Friday, December 12, 2014

#003: Open Letter to a Dying House Plant

Dear, Stupid Plant.

Here’s the thing… Living or dying is not really a choice for you to make.
I chose you. I paid for you. I own you.
And after years of shitty plant stuff involving regularly scheduled watering, moving you around to find the perfect sunny spot in the apartment, extensively researching your type online for vital information and so on and so forth, I think you pretty much owe it to me to live.
I’ve done my bit and quite frankly, I’m done with your shit.
You waltzed into my home covered in beautiful white flowers. You flowered once more… and that was IT! Not a single flower three years later.
Essentially, I’ve been robbed.
Let’s not even talk about the time I picked you up to give you some love, and a dirty, giant worm crawled out of your holder, very nearly scaring me to death and causing me to fling you clean across the room. You watched in silence as I swept up the potting sand in the living room, not ONCE offering an apology or a helping hand. Branch. Leaf… you know what I mean!
You’re supposed to be purifying the air with your fancy green leaves, but I don’t know how that’s physically possible, when I seem to spend half my life dusting them. Each. One. Individually. How are you sucking air in through all that dust? I call bullshit.
I don’t think you quite realise just how busy I am - running a full time job, running a home on my own, running on the treadmill every day. Running, running, running. Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is run, with little or no support from anyone. The LEAST you can do is stay alive, flower and look pretty. Those, by the way, are your basic biological functions. I’m not asking you to do anything out of the ordinary for a plant. I don’t expect you to start balancing the cheque book at the end of each month, but hey, I also don’t expect you to be ungrateful and die on me.
If this letter comes off sounding a little hostile, it’s because I’m officially at breaking point.
I’m done taking crap from you, in my own house.

I trust that you will action all requests timeously.
Should you require any further information, you know where to find me.

Regards.
Me.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

#002: The worst Thanksgiving dish I've ever had

Yappy Kathy has been spayed.
At least, that's how it feels.
She'd been charmed into the car with the promise of long, romantic walks on the beach, and instead, has had her most important bits unceremoniously ripped out - the bits that make you like boys. And now, boys can't seem to understand why she can't muster up a little enthusiasm when they dangle the lead in her face, wanting to play.
Dangle away, you big fake. You won't fool me again.
Perhaps you shouldn't even call her Yappy Kathy anymore. Now she's Sedate Susan, occupying a seat at the table, passing the gravy, smiling on cue, barely tuning in to the buzz of inane conversation around her.
Thanksgiving used to be her favourite time of year, but once you've been spayed, just about everything loses its sparkle. Lumpy gravy. Lump in throat. It's excruciating.
Harder still, sitting next to the one who'd had her spayed. He's in his element, chuckling away at the inside jokes he shares with his people. They're with His People this Thanksgiving - another nail in the coffin for this holiday.
She's dressed in the traditional colours. No-one else has made the effort, and it makes her feel even more out of place - some sort of Thanksgiving joke. They're all thinking it, but nobody's saying anything. Talking but saying nothing.
She should never have come. What was she thinking?
She could have been with Her People, doing the things they do. Instead, she's doing everything backwards. It's all wrong. The time they serve their big dinner. The things they're putting on the table. The traditions are off. They're off.
She takes another bite of Lonely Pie with a side of mashed dreams.
Yes, she thinks. This really is the worst Thanksgiving dish I've ever had.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Thursday, November 20, 2014

#001: What could happen in a second


It could happen in a second.
Love.
But, everyone knows that… Predictable.
It’s the falling out of love that happens just as fast.
The single epiphanic moment when you know it’s broken, forever. The Ol’ Mare has had a few in her time time – moments that stand proud in my often foggy memory. After forty years of flexing the Dreamer muscles in my brain, I sometimes can’t tell what was real, and what I’d imagined. Did I really go there? Do that? Was that really me, or something I dreamt up?
But those moments, like lighthouses in the storm, will forever remind me when and why those tempestuous loves ended. So, that was why. Ah, I remember now. Don’t let nostalgia cloud your judgement, girl. Stay on course. Head steadily toward the lighthouse.
There was the one who sobbed into his pillow, little girl noises from The Tough Guy, begging me not to end it. Another, that night at the club when his best friend, pupils pulsing, slurred out the name of The Other Girl. And another still, his broke ass standing on my veranda, smoking my cigarettes, drinking my scotch telling me how “marriage is a big word” – the same word he’d used to win me back just days before.
Guess he didn’t know there’d be no more “winning back” after the second I finally clicked. None of them did. The Second broke it.
Love. Trust. Loyalty… all gone in just one little second.