Mom crashed the car through the garage door--again. Dad spent four hours in the ninety-degree humidity, on a five foot ladder, attempting to fix the busted garage door opener--to no avail. I came out to assist and was given the task of taping the broken garage window--with blue painters' tape. I got a Ct for the work...
Inside, Mom was pissed off at Dad; herself; my sister Ann for buying a roasted chicken for dinner--"Dad's not a chicken person...I was going to make macaroni..." ( Dad isn't a pasta person, either. )She was also pissed, in general, because by fixing the garage door, Dad hadn't come in to carve the chicken for supper.
"Ma, would you like me to carve the chicken?" I ask, even as she is wielding the electric knife.
"Right--you carve the chicken--" She saws through a thigh bone, the knife whining in horror.
"I'm fifty-six. I think I can cut chicken meat off the carcass with an electric carving knife..."
"I don't know how you took care of yourself back in California all those years alone--" Bits of bone and skin and meat are flying through the kitchen atmosphere. The dog is dancing around, both delighted at her windfall, and horrified at the sounds.
"I did fine--and I wasn't really ever alone--" I know it's the wrong response even as I say it.
"Just go do your thing, Karen...if your Father would just call the repair man and stop trying to fix everything himself...(More flying dead skin and gristle...more muttering under the electric whine.)
This morning, when the Africans-doing-the-sweepstakes-scam call for the third time in a row, Mom has her whistle. Dad is on the phone, downstairs, about to "try to trap the creeps" again when Mom lets loose. I am in my room, reading. I jump three feet--then run into the hallway--as if it's a raid.
"Just those Africans!" Mom comes out of her room, pleased as punch, lipstick on, whistle dangling.
I go back to my room.
I turn on the Toshiba to see what real-world events are passing me by. There's an e-mail asking me to renew my writers' review form for a small press publisher I occasionally get books from...they want to know the nature of my blogs...
"A writer trying to re-make an authentic life in a closed society...coming home after thirty-five years to a town that has no room for her, to a family that thinks she is really an alien cartoon on a visa, to confrontation with a life that is the exact opposite of what she has dreamed it would be when she was five years old...unfamous, single,broke and still round...a writer looking for who she always thought she would be."
That about covers it.
(Back to the garage doors...)
Inside, Mom was pissed off at Dad; herself; my sister Ann for buying a roasted chicken for dinner--"Dad's not a chicken person...I was going to make macaroni..." ( Dad isn't a pasta person, either. )She was also pissed, in general, because by fixing the garage door, Dad hadn't come in to carve the chicken for supper.
"Ma, would you like me to carve the chicken?" I ask, even as she is wielding the electric knife.
"Right--you carve the chicken--" She saws through a thigh bone, the knife whining in horror.
"I'm fifty-six. I think I can cut chicken meat off the carcass with an electric carving knife..."
"I don't know how you took care of yourself back in California all those years alone--" Bits of bone and skin and meat are flying through the kitchen atmosphere. The dog is dancing around, both delighted at her windfall, and horrified at the sounds.
"I did fine--and I wasn't really ever alone--" I know it's the wrong response even as I say it.
"Just go do your thing, Karen...if your Father would just call the repair man and stop trying to fix everything himself...(More flying dead skin and gristle...more muttering under the electric whine.)
This morning, when the Africans-doing-the-sweepstakes-scam call for the third time in a row, Mom has her whistle. Dad is on the phone, downstairs, about to "try to trap the creeps" again when Mom lets loose. I am in my room, reading. I jump three feet--then run into the hallway--as if it's a raid.
"Just those Africans!" Mom comes out of her room, pleased as punch, lipstick on, whistle dangling.
I go back to my room.
I turn on the Toshiba to see what real-world events are passing me by. There's an e-mail asking me to renew my writers' review form for a small press publisher I occasionally get books from...they want to know the nature of my blogs...
"A writer trying to re-make an authentic life in a closed society...coming home after thirty-five years to a town that has no room for her, to a family that thinks she is really an alien cartoon on a visa, to confrontation with a life that is the exact opposite of what she has dreamed it would be when she was five years old...unfamous, single,broke and still round...a writer looking for who she always thought she would be."
That about covers it.
(Back to the garage doors...)
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