I am a big old fountain of cranky.
Month: February 2003
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I borrowed this idea from here who borrowed it from here:
3 Weird Things about Me:
1.) I hate bananas. I hate cornflakes. But I love bananas on cornflakes.
2.) I hold extensive conversations with inanimate objects and animals and plants.
3.) I have a very defined shower routine (wash face, wash hair, condition hair, shave, wash body, towel, lotion) that, if not performed properly, causes me entire day to be cockeyed.
3 Wonderful Things about Me
1.) I give very good massages and greatly enjoy giving them.
2.) I give presents to people for no reason.
3.) If I smile at someone, I really mean it.
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the bad thing about wonderful extended weekends is that they have to end…
i did get a wonderful pratchett book and horton and a dragon…
but i’d rather have the time of the weekend and snuggling and all that assorted wonderfulness of not being alone…
however, I must recommend that a studio efficiency is not a good place for two people and two cats to have a snow day in, even if the people really like each other…there simple is not enough space
my question is, how does that couple down the hall from me stand it? two of them plus an 8 year old child – in a barely 300 squarefoot apartment…
Insane.
he annoys me just when i hear him shrieking in the hallway, not to mention the domestic violence couple that lives a floor below me…
ugh
i need a new apartment, a bigger apartment!
i’m looking and i might even have found a roommate…just need to get ourselves in sync….
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continued
He waited for her to continue, his knee jumping with impatience and barely constraining the urge to look at his watch. He hadn’t budgeted time for this, Laura was waiting in the car and bless her frothy little head; she wasn’t likely to wait long. He hadn’t planned to listen; he’d only come because she’d found the note and wanted an explanation, had wanted to know whom this mysterious she was. That had necessitated telling her as little as possible about the whole messy missing Sara story. How he’d proposed, how she’d accepted and how the very next day, she’d disappeared, leaving behind a cat, all her clothes and books and how the police did nothing about it. Conspiracy theories had always been his strong point but even this one had him stumped. Sara was Sara; she had no connection to anything he could think of, not even aliens seemed plausible, as he knew that she’d never left the apartment.
Sara glanced down, visibly calming herself and looked back into his eyes. She was different – not just five years of disappeared different, she was not humanly different.
“I’m sure you wondered, I’m sure you looked.” She said, “I know it won’t make any difference, but I didn’t have a choice. They told me that you would be told. They just never told me when.”
“Sara.” He grated out, “Just tell me where you went, why you went and why you never contacted me. Tell me why you left poor Quincy all alone in your apartment. Tell me why it’s taken you five goddamn years to finally tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know, I had to, I couldn’t, I didn’t want to and I had no choice. Does that really help? Will you let me try to explain my own way?”
“I would if you’d get on with it.”
“Jacob?” a voice interrupted, a hand on his shoulder, the diamond on it flashing in the sunshine. His hand automatically covered it. Sara’s hand automatically touched her own bare left hand. “What’s going on? Is this Sara?”
“Well,” Sara said, standing up to shake the woman’s hand, “this explains a lot.”
“This is Sara. Laura, Sara. Sara, Laura. Get on with it.”
“I can’t. Not while she’s here, this is only a story for you. They won’t let me tell anyone else.”
Laura looked confused, sweet, and young but still confused. “What is she talking about, Jake? Isn’t she just supposed to tell you why she abandoned you?”
“I am trying to but I’m not succeeding. I need to talk to him alone. Would that be okay?”
The two women looked at each other, weighing and measuring. Jacob feared the inevitable catfight but neither woman moved. Sara’s eyes dropped first. “Please? For both of our sakes?”
Laura nodded, “I’ll just go get some coffee and a magazine, Jake. I’ll be inside when you’re through.”
“The wedding is soon?” said Sara, as soon as she was out of earshot.
“Three days. How did you know?”
“That would explain the sudden haste of this meeting. Why after five years they’d let me out here. And why they didn’t tell me anything about what had happened to you.”
“Just tell me why you left.”
“Do you remember when I applied to the government for a research grant? The one you told me I shouldn’t apply for because it was obviously just the government trying to gain information about it’s scientists and what they were doing?”
“I was paranoid.”
“You were right. Sort of.”
She sighed again. Feeling nervous, she sipped the now cold coffee, wiped her lips and tried to continue.
“After you left that morning, the day I…”
“The day you left me.”
Sudden flash of her temper, “I didn’t leave you. I never would have left you. I had no choice but to go!”
“Did they put a gun to your head? Threaten you family? Drug you?” he mocked her, bitterness obvious, thinking she was lying that she was trying to get something from him, “There is nothing you can tell me that I’ll believe. Laura and I are very happy, and I am finally over you!” Jacob stood up again, ready to leave.
Sara reached for his arm and he flinched back. She growled low in her throat and half-shouted: “Jacob! Why are you here then? What do you want from me? The truth? I’m trying, if you’d stop being so blasted stubborn and interrupting me I’d tell you what I know and why I’m here now!” He sat down.
“Stupid men. Did you really think I’d leave you?”
“I didn’t know what to think! You were just gone. No note, no calls. Your family was frantic, I was frantic. Hell, even your boss tried to find you. No sign of you, anywhere.”
“That day, I got up and answered the door. I have no idea what happened after that. I woke up…I woke up in a place that wasn’t here.”
He looked at her. “Aliens, Sara? You’ve read one too many science-fiction story.”
“I haven’t read a book in five years. I haven’t been back here, to this city, to this earth in five years. I’ve been off…somewhere else. They said it was important and that it would save lives. That I had to develop my talent and, and that…” she stopped, knowing that she was badly bungling this explanation, “That I’d find him.”
“Now I know you’re seriously in need of some help, woman. What are you babbling about? They? Him? Talent? This earth?”
“Yes. They. Don’t ask me who they are because I don’t know. I thought they were aliens at first – well, after I stopped suspecting the FBI and the CIA that is – but I’ve never seen them. I’ve only heard them and they sound human. I was trained…oh to do all kinds of stuff. Martial arts, sword-fighting, knife-fighting, sniping, archery, computers, survival skills.” As she spoke, his eyebrows kept going further and further up his forehead and disbelief rolled off of him in waves. She felt her own desperation and feared what would happen if she didn’t manage to convince him that what she was saying was true.
“They also taught me about empathy and searching. And how to find him. The one.”
“All right, look. You blatantly stole that line from a movie. Couldn’t you at least be a creative insane person?”
“No. The movie stole it from them. Didn’t you ever wonder about that reoccurring theme? About all the reoccurring themes in novels and in movies? In legend and in myth? Did you think they were just coincidences? That people just really liked to hear and read the same pap over and over again? No. There is a reason.”
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The coffee tipped spoon slipped from her fingers land on the table with a clatter, making her jump slightly. He was coming, across the parking lot. Anger rolled off of him in waves, she could not only feel it but also see it in the set of his jaw and shoulder, in his step, and in his eyes. She frowned and brushed unconsciously at her lap, to remove the nonexistent crumbs from her hardly touched pastry. Shouting was very likely, and most probably necessary as much as she hated the idea of the violence, nearly as much as she hated the idea of the scene she knew they’d create. However, that was the reason for suggesting a crowded, brightly lit coffee shop, noise had always off-put and upset her and this time boded to be worse than ever.
He was close enough that she could see his face clearly, hear his harsh breathing and feel the pulse of his heart. She rose quickly, attracting his attention and quite clearly shocking him. Look for the woman in black. She’ll show you what you want to know. That was what the note had said, it was not what she would have said but she’d had no choice, as was usual.
“Jacob.” She attempted a smile of welcome, knowing it never touched her eyes and was barely acquainted with her lips. She held out her hand and he reached for it before stopping himself. Barely restrained rage was bubbling below the surface; she didn’t need even her smidge of empathy to feel it.
“Who the hell are you? And what the hell do you mean by sending a note like that?” His voice was harsh, she flinched inwardly.
“Sara.” She said, dropping her hand and seating herself awkwardly.
“Sara?” His face, already pale with anger, abruptly paled even more and he dropped with even less grace than she into the chair across the table.
Sara remained calm and managed to squeak out that smile this time. She settled herself more comfortably, fidgeting. “Yes, Jacob. Who did you expect?”
He merely stared at her, slack-jawed, uncomprehending. Questions raged in his mind, nearly hidden by shock.
“It’s been five years, you could at least say you were glad to see me.” She said, his silence beginning to wear on her taut nerves, “I’ve missed you.”
And with that, he started to laugh a jagged, hurting laugh that illustrated his pain far better than any words ever could.
“You’ve a lot of fucking nerve. Five years. Five goddamn years! You walked out of my life then, you can damn well walk right back out now.”
Jacob stood up and prepared to walk away; pausing just a moment, he looked down at her, those cat eyes full of so much hurt that she flinched. As he turned, her hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist, pulling him down before he could try to stop her, not that he could have. He looked at her, uncomprehending for a moment and tried to pull away. She didn’t let go for a moment.
“Do you want to live the rest of your life not knowing the truth?” She hissed, glaring right back at him, his anger finally infecting her, breaking her calm reserve. He stopped struggling and she released him. Her hands had left large red marks on his wrist. For all that he was nearly a foot taller and twice her body weight, he’d never stood a chance and he’d known it.
“What the hell happened to you?” he said, staring into her eyes feeling suddenly shaken and nearly afraid, nearly ready to cry again, as he had so many times, “What the hell are you?”
“I am what I always was, I just never knew it.” Sara said, looking down at her plate, breaking eye contact, “And I am what you will be, only much less so. They need you and that can be either very good or very bad.”
“They?” He looked at her quizzically, “You’re evading and dodging like you always do. Answer my question! Where have you been? Why the hell did you leave?”
All anger suddenly left Sara and she started to laugh, bordering on hysteria. “Gods above,” she said, “I feel like I’m trapped in a bad smutty romance novel.”
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typically, I don’t find shoe commercials funny
but I have seen the same one for Nike Shox twice now…
it’s a soccer game, and a very naked man slightly portly vaguely English looking fellow wearing only nikes and a LONG scarf streaks about repeatedly…
it’s not really a good commercials…but for some unknown reason it makes me laugh
