Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser McAlpin

Friday's Three

Thank you to Unconscious Mutterings, week 216, for the prompts.

Stems  ::  My rose room.

In the rose room, i.e. the den, there hangs a painting by Ben Matthews that reads, “Cristine Flanica.  Using rose stems to end the lives of countless male victims, Cristine Flanica became the most notorious woman of her time.”  In the room, I scattered about an assortment of roses―a couple of long-stems lying across the cocktail table, a silk arrangement in the vase sitting with my pictures on the bookshelf, a bunch of dried baby roses tossed haphazardly on an end table, and I’m considering hanging a few stems upside down on a floor lamp, tied in an elegant black bow.  I guess I have a weird sense of humor.  I am not a murderer, a hatemonger, or a male basher, but I found the concept of this painting, and now the entire room, to be irresistibly silly, in a perverse kind of way; plus I love Christine, dressed in black and painted with pink roses, stoically clutching her red rose stem.  Needless to say, this is not the first room I show to viable dating prospects.  I figure the mastiffs are scary enough.

Groovy  ::  Workin’ on a Groovy Thing.

Song from the 70’s by The Fifth Dimension, no. 7 in the listening samples provided here.  It continues to be one of my all-time favorites, making me long for the days when I believed in love at first sight, happy endings, and everything working out alright if you just tried hard enough.

Jealousy  ::  My least attractive emotion.

They call it the green-eyed monster with good reason.  Having been raised in the shadow of a big sister who wore an invisible crown or maybe a halo, and did no wrong, and who was shaped like a Barbie doll in her teens, while I was the cute, sturdy one with pigtails, glasses, and braces, I am programmed to feel jealousy as an automatic knee-jerk reaction to just about everything.  It is the first feeling I go for, as if rushing by the hall closet on my way out the door, late, flustered, and preoccupied, where I automatically grab my usual scarf before remembering that the moths found it and ate it full of holes, which embarrasses me to rediscover, and reminds me that there's something wrong, or at least unclean, about my closet.  Since I’m aware of this tendency, it doesn’t rule me, although it certainly wants to, and it certainly tries.  I prevail because I know how to try hard enough, I am determined to be bigger than it, and, once I've made up my mind, I am one tough cookie to crack.

With that said, I hope this weekend you can have your cookie (cracked or uncracked) and eat it too.

From Louise

Seated Shrinking

Saturday night, I had a date with a man who took me to dinner, and out and about, and I spent an hour putting on my makeup just right, and fixing my hair just right, and wearing my drop-dead outfit just right; and when the bell rang, I flung the door wide open to find him standing there in faded jeans, dirty gym shoes, a tee-shirt, and a red ski jacket with the lift tag still hanging from the zipper, never mind that it was a springtime 65 degrees outside.  My heart sank.  Not the love of my life, thought I, knowing full well that I didn’t believe in that stuff.  I let myself into the passenger seat, adjusted my designer leather mini-skirt, and fastened my seat belt, instead of making a bolt toward the front door, yelling, Mistake! Mistake! like I wanted to.  He slid behind the wheel, and became my fascination for the rest of the night.  Where did he go?  In a seated position, his body seemed to collapse in on itself, making me the tall one, at barely five feet.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  Where did he go, I wondered anew, wanting to reach over and pull back the layers of his jacket to see for myself.  I had to get a read on his posture.  How was he put together so that he collapsed when he sat down, without pain?  How could his lungs expand?  How could his heart beat?  Weren’t his ribs crushing up against one another?  Wasn’t he short of breath, or experiencing chest pains?  Did his legs grow while his body shortened?  Did he fold, like an accordion, into the crease that was formed where the seat-back met the seat bottom?  When I realized I was staring rudely, I looked out the front windshield.  But all night long, every time we sat down―at the restaurant, in the theatre, in the car, in the coffee house afterward, with our table in the front, close to the guitar player on his wooden stool, who closed his eyes dreamily whenever he leaned toward the microphone―I studied him, trying to figure out where he went when he sat down, and trying to resist the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him up straight.

Killer Fever - Part II

...continued from Wednesday:

Thank goodness he had come home.  We watched American Idol together, and he stayed downstairs with me in front of the TV as long as he could, before trudging upstairs to his bed to retreat from my clapping, cheering, and yelling, and to alleviate the strain of sitting up and trying to pay attention.  Swallowing was becoming more and more difficult as the show progressed, and he needed privacy and quiet.  His head ached, his eyes, ached, his legs ached, everything ached.  And then his fever spiked to 105.1°.  So there I was several hours later, sitting on the floor next to the tub, listening hard to understand my son as he spoke with a partially closed throat, and keeping my eyes averted, since there are some things a mother just doesn't want to see.

I waited five more minutes and handed him the themometer again.  Beep, I reached toward Jeffrey, and plop, there was the thermometer.  104.5, still falling.  Ten minutes later, beep and plop.  104.1.  He was slowly losing that glassy, puffed look, although he was still pale and blotchy; and he still didn't want to go to the hospital.  104.0.  To pass the time, I teased him about his red canvas belt, looped around the waist of his faded and torn blue jeans that were crumpled on the floor next to me.  "I got it on sale," he said.  "I can tell," I replied.  We laughed.  103.9.

At 2:40 am, his temperature had gone down to 102.5°, a temperature I would normally consider a high fever; but in the soft light of my bathroom, sitting on the floor by the tub, talking with my son who was soaking in tepid water and covered with cool, wet washcloths, who had somehow managed to survive a fever of 105.1 without convulsions or a coma or death or God knows what, 102.5° sounded mighty normal to me.

"I'll let you get out of the tub now," I said.

Well, that's great, mom; but, uh, do you think you could give me some privacy, please?" he asked.

"Oops, of course, honey.  I'm outta here," I said, getting up to leave.

to be continued. . . .

S is for Sections

and a spray of surgery, softball, sickness, sparkles, spectra, stone, sunlight, and spring.

Section I -- Surgery

Two weeks ago, Winston had his spleen removed.  It had turned into a softball somewhere along the way, when it was supposed to have been a long, sieve-like tongue; and he beat the odds by not having cancer, although the vet kept bugging me that the whole non-cancer thing was inconclusive until we received word from the pathologist.  When the report came back negative, and Winston perked up and pranced and played and searched for his ball outside, my appetite returned and my shoulders relaxed; but now at night, he's starting to leave my bed to scratch his way outside to be sick, again.  Sometimes I get up to guide him out, but last night he couldn't wake me, leaving a wet spot near my face, and a sick mess in front of my closed bedroom door.  Today I am queasy right along with him, and my shoulders have strained my back into tight ropes, filled with knots and dread.  I had hoped for some more time with my old friend, but I never meant for him to suffer.

Section II -- Sparkles

I remember summers in Cape Cod at my grandmother’s cottage, sitting on a stool, watching a white curtain curving, flowing, waving into a sunny room that smelled like cedar and pine, and standing in front of a three-tiered rack of baubles, staring at rows and rows of colored, flashing birth stones, fashioned into rings and necklaces, each for a dollar.  I fell into the bright, endless spectrum of radiant rubies, precious peridots and luscious, lavender amethysts, and I liked it.  “Mom, please?” I begged.  “No, they’re only glass,” mom would reply absentmindedly, as she filled her red basket with paper towels, tissues, and Pond’s cold cream that felt like Crisco icing on her cheeks at night, offering me no safe landing for a goodnight kiss.  Glass or stone, no matter.  I wanted the twinkling on my finger, around my neck, so I could sit on my stool and be the magic, and move the sparkle through the sunbeams of the window with the curtain, and turn it this way and that, and continue my forever freefall.

Section III  -- Spring

Warm spring showers have found us in Pittsburgh.  I hope spring is finding you too.  Have a wonderful weekend.

From Louise

Killer Fever - Part I

Last week the temperature outside went up to 70°, and my son's temperature went up to 105.1°.  I threw him into a tepid bath, and called Dr. Pat, my authority on all things health-related.  "What do I do?" I asked, when she surprised me by answering the phone at 1:00 in the morning.

"Don't ever mess around with a fever of 105°," she said in her most motherly tone, assuming the role of One Who Knows, which felt akin to being tossed a lifeline, since I was, at that moment, suffering from something that sounded like, "Help, help, omygod, what should I do, what should I do?"  I had never been around a temperature of 105° in an adult before, and Jeffrey looked absolutely awful with his deathly white skin and glassy bug-eyes, which were enormous, even though he was squinting.  "Take him to the Emergency Room immediately, and let me know how he is tomorrow."

I went into the bathroom, feeling my way toward the tub while aiming my eyes in the other direction, and stuck my hand in the water to check the temperature.   "Jeffrey, why is this water so hot?  For God's sakes, we're trying to cool you down, not heat you up."

"I was shivering," he said, while I felt around in the air, searching for the faucet (lefty, loosey; righty, tighty), and unleashed a blast of cold water near his feet.  "I don't want to go to the ER."

"I'll reconsider if your temperature starts going down," I replied, giving him the thermometer and hearing it clink against his teeth.  I heard a beep, reached my palm out, and looked at the thermometer that was plopped into it.  104.9.  If 105° is dangerous, does that mean 104.9° is safe?  Where is the cut-off line?

"Okay," I said.  "We'll see if it continues to go down."

Thank goodness he had come home.

to be continued.... 

Tonight, Tonight

Today I am submitting something (anything) to my blog that you are now reading (or at least looking at).  In addition, I am working out at the gym (I hope), doing several hours of homework, calling the vet about my cat who has pink-eye, and visiting Eleanor.  This evening I have a hot date with American Idol.  My friends Caroline (in Naples FL), Alexis and Annie (both here) text-message me constantly during the show and call me during the commercials, to offer their candid opinions and appraisals of the performing contestants.  American Idol has become an actual event/appointment that is scheduled into my cell-phone/calendar.  For the 1 and 2-hour shows, the four of us have become the know-it-all experts everybody hates.  Alexis forbids her poor husband to even enter the room when Idol is on, and only in recent seasons, has come to allow her daughter to watch with her because her daughter is a singer, and they can critique together.  Basically, during American Idol we’re all completely obnoxious and act like we’ve lost our minds.  I, for one, become my evil self, the self of which no one sees even a hint, during regular, non-Idol hours.  But when Idol is on, I've been known to change colors, shake my fist at the television and jump off the couch to dance in uncontrolled spasms and jerks at odd moments during the show.  Of course this is not my normal behavior, I promise.  But is it possible to be pure sweetness and light all the time?  That just wouldn't be any fun at all.

Bits o' This, Bits o' That

Today's blog entry is brought to you by Unconscious Mutterings (week 214) and SixSentences.com.

Ryan  ::  Seacrest.

Gay or straight?  It wouldn't have occurred to me to wonder, if Simon hadn’t been teasing him mercilessly about coming out of the closet (check it out).  Each week , there’s a new barb, a new comment, a new insinuation. And then he turns his venomous wit onto the kids.  I shudder, thinking of it.  He's reminiscent of a mentor/tutor/coach gone mad and running amok among the populace, popping into view here and there to shatter people with opinions that he chucks like spears.  And though I may agree with his performance assessments almost always, I have to say that if I were in his shoes, I would be inclined to remember that I was speaking to a bunch of kids and young adults, not another jaded old man like myself, and would find a less hurtful way to tell them that they suck.

Intuition  ::  Trouble.

I have a well-intentioned commitment to practice the fine art of living my life intuitively.  This possibly gets me into more trouble than anything else I can think of at the moment, and will probably continue do so until I learn the difference between an exciting idea and an intuition.  My friend, Kate from Portland OR, once told me, “Sometimes those exciting ideas are little gifts from the Universe.”  Oh, yeah?  Well, sometimes they’re not.

Apology  ::  Nope.

I won’t apologize for looking too long at one of my fellow students, fodder for a riské piece that Six Sentences picked up.  Or am I just creating Mrs. Robinson-type fiction and passing it off as memoir, just to get your attention?  I'm not telling.

Keep 'em guessing, and have a wee bit o' fun and a great St. Patty's weekend.

From Louise

Teatime Tangent

In my next life I’m going to have those legs (I looked the other way to avoid staring, but gave up after about two seconds).  And those eyes and that hair (I took a sip of tea) and those arms and those hands with their ten perfect fingernails shaped in squares and painted with just the right amount of white.  The tea was too hot.  I was supposed to be enjoying my midday Starbucks escapade, sipping sweet tea that tasted like gingerbread graham crackers, munching an exquisite—albeit unusually crumbly—piece of coffee cake, and dissecting fragments of poems assigned for homework due tomorrow; but instead, I was placing my order for my next life and burning the roof of my mouth.  It was a relief when she got up to leave.  As she brushed by my table, she flashed me a nice, round derriere to add to my list.  And that was the end.

What SHE Said

For a sultry, sensuous start to your week, check out Madam Z's latest entry on SixSentences.com here, and enjoy your travels up and down dark staircases for the rest of the day.  That's all I'm saying.

Cheers from Louise

Munchy Mutterings

Thank you to Unconscious Mutterings for the prompts.

Nude  ::  Winter tree branches.

They should be wearing sweaters with holes in the elbows, gnarled, nubby mittens, scratchy, woolen scarves with fringes at the ends, and a favorite, hand-knitted hat pointed with a pom pom.

Support ::  System.

A wonderful thing to have in an emergency―sometimes necessary and sometimes desperate.

Rachel  ::  Ray, of course.

Spoons, spatulas, electric mixers, cookie trays, chocolate chips.  Yummy.  Why do I always think straight for the dessert?

Crane  ::  Frasier. 

"Oh, for God's sakes, Niles!"

Mind games  ::  Unconscious Mutterings.

Or maybe chess.

Eviction  ::  Notice.

Please see “support  ::  system” above.

Produce  ::  Veggies.

Healthy foods.  But I will always prefer desserts.  Crème brulee, key lime pie, cherry pie, banana cream pie, trifle, chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, butter pecan ice cream, chocolate chip ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies.  Heaven.

Joke  ::  Of the day.

The Universe is filled with its tricks and jokes, usually on us.  Concrete example: why couldn’t desserts have been the healthy foods, and veggies the desserts?

Do some research on the subject, and have a yummy weekend!

From Louise

Cell Phone Gone Awry

I hate my cell phone.  Or maybe I should say, my former cell phone, since it has been duly replaced as of yesterday.  Last week, I left a recorded message on someone's answering service that I was reluctant and uncomfortable about leaving, since it involved the word, “no”.  In general, I do not like the word “no”, but I particularly don't like saying it to someone's phone messaging system.  It sounds callous and unfriendly somehow, and causes me to wring my hands and want to apologize profusely, which would only make matters worse.

After I had finished bumbling through the message, I flipped the phone’s cover closed, assumed it had hung up, and proceeded to give myself a lecture on where my responsibility ends and someone else’s responsibility begins, in a meager attempt to make myself feel better for having probably hurt another person’s feelings.  “You are responsible for you, and not for other people, or other people’s feelings, or other people’s feelings about your feelings, or other people’s feelings about their feelings about your feelings.... “ and so on, without any relief, when I heard my cell phone make a chirping sound.  I flipped the cover open to see that the timer was still counting out the duration of the phone call.  “Call connected,” it read.  "1:53 minutes."  And obviously still counting.

"Good Lord!” I thought, pressing the red disconnect button and watching the numbers freeze at 1:54.  “Did he hear all that?  Did I just leave that whole lecture on an answering machine?”  I tried not to panic, before I realized that I had probably left other unintentional messages in other unintentional voicemail boxes on other unintentional message answering centers.  That was when I panicked.  “My voice couldn’t have gotten through to the phone’s microphone through a closed lid,” I reasoned, trying to pull myself together.  Could it?  Was there a way to test it?

I flipped the phone back open, and dialed my home phone number, trying to ignore the honking traffic and student-pedestrians crossing the street in the crosswalk in front of me.  Fortunately for the moment, I was sitting at a red light close to the university.  When the light turned green, I proceeded carefully with my own voice droning tinnily in my ear.  “You have reached Louise Yeiser.  Blah blah blah.  Please leave your message at the sound of the beep.”

I know my limitations, so I never promise to call anyone back.  I simply invite them to leave messages.  Do people really expect others to call them back?  Because if they've taken it upon themselves to reach me, isn’t it their responsibility to do so?  Why should it become mine?  It’s that responsibility thing again.  I have always found it confusing.

Once I heard the beep, I said in my most business-like tone, “Hello, Louise.  I am Louise.  The same Louise that will be listening to this message in a few minutes.  I am flipping the cover closed (flip) and now I am talking to a closed phone.  Can you hear me now?  Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed,” I said into the phone.  “Okay, bye-bye.”  I opened the phone, cut off the call that was still chugging away, and called my home phone messaging center.  I took a few minutes to key in my phone number, password, and all the necessary hoo-ha that is required of me, and listened to my own voice playing back.  “Hello, Louise,” it said.  I waited.  I heard myself announce the flip, and I heard every word after that, as clear as a bell.  I heard the “Can you hear me now?”  I heard the first few lines of of our National Anthem.  I heard the farewell.  I groaned and turned my car into my regular university underground parking lot, and drove past the "Cash Parking" sign and the reserved spaces in the front.  I clenched my teeth, pushed my foot down on the gas pedal, and took the first corner on two wheels.  The lot attendants turned to watch.  I knew that this would be the beginning of the end for my cell phone.

Yesterday it was replaced by a Verizon Wireless―a slim, silver smartphone with a computer chip, a large screen, a camera, email access, and all sorts of bells and whistles that I’ll probably never figure out how to use.  It is flat, with no deceptive cover that tricks you into thinking you can end a call with a flip.  No, the proper cut-off maneuver is accomplished by simply pressing the red button on the right side, easily distinguishable from the green button on the left side.

What have I learned from this experience?  Well, for starters, I have learned that although many people believe that one good flip deserves another, I'll take the non-flippers any day of the week.  What I've also taken from this experience is that next time I have issues over whose responsibility belongs to whom, I’ll forego my own boring lectures, which make little sense anyway, and call my sister in Sarasota or my best friend, Annie, on my new-fangled, high-tech, slim-line phone, and ask what they think.  Or maybe I’ll email them.  Or send a text message.  Or....

Time Taken Back

I woke up this morning to realize it was Monday.  I groaned, threw off the covers, dragged myself out of bed, and plodded downstairs to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee, muttering the whole way.  How in the world did today get here so fast?  What happened to yesterday and Saturday and all of last week?  I hesitated in the kitchen, lingering over those first few ecstatically grateful sips of hazelnut laced caffeine, leaned against the cool granite counter, and pondered the passage of time.  Where had it gone, and what had I done with it?

Let’s see―last week I was busy with school, Friday I handed in a Myth paper that counted for 30% of my grade and was probably one of the most poorly written pieces I have ever submitted anywhere (nor did I care, unfortunately), Friday evening, I went to a Pittsburgh Musical Theater production of Footloose to recognize an old friend on-stage, Tim Hartman (Rev. Shaw Moore), whom I knew because he and his family live in the house where my great grandparents raised my grandmother, and 6 years ago, my aunt from St. Louis MO and cousin from Charlotte NC flew in for a grand house tour that Tim agreed to give us, something for which I am extremely grateful, since my aunt remembered how, as a little girl, she boarded the train bound for the same house to spend time with her grandparents, so that walking through it once again in her later years was a special treat, especially since she became ill shortly thereafter.  Saturday I went out with friends for brunch, followed by shopping, and returned home for a movie night with the mastiffs (A Good Year with Russell Crowe and Albert Finney, and The Prestige with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale).  Yesterday I went to yoga class before spending the day cleaning and organizing the house, paying some bills, doing laundry, and reading the first three articles of a double issue of The New Yorker, an assignment for my Contemporary Readings class next Monday.  Speaking of great grandparents and The New Yorker, one of my great, great, great uncles from the other side of the family was one of the magazine’s founders, who wanted to publish a periodical that poked fun at New York society.  This story, although it's an amusing anecdote and a great hit at family get-togethers, plus a quarter, won’t even buy me a diet coke, which I suppose is alright, since they’re bad for me and I shouldn’t be drinking them anyway.

Time is a pretty strange thing, when all is said and done; and to me, it mostly looks like it goes around in circles, or cycles, or spirals, always landing somewhere near the place where it began.  With that thought, I bid you the beginning of a happy week.

From Louise

Marchin' Toward the Edge

As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

--Hughes Mearns, The Psychoed