Behind Schedule

 It had taken so long to get here, now that the end was in sight Charlie could hardly contain his excitement. Patience, he thought to himself. You've waited this long, you can wait a few more minutes. 

The subway car slowed for another stop and as people got off and more people got on Charlie gave up his seat to a young mother with a toddler and a giant stroller loaded with shopping bags.

"Thank you," she said, relief in her eyes as she sat down and pulled her son into her lap. Keeping one hand on the stroller to keep it from completely blocking the aisle.

The train slowed again and Charlie smoothed down the from of his suit jacket in nervous anticipation. MacPherson Square said the barely audible voice over the loudspeaker. He would still have a few blocks to walk but it was a beautiful fall day, he would enjoy it.

Years of patience, planning and focus had culminated in him finally getting the job he'd wanted since childhood. Of course, today would be the day his car wouldn't start. Luckily, his habit of leaving time for any eventuality had come in handy. That and the Metro station a block from his new apartment.

The doors to the car opened and Charlie stood to the side to let a couple of ladies exit first. He was just about to step onto the platform himself when the third woman, stopped abruptly in front of him and whirled around.

"My portfolio!" she gasped bumping into him as she tried to get back into the car. The tangle of their side to side dance lasted just long enough for the doors to begin to close. Finally just pushing past him, the woman raced to the seat she'd just left and grabbed the well-worn black messenger bag from under the seat. "Crap," she said looking up and seeing the platform disappear as the train entered the tunnel.

"Did you miss your stop too?" She asked coming to stand beside Charlie next to the door.

"No thanks to you," he muttered glancing at his watch. He still had 10 minutes to get to work. He didn't like the thought of cutting it so close on his first day. But what could he do? He took a moment to look at the Metro Map to see how far away the next stop would leave him.

"I'm sorry," the woman smiled up at him flashing him a smile, complete with dimples and a happy green eyes. "We can just get off at the next stop, its only a few blocks out of your way I'm sure."

Charlie nodded, before he could orient himself using the map, the train came to a stop and the doors opened. The woman grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the car. "Come on, I'll take you back to the square. I'm Erin, by the way. Where are you headed?"


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This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Kayla, who gave me this prompt: write about a person who does everything "by the book". I challenged Hannah with the prompt: I've never done anything like this before. Are you sure it's safe?

I'm not thrilled with my work, but I want to keep working on these two characters. 

The Favor

Her favorite color was lavender. But she ruthlessly shoved past her new purple top in search of the drab olive green blouse her mother had given her for her last birthday. She was going to the ballroom tonight, but she wasn’t going to have fun or try to hard. 

She owed Dan a favor and this was how he chose to collect. By making her accompany him to the Friday night swing dance class so he could be assured of having a partner once the open dancing started. It didn’t hurt that she’s been the one to introduce him to the hobby so she knew what she was doing.

She was scraping her long dark brown hair into a messy ponytail when her doorbell rang setting her dog, Milo off on a cacophony of delighted barking as he raced to the front door.

“You ready?” Dan asked.

“Give me five minutes,” she said opening the door and walking back to her bedroom. She smudged on the barest hint of black eyeliner and a single coat of mascara before grabbing a sheer rose colored lip-gloss from her basket of makeup and slipping it into her back pocket along with her driver’s license and cash.

She paused before leaving her room to take a couple of calming breaths. It was ok. She was allowed to go out and have fun.

“Hurry it up,” Dan called. “I don’t want to miss the lesson.”

“You know I can give you a quick refresher when we get there?” she reminded him as she came down the hall.

Dan was still standing by the door, Milo sitting at his feet begging for a good pet. “Yes, but I already know you. I want to meet some new ladies and the partner switching during the lesson is the easiest way the break the ice.”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed her keys from the table by the door. “Be good Milo, I love you!” she said with a quick couple of pats before leading Dan out the door.

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Thanks to Alison and the II Writing Challenge for a truly inspiring prompt: Her favorite color was lavender. I think I may have the beginning of something pretty good here.

Be sure to swing by Debra's blog to see how she answered my challenge.

Go fish.

Growing up, my family took a lot of road trips. We were pretty poor. But every couple of years there was a summer road trip to somewhere. Montana, Missouri, Victoria Canada, Texas... and all stops in between.

On the Montana trips we would often stop to fish in one of the many creeks or rivers we passed. My brother and I each had our own poles and creels and I wasn't the least bit squeamish about impaling an earthworm or cricket on my hook. My dad would give my brother and I our little cans of bait and send us off. Never out of shouting distance, but we had quite a bit of freedom for 7 and 9-year-olds.

I don't remember where we were on this particular day, but I remember finding my spot up river from my mom on a big outcropping of rocks. An older woman was fishing from the other end of the rocks and I being a social (chatterbox) little kid quickly struck up a conversation with her.

This lady had a bunch of fish dangling from her line (whatever its called when you sting a fish by its gills and let it float in the water?) and I was impressed. I don't remember a word of our conversation but I do remember what happened after she caught a fish.

"I don't like them to suffer," she said before grabbing the trout (most likely) by the tail and whacking its head on the rock next to her. I was too young to understand the irony of the situation and I don't remember any of our conversation after that. But I do remember my mom calling me over and making me fish beside her the rest of the day.

Now that I am an aunt (to the cutest little boy in the world) I can't imagine letting him wander around in the wilderness talking to strangers, but it was a far different time back then. Wasn't it? Then again there was a weird lady bashing fish to death in front of little girls...

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Thanks Feisty Cat for the inspiration as part of the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. Want to join in the fun?

Day 14 - 11 pounds gone!

Yes you read that right. 11 pounds lost in two weeks!

It probably would have been more but around day 9 I has a success-fueled moment of bravado that resulted in some terrible eating choices and I kind of gained back four pounds. Lesson learned: cheating "just a little" is still cheating. Since then I've been meticulous about tracking my food intake over on The Daily Plate and have managed to end each day knowing that I did the best I could.

I have stuck to my ban on refined sugar, caffeine and simple carbs. I still use too much fruit in my juices so I'm probably getting a little more sugar than I should. I have visitors in town from Missouri this weekend so I know there will be ample opportunity to slip-up so I really need to concentrate on the end result and making healthy choices.

We're headed to the Jelly Belly Factory today and are going to drive into San Francisco tomorrow so wish me luck!

Day 7 - 9lbs down!

Yes you read that right. I've lost 9 pounds since I started my juice fast last Saturday. I probably could have lost even more if not for a few hiccups along the way.

I didn't get to my current weight by eating healthy so it should come as no surprise that I leaned off the wagon a couple of times this first week. I'd like to think that even though I was eating food instead of drinking the juice, I made OK choices. Wednesday night I broke down and had Chipotle but stayed away from the carbs, and last night I had In-N-Out, again staying away from the carbs. I'm not proud of my choices this week. I kind of got into the mindset that I could ease up the restrictions a little until Saturday (tomorrow) since I would be going all juice then.

I have to remind myself over and over that I am the boss. Not my cravings, not the commercials telling me to order a pizza, not my friends who are all going out to eat, ME. I'm kind of a crappy boss.

Whatever.

I've got to not beat myself up, savor the tiny triumphs and just keep moving forward. Let me tell you it was hard this morning. I got yelled at by my Dad/Boss at work and it was all I could do to keep from pulling into the McDonalds drive-thru for some greasy self-medication. I was able to resist, thank you Jesus!

As a reminder my Tiny Triumphs of the Week:

• -9lbs
• No sugar or gluten for 7 days
• Was able to resist temptation even under stress

Don't you touch my iPhone!

It's that time again! Time for the Indie Ink Writing Challenge! This week mine comes from Greg and id kind of kicked my butt:

The coming technological singularity.


I LOVE my technology. I was the first of my friends to get a cellphone, DVD player, and TiVo and assorted other little gadgets and things designed to make life easier. So this make what I am about to say seem a little crazy.

I wish the internet had never been invented.

I know, I know, with out the internet you wouldn't be reading this right now. I wouldn't have met some amazing people and learned so many things. I would also be EXTREMELY bored at work.

A few months ago a customer came in (an old man) and he asked to use my desk phone to call his office. He didn't have a cell phone. While my first thought was, "Who in this day and age doesn't have a cell phone?" My very next thought was, "That must be nice..."

I have an iPhone. As soon as Verizon started offering them (and my renewal time came up) I had it in my hot little hands. I love it. I love it so much I would marry it. But at the same time I kind of loathe it. I learned from previously having a Droid and several Blackberries that I was addicted to the little chime that told me I had new mail or text messages. In the movie theater I would keep my phone at the very top of my purse so I could glance down to see if the message indicator light was blinking.

When I got the iPhone I immediately disabled all alerts except for text messages. Not just to save battery power but the keep myself from engaging with my phone every time spam came in to one of my three (yes three) email addresses. It has made a huge difference in a lot of ways. I can carry on a conversation with out rudely checking my email. I can watch a TV show or movie with out getting distracted by someone's comment on Facebook. Tiny things, but I'll take them.

So what do I think about the coming technological singularity? I think it's bad, bad news. Not that computers will grow to overtake humans or anything like that. I just think technology may be getting a little too big for it's britches.

Check out Greg's response to my prompt. It's kind of weird that I answered his and he answered mine...

Day 4 - Stumbling but recoverable.

Yesterday ended on a "meh" note.

I stopped at Costco after work to load up on some more fruits and veggies and I was starving! I had to walk through the bakery department to get to the produce and thank you God they didn't have any chocolate cake on display or I might have gone home with one.

Instead I picked up a flat of beefsteak tomatoes, a package on mini European cucumbers, 5 lbs of strawberries, 2 personal sized watermelon and a bag of clementines. I also bought a rotisserie chicken, roasted turkey lunch meat and a big bag of raw almonds (more on that later).

It was a fierce battle in my head as I walked to the front of the warehouse. The devil on my shoulder telling me to go ahead and have a giant slice of pizza. The angel reasoning that I was almost at the end of day 3 and hadn't had any caffeine, sugar, flour or fat. I'd also made the mistake of slurping down my 64 ounces of juice before 1 pm and by 4 pm I was STARVING.

But I did it! I was able to resist the dastardly allure of melty-cheesy-goodness poison. I may have ripped open that package of turkey and wolfed down a slice before I made it out of the parking lot...

OK back to the part where I bought the meat and almonds. No, it is not on my "plan" but I also didn't properly for this endeavor and went from eating everything in sight, including blue-cheese fries the night before I began, to a raw, protein-free diet in a matter of about 10 hours.

I'm giving myself this week to juice all my meals, but supplement with pure protein in the form of chicken, turkey and almonds for the really tough moments. My goal will be to be all-juice by next week.

Now onto today. I feel great. I had a 6 am Bible study meeting so I had to get up at 4:45am in order to get in my usual getting ready routine as well as juice. I didn't even hit snooze. I was up and showering with in a minute of my alarm going off. I've had a bit of a mid-morning lull where my head feels a bit foggy but it probably means I just need to have some more juice. I'm really trying to parse it out to last me all day. And in between 16oz cups of juice I'm drinking the same cups full of water, at least one if not two. I'm spending a lot of time in the bathroom, but its all good because it means I'm getting cleaned out. Right?

P.S. See the link to my new Tumblr account on the right to get my juice recipes.

P.P.S I slipped and had the last remaining Eggo waffle last night. I should have thrown them out before this all began. But I beat myself up enough about it last night. Today is a new day and I'm going to move on.