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hello from the small town of nata de los caballeros! yeah, i'm back to the factory this week. oh, in case you didn't know i went back home before-- yeah, i went back home. then there was carnival and i had a couple days off so we went to the beach for the weekend, then i had to work at the office wednesday through friday, and now i'm back to exile at the factory. lol, there, you're all caught up. xD
currently watching the second part of syfy's alice miniseries... good stuff. i love modern re-imaginings and i'm really enjoying this one. i was never a big fan of alice in wonderland, but this one's definitely more my thing. and hatter's hot. ;) (and did you know andrew-lee potts is engaged to hannah from s club 7? small world!) the whole hatter/alice thing squicked me like you have no idea back when i first learned that lewis carroll's story (and the disney version of it) actually had a fandom and shipping at all, but i definitely can get on board with this version of it. they're cute together. ;P
speaking of modern re-imaginings... i finished the bulk of my work early on friday so i was just reading some fic for a while, but then i ended up adding a few more details to that scene i posted last time, and then this scene just came to me. and now i've been getting ideas for this project the whole weekend. which is awesome, but it's also kinda weird because i really hadn't even been thinking about this thing for the longest time. i hadn't watched the movie in a while, i hadn't re-read the book in a while, i hadn't even read any little women fanfiction in months, but there you go. i might even get chapter one finished this week! i'm in absolute awe of myself, haha. xD
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Never let it be said that her youngest daughter wasn’t completely prepared to argue her point, Meredith thought as the petite redhead approached her bed with what seemed like 10 tons of colorful paper printed off the internet. “Are you campaigning against recycling, dear?” she asked with a chuckle.
Fully knowing her mother would have something smart to say about it, Gwynn only shrugged, sitting down on the bed and depositing the papers by Meredith’s legs. “I’ve been thinking and... can I have a cell phone for Christmas?”
The older woman took off her glasses, marked the page she was reading and put her novel down. Before she could say anything else, her daughter all but shoved a few pieces of paper right down her nose. “I know we can’t afford anything expensive, but I’ve been doing some research and really, there are a few models that are really cheap and I don’t need a lot of minutes anyway, I’ll mostly be texting so I don’t need an expensive plan or anything, plus they all have rollover minutes now so it’s not like I’ll ever have to pay for extra minutes...”
“Hold on, hold on,” Meredith tried to shush her before the amount of data bordered on overload. She looked down at the brochures she had brought and she was right, a lot of the phones in there were cheap compared to, say, her own. She had plenty of information about different service and data plans. Clearly she had done the research. “Alright. I see what you’re saying. But what I’d like to know is: why do you need a cell phone?”
The girl shook her head. “Mom, it’s the communication era. Who does not own a cell phone these days? It’s like a basic necessity.”
“Laurie doesn’t have one,” Meredith was quick to point out.
“Laurie doesn’t count, she has no friends,” was Gwynn’s knee-jerk retort, and somehow it came out so disdainfully that Meredith had to admonish her. The girl immediately apologized, feeling bad. “Sorry, that came out wrong.” She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. “But Leigh-Ann and Bailey do!” she jumped right back into the argument.
“Because they have extracurricular activities and I need a way to contact them wherever they are if I need to,” the mother explained calmly, feeling she had repeated this phrase way too many times in her life.
“So… I’ll join the drama club!” Gwynn stated, as if she were making her mother an offer she couldn’t refuse.
But her mother wouldn’t have it. “You can’t have drama club and a cell phone. We just can’t afford them both right now, honey. And you’re not getting a cell phone unless you really need it,” she tried to sound conciliatory, but her words were final.
“But I do need it!” the redhead exclaimed, and from experience Meredith knew she was that close to a whine. “Mom! All my friends have cell phones, I’m really the only one who doesn’t have one. Do you want them to think I’m poor?”
“There’s nothing wrong with being poor,” she intervened again, trying to correct what seemed like flawed beliefs. “Money does not make a person better or worse, you know that.”
“I know, but they’ll make fun of me!” the girl put forth. She was confident this would sway her, kids could be really mean nowadays and they both knew it was true. “What kind of mother wants her daughter to suffer that way?” Last twist: the guilt card. If this didn’t work…
Predictably, it didn’t. “The kind of mother who believes her daughter should take the adversity and learn from it,” Meredith concluded, giving all the brochures back to her agitated daughter with a smile. “Sorry, sweetheart, but we’re squeezed really tight this year. You should be happy you’re getting presents at all.”
She put her glasses back on as Gwynn huffed and puffed her way off her bed. “Ugh! This is going to be the worst Christmas ever!” she exclaimed as she hurriedly left the room.
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i have to do a scene about laurie between this one and the one i posted last time, but that one's proving hard. i don't know how to write laurie. funnily enough, she's the sweetest character in the novel but she's going to be the biggest pain in my behind, i just know it... *BIG SIGH*