The Queen of Gone

Three-Minute Fiction:  “The Queen of Gone”

“Carol, where are you?”

            Cringing, I held the cell phone away from my ear.  My mother-in-law, Maureen, spoke so loudly that I risked hearing loss with every phone call.

            “At the grocery store. Why?”

            “I’m at the train station, waiting for you to pick me up,” she said impatiently.  ““Didn’t you read the e-mail I sent you two days ago?”

            Actually, I hadn’t. My life had been rather stressful lately and I just hadn’t felt up to her rambling, ranting e-mails, Facebook entries, Twitterings, and multiple blogs, most of which were complaints about friends, former friends, acquaintances, relatives, on-line shopping websites, and assorted celebrities.   The latter were a favorite target for Maureen’s vitriol.  She especially disliked the Kardasian clan because they made a lot of money just for being themselves, and because they had too many ‘K’s” in their names. Really.

“Sorry, I must have missed it,” I apologized.  “I’ve been sort of busy, what with driving the kids everywhere, teaching an evening speech class at the community college, and trying to finish writing three articles.  What did your e-mail say?”

“That I’m visiting for a week and you were to come get me at the station this afternoon at two o’clock.”  She added, her voice rising  – I was sure it could be heard by anyone within a ten-pace radius of my cell phone - “And it’s now 2:20!” 

Maureen expected everyone in her sphere of influence to jump when she said ‘Jump’. She lived in sort of fantasy land of her own creation, a land in which she was the queen and the rest of us were her subjects.  Unfortunately, she was never happy with the way her subjects served her, especially me.  I never jumped high enough.

Maneuvering the shopping cart into a check-out lane, I repressed a sigh.  “Okay, Maureen. I’ll be there in about half-an-hour.”

“Humph.” 

I swear, she actually said that.  Is ‘humph’ even a word?

As I hurried to my car, I thought about a one-week visit from my mother-in-law. A whole week!  I shuddered, envisioning her haughty stare and the way she tossed her bobbed hair – which would be dyed anywhere from flamingo pink tomidnightblack – with disdain.  Maureen was good at disdain.   I knew my husband Mark wouldn’t be thrilled about her unexpected visit, either.  He loved his mother but he had a hard time being around her for more than a few hours at a time.

“Yeah, but Mark won’t be the one who’ll be with her all day, will he?” I muttered grimly as I closed the trunk.  “And since Maureen thinks my writing and teaching aren’t actually work,  she’ll be constantly interrupting me. I won’t get anything done!”

And then the solution hit me; and the more I thought about it, the better it sounded.  I called my friend Linda, a fellow teacher, and by the end of our conversation she’d agreed to teach my night class for the next few days.  Next I phoned Mark.  It didn’t require more than a few desperate sentences from me before he agreed to take some vacation time so he could hang out with Maureen and chauffeur the kids around.  

Now all I had to do now was pick up Maureen and her assortment of expensive suitcases – and one particularly nasty little Chihuahua  - and deposit all and sundry at my house.   And then I’d pack a few essentials and my trusty laptop, hop back into the car and drive two hours to our funky family cabin in the mountains. 

There, for seven blissful days, I would be the queen of all I surveyed!

Ten Random Facts About Me

A special writer/friend/gorgeous woman named Diana Murdock (check out her blog on Word Press and find her on Twitter) tagged me to share ten random facts about myself.  I think I’ve been putting it off because I’ve discovered it’s way harder than I thought it would be to come up with  ten facts.  Or maybe it’s not actually that difficult, but as an older-type woman, I was raised to be self-depcrecating, humble, and all that… stuff.  Thus telling anyone ten whole pieces of information about me seems overly-prideful.

But I’ve overcome these feelings, and here are my ten facts: 

1.  I love Mexican food; authentic, rich, high-in-calories, spicy.

2.  I would  kayak a couple of times a week if I could manage it.

3.  I love teaching. (I’ve taught ESL to  adults in the Napa Valley; substitute taught  in elementary schools in Hollister and Napa, CA and north Idaho; and have been a reading instructor in north Idaho for the past six years) .  I’ve been teaching for about 15 years, and wish I’d discovered how much I enjoy it when I was much younger.

4.  Copy-editing book manuscripts (or even English essays) is so much fun for me!  I guess wielding a red pencil is a power trip. 

5.   Being around children – preschoolers through high schoolers – completes me.  I just… love them.  Period.

6.  I have to have a pet/pets, preferably cats and dogs.

7.  I am social.  I don’t need many friends, but I need good ones who I can trust and with whom I can laugh and cry.

8.  I’m very emotional – easily hurt, quick to tears, unfortunate tendency to hold a grudge (I’m working on the last item).  I think I probably have way  too much empathy for optimum  mental and physical health.

9.  I hate exercising.  I like to walk with a dog and a friend, or at least a dog, and I love kayaking (see above)  but that’s all.  It’s a flaw, I know.

10.  Some day I hope to produce – maybe even have published - a really well-written book.

Crow or Panda?

Crows are social creatures; they like to live in close proximity to each other.  This photo of crows’ nests looks rather like a condo complex, don’t you think?   I’ve lived around crows all my life, both in California and in north Idaho, but until now I didn’t know how they nested.   The subject came up a few days ago during a telephone conversation with my sister about the impressively large squirrel’s nest in one of my backyard trees.  That led to her telling me about massive crow nests, and then I just had to go to Google Images and find some photos.  (Yes, I know – this was kind of a weird conversation, but it’s not unusual for members of my family to talk about weird stuff.)

Then – naturally, right? - my thoughts strayed  to human homes.    After all, people can be crow-like – or prairie-dog-like, if you don’t care for crows – by living in densely-populated cities or nestled close to each other in suburban neighborhoods. 

But some folks are more like the solitary mouse lemur (I looked it up), or, on the larger side, Giant Pandas, prefering to live in rural areas separated from other people by plenty of acreage.

I grew up in the California suburbs, and other than a few years of apartment living in Oakland, California, I’d always lived in the suburbs.  Now, though, I’m in a sort of limbo-land; in a neighborhood but with about a half-acre between our house and our neighbors’ homes, and surrounded by mountains. 

Which do I prefer?  Depends on the day you ask me…  During the gorgeous north Idaho summer (which lasts about a minute, unfortunately), I want to live here.  During the short, dark, cold winter days, I would really like to be back in the Napa Valley, or possibly in the San Luis Obispo area… or Maui.   One day, I hope to find a balance.

How about you; where do you dwell?   Are you a crow or a panda?

Where does your heart say you should live?

Top Eleven Favorite Books

There’s no doubt about it, the Kindle is a devilish sort of device.  When I finish reading a book, the infernal machine whispers seductively (really, I can almost hear it), “Go ahead, buy another book, Kathleen.  After all, it doesn’t cost much, and you deserve it.  Buy… buy…. buy….”   I’m not much a shopper except when it comes to literature, and then I have a bit of a self-control issue.   Owning  a Kindle - with its “one-click” shopping feature - has made it way, way too easy for me to indulge my habit.  For those who are worried about the demise of printed books, let me hasten to add that I do make it a point to buy an occasional ”real” book at a bookstore or from a used-book seller on Amazon.  But, oh, I do love my Kindle.

Have you ever tried to come up with a “Top Ten Favorite Books” list?  When you love books as much as I do,  this presents an almost impossible challenge.  In fact, I had such a difficult time with it that I had to extend the list to eleven books.  

So here is my admittedly odd list – being a mix of fantasy, mystery, travelogue, and biography –  in no particular order:

1.  The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

2.  The Hobbit

3.  A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle

4.  The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis  (Yes, I know this is cheating because there are several books, but it’s my blog… so there.)

5.  The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowlings (See #4, about it being my blog.)

6.  The Passage, by Justin Cronin

7.  Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy Sayers

8.  In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson (and really, every other book he’s written)

9.  His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman

10.  Unbroken, by L. Hillenbrand

11.  Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

What are some of your favorite books?

And So Another School Year Begins

Some random thoughts on the beginning of a new year at elementary school:

- Wearing a ballet tutu on the first day of school is perfectly acceptable for a kindergarten girl. 

- First-graders still look – and act – like kindergarteners.

- Some fifth-grade girls appear to be old enough to be starting high school.

- School should not start when it’s 90 degrees and we all need to be at the beach. 

- Everyone is exhausted by the end of Day One  (both teachers and students).  And our feet hurt (teachers only).

- Parent drivers need to take a class on how to pick up their children at school in a safe and sane manner.  (Note:  Do not blame the teacher who is directing traffic for your inability to read directional signs.)

- Parents should remember that school really, truly has begun and they must pick up their children at the end of the day in a timely manner, thus avoiding tears (on the part of the child) and worry (on the part of the teacher).

- Bus drivers have one of the most difficult and under-rated jobs.

- So do cafeteria ladies.

- It’s a long haul until June.

- I love children.

What do you remember about your  first days of school?

Hair Today…

I will admit it:  I’m not ready to go gray.  Why?  Well, I’m vain, and… well…. Hmm. I guess vanity is actually the only reason I have my hair professionally dyed.  And I’m phobic enough about the insidious onset of gray hair that between dye-jobs I touch up my own roots (hair, that is – not my geneological background). 

(If only I – and my hair – looked this good.)

So, yesterday I was doing a little at-home touch-up and discovered – way, way too late – that I’d grabbed the wrong box of dye at the grocery store.  Instead of “golden brown”, I’d picked up “dark golden brown”.  But there wasn’t an iota of gold  in this color; in fact, the entire top of my hair ended up being nearly black.  Yipes!  Fortunately,  I’d saved half the dye mixture to use another time so I quickly painted it onto the rest of my hair and let it soak in.  When I rinsed the dye out, my chin-length hair was now an awfully strange combination of very dark brown and patches/stripes of light brown and reddish brown.  If I were younger – and the slightest bit musically talented – I could tie a rooster feather in it (thanks-but-no-thanks Steven Tyler for a really stupid hair fad that’s cruel to chickens), pull on a pair of those oh-so-short shorts and a pair of tall boots, and join an alt-rock band.  As it is, I just look…. odd.  My husband and son tried to think of something kind to say when they first saw my new ‘do, but the best they could come up with was, “Well, it will grow out”, and “Um, did you mean to put in those streaky parts?”

What’s the worst hair experience you’ve ever had?