A little less than maximum fun.
Ficlets! And the weirdest thing? I was doing some accounting recently, and the first of these means that I've written in exactly 30 fandoms.
For wafflelips, Big Love, Nicki and her kids, no specific spoilers but context will help. She knew the town would talk, but then, she never wanted fame. She only wanted someone to sing songs with in the rain.
Everyone thinks that Nicki didn't want to leave the compound. Her parents and siblings think it; they ask all the time how she can stand to live the way she does, or they cluck about what a shame it is that Bill won't live a more righteous life. Her sister-wives are sure of it. They treat her like she's made of glass, and if they drop her, they'll all have to carry the pieces back to Juniper Creek. Her boys are getting old enough to ask if they'll get to go to school like their big brother and sisters, or if they have to be homeschooled like their cousins. Even Bill, although she's told him a thousand times, presses her with the question. He thinks she'll feel better if she admits she's not happy.
And he's right that she's not happy, but it's not the suburbs that are the problem. God makes some people flexible, agreeable, content in any situation, and He makes others who will be restless anywhere. That's her struggle, and when she prays, she doesn't pray to change it or even to ease it. When she prayed for guidance in how to curb her stubbornness, how to be humble and wise as a wife, God sent her to Salt Lake, where people don't question when a wife resists, when she speaks her mind. There are plenty of other things that have to be hidden from the neighbors, but Nicki doesn't have to curb her personality. It was a good decision on His part.
It's raining. Sheets of rain. When Nicki was a little girl, her mother told her that the rain was God's tears. That's not what she told her boys; she explained to them about how clouds get full of water until they burst, and all the plants on the earth get watered. That's the kind of God she wants them to know: the one who finds solutions that keep the world running, not the one who cries all the time. "Mommy, let's go outside," Raymond says, tugging on her skirt.
"How about we go outside later, when it's not raining so hard?" she says.
"But it's boring in here," Wayne pipes up.
She purses her lips and looks around her house. It is full of abandoned toys. They have played every game and built every fort. It is boring in here. "All right," she says. "All right. Here's what we need to do. We need to get our galoshes, and our rain slickers, and our hats." Wayne runs off to get his own; Raymond needs help. They both need help getting their thin arms through the sleeves of their raincoats and snapping them in the front. Soon, though, they are a matching waterproof family, and the boys are jumping in the puddles in the front yard. She scowls, thinking of the baths she's going to have to give them later. Thinking of the neighbors who might be observing her dirty children and the dirty hem of her skirt.
She takes each of the boys by one muddy hand. "Let's sing a song," she says. Both are surprisingly amenable to this, and they join their free hands to make a circle. They start off with nursery rhymes about rain, but pretty soon they've moved on to silly songs they've heard on TV. They know things that she hasn't taught them. Wayne will start kindergarten in the fall, and he will know even more, and she thinks this is the right place, the wise place, the place they've been brought with purpose and grace.
*
For annavtree, figure skating rpf, Michelle Kwan, summer of 2006. I wish I could do all the things I can do. Though I'm long overdue, I'd be starting anew.
Michelle isn't sure that anyone likes her. People are nice to her, and she never lacks for people to talk to on the tour bus when she's in the mood for conversation. Nobody balks when Gwendal pulls out his camera and asks them to throw their arm around Michelle's shoulder and smile. Even the girls she's in direct competition with don't seem to bear her any ill will. She gets along all right with everybody.
But she gets a hunch sometimes. She looks around the bus and she sees these impenetrable connections. Max and Zhenya sharing a private joke in Russian, Tanith forcing Ben to listen to some weird thing on her iPod, Marina Anissina putting tiny braids in Johnny's hair. She doesn't have that with anyone. She hasn't been mean, but she hasn't been warm. She's been a competitor. That will get people to smile with you in pictures and talk about how much they admire your athleticism, but it won't make you anybody's best friend.
Three other women's skaters on the bus, and they all look bored. Kimmie is looking out the window at the endless cornfields. Sasha could be mistaken for unconscious, except that she's subtly mouthing the lyrics to the song she's listening to. Ira is holding a Russian newspaper in front of her, but she's got a glazed look in her eyes, like the words aren't sticking in her mind. Michelle could go up to any one of them.
Except she couldn't, because they'd look at her with suspicion. They all know that she hates them a little, hates their clean triples and their perfect spiral extensions, hates that they're not waiting for the pain to subside so they can do what they're capable of. And they all know that she's hated them a little for a whole lot longer than that. She needs that hate so she can win. That's how she's justified it, at least.
She wishes they could all pretend this was their first competition. She wishes they could all be strangers, no baggage, no rivalries, that she could hold out her hand to each of them and introduce herself, and all they would see was another girl, another skater. And they would think, this one seems nice. This one seems okay. This one seems like someone I could hang out with after the scores are posted and we can just laugh, laugh at who's better than us and who's worse than us, because all the standings will change in a month and until then, there is no need to be enemies.
For wafflelips, Big Love, Nicki and her kids, no specific spoilers but context will help. She knew the town would talk, but then, she never wanted fame. She only wanted someone to sing songs with in the rain.
Everyone thinks that Nicki didn't want to leave the compound. Her parents and siblings think it; they ask all the time how she can stand to live the way she does, or they cluck about what a shame it is that Bill won't live a more righteous life. Her sister-wives are sure of it. They treat her like she's made of glass, and if they drop her, they'll all have to carry the pieces back to Juniper Creek. Her boys are getting old enough to ask if they'll get to go to school like their big brother and sisters, or if they have to be homeschooled like their cousins. Even Bill, although she's told him a thousand times, presses her with the question. He thinks she'll feel better if she admits she's not happy.
And he's right that she's not happy, but it's not the suburbs that are the problem. God makes some people flexible, agreeable, content in any situation, and He makes others who will be restless anywhere. That's her struggle, and when she prays, she doesn't pray to change it or even to ease it. When she prayed for guidance in how to curb her stubbornness, how to be humble and wise as a wife, God sent her to Salt Lake, where people don't question when a wife resists, when she speaks her mind. There are plenty of other things that have to be hidden from the neighbors, but Nicki doesn't have to curb her personality. It was a good decision on His part.
It's raining. Sheets of rain. When Nicki was a little girl, her mother told her that the rain was God's tears. That's not what she told her boys; she explained to them about how clouds get full of water until they burst, and all the plants on the earth get watered. That's the kind of God she wants them to know: the one who finds solutions that keep the world running, not the one who cries all the time. "Mommy, let's go outside," Raymond says, tugging on her skirt.
"How about we go outside later, when it's not raining so hard?" she says.
"But it's boring in here," Wayne pipes up.
She purses her lips and looks around her house. It is full of abandoned toys. They have played every game and built every fort. It is boring in here. "All right," she says. "All right. Here's what we need to do. We need to get our galoshes, and our rain slickers, and our hats." Wayne runs off to get his own; Raymond needs help. They both need help getting their thin arms through the sleeves of their raincoats and snapping them in the front. Soon, though, they are a matching waterproof family, and the boys are jumping in the puddles in the front yard. She scowls, thinking of the baths she's going to have to give them later. Thinking of the neighbors who might be observing her dirty children and the dirty hem of her skirt.
She takes each of the boys by one muddy hand. "Let's sing a song," she says. Both are surprisingly amenable to this, and they join their free hands to make a circle. They start off with nursery rhymes about rain, but pretty soon they've moved on to silly songs they've heard on TV. They know things that she hasn't taught them. Wayne will start kindergarten in the fall, and he will know even more, and she thinks this is the right place, the wise place, the place they've been brought with purpose and grace.
*
For annavtree, figure skating rpf, Michelle Kwan, summer of 2006. I wish I could do all the things I can do. Though I'm long overdue, I'd be starting anew.
Michelle isn't sure that anyone likes her. People are nice to her, and she never lacks for people to talk to on the tour bus when she's in the mood for conversation. Nobody balks when Gwendal pulls out his camera and asks them to throw their arm around Michelle's shoulder and smile. Even the girls she's in direct competition with don't seem to bear her any ill will. She gets along all right with everybody.
But she gets a hunch sometimes. She looks around the bus and she sees these impenetrable connections. Max and Zhenya sharing a private joke in Russian, Tanith forcing Ben to listen to some weird thing on her iPod, Marina Anissina putting tiny braids in Johnny's hair. She doesn't have that with anyone. She hasn't been mean, but she hasn't been warm. She's been a competitor. That will get people to smile with you in pictures and talk about how much they admire your athleticism, but it won't make you anybody's best friend.
Three other women's skaters on the bus, and they all look bored. Kimmie is looking out the window at the endless cornfields. Sasha could be mistaken for unconscious, except that she's subtly mouthing the lyrics to the song she's listening to. Ira is holding a Russian newspaper in front of her, but she's got a glazed look in her eyes, like the words aren't sticking in her mind. Michelle could go up to any one of them.
Except she couldn't, because they'd look at her with suspicion. They all know that she hates them a little, hates their clean triples and their perfect spiral extensions, hates that they're not waiting for the pain to subside so they can do what they're capable of. And they all know that she's hated them a little for a whole lot longer than that. She needs that hate so she can win. That's how she's justified it, at least.
She wishes they could all pretend this was their first competition. She wishes they could all be strangers, no baggage, no rivalries, that she could hold out her hand to each of them and introduce herself, and all they would see was another girl, another skater. And they would think, this one seems nice. This one seems okay. This one seems like someone I could hang out with after the scores are posted and we can just laugh, laugh at who's better than us and who's worse than us, because all the standings will change in a month and until then, there is no need to be enemies.