Basically, I'm getting along. I went for a 31 mile ride on Saturday and it pretty much wiped me out. Which is unfortunate. My ability to be in shape has taken a severe decline here recently and I'm going to pick up a book someone recommended that helped them lose a lot of weight. She's had some general parallels in her body type to mine, so I'm really hoping it'll help. This recent development of my body expanding what seems like to me exponentially is severely frustrating, upsetting, and downright sad sometimes. I've lost some ground on all the hardwork I put in for over a year.
As for my writing, beside the minor black hole in between Friday and Monday where almost nothing got done, it's actually going really well. I'm writing a short story about my Grandmother Needham (pictured below). I started the story because the house she lived in is one of the most consistent elements of my dreams (not saying it comes up in every one, but that throughout my lifetime, it's popped up the most often). The story that wanted to be told was my first brush with a death of a loved one.Some personal stories can be very insipid and dull, monotonous and just bad. However, if done right, personal stories can have the most life and the most beautiful awareness and essence to them. I'm hoping this turns out into the second type. Here are a few excerpts that will most certainly undergo massive editing later on. Please feel free to comment on the wording, flow, structure, etc... of the pieces/paragraphs.
....
"When I was young, the kitchen was the best place to be. It was a long narrow L shaped brightly lit room where food, surpassing my child ideas of quality sprang forth like magic from underneath grandma’s smiling face and busy hands. They were always simple things, sandwiches, salads, rice, but they tasted like crafted tidbits of pure magic. Food so delicious it required its own state of mind. Tomatoes so ripe they burst into arias of flavor, ice cream that was so creamy rich it was like chilled velvet dreams, a salami and muenster sandwich with large bits of peppercorn that crackled across your tongue like bolts of flavor lighting.
I was amazed, and honestly sometimes irritated, by the harvest gold fridge that stood next to the back door. It was old and had varying levels of wear in its dull burnt sienna then bright shiny buttercup color. It was always stocked with the best and the worst food. There was always ice cream and apple juice and yummy meats and cheeses in it, but it also housed the loathsome three bean salad that tasted too much like vinegar and lingering farts. I wondered at the novelty of its ice maker and was slightly disgusted with it for ruining the question of whether the light in the fridge stayed on when the door was closed. It doesn’t. For weeks after that I kept thinking of the apple juice, cake, and leftover green beans sitting side by side, alone in the dark, waiting for someone to open the door and turn on the light. "
....that was more from the beginning.....this is more from the end where we visit Grandma in the hospital.....
"My brother and I were told to wait in the “family waiting room”. We slumped in the dark and barely lit space that had somber colored pale blue walls waiting and waiting. It was like waiting for Dad to come home and ground us. An air of anticipation, overlaid with dread and unknown foreboding at what the news might bring. It wasn’t going to be good, but how bad it was going to be was yet to be determined.
Both of us sat on the navy blue love seat, with upholstery that felt weird and plasticy. An uncomfortable chair sat off to the side, and for as small as the room was, it looked barren. It was drab and somber type of room, a place where unhappy people waited. Maybe they would choke back a sob, exhausted with emotion, perhaps someone would have an outburst and scream at the unjustness of it all. Really it was just as it said - a waiting room. A room to be in to wait, to flip absentmindly through outdated magazines, to try to not think too much in. I was glad I didn’t have to stay there long.
Dad and my uncle were talking in hushed strained angry tones further down the hall. Two large six foot plus brothers, dark haired, large glasses showing eyes bruised with fatigue and emotional exhaustion were talking about their dying mother. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say, but I couldn’t help it. Hushed tones mentioned “Leukemia….getting worse….doesn’t want to hear about it…..don’t know how long…."
Again, super rough draft. But when I'm finished, I'm going to try to get it published.
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