Halloween Fiction

I do a little activity with my classes now and then called 55-Fiction. The concept is pretty simple. You write a short story that is exactly 55 words long. It's a great lesson in writing economically as well as revision as you try to whittle your story down (or build it up) to exactly 55 words.

Last year, we did 55-Fiction the week of Halloween with the goal of writing scary stories. I wrote some examples which turned out kind of nice. Not terrifying stuff, but a little creepy.

So here they are. Enjoy.

Working Late

It was a typical night at the morgue. I played solitaire while waiting for the other coroner to arrive. The building was empty and locked up. I heard footsteps in the hall.

“Tom?” I hollered. My cell phone rang. It was Tom. He was going to be late.

The doorknob turned.



I had one student this year, Maria, who asked me if I'd shared this next one with my wife. I hadn't. I wasn't intentionally keeping it from her, I just never thought to bring it home. So Maria pestered me everyday: "Did you let your wife read it? Did you let your wife read it?" Finally, I printed out a copy and showed it to Cristina. Here it is:

Good Night

I patted my wife’s hip and rolled over, adjusting the covers and switching off the lamp. Ah, what a night! As I waited for drowsiness to come, I gazed at my wife’s face. Her eyes stared back.

Finally, I rolled over. I paused briefly and gently shut my wife’s eyelids with my hand.



This last one's a bit more than 55 words, but it's a favorite of my students:

Driving

The night was so dark I hardly noticed the hitchhiker. He climbed in out of the rain clutching a battered cardboard box.

“Where you heading?” I asked.

“Away,” he said. “Anywhere.”

“What’s in the box?”

He didn’t answer, but set the box on the floor between his feet. The guy on the radio said police were still looking for an escaped convict. Armed and dangerous, they said.

“You mind?” the man asked, gesturing at the radio.

“No, that’s fine,” I said as I switched it off.

Ten miles down the road, I dropped him off. As I pulled back onto the highway, I reached down and opened the box. I smiled and glanced in the rear view mirror.

With this rain, it should take them a while to find the body. I should be across the state line by then.



Happy Halloween everyone. Be safe.

Homecoming Week

Last week was Homecoming week for South Mountain High School, where I work. Though I had intended on being more active here than my previous school (e.g. going to a football game now and then) I have yet to go to any event outside of school hours. Even though I live only 5 minutes away, it's still too darned enticing to stay home with the family. So I didn't go to the Homecoming game last Friday night.

I am, however, going to a different homecoming.

My alma mater, the University of Florida.

Yes. It's Homecoming week for UF, and I am returning to Gainesville with my son to experience all that is Homecoming. We fly to Orlando on Thursday, where we'll be picked up by my sister-in-law. Friday at noon is the Homecoming parade, which Alex hasn't seen in 4 years. Friday night we're going to Gator Growl, and then Saturday afternoon we'll watch the Gators take on Vanderbilt. Already have tickets. We fly home on Monday.

So I've got a short week this week. I need to tie up loose ends here at school (clean my desk off, make sub plans, etc.), pack, and oh yeah, do a little Halloween just before we leave. Alex and I are going to be vampires (his idea). We're going ghoulish this year instead of fanciful. Sofia and Bella will be ghosts. Pics to come.

Florida - Georgia

I can't believe we're already 7 games into the season.

The Gators have 3 big rivalry games every year (Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida State) and to me this one is the biggest.

And it finally kicks off in about 5 hours.

I'm too excited to blog right now.


Family Night went well. Cristina read the kids a bunch of library books while I made lunch for dinner. You've heard of making breakfast for dinner, but I made lunch for dinner. Since they had had a dinner-like meal for lunch (a big pasta meal) I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and ramen noodles for dinner.

We sat around the table and talked after we finished eating. By the time we got the two youngest in the bath, it was 7 pm. A little late to still have games. Bella wanted to go to bed, so Cristina got her down while I helped Alex in the bath. I suggested to Alex that we play games Sunday night since it had gotten so late. He wasn't going for that. And it completely killed his motivation for bathing quickly, so I told him if he bathed quickly we could play a game.

We played Cranium. Cristina was upstairs with Bella, so I played on both teams (you have to have two people per team). Cristina joined us at the end. It was good. The girls won by a nose.

Friday Family Night

When you first decide to have a baby, you have all kinds of ideas of ways you want to live and be together. Things you want to do, places you want to go. Then everyday life sets in, and you get busy working, trying to get dinner on the table, and getting enough sleep...sometimes those beautiful ideas and plans get forgotten or postponed. The next thing you know, a decade has gone by and you haven't done it the way you envisioned it.

"Family Nights" are one of those ideas that we've had a hard time instituting on a regular basis. I know of other families that have one night a week where the family stays home and plays board games, or watches a movie, or something fun that everyone does together. Our kids are still young, so it's not yet hard to get everyone to stay home for a night. But we haven't made this a weekly routine yet. I want to.

Last Friday, we made it a movie night. We ate veggie burgers and homemade meatball subs. I bought some organic Blue Sky soda. We rented Surf's Up, which everyone was wanting to see. After dinner, we pulled out the bed on the sofa, piled up together, and watched the movie. And we had ice cream cones as well. After the movie, we watched some of the bonus features and then got the kids to bed. It was great. Now the trick is to do something like that every Friday so that it becomes a routine. I want it to be such a part of our lives that if we don't do it one week, we all miss it. I want it to the be the kind of thing where when the kids are off at college, they still try to make it home for Family Night when they can.

We all take comfort in routines.

Tonight we talked about having a game night. Game night is a little more challenging for Bella, because she's still too young for most games. But we'll work something out. Maybe we can play a little Candyland before playing Cranium, which is what the older kids love. We can try to incorporate her into the Cranium game too. She can be the designated dice roller and card picker. I think that will work.

Last night, Sofia suggested that we decide on Wednesday what we're going to do on Friday. That way we have time to rent the movie if it's a movie night. Smart girl. She's suggesting a routine for planning our routine. I like the way she thinks.

Scary ice cream trucks

On the way home from work the other day, I was behind an ice cream truck. I was taken aback at the sight of it, because it looked like the idyllic, old fashioned ice cream trucks from my own childhood. In fact, I was so happy to see an ice cream truck that looked like an actual ice cream truck that I was tempted to follow it, motion for him to pull over, and buy a frozen treat with change from my ash tray. Just to support him, if nothing else.

Let me explain. When I was a kid, I remember the ice cream truck that came through our neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina (yes, I know I was age 0-3 in Charlotte, but I swear I remember!) The truck was huge, blocky, white. It played a tinkling little ice-cream-truck music that you could hear from around the block. And when we heard it, we'd run inside and ask my parents for some change (back then a little spare change could actually buy a Popsicle). Sometimes they'd give us some change, sometimes they wouldn't. Occasionally we wouldn't make it back out to the truck in time before it was gone, but when we did, that ice cream was the best treat since...well, it was good enough that I recall the whole experience 30 years later.

Flash forward to modern times. Ice cream "trucks" have gotten downright gross. First of all, they are almost never trucks at all, but converted vans. They usually play some kind of cloyingly childish music, but it's canned and insincere. Usually one side of the van is covered with tacky stickers advertising what they sell and how much it is. And even worse, they're stuck up there haphazardly, in varying states of dog-earedness, peeling and dirty looking. And I don't know why, but every one of these types of ice cream vans I've seen, from Florida to Arizona, have those tacky stick-on letters on the front doors, the kind of letters you buy at Wal-Mart to put your name on your mailbox, that say (again, always crooked) Ice Cream. Although there's usually a letter or two missing.

I want to run from these abominations. I want my children to be protected from things like this. They are the frozen dessert versions of the creepy old guy in the trench coat, whom you don't trust, who hangs out near the park. I've never bought an ice cream from these ramshackle ice cream truck wannabes and I never will.

But that truck I was behind coming home from work? His sign, large and professional looking, said "Popsicle Pete." I purposefully remembered it because I wanted to look him up on the Internet. I want to call him and ask why I haven't seen him on Sunland Ave. and when will he plan on driving through. I haven't done it yet, but I will. I think I'll google Pete right now.

Day 4 with Vivien

Day 4 with the dog and all is well. She has had a few accidents on the carpet, but she's so little that it's really not too distressing. The quantity of each accident is quite small. She will eventually be house trained. I'm more tuned to how we are handling her potty accidents, not so much that she's having accidents. That's expected.

She is definitely getting more comfortable with us. We've heard her bark a few times now, at nothing in particular (usually in the back yard or towards the open back door...she no doubt hears and smells neighbor dogs and such). Coco is still keeping a respectable distance.

Last night I watched a movie (Flightplan) with Viv snoring gently on my chest. When I got up, I sat her on the sofa. She hopped off easily by herself, so she can definitely handle getting off the sofa, even if she can't quite get on the sofa by herself.

She loves to be near us, without pestering. In that way, she's a lot like Coco, who has dog-like qualities like wanting to be near people. Funny...Vivien is a dog who acts like a cat who acts like a dog.

It's not uncommon for Viv to come up and just plop her heiney down at your feet. And when you scratch her belly, she lifts her back leg. Very cute.

Will the third time be the charm?

We got our first family pet in late 1999 when we got Coco, our big black cat. Coco has been the dream pet...easy to take care of, affectionate without being overly needy, friendly in an almost dog-like way.

We love dogs, too, and Alex especially wanted a dog badly. Dog was actually his first word. We finally got our first dog in 2003. Our beagle, Lily, was beautiful and sweet, but she presented challenges that we hadn't dealt with before. She was incredibly difficult to house train, she was hard to confine (an escape artist), and she, like all dogs bred for hunting, was a compulsive follower of her nose. An accidentally left-open gate led to her demise when she was hit by a car in front of our house.

Devastated, we didn't feel ready for another dog until 2006, when we were settled in our new house in Arizona. Learning from our experiences with Lily, we decided we would like to get a grown dog, rather than a puppy. We still wanted a small dog, since we have a small house and small yard. I did some research and narrowed my top choices down to three breeds: pug, Boston terrier, or French bulldog. All 3 breeds have some similarities. Short hair, small bodies, and cute "smooshed" faces that I've always found appealing. The pug had a few more health issues than the others, so that was my third choice. French bulldogs were great, but seemed harder to find and beyond our acceptable price range. So that left the Boston terrier as my first choice. After researching Boston terriers and waiting for a good time to start a dog adventure again, Cristina saw a little black and white dog, a basenji mix, for adoption at PetSmart. He seemed perfect...small, short haired, full-grown, and inexpensive. After some deep thought and family consultation, we adopted Cade.

Cade was full of life. Maybe too full for us to handle. He needed a lot of exercise to burn that energy. And since he'd been a stray, his housetraining wasn't where we thought an adult dog's would be. Worst of all, Alex's play would constantly get Cade riled up and crazy, which would then lead to Cade jumping on people and nipping and biting. We tried a private trainer, which had some nice results, but the fact remained...Cade required a lot more work than we felt we had the time and energy to give. My parents had just lost their dog to old age, and when they enjoyed Cade so much during a visit, we asked if they would like to "adopt" Cade for a while. 3 months after we adopted him, Cade went to live with my parents in North Carolina. He was happy there, my parents loved him, and we were dog-free again.

We all but swore that we'd never try to own a dog again. We even discussed getting a second cat.

Here in Phoenix, our friend Valerie markets and sells dogs for a breeder in Hungary (http://www.scrumptiouspups.com/). Valerie had been aware of our dog difficulties all through our Cade period. Before we got Cade, she had been working on getting us a Boston terrier, but things fell through and it didn't happen. Summer 2007, she had a "Frenchie" (French bulldog) that she was convinced would be perfect for us. She knew that what we basically wanted was a dog that had many of the attributes of a cat. Not hyper, not too much need for exercise and frequent walks, small, short-haired, sweet and affectionate, and relatively quiet.

Vivien fit the bill. Not only are Frenchies small, but Vivien is a small Frenchie, about 10 pounds. That's 6 pounds lighter than our cat! And she's used to cats, and does not chase them, which should bode well for Coco, who has yet to meet a dog he liked. She doesn't need to be walked a lot, she's very calm, mild-mannered. She doesn't jump up on you and get all crazy. She's not a licker. She can be playful, but not in a rough way. In many positive ways, she's like a cat. But like most dogs, she loves to be pet and rubbed and coddled.

So we picked her up yesterday and we're giving her a 3 week trial. She's 7 months old, so she's pretty much done growing. She needs some housetraining, as she was used to having a doggy door, which we don't have. She's never slept in a crate, and we believe in crate-training, so last night was her first night in the crate. She did fine. She peed when I first put her in it, but after I put a fresh towel in and went to bed, she didn't make a peep all night.

And she lightly snores. It's very endearing.

I love her. And most importantly, Cristina seems to love her. Cristina has had the hardest time with our previous dog experiences, and since she's at home more than I am, it's important that she really enjoy the dog. I hope third time is the charm.

Okay, I'll try it

The thought that I'm an English teacher and I don't write nearly as much as I would like has been gnawing at me. Two of my best friends keep a blog. Sure, they don't post everyday, but they post enough to remind me that I too could write a blog if I chose to. I usually keep a journal when we travel, but...I should blog more.

So here I go. I'm going to see if I can keep it up. I'm not going to send it to anyone until it looks like I can sustain it. Nothing's worse than emailing all your friends and family and telling them "I've got a blog! Here's the address!" And then you totally choke and never keep it up. Cue sad muted trumpet: wah, wah, wah.