Parasailing (California, Horizontal, Soaring, Submarine, Whirlpool)

I was sitting in the coffee shop the other day eating a 12” submarine sandwich when Jimmy, an old friend from my California days walked in. After many hugs and exclamations of joy at seeing one another after so many years, I invited him to sit and have lunch with me. It seems he was in town for a big parasailing event. Now, our small town had never been much of a place for parasailing, but some young, foolish men had discovered that it could be done on some high bluffs over the river. Now they were trying to make our little town the “Parasailing Capitol of the South.” Can you imagine! All the farmers were against it because it kept scaring the cows and they were running off their weight trying to get away from those big colorful predators flying around up in the air.

It turned out that Jimmy now sells parasails and all the vast array of paraphernalia that goes with it. He offered to take me up for a ride in a tandem/teaching parasail. Well, my daddy didn’t raise no idiot so I kindly thanked him for his offer and told him I would be glad to come and watch him go flying through the air. Well, then he called me a chicken and started dancing around the coffee shop making chicken sounds – “buk, buk buk, buk buk buk, till he finally made me mad and so I told him to come on, if he was waiting on me he was backing up! Well, off we traipsed to the bluffs. On the outside I was cool, calm, and collected, but on the inside I was quaking in my sandals, thinking of all the horrible things that could happen way up there in the air. What if we get caught in a whirlpool of wind and dash onto the ground? What if the parasail rips and we plummet into the river or worse yet, into that copse of thorny trees by the river?? Yikes! You would think that by my age I would have learned that pride cometh before the fall – this time I was hoping that it would not be a literal translation.

So after he strapped and gusseted me into this seemingly flimsy contraption with these tiny thin little metal bars, Jimmy commands me to start running toward the edge of the bluff. I start off at a hesitant little trot and he is yelling, “Faster, faster!” so off I go running and praying and feeling like my heart is going to literally explode in my chest. We get to the end and all of a sudden I am running in thin air. Here I am, dangling, not quite vertical, or horizontal holding on to this bar with a grip that is about to bust my knuckles. And then I open my eyes – and after the initial bout of nausea, I begin to really get the hang of this parasailing – I find myself waving to people on the ground that I know – they look like little miniature toy people down there. I laugh at the cows running until I see my Uncle Jake shaking his fist at us. We had a marvelous time just soaring around in the thermals; I could have stayed up there all day. Then, just as we were landing, I saw my dad standing over at the side shaking his head. I know this was just one more incident in a line of many others that have convinced him that he might have, after all, raised an idiot.

I have never actually parasailed, but my dad has wondered many times at other crazy things his middle daughter has done! You can see a picture of my dad on my blog: crockchronicles.blogspot.com

Submarine (California, Horizontal, Soaring, Submarine, Whirlpool)

I’ve never been to California and I’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Ocean. But I don’t think I’m up to it. You see, I’m an East coast girl - a flatlander, really. Just being in the mountains makes me queasy. While gazing out over a lookout point in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains not too long ago, I felt like I was hanging in outer space, soaring above terra firma, ready to begin free fall at any moment. My head started spinning as a sucking spiraling whirlpool formed somewhere behind my eyes. I had to dive for cover in the car like a submerging submarine plummeting to safety. I spent the trip home lying perfectly horizontal in the backseat, swallowing down the nausea and counting the minutes until we reached the lovely level land of home.

~Belinda is an avid writer. You can view her blog at Upsidedown Bee.

Untitled (Broom, Congas, Carriage, Sunrise, Tenuous)

-Alright, fellas, the writing's on the wall. We've played sixteen basketball games this year and lost them all. And here we are, halftime of another game, playing against a team that is actually legally blind and we're down by sixty. We are on tenuous grounds, men. I'm likely to get fired after this game if we don't pull out a win.

-But coach, they're really fast.

-They're blind, Jenkins!

-Blind people can be fast, coach.

-Fine, touche, Mortinson. But you're just letting them run circles around you.

-I am an artist, coach! I am not a basketball player.

-Then why are you on this college basketball team?

-I need the tuition.

-Get out of my locker room!

-Fine, but first, I'd like to read one of my poems.

-No--

-"The sunrise looks like a man dying, today..."

-That's terrible, Mortinson.

-"A single eagle flies, and I cry, into several buckets..."

-Stop it, Mortinson!

-Coach?

-What is it, janitor?

-Can I play?

-No! You're a janitor.

-I'll give you my broom if you let me play.

-That is not an equal trade, look--

-"Trees fall under my skin and the wind blows me a new heart..."

-Mortinson, I'm going to throw a javelin through your heart.

-Do it, Coach!

-Be quiet, Jenkins! All of you, be quiet. Now look, we should be pounding these kids heads in like congas--

-That's offensive, Coach. I have a brother who is blind. And also has a drum for a head.

-Well, I'm sorry to hear that--

-He also plays for the time we're playing against right now.

-Ok, fine. That's fine. Look, men--

-I can't do this coach. Not to my brother. Here, take my jersey.

-I don't want it.

-What if I give you my broom AND my mop bucket.

-No, I don't need those things.

-AND my jumper?

-No. TEAM.

-Coach, the buzzer is going off.

-I can hear it. Look, pick and roll and--IT doesn't even matter. Just play really quiet so they don't hear you.

-"I will break away and become a spider-person but I am no spider-man..."

-Mortinson, your poems are terrible.

-Your LIFE is terrible, coach.

-Coach, is your team going to come out and play this second half or what?

-Yes, I'm just trying to finish my speech, Referee.

-Coach, your team is losing by sixty points to blind people.

-I'm well aware.

-Maybe you aren't a good coach.

-Maybe you're a jerk.

-Oh, is the wittle baby coach offended now.

-No.

-Oh, is the wittle coach gonna cry and pout.

-Shut up, referee.

-Want your bottle? Maybe your wittle baby carriage? Want me to push you around the court while you suck your thumb?

-No, I do not.

-Come on, little baby coach. I want to put you in a crib.

-Team! Where are you guys going?

-Some guy just came in and made Mortinson the Poet Laureate, so we're gonna go to his induction ceremony.

-This is stupid.

-Awww, is the little baby coach cry-crying because he didn't win the Poet of the Year award?

-He didn't win poet of the year. He's the Poet Laureate. It's two different things.

-Awww, is the little baby coach getting wrapped up in semantics.

-Why are you still here, Ref?

-Because I'm homeless. My wife divorced me. Let me live with you.

-No.

-Please? I know how to make homemade relish.

-I...fine. Whatever.

-Hooray! I'm going to jump on your back now.

-Don't.

-Here I go!

-OW! I think you broke my entire spine.

-Haha! Roommate, you are so funny.

~Jake Goldman is a writer living in New York City. some of his work can be found here: 23/6 (http://www.236.com/contributors/jake_goldman/)

Ping Pong Balls (Grand Slam, Ping Pong, Projector, Montreal, Ice Cream Sundae)

Rob and I sat on lawn chairs rolling ping pong balls one by one to the edge of the fire, waiting as they melted and then burst into flames. We had found a box of fluorescent orange balls tucked away on a shelf in the garage behind an old projector Mom had used when she taught middle school. It was enough for probably a good hour of entertainment. We had to laugh as we remembered the night Dad had demonstrated this trick for us. It seemed like a long time ago for both of us.

Rob had married his high school sweetheart, Mona, moved to upstate New York after medical school. He had built a successful private practice, counseling housewives, as he said, while either they or their husbands stumbled through the standard mid-life crisis. He seemed bored, I thought, and maybe going through a mid-life crisis of his own. His only child, Julie, had just left for college.

As for me, I had settled in Montreal, after marrying a gorgeous Canadian who taught in the Food Science department at NYU and who was also my instructor for Food History and Techniques of Regional Cuisines. After I graduated 2000, Pat left the university and we opened a restaurant in the shadow of Olympic Stadium, then the home of the Montreal Expos, called The Grand Slam. It was Pat’s dream and so it became mine. We served the standard baseball fare: hotdogs, burgers, milkshakes, and ice cream sundaes. In 2004, the Expos relocated to Washington and a year later Pat and I had to close shop. The end of Pat’s dream was also the end of our marriage. The divorce was final two months ago.

Rob rolled the last ball to the edge of our dying fire.

“Dad would have hated the funeral, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes.” I looked back to the house and saw the kitchen curtains move slightly. “Mom’s watching us. We better go in. She won’t sleep until we do.”

~Belinda is the star writer of this blog, at this point. Read the rest of her work at Upside Down Bee.

So's your mother-in-law! (Solar, The Fourth Wall, Communism, Disneyland, Declined)

I belittle people. It’s my job.

As a stand-up comic, I’m happy to just do my job and entertain…but sometimes people can’t keep their mouth shut. When this happens, I get involved.

Every time the audience gets involved the Fourth Wall becomes a poorly-kept demilitarized zone. And I usually walk away unscathed.

Last Thursday, for example…this lame-o with big ears in the front row made a comment during my “Bring back Communism” routine, something like he’d rather stand in bread line than listen to my act. I told everyone I was sorry I didn’t notice that we had Dumbo the Elephant in the house, and asked him when he was due back at Disneyland.

Laughs all around. For me.

I have a pretty good routine about Solar energy and I was halfway into it when I got the usual “bag of hot air” comment from the obese guy in the fifth row.

I told the guy I was sorry his credit card was declined on his liposuction, although I was happy he was able to afford the breast implants. Zing!

My advice for would-be-hecklers is don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

~dt (although not a comedian - can't you tell?) dares you to heckle him…but asks that you respectfully avoid talking about his big nose or his alcoholic third cousin.

An Audience of One (Solar, The Fourth Wall, Communism, Disneyland, Declined)

The Fourth Wall is an interesting new term I’ve just learned thanks to GM at Five Word Monologues. Picture a stage as a box with one side cut out so we can peer inside. This “missing” side, The Fourth Wall, is an invisible partition that actors are supposed to ignore as they perform. Sometimes, though, an actor will speak directly to the audience. This is called “Breaking the Fourth Wall.”

The idea of The Fourth Wall brought something else to my mind. There is a thought in Christianity that says when we worship, whether it’s formal worship in a church, private worship at home, or just living out our daily lives in a worshipful manner, we are playing to ‘an Audience of One.’ All that we do, we are doing for God, to please Him alone. I think the thought is disturbing to some who envision an ogre staring at them in their most private moments – judging, poking, and prodding. Or others feel that they must live perfectly, putting on a Disneyland veneer, so that to all outside appearances life is beautiful, while underneath there is a lot of scurrying around to deal with all the trash. I can relate to both.

Mostly, though, God for me is a Presence who teaches, guides, and directs my steps in this journey He’s set me upon. He writes my storylines, coaches me in how best to be true to the script, and then sits back to enjoy what I offer up to Him. He cheers, claps, and laughs at my antics. He sometimes cries, too. I find Him most pleased with me when I remember to occasionally “Break the Fourth Wall” and talk directly to Him.

I like to think sometimes of all the things God has watched us humans do on this little planet zooming through the solar system. This weekend I visited Nags Head and saw the monument to the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Their first flight was in 1903. In just 63 short years, we took the seeds Orville and Wilbur planted and grew them into a rocket that flew men to the moon! I wonder if our Audience was amazed at such spectacular ingenuity. Did He applaud? What about all of our attempts through the ages to create Utopia, a Heaven here on earth? Did He moan over the ideology of communism, seeing down the road to the devastation it would cause? Did He cry and cover his face at the horrors of the Holocaust? I imagine He just plain declined to attend the debut performance of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

And we know His heart broke as He watched the ultimate climax of our story, the death of His Son, Jesus.

~Belinda tries to write for an Audience of One at her blog Upside Down Bee.

Squash Blossoms (Squash, Raffle, Quesadilla, One-Man-Band, Heinous)

It’s that time again…I’m planning my backyard garden. This year I’m going for simplicity: two tomato plants (Better Boys and Early Girls – I try for sexual equality in my gardening!), two squash plants, one cucumber plant, and one pepper bush. It’s a one-man band, though, as my husband has sworn off gardening following last season’s debacle. I wanted to try container gardening and after about $300 and many hours of labor, our garden yielded about five tomatoes. He pointed out that put our tomatoes at $60 each. He says he's satisfied just sticking with store-bought tomatoes, no matter the exorbitantly heinous prices and bland taste. I just can’t give up so easily. I still dream of juicy tomato and mayo sandwiches on fresh white bread. But I am trying hard to keep the dollar investment to a minimum this go-around. So far I’m up to $35.76 for plants, mulch, a new shovel, and a raffle ticket for an electric tiller.

I’ve found some interesting recipes using squash blossoms that I can't wait to try: squash blossom quesadillas, batter fried squash blossoms, and cheese-stuffed blossoms. Squash blossoms are not something that you can usually find in the produce department at your local grocery stores because they are extremely perishable. At best, they will last only two days in your refrigerator’s crisper and that's if you wash and store them perfectly. I’m hoping to pluck these little delicacies right off my plants, rinse them off, and cook them up. Wish me luck!

~Belinda definitely does not have a green thumb, but tries to give gardening a go every now and then. See her blog at Upside Down Bee for links to these yummy squash blossom recipes!

Returning from Paradise...(Squash, Raffle, Quesadilla, One-Man-Band, Heinous)

We've been here a little over four years and loved it. Along the way, we’ve learned a few things:

1. It’s better to win the raffle than the golf tournament. When you win the tournament, everyone is jealous (because you were better than they) but the “rifa” winner is lucky and celebrated. It’s backward, but that’s how it goes.

2. Paradise is overrated and overpriced. Heinous prices are charged for everyday things like peanut butter and dark beer, if you can even get them. Usually, you can’t.

3. Just because the people speak Spanish, it doesn’t mean they have good Mexican food. The quesadilla I had last night was heated cheez-whiz on a tortilla.

4. They have no regard for sports that make sense to gringos. No basketball, no football…they play squash, if you can believe it.

So we are departing this island to take over the family business in the USA…it’s a mom and pop place, a one-man-band, but it’s the next step in a journey that continues to get better.

~dt and family will move from the Caribbean to rural Tennessee in May. He can’t wait to watch ESPN.

Milkshakes (Testing, Fundraiser, Mint, Car Wash, Pizza)

I have an idea for a really cool school fundraiser: a challenge to drink one of every milkshake on our local Cookout Restaurant's menu within one week. And, on top the requisite stomach capacity, here’s an additional twist: you can’t gain ANY weight! The person who drinks his or her way through the menu, (approximately 45 different varieties) without gaining an a single ounce would be the winner and receive some cheesy t-shirt at the final weigh-in ceremony. The proceeds to the school would come from the entry fees. Also, maybe we could talk Cookout into donating a part of the sales on each shake bought for the competition. I think we could pitch it as great publicity.

Each entrant would weigh in at the beginning of the week, keep up with a menu card that Cookout employees punch as they purchase and drink each flavor (verified by an eyewitness, of course), and then weigh in at the end of the week. What do you think? Personally, I believe this would be much more fun (and profitable) than just another carwash or pizza sale!

I’m planning on testing the process out next week. Some quick math says I need to target seven shakes a day Monday through Friday and then taper off to just five on Saturday and Sunday. I think I’m going with classic chocolate, followed by Oreo mint, then blueberry cheesecake, and a banana pineapple chaser. After that, I’ll take a break for a couple of hours or so until I’m ready to pick it back up with caramel fudge, then orange push-up, and finally finish the day with peach.

My strategy is to drink the most disgusting mix of flavors each day in order to induce vomiting, and hence, no weight gain! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

~To see a picture of Cookout’s milkshake menu, see Belinda’s blog at Upside Down Bee!

The Wedding Reception (Testing, Fundraiser, Mint, Car Wash, Pizza)

Do you believe that I once went to a wedding reception held at a Busy Bee Carwash! It’s true….and to make matters worse; it was the wedding of a guy I once dated. I can tell you that my dad breathed a sigh of relief when that ended. His name was Charlie Brown, again, no lie. He was from West Virginia and at the time of his marriage worked at the carwash. He was one of those “great” guys that my brother-in-law hooked me up with.

The wedding had been held at a nearby park with the Wedding March played over a portable tape player that squelched during the whole song as they were trying to amp it through a karaoke system. They had put up this little platform right by the pond and the ducks kept coming up thinking they were going to get fed. The Bride’s father kept trying to shoo them away. I don’t know which made the more noise, the ducks or the horrible sound system. There were about 25 of us at the wedding, standing there as they had not provided any chairs. Fortunately it was a very short ceremony. Then we all proceeded over to the carwash for the big reception.

They had the buffet table down the middle of the carwash. They had those buttery wedding mints, pizza rolls, little crust less tuna & chicken salad sandwiches and a two tier wedding cake with a big Busy Bee on the top of it. They had no plates, just these cocktail napkins with ducks on them left over from the annual Ducks Unlimited fundraiser. The best man kept joking that he was going to hit the button to start the carwash during the dancing. The bride’s father invited us over to his house after the reception for a taste testing of the different Boones Farm wines! As the couple was departing and we were throwing the rice my brother-in-law leaned over and said, “And this could have all been yours.” Thank you, Lord, for my singleness.

~Cheryl keeps writing monologues but forgetting to put in tag lines. So here is one that GM wrote for her. She has a knack for humor!

My Head (Baseball, Caramel, Curry, Horns, Rain)

I’ve had the strangest headache for the past three days. It’s really more of a skull-ache or a scalp-ache, I suppose, than a traditional headache. Nothing I take seems to give any relief; I’ve tried Motrin, Excedrin, and Aleve. The pain is centered on the top of the right side of my head in an area about the size of a baseball. It’s been keeping me up at night.

This morning around 2am, awake and uncomfortable, I turned on the TV and flipped around until I settled on the Food Channel. I watched a show on Indian food and now I have a great coconut chicken curry recipe to try. A blessing in disguise, I suppose. Then I tried to go back to sleep by lying still and listening to the rain pinging on the gutters. It didn’t work, but it was rather peaceful to be awake in the middle of the night, listening to all the sounds a sleeping house makes.

Finally, around 5am, I gave up and decided to just get up for the day. I made myself a caramel-flavored coffee with our new fancy one-cup brewer and settled down on the couch to do a little reading. The pain was too distracting, so I gave that up, too. I went to the bathroom to see if I could find anything on my scalp that would be making it hurt so bad. I parted my hair and gave myself a good examination. What I saw was very disconcerting.

I think I’m sprouting horns.

~Belinda, writing at Upside Down Bee, really has had a weird headache for the last three days. Her husband was the one who suggested it was horns.

The Horse Sale (Baseball, Caramel, Curry, Horns, Rain)

I had so much to do and the rain would just not let up! The water was pouring in sheets off the roof of the barn and even running in rivulets down the aisle between the stalls. The horses were stamping and snorting at the noise that the rain made pounding on the tin roof above them. I had six horses left to curry and also the back breaking task of trying to sand and blacken their hooves and then clip the hair in their ears. All of this to do with yearling foals who like to jump around with every noise, pretending to be scared. To make matters worse, my younger sister and some of her friends were out in the paddock chasing “Elmer,” our young steer around trying to tie one of the girl’s tennis shoes to his horns. Needless to say Elmer was not a happy camper and kicking up quite a ruckus. I’m sure they could hear him bellowing and blowing at the farm down the road. The girls were soaked through to the skin and covered with mud.

My dad was in the house trying to get the horses’ pedigree papers ready while an Atlanta Braves baseball game blared from the radio in the background. Grannie was in the kitchen making my very favorite caramel cake. My two sisters and I had once devoured a whole caramel cake at the wake of one of my great aunts! We were sitting by the dessert table and just kept slicing on that cake, “making it even” until we had evened it down to crumbs. My mom was sitting, as usual, at the big desk trying to figure out how we are going to pay this month’s training fees for the horses we had at the track.

Tomorrow will tell us much of how the rest of our year is going to go financially! We have a group of 11 foals going into the yearling sale at the “OBS,” the Ocala Breeders Sale. The sales are great fun to go to as a spectator, but a lot of hard work and nail biting if you are counting on the sale of these foals to fund your breeding farm for the next year! Sure, you have grooms and walkers working for you, but when there is so much money at stake, there is lots of hands on supervision from the family! We are really a very small thoroughbred farm, surrounded by huge, palatial farms, but we have had good results so far with several different multiple stakes winners to come from our mares. My father is great with the animals and does the training work with them from the time they are foaled till they go for their last training before the track.

Some people would say it is as much of a gamble to make a living off a breeding farm as it is to make that same money betting on horses at the track. And most people you see trying to do that are usually in the food stamp line! My father, who has been known to win a nice sum every now and then, says that he would give back ALL his winnings for 10% of what he has bet over the years! There is a lot of hard won wisdom in that statement! All in all, I’ll take the bumps and the bruises, the highs and the lows, the wins and the losses of horse breeding any day over the endless grind of trying to make a living sitting in an office forty hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 30 years of my life!

~Cheryl didn't write a tag line for this, but she has quite an imagination.

Fall Hiking (Strawberry, Mall, Sunder, Brick, Waterfall)

We had been backpacking in the North Carolina mountains for 12 days. Toni and I have been doing this every October for the last several years. There is no more beautiful place on earth than the North Carolina mountains in October! The air is crisp, the smell rich with the loamy earth, the leaves beautiful hues of red, gold and yellow! We keep our hikes near the creeks as we love to hear the sounds of the rushing water. We often stop at different waterfalls to eat our lunch and revel in the sights and sounds of water cascading down the mountain wall. Sometimes we even get the courage to jump into the water, gasping as we come up, laughing at each others expressions because it is so shockingly cold!

Toni has always been the one to take care of our backpacking menu, and she is very creative. She has figured out how to take backpacking meals way beyond the usual freeze dried concoctions and beany-weanys!! In fact, last night for dinner with had chicken and artichoke hearts with egg noodles with strawberry Jello with fruit for dessert! She takes the Jello and puts it in a water bottle and submerges it in the creek for awhile and there you have it! She does the same with instant pudding. It is always fun to see what she is going to pull out of her backpack for the next meal.

Last night we made our camp by an old homestead that had nothing left standing except an old brick chimney. You see many of those lonely sentinels scattered through the southern landscapes. As we sat around after dinner we invented stories of who lived here and of their loves and losses. Times change, seasons come and go, and yet, our hopes and our dreams are in most ways the same as the family that lived here on this mountain those many years ago: The desire to be loved and appreciated, to have a home where harmony rules and is a safe haven from the discord of the world.

Unfortunately, this morning we left the mountains to head back to civilization, jobs and the every day world. As we came down into Brevard we had to stop by the mall to pick up some supplies for our long drive back home. In the midst of the cacophony of too loud music, too many people and too many lights I felt that sense of peace that had come to me from two weeks of reveling in God’s beautiful creation sunder under the gaucheness of the world we live in.

~I am a medical missionary (a nurse) and live in the Philippines where I work with street children. I have always loved words and writing so this looks like a fun way to develop that even more.

Hester (Strawberry, Mall, Sunder, Brick, Waterfall)

I pull into a parking space as close to the mall entrance as possible. I sit in my car, breathing slowly, trying to get the courage to open the door, step out, and walk the short distance to the door. I hear a roaring like a waterfall in my head and it feels as if a brick is sitting low in my stomach, anchoring me to my seat. I think I'm going to be sick.

This is the first time I have been back since the day I lost Sophie. She was there playing in the racks of clothes, bright red and green Christmas sweaters, and then she wasn’t. She was gone. Flyers with her little elfin face, clear blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair are still plastered all over the city. Bob and I are keeping up our weekly rounds, checking to make sure the flyers remain posted, asking questions of the store clerks, putting up more if they have become ragged or torn. Every Tuesday, we visit the police detective assigned to our case, Jeff Rayner, just to check in.

Lost, stolen, kidnapped, taken: All words describing what happed. But lately, I’ve been thinking that none of these particular words really describe the truth of that day. I came across the word sunder last night while rereading The Scarlet Letter in preparation for the freshman English class I'm supposed to start teaching next month. I'm somewhat doubtful that I will be able to keep that commitment. Mid-way in the book, there is a scene in which the leaders of the town are interviewing little Pearl, trying to determine if it would be in the best interest of her young soul to be taken from her fallen mother, Hester, and given to someone else, someone more godly, to raise. The men decide to put the matter aside for later consideration and, as Hester scoops Pearl up in her arms and leaves, she encounters a woman who invites her to the woods for a satanic ritual later that night. Hester declines, but says if they had taken little Pearl from her, she would have willingly gone and signed her name to the Devil’s book. The last lines of the chapter keeps playing through my mind:

But here -- if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable -- was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.

After reading that chapter, I went to the dictionary on the swivel stand in the front living room and looked up sunder. The primary definition is “to break or wrench apart, sever.”

Sunder. Yes. That's the word. That’s what has happened to Sophie and me. We have been sundered. We had been wrenched apart. We, mother and daughter, have been severed. And now, fallen like Hester, if I could have the offspring of my frailty back for even a moment, I would gladly sign my name to the Devil’s book. I would lay myself before Satan's snare if only I knew my little girl was safe. God help me and forgive me.

~Belinda is enjoying the challenge of these weekly monologues. Among other things, she posts them on her blog at Upside Down Bee.

Midnight Prowler (Waterfall, Mall, Strawberry, Sunder, Brick)

"What in the world?!?!?" I sat bolt upright in bed - my eyes shooting open and my heart beating like my Kitchen Aid mixer going to town on a meringue. I could hear the unmistakable sounds of someone creeping around the perimeter of my house. I sat as still as possible, the sound of my heart beating so loud in my head I knew the prowler could hear it, too. "Why, why, why tonight when Mike is coaching the late ballgame?"

The branches sunder beneath my bedroom window, scratching the siding, as I listened to his feet crunch in the leaves. I begin to pray, "God, no matter what, please protect the children! Please, please protect the children!" I thought of them lying innocently in their beds, hopefully sleeping soundly and unaware of the horror taking place in their backyard.

I gathered my courage and slunk out of bed. I laid there on the floor for a minute and listened again to hear where he might be now. I could hear footsteps in the garden, by the brick wall. I crawled on my elbows, commando style, to my kitchen. I stuck my arm up and felt around on the counter for my kitchen knife. As I pulled it down, the blade clattered to the tile. "Dang it! Well, that's what you get for buying a set of knives from a teenage boy at a kiosk in front of the waterfall at the mall!" I laid flat on the ground and looked at the windows to see if I could see a shadow of the person torturing me. No shadows emerged.

I crawled over to the phone and picked it up off its cradle. With shaking hands, I dialed 911. It began dialing. I crawled to the window and lifted the sheers to see if I could stealthily locate the prowler. As I lifted it, his figure came around the corner. He looked me dead in the eyes. I heard a voice say, "911. What's your emergency?" I calmly replied, "The neighbors great dane escaped again and he is in my garden eating a strawberry."

~hpt loves to write and hopes never to go through anything as harrowing as this...

Carnival Day (Bracket, Assembly, Tent, Velcro, Spice)

Shivering from excitement and the unusually cold spring weather, I stood with my classmates waiting to enter the striped red and white tent that had appeared overnight on our school’s large playing field. It was carnival day at Mary Pickles Goff Elementary School and we were wiggling anxiously to give our tickets to the attendant. For weeks, flyers had been posted around school describing all the different games we would be able to play and the amazing prizes we would have a chance to win. Our little heads were full of visions of ring tosses, birthday guesses, basketball throws, and huge stuffed teddy bears.

During morning assembly, Mrs. Rabalais had announced that the 6th grade classes would get to line up first, ahead of all the younger children, because we had brought in the most food for the Drive Against Hunger. I was sure that my contributions of a can of sliced olives, a jar of peanut butter, and two bags of elbow noodles had tipped the scale in our favor. Plus, unbeknownst to my mother, I had also snuck her large tin of ginger from the spice cabinet. I despised the taste of ginger because my mother believed a teaspoon dissolved in a glass of warm water cured everything from upset stomachs to colds. She looked for any opportunity to pour this concoction down mine and my sister’s throats.

My bare legs were freezing as the wind blew in from the north side of the courtyard and buffeted against the main campus building. Like the brackets of a parenthesis, my brown pig-tails hung from either side of my head, framing a freckled face with wide set brown eyes. With one hand I nervously opened and closed the Velcro tab on my skirt pocket, while chewing the cuticle on my other hand’s thumb. In so many more ways than my young mind could comprehend at the time, this day was going to be one I would remember for the rest of my life.

~Belinda writes, ponders, considers, questions, and muses on her blog, Upside Down Bee

A Slice of Derby Pie (Flicked, Olive, Hair Dryer, Parachute, Crackled)

I was lying on the old quilt we picked up at the flea market the week before. Someone had put a lot of love into it; one edge was frayed, but not beyond repair. I rolled over, reached into our basket, and plucked an olive from the jar. I sucked on the pit as I searched the sky for the first parachute to appear. The PA system crackled and a female voice announced that four-year-old Clare was lost and would her family please come to the registration area. At the end of the lane a cyclist worked his handlebars with a wrench, his race number fluttering in the breeze. I could hear a bluegrass band tuning up close by. An orange trail above alerted me that the first diver was about to come into view. I flicked the pit into the woods and stood up to look down the hill at the big X where they would land. The excitement of Derby week was all around me in the city, but here in the park it was like a festival. I squeezed Jason’s hand as if to say, pinch me so I know I’m not dreaming. Arriving from Minnesota, the weather was a relief. It was the first week in May but the wind spread sunshine hot across the back of my neck like a hair dryer.

~TherMumz likes trying her hand at these monologues

Falling (Flicked, Olive, Hair Dryer, Parachute, Crackled)

Pushing the door open, I reached my hand in and flicked on the light. Hesitating before stepping from the thick carpet of my bedroom to the stone tile of the master bath, I saw the floor had been scrubbed as a pungent disinfectant smell wafted out to me. I made a mental note to ask Janice who had done this distasteful job. They should be thanked.

At the far end of the bathroom, the shower curtain with tan fern fronds over an olive green background was pushed back revealing the white enamel of the tub, the silver faucet and shower head. We had bought the curtain last month; one of several accessories purchased to compliment the creamy brown Bryce had painted the bathroom. “Macadamia” the paint card said. This was just the first project of many we wanted to accomplish to get our home ready to sell. Bryce had been laid off from his job and we were preparing for the likely possibility of a move. Bryce was interviewing locally without much luck, but I still hoped we would be able to stay in this community where I had finally started to put down some roots. So, I made sure the paint colors and other choices were things I actually wanted for our home, not just things a buyer would like.

The new bath rugs were gone as well as the wicker laundry hamper and matching basket in which I kept clean towels. Where they were or who removed these things, I couldn’t say. Or why. To spare my feelings, maybe? Or were they taken for the investigation?

My hair dryer was lying haphazardly in the sink, its cord snaking across the cream tile counter to the floor. The sight of this – something belonging solely to me, not Bryce, and that something being out of place – moved me to finally step into the room. Here was something I could fix, something I could “tidy up” as my mother liked to say.

Placing the dryer in the cabinet below the sink, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Slowly, I leaned in closer and saw what I already knew was there: dark circles around swollen eyes, a pale and puffy face, limp and dirty hair. There was one surprise, however. New little pouches of skin had appeared at each corner of my mouth. “Nice,” I thought. I looked and felt like I had aged 10 years in the last two weeks.

Looking at the tub again, I moved to the end of the room. Reaching up to unhook the curtain and its plastic liner from the shower rod rings, the liner crackled as it began to fall into the tub. A tear slid down my face and landed on the edge of the tub. I looked at where it had landed, surprised. I hadn’t cried in three days. I thought the tears had run out.

Suddenly, the rushing falling sensation was on me again, driving me to my knees. I had been falling for two weeks now and the bottom was no where in sight. But thankfully, over the past few days, the falling was becoming more of a floating downward, and it seemed more like a parachute was slowly bringing me down, down, down to the solid ground of reality. But moments like this, my parachute collapsed and I began plummeting. There would be no one to catch me or cushion my landing. For this, I knew with certainty, I was alone.

I closed my eyes, praying for the panic to pass. I felt like I was back in Junior High when Mary and Nikki had bullied me into riding a roller coaster at the park. As the car dove downward, I had clutched the silver bar, hair flying out behind me, mouth open in a silent scream. Then, I knew I just had to hold on for a certain amount of time. It would be over. The ride would stop. Now, I didn’t know if this nightmare ride would ever be over.

“Mom? Mom!” David’s voice came to me. “Aunt Janice says I can’t go play at Billy’s house today. I want to go! Why can’t I? Can I go, Mom? Please? Mom?”

Forcing my eyes open, I tried to focus on David’s face, the pursed lips, the furrowed brow, the tear-filled brown eyes. He stood with his stout legs apart, hands fisted on his hips, like a super hero. “Mom?” he said again, questioning with a softer voice now that he had seen my face.

David’s voice inflated my parachute again. I found myself floating, the freefall had stopped. The panic has subsided. Another thing was before me that needed to be fixed. And, as I stood to go to my boy, the thought occurred to me that David also only belonged to me now. No longer did he belong to both me and Bryce. He belongs solely to me.

~Belinda resides in North Carolina with her husband, three children, and one dog.

Memoirs of the Best of Times (Flicked, Hair Dryer, Crackled, Parachute, Olive)

While walking into the house for the first time in forty years, I noticed that most of the walls were painted a drab, olive green. Some of the windows held old venetian blinds that crackled as I attempted to push them up in order for the sun to penetrate the dusty, film covering the windows. I flicked off a dead fly from the sill where in the past I would stare for hours looking outside at the birds, the trees, and my older siblings playing in the back yard. When I was young the walls had been a bright white with curtains that had vivid colors all over them in some kind of paisley print. In the bathroom was an old hair dryer with the cord hanging down over the sink in a limp position that reminded me of abandonment, neglect, and desertion. Which told me not everyone had the same emotions crossing the thresholds inside as I did. Roaming from room to room brought a cascade of memories that clouded my mind and heart. I could see clearly the times that my sister and I would hide from my mom behind the edge of the dresser. How in the world did we think that we were ever really hidden? One time I brought home a jar of baby frogs, tiny little things that represented treasure beyond belief. I put them in a shoebox with grass and a jar lid full of water. Astonished was the only emotion I had the next morning when my baby frogs were not in the perfect house that had been fashioned just for them. Where they ever went I never found out. In my brother’s old room, we would set up a cave made out of blankets and sheets. First of all my brother would help me take the sheets and parachute them into place right over the chairs and other mobile type furniture to make just the right fort. I would play in there for hours setting up my dolls, stuffed animals, and several books.

So often the patterns we set up as young children carry over into our adult lives. I still love bright walls, cheerful curtains, and looking outside in my back yard. As my mind wandered through that old house, it struck me how all of the elements of my life could be found in my past. I remember piling books into my forts or sitting up on the roof taking my recent tomes and devouring them in the afternoon sun. Entering the house of my youth showed me that the blueprint for the rest of my life was laid right there in the walls of that old home.

~For Lynn, writing is not only a passion it is the way to make sense of the world. I write almost daily at lynnsmusings.blogspot.com

Choking (Flicked, Hair Dryer, Crackled, Parachute, Olive)

The sticks crackled under my feet as I walked under a tree next to the 13th hole. I had tried to hook it around the Tea Olive that guarded the front left of the green, but I quit on it and pushed it right. The sea-salted wind blew off the ocean like a hair dryer set on high.

EVEN IF I LOSE THIS HOLE, I’ll still be okay, I tell myself.

I knew differently. I had to get this one up and down. A three-up lead might not be enough, with all that was going on in my head. My opponent played poorly early, but now was mounting a charge. It had started to wear on me on the 12th, when my tee shot found the bunker. I flicked it on to the green and made par, but my hands were shaking the entire time. My golf swing had stopped working.

STAY IN THE PRESENT, I tell myself. Don’t think about anything but THIS shot.

The club championship was open to everyone. I won it last year, but the boss didn’t play. He hadn’t had a tough match, crushing his first four opponents. I had had nothing but difficulty, coming from two back with five to play in the second round and winning the last hole in the quarterfinals to advance.

And I needed to beat this guy to make it to the final to play the boss. STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT, I tell myself.

I decided to try to lob it up over the grassy patch that lay in front of me. If I hit it crisp, I could make it sit like it had a parachute attached to it. Anything else, I’d lose the hole. And maybe the match. Simple as that.

Panic was taking over my body. My pulse quickened as I made a couple of hurried practice stokes. CALM DOWN, I tell myself…CALM DOWN.

~dt's semifinal match is March 22 on the Teeth of the Dog