What Price Freedom?

Whoapants.  I have to work tomorrow!  What is this crazy concept??  Work?  Bah.  I have had 6 consecutive work-free days (including the weekend), and will follow this one measely day up with three more days off (thanks to the Reverend Doctor).  Makes this one isolated day somewhat superfluous, doesn't it?  Like a silly waste of time and energy?

Hey, guess what I've discovered?  A couple things.  One:  Practicing Optimism is made an almost insurmountable task when suffering from a stomach bug and a miserable headcold.

Here's the other thing I discovered:  Eric pretty much has no plans of moving out.  This is not me being pessimistic, or paranoid, or mean-spirited or anything like that.  This is me being underhanded and scrolling through the sent and recieved texts on my husband's phone to see what was up in Eric's life.  Was it shady?  Meh.  A little.  But really?  Get your own goddamned cell-phone if you don't want people knowing your biz, or at least cover your tracks better and delete that shit.

Because Aaron's phone is 2 generations old, it doesn't save the texts in conversation form like mine does, so I sorta had to cobble together info to put together the whole picture, but the picture is a grim one.

Here's the low-down.

Looks like Eric is back in heavy contact with his 'ex', a girl he has railed about and verbally bashed, and foresworn, and vowed never to speak to again.  A girl he insists is a 'fucking psycho' and a 'waste of his time'.  He is back in contact with her and apparently scheming about how he can secure his lodging here indefinitely!

  Now a series of back-and-forths seems to begin after an interrupted marathon phone call, where I'm sure most of this got unleashed. 

    Of course the phone dies while I'm pouring my heart out.  Sorry to unload all this on you.  Don't worry about me, I'll be fine...

He writes, sounding both miserable and pathetic.

She writes back something to the effect of how she wishes she could help more, and asks about the living arrangements.  Now, please keep in mind that I'm doing this all surreptitious-like and RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, so I am rushing and scanning and just getting the gist of most of these awful and usually misspelled texties.

So she says, in one of those dangling remainders of a longer text:  ... live there?

To which he replies:  There (sic) landlord doesn't want me here.

This is the catalyst Aaron gave for a certain end date.  Our apartment was not meant for 3 adults and Peter is not pleased.

So this is among my very favorite (and by favorite, i mean, of course, nothing of the kind) responses from the young woman I opened my home to, opened my heart to, and have never said an unkind word about to date, no matter how much or how often Eric has, in this on-again-off-again breakupdance, tried to solicit my empathy and support. 

She writes:  There has to be a way!  You need to talk to your brother.  Get him alone.  It is your only chance!

UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!????????!!!!!!??????!!!!!!

Whatthefuck?  Oh, it's on now, bitch.  I am so blindingly furious at that one I nearly blow my cover.  But I keep scrolling, trying to siphon a bit more details before I have to leave the phone alone.

In going back a little I see some shit about how she wants him to go to some hospital or something and he talks about how he cries all the time because he misses her sooooo much, wah wah wah.  So I skip that bull and jump to the few most recent.  Well well well.  In addition to pushing him to live offof  his brother and sister-in-law's generosity forever without remorse or scruple, she is also soliciting money from him.

        I found out I need to get new tires before I can drive home and I only have 20 dollars to my name!

So he goes, and this really is a kicker, let me tell you, for someone who is supposed to be saving for an apartment, a cellphone, a car, and whateverthehellelse a grown up needs to be a grownup.

       I should be gettimg my check tomorrow, so i can send you that...

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?  Fuck You.  For Real.  Fuck you and get the fuck out of my home.

At this point my activity looks real suspicious and I need to put the phone down and make my excuses and get the fuck out (aaron was waiting for me downstairs, I'd come back in to use his phone--which he often leaves for eric's use whilst we are out together--to call mine and find it.)  I left, saying I must of left my phone in my pocketbook (which turned out to be true!), and immediately went down, got in the car and began informing Aaron of everything I'd discovered.

I thought he was going to hit the roof when he found out about the money for tires.  "Well, then, I guess we just need to give a definite end-date and that's that."  My husband says calmly.

As ever I express my angst and worry and concern.  It seems like an insurmaountable task, getting together enough scratch to strike out on one's own in a matter of a couple months.  But then, as we talk it through, Aaron helps me see that we have done all that two people with no money can do for a person. 

"We've provided free room, free board whenever he's home, and a perfect opportunity for him to get on his feet.  An opportunity which, I believe he has completely squandered."  And it's true isn't it? 

I am all stressed because I don't want him to have to go to Grandma's (which isn't really grandma's; it is Manic Julie and philandering Joe's, with an unhealthy dose of bat-shit-drug-addled Melissa's and bitchy-beyond-reason Samantha's!).  But Aaron points pout that that guilt I feel should be well exorcised by now.

"He's been with us since August."  He says, no-nonsense.  "We've done our part, and it can no longer be our concern whether or not he's done his." 

"But--"

"No.  To be perfectly honest, I stopped caring about if or how he was going to get his shit together since the new year.  It is well past time for him to be out, and now I just have to determine a date.  I want my apartment back but I don't want to screw ourselves over by picking something ridiculously undoable."

So there it is.  We get home and aaron sifts through his texts.  Many have been deleted.  I have no poker face and would make a terrible spy.  The kid obviously picked up that I was doing espionage and tried, sloppily, to cover his tracks (further evidence that he and his paramour believe they stand a chance in hell of playing my husband against me!).  Aaron said enough remained of the text convo for him to see what I was seeing:  That Eric has no intention of getting out.  None. 

So the plan is, for now, to see if Eric WILL try to talk to him alone, or if that was just a device out of Gina's sociopathic brain (Aaron's opinion, not mine.)

Then, before the end of the weekend if Eric has not approached him, he plans to go to Eric with the termination date, which is still TBD.

What do you guys think?  I am nervous and jumpy and see all kinds of ways this goes south.  I know I gripe and bitch and whine and bemoan, but I do love the kid and WANT him to succeed. Obviously success and prosperity would be IDEAL!!  I just know I'll love him alot more when he is out of this apartment!!!  Right now, these last days off, which should have been a dream come true, have been largely depressing and confining and ass boring, as I never feel like I can truly be myself when he is around-- and boy was he ever around.  Worked, I think, 2 days all week.  When I express concern that that isn't nearly enough hours for someone who's trying to save and move out, the kid shrugs and blames the person making the schedules, and no, he tells me, he has no idea if he'll ever get more days.  'hopefully', he says in a tone that belies the word, 'eventually...'  Well fuck you very much, here's your hat, get the christ out.

So instead of doing all the awesome wonderful fun things I could have done with Aaron, I have had a lazy loafer parked in front of either my tv or my computer for DAYS SOLID.  No fucking joke.  I got so depressed last night that I had some pretty black thoughts, let me tell you.  And woke up this morning feeling grim and hopeless and fragile.  Finding the texts, has, in a way, helped provide that much needed tipping point.  For some time I have had the suspicion about Eric's motives, but Aaron has insisted that 'Nobody WANTS to live like this.  He WANTS to move out... He CAN'T possibly enjoy living in a room with no walls and no door and on the charity of a married couple he's displaced."

And maybe on some level that is true, but I think it is easily outweighed by the free internet, the free tv, the free rides to work, the free meals, the free bed, the free towels, the free refrigerator, the free couch, the free medicine, the free heat, the free electricity, the freedom to do whatever he wants without having to answer to anyone, the free xbox, the freeeveryfuckingthing.

So what are your thoughts?  What would you set as a reasonable end-date?

Much love,  and enjoy your friday,

Beth

Procrastination and Power Outages

Was without power for most of the day today.  Am now trying to catch up on work I had hoped to accomplish during the snow day.  Namely:  Choosing 3 shows that i will direct with my thursday night drama classes.

I only have so many physical copies of scripts to read.  The bulk of my shows come from playscripts.com which is the SHIT because they let you read ' free sample', and by that they really mean a PDF of the whole fucking scripts, save the very last page.  No lie.  It is awefome.  Other play publishers dick you over by giving you a catalogue (physical and\or virtual) to peruse, and expect you to be able to make a solid decision based on the conflated blurbs they write up.  Gag me.  This invariably leads to disappointment.  "But it sounded so good in the catalogue..."  and then the perusal arrives and it is god awful. 

So thanks and AMEN to playscripts for being really progressive.  It has made my life infinitely better, and as a result, guess who gets more business?  yup.

So presently I'm *supposed* to be reading sub-par children's theatre selections and trying to choose the ones I hate the least.  Oh, wouldn't it be fun to do some Ibsen once in a while?  or some mamet or some albee for Christ's sake?  "Hey kids, today we'll be doing scenes from a favorite playwrite of mine, Neil Labute!, just ignore the swear words..."

Kid:  "....the....and....but.... um, is 'slut' a swear?"

Sigh.

One exciting thing is that i'm thinking of doing some shakespeare with my oldest class.  The challenge inherent in this is that most young people, EVEN young theatre people, have decided pre-emptively, that they hate and can't understand shakepeare, a catastrophe our highschools do nothing to correct or repair.  so the onus is on me to turn on the light and help them see how awesomesauce and actable, and fucking fantastic shakespeared can be.

Maybe because I've been sick for days, or maybe because I'm kinda burnt-out on teaching and theatre both, but I kinda don't FEEL like taking on that responsibility right now.  but I kinda do, too.  That's standard operating procedure for a libra.

I took time out of my task to work on a side-task for PM productions!  This made me feel productive and useful and valuable, which was nice.  I spent time compiling a brainstorm list of possible musicals we could do this summer, our inaugural season!! I have my fingers crossed that I will be able to do that job full time and not have to split my time between several jobs.  how nice it would be to have a home base, something I was truly invested in and cared deeply for.

Ok.  Back to the grind.  I swear.  You all should read some of this schlock. But at least I get to read it BEFORE I pay for it (thanks again playscripts, you are the shizzzzzzzz!), because a good director knows within the first two pages whether or not the piece is any good\will work.  So that's good, at least.  Quick way to narrow and eliminate.  What's the worst is when a play is soooo good and working for so much of the script and then something terrible happens and it is either really racist or incredibly dated or calls for some crazy integral special effects like flying or something and I have to abandon the script after I've invested so much time in it!

I had a great lunch today at Panera with the besties!  It was nice to go somewhere else, though the drive was treacherous.  School's cancelled again tomorrow which is a mixed blessing.  Happy to have the day again, not psyched about how this week's paycheck will look when i get it... but what can you do?

I would also super appreciate it if my brother-in-law would get the fuck out of the house.  Also, he is only working like 3 days a week, which is NOT GOOD BUSINESS!  I need him working and saving and getting the fuck out!!

Hmm.  that didn't sound charitable.  Im am 'optimistic' that he will get the fuck out?  Lol.  I don't think whitewashing it with the word optimism does the trick.  i think i actually need to focus on shifting my energy to a more positve place.  I'll think on it.

Had amazing sex last night.  There's a positive.  Eric was home, but he was asleep... i hope.  It was mind blowing and I got pretty vocal, but what can you do?  It was one of those things that started innocently enough, just cuddling and kissing and fondling, but then i started talking dirty and it was like phone sex, but in person!  Lot of hands and filthy talk, and after I'd come, like, seven times from the touching and talking we had to go for the gold, brother or no brother.  It was hotttttttt.

TMI?  too bad.   my blog.

Can ypou tell, though, that i am procrastinating?  Sigh.

Oooh, maybe a 30 day anti-procrastinating challenge, eh Emmy?  Emmy is inspiring me with her 30 day challenges this year.

I could use a real anti=procrastination movement in my life.  I'm always putting myself in these situations where i'm under the gun and...

Ok, ok, i'm going.  sheesh.

The 'Woman's Doctor'

How you doing Danielle?  What one are you on?  I will try to give you a break, but I am having an urge to post fiction again today!   Maybe because I am sick and want to feel creative instead?

 Because it was liberating to post a future-teaser yesterday, I thought i'd follow up with one i wrote some time ago but have been looking forward to finally sharing.  Why the fuck not, right?  It is may blogdy, and I'll do what I want! lolz.

This one is somewhat different, because it is from a peripheral character's perspective.  I love it because I love the idea of how rumors and gossip and point of view come into play in a place like CF.  It is sometimes nice to take a step back and see what other people around the Delaneys are thinking\seeing\guessing\supposing.

This is Sam Bennett, the gynecologist and Delaney family friend. I only have two written for him but I thoroughly enjoyed writing both!  And re-reading too.  Plus I love the opening line, heeheehee.

So even if you haven't been following CF closely I encourage you to give this a read.  And let me know what you think!

Enjoy!  And thank you for all your hearty well-wishes!  Another sick day today (unpaid).  But what can you do?

************************

“The Delaney girl is knocked up” growled Doc Bennett around a bacon-wrapped scallop. 

Sam sipped his beverage and sized up the bride, who was warmly making the rounds about the pavilion, greeting her guests and making requisite small talk while they admired her gown and her hair and whatever else they were supposed to gush about.  She looked perfectly slim, her balance seemed normal. She betrayed none of the early indicators of pregnancy. His old man was losing it.  “You sure?”  he asked politely, knowing Avalon had just been in his office not more than five weeks ago and she certainly hadn’t been pregnant then.

“Not the bride you idiot.”  His father grumbled and lifted his whiskey to his lips, his eyes fixed on someone in the opposite direction.

Sam clenched his jaw and indulged the old man’s fantasy.  Being the son of the ‘village doctor’ could grow tiresome quickly.  He was always sizing folks up, offering comments and diagnoses out of the corner of his mouth.  ‘Teaching you’ is what his father had always asserted when Sam complained, as a boy, that he didn’t like knowing about his neighbors medical problems, but Doc Bennett had scoffed.  “You expect to follow in my footsteps you’d better learn to train your eye boy.”

Nobody called Doc Bennett anything besides “Doc”, as if he were the only doctor, and as if a doctor was the sum total of the man.  Even his sons called him Doc.  His wife called him Doc.  Now his grandchildren called him Doc.

Sam blinked and scanned the area of the party that Old Doc was fixated on.  “Velvet can’t have more children” he said grimly.  She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, the mother of the bride.  And still young enough for his father to entertain the notion.  But Sam had performed the tubiligation himself after her youngest had been born, after all the complications that had nearly put her in that Marble Calder Mausoleum up in Cedar Falls Cemetery.

“Christ boy, you call yourself a woman’s doctor?”  Doc laughed derisively.  Sam smiled wanly.  His father embraced the country doctor persona to the degree that he eschewed proper medical terms such as ‘gynecologist’ and he seemed to loathe the abbreviations even more.  Sam had never once heard his father refer to him as an OB.  “You can’t see that that little girl is more than a third of the way gone then you maybe oughtta hang up your speculum.”

Sam pressed his lips together and looked harder.  Velvet wasn’t pregnant.  Nolan’s wife, also a ‘Delaney’ was over there too, but she didn’t appear to be expecting either.  And He assumed the Doc wasn’t referring to the now blatantly pregnant Mrs. Grey Delaney, everyone was already buzzing about that, that was old news.  What the Christ?  When he was just about to admit to his father that he had no idea what he was talking about, just as he was about to turn and accept whatever ridicule the man had ready to pour on him, he watched his old friend Jonah pull a chair out for his youngest, and when she’d sat, push the chair in beneath her.

“Shit.”  Said Sam, amazed and astonished.

“See it now?”  His father goaded, boastful.

“Christ.”  Commented Sam.  “I don’t know how I’ve missed it.”

“You never look close enough at the teenagers.”  His father said.  “A made-up thing, teenagers.  Fiction.”

Sam took another drink and studied Viola from across the pavilion.  “So you’ve said.”  He murmured.  The subject of society’s pet fiction, ‘the teenager’, was a favorite topic of The Doc’s.

“It’s a fool who thinks a fifteen year old hasn’t got the urges of a thirty year old.  Hell, it’s a biological imperative.”  The Doc managed to obtain two more bacon-wrapped appetizers from a passing waitress.  “Fifteen year old girls get knocked up quicker and better than their mothers, boy, I’ll tell you that.”

Sam hated to admit it but the Doc was right.  Viola Delaney was pregnant.  He wondered how the hell that had happened.  Well, he knew how it had happened, he was a ‘ladies doctor’ afterall, but wondered if she’d been airheaded and irresponsible or if she’d deliberately gone off the pills.  That’s why he encouraged the shot for girls that age…

“And another thing—“  His father added, licking his fingers thoroughly, “Their bodies bounce back better too.”  Sam had heard this lecture a hundred times.  Now that he’d talked about how their young bodies were meant to carry babies he’d move on to the issue of statutory rape.  About how there was nothing criminal about a man having a physical response to a teenage girl, in fact, according to The Doc, a man wasn’t healthy unless he did look. 

“You think they know?”  Sam asked his father, not taking his eyes off the family as they settled in for cake.  He didn’t feel like having the same old discussion for the umpteenth time.

“The girl knows.”  The Doc said.  “And.”  Sam waited while the man sized up the picturesque pillars of the community.  “Her pretty mother hasn’t a clue, but I’d bet my license that her Daddy knows.”

Sam looked sharply at Jonah.  He looked pale and drawn, but very handsome and composed in his wedding finery.  It didn’t ring true to Sam that Jonah knew but Velvet didn’t.  Jonah was a romantic sap, and he was the kind of husband that told his wife everything.  Now if the Doc had argued that Velvet knew and Jonah did not, well, Sam would have precedent to believe that.  But the other way around? “I doubt that very much.”  Sam said, finally turning away from the family with the dark secrets and looking at The Doc.

The man shrugged and tossed several long toothpics onto a large empty tray as it passed by.  “He knows something.  That strain he’s under ain’t normal.”

“His oldest daughter just got married Doc.”  Said Sam in a patronizing tone.  “And he paid for the whole damn thing.  Look around you.  I’d say that’s an inordinate strain, wouldn’t you?”

The Doc nodded vaguely and glanced around at the lavish wedding reception going on all around them.  “Like I said, I’d bet my license that there’s something else.”  He lifted his eyebrows and downed the rest of his whiskey drink.  “So she hasn’t been in to see you.”

Sam felt his jaw tick.  Doctor-patient confidentiality never seemed to apply to Sam where the Doc was concerned.  They shared most of their female patients anyhow.  The Doc was the Delaney family’s primary.  “No.”  Sam replied tersely.  “You?”

The Doc shook his head.  “Why d’you suppose she didn’t get rid of it?”

Sam looked back toward the Delaneys and wondered again if that young woman had been careless or deliberate.  He remembered the way she’d interrupted their poker night some months back.  How could he forget?  Christ, he’d jerked-off to thoughts of that night frequently since, and he’d closed his eyes and thought of her in order to finish with his own wife more than once.

“For whatever reason,” Sam said quietly,  “She wants it.”

The Doc examined his empty whiskey glass with a half smile, half frown.  “Biological imperative son.  There ain’t no such thing as a teenager.  They’re kids and then they’re women and there ain’t nothing in between.”

Sam watched his father head toward the open bar and he knew he disagreed.  Maybe biologically the girl was ready to carry a baby, able to screw around and conceive and deliver, but he came from a different generation than his father.  And he understood that there was a subtle but important psychological difference between teenagers and adult women.  And he knew Viola might want to play at being a grown-up, that she had sexual desires and needs and urges, but that she was still a little girl playing pretend.

He finished his drink.  And he wondered what lucky son of a bitch had put his cock in her pretty little pussy.

Prelude to a Showdown, or: Baby Shower (teaser)

Not even LolCats are immune to the dreaded bug!!

Staying home from work with the ole bug.  Will try desperately to make it to aftercare though, as I teach a drama enrichment on monday afternoons.  I'm a drama teacher, don't ya know?

SO............

Even though I have a whole FOLDER of unpublished vignettes, I wanted to publish this one that I wrote tonight, because it is the first complete little vignette I have written in some time.  It is also a 'flash forward' into things that will come to pass, which makes a nice change from all the flashbacks we've been having.  I wanted to give you a little teaser, a taste, of the way the story is unfolding.  It will not all make sense, but I hope it will whet your apetite and keep you reading! 

Enjoy!  And stay hydrated, all you sufferers of this awful bug :\ 

********************

Velvet slipped her fingers up the crisp, perfectly ironed cotton-silk blend of her husband’s collared shirt and felt the muscles bunched and knotted beneath it.  He flinched at her touch—just a fraction, just a bit, but he flinched, and she sighed.  He’d been doing that lately, the nervous flinching at her touch, and she was well and truly over fretting about it.  For weeks, for months, she’d tried to get to the bottom of this strange new reaction to something he’d always melted into, something that had always before elicited a contented exhale of relief and enjoyment.  But whenever she’d ask, the same brush offs would inevitably follow;  the ‘Nothing, Love’s, and the ‘Must have been daydreaming’s and the ‘Sorry, Sweetheart’s  piled up, day after day, before he’d quickly recover from the initial automatic reaction and he’d be her Jonah for a while.  Her Jonah, but not her Jonah too.  And there was nothing she could do to persuade him to confide in her whatever the hell was slowly, but very surely, driving an invisible wedge between them.

So this morning, when he did it, she couldn’t muster the energy to comment, to call attention to it, to put up a fuss.  She simply sighed and pushed her small hands up the broad expanse of his back and found his shoulders, which were not easy for her to reach when he stood, like he was now, at his full height.  “Hello Angel.”  He murmured, forcing a gentleness that did not agree with his tensed frame.  Velvet swallowed as she began to knead the taut muscles on either side of his neck.  Jonah Delaney was ready for a fight.  He expected an altercation.  He was bracing himself for one, standing there in his tailored shirt and his best dress khakis, cleanly shaven and showered and smelling, like he always did, of clean laundry and fresh soap and bergamot.

“I love you.”  She prefaced, sticking her toe in the water to take his temperature.

“I love you.”  He replied effortlessly, his shoulders like stone under her newly manicured fingers.  He said it so easily, so readily.  It was an habitual thing.  And at the moment Velvet couldn’t help wondering how many times he’d said it like that, so pleasant but so devoid of real feeling—wondered how many times she’d smiled and purred and ignored that hollow note resonating within the words he recited by rote.  “That feels wonderful, thank you.”  He added, just as automatically.

Velvet made an indistinct sort of noise in her throat and tried to work her fingers into his stony clusters of muscles with little effect.  The guests would start arriving any time now.  Caleb had come early to help her set up, and was around there somewhere giving orders and seeing to last minute details.  Usually Grace helped out with that sort of thing, but, well, in light of present circumstances…

Velvet couldn’t help the little sigh that huffed out of her, thinking about all the terrible ways her family was being ripped apart.  And all of the awfulness mounting up on a day that was meant to celebrate family, celebrate new life, celebrate the bonds of blood and marriage.  She half wished she could cancel the shower, have a rain date; But what good would it be postponing the inevitable?  It would only add fuel to the fire, as it were.  The gossips were already buzzing so loud around town that Velvet imagined Cedar Falls had turned into one massive hive of supposition and rumor and salivating scandal mongers.  The amount of behind-the-hand conversations that had sprung up in her wake as she made her way through the market this week had put her on edge, but that was nothing compared with the open stares and pitying glances she received while out on the Centre street as she picked up the last of the things she needed for the shower.

It was miserable.  And humiliating.  And desperately awkward.  She felt as though she were emblazoned with some scarlet letter on her breast; yoked with the neck-breaking albatross of ‘dysfunctional family’—she felt the pitiable weight of it all pulling her spirits down into some grim abyss.  She felt herself frowning more than she’d ever done before.  And worrying.  And praying. 

To whom?  She didn’t really have a clear grasp on that, but that was a whole separate issue, and not one she really had time for, especially not on the day of Maggie and Grey’s Baby Shower.

All this when she should be the happiest little wife and mother in the county.  The wedding had gone so beautifully!  Her first grandchild was very nearly here!  Her twin girls had graduated high school with top grades and limitless prospects for the future!  Her husband was up for the top promotion!  Life for the Delaneys should have been as charmed and charming as a storybook.

She let her hands slip down his back and fall away as dead weight.  She hadn’t made any headway at all and her hands were beginning to cramp.  He turned his head to the side just a fraction.  “All done?”  He asked politely, as though she were a co-worker who’d just handed in some minor report.

“Mhm.”  She intoned succinctly, not trusting her voice to mask her real feelings.

“My thanks.”

They stood there, together, for a long few moments in silence, looking out over the splendidly appointed back lawn.  The party tents, the bouncy castle, the buffet tables, the ice sculpture.  The sculpted rose bushes she’d had brought in, the large round tables with their fine linen, and the stylishly upscale folding chairs.  The neatly mown grass, the freshly re-pebbled walks.  The pool, blue and rippling and glinting diamonds in the late spring sun.

“Beautiful work, as usual, Mrs. Delaney.”  Jonah said quietly, and with his easy grace turned just enough to slip his arm around her and pull her to him gently.

“Thank you.”  She hadn’t intended to answer in that tight-throated whisper.

He glanced down at her and she avoided his eyes.  After a moment she could feel him looking back out once more, and she could breathe a little easier. 

“Do you think she’ll come?”  She asked, following one of the cater-waiters with her eyes absently, her mind fixed on the many ways this celebration could turn into an epic disaster.

Jonah gave a short, uncharitable laugh.  “Which?”  He asked, an undercurrent of bitterness and hurt flashing white-hot through the simple retort.

Velvet leaned her head against him and sighed yet again.  It was a fair and a loaded question.  “Any of them.”  She responded dully.  “All of them.”  She added.

Jonah was quiet.  Velvet watched the landscaper adjusting some lovely urns of riotous hot-house blooms in the area surrounding the swimming pool.  She felt a shiver chase through her husband, from top to bottom, and she shivered a little in response, despite the pleasantly warm morning, her teeth chattering together a few times before she could compose herself.

“I believe Avalon will attend, if only out of duty.”  He said in a detached and professorial voice.  “I think Grace may attend because of our desperate entreaties.”  He said, maintaining his emotionless tone.  “And I expect Viola will be here—“  He cut himself off, seemingly in mid thought.  Velvet tilted her head up to watch the small, silent debate her was having with himself.  After a few moments he shrugged and continued his original prediction.  “I expect Viola will be here, quite against her will, because He will wish to drag her to this event and parade her around on his arm.”  Jonah said almost casually, sending another icy shiver slipping down Velvet’s spine. “To hurt me.”  He said quietly, but calmly.  “To humiliate us.”  Jonah finished matter-of-factly.

Velvet’s hand reached up of its own volition and cupped his beautiful face very gently.  Behind his glasses Jonah’s exceptional violet eyes seemed to shimmer and burn as he stared fixedly out, over the nearly-party of their lawn.  Velvet thought if she followed his gaze she would find him staring at that old swing-set he’d put together when the kids were small.

She searched his face but, as usual these days, it was unreadable.  Even.  Controlled.  He was getting very, very good at compartmentalizing, at quarantining his more visceral reactions, his more human feelings;  He was fast becoming adept at presenting a mild, uninterested persona.  And only if you got close, like Velvet did, could you see the strain around his eyes, the pulling at the corners of his mouth, spot the enormous effort it was taking to keep up appearances, feel the miserable tension twisting every fibre and sinew of his long, graceful form.

“What are you planning?”  She ventured cautiously.

A muscle ticked in her husband’s jaw, but when he spoke it was in the same calm, neutered voice as before.  “At my son and daughter-in-law’s baby shower?”  He asked rhetorically, “I plan on being the perfect host.”

Velvet felt something panicky and ominous jittering around behind her ribs.  She imagined a pin ball with her ex-husband’s face on it, battering around inside her torso—slamming into her ribs, crashing off her spine, zooming circles around her heart and bouncing again and again through her lungs, robbing her of air in odd little bursts.

“What do you think he’s planning?”  She asked as levelly as she could manage, some of it coming out like a croak.

Jonah snorted very softly, like a horse ready to take its head from its rider.  “He’ll want to get me to throw a punch,”  Jonah said plainly, “Or worse.”

Velvet closed her eyes and held them closed, collecting her wits and catching her breath.  “Jonah, you can’t—“

“I’m aware.”  He cut her off curtly.

She tried to swallow but found the task undoable at the present moment.

She watched the tent people triple-checking the rigging, and the tie-backs on the flaps, and whatever the hell else a tent-erector had to check thrice.  The hum and whirr of the motor on the bouncy house cushioned the steady lap and splash of the gentle waves in the pool and Velvet thought she’d quite like a frozen cocktail and a license to put her feet up and forget the whole affair.

“I love you.”  She told him again, the words falling out on yet another, quite resigned--and quite disillusioned--sigh.

The Bug

The bug has hit the household.

May just be a sick day tomorrow for both of us.

Stay hearty and hale out there kids!

Word Names for Babies

Lolpants.

So far the names on the word name list include Magenta and Squat.  Too fun.  You guys kill me.  I will not be naming my children these names (though I quite liked the idea of a Magenta Pigeon in the world!).  But I have a hankering to buy me a couple ferrets or something and dub them these fabulous monikers.

So we're interested in word names for alot of reasons.  1st:  Why not?  All names are are representational of things anyway, right?  Don't people ask--'what's your name mean?'  And such.  And new parents are often eager to tell you what 'cameron' means or 'stella' and whatnot.  OR names are chosen as familial\personal significance, but a word-word, as opposed to a name-word can often fill the same function.

2nd-  We are sick of trying to unearth less common names, especially because whenever we do settle upon one (Let's say CALEB, for example) that's nice and pleasantly obscure, the name suddenly jumps onto the top 1,000 most popular and we are back to square one, frustrated and disappointed.  I mean when we chose 'Jack', not john but Jack to be our son's name I have to tell you that it was so far out of vogue it was getting wrinkled noses from those we told.  But between Will & Grace, 24, and Lost, the classic hero-ness of the name Jack seemed to reoccur to people.  Oh, JACK, they seemed to say as a collective unit.  Jack is a great name!  It sure is, fuckers.  And now you can't go into a toys-r-us without hearing 1 in 5 mothers calling out 'jack, hey jack' or 'jackson, jackson look at this' or Jax!  C'mere Jax, hey jax!'  Gag me.  The market is so thoroughly glutted with Jacks and jacksons and jaxxons that I want to punch a puppy.

SO.  So we want a less common name, but the only way to ensure that it will really stay uncommon is to go the word route.

3rd.  Another reason you choose a name, besides meaning, is because you like the sound of it.  Or the vibe of it.  Is it a pleasing name when spoken.  When written.  When you hear it.  If this is true, then why limit yourselves to the standard baby name dictionary?  There are so many pleasing combinations of letters out there, of vowels and consonants.  I don't even object to just plain make one up, if it comes to that.  I just also like the name to have resonance with meaning.  But, like, how cool is the name Zan?  Doesn't mean shit.  Made it up in my brain.  Or Velen!  Cool beans right?  Just made the fuck up.  Names are just made up anyway, so I absolutely hate it when people get all high and might about some of the names people have.  I encounter this alot in the public schools.  Old teachers are always making snide comments like: "Whatever happened to joe and jane?"  And I feel like staring at them and saying quite frankly:  Those are boring ass, trite ass fucking names, and maybe these parents didn't want their kids to be cookie-cutter or average!

I especially hate the snide little comments and the flat-out refusal to get pronunciation right because it smacks of insidious racism.  But that's a discussion for another day.

Ok.  Meaning, sound, popularity.

So I thought it might be fun to show you a list of words-as-names that we've been cooking up. I'll show you the narrowed list first, so you can get a sense of where we are, but then for funzies I'll show you a list of word-names that I found enchanting (though unrealistic), and might yet name characters!

Oh.  Keep in mind that these are for a boy.  It is too easy to choose word names for girls.  Practically anything can be a kick-ass girl name.  Days of the week.  Months.  Places.  Fruits, flowers, anything.  Most words that are pleasing to the ear can make a decent girls names.

So here goes, words that could be a name for Baby Boy Reardon (Don't even want to get into that discussion right now.  Yes I realize it is unconventional.  But it has been decided.)

Locke

Tell

Truman

Catch

Otto

Thatcher

Greyson

Monroe

Cabre

Cable

Mack

Ferris\ Ferrous

Fitz

Church \ Churchill

Shepherd Sheppard

Park

Beckett

Tuck Puck Luck Huck

Friday

Column

Caul

Cardinal

Chord

Obediah

Heeheehee.  Fun right?  Some are names, admittedly, but weird ones, or last names.

Here's the other list.  Pretty wild, but some delicious words:

(Many of these have been vetoed by Aaron for reali-like names.)

Bishop

Chance

Quest

Archer

Arrow

Silas

Phelan

Elm

Fly

Hawthorne

Zenith

Audacious

Oath

Honor

Truth

Courage

Solace

Solemn

Sycamore

Mack

Legend

Fox

Wolf

Harbinger

Science

Wisdom

Time

Sentinel

Daedalus

Kilroy

Prior

Phoenix

Will

Argyle

Allegiance

Credence

Dare\ Daring

Merit

Persevere\ Perseverance

Reverence

Providence

Search

Tenacity

Zeal

Orion

These listies are by no means definitive, but they are fun.

So I pose this to you:  Any favorites?  Any you absolutely want us to rule out?  I love feedback.  Keep in mind that we already have chosen a word-name for a boy that we lovelovelove, so the next one we choose is a back-up, a spare.

Hearts!

-Beth