injaynesworld we are "Thankful for Mornings..."

Blessed are the mornings, for they are filled with such promise – Me

It’s hard for me to believe now that there was a time – long, long ago and far, far away – in the land known as “my youth,” when I was not a morning person.  I recall lying in bed looking at the clock, which might have read “10:15 a.m.,” and thinking, “Great.  It’s not even eleven yet.  I can go back to sleep.”  Which meant my “useful” day would start at about 1:00 and, during the winter months that would give me only about four hours of sunlight.  No wonder I was so cranky back then.  I was seriously Vitamin D deficient. 

The fact that I rarely got in before 2:00 a.m. in those days and that I currently live in a community that rolls up the proverbial sidewalks at eight should probably be mentioned.  The most raucous club in town closes at ten.  People here have cows and horses to feed in the morning.  

I love mornings, and if I don’t have to come down off my quiet, little hilltop, all the better.  The idea that a day is new and as yet unsullied appeals to me.  Morning is a frame of mind.  As long as I don’t take off my robe – even if it’s 3:00 in the afternoon – it’s still technically morning. Conversely, if I have someplace I need to be at 9:00 a.m., even if I’m home by 10:00, morning is lost.

I realize that I’m getting older.  I can see the “Exit” sign from here, so these days I’m happy just to wake up and find that I’m still alive. “Score!  Got another one!”  One hears about people unexpectedly dying in their sleep all the time and, while it sounds peaceful, it would seriously piss me off.  Let me have one more morning. 

Afternoons wear on me.  I’m tired by then and completely understand the Latin tradition of napping the afternoon away.  Have you noticed that people will say that they’re a “morning” person or a “night” person, but no ever one says, “Hey, me?  Yeah.  I’m an afternoon person.”   With apologies to the British and their penchant for afternoon tea, I’m of the belief that those hours are just there to fill the space between morning coffee and evening wine. 

Thanksgiving would be the exception, when the feasting in my world starts at around 3:00.  Even I would not want to wolf down turkey and sweet potatoes for breakfast and, after 6:00, such overindulgence will stay with me for the entire night, causing me to wake up feeling like crap and ruin the next morning.  So yeah, for one day a year, I’m an afternoon person.

Whatever time of day it is that you gather with loved ones, I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

injaynesworld it's "Daddy's Girl..."

Day 19 of Nancy Stohlman's "30 Days, 30 Stories" flash fiction writing challenge and the prompt is "my father."

My father waits at the curb, leaning against his ’56 Hudson, a Lucky Strike burning down to his calloused fingertips. 

Despite my mother’s protest, I wear my best dotted Swiss dress, my petticoat starched and stiff against my bare legs. 

He reaches inside the car, pounds twice on the horn. 

New black patent Mary Janes pinch my feet as I rush from the window to the front door, down the three steps from the porch and out to the sidewalk.  He tosses his cigarette to the ground and picks me up, his face like sandpaper against my own. 

“Well, aren’t you Miss Fancy Shmancy” he says.

I smell the whiskey on his breath, though it is barely noon, and I know we are not going to the promised zoo. 

injaynesworld it's "The Legacy..."

Pinched in a small, white box, wrapped in a sock, buried deep in her underwear drawer, the last gift her mother would give her lies in wait for those occasions when it is brought out from the darkness and slipped onto the daughter’s finger.

Cast with diamonds from the mother’s wedding ring out of a marriage born of duty, its memories best left in the past, and a single blue sapphire added at its center for her own birth, the ring bears decades of love and sacrifice, blessing and burden.   

The daughter’s hand sinks under its weight.

From the prompt “treasure” from Nancy Stohlman’s Flash Nano 30 Days 30 StoriesChallenge.

injaynesworld "A Thought or Two About the Election..."

Another election is behind us. Enjoy the relative peace for about another six months until the 2016 campaigns kick in. 

 

Yes, I voted. I’m of the opinion that if you don’t vote you can’t bitch about the results and God knows how I love to bitch.

Does it really matter who wins the Senate when the choice is so pathetic?  Republicans are evil, Democrats are spineless, and they’re all blowing Wall Street.

Republican supporters can gloat today, but they shouldn’t take the election results to mean that the majority of the country’s populace supports their anti-middle class, anti-minority, anti-woman agenda. The GOP won because the majority of our citizens either didn’t care about voting or were disenfranchised by new Republican-backed voting laws that made it impossible for them to do so. Not surprisingly, most of the disenfranchised were people of color. The good news is our brown brothers and sisters will soon outnumber you old, white bastards.

Then we have the people who consistently vote against their own best interests and wonder why their lives are shit:  Those who voted for Republican governors who have fought to prevent them from access to Medicaid. Pissing blood?  Good luck with that.  Those who voted for Walker in Wisconsin, despite his blatant assault on the middle-class, because why should teachers, fire and police have decent pensions after they’ve spent their lives serving an ungrateful public?  And what’s with those who voted for McConnell in Kentucky?  Has there ever been a bigger turd in the punch bowl? 

For those who believe this was a win for the “real patriots,” think again. The big winners were the international corporate interests that have no allegiance to flag or country, only to shareholders. You might as well pledge your allegiance to G.E’s corporate logo.

But now the fun begins. Remember all the whining by Democrats over Republican filibusters and obstructionism?  “Tit for Tat,” baby.  Say what you will about the Nixon years, but we had a Congress that actually worked together.  We’ll never see that again.  Not in my lifetime anyway.

For those of you who remember my older blog posts where I was so passionately political, that torchlight has gone out.  I’m just happy to live in California where sanity, for the most part, prevailed.