicer course, it had a full 18 holes, and it was quite a bit more challenging. It also drew the social crowd after its club house burned in the late 1950s and was then rebuilt as a much nicer social center to draw non-golfers to its facilities. In the late 1960s the city of Lewiston said enough, it counted two private courses in its purview and decided to open a municipal course on the plain above the Lewiston course. The Lewiston course couldn’t stand the competition from the social Clarkston course and the new public course, so its members decided to sell the old course to home builders and build a much more “grand” course and club house a mile or so to the South.

At the “old” course, Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived in a trailer house behind the club house. He sold buckets of golf balls to use on the driving range, he gave golf lessons to “juniors” like me, he over-saw the occasional tournament and the men’s and women’s golf leagues that ran most of the year, and he over-saw a small crew of maintenance workers who would keep the fairways trimmed and watered. Mrs. Walker ran the restaurant and bar -- the iconic “19th” hole.

The golf course only had about 250 family members then, a small number. As I recall monthly dues where in the $150 range, fairly expensive for the time. There were no green fees for members, but there were additional costs if you wanted to rent an electric cart (pull carts were free), get a bucket of balls for the range, or pick up a sandwich after your round.

For several summers I would go out to the course early, before the golfing day began. I would knock on the door of the Walker home, and Mr. Walker would come out with coffee in his hand to give me a bucket of balls. I would spend an hour or more hitting those balls, then go out onto the empty course to play a round with three or four balls. I would take a lesson from Mr. Walker one or two times a week in that first year. He would always say the same thing, ‘Slow down your backswing, it’s too fast.’ That was very good advice then, but it took me decades to learn it.


In the next several years I would hang around the club house on summer days waiting to find a party of three needing a fourth to play. It usually didn’t take long to find a group. Some of the groups I played with comprised of local business retirees whom I knew or should have known. What amazed me was how accurate these old guys would hit their balls down the fairways or at the holes.

Bob Newell, father-in-law to my cousin Butch Alford, said it best. Bob was maybe in his mid-70s then, an extremely nice person, intelligent, humorous, and retired after selling his tire store. He would hit his driver only 175 yards or so, not very far, but always straight. I asked him one day how he did that so consistently. “I don’t have the arm strength I use to have when I was younger,” he said, “and I can’t swing the club nearly as fast. I slowed down my backswing, not because I wanted to, but because I got old.”

Oh, that’s what Mr. Walker meant.

Once I reached high school and my golf game developed more, my father was draft me to play with him in a summer businessmen’s league when they needed a substitute, or he would take me along when a visitor would come to town and scrub to my father’s persistent, “Want to play golf this afternoon?” Sometimes it would be just him and me. And the refrain would continue both from my father and others on the course, ‘Slow down your backswing.’

The problem, you see, with a fast backswing is that the club head lags behind the club shaft, and once the head hits the ball, the ball has a tendency to fade out to the right, sometime developing a very pronounced “slice.” What does that mean? I was strong, and it hit that ball hard. I would hit that ball 350 yards in the air, or maybe further. But alas, I might also hit it 350 yards to the right, pushing that ball god-only-knows-where. That was a bit of a problem.

I got the slice in my game under control over time, and I played on the high school golf team where I won a few matches, I did well in state-wide high school tournaments, and I then played on a college team for a couple of years before other activities took my time.

While Brother David chased the pig skin for just a few years in high school – he was an all-state player for two of those years winning numerous accolades, he chose not to play college football even though several colleges recruited him – I continued to chase the white golf ball for decades.

But it wasn’t until much later, maybe in my late 30s or when I reached the old age of 40, after I had sat behind a desk for 15 or 20 years, did my backswing really slow down and my accuracy improve dramatically, a function of age, relative inactivity, and a bit of excess poundage around the gut. That slowed the swing down!

Once I moved away from Idaho to Phoenix, and then on to Mexico City for a number of years chasing a career, I didn’t play golf at all. Then 10 years ago, at the ripe old age of 50 and living back in Phoenix with Mrs. Steve, I took my sons to the driving range one day to show them how to hit a driver. As I recall I did that, and that was a joy to see that white ball flying far and straight again. Unfortunately I messed up my back with my powerful swings, so well I didn’t walk for about a week…. the result of a desk job, inactivity, and a few too many pounds around the gut. Now I see a semi-retirement coming at me in not too many years, and I feel the pull of the golf ball starting again. I’m sure my backswing has slowed; I just hope it hasn’t stopped!

(c) 2010 Stephen J. Matlock
This publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected
under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.