My Week

This week was very emotionally demanding for me.

 This Monday as some of you may know, was a bigger drag than the regular Monday. I had some serious cramps, which I have not had to deal with on this level for a while, and I needed to make some reminder calls to some of my Avon customers, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had been feeling well, as it was, I wasn’t even sure I could speak without groaning, but I go through it alright.

Tuesday I went to the Whittier DMV office to take my driving test and I tell you here and now not to go there ever, ever. I got a woman who was determined to flunk me before she got in the car! Before she came all the way up to the car she ordered, didn’t request: ordered me to get the rosary off of the review mirror. I don’t think it made that much of a difference, but, okay, let’s say she’s worried that it would get in the way of me seeing what’s in the mirror, okay I can deal with that, I’m not that religious, I don’t care if it’s there or not; but still, I can think of at least thirty different ways for her to ask me to take it off the mirror that would have been acceptable from one human being to the other. So, I got Jesus down (wow that looks odd, I thought Jesus was supposed to get himself down [for clarification that’s a joke, and yes, I know I’m going to hell]) and stuck the beads in the cup holder. Once the instructor was in the car and we were going down a neighborhood, she didn’t pay any attention to my driving for the whole first half, she was more concerned with the fact that the air-conditioning in the car didn’t work. At some point she realized all the fussing in the world wasn’t going to get the air cooler in that car, and she told me to pull up to the curb behind a white car, then to stop. I did so, then she told me to backup, I did this, then I kept going, and going and going, I asked how far she wanted me to go, she said she’d tell me when to stop. So I kept going, I must have backed up over a hundred feet. The part of my brain that wasn’t occupied with not hitting the curb was wondering when this would be applicable in a real life situation. After that ridiculousness was over, I was thoroughly shaken and forgot to turn my blinker on and check before I pulled away from the curb, because logically, I was just looking back there and I knew no one was there to signal at, I know the rule is you check and signal no matter what because someone could be there, I know this, but it didn’t even cross my mind to do this until the test woman made a big show of looking behind us after I had already pulled away from the curb, and I thought “Crap,” okay so the word was a little stronger than that, “it’s too late now.” I half-heartedly looked over my shoulder and didn’t bother to flick the blinker on; it was way too late for that. After this I drove much slower, the whole time I was thinking, “What the fink” I’m paraphrasing, “is she going to make me do now?”  She complained about my slow driving and marked me down like I was driving too slowly through the entire drive, (which I wasn’t she was too busy with the air-conditioning to notice) so, she flunked me. That sucked, I need my license before the end of summer, or I don’t know what I’m going to do when school starts. Better luck this Monday I guess, Mama is going to try and teach me how to drive backwards between now and then. We’re going to go over the car controls in my brother’s car too, because I didn’t know where some of them were, (we’re in Southern California, when am I going to use the defroster?) So, hopefully I’ll get it this time, if the tester in Pomona is more reasonable; did I write “more reasonable”? I mean reasonable. Someone reasonable would be nice.

Wednesday was a little better; I went to group counseling for college and got my math level boosted up a level, which is great, because I want to spend as little time in that department as possible.

  Thursday, I rested, and my second Avon shipment arrived and I made all my deliveries, save one.

  Today I went over to a friend’s house and did some quilting stuff with them. I gave away some Avon brochures there, and then went shopping with my mom. So today was all about girl time, it was wonderful.

Hostage

My phone says ding-a-ling-a

I stare, my heart, it skips a beat

In its frantic tarantella

I wonder what my captor

The reason for my hearts erratic rhythm

Will ask me to do now

Shall I answer?

What will I do? Lie? Act Normally?

What will he decide after the brief ponder?

He gestures with his armed hand.

Oh, terrifying firearm!

for me to stand.

I scramble to my feet

So I shall pick up

I walk with heavy feet

As I reach with my hand, I realize

One word, one frightened breath on the receiver

It will bring my certain demise.

This thought caused the plastic handle

To weigh a million pounds

My lips feel like wax from a candle.

How can I speak,

when I can’t taken in a breath of life?

Will my life be taken by this creep?

The worst was I could have done more,

To prevent this end

Why didn’t I lock the damned door!?

The House Cleaner

Heather’s knees clicked as she finally stood up, she had been on her knees for far too long as she polished the legs to the wooden furniture in the Willis’s house. In her eagerness to got off the floor, she stood up too quickly and got a head rush, or a freebee as her friend Cathy would say. Once the dots had faded she surveyed her work. The room was sparsely furnished, there were no pictures on the walls, and the mantelpiece was dedicated to the diplomas belonging to the master of the house. Heather knew that he had a wife and kids, but you wouldn’t know it looking at this room. It was too phony, too much like a picture in a magazine, even more so since she had just finished whipping away the dust that had gathered since she had cleaned it last week.
Heather gathered up all of her cleaning tools and placed them in their closet next to the laundry room. The brand new chrome washing machine and matching dryer sparkled without so much as a scratch or smudge on the surface. Heather knew from speaking with the housekeeper that neither of these machines was ever employed, since all of the Willis’s clothes were dry cleaned in town.
After she put all the cleaning items away, Heather used the backstairs up to the nursery where the nanny would be keeping an eye on the Willis kids and Heather’s check since the housekeeper was out.
Knocking discretely at the door Heather needed only to wait a few seconds before the disgruntled nanny stepped out of the room, check in hand; she did not invite Heather in, nor greet her in anyway. So Heather let her self-introduction awkwardly fade off as she took the check the nanny offered her before ducking her disheveled head back into the nursery in response to a loud thump and muffled yelp from within the nursery.
Heather checked the amount on the check, which was written out in perfect script with a fountain pen. She tromped down the stairs and out the backdoor as she exited the Stepford house she sighed with relief, some things were just too perfect to be true, she didn’t know what kind of a price Mr. Willis and his family had to pay everyday for their apparently perfect lives, but it had to be a dozy.

Daycare

Mike’s ears were ringing as he left the daycare where he worked. As a teen aged boy, he had gone to his share of rock concerts, and he’d thought the loud music was really bad, but it was nothing compared to the screams of the five to twelve year-olds at the center. The noise those little monkeys (as Mike called them when none of his co-workers were around) made was excruciating after half an hour, but staying for five hours like he had to was a new kind of hell.

  Then there was the fights, blood, pee, broken toys added to the mayhem. There was not one decent kid in the bunch. The new ones that started out okay always turned into one of the monkeys given enough time. It was as if the kids knew they were being abandoned by their parents and they were releasing all of their frustration on everything and everyone around them. Aaahh, the parents; they’re another case in and of themselves: rude, self-absorbed, inconsiderate monkeys in suits.


Monkeys, each and everyone, making more monkeys, then they all wonder why no one acts like a decent human being.

Breaking Benjamin - Rain (acoustic live)

All I can think about is the rain here in Southern California, so here's a little childrens song that was made awesome by Breaking Benjamin!!

Stairs Leading to Nowhere

I was flipping through one of my composition books and came across an old writing prompt that said “Stairs leading to nowhere…” My first story was about a crumbling staircase in a graveyard that used to be a part of a building that’s function was long forgotten.
Today when I looked at the prompt it brought up things in my mind that were completely different from what I had come up with the last time I looked at it.
The first things that popped into my head were the unfinished “Adoration of the Magi” painting by Leonardo Di Vinci, and the stone steps in our old backyard in Bella Vista, and how Arkansas is a place that will lead a local to nowhere and an outsider to certain ruin…
Then there was something else a lot more profound than the others. Drugs and alcohol are “stairs leading to nowhere” in a symbolic sort of way.
Everyone can look at history and see what those things do to people, that it leads to absolutely nowhere, or like the “Adoration of the Magi” they lead to a shear drop that could kill you.
Anyone can see it, yet generation after generation continue to choose not to look beyond the step directly beneath them, and when they run out of stairs they may not even realize that their falling until they hit the ground.
Then what? What do most people do if they survive hitting the ground? Turn around and start looking for a staircase that will actually lead them somewhere? Some do, most don’t.
Sad to say a large number of them get right back on that same old staircase, thinking that this time they won’t climb so high this time, and they’ll avoid falling. A number of them do succeed to a degree while others take the big tumble all over again. All these people continue to use the stairs, never seeing that they will never bring them anywhere.
They just stay stuck in place, never moving on as human beings, never progressing, they are content to remain stationary, content in their nothingness and insignificance, until they become another step on the stairs leading to nowhere.

Moving On

Moving On

Moving on is hard
Leaving the known
Is hard
For all you receive is unknown

We all put it off
No one likes a change.
We can no longer put it off
We need the change.

To keep life like this
Will suffocate us
To accept everything as is
Will mean the end for us.

I can’t stay with you
If you continue
To allow those who harm you
Around you.

I seeing you hurt everyday
By those who
Have the audacity to say
They love you.

I always ask myself: How can you hurt
Those you say you love?
I want “this take and hurt”
Way of love.

If this is the way it is
I will skim above
Any chance of
This so called “love.”

All that is left a web of lies
With mere whispers of the love
That first made the ties
Of a home of peaceful love.

So many tears fall
I fear there’s more to come
God can’t count them all
Yet each partake in who I shall become.

It is a burden on my heart and mind
I cannot fight your fight
I can’t cut the ropes that bind
Your will and might.

I walk away
So that I may breathe again
And I will pray
That you will learn to Fly again.

Boy in Hell's Kitchen

A boy in a shop
Served the costumers
While his pop
Went calling Mortimers
The man who sold them flour
The boy mined the store
Well over an hour
Before his brother
Walked through the door
“Switch time” said the brother

The boy stalked out
He disliked the way
His brother went about
Bossing when pop was away

And he hated the task
He was to undertake
To bake the bread
The day was so hot
He believed the bread
Need only to bask
In the sun to bake
But complain he could not

For baking was the only way
To get the needed money
So he could pay
For pretty things for little Bonny

The boys little sister
And greatest charm
Never had she done harm
To any living creature
Great or small
As pretty as a picture
She stood three feet tall

The child was blessed
With a smile
To be the best
Off all the chil’
In the village if Esting
Baking bread was the only way
To get the funding
The boy needed to pay

For a gift for Angel
His trustiest love of love
For her he’d walk to hell
His sweet turtledove

He remembered his Angel
As he stepped into the kitchen of hell
For his loves that were true.

A Snowman's Chance in Hell

A Snowman's chance in hell,

I could not tell

If it is the average image of it,

He would not last a minute.

Fire and torture, torture and fire.

However,

does one consider,

that maybe hell is cold?

Remember that song of old?

"When hell freezes over"

Well, do not tell

But my picture if hell

It is frozen over.

A man made of snow

Will last forever

In the never

ending storm of Snow.