Thursday Freewrite








I'm not going to set a time limit for this freewrite. I'll write until I damn well feel like stopping. You stop reading when you damn well feel like stopping. Even Steven?

The picture to the right is a close up of the bulbs of my pregnant onion plant. My pregnant onion is the coolest plant I've ever had. It's almost a "plant pet". I've never seen one for sale in a store. There's a few on eBay. We bought this one fifteen years ago at a garage sale full of houseplants. It was the first spring we lived in our house. It just belongs here, like the trees and the yuccas out back. Like me.

We're planting dozens of perennials against our new "We Hate Our Neighbors" privacy fence. Maybe some will still bloom long after we're gone, like the flowers my mom and grandma planted. If when I die someone says, "she grew pretty flowers," I'd be thrilled.

This is me and my sister Nancy in July, 2009. She's on the left. Eleven years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, she thought she had it beat. About six months after her first "good" test results it metasticized to her brain. In the past several years she's undergone two conventional brain surgeries and a gamma knife surgery. Her oncologist told her she is in stage four and to just go home and wait until it's time to call hospice. She found another oncologist. She's undergoing her umptyninth round of chemotherapy now, still with her chin up, but not as high as before.

We talk on the phone several times a week. She has slid into a an understandable depression. We talk about her current health situation, but mostly we talk about that winter Daddy built us those igloos, or the summer we all went to Colorado and she jumped in the river. We wander around on the memory lane where her daughters were little girls who loved to climb trees and fish. Sometimes I hang up the phone after one of our calls and put my face in my hands and cry, already mourning for the part of her that is already gone, aching for the part of her that is still here and so wants to live.

FIVE MINUTE FREE WRITE

This is a new challenge that's taking the "other" writing place by storm - free write. This is my first attempt.

If it's this cool already, can winter be far behind? I don't even like to think about it. My loathing of winter causes me to also dislike Fall because it's whne everything begins it's headlong fall - pun intended - into death. Things aren't waking like in spring, but dying, turning brown, not green. Getting brittle, breaking off, crumbling. It's too cold right now to have a door open, to push a window up. It's September 2? More like October 2. In Octoboer is Halloween and the day after Halloween is Christmas, or so it seems.

There is nothing on the regualar channels this year that even sounds vaguely good. I was shocked a few nights ago to realized I don't watch any fiction series on the big three networds. The closest I get is House, and I think he's on USA or Fox. I watch 90% reality, yet I read 95% fiction.

Reading may get batter. After the White Queen I couldn't settle into another book but yesterday I got In the Comapny of The Courtesan at the library. So far - 50 pages or so - it's pretty good. Not Tudor England, but the early 16th century in Italy. I have the Elizabeth movies to watch with Helen Mirren to watch this weekend.