Sunday Distraction

            The heat in the little church was oppressive, and Nora was already regretting the prideful impulse that compelled her to squeeze into her Spanx.  Her backside was itching already, and Pastor Lang wasn’t even done with his first story yet.

            Pride went before a fall. 

That was in Proverbs, wasn’t it?  Nora forced herself to sit a little straighter, and made another attempt to focus on the sermon.  The pastor was still telling one of his stories; they were supposed to illustrate the message of the sermon, but sometimes it seemed like they were just stories, and Nora was hard-pressed to make the connection.  She shifted slightly, wishing she could scratch where it itched.

            Home is where you can scratch where it itches.

            She’d seen that on a shirt at Wal-Mart a while back.  It seemed a little crude at the time, but right now she could relate.

            Her husband shot her a look out of the corner of his eye.

            How did he always know when her mind was wandering?

            Oh.  Her hand had snuck down to a spot just behind her hip and was scratching quietly.  She blushed a little and smiled sheepishly at him, sliding her wayward hand back to the Bible on her lap.

            And she’d missed the pastor’s transition into his actual sermon.  Nora re-crossed her legs and focused on the pastor’s voice.  He was getting worked up about something.  Apparently he was worried that people weren’t taking their salvation seriously, and that sort of thing leads to the hot place.

            The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

            Like that time the youth group decided to go to the store and help elderly people load their groceries in their cars.  Turns out the elderly are pretty paranoid about getting mugged these days.  It took one of the town’s police officers, a sheriff’s deputy, and the pastor to smooth things over.

            ‘Course, it occurred to her that some of the youth, her own son included, did look more like muggers than missionaries most of the time.  Nora caught herself before she snorted, and hauled her wandering mind back to the sermon.

            Another story.  Possibly about hunting, but she couldn’t be sure.  The Lord knew their pastor sure did like to hunt.

            Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to me.

            Nora wondered how God felt about hunting.  They taught the kids in Sunday school not to be mean to little animals because they were part of God’s creation too.  Seemed like stalking a deer in the forest and then killing it when the poor thing least expected it wasn’t a very Christian thing to do.

            Then again, some people did it so they’d have food to feed their family.  That was probably OK.  But then again, you could say that it was OK to steal food to feed your family, if you were going to make excuses.  It sure seemed like people were awfully ready to make excuses about what they did that they shouldn’t have.

            Nora jumped when her husband’s hand came down on her shoulder.  The rest of the congregation was standing and singing.  She’d missed the entire sermon.

            Again.

            Probably shouldn’t have worn those stupid Spanx…

Death Walks

Two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane.  They turned without speaking and walked north, toward the small village nestled in the heart of the primeval forest.  A deep layer of fallen leaves masked what little noise their paired steps would have made.

The setting moon cast long shadows in the deep blue of the night when the two men passed the first cottage on the perimeter of the village.  When they reached the center square and the communal well they stopped, the distance between them the same as it had been when they’d first appeared.

Simultaneously, they walked in opposite directions – one west and one east – moving silently past the small shops and into the cottages occupied by the villagers.  Stopping at the first homes they reached, their fists raised in unison and knocked.

The village, when viewed from above, resembled a wagon wheel.  The two silent strangers moved down the spokes of the wheel, knocking at doors, never speaking.

The house to the west was home to a young family, with an infant only days old.  The parents had been awakened by the baby a short time before, and had only just settled back into their bed.  At the knock, the father sighed and pushed up from the bed to shuffle to the wooden door.

Swinging the door open, he glanced up into the blank face of the man waiting there.  A shiver of fear took him by surprise, making him frown.

“Can I help you?”

Silence met the young father’s question, and he realized that despite the bitter cold, no familiar puff of vapor betrayed the stranger’s breath.  A chill that had nothing to do with the night air stiffened the father’s spine and he moved quickly to swing the door shut.

“Who was it?”  His wife’s sleepy voice startled him.

“No one…it was…no one,” he answered, climbing back into the bed.

As the sun rose over the trees and crept across the rooftops, an unnatural silence grew in the village.  The strangers met at the well and turned to reenter the darkness of the forest, disappearing as the first wails of those left behind rose into the dawn air.

This post is my response to a prompt from Write on Edge - using as the first line : "Two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane."

Please take a moment to make a comment and let me know what you think!
 

Model Behavior

My youngest son and I were having an argument, and it wasn’t going well.

His ropey arms were crossed over his skinny chest, and an exaggerated frown pulled his lips and eyebrows down at exactly the same angle.

I felt that his room needed to be cleaned.  He disagreed.  When I played the mommy card, “Because I said so,” he pulled out the big guns: this caricature of displeasure.

***

As a college student taking freshman psychology, I was required to participate in experiments.  Cheap (read as “free”) test subjects for experiments designed by grad students.

During one of these experiments, pictures were flashed onto a large screen for just a fraction of a second, and we were meant to write down the emotion we saw on the person in the picture. 

Later it was explained that this tested our ability to read non-verbal cues—the messages we send with our facial expressions and body language.

Why is that important?  Studies have suggested that only 7% of our communication actually happens through language, which means that 93% of our communication is through those nonverbal cues. 

I find it ironic that I participated in this experiment, because years later my youngest son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.  His position on the autism spectrum means that for some reason his brilliant brain simply doesn’t see or understand nonverbal cues. 

Sort of like colorblindness, in a way.  Except he’s blind to 93% of the communication we use as human beings, instead of just being unclear on the difference between green and blue.

I look at those numbers and think, the world of human interaction is an iceberg: 10% or less is on the surface—obvious because it’s what we say.  The biggest part of it, the dangerous part of it, is the 90% lurking under the ebb and tide of our conversations—body language, facial expressions.

It’s that 90% that will sink you, just ask the Titanic.

***

Back to my son, and our little disagreement.

He’s seventeen, and very bright.  He’s fully aware that there are icebergs floating on the sea of communication he’s trying to navigate.

So he takes what he knows and mimics it. 

Arms crossed over the chest, lips and eyebrows drawn down.  This is displeasure.

It’s also a mirror.

It is an exact replica of the body language I adopted a micro-second ago, instinctively, to express how I felt.

This is how he steers around the icebergs.  Sometimes it works and he enjoys smooth sailing.  Sometimes it doesn’t, and he plows right in.  He keeps sailing either way, because the only other option is sinking.

And he’s unsinkable.




This post is my response to a prompt from Write On Edge to write using a line about someone crossing their arms (I'm paraphrasing).  The image that popped into my head was of my son, attempting to argue with me, copying my body language.  Using my mannerisms to express himself.  As frustrating as autism is, there are also those moments of wonder and humor.  

Thank you for stopping by, and please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comments!

Touching The Future...Or Not

About a million years ago, I wanted to be a teacher.

That became a dream deferred, but not one I’d given up on.

Then my husband (a brilliant man with a degree in physics), became a teacher at a public high school here in North Carolina.  He’s an awesome teacher.  He loves his students.  He loves his co-workers.

He’s starting to wonder if he should start looking for another profession.

It seems like I’ve wanted to be a teacher since the beginning of forever.  Now I’m rethinking a dream that has lasted more than twenty years, for the same reason my husband is rethinking his profession.

Everywhere we turn the profession he loves, and the one I’ve dreamed of for so long, is under attack.

“There r more bad teachers than good. That is why they r intimidated by the merit raise / fire approach that we use in the private sector”

“i think most of you are over paid as it is and not only that but when you got raises so did my property tax raise too. So dont bite the hand the feeds you. the days of wine and roses are coming to an end for you teachers.”

“you have no marketable skills”

“teachers have pretty sweet jobs on the backs of tax payers”

“public school teachers need to get off their high horses”

“fire all current teachers, and hire the homeless to do their jobs at a fraction of the cost”

“Teachers are lazy and have a false sense of worth.  You stand in front of a room of kids and read from a lesson plan.  You also get summers off.  Quit complaining.”

All quotes from comments on news stories about teachers, and not even the worst of them.

You see, it’s not the low pay and incredibly long hours that are discouraging…

 – oh yeah, you know that thing about teachers only work 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, get summers and holidays off to work on their tans?  Complete crap.

The teachers I know who aren’t lucky enough to have a spouse with a job that pays enough to support the family, supplement their income with second jobs, summer jobs…in general, really crappy jobs.   Teachers who’ve been teaching over fifteen years (if they’ve survived that long), make a better wage, but still nothing like any other professional who’s been in their job as long.

But I digress.

Because, as a post I saw on Facebook this last week put it, “Teachers aren’t in it for the income, they’re in it for the outcome.”

No, it’s not the income, because if that was the issue I’d have given up on the dream a looong time ago, and hubby never would have started.

It’s the lack of respect.  It’s the open derision.  It’s the fact that open season has been declared on teachers, and most people don’t seem to have a problem with it.

How do I know that?  Well, one big clue is that we keep electing and re-electing people who have consistently placed education at the bottom of the budget priority list.

Another big clue is that while it was distressingly easy to pull up lots and lots of these comments, the majority of rebuttals were from…teachers.  Teachers are the new favorite scapegoat for problems in our educational system and shortfalls in state budgets. 

Not parents who fail to instill a sense of personal responsibility.  Not politicians who cut funding to the bone, so that teachers (including my husband) have to try to find a way to pay for supplies out of their own pockets.  Not budget priorities that make sure administrators go to really awesome meetings in resort towns, while science teachers use re-covered text books that were inaccurate when they were first printed…fifteen-plus years ago. 

There were a fair number of people who were willing to allow that teachers were, well, a necessary evil.  But the caveat to that was, “I don’t want my taxes to go up.”

The other comment I’ve seen a fair bit of, is the, “I don’t have kids, so why should I pay to educate other people’s kids?”

(By the way, the simple answer to that is: Do you think it MIGHT possibly be a good idea for that nurse to understand the difference between .10 cc’s and 1.0 cc’s?  Unless of course, you’re not planning on needing a nurse…ever.  Or a doctor.  Or pretty much any other profession that requires a working knowledge of science, math, the English language, or basic social studies – you know like, accountants, lawyers, firefighters, dentists, etc.)

So.

How bad do I want the dream?

How bad does my husband want to keep the dream?

Bad enough?  I don’t know.

Do you care if another teacher bites the dust?  Or never steps into the ring in the first place?

Do your family and friends and neighbors care?

Because I can’t hear you.

As Edmund Burke pointed out, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

All Cooped Up!

As you may remember, a while back I posted that we were getting ready to get chickens.  If you missed it, or need a refresher, just click HERE !

At any rate, we spent last weekend finishing up the chicken coop.  Foolishly, I thought the hardest part was done: making the base and the basic structure of the coop.  I had completely underestimated the aggravation involved in attaching doors that weren't square to a structure that wasn't square.

I also completely underestimated a reciprocating saw's usefulness as a dental tool.

Specifically, it can rattle the fillings right out of your teeth.  Good to know.

Also, when attempting to use a reciprocating saw to cut plywood that's balanced on two milk crates, if you have not braced it appropriately it will bounce all over, cut the crap out of everything EXCEPT what you intended to cut, and threaten to remove several of your hubby's digits.  Which he won't appreciate, by the way.

We've got a few little housekeeping details we need to take care of (like nesting boxes, for one), but we are basically ready for chickens!  Between now and the end of March we're going to finish up those little details, and then...we're buying chickens!

Here it is - the ugliest chicken coop in North Carolina!

Persephone's Hope

This post is a continuation of Persephone's Tears - you may want to pop back and read that story first!

Anise climbed out of the shaft carefully, pulling the heavy skid up behind her.  The water beginning to flow in through the opening helped the skid glide more easily over the loose rock.  If she’d taken any longer in the shaft, she would have been forced to leave it behind.

Once she was clear of the rocky coast, the skid moved freely on the ever-present red sand that covered most of Persephone.  She made a wide circle to approach the mining camp from the south.  It wasn’t likely that any of her fellow miners would be interested in the natural shafts that dotted the coast, but there was no sense in taking that chance.

Anise could feel the small packet she’d placed those three precious Tears in pressing against the underside of her breast as she walked.  She needed to get into town, to give the stones directly to the government assayer. The assayer was a construct—a robot designed to look enough like a human to make people comfortable dealing with it.  It was incapable of cheating or giving short value to a find, and the credit was uploaded to the government network immediately.  Her indenture would be paid the moment the transaction was completed.

“Hey girlie!  You gonna skip getting’ paid today?”  The rough voice sounded in her ear, and Anise had to fight to keep her hand from checking the hidden packet.

“Not a chance, Piggen.  I figure I got enough for a bowl of soup,” she replied calmly, turning toward the assayer’s tent.  The man lounging inside would have tested the four-hundred pound weight limit on her skid.  Bathing facilities were in short supply out in the mining camps, but Piggen was filthy even by their standards.

“Ha!  We’ll see about that!”  His thick hands made quick work of the haul in the skid, sorting the contents by relative value according to the current market.

Anise struggled to hold her tongue when she saw him place several stones of moderate value in the lower value bins. Unlike the miners, Piggen wasn’t there to work off a debt.  Rumor had it he’d been given a life sentence (for what wasn’t known), and he was serving it out on Persephone.  One thing was certain, if he wasn’t getting off Persephone, neither was anyone else.  Not one miner in their camp had ever managed to earn enough to go home on Piggen’s assays.

When he handed her just enough credits to buy a ration bar—the cheapest food option offered to the miners, and despised for its awful taste—the look in his eye dared her to complain about the short value he’d given her find.

“Thanks, Piggen!” she chirped with false cheer, and had the pleasure of seeing a flash of confusion cross his flushed face.

“No doubt about it,” she thought as she dragged the skid to her tiny tent at the edge of camp.  “Gotta find a way into town if I want to go home.”

This post is in response to a prompt from Write On Edge to write about an Anti-Hero.  I liked Anise when I wrote about her the first time, and I decided that she really needed an Anti-Hero.  Thanks for stopping in to read, and please leave a comment below!

Devil With A Blue Dress

Picasso - Girl In The Mirror

One of my best friends was getting married, and I needed a dress, so I bundled up my baby boy and went down to K-Mart to find one.

I'd been pregnant for approximately forever, and I still had the extra roundness from that in addition to the excess weight I typically carried.  My body felt alien...squishy and lumpy and ugly.  I loved being pregnant, and I loved being a mother, but I hated my body with a passion.

I browsed through the racks of dresses with the baby snoozing quietly in the car seat.  I wanted something pretty.  I wanted something flattering.

I wanted something that would make me skinny.

A blue dress with tiny white flowers caught my eye and I carried it and the car seat into the dressing room. The dress was pretty...it had tiny white buttons that ran down the front, and the back laced up to tighten the bodice without emphasizing the pooch my tummy still sported.  I was sold.

Getting dressed for the wedding, I felt good about what I saw in the mirror for the first time in a very long time.  Hubby and I loaded the ourselves and the baby into the car and headed over to meet a couple we were friends with.  They knew where the church was, and we didn't, so we were going to follow them.

I stayed in the car while hubby went to the door to let them know we were ready to go.  The baby was talking cheerfully in the back seat, bubbling and giggling about the toy swinging from the arm of his car seat.  I fussed with the buttons on the dress a little, pleased with that little detail.

Then the door to the house opened, and the couple came out.  The hubby, looking dashing in a gray suit, and the wife—the skinny wife with the perfect body—in my dress.  Only sixteen sizes smaller, and without the leftover baby pooch and big ass and flabby arms and flat hair and washed out complexion and bitten nails.

It was like a horrible before and after shot for one of those makeover shows...and I was the "before."

When we got to the church, I couldn’t make myself go into the sanctuary.  I couldn’t stand the thought of being compared to perfection when I was so far from it.

I missed the wedding.





This post is my response to a prompt from Write On Edge to write about a time when we compared ourselves unfavorably with someone else.  This is, unfortunately, something I know a lot about.  If it were an Olympic sport, I'm pretty sure I'd take the gold...or at least the silver.

I loved that blue dress, right up until I saw it on someone who was a size 2.  I never wore it again.  It didn't matter how many times I told myself it was stupid, every time I tried to put it on I got an image of that size 2 and compared it to my size 18 and took it right back off again.