First well rested post

After a nights sleep and test out of the way I can post some ordered thoughts here...HAHAHAHA...

I checked out some other blogs, just to see what other people were doing. Now it feels like a skeleton tree surrounded by carnivals, museums of all kinds, concerts, and libraries. (libraries are exciting and magical places too) So the next few days I'll be exploring the site to try and spiffy it up a bit.

Looking for responses to the blogs url as well ^.^

NOVELS UNDER THE BED

Here is an old story...just to get the ball rolling...

The house was quiet. The movers had left for the day, saying they’d be back tomorrow, bright and early. The kids were gone because the house had run out of food. He had decided to sell the house after the funeral. There were too many memories and the house was just too big for him. All they had to do was empty the house. After two days all that was left was the master bedroom.

          He walked up the stairs, remembering how the kids had run up them and had fallen down them. He saw the fifth stair from the bottom where his wife had discovered that a metal sled didn’t work very well on wooden stairs. The gouges were worn smooth from all the traffic. He wondered if the buyers of the house would replace the step; leave it as it was, or if they’d even notice it.

          “Quit stalling.” He said to himself, jumping the fifth step.

          The hallway at the top of the stairs had in groves on the floor but it did have a section of the wall that was an off color. His wife thought that one can of paint would have covered the whole hallway. Half way through, they had run out.

          He hadn’t gone to the store with her, but the police officer that brought her home assured him that the teenaged paint mixer had thrown the first punch and after he left the hospital they could press charges. After assuring the officer that it wasn’t necessary he thanked him for bringing her home. She didn’t have any marks on her save a paint stain on her pants.

          After the officer left, they dissolved into laughter that lasted until the kids came home. The kids exclaimed that they we were both crazy and since no nursing home would take crazy people they would start looking for a mental institution.

The next day, they had both gone to a different store to get more paint, but the she had lost her color card in the scuffle and store didn’t have the color. So between the two of them they picked the closest color. The paint looked fine in the can…but once it dried on the wall you could see the difference. Even though the colors were different, she liked it, so they had left it that way.

          After the children saw the finished wall they were up all that night searching the internet for mental hospitals.

          “Snap out of it. You have work to do.” He said as he passed the wall where the two colors met.

He walked on to the bedroom; the smell was still the same. The aroma of pencil shavings, model glue, past arguments they had and making up after assaulted his senses, and reminded him of the phone call he received. His knees hit the floor as he remembered.

          First he had thought it was just her calling to say she had gotten lost on her way home from work and needed directions. Again.

When he heard the voice on the other side of the phone he figured it was a joke from his oldest. Again.

When the voice asked him to come right away he knew something was wrong, panic set in.

          The whole way to the hospital he couldn’t get his mind to do anything productive. She had always said that he could out multi task a computer, but his brain could barely work the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time. The hospital was only three or four miles away but the drive seemed to take forever. When he finally arrived their loved ones were waiting for him, their parents,  kids, and his old friend from school were all waiting in the front lobby.

          Her mother walked up to him, slid her arms around him and whispered in his ear, “She only wants to see you.” She gave him another squeeze and let go, to return to her husband’s side.

          He couldn’t remember who took him to her bedside, but when he got there all he could see was her. She was whiter than usual but the wicked smile was still on her face. She opened her eyes only after he reached her side and took her hand.

          “Dad! You still here?” his eldest voice came from the front door.

          He stood up and wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve. After clearing his throat he yelled back, “Yeah, I’m upstairs. You’re just in time to help me carry all of mine and your mom’s “toys” down.”

          “EEEEWWWW! That’s not really something you want to hear about, let alone touch.” was the response. “It’s getting kind of late dad. Don’t you think you should call it a night?”

          “Ok…darn. You’re right. But what am I suppose to do with these leather cuffs and this whip? I don’t know if leather is supposed to be packed differently or not.”

          “Ok, ok I’m leaving! Just make sure you’re in time for dinner.”

          “Wait! Have you seen the neon green butt pl... ?”

          A slamming door interrupted the rest of that question.

          Chuckling to himself, he walked over to the closet. As he opened the door he remembered why there was a deadbolt on a closet. An avalanche of paper, pencils, sketchbooks, old textbooks, reference books, and an assortment of small plastic figures from all over the world fell across the floor. He dodged the mess, and sighed in irritation.

          One of their last fights was about this closet. She had clamed that it was a new type of high level organization and because he wasn’t enlightened that he wouldn’t understand. He had responded that he hoped he would never be enlightened because he never wanted to see a pile of garbage as organization. Well, that was where the fight had started anyway. Old arguments came up, family was insulted, the opposite sex was accused, and it was a slippery slope from there.

          As he had stomped out of the room she said, “Don’t go away mad, just go away.” And flashed the wicked smile of hers as she knocked some of his model planes out the window.

          He left the house trying to slam doors, but as rusty as the hinges were the door fought back. When the door slammed into him, her mocking laughter haunted him until he got to his friend’s house. He knew she just needed time to cool down and he needed to spend some time playing some poker with his buddies. And after winning ten dollars, he said goodbye to his friends and returned home.

Arriving home he found his models sitting on the table right inside the front door. When he picked them up he knew they had been cleaned and repainted. Which was exactly what he had been trying to do when the argument had started.

Smiling to himself, knowing that this was her way of apologizing. He picked them up and headed up the stairs. When he opened the door, he was shocked. The closet door was opened and was missing her new aged organization system. There were full garbage bags all over the room, and his wife in the middle, sorting through a small pile of papers left on the floor.

“What are…?”

She had jumped up in surprise, with her hands behind her back. “I didn’t think you’d be home this early.” She stuttered. “I was just finishing sorting through my closet. I’ll get the garbage bags out to the curb.”

“Why are you throwing away your books and drawings?” he asked, in shack and amazement.

The wicked smile flashed.” Well, the books are old and no one would want some third-rate artist’s sketches.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

The smile disappeared, “Just trying to get organized.” And when she bent over to pick up two of the garbage bags he noticed her hands were bandaged.

“What happen to you’re hands?”

Her hands disappeared from the top of the garbage bags. “You need glasses, you’re seeing things. Your mom is an optometrist you should set up an appointment.”

Not put off by her smart-ass remark, he said “Har-de har. Let me see.”

Blushing she backed away from him, “Tis nothing, mighty Lord Tree Swinger.”

He dropped his planes on the bed and a chase began around the room. Between having to dodge him and the garbage bags she was caught before she reached the door.

“Now, woman, let me see.” He commanded in his best Lord Tree Swinger voice.

She held her hands out and he saw a lot of small, but deep, cuts in her hands. “How did you manage this?”

Blushing, she leaned against his chest and a muffled voice responded, “Your planes that flew out of the window fell into that monster you planted under the window. I had to negotiate with the beast to get it back.”

The “monster” was a rose bush that he had bought for her for their first Valentines Day after they had gotten married. It had bloomed once or twice but lately it only grew thorns.

“A deal was struck, I take it?” he asked trying not to laugh, because he could feel her tears through his shirt.

“Yes. A pound of flesh was the price per model. I promised it my next born, and it agreed. With the condition that I must remove the models myself.”

“I see.”

“I removed the models and then proceeded to laugh at the bush, revealing that I could not have any more children.”

“Very clever.”

“But…”

“But?” The tears had disappeared and the wicked smile returned.

“It responded that it had gotten what it needed from me and didn’t need a child. It also said that it was much more amusing to see a grown adult, rummage through a thorny bush.”

He couldn’t keep the laughter back any longer.

“You laugh?! At my suffering!?” she asked as he had released her, so he could catch himself from falling. “You are cruel Lord Tree Swinger.”

“My lady!” he said in a gasping voice, “I am not laughing at you. I am laughing with you.”

“You hyena, I’m not laughing.” She said with a curve of the wicked smile returning.

“No, not now, but you will be.” He said as he pulled her on to the bed.

Neither of them noticed the models on the bed, and all the stuff in the bags eventually went back into the closet, but the monster bush did have a few flowers the next spring. They were red.

He pushed at some of the junk that had fallen out of the closet with his foot. “Should have saved this for last.”

With all the memories in this room he realized that he would never be able to do this. He sat on the bed and looked around the room. Everything in the room was something that they had shared. The pictures, the two unmatching dressers, (They couldn’t agree on what type of bedroom furniture they wanted so they picked their own.) and…just everything in the room had something of her in it. He lay back on the bed and covered his face with his arm.

“This is hopeless. I’ll have the kids come do this after dinner.”  He glanced at the glass paperweight that sat on his nightstand. A friend of his grandfathers who was a glass blower made it, and they had gotten it as a wedding present. His father had given it to him when they had gotten married. She had always liked it. There were blue, red, and yellow ribbons of color that seemed to be dancing within the rounded glass. She had always joked with him that it was the family treasure and that it would be stolen if they took it out of their room.

He had toyed with the idea of putting it in the coffin with her and put it in his coat pocket before the funeral. But when he got to the funeral home he realized that it wasn’t there. He didn’t worry too much about it. It couldn’t have gone too far, and he got a chuckle out of the fact that she had been right. He took it out of the room and it had gotten stolen.

After the service he saw his kids standing by his car.

His oldest said smiling,” Come on, old man. Time for us to drive you home.”

“Old man, huh?” He had asked him. The younger two were standing behind the oldest trying not to laugh.

“Yes.” The middle one replied. ”Old people are known for losing things, and we noticed you slipped up.”

“God save me from smartass children.” He sighed, “What have I forgotten?”

“Aww, come on Dad you don’t know what we’re talking about?” the oldest asked. “Mom never told you?” He elbowed the youngest. “Show him.”

The youngest reached into a pocket and pulled out the glass paperweight.

“Mom always played this game with us. She had said we could have it if it ever left her room. She’d sometimes hide it around the house so we’d have to find it. She called it the “family treasure.” The middle one explained.

“I saw you put it in your pocket yesterday and I thought you were playing the game.” The youngest added, after seeing their father’s face turn white. “I told them about it and they said...”

“Don’t blame me!” the eldest and middle one said together. They cased the youngest around the parking lot, while he had leaned against the car laughing.

They climbed into the car laughing together after that, and told embarrassing stories about each other all the way home. The youngest had returned the orb when they reached the house along with a warning. “Keep an eye on it or someone could steal it.” She had placed it in his hand with a familiar wicked smile.

That had sounded so much like his wife that he had to turn away so they wouldn’t see his face.

He reached to replace the orb on the nightstand but he misjudged the distance and it dropped towards the floor. He shot out of bed and tried to find where it had fallen. There was no shattering noise but he didn’t want to lose it. He looked around the floor. When he realized that it wasn’t on the floor he lay down to look under the bed. He found the paperweight along with a thin plastic tub filled with, papers. Surprised that something could survive with all the dust under the bed he pulled it out.

He wiped the dust off and after a sneezing fit; he firmly set the paperweight in the middle of the bed. Returning to the floor, he opened the tub, covering his nose in case of more dust. The lid had a piece of paper taped to it. It said, “DO NOT OPEN! OR PMS WILL HAVE A WHOLE NEW MEANING!” snickering, he set the lid aside.

 Inside, he found two bundles of paper, one small and the other one large. The small one’s cover read The Family Treasure. The thicker one’s cover read Lord Tree Swinger,

He pulled the papers to his chest, protecting them from the falling tears. He wasn’t going to make it for dinner.

                        For Jeannine, Savanna, Sara, and Sam.

In memory of John

                                       Father, Husband, and Best Friend.

Names have been changed...

Since my personal writing has been improving in number (if not in correct grammar) I figured I'd throw it up here for people to read at their own pace. (Hachi's idea) As well as being a possible whining corner I plan on posting what I remember of the dreams I have because it appears I lose journals and the like. Can't see me losing Lappy anytime soon. It seems to me dreams are what happens when people relax to the point that all the paradigm walls in their heads sink, and their minds function as they would with out filtering or categorization. (As me about my vegetable tray analogy some time...I DARE YOU) Asking Teren, Giggy, Magicj, or a handful of other people, they'd tell you that strange things come out of my head. All i have to say is...you have been warned. ^.^