woah, is this a new thing?

So here it is: my second attempt at the le impromptu fiction.  Yesterday was fun, so I tried my hand at it again this morning.  

Before I post it, though, I have to say that this week is not going particularly the way I want it to.  It's already Thursday and I'm feeling like the week has just blown past.  My mornings are not going the way I want: twice I overslept the Early-Early alarm and then yesterday and this morning, the husband and the dog have been up at roughly the same time so I don't feel like I've had the peace I crave.  To be honest, I do want to stamp feet and whine about it a little bit.  It is perhaps true that I don't own the morning, as Joe likes to remind me, but damn it, I do like to pretend. 

And since I'm whining, can I mention that I'm really not sleeping from the pain of this damn herniated disc.  Which makes me all the crabbier about the loss of solitude to work in from 4:30 - 6:00 am.  I am repeatedly awake all night, trying without success to find a comfortable sleeping position (apparently impossible), and longing for it to be 4 so I can stop pretending and get up and get started.

Oh, and this morning inexplicably Burns ate one of Joe's slippers.  This is truly a shocking development, one that bodes extremely ill for the treasured footwear in this house, particularly as none of the closets have doors on them and everything is placed low to accomodate midget-me.

So you see, I am a little off today.  But still I managed to make something up this morning based on the prompt words Meg posted last night.  It's funny how the story begins to suggest itself based on putting one word in front of the other.  I don't know where this is taking me, but I'm following along anyway.

Which is really the best I can do today until Joe gets through this period of over-work and ceases interfering with my mornings.  

I don't care what he says.  I do own them.  I do.

* * * * * 

That damn hound, he muttered, as he started unloading the gear from the back of the truck.  Would it be too much to ask that after all these years, that damn dog not run off as soon the tailgate of the truck was lowered, just like that, following his own nose into the woods, unraveling some great spool of scent all the way back to its starting point?  Gone again, that damn dog, to return who knows when and meanwhile here he was, first to arrive, on purpose, to set up camp for the guys, but now with that knife of anxiety in his belly about the dog.  The dog would be fine, naturally, he always was, but since he got him, no matter what, he had never lost that fear of losing him that made him slick with sweat every time Steve took off.  It was something about his own powerlessness, the self-reliant Fuck You Steve seemed to be saying to him over his shoulder as he padded away, snout as ever glued to the ground, eyes barely visible under the drooping curtain of his forehead.  Yeah, that’s right: Steve.  He’d named him Steve mostly to make the other guys laugh.  They didn’t have a Steve in their circle, so naming the dog Steve seemed to complete things, at the same time that it made such a clear expression of the canine’s status among them, his importance in their hunting, not a pet, no mere commodity, but a working dog without whom the spoils of their pastime would be fewer, oh far fewer.  He whipped himself on, shaking the fine powder of road-dirt from the tents before setting them up, setting the camp chairs around the fire pit, stacking the food in the bearproof cupboard.  Quick, before the rest of the guys arrived, there was still time to crack open a can of enticing pork and beans and carry it into the trees, calling softly, keeping the desperation out of his voice, “Come on, Steve, come to Daddy.”

Comments

[Frankie]

extremely very cool