Monday, Monday

You can't hear me but I'm singing. I don't know why, maybe because it's sunny outside, but I woke up happy today, maybe because I have tomorrow off, maybe because I worked for four hours yesterday without a single customer or phone call. It was hard to stay awake, I'm telling you.

I rolled over my focus-on-my-writing cd last night. Arrrgh. It's one of those new age-y rainforest sounds with a little elevator music cds you can buy in displays in Kmart. I hope they still have those displays. I need another one. It's my turn to submit and I've got an idea, I just need to pry it out of my brain and flop it onto paper. That's what I was doing last night when I rolled my chair over to look at a journal entry, got to the end of the earbuds' wire, and pulled the cd player onto the floor, where it regurgitated my cd and I rolled over it. $%#@* (That's pretty much verbatim.)

Here's today's writing. I know you're waiting for it.

February 23--Ivan Semyonovich Kulikov, The Wedding Dress. She felt the weight of each layer from the gossamer silk of her underclothes to the thick embroidered satin of the outer layers. Each addition, each piece of gold embroidered trim felt like another stone chained to her flesh. The aunts, one her dead mother's sister and the other her father's sister-in-law, had driven hot needles into her earlobes and then shoved the heavy gold earrings into the holes. She had cried out with pain but the aunts scoffed at her. "You think this piercing hurts? Just you wait." She kept her eyes downcast as they draped her neck with chains until she felt like a puppy to be drowned. Finally her hair was gathered into a braid that was piled on her head, covered by a lace cap, which peeked out from the edges of the stiff embroidered silk and heavy gold wedding crown. The weight of it made her feel as if she would never again lift her face and smile.

Enjoy your day.
--Barbara