Story 3/52: Cheers, Darling!

sphynx-clipart-3The writing prompt was: Write about your Muse.

Cheers, Darling © 2018 R.D. Girvan

My muse has a great sense of humour.  She is quick to laugh and giggle, and if your joke surprises her, she may even snort. She loves puns and verbal dueling, self-deprecating humour and wit both wry and dry.

She is stubborn, determined, goes over/under/through obstacles to get where she is going. Once she sets her teeth into something she will not relinquish it. She is sort of like a terrier, in those ways. Or a tank.

She is kind and loyal, sees the best in people and promptly forgets when others disappoint. She prefers to live and let live, but knows that one can’t always do that. She protects me, like a best friend, a big sister, a sphinx.

Vaguely British, she runs her hand through mostly silver hair, looks over her glasses at me and says things like, “To master anything, darling, one must do it for 10,000 hours.  So let’s go!” She has a variety of surprisingly motivational sayings, most of which boil down to: don’t complain – don’t waste time – don’t give up.

She has her 10,000 hours already.  She came to the writing life late in hers, but refuses to bemoan that. She is a fantastic writer. Something about her work makes it impossible to stop reading it. She loves to reveal unspeakable truths, by degrees. She writes clearly, honestly. Bravely.

She leads the way with hindsight’s 20/20 vision, towards my future – her past. She is shimmering her way into shining existence with every word I write, every story I finish, every hour I add towards my 10,000. My imaginings, my fictions, are turning her into non-fiction. Is that irony? She would know.

My muse and I are the same girl, separated by a few years, so of course, we share a birthday. Every December 31st I like to drink to her health. Cheers, darling!

 

 

 

Guest Writer: Picnic in Winter

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I love this piece from one of our Wednesday Night Writers. Thanks for letting me post it, David! Picnic in Winter ©2016 David Routledge

By David Routledge

The vicissitudes of fatherhood: no one can catalogue them all, and certainly not in advance. One does better in hindsight. Oblivious at the time, I inflicted one of these on my Dad when I was twelve.

Dad had been a boy scout when he was a kid, so he certainly encouraged me to get into scouting. And I’d gone for it, full bore: bought the Baden-Powell scouting book, learned the knots, made a scout staff, made a kerchief toggle, learned Morse code, learned semaphore, learned the scout promise, the scout salute, the scout handshake, yadda yadda.

Except, out in the bush, I was useless. That scouting book, after all, had been written by a Brit. For Brit kids wearing shorts in the gentle Brit climate. Where winter—real winter—lasts only a month or so.

But this was Canada.

Our scout leader scheduled the bring-your-dad cook-out for the North Saskatchewan river valley just before Hallowe’en. We were supposed to do it all for our Dad. He’d watch as we set up the fireplace and made a log stool and a log table, gathered kindling and firewood, lit the fire, got out the pots and fry-pans, and—

Okay, you’re ahead of me. You know by now that of course it snowed the day before, and snowed all night, and tapered off only about noon on the day of the cook-out.

And the temperature dropped to about minus five. Max.

To cancel… ? Or not to cancel…?

Nah! We were tough! We could handle a little snow! The scout troop voted unanimously to go ahead with it.

The dads didn’t get a vote.

For me, of course, it was a disaster. Everything took much longer than I expected. And it got dark so early! In place of a stool Dad settled for a chunk of dead tree I managed to yank out from under the snow. The firewood, too, took quite a while to find and collect. Dry firewood, that is, that would actually burn, what with all the snow I had to get off it. So he waived the requirement for a table—he’d eat with the plate on his lap. “Better get on with cooking supper, David,” he advised with patience. “It’s going to be dark in a few minutes.”

Which turned out to be true. And the fried potatoes—the only thing I managed to produce—didn’t seem to get hot actually, let alone brown, in that frying pan over that open fire. Or the margarine either.

And then the heroism kicked in. He ate every one of those potato slices… well, okay, chunks—frozen, covered in cold margarine, raw—with a smile on his face, proclaiming them to be delicious.

An Academy Award performance. And here I am, sixty-odd years later, finally able to appreciate it.

A disaster, but he made it all right.

 

Story 2/52: Taking Care

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cb radio

 CB radio on the dashboard. (Photo: ^ Missi ^/flickr)
Taking Care ©2018 R.D. Girvan

I could see him out there, hovering. Ostensibly sweeping his driveway, my neighbour Louis was waiting for me to notice him.  I walked through the pantry and opened the overhead garage door to coax him closer.

While worth it, being friends with Louis did take a bit of getting used to.  He had spent his life long-distance trucking, and had never been home long enough to interact deeply with others.  No social media was there to create a portable network of buddies; most of his conversations had been punctuated by “breaker, breaker.” He had come of age seeing the world through the virtual bubble of his cab as if in amber. He meshed with the families our young bedroom community about as well as a black-and-white photo would sync with streaming video.

Hello, Gang of Glorious Readers (both of you! haha), Rhea here.

I am entering stories into contests, some of which do not allow any publication of any kind, even on a baby blog like mine. So if you would like to read the entire story, send me your email address and I will forward it to you.

Best always, RDG

 

Story 1 of 52: Role Model

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barn
Role Model © 2018 R.D. Girvan

 

The horses died first, then the donkey. Well technically, the neighbors died first, followed by their dog. Then the horses and the donkey.

Mike, digging a trench with the backhoe, tried to make himself laugh so he wouldn’t cry. Should have called that stupid donkey ‘Dug’ instead of ‘Doug’, he thought,  L – O – fucking – L. 

He scooped a fresh bucket of dirt, backhoe lurching as the track caught the edge of the pit. Through the dusty windshield, he could see his wife stagger across the yard. His laugh crumpled up and died in his throat.

Hello, Gang of Glorious Readers (both of you! haha), Rhea here.

I am entering stories into contests, some of which do not allow any publication of any kind, even on a baby blog like mine. So if you would like to read the entire story, send me your email address and I will forward it to you.

Best always, RDG