writing prompt

Slippery, slimy, gross, disgusting cold, wet pasta

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I have written before about my dislike of vacuuming.  It’s not just dislike, it’s a visceral hatred that suffuses all of me and makes my hair stand on end.  Inevitably, the machine will clog, the belt will break, and I will end up cursing.  Every time.  Every single time.  For now, and always and forever.  This is true.  I no longer fight it.  I try to roll with the flow.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

I am also not fond of putting laundry away.  I don’t mind doing laundry so much, but right outside my laundry room door is an 11-foot old oak church pew.  Fresh from the dryer clothes seem to end up there.  And even if I do fold them, they tend to stay there.  I often dress from the church pew in the hallway that is right in front of my windowed kitchen door.  This is flirting with disaster.  I am someday going to flash somebody.

Dusting also annoys me.  I live on a dirt road.  I have 3 dogs.  I have laundry sitting on the church pew.  I have dust.  And it accumulates at warp speed.  I often say I’m running a retirement for dust.  Just as soon as I carry some of it out to the bin, a new crop arrives to take its place.  It’s maddening.  I can wield a can of Pledge for hours and admire my sparkling furniture and shelves, but by the next morning, it looks as if weeks have passed since anything has seen a dust rag.

Suffice it to say there is not much I like in the vein of housecleaning aside from making up a bed with clean linen sheets and a freshly aired duvet.

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There’s nothing better than. . .

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There’s nothing better than standing in the kitchen of a rented beach condo eating a peanut butter, potato chip, and butter sandwich on plain old grocery store wheat bread. 

Wet hair, damp bathing suit, sand between the toes.  Slathered peanut butter, thick cold real butter, crispy salted potato chips on bread with barely enough oomph to hold it all.  Superb.

So much so that two are better than one.  The second one should be consumed in a chair on the balcony.  Maybe wash it down it with a Coke or perhaps an afternoon cup of coffee.

After a day at the beach, the body needs what that sandwich offers.  Salt after sweating, protein after swimming, fat just because it tastes good.  I love love love a peanut butter sandwich after a day at the beach.

I also love a frou-frou umbrella drink at the beachside bar. At about noon. I used to always have a daiquiri – strawberry — frozen, one shot and twice as much strawberry mix as usual – two drinks worth with half the alcohol, an all-afternoon sipper in a thermal cup.

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Walking

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I like walking in the morning after a big snow.  The fluffy kind that eddies and swirls with each step.  When the silence is so profound it is a roar.  When all you can see is white. Frosted trees, curious mounds that used to be lawn furniture,  and the small tracks of some wild animal out foraging for breakfast.  When air sparkles silver and the shadows make interesting images on the white canvas of the snow.

I like walking at lunchtime with my close friend who is also my boss to the restaurant we have chosen for lunch.  I cannot often afford to do this any longer, but I miss those walks.  Idle chatter, not related to work, feet pounding cement,  me trying to keep up with a woman nine years my senior. 

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First Kiss

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Gordon did a mean impression of Flip Wilson’s Geraldine.  He did.  I was always a sucker for a guy that could make me laugh. We were in sixth grade together and he was, of course he was, the class clown. He was a bit pudgy, had dark almost black hair, and big brown eyes.  He was taller than me – another trait I like in a romantic partner.  In sixth grade, it was hard come to find a boy my age that was taller than me. 

We were stationed at Camp Lejeune but living in town.  I was at a civilian school made up, primarily, of military brats.  Jacksonville was a very small town with absolutely nothing but 40,000 Marines.  My dad referred to it as the armpit of the world.

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