Because Celes poked the hell out of me....
I'm back. Kinda. Not sure yet.
A few of you know that the last few months have been really rough. Overall, I think things are back to normal, but I still have "my moments" and my mom, sis, and I have taken to saying. Mostly just trying not to think too long for any long period of time. Staying busy helps too.
Well, the muse has returned, in a way. So here is a very rough, very pieced together beginning to a story. Don't be surprized if the whole thing changes. Just thought I should offer something up as a sacrifice.
Note on the story: This is an original piece. The only characters that I stole are those in my own life ;)\
One
Do you know how frusterating it is to spend forty five minutes on your hair, only to smash it under a smelly hood and heavy helmet? Especially when it happens 20 minutes into your twelve hour shift, and you know that you are going to be running around the rest of the day with sweaty, crappy looking hair. You don’t? Well, welcome to my life.
Yes, I am a probie. Wheelchalk. Rookie firefighter. When everyone else is trying to get out of their house that’s shooting flames here and yonder, my guys and I are hustling in. Ok, we are crawling in on hands and knees dragging 75 pounds of equipment and hoses filled with water, so there isn’t much hustling, though we are going as fast as we can.
You might be wondering, why bother with the hair. Especially if it usually ends up in a messy ponytail no matter how the day starts. Well, here is the story. Despite my job in the boy’s club, I am a girly girl. A girly girl with the hots for one of the cops that works in Springwood. Yeah, I got it bad for one of the boys in blue. Too bad the only times I get to see him, I’m covered in soot, or crawling into smooshed cars to help the people inside. Not always good times to talk about our similarities and favorite movies. But I live in hope that one day he walks into our side of the station to talk about how slow it’s been today, but with the basketball game later today, shouldn’t stay that way long. Of course, my luck doesn’t run that way. The police officers stay to their side of the civic building, and we stay to our side until some call brings us together under the worse conditions.
Yep, that’s life in good ole Spring-hood Michigan. Where the town population is about 5000 and all the twenty somethings riot everytime the University of Michigan loses a game. Football, soccer, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, you name it. Basically they look at it as a good reason to drink too much and set couches and Ohio State fans on fire. That’s where my job comes in. I’m a firefighter, so they call us to put the couches out, bandange the OSU fans, and finish the kegs. Ok, the keg thing isn’t in our official job description, but it happens more often than not. Especially since a good portion of the fire department are also twently somethings (though more are just permentantly stick in that mental age range). The town is remarkably quiet during games as most everyone is watching the game of the night. Including us sitting at the station. Only difference is, when the game is over and they are tossing couches out the window and gathering lighter fluid, we are getting our gear on, and waiting for the first call of the night. Trust me, we are never sitting there more than five minutes before it comes in.
It’s a good thing that Michigan takes it athetics seriously, and have a pretty good record, or we would be a lot busier than we are. Again, if this was a college town near Kettering University we wouldn’t have this problem. Most people in Flint don’t even realize that they have a university in their town. But, they have their own problems there. Anyone who has seen a Michael Moore film knows what I am talking about.
In any case, life is pretty interesting around here. Now, myself, I just moved here about six months ago, so maybe the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. I grew up in a little town in Pennsylania that no one has ever heard of. I had to drive for two hours to get to anything resembling a mall. When my friend Ashley asked me to move to Michigan with her while she went through medical school, I didn’t hesitiate. It was time to get out.
Now before I get into that, I should tell you a little more about myself. In school, I was never a good student. Things like World War I and gerunds and the Plyagorian Theorum just never interested me. I did okay, I guess, but I never spent extra time studying when I could be out with friends. Just didn’t see the benefit. So, much to my parents dismay, college just wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with. I mean, think about. You don’t have to go, you pay outrageous amounts of money, and write hundred page papers. Uh huh, not me. Well, the ‘rents said, college or work, you are doing it full time. Guess I can’t argue with that. So I got a job at Fay’s Candy Shop. One of the few businesses in my little town. Mrs. Wetzel was this sweet little old lady that has rolled truffles and dipped strawberries for the last fifty some years. Her and her husband opened the store on their first anniversary, and it’s been going ever since. Needless to say, Mrs. Wetzel was getting pretty old, and she found it harder and harder to keep up with the demand of the store, so she took me in as an apprentice of sorts. I didn’t really agree with the early hours that she held (okay, seven isn’t that early, but when I only went to bed three hours ago, it seemed positively evil). I did like learning how to make all those neat little chocolate treats, learn how to “read” the tops of chocolates, and spending time with Mrs. Wetzel. She told a new story everyday and often had me rolling on the ground in laughter, on the verge of peeing my pants. You don’t even want to know what happened on her twenty fifth anniversary and why they had to throw out a whole batch of peanut butter cups.
So that's the beginning. Again, that was - beginning. Much more work to do. I've decided though, even though I know I can't keep up with the demands of NaNoWriMo, I'm still going to do the "just get the words down thing". Sound familar Celes?
oh well, I'll try to keep up here, but we all know how well that will work ;)
A few of you know that the last few months have been really rough. Overall, I think things are back to normal, but I still have "my moments" and my mom, sis, and I have taken to saying. Mostly just trying not to think too long for any long period of time. Staying busy helps too.
Well, the muse has returned, in a way. So here is a very rough, very pieced together beginning to a story. Don't be surprized if the whole thing changes. Just thought I should offer something up as a sacrifice.
Note on the story: This is an original piece. The only characters that I stole are those in my own life ;)\
One
Do you know how frusterating it is to spend forty five minutes on your hair, only to smash it under a smelly hood and heavy helmet? Especially when it happens 20 minutes into your twelve hour shift, and you know that you are going to be running around the rest of the day with sweaty, crappy looking hair. You don’t? Well, welcome to my life.
Yes, I am a probie. Wheelchalk. Rookie firefighter. When everyone else is trying to get out of their house that’s shooting flames here and yonder, my guys and I are hustling in. Ok, we are crawling in on hands and knees dragging 75 pounds of equipment and hoses filled with water, so there isn’t much hustling, though we are going as fast as we can.
You might be wondering, why bother with the hair. Especially if it usually ends up in a messy ponytail no matter how the day starts. Well, here is the story. Despite my job in the boy’s club, I am a girly girl. A girly girl with the hots for one of the cops that works in Springwood. Yeah, I got it bad for one of the boys in blue. Too bad the only times I get to see him, I’m covered in soot, or crawling into smooshed cars to help the people inside. Not always good times to talk about our similarities and favorite movies. But I live in hope that one day he walks into our side of the station to talk about how slow it’s been today, but with the basketball game later today, shouldn’t stay that way long. Of course, my luck doesn’t run that way. The police officers stay to their side of the civic building, and we stay to our side until some call brings us together under the worse conditions.
Yep, that’s life in good ole Spring-hood Michigan. Where the town population is about 5000 and all the twenty somethings riot everytime the University of Michigan loses a game. Football, soccer, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, you name it. Basically they look at it as a good reason to drink too much and set couches and Ohio State fans on fire. That’s where my job comes in. I’m a firefighter, so they call us to put the couches out, bandange the OSU fans, and finish the kegs. Ok, the keg thing isn’t in our official job description, but it happens more often than not. Especially since a good portion of the fire department are also twently somethings (though more are just permentantly stick in that mental age range). The town is remarkably quiet during games as most everyone is watching the game of the night. Including us sitting at the station. Only difference is, when the game is over and they are tossing couches out the window and gathering lighter fluid, we are getting our gear on, and waiting for the first call of the night. Trust me, we are never sitting there more than five minutes before it comes in.
It’s a good thing that Michigan takes it athetics seriously, and have a pretty good record, or we would be a lot busier than we are. Again, if this was a college town near Kettering University we wouldn’t have this problem. Most people in Flint don’t even realize that they have a university in their town. But, they have their own problems there. Anyone who has seen a Michael Moore film knows what I am talking about.
In any case, life is pretty interesting around here. Now, myself, I just moved here about six months ago, so maybe the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. I grew up in a little town in Pennsylania that no one has ever heard of. I had to drive for two hours to get to anything resembling a mall. When my friend Ashley asked me to move to Michigan with her while she went through medical school, I didn’t hesitiate. It was time to get out.
Now before I get into that, I should tell you a little more about myself. In school, I was never a good student. Things like World War I and gerunds and the Plyagorian Theorum just never interested me. I did okay, I guess, but I never spent extra time studying when I could be out with friends. Just didn’t see the benefit. So, much to my parents dismay, college just wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with. I mean, think about. You don’t have to go, you pay outrageous amounts of money, and write hundred page papers. Uh huh, not me. Well, the ‘rents said, college or work, you are doing it full time. Guess I can’t argue with that. So I got a job at Fay’s Candy Shop. One of the few businesses in my little town. Mrs. Wetzel was this sweet little old lady that has rolled truffles and dipped strawberries for the last fifty some years. Her and her husband opened the store on their first anniversary, and it’s been going ever since. Needless to say, Mrs. Wetzel was getting pretty old, and she found it harder and harder to keep up with the demand of the store, so she took me in as an apprentice of sorts. I didn’t really agree with the early hours that she held (okay, seven isn’t that early, but when I only went to bed three hours ago, it seemed positively evil). I did like learning how to make all those neat little chocolate treats, learn how to “read” the tops of chocolates, and spending time with Mrs. Wetzel. She told a new story everyday and often had me rolling on the ground in laughter, on the verge of peeing my pants. You don’t even want to know what happened on her twenty fifth anniversary and why they had to throw out a whole batch of peanut butter cups.
So that's the beginning. Again, that was - beginning. Much more work to do. I've decided though, even though I know I can't keep up with the demands of NaNoWriMo, I'm still going to do the "just get the words down thing". Sound familar Celes?
oh well, I'll try to keep up here, but we all know how well that will work ;)