Day 3: A genre you've never written in before

This one could be interpreted several ways, but I'm going with a genre of fiction I've never written in before. At Bryan's behest, I've chosen fantasy. Please enjoy this super serious tale of intrigue and warring kingdoms.

Arwen Aria Hortense Moonbeam, one third warrior queen, one third fairy queen, one third regular queen, ruler of  the kingdom of Cogglegrog, sits in her royal bedchamber combing her ass-length, wavy hair. There's a knock at her chamber door.

"Enter please," she instructs. Her voice is sexy, yet powerful. Also, she has a British accent.

Behold, it's Glennon, her resident soothsayer/former gypsy, master of all things omen and portent. Glennon looks pretty much like you would expect: wrinkles, hooded velour robe, scepter with a clear glass orb on top, etc.

"Your highness, I fear I have an unfortunate portent to bring to your attention."

"Please, deliver the bad news. Be quick! Get it over with!" Arwen Aria Hortense Moonbeam has a pretty low tolerance for bullshit and small talk. She generally credits this character trait for her success as a ruler/warrior/fairy.

"A vision has just come to me in my little orb thingy. It appears that the Splorglordians are invading from the North. They come on dragons, unicorns, very large serpents, and some other creatures that appear to be a mix of all three. I fear that they will be approaching the edges of our kingdom within a fortnight."

"Our kingdom? Seriously? It's like I give you one velour robe and you..."

"Alright. Sorry. They will be approaching the edges of your kingdom within a fortnight. Anyway, I'm afraid it gets worse. Apparently, due to some really unscrupulous stuff involving your late parents the Warrior/Fairy/Regular King and Queen, the Splorglordians believe that they have a claim to the throne of Cogglegrog."

"What?"

"Okay so, things got pretty hard to follow near the end of the vision. I mean, the orb is pretty small and the resolution isn't the best but, it appears that Thalmar, their ruler, may be the late King's son. So because Thalmar is male and everything, and because, you know, patriarchy..."

"But wait. My late father the King had tons of illegitimate sons. I've easily defeated all of their bogus campaigns for the throne of Cogglegrog. Why does this Thalmar person believe that he's so special?"

"Because apparently, he's not illegitimate. According to their story, he's your full brother. I've never told you this before, but, a few years before you were born, your mother gave birth to a male infant. He had some really weird deformities. Like, I hate to sound insensitive, but basically he looked like a frog. Your mother, being very vain, was horrified. She had her henchman take him away. She didn't even specify where. She was just like 'Ugh. gross. Get it out of my sight!' Your parents then told the people of Cogglegrog that the baby had died at birth."

"So Thalmar the Splorglordian is claiming to be the frog baby?"

"Yes. That's what I'm saying."

"Okay so, what I'm really dying to ask you, Glennon, is: Does this Thalmar person still look like a frog now? Or is he claiming that...his condition...just sort of cleared itself up? Maybe saying that a magic spell, or, like, some enchanted forest animals or something took care of it? Or...?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's unclear. The orb's zoom function wasn't really good enough for me to make out Thalmar's features."

"Alright. Well, that is very very  gross. But's it's okay. I'll take care it, just like I always do. You are dismissed, Glennon. Thanks for letting me know."

Following Glennon's exit, the chunky and rustic-looking chamber door bangs to a close. AAHM resumes her grooming, a look of cool and smug competence disguising the anxiety and turmoil building just behind her silvery fairy eyes.

Because the truth is, the people of Cogglegrog are just not the brightest bunch. They're gullible and foolish and easily swayed by an emotional appeal. And they rarely, if ever, vet their sources of kingdom news and gossip. Honestly, if weren't for AAHM's tireless efforts and amazing combat skills, they would have all died at the hands of the Ogres of Gorzot years ago.

AAHM's no fool. She knows how this Thalmar the Splorglordian story is going to sound to the people of Cogglegrog. A rejected and orphaned child rises to power in a foreign land and then comes back to his home to reclaim what is rightfully his? Fuck. They're going to eat it up.

She puts down her alabaster hair brush and rushes down the tapestried hall after Glennon.

"Glennon, fetch me Moreblorb." Moreblorb is AAHM's Secretary of Propaganda.

"I have an assignment for him."

Day 2: Facing the fear

Residue 

He never noticed his world shrinking until it was already so small that he found himself bumping up against it's edges. That was happening today.

He needed to wash the dishes badly. They were piled everywhere: on top of the microwave, on the radiator cover, obscuring the stove burners. The sauce pans were crusted with the remnants of mashed potatoes and other, less recognizable, things. They would need to be filled with water and left to sit, but where?

 He could barely walk around his small efficiency without knocking piles of dishes over, so he'd assumed a sort of hunched position on the floor in front of his computer.

He was beginning to feel ridiculous and guilty, like one of those poor people whose psychosis becomes the subject of public ridicule on that awful reality show "Horders." Time to get up.

He started to stand, but his fingernails snagged the carpet. He returned to hunching. Before he could do anything else, he would need to clip his fingernails. He couldn't stand to do any even vaguely manual task with his fingernails that long.

He didn't know where to even begin to look amongst the piles for his nail clippers.The very thought of it overwhelmed him. He'd have to go to the drugstore and buy new ones before he could even start on anything. But damn. That would mean a shower first. There was no way he could leave his apartment with his hair all grease-slicked into these odd and disturbing peaks.

He started to stand again. On his way up, his field of vision narrowed. He stumbled forward a little, his body not yet fully vertical. He remembered that he hadn't eaten anything all weekend really. Well, anything besides Cheetos.

He decided that what he really needed was some food, maybe some coffee. Surely, with proper nutrition and caffeine, the tasks before him wouldn't feel so blown out all proportion and  gargantuan and impossible.

He covered his very bad hair with a toboggan. Okay, that was progress. His coat and keys were right were he'd put them after work on Friday afternoon.

Just open the door and walk out. Nobody cares. Nobody will notice you. There are thousands of people walking around out there. Some of them probably have greasy hair and disgusting kitchens. Nobody will notice you, seriously. This will only take a minute.

He tried to remember when he these sorts of pep talks first became necessary.

He wondered if he was actually crazy.

He opened the door.

He made it out of building without seeing any of the other tenants, which he had expected. He pretty much never saw anyone else in the halls. That was lucky and good, but sometimes it made him feel even weirder. So few people had even ever seen the interior of his apartment. He tried to count them: His mom, his dad, the odd friend here and there. It was definitely less than five. That, plus the apparent lack of other people in the building, made his apartment, and thus the hours he spent alone in there, feel not completely real.

It was warmer than he'd thought it would be on the street. The sandwich chain where he knew he could get quick takeout was maybe two blocks west of his building. There was a steady stream of people heading east down the sidewalk. He wondered if there were always this many people on the street on Sunday. He wondered what time it was.

He tried to look at each person's face for just a second and then look in front of him, the way he imagined a normal person might. He found that his timing was very off. He couldn't quite remember the appropriate ratio of face glances to forward glances.

He decided to stop with the face glancing all together, but then he worried that he was hunching and scowling. He thought people might assume that he was homeless.

Finally, the warm commercial glow of the sandwich chain was upon him.

He was very grateful that no one was going out as he was coming in. The correct formula for determining whether or not to hold the door open (let x represent the distance between person a and the door, then add .5 for every grocery bag, infant, etc. person a is carrying...) was was too much for the universe to ask him to recall.

He approached the counter and said hi to the girl behind it before he could stop himself. The "hi" came out scratchy and too deep. It occurred to him that he hadn't spoken a word out load since Friday morning.

The girl smiled at him from beneath her visor.

But shit, he didn't know what he wanted yet.

"Ahhh. Just a minute." He stepped back and sort of off to the side. The menu was just far enough away that he had trouble seeing it, and as he squinted up at it, it occurred to him that others might confuse his "trying to see" face for a "thinking comically hard about what I want from the sandwich shop" face.

He moved back in front of the register.

"You ready?" asked the girl.

"So can I get half a (long pause as he squinted hard at the menu again) Tuscan turkey breast sandwich and a cup of broccoli cheese soup."

"Sure. Can I get a name?" she asks as she punches the order into the register.

"Um to go please. And a cup of coffee."

"Uh okay." More punching. "And your name?"

"Uh John." Something about the abruptness of his short name made him feel the need to preface it with an extra syllable.

"So is that A J O N,?" She asks.

"No. Just John. Sorry." He cringed and wondered what kind of person got their own name wrong.

He paid with cash and was careful not to touch the girl's hand as he handed over the coins. But maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe normal people touched the cashier's hand, or at least didn't actively try not to. Maybe purposefully avoiding her hand was aloof and insulting.

As he walked toward the takeout counter, he comforted himself with the thought that, soon enough, he could steel back to his apartment with his soup and maybe clean up a little bit and become a normal person again. He was trying to convince himself that with a shower and a warm meal, the horrible fog that was muddling all his interactions would lift and he could look a person in the eye again without wondering if he was doing it wrong.

Another girl with another visor placed a brown paper bag on the counter.

He couldn't tell what name she had said. It sounded like John. It could have been Jan. Jean maybe? He looked around. A lady stood in the corner. She wasn't making a move. He smiled at her. He felt like maybe he looked frantic. Did they normally complete to go orders so quickly here?

Maybe they did. He grabbed the bag left and the building.

That wasn't so bad. No, it wasn't. Nobody thought anything of me. I was just another patron. Just another guy buying soup. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care if I looked at the menu too intensely. Yeah, she definitely said John.

He unlocked the front door of his building, but before he could ascend the first flight of stairs, he was gripped  with dread.

He knew what he would see before he even opened the bag. Jan's (Jen's?) almond chicken salad where his turkey sandwich and broccoli cheese soup should be. He was a monster.

30 day writing challenge: A place that you love

Bryan's picture from Canaan. The woods in my story wouldn't look exactly like this, but close enough.

Pollen

I can't believe that I remembered where I kept the key, but I open the slatted door of the corner hutch of my childhood bedroom and there it is, hanging on the hook where I left it probably ten years ago.

The keychain is some kind of clear round stone, the kind you find at a beach gift shop.

"Well yep. There it is," I say to her, looking up from where I'm kneeling if front of the hutch.

She follows me outside and down the wooded slope that functioned roughly as my childhood back yard. We always referred to this area as "over the hill." The "hill" is not nearly as steep as I remembered it. It's amazing how you eventually grow up to dwarf the landforms that loomed so hugely throughout your childhood.

And I know she's having similar thoughts because she says, "That time when we spent the night out here and heard that creepy sound? That thwack thwack? It was like we had to run up a mountain to get back home? How funny."

She's developed that habit of making all her declaratives sound like interrogatives. My linguistics professor calls it uptalking. It's supposed to signify a lack of confidence or something. My first reaction is to start to hate her for it, but I squelch that quickly enough. Honestly, I do it too. And anyway, and I'm glad that, after all this time, we can still think the same.

After about fifteen feet of gradual decline, the ground levels out. The forest floor is covered with debris and thorns and I love that this, and not some well-manicured, jungle-gymed lawn, was where I was sent to play as a kid. There are a few huge flat rocks down here, roughly five feet in diameter. They always made it easy to pretend that this was the bottom of the ocean. In fact, this part of central Appalachia was the bottom of the ocean at some point during pre-history.

When I was high school, a tree fell during an ice storm and cracked one of the rocks completely in half. That had been a jarring duel lesson in impermanence and geological change.

We cross a small shallow gully--what was at some point either a creek or a mining road--and then we are at its door. The real tar shingles of the roof are sagging in a way that makes me worry, and the plastic taped over the windows droops in some spots.

"Still standing." I say. We smile at each other.

A wind chime hanging from the eaves is too choked with spider webs to make noise anymore.

I unlock and open the front door (Only now does it strike me as hilarious that the twelve by eight foot fort is also equipped with a back door.) to a time capsule covered in pollen.

"Oh my god! Our anorexic hammock!" She's talking about the perplexingly narrow hammock that bifurcates the fort's one-room interior. We always thought it would eventually stretch out width-wise. It never did.

It looks almost prideful, hanging there all abandoned and yet un-dry rotted, like a lady who got old but not fat.

A small plywood table is covered  in bird shit. There's a dead robin behind it. Luckily, it's too cold outside to smell.

Amazingly, miraculously, a purple sparkly inflatable chair remains fully blown up in the corner. Its compatriot, a green sparkly inflatable chair with a cartoon frog face printed on the seat, is less fortunate. It slouches, deflated, beside its purple brother, chosen at random to be the victim of the mysterious cruelty of passing time.

I notice some molded plastic lawn chairs--purple and green as well--and I remember that we had actually chosen a color scheme for our play fort.

She's staring at the southern wall, the wall we (how funny to talk about the twelve-year-olds who did this as "we") had covered with disposable camera prints of ourselves.

There we are lying in our bunks at summer camp. There we are in our long john pajamas in my living room. There we are seated behind a cake at my ninth birthday party.

"Oh no! I was so dorky looking," she says.

I'm surprised to say that she's right. She was dorky-looking. She had big teeth and thin hair and round wire glasses.

But I only remember her as completely, enviably, beautiful, all thin willowy limbs and huge green eyes. All the boys we knew fell in love with her instantly, large teeth and glasses or not.

The pictures are starting to yellow and curl up around the edges. Some of them have fallen to the floor, failed by the balled-up masking tape that was once enough to hold them. How can it be that the pictures of our adolescence are aged and yellowed? Are we not still young?

"Maybe we should take them back up to the house before they get any more damage. I mean, it looks like this pollen will probably wipe off." I say it like I'm not convinced.

"Yeah, but that just feels wrong somehow, like stealing."

Again, I see that we can still think the same.

We were always finding things in the woods around our fort: an old rusty roller skate (the kind that would have had a key), a tiny porcelain doll's plate, an old plastic toy gun.

We loved it, but we were confused by it. How does stuff get left out like that, in the woods, for decades?

I lock the door and we leave the pictures, the blow-up chairs--all of it--maybe for forever. I'm not sure but, I think we leave them for two dorky-looking twelve-year-old girls. Maybe they are our ghosts. Maybe they are our heat imprints. Maybe they are our residual psychic disturbances. Or maybe they are the "us" of a different, future generation, two more Appalachian girls who are, like we were, half wilderness explorer and half interior designer.

And I guess we understand the origins of the rusty roller skate, the porcelain plate, and the gun a little better now.

Something Different

In an effort to write something that isn't a melodramatic contemplation of my current life, I decided to seek out a 30 day writing challenge.

I found this one here after a brief google search:

Day 1:  A place that you love.

Day 2:  Facing the fear

Day 3: A genre you've never written in before.

Day 4: Dialogue only, please.

Day 5: Inspired by your favourite song.

Day 6: Second person coffee.

Day 7: A day in the life of your favourite comic book character.

Day 8: A place that exists only in your mind.

Day 9: El Diablo

Day 10: The Interview

Day 11: A moment in history.

Day 12: Your passion

Day 13: The place you grew up.

Day 14: In the style of a favourite writer.

Day 15: The road goes ever on

Day 16: How an event from yesterday could have gone

Day 17: The Ocean

Day 18: The taste of your favourite meal.

Day 19: The day of randomness - use a random page from Wikipedia to inspire you!

Day 20: A place you want to visit.

Day 21: First person blind date.

Day 22: Night

Day 23: Standing at the precipice

Day 24: The City

Day 25 A poem.

Day 26: Something you witnessed today.

Day 27: A snippet from a novel you want to write.

Day 28: Second person bank robbery

Day 29: Blue Powder

Day 30: The End

So, Oliver Davies, I hope that you don't mind that I'm totally jacking your writing challenge.Just want you to know that I like it because: 

a.) It's broad enough that none of the topics seem boring to me.

b.) It almost allows me to completely avoid writing any poetry.

But wait! It gets even better! Bryan, the pretty good cartoonist behind wvisformonsters.tumblr.com who also happens to be my boyfriend, has agreed to simultaneously do a 30 day drawing challenge. Whoever gets closest to actually completing his or her respective challenge in the allotted 30 days is the honorary More Creative and Interesting Person in the Relationship. Obviously, the stakes are pretty high.

Day 1 is tomorrow!

Have You Ever Noticed the Many Ways in Which I am Awful?

I really hate the way I sound in my last two posts. I can't help but imagine them being read in a whiny voice: "Waahhh I had to clean up after peeeepppuuulll. Waahh moving doesn't fix everything in your lifffeeee." This is why I've been having trouble writing lately. The things I write are sort of making me hate myself.

I've unfortunately reached that plateau on the journey to improved self awareness where I am really really good at identifying the things about me that are probably annoying to others. For example, if I really really like an anecdote, I will tell it over and over and over and like sneak it into conversation whenever possible. It's a lot like Brad Stand and the chicken salad/Shania Twain thing.

Or, semi-relatedly-like when I want to show someone something funny/interesting on the Internet, I assume this supremely obnoxious body posture and facial expression while they watch it. It can only be described as expectantly smug.

Or like lately, I keep on jumping all over people when I perceive their comments to be even vaguely misogynistic. I am giving feminists everywhere a bad name. And the worst part is, my extremely kind and loyal friends will go out of their way to be like, "No, that entirely insane thing you just yelled at that man was totally called for. You shouldn't feel bad about it at all." My god. They are saints.

And I'm sure you've all noticed how I just generally talk a lot. Like I monopolize conversations. I have a response and often an accompanying anecdote for every damn thing somebody says.

Some others:

• I talk about my cats a lot.
• I am really really bad at curbside parking.
• I walk really really fast and purposefully around the office. It could probably be described as "storming."
• I am hypocritical and contradict myself a lot in day-to-day conversation.
• I have like a trillion "hobbies." My interest in each is so diffuse and ill-focused that I will probably never be good at anything or accomplish anything. 
• My knowledge about a lot of things that I claim to know about and care about is embarrassingly facile. Basically like this:

• I complain about going to the grocery store.

So, how is that, knowing what I know about myself, I am able to maintain any level of distaste for a large portion of the general populace?

I realize that I am awful. Just like everyone else. Brb, ascending to the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Everywhere I go

There I am.

I knew this, but, will I ever really know this?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Plunging the Clogged Toilets of Other Peoples Children): Part One

I had resigned myself to a second summer in a row of unemployment when I received a call I didn't expect. It was a follow-up interview for a job that I had applied for back in May. Because I went so  long  without hearing anything back about it, I just assumed that I didn't get it.

I was happy and relieved to get the follow-up interview. I had signed a lease for a place with rent I could barely afford and was eager to make some money. 

My new boss explained that I would be working "front of house" in the cafeteria of a children's summer camp. Just setting the tables, restocking the salad bar, sweeping. Sounded like a piece of cake.

"We also might schedule you for cleaning once in a while. Hopefully we won't have to."

"That's fine. I cleaned bathrooms at my high school job. I don't mind," I replied. Mistake number one.

When my new boss  asked me how much I was looking to work, I told her to load me up with hours (mistake number two).

I have been extremely lucky when it comes to employment history. Never before have I had a truly terrible job. 

In high school, I worked front of house at a live outdoor theater, cleaning the bathrooms, taking tickets, and operating the concession stand. This was actually an incredibly sweet gig. I worked for my cousin-in-law and with my friends. During the show, we would roam the state park in which the amphitheater was located. We were almost always overstaffed and days off were abundant and easily requested. Also, there were only two bathrooms. Bliss.

After that, I worked as an office aid for my dad, who is a property lawyer. When I tell people about this job, I always veer toward the dramatic. Like really dramatic. I've been known to compare my dad to Meryl Streep as Anna Wintour (err "Miranda") in The Devil Wears Prada. And, in my defense, there was a time when he really did ask me to locate some lonely piece paper (which he only vaguely described) in  a entire store closet full of barrister boxes, each of which was stuffed with file folders. Very Miranda.

But if I'm being honest, the job was, most of the time, pretty mild. Some light filing, some data entry, some dictation. 

This was followed by a plethora of University positions--science camp counselor, new student orientation aid, research assistant, journal editor--each job cushier than the last. 

And finally, I was a temp in an IT office. In a lot of ways, this job made me miserable and lonely, but let's face it: I came in late, read blogs for a embarrassing large portion of the day, and never got yelled at even once.

My pampered bourgeoise ass was in No Way prepared for what was waiting me at the Camp of a Million Sorrows.

First, a few things about the camp: 1.) It is expensive, meaning, the children that attend are overwhelmingly wealthy, and 2.) It is huge, meaning, close to 600 campers at a time. All eating at once, all needing juice and peanut butter and margarine packets and ketchup and more fucking cream cheese and caviar and perrier and golden nuggets, like, yesterday.

I think that it's also important to mention that I wasn't actually employed by the camp. I was employed by a catering company that it contracted by the camp. 

This setup created a very "us against them" vibe, at least for me.

And truly, truly, every meal was like going to battle. 

When I try to explain to people what made this job so terrible, I can't find the words to adequately express the press of 600 children at the salad bar and the "peanut butter station" (a table that we kept stocked with peanut butter and jelly ingredients and fruit all day). The children were extremely competitive about food procurement, which led to some maddeningly inappropriate and annoying behaviors. First, they would not move away from a salad bar or PB station item long enough to let me restock it. I would have to fight my way through them to give them the shredded cheese or grape jelly that they were so desperately clamoring for. Additionally, they could not take one fucking extra second for civilized behavior. They ripped the bread bags at the PB station open because they didn't want to waste time untwisting the tie, grabbed cartons of milk or pitchers of juice off carts while I was still wheeling them out, and threw garbage into trash cans that we had not yet had the chance to reline after hauling the garbage out.

And I guess the garbage was actually partially our fault, because we should have learned, by that point, that the meal time battles were as much about defense as they were about offense. We should have known that kids were going to throw trash in the unlined cans and not left them unlined for even a second. Because you had to do that, to determine how the campers could use things you left out or provided against you.

It was exhausting, setting up this huge cafeteria for a meal, serving the meal, cleaning the huge cafeteria up, and then doing it all over again. I think this was the fist job I ever had that actually made me physically tired. Holy privilege! How could have gotten this far through my life without ever experiencing that before?

And actually, that exhaustion--that feeling that you had actually earned your money--felt pretty nice. I use to come home from my cushy office job feeling angsty and irritated as all get out, absolutely seething with dissatisfaction. But the sore arms and aching feet that marked the end of a day at the camp  felt weirdly wholesome, and i returned home with the simple happiness of having had a defined task to complete and completing it, I happiness that all my amorphous and vague office work could never provide.