March 10th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

I woke up a few minutes after six to the unmistakable sound of snow plows scraping the road. I was stunned. Yesterday, even in Vermont, it was beautiful, sunny and in the high thirties.

As quietly as I could, I got dressed, grabbed my phone and left the hotel room to call Dani to make sure she was awake and getting ready for school. Six rings then voicemail, so I hung up and tried again. Three rings and voice mail again… oh no. Three rings and then voice mail a third time. Now I’m beginning to panic because the bus was coming in less than half an hour, so I call my hubby. I can tell you, I am not his favorite person at the moment having to wake him up two hours early. Grudgingly he gets out of bed to check on her, and she was up. She had just left her phone in her room. Crisis averted, even though I am now on my hubby’s short list.

Now that I’m up and downstairs at the hotel, looking like Heat Miser with my hair sticking up every which way, I go and get some coffee and ask, were we supposed to get snow? The front end manager says no, but this is Vermont, and basically since no one knew it was coming, no one could enlighten me as to what to expect. Wonderful.

Remember how I said I wanted to take my mom to the quilt shop on our way home today? Well, yesterday on the ride up, she asked if we could take a small detour on our way home to stop at King Arthur Flour, “It’s on the way”. I tell her sure, no problem, then when I see where it is on the map and realize it’s clear across the state, I begin to regret my snap decision. Then I figure we are not in any real big rush to get home, so if it will make mom happy, no big deal…right? Yeah, that was before it decided to snow overnight. Just shoot me now. Well we aren’t planning on leaving until around ten, and the weather report says it’s supposed to get in the forties up here, so the snow should all melt and not be an issue…hopefully.

I just realized I forgot to tell you. The reason I was doing my Heat Miser impressions this morning was on Saturday, I got all my hair cut off. No more ponytail. I have a short haircut – I’m talking over the ears short. The last few times I’ve colored my hair, something I have been doing since I was seventeen (to cover the grey), it has been a painful experience. My scalp would burn for several days after having my hair colored, so I decided to just let it go grey. I have been fighting the battle for thirty years, and I have given up; but the half grey / half colored look I was sporting looked ridiculous if I wore it down, so all I ever did was slick it back into a ponytail. Not exactly an attractive hair style, so on Saturday I bit the bullet and had it all chopped off. 

The flip side of having a short haircut is in the mornings no two hairs on my head are going in the same direction and a ponytail fix is out of the question. The cut is only two days old, so I’m still in the ‘playing around with it to figure out what works best’ stage. Today I’m going to go for the ‘wet it and forget it’, and we’ll see how it works. I’m not holding my breath, but I’m hopeful.

Even though I was trying to be quiet, I’ve already woken mom up once, and since my coffee’s finished and I am in desperate need of another cup, I’m going to wrap things up for the day. I hope y’all have a marvelous day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

That was the weirdest dream ever!

Dreams are bizarre creatures. Sometimes they are vivid and remarkably detailed. Sometimes they are disjointed and nonsensical; and sometimes they are just… well… weird. I guess because I’m a writer, I am blessed with the ability of remembering most of my dreams, hours, or even days, after waking.

As a matter of fact, it was a recurring dream which spawned my first novel. The characters had become so insistent, I had no choice but to write them down in the hopes that if they were on paper they would get out of my head. Thankfully my theory worked, but the second the first book was finished, a new set of dreams began – a high-grade problem I know.

Anyway, one of the weirdest dreams ever was one I’m still not sure was even a dream at all. I was sound asleep and something woke me. I hear a low growl. I leaned up on my elbows and squint my eyes to try to see through the dark. There, near the door, I could just make out the outline of a dog. Somehow, through my sleep fogged brain, it registers this dog was twice the size of my dog. Another growl penetrates the darkness. I sit up in bed. The dog stalks toward the bed. Just enough moonlight peeked through the curtains to reveal sharp white teeth as the dog peeled his lips back in a snarl.

My heart began to pound and I scrambled up onto my headboard (the headboard of my bed is a books shelf – big surprise, huh) and started smacking at my husband to try and wake him up. I never took my eyes off of the dog who was now at the foot of my bed. Still not wanting to make a sound, in fear I would wake my children and they would come running into my room and be mauled by the beast, I start hitting my husband harder and harder until he finally wakes up. At this point I am totally curled up on the bookshelf above my husband’s pillow because the dog now has his front legs on the foot of my bed and he’s staring me down.

Out of time, but I’ll finish the story since this actually happened.

My husband finally wakes up and, still not making a sound nor taking my eyes off the creature, I point to the end of the bed. He says, “What?” I glare at him for half a second and quietly hiss, “Oh my God, just look.” I look back, and there was nothing there.

I’m shaking like a leaf and still curled up above my husband’s head, so he flips on the light, grabs the bat which we used to keep by our bed, and goes to investigate. Keep in mind, he still has no clue what had happened. A few minutes later he comes back and tells me there’s nothing and asks me what exactly was it I thought I saw. What I saw, was a huge, snarling German Shepherd. He told me I must have been dreaming and I argued I had been awake for the past fifteen minutes watching the thing stalk me. He flipped off the light and went back to sleep. I stayed awake the rest of the night gripping the bat and staring into the darkness.

I don’t think I had ever been so scared in all my life. I truly felt like, somehow a rabid dog had gotten into the house and we were going to be attacked. This happened over seventeen years ago and I still remember every second of it. See what I meant about not being sure if it was a dream?

Your Next Challenge is:

When will it ever end…

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.