Fired-Up Friday

Maybe We All Need a Bus Ride

     It has been said that Thanksgiving is the most traveled holiday in the U.S. More people go home for Thanksgiving than at any other time of the year. While there is often a lot of joy associated with family gatherings this time of year, there can also be angst and uncertainty. Old hurts between siblings surface and for those who have been away a long time, a feeling of no longer belonging leads to estrangement.

     In my story “Bus Ride to Love,” from the e-book Autumn’s Gold, Ellen Curtis is facing just such a dilemma. Having left North Dakota far behind when she took a job in Chicago years ago, Ellen no longer feels a part of her family and has stayed away much too long. But this Thanksgiving, she is taking the long way home to try and reconnect. It turns out to be a bus ride of unexpected surprises.

     Ellen Curtis didn’t mind rock music. She’d grown up listening to some of the loudest rock bands around. It was just that after hours of being blasted by music played at its most obnoxious level, she was ready to scream. But screaming would hurt too much. Her poor head was already pounding as if 16 jackhammers were at work between her ears.  

     She had expected the Thanksgiving bus ride from Chicago to Red Butte, North Dakota, to be long, dull, and relaxing; a time to gather her wits before facing the Curtis clan. So far it had only been long, and it wasn’t even half over.

     Things change rapidly when a new driver boards the bus and issues an ultimatum.

      He stood in front of the bus, surveying them all with a gaze of pure steel. Burly wasn’t the word to describe him. More like massive. His chest was wide and the sleeves of his jacket strained over bulging biceps. Musclemen didn’t usually do much for Ellen, but she had the feeling this fellow came by his brawn quite honestly. He’d probably never seen the inside of a workout gym or health club in his life.

     With cool gray eyes he swept over the rows of passengers and settled at last on the three orange-haired rockers. Ellen saw his jaw clamp down hard.

     The rock band members are soon put in their place with Douglas Maddock’s warning that the noise will stop—now—and the ride becomes more tolerable, but when the bus becomes stranded at a tiny bus station on the prairie, because of a sudden blizzard, Ellen learns that Douglas is a former lumber man from Oregon, a single dad whose son lives with his parents while he’s driving the bus. She ends up telling him about the family she is going home to see, the sister who is marrying Ellen’s former boyfriend the day after Thanksgiving, and her parents who were less than happy when she moved away. Ellen wonders if “they’ll ever accept me for the way I am. At my age it shouldn’t matter anymore, but family disapproval is a hard thing to deal with, no matter how old you get.”

     When she calls her parents to tell them of the delay, her sister Tammy is worried she won’t make it home for the wedding.

     “But tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, and the wedding’s Friday at four. What if you don’t make it?’

     “Then marry Sonny without me,” Ellen said snidely and clicked off, feeling like the Wicked Witch of the East. Why did she feel so down on Tammy marrying Sonny? She certainly didn’t want him anymore.

     Ellen is upset when Maddock asks her if the censure she feels isn’t just “all in your head, Ellen Curtis?” But then, maybe it is. Her parents seem genuinely worried, and when Douglas Maddock gets the bus to Red Butte in time for the wedding, Ellen’s father is anxiously waiting to pick her up. It strikes Ellen how much older her father looks. The weekend passes, Tammy marries Sonny, and Ellen begins to see that, though not much has changed, There was an order and purpose to life that was comfortable and reassuring, and Ellen wondered that she had ever considered such a life boring and repetitious. There was nothing more repetitious than sitting at a computer all day.

     When her father takes her back to the bus station on Monday, he asks her to not stay away so long again, and this time she will keep her promise to come home more often. When she boards the bus Ellen is suddenly saddened to see the driver isn’t a burly man with cool gray eyes. But after they are on the road, someone sits down beside her and asks, “Things change much?” She admits no, but that’s okay. She notices his eyes are a warm blue color today. He asks if maybe she would come to visit Oregon? She could meet his son. Ellen says she would like that and settles back to watch the landscape slip by, glad it’s such a long way back to Chicago.

     How many people can relate to Ellen’s situation? Probably all of us in one way or another, even if we’ve never personally experienced the kind of estrangement she has, we still all have our differences. But perhaps that is why Thanksgiving is the most traveled holiday, because sooner or later we all need to set aside differences and celebrate what makes us more alike.

 

 

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Fired-Up Friday

Ten Ways to Beat the Blues

 It’s fair to say that many of us are feeling blue after this week. Maybe more than blue and more like sucker-punched, kicked to the curb, and left wondering—what’s next? With all the negativity, meanness and nasty verbiage that has filled the airwaves, we can’t help but have absorbed some of it, and it’s not a good feeling. Yet at some point you have to pick yourself up and find ways to deal with the stress and anxiety, get rid of the negativity, and take care of yourself. These are a few tried and true ways I’ve found that, no matter the source of the stress, always seem to help put it all in perspective and even offer comfort.

*First of all, feel the emotion. Give yourself time. It’s okay to be sad, mad, afraid, angry. Furious even. Accept you feel this way and own it. Once you do, it becomes easier to deal with.

*Listen to music. Doesn’t really matter what kind. Your choice. Sometimes the louder the better, and go ahead, sing along. It releases lots of pent up emotions and energy.

*Read a book. Find one you’ve been meaning to start for a long time and lose yourself in another world. Books are great for taking us away from it all. If you can read while relaxing in a lavender-scented bath, all the better.

*Snuggle with your pets. Your cat, your dog, your bird. Curl up with them and show them lots of love. Petting an animal has been shown to lower blood pressure, and even watching fish in an aquarium can help with relaxation. Your pets will love the extra attention and will lavish you with their unconditional love. If you don’t have a pet, visit a local shelter and donate some much needed pet supplies. They will be most thankful, and you’ll feel better for having helped them.

*If you’re a writer, get back to writing! If you write fiction, pour all those emotions you’re feeling into your characters. I happen to like lots of drama, so this works into some very heartfelt scenes in my stories. Let your hero and heroine suffer and deal with hardships and then bring them full circle to their happily ever after. Because in your story, you are in control and you can make this happen.

*Hang out or talk with like-minded friends to commiserate and share your distress. Misery does love company, and there is strength in numbers.

*Get physical. Take a walk, play with the dog, clean the house, rake leaves, tackle the chores you like to put off doing. Expend the energy. At least when you’re done you’ll be tired and ready to chill out.

*Get involved in a community project that will benefit others. This time of year there are many opportunities to reach out to someone in need. Collect grocery items for a local food bank, mittens for a mitten tree, coats for a coat drive. Go through your closet and donate items to the Salvation Army. As mentioned, animal shelters are always in need of pet food and cleaning supplies.

*Sign up with www.freekibble.com to play a daily trivia game that donates kibble to homeless pets. It’s free and it’s fun.

*When all else fails, watch a Hallmark movie. Right now you can binge-watch on Christmas movies all day long. They’re feel-good movies but if one makes you cry, then you’ll have let loose with some of that pent-up emotion.

As a final caveat, if none of these help and you truly feel the need, don’t hesitate to seek out professional help to work through it. Don’t let anyone tell you to “just get over it,” because if you’re struggling with very deep disappointment and you fear it will affect your everyday life,  you must take care of yourself first.

Here’s to sending positive thoughts, prayers, vibes, and energy out into the universe in the hope it will all come back to us.

Of course looking at kitty and puppy pictures never hurts either. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fired-Up Friday

It Could Happen

This has been a truly fabulous week. In spite of all the nastiness flying around us in these last days before the elections, it was a week that lifted me up to a place where I didn’t have to think about any of the vitriol filling the airwaves. On Wednesday we went to see one of our favorite bands-- no make that our very favorite band-- in concert. We first saw the Moody Blues in the early 1970s and have tried to make it every time they’ve been close ever since. Hard to believe the Moodys are now in their 70s, but they still sound great and hearing all those songs we’ve so loved over the years is always a real treat. Something that struck me this time, though, was how many of the things they sang about way back in the day are still all too relevant today. Not only finding love but searching for meaning and justice in an often cruel world. How so many people are “lost in a lost world.” Yet their music was and is always hopeful, and while you’re listening you just plain feel so much better! While at the concert, it didn’t matter how the fans were different; for the moment, they all just loved the Moody Blues.

Wednesday was also the day for a historical event. THE CHICAGO CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!! Sorry, just had to shout that one out. While I will admit I am not by any means a baseball fan (truly, most of the time it puts me to sleep) you can’t grow up this close to Chicago and not know the story and history of the Cubs. When I was a kid, we had extended family living together in the big farmhouse, and in those days there was only (horrors!) one TV. During baseball season, and much to my chagrin, when my Uncle Frank came home from work the TV was tuned to WGN and wherever the Cubs were playing that day. It was the voice of Jack Brickhouse you heard announcing back then. I remember my uncle grumbling every year about the losses and yet every year, there he was watching them play. I’m not sure you would find any fans more loyal than Cubs’ fans. They stuck with their team through the years, and in spite of what was called “the billy goat curse,” and comments like “Yeah, that’ll happen when the Cubs win the series,” they always said, “Just wait till next year.” On November 2, 2016, in the 7^th game, in the 10^th inning, next year finally became this year. What fun it was to watch the joy and celebrating on the field, and to see their signs with the “could” crossed off to say, “It did happen!” I had to think about all the people who waited a lifetime for this to happen, most of us having at least one if not more family members who waited. My Uncle Frank wasn’t big on showing emotion, as many men of that time were not, but I bet this would have at least got a smile out of him. Maybe even a laugh. There’s a big parade in Chicago today and the river is running Cubs blue. Celebrations will continue, and maybe the best thing is that it brings people together in a good way. It doesn’t matter how they differ in other ways, just being a Cubs’ fan is enough for now.  

In what seems almost anticlimactic, but in the midst of this celebratory week, I did manage to write some new pages on the book I’m hoping to finish by the end of this month. I’m still about 43,000 words away from writing The End, but to borrow the hopeful phrase from the Cubs fans' signs, “It Could Happen.”