Because I Can

This week I released my first manuscript upon the world - I have written a book about my experiences working in a retirement village. It is still being edited, and I may add a few more little bits and pieces, but the bulk of it is in place for the world to criticise enjoy see.

So, today you get to share one of the stories. I present to you: The Lifestyle Village, Chapter 4 - "I have a new job". The entire book, with several funnier stories (if you're interested) can be read online for free at http://www.authonomy.com/books/33488/the-lifestyle-village/read-book/#chapter.

I have a new job

I have a new job. It's working in the community kitchen of the retirement village where my aunt does the wages. Sorry, Lifestyle Village. I can't call it a retirement village. Those are for old people. It's a Lifestyle Village, which automatically makes 90-year-olds "not old". It's all about image. Or something.

 I have nothing to do with my aunt, which is good, since my mother and I nearly came to blows working together at her work... but I digress. I'm a combination kitchenhand/waitress. Go me. Actually, I like it. The weekend pay is better than I was getting in tech support for sitting at a desk and I bring home more leftover food than I could possibly eat. Free food rocks.

 I get to serve them all in the dining rooms. They're actually not a bad bunch at all. Most of them have all their marbles, albeit left over from 1972... the dinner table conversation can be quite amusing. On the weekend they had been discussing some actor from nineteen yickety two (I missed who) and that some movie of his had been on, and others were disappointed to have missed it on the tv. Enter our hero, Iris, who announced, "You're all welcome to come and watch it in my flat, I have it on Dee Vee Dee." Muttered discussion and awe as they all digested this new fangled news. I doubt many of them even have a VCR.

 The amputee lady, Doris, has more spunk than the rest of them combined. "Well if you're finished boasting," she said, "I'll have a boast too. I have a new stereo, and it's got a Woofer."

 This was met with gobstruck silence as they looked at each other in total ignorance. I had to leave the room to avoid laughing aloud. I listened from the kitchen. Finally one of them timidly asked the inevitable question.

 "What's a Woofer?"

 The discussion, of course, was all very serious, and they all learned about how it's important to emphasise the bass.





 Marlene is knitting me some bedsocks.

Winter

(Warning: Lame emo short story thingy follows. Definitely among the dregs of my work, but rather than leaving you all without a contribution, I'll post this to fill space.)

Is there an unwritten mantra, that declares we must find the beauty in winter?

Winter and its crystalline landscape. Icicles hanging from delicate tree branches, reflecting the brilliant sunshine. Streets and pavements with their sharp corners all buried under smooth drifts of snow, single flakes falling in a spectacular display, small figures in mittens making snowmen and laughing.

Did someone stare out the window at the horribly bitter and vicious cold for so long that they tried to find something nice about it? Did they stay inside near the fireplace for days on end until they forgot the feeling of the wind blowing deep into their bones?

The snow is here for so long each year, but there's one thing that makes me think of you. The rain falling onto the snow and melting it, sweeping it into slush, washing it into drains and across streets, the slippery mess of water reminds me of when you left. The rain was falling on that day, as we carefully stepped across the yard to say our goodbyes beside the waiting taxi. My hair clung to my face and you couldn't see the tears for all the splashes from above. You finally let go of my embrace and stepped back. And for long minutes you stood there like a statue, alone, apart, and unwilling to take that last step away from me, to fold yourself into the seat and be ushered away to your next destination.

I stood there and wondered, what if I stopped him from leaving?

Can I really be that selfish? I know you wanted to stay.

But I'd also known how things would be worse if you didn't return. And I had to content myself with hoping to see you again. One day. "One day" became months of waiting. Our conversations always centred on that "one day". Our dreams and plans all about that one day in the future where I wouldn't have to say goodbye.

It's raining onto the snow this morning. A few children tried to make a snowman and gave up in disgust. I've watched a lady at the bus stop, whose umbrella blew inside out as the water saturated her. Cars creep by infrequently, but when they do, it's only at a snail's pace. Their tyres splash filthy mush onto everything nearby. The scene is winter, and the cold and the snow, in all its dreary lack of glory.

But tomorrow, I'll be in your arms. Somehow, winter is beautiful.

Little Green Door

n.b. For this Fiction Challenge we had to write anything fictional in any form, including the words vessel, extinguish and market.

It's very interesting for me, who usually only writes when the universe moves me, to write fiction to a deadline. In fact, I questioned my ability to do it at all. I looked at the clock tonight once the children were in bed and I had spoken to a friend on the phone and saw that it was 9.30pm. I nearly didn't write this piece. I thought that I wouldn't have anywhere near enough time to throw anything together. But for a first draft I am over the moon with it. In fact, I think that I like it so much that I might keep working on it.
Yay for our blog and it pushing my boundaries!

Little Green Door

The terraces in Abercrombie Street sat back from the tree lined road upright and statuesque. Gabled windows like hooded eyes, glaring in judgement at the little wooden workman's cottages that dotted the street amongst them. The cottages sprawled, some of them shedding their splintered timbers into unkempt yards that were framed by small rusted cyclone-wired fences. Their size and disarray gave them the kind of hang-dog look of a condemned man. It was only a matter of time until they too would be transformed. They were vessels waiting to be filled with modular leather lounges, flat screen TV's and Laura Ashley linens. But only once they had been squared off, set right, extended, and painted from the same palettes as their superiors, in their pretty uniform party dresses.

Oh the new Newtown gentry knew how to extinguish character from a perfectly friendly little street, Bob thought, as he sat on his front verandah watching the women with prams parade up and down the footpath. He watched the sunlight play through the trees onto the path and spat a piece of orange pith into the long grass beside him, wiping the juice from his chin with his sleeve, swearing silently as it made its way into a shaving cut and stang smartly. That bloke from the real estate had come by again, said he had buyers for the house, a likely story! He wouldn't bloody sell it to them anyway, if that was what they were going to do with it. He stared at the house opposite,that no longer resembled the house it had once been. And if he sold more of them would move in too. No, he couldn't be responsible for more of those people in the street, or in the suburb for that matter. He didn't freakin care if the market was “red hot.” He thought of the real estate fella again and snorted audibly, though there was no one to hear him.

The woman across the road was coming out of the house with the florescent yellow door. The door had always been a bit of a mystery to Bob. He hated the poofy muted colours that “those people” in the street had painted their houses. But he hated that florescent door more. It just illustrated his point, weirdos...the lot of them.

Sara was in a hurry. She ushered the kids out the door and over to the car “chop chop”. The truth was that she was always in a hurry. From this to that, no time to think. Yet what did she really do? She wondered as she strapped Henry into his car seat. Crap....the registration papers, she thought, and told the boys that she just had to pop back into the house to grab something. She wasn't really thinking of anything other than retrieving the papers when she put the key in the lock and started to turn it. Then, as if she had not noticed it for the last 8 years, she suddenly realised that the door was still that disgusting, god-awful yellowy/green colour. She stopped, mid-turn with the key. It wasn't the colour so much that offended her, though that was what had annoyed her initially. No, what bothered her was that it was still that colour 8 years later, and all that that represented.