Sharing My World 84

Share Your World II 11-26-18

If your five year old self woke up in your current body, what would happen, what would you say?

I would probably look at my hands and think, wow, I have Grandma skin! Five year olds don’t normally look in a mirror unless they are carefully applying bright red lipstick in a circle from forehead to cheeks to chin just before leaving for church. Then I would be super excited that I could reach things without standing on tip toes. And finally I would find my mom and say “Hey! Look at me! NOW am I big enough to go to school?”

What is a relationship deal breaker for you? Whether you are talking about a romantic one, a friendship or a related to sort of relationship?

This might seem like an odd answer coming from someone who thinks she can tell very credible lies, but I don’t want to be lied to. Or taken advantage of. Or told to quit ending sentences with prepositions. I lie only if it keeps me out of trouble and doesn’t hurt or incriminate anyone else. So that’s a discriminating kind of fib teller I guess. As if there are degrees of wrongness about not telling the truth. Maybe I’m lied to all the time and have no clue, but if I see through a lie I’m doubly offended that someone thinks I’m dumb enough to believe them.

Is there something out there, a thought, an idea, a current event, or a fear that you find deeply unsettling?

Global warming and what sort of horrible world we’re leaving for our grandchildren. Consumerism could kill us all. We can blame the big environment destroyers all we like, but we are the idiots demanding the crap they produce.

And one that is a bit whimsical:

If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?

Having spent a large portion of my life trying to convince myself that what other people think is not my problem, not important, and none of my business, I am at a complete loss to answer this. So I asked W the question. Surprisingly he was pretty prompt coming up with an answer. He would assume some secret from my past had finally come to light. He used the word “clandestine”. He told me when I say I’m going to Michael’s for yarn, I could be doing something else entirely. How clever he must think I am to come back home in an hour or less with a Michael’s bag full of yarn to cover my tracks. Woman of mystery. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known someone or even lived with them, they can still surprise you. In our case, I guess that works both ways.

Finally

What were you grateful for this week? Something that brought some joy into your world?

My new keyboard for my IPad! Although my fat forgetful fingers are getting better, there has been a lot of fumbling and stumbling and wearing out of the delete button while I get back to what I think of as normal typing with all ten fingers. Its already getting better. Maybe blogging will start to feel like less of a pain again. You lucky blog readers.

The other thing giving me joy is crocheting. Like everything else, I go on binges. First it was slippers, then rugs that look like braided, and now suddenly it’s hats because I found a pattern. And bought a Pom-pom maker on one of my fake trips to the store. Life is good. And for all you know, I’m not talking about my secret one when I say that.

Liar Liar

She told me lies – hundreds of them – all meant to manipulate and control. A liars mistake? Embellishing the tangled web and assuming the others gullibility.  I never let it touch me, though.  I’m a liar too. I know exactly how it works.

No Looking Back

 

He leans over the balcony railing with her note in one hand and his half smoked cigarette in the other.  Can’t stay, sorry love, pressing matters, no point waking you up to say goodbye… So many lies.  He wants to believe them and doesn’t know why.

The paper crumples in his fist, drops to the patio stone.  He watches it skitter and dance in the morning breeze.  Imagines her leaving, how she walked, the set of her shoulders, the swing of her hair.  Gone, like that.  With no looking back.

He slowly exhales.  His head hurts.  So does his heart.

**********

Light and Shade Challenge – 100 words inspired by the above picture and this quote:  She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake – Margot Asquith

Dear Frankie

Last night I watched the movie “Dear Frankie”, a 2004 British drama available on Netflix.  That was the easy part of the “watch a movie” challenge for today – and the hard part is writing about it without giving away the entire plot.  So SPOILER ALERT!  I’m just going to go ahead and give away the entire plot.

Frankie is a 9-year-old deaf and mostly mute boy on the run with his mother (Lizzie) and his grandmother from an abusive father.  Frankie doesn’t know what they’re running from or the truth about his psychotic father (whose physical abuse is what caused Frankie’s hearing loss as a baby) (but we don’t find that out until much later) because his mother has been encouraging him to write letters to his absent da (Davey) and fabricating letters back in which the dad describes his exciting life at sea.

Well, no good can come of this kind of deception in the end, right?   Frankie becomes convinced that his father is taking a break from his exotic adventures and making his way back home to Glasgow, and that he is going to surprise them with a visit.  So Lizzie must make a tough decision: find another way to pacify Frankie’s desire to meet his father or tell him the awful truth.

With the help of a new friend Lizzie concocts a scheme to hire a man to impersonate Davey, and in walks Gerard Butler.  Well.  Who doesn’t love Gerard Butler??  I can’t think of anyone.  Lizzie gives him the letters after he accepts what she can pay him and he agrees to spend a day with Frankie.  Then both of them decide to spend a second day together, this time including Lizzie. It’s awkward, fun, strange, and a little heart wrenching in places.

When Gerard at the end of day two asks her how her husband could ever have left the two of them, Lizzie explains that she is the one who ran away and tells him the reasons why.  Lizzie has all kinds of self doubt about her decisions, saying she has kept up the letter writing thing because it’s a selfish way for her to ‘hear her sons voice’,  but Gerard says he thinks she’s a great mother for protecting her son.  Lizzie and Gerard share a kiss goodbye, and when he walks off down the street (with Frankie waving from an upstairs window) Lizzie discovers he has returned her payment envelopes, slipped into her jacket pocket.

Then Lizzie learns that the real Davey is terminally ill, agrees to visit him, finds out he’s still a complete asshole even though he’s dying and what’s the point, but she has a good enough heart to give him a picture of his son and a note and a picture that Frankie has made for him after being told how ill he is.  The real Davey dies.

Frankie turns out to be a lot smarter than the adults have given him credit for with all their deceit and little white lies.  He writes another letter, this time with the things he says letting his mother know that he has been aware for awhile that the stranger was not his real dad.  He lets them both know he will help his mother to get over her sadness, talks about school and his friends and football, and then closes the letter by saying he hopes the stranger will visit them again sometime.

And that’s how it ends, with Lizzie and Frankie staring off into the sunset.  Well, not really.  They’re sitting at the end of a pier looking out to sea.

Now all you need is a trailer to fill in the blanks and you can say you’ve seen the whole thing since I’ve effectively done it all for you.  You’re welcome.  Watch a movie for me sometime.

For Cin’s Feb Challenge/Witchy Rambles

Three Things One More Time

I’m still slogging through a revsion process and came across the following  effort which seemed worth another look and a re-do.  Please feel free to copy the headings and fill in your own answers!  I have no idea where it came from in the first place – probably one of those annoying chain type e-mails.

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:

1. Lin

2. Mom

3. GrandmaGrandmaGrandma!

THREE THINGS YOU DON’T EVER WANT TO BE CALLED:

1.  Anything with a swear word in it

2.  Lazy and selfish (the truth hurts)

3.  Bellatrix Lestrange

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:

1. My razor sharp wit

2. My incredible beauty

3. My blatant sarcasm

THREE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:

1. My inability to function as a human being without the aid of coffee

2. How much I enjoy doing nothing

3. The shape of my right foot – is that a BUNION for the love of God??

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:

1. Scottish

2. Irish

3. German, English, Russian, who really knows

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:

1. The Ocean

2. Wild Animals

3. Severe Weather

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:

1. Coffee

2. My computer

3. More coffee

THREE OF YOUR FAVOURITE COLORS

1. Dark Red

2. Medium Red

3. Light red

THREE THINGS YOU VALUE IN A RELATIONSHIP:

1. Laughter

2. Respect

3. Separate vacations

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order):

1. I would like to go back to Scotland some day

2. I love African decor

3. I’d like to drown at sea

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:

1. Reading

2. Writing

3. Reading something else

THREE THINGS YOU HAVE WISHED FOR

1. Rain

2. World peace

3. To win the lottery

THREE CAREERS YOU HAVE CONSIDERED

1. Brain Surgeon

2. Rocket Scientist

3. Optician

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO:

1. Home

2. To sleep

3. To heaven

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:

1. Live

2. Make the world a better safer happier place

3. Make W.’s life hell. (oh – I thought we were still doing the truth/truth/lie thing 😉

The No Great Shakes Chronicles

Confessions of an Ordinary Life

Chapter One

This is not a compilation of memories from a lifetime filled with lofty aspirations and brilliant accomplishments. I find that type of person rather hard to like, and much prefer the unpretentious and the down-to-earth. Unless of course they reach the stage where they’re completely unambitious and devoid of any kind of passion. Apathy is a terrible thing. Better to be merely lackadaisical. It just sounds better.

As a baby I liked to sleep. Apparently people remarked on it to my mother so much that she began to wonder if I was normal as she jumped to her own defense by vowing that I had not been drugged in any way. I still like to sleep –  it’s one of my favourite things to do. Perhaps in another life I was a cat. I can nap anywhere. If there is ever a sleep marathon, I like to think I would be a serious contender.

As a child I liked to tell lies, the bigger and more ridiculous the better. I was strongly advised to tell the truth. I knew the difference, but the truth was way less fun. When my daughter showed a similar inclination to exaggerate we called her interesting ramblings ‘hard to believe stories.’ Perhaps I’ll throw a few of those into this book just to see if you’re paying attention.

As a teenager I was Miss Goody Two Shoes, secretly longing to be wild. I made some mistakes, I fell in and out of love, I tried to decide who I wanted to be. I got married and had children and worked hard and lost myself, being so many things to so many people for so long that now I’m afraid I still don’t know exactly who I am. Sometimes I think it’s rather unfortunate that I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m just too lazy to care whether I ever figure that out.

As an adult, mother of grown children with families of their own who call me grandma, I’m thinking maybe this is one of the best people I’ve ever been, one of the most delightful roles I’ve ever played.

I’ve been awake for years and years! It’s time to put my memoirs together and pass them along before I forget everything. Maybe someone else can define this ordinary life and discover what it meant to be me, before I fall asleep again forever.