MissMeliss: Escribition

meanderings and musings from MissMeliss

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Don't be paraskevidekatriaphobic! MissMeliss is turning 40 and the party is on Friday, August 13th from 7:30 PM - whenever. For more information, see the flyer (linked here). MissMeliss loves presents as much as anyone else does, but doesn't believe anyone should feel obligated. For inspiration, see her Amazon Wishlist, or consider making a cash donation to Shelter2Rescue.

September 2010
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Miscellaneous Updates

Posted By MissMeliss on September 3, 2010

I haven’t blogged in a week. Here’s why:

  • I’ve had to draw a virtual hot tub cover – the hard kind that hinges in the middle like a treasure box, not the soft bubble-wrap pool-cover type – over my blogging this past week. Nothing’s wrong, I’ve just been in a quiet mood, and dealing with some personal stuff. Medical stuff – no, I’m not dying – and no, I’m not blogging about it. Some things are just not for public consumption.
  • I learned that Amazon has amazing prices on Capstar flea pills. They arrived today. The dogs are not itching…but I am.
  • I skipped Bible study to spend a quiet evening at home, because I knew it would be a stormy night, and Fuzzy was in Utah. I was not disappointed. My net wasn’t working, so I curled up with a Top Chef marathon and lovely tea.
  • Yesterday was a challenging day: Max was in a mood, all the dogs were freaked by a pre-dawn thunder storm, and around 9:00 PM, just when I’d finally gotten them all settled, the doorbell short-circuited, causing a minor electrical burn, and making the house smell like toasted band-aids. It was not fun.

Here’s hoping next week is a little more balanced.

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Musical Monday: Steve Earle, “This City”

Posted By MissMeliss on August 30, 2010

Since yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I knew I wanted today’s Musical Monday to be some kind of memorial. Since I’m a fan of the show Treme, I’m managing to combine my love of the show with my “anniversary plan .” Today’s video? Steve Earle singing the song he wrote for the first season finale of Treme, which episode, he says, they were filming at the time of the BP oil spill. Oh, and just to make it even more special, the venue is the Stone Pony, in Asbury Park, NJ.

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Smells Like Firestone

Posted By MissMeliss on August 25, 2010

Tire Swing

Tire Swing | Source: Morguefile.com | Click to embiggen

CafeWriting asks us this month to write about childhood using the picture above as a source of inspiration.

* * * * *

I’ve written before about the scent of my mother’s straight pins, but there’s another childhood aroma that I often remember: the scent of a sun-warmed rubber tire.

Now, I’m not one to rhapsodize about auto parts, and I never crawled around parking lots sniffing wheels, but as a small girl, I did have a tire swing suspended from one of the trees in my grandparents’ back yard. My grandfather had created it for me, either because I’d asked or because he held some unspoken belief that all children should experience the joy of spinning on an old tire until they are completely nauseous. Either way, countless hours of swinging, spinning, and sometimes just sitting, ensued.

There are two ways to make a tire swing. You can have a horizontal surface, suspended by three anchor points, or you can have a vertical tire, with loops of rope at only one point. The former is safer, and commonly used in public playgrounds; the latter is more authentic, and more fun. On a vertical tire swing, you can stick your legs through the hold, and let the hollow rubber rims cradle your buttocks, or you can balance on those self-same rims, or you can climb up to the top and straddle the rope. The first method lets you swing higher and farther, but you have to have a good grip – long arms help, too. The second can be ill-advised if you’re one who likes to spin. The third is not always comfortable – wrapping the rope in something soft helps some – but gives you an excellent vantage point and decent swing-ability.

One thing that is constant across all tire swings, however, is the smell of the rubber. When it’s cold, a rubber tire has a faintly metallic note, but when the sun has warmed up the treads, not only is the rubber slightly softer, but it has a scent that combines a sweet earthiness with a sharp chemical tone. It should be gross. It should be disgusting. It should be completely unappealing, and yet it is none of those things. Somehow, maybe because the rubber fumes make you a little high, or maybe not, it’s a comforting aroma.

I was always perfectly content to curl up with a book and read away an afternoon – I still am – but when I had my swing, I found myself hanging from it and staring up at the sky, diffused by the dappling of green leaves. I was in a bubble of my own imagination, surrounded by grass and trees and honeysuckle, of singing birds, and my grandmother’s singing as she hung clothes on the line. I smelled the earth, the grass, and the sweet summer smell of Firestone.

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Miscellaneous Musings

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

I’ve been a fan of vampire literature (with the exception of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series) ever since I can remember, and sometimes I write my own vampire stories. When I’m watching television, while I generally fast forward through the commercials (we DVR everything), sometimes I’ll stumble across one that will make me think, “Oh, that would be an interesting plot point.”

The ads for security cameras, for example, always make me consider: some vampire lore says vampires can’t be photographed, but is that only on old-style cameras that use silver nitrate, or does that cross over to the digital age? What about video. The Charlaine Harris vampires can use mirrors (and apparently webcams) so perhaps it depends on the specific fictional world.

Thoughts like these sometimes lead down dangerous fanfic paths…I’m dying (no pun intended) to – just for fun – pop Freddy Kreuger onto the U.S.S. Enterprise (any iteration) and see what happens. I once wrote a Buffy/Data crossover ficlet. It was short, sweet, and kind of cute, but it got a musing out of my system. Fanfic can be silly, of course, but sometimes it’s good for getting creative juices flowing. (Speaking of which, I saw a flyer at my local Starbucks advertising auditions for Hogwarts: the Musical.

When I was pitching my still-unfinished novel, one of the agents challenged me on the concept of coffee. “Do you really think we’ll still be drinking coffee, or going to cafes in a hundred years?” he asked. I keep coming back to this, and the answer is always yes. Not just because we’re addicted, but because coffee has been consumed for centuries, and became common even before the whole “penny university” society. I just don’t see that ending any time soon.

Of course, I still haven’t figured out if vampires get nervous when they drink from caffeine addicts.

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100 Words: Bottleneck

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

bottleneck

Blue Bottle

I was shopping with my mother when I saw it: the slender tapered neck, the almost oval body, the rich blue color of the glass.

My favorite wines are, in order of lightest to darkest, chardonnay, white zinfandel, and syrah. I’m not a major fan of sparkling wines, though I had harbored the fantasy of greeting my 40th birthday with a toast of Veuve Clicquot. This bottle held something sparkling, fruity, and Italian – chances are I would have enjoyed it.

But it was the bottle that tried it’s best to seduce me.

Blue glass is the best of them all.

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Hardware

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

I have a thing for hardware stores. Oh, not the big-box hardware warehouses where the staff, when you can find them, are condescending at best and often veer into the completely useless. The hardware stores I love are the smaller, neighborhood types. Sometimes they’re ACE franchises, sometimes not, but they all have a sort of ordered chaos that manages to combine rugged masculinity with homey coziness.

When Fuzzy and I lived in San Jose, I loved visiting the local Orchard Supply Hardware. I loved walking up and down the aisles of Kohler toilets and faucets and planning elegant bathrooms I’d never have. I loved the sweet smell of fresh-cut lumber and the tangy metallic scent of newly made keys. I love the rows of tubes and pipes and the racks of tools with rubber and wooden handles and the power tools in their bright yellow and black.

My favorite department, however, is the garden section. I’ve been known to spend hundreds of dollars in the garden department of hardware stores. I’ve bought window boxes, wine barrels, and color bowls, and I’ve purchased potting soil, cushy-handled trowels, and more garden hose than I care to catalogue. I’ve brought home patio furniture, grills, and once, when I was prepping a house for sale, and even though I knew my grandmother would have been rolling over in her grave had she not been cremated, I even purchased bags of sea glass.

I’m not sure if my love of hardware stores is related to the crazy mish-mash of stuff they sell, or the memories I have of doing projects with my grandfather, but every time I go into one, even when I can’t find what I meant to buy, I leave with a secret smile.

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Contact

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

On Monday, I had to change my cell phone number. Someone had either accidentally or intentionally submitted it in a request form for one of those online college websites, and like a hydra re-growing two heads for every one that got cut off, every time I told one school that no, I hadn’t asked for information, and no, I didn’t WANT information, and PLEASE stop calling, two more would.

AT&T was very apologetic, but was unable to block anything, and I was going CRAZY, so we changed my number, for which, since I’ve been a customer since 1998 the charge was NOTHING.

Tomorrow evening, our home number will also change as we kill the landline and switch to digital VOIP phone service through UVerse.

My email address, however, remains the same.

Interestingly, neither of the two AT&T folks I spoke to have UVerse at home – though both want it – as it hasn’t been rolled out in their areas.

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I can get it for you…

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

Watching DVD’s of Gilmore Girls this week, in the cool solitude of my bedroom, I was reminded of when I was seven and eight and my mother owned a gift store in a quaint mountain town.

I remember playing with samples of wooden toys and country crockery brought for her opinion by a wholesale rep from whatever supplier. I remember pricing cute spoons, and wishing I had my OWN name carved from a single block of wood.

I remember, later, getting my name-carving, and the sweet smell of fresh wood. Sweet and gritty, and somehow warm, like sawdust but more, like a pine fire but less.

Whenever someone says, “I can get it for you wholesale,” I grin.

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100 Words: Summer Shower

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

We stood on the deck, and watched the cloud formations form a ring around the moon, and listened as the sound of sprinklers was replaced by the soft murmur of thunder in the distance.

Rain came softly at first, teasing the ground – and our skin – with eskimo and butterfly kisses.

The insect voices stilled.

A current of cool breeze drifted through the sticky, steamy day.

The sky grew black as twilight and opened up into a deluge of cool water that sent us to hover inside the open patio door.

Like a bucket slowly emptying, the shower diminished.

Sunshine returned.

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Just checking in

Posted By MissMeliss on August 19, 2010

It’s Thursday afternoon, and my mother’s plane takes off in about twenty minutes. We dropped her off about 90 minutes ago, of course, and I helped her get her bags tagged and checked, and walked her to security. I’m spoiled because Fuzzy has elite status, so we generally get upgraded to first class and never have to pay for checked luggage. I think it’s ridiculous to base the amount of luggage one is allowed to check for free on the amount someone paid for their ticket. Instead it should be based on destination and duration of trip. Flying to California from New York for ten days should get you two free bags, while an overnight in NOLA when you live in Dallas or Atlanta should not.

* * * * *

My mother brought her aubergine Dell laptop with her on this trip, sat at the round table in the breakfast nook, and played games at full volume. A lot. It’s amusing to watch her at the computer because she talks to it, the way some people talk to their television sets. (No, it doesn’t answer.) Almost as loud as her one-sided conversation, and the sound of JewelQuest being played in tournament mode, is her typing. To this day she’s a two-finger typist, and she bangs on the keys as if they were mounted to an old Underwood typewriter rather than a printed circuit board. If they had a version of student laptop insurance for mothers who abuse keyboards, I’d buy it for her. If they had a fluffy keyboard cover that diminished the impact of fingers upon keys, and the sound of it, I’d totally buy it for her in seven colors, including metallic gold and the same purple of the laptop itself.

* * * * *

Two days before my mother arrived last week, I had a few fillings done in the upper right quadrant of my mouth. They were deep, and in the way-back, and the dentist accidentally nicked my cheek, which I later bit while I was numb. Now, my cheek is finally starting to heal, but all the nerves in my mouth are still awake. As a result, I’ve been trying not to talk a lot, because it just makes everything worse, and because it’s difficult to enunciate. Last night, I learned that two glasses of syrah followed by ibuprofen are really much more effective than ibuprofen alone.

Just so you know.

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