brief vignettes

I have been keeping an online journal for about three years. It was never anything super interesting, just what I ate that day and what I did. I kept it to make myself write everyday, but I ironically did very little writing because it was all just short, dry lists about my day. I was considering giving it up when I came across this quote:

“Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.” 

It is now a part of my daily routine. As the new year begins, I want to start with a look back with a small collection of the brief vignettes I wrote over the course of 2014:

1) Every time Addie gets riled up, she grabs my wrist in her mouth and gently bites down on it. Those moments always fill me with sudden fear and endearment when I think of how easily she could bite through my bone if she wanted. But she chooses not to.

2) I was woken up by a weak whimper. I opened my eyes and saw Addie's nose a few inches from my face. At seeing me awake, she excitedly lifted her head and her ears went back. She whined louder.

I tried to close my eyes, but she just jabbed me with her paw to make sure I would stay awake.

3) Nick looked down at his phone to give Waunt directions as we neared our destination. "Exit on Alamo," he said.
Dylan adjusted his glasses in the back seat. "Remember that."

4) The man that no one recognized as a parent walked by again this afternoon during check out. He stared at Christina's clipboard.
"You guys giving out free spaying and neutering this week?"

Christina looked toward the veterinary hospital as if the building would confirm or deny it. "I'm not sure, but you can go walk down to our hospital right there and I'm sure they would know."
"But it says on your sign," the guy said. He pointed at her clipboard that read "Furry Friends is nut free this week" because one of the kids in her group had a severe peanut allergy.

5) I pulled out the tablet with the video of the rat tricks already downloaded onto it. While I was swiping the screen to unlock it, one of my kids told me he wanted to eat me. "Excuse me?" I asked.

"I want to eat you." He opened his mouth wide, his lips pulled back to expose his teeth.
"Why?"
He pointed at my pants, plum-colored jeans. "You look like a salad," he said.

6) Nick stood on the corner, covered in grape jam with a sign offering free hugs. The streets were mostly filled with confused tourists, who weren't sure if they should take a picture of that crazy guy they saw in San Francisco to show off to their friends back home or to walk quickly past him without making eye contact.
The only person who did unabashedly stare at him was the guy in the Elmo suit on the opposite corner. After Elmo had been staring for a few straight minutes, Nick yelled to ask if he wanted a hug.

Elmo just yelled, "Don't touch me with that shit!".

7) Trenton would not leave the guinea pig poop alone. I caught him picking it up and collecting it in the palm of his hand three times already and the guinea pigs hadn't been out for ten minutes yet. The other kids scrunched their noses and told on him every time they saw him looking at the little pellets for too long.
I sat on the couch behind them and continued to ramble off my guinea pig facts. "Guinea pigs self groom a lot. In fact, they secret a milky substance from their eyes and put that in their fur to help them stay clean."

Trenton's mouth fell open. His hands were full of poop again. "That's disgusting," he said.

8) I woke up in the middle of the night and sat upright in bed. I couldn't figure out what woke me because everything was dark silence and Nick and Addie were both still. Then I felt it. The room swayed. It took a moment for me to realize it was an earthquake and not a truck going by. I turned to my side and shook Nick's shoulder.

"Wake up," I said. "It's an earthquake. We are in a San Francisco earthquake."
Nick's eyes opened for a few seconds until the earthquake passed. Then he closed them and immediately fell back asleep. Addie was also unimpressed. She glanced around for a few seconds before cuddling closer to my shins.

9) I have acclimated to the San Francisco weather just enough that I am still cold here, but everywhere else is too hot. I have adapted enough to be miserable everywhere.

10) Lexi stood near the edge of the water. When the wave came, she fought every urge to run away. The cold water seeped around her toes, a sea foam anklet formed around each foot. She screeched happily and jumped back, only to run back forward into it. "It feels like soda!" she yelled.

11) Moby flopped on his back and rolled around in a spot in the grass that I can only assume something died on. His white belly was up and his body was wriggling around with his paws up in the air like he was dancing the hula. His leash limited some of his movement and for a moment, he looked like a trout on the line, struggling to escape from the floor of a canoe. 

12) I walked Ginger and Baxter across the street towards City Hall. We passed a man tucked in the corner between the bank and Fox Plaza. He had a long strip of blue cloth wrapped limply around his head. His entire body was lassoed with a dozen computer cords, the kind that were once used to connect computers to landlines. He had a giant, rainbow swirl lollipop in each hand. 

I passed him when he was still carefully adjusting his computer cords, so I went by without him really noticing. But he had finished by the time the person behind me walked by.
The Lollipop man followed him, screaming gibberish in a hoarse voice and waving his lollipops angrily in the air.

13) Rusty is extremely strong for such a small dog. When I try to get him to go in a direction he doesn't want to go in, I can see the muscles in his furry legs seize up when he senses the slightest tug from the leash. He locks down into the earth. Sometimes I am tempted to start leaning back on the taut leash, my feet planted in one spot and the rest of my body lowering until it is parallel to the grass lawn. I am almost positive his stubbornness could support my entire weight.

14) We knocked on the door and a reserved middle-aged woman answered the door.

She was using her body to block the doorway so her dog wouldn't run out into the hallway. When she got the dog a little calmed down, she led us in and gently teased her dog that was still barking at us. "Yes, your worst nightmare has come true. They are here to steal your kibble."
I started laughing, but then stopped as I almost walked into the stripper pole that pierced through the center of her living room.

15) "If you had to hide a body, who would you call?" Dad asked. He looked around at our faces lit by the outdoor fireplace while we all sipped whiskey and took tingling puffs from our cigars.
We went around the circle and gave our answers, most of us opting for Ryan because he had a bus, he could probably sneak us out of the country if we needed to, and he always seems to know a guy.
Then it was Uncle Lars' turn. He's always so quiet and respectable that we expected him to pass or ask questions about how he ended up with a body in the first place.
I flashed back to the first time that we met him when he and Aunt Janette were dating. He was standing outside of the cabin we were all staying in for Christmas and we all looked at the windows to find him staring at the roof, his mind totally wrapped up in it. We were all confused until Aunt Janette explained that he was an architect.
Now, he leaned back in his seat, pulled us cigar out of his mouth and answered that he would call his concrete foundation guy.

much love,
hedgie