Book Excerpt

The following is from a book I am currently working on. Just wanted to share.  

Chapter 5 - Childhood Ambitions and I Still Don’t Know What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

I was nominated my senior year of high school as being the one ‘most likely to still be in college trying to decide what to major in’ for our senior year future predictions. 

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a movie star actress more than anything in the world. I dreamt of it often, walking the red carpet with my Oscar in hand. And I didn’t want to be a stage-actress playing lead role in the same part every night for three months straight. But I didn’t want to just be a movie star for the glitz and the glamour. The appeal of fame and fortune was not as strong as my need for privacy and my not wanting to be chased by photographers everywhere. The main reason, the overwhelming reason I wanted to be a movie actress were the roles. In one movie you got to be a fighter pilot, in the next movie you might be a princess; in another you might be a firefighter hero and then turn around and be a stay-at-home mom who drinks too much. But it was always changing. You could be whoever you wanted to be, in different careers, different geographies, far away planets that don’t even exist - that’s what I was always interested in. And it wasn’t that I was unhappy with my life or who I was, or maybe I was and didn’t know it, but more like monotony has always bored me. Routines are hard to follow, as was sitting still behind a desk for ten years of my life, taking orders from people who quite frankly, nine times out of ten, didn’t know their ass from their elbows. I have found a job that I love though. I do really enjoy real estate, my current profession, and have interesting stories I could probably tell from my journey with it thus far. Wait, what, did you think I was a writer? Hahahaha, well no, I’m not. I don’t go around introducing myself as “Hi, I’m Jennifer. I’m a writer.” Instead, I say, “Hi, I’m Jennifer. I’m a real estate agent.” “Can I show you a house?” “I have some property you might be interested in.” I write because I love it. I love to write. But I am not a writer by trade or profession. It’s my hobby. It’s my own entertainment, and sometimes my own therapy. I was born to write. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before or not, but I started my first novel at the age of 10 or 11. True Story. I never finished it. As has probably been one of my biggest weaknesses/faults in life was not finishing. Not the book, I’m sure it was not that great of a book, at ten years old, but in not finishing many things I once started. I’m not gonna say I didn’t come by it honestly, either, but that’s no excuse. It’s something I have had to openly admit to myself that I have many times in life taken the easy way out like just quitting something I had committed myself to without real cause, other than I just didn’t want to, mostly. I’m working to improve that side of myself. They say acknowledgement is the first step in recovery. I intend to finish this book, sooner, rather than later. And I’m not being doom and gloom, but I feel a renewed sense of urgency in getting these thoughts and words down on paper. 

….Stop and smell the roses. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. To look around, acknowledge the world around me, and give thanks for it. I am currently doing that right now. Sitting on my front porch, trying to type without looking at the computer screen thinking of my high school typing teacher, Ms. H, while a bee buzzes above my face, and the wind rustles the small, delicate yellow flowers in my front yard, with too tall grass that needs mowing. My Father in Law is supposed to be on top of that these days. He’s retired now. I like to think it helps keep him busy. He’s a piddler, if ever there was one. Folks from the South know exactly what a piddler is and if you don’t know, you ain’t from around here. 

I recently divorced myself from an on-going group text message with around 6-9 of my gal pal besties. I hated to do it, but it was time. It had gotten too big, too frequent, too time-consuming, and too distracting. I was getting anywhere from 100-200 text messages in a single day from one single text thread. And the majority of the conversations were not what I would call urgent need to know information. It was more like gossip, silly antics, funny this-just-happened-to-me conversations, and random whatever from someone with nothing really to do a the moment. It was taking a lot of time out of my day from other things in my life, and just since my “break-up”; which was coincidentally, yesterday, I have already noticed a difference in my day and have gotten far more done today than I have any other day this week. And the quiet… Now, granted, my phone rings and dings a lot. Pretty much all day/night at least in random spurts throughout the day. After all, I am a real estate agent. My phone is how I make a lot of my living. But honestly, with the group text, it had gotten to where all my phone did all day long was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ding. It was constant; all day. About nothing in particular, becoming just an annoying noise that kept driving my attention back to it. Life, is like that sometimes too, a buzzing, dinging noise in the background. Slow down.  Turn your phone off. Stop spending your time living in a group text or living vicariously through television or social media, and actually get out and start living your life. It’s slipping away right now, perhaps slowly or more quickly than you may realize. Enjoy. Relax. Read a book. Read my book. Write a book. 

Maybe one day I will introduce myself as a writer. 

Prologue

October 21, 2015 

(The day Marty McFly goes Back To The Future {Part II})

This started out as a story of my journey with cancer. But after careful consideration, I have decided my story is much more than that. Yes, I have cancer; Stage IV Colorectal Cancer. I’ve been fighting it for well past two years now, and still undergoing treatment. However, I am currently 39 years old, so in comparison, two and a half years isn’t really that long. Plus, I refuse to be defined and labeled as a disease statistic. If, I am to be remembered in relation to cancer, I hope to be “that girl who made cancer her bitch and whipped it like a man behind the toolshed”. No, my journey has been much more than this disease. I would even say it's been absolutely wonderful. It has been full of adventure, mischief, bad behavior, good deeds, acts of kindness, despair, tragedy, pain, hope, dreams, love and ideas; both big and small. As far as a life can go, mine’s been a pretty damn good one I think, and I like to believe it’s far from over. Then again, I may get hit by an asteroid later tonight, so I figure I should at least get the prologue done for the book I’ve been wanting to write since I was about ten years old. It’s changed quite dramatically in the last 29 or so years, and it may change yet again before I’m through writing it. But for now, this is the start. 

This is what I have always wanted to do. It’s too bad that I had to come close to dying before finally doing it. This is my story, as best as I can recall. 

Chapter 1:

A Perfect Day

Life is better in the South. I’ve read a few Southern writers who have said something along the lines that Southerners have better stories. Mostly, in part, because Yankees are too cold to stand around and tell ‘em. Well, I think it’s true. But that’s another story.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, coming out from under a chemo fog, is a whole new experience. You don’t really feel great, until you have felt absolutely terrible. That’s what chemo is like, for anyone who would like to know. You feel the very life of you slipping away, and when it’s over, you think, “Holy shit, I’m glad that’s over.” But you feel somewhat renewed. Or I do anyway. I can’t speak for anyone else living this.

Every time I go into a treatment, I am filled with dread. I have anxiety the night before and barely sleep. I know what’s coming. And every single time, I think, I can’t make it through one more. But then, somehow, I do. And when it’s over, I look back and think, “I made it.”
And I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the chance to say I made it. So many don’t get that opportunity. And sometimes, when I’m laying there, feeling sorry for myself, I think of the all the people who weren’t given the chance; those that were given a death sentence and some morphine to ease the pain. And so it seems rather selfish to throw a second chance into the wind. It’s wrong not to fight.

Cancer is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. There are far worse fates. It’s just the name we give to a disease we don’t understand. It’s not fair, but nobody said life was.

I recall my Mom, Dad and I having casual conversations around the dinner table about how we would choose to die... not necessarily your typical dinner conversation, yet nonetheless, we did so more more than once. Maybe we’re just morbid. I always said I would rather have a disease like cancer so that I would know the end was near and make necessary preparations. My mother always opted for a car crash, or something immediate. My dad usually leaned toward my way of thinking, but perhaps slightly more hesitant.

Given everything that’s happened, I still stand by my original decision. At least I have a chance.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

'Cation

I’m officially on vacation, at Gulf Shores in Alabama, thanks to a friend of mine who is letting us use his condo for the week.

Why am I writing this? Because life is good today. You never really realize how stressed and tense you are, until you get somewhere where stress and tense do not exist. And then all of a sudden, you don’t know how to act. Wait...what is this? No alarm in the morning? A beer for lunch? Don’t mind if I do....

We’ve only been here one day and so far we have seen six dolphins, although really it was the same three dolphins; twice. Once, earlier today, on their trip out to sea, and this evening, with the same three dolphins on their return voyage. Or, at least, so we’re guessing. And Seth caught two hermit crabs and got nibbled on by a school of fish. We went to The Hangout after we got in last evening and watched people dancing on tables and ate some of the best shrimp I’ve had in a really long time.

I love the ocean. I love how it makes you feel so small and tiny. No matter what is going on in your life, just sitting outside on the beach at night, with the sound of waves crashing in, neighboring vacationers dancing, drinking, or solving world peace; it’s like the “real world” no longer exists. All of the problems you have, all of the drama you have to deal with, or just the daily grind, just melts away. Slowly at first, as your body and mind adjust to the calm. And then, before you know it, you’re running down the beach with seashell braids in your hair, pulling a Bo Derek.

There’s an old saying, something about how if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And then there’s the one about creating a life that you don’t have to take vacation from. Well, that sounds pretty fabulous in theory, but most of us do not have that luxury. We have to take it when we can get it, and enjoy every single second of it, knowing that it’s only for a limited time, and next week, it’s back to reality.

Time for another Corona...

These Feet are Made for Walking

In July of 2003, I severed my Achilles tendon. All the way. Completely in half. 

I was married only a couple months before this. My newlywed husband and I had been at a friend’s house, soaking in the hot tub, drinking a few beers. On the way home we got into an argument. It was over a hypothetical poker game, and somehow, between the beers and the hot tub and the heat of the summer, it escalated into a full blown yelling match. 

We pulled into our apartment building, in downtown Birmingham. We had a large deck facing the driveway and parking area. We got out of the car, still screaming at each other. My husband was much larger than me; about six feet tall and weighing in at around 200 pounds or so. I am 5’4” and 120 pounds soaking wet. He made it out of the car first. As I came up the back steps leading to our back deck, he stood in front of the door way. He told me that I was not coming into HIS house. 

The rage overtook me. How dare he try and block my path. I lived here. I paid half the bills. I owned half the furniture. I would be damned if some man was going to tell me I wasn’t welcome in my own home. My first instinct was to kick him. Hard. Maybe in the groin. But he was much larger than me, and I realized the alcohol was clouding his judgment, and he was already angry. What if he kicked me back? 

The apartments and houses in this part of Birmingham are typically much older homes. Full of charm, but with old home problems. The door on the back deck was a glass paneled door, and if often stuck; meaning you had to push with authority at times to get it open. 

It was hot. I was wearing brown leather Eddie Bauer sandals. I reared back, and kicked at the wooden frame portion of the door, right past where my husband was standing, second panel up, probably close to 18 or 24 inches from the ground. I missed. I hit the glass. 

The door burst open. I immediately crashed inward and landed inside the house, just past the dining room table. The lights were off in the house. That’s when I felt it. It hit my stomach. A strange, sort of nauseating feeling, like I was about to pass out. I immediately knew something very bad had happened. 

“Bart,” I said. “Something’s wrong.” He had walked past me in a huff making his way toward the kitchen. “Whatever,” was his response. He turned the kitchen light on. Just then I saw every bit of color leave his face. 

It’s a strange moment when it happens. Everything that was just a second ago, so very important, all of a sudden, didn’t matter anymore. He grabbed one of his t-shirts that happened to be lying close by and wrapped it around my ankle. Blood was pouring everywhere. “Can you walk?” he asked. “I think so,” I said as calmly as I could. He said he was going to get the car and I would meet him downstairs. The walk down my steps was surreal. 

Once, years before, I was driving a car and the front axle went out. I could turn the wheel as hard right as I wanted, and the car only drifted in whatever direction it felt like. It was the same sensation. My foot floated and twisted loosely in my shoe. I was turning the steering wheel, but the tires weren’t moving. I assumed it was from the blood pooling in my shoe. My foot just can’t get any traction. 

We lived two blocks from St. Vincent’s hospital. We came in damn near sideways. Bart jumped out of the car in front of the emergency room doors. He told me to sit tight; that he was going to get help. As I sat there, I could feel the life drain from me. I knew if I waited any longer (it felt like eternity) I would surely bleed to death. I opened the car door. I hobbled slowly from the passenger seat. I felt dizzy. Small black specks were starting to float in front of my eyes. The nauseating feeling in my stomach grew more severe. Had to make it. I started trying to walk. I limped, half-dragging my useless foot and faced the sliding glass doors in front of me. They didn’t move. My dizzy head couldn’t stand there any longer and try to figure it out. I spotted more doors off the right. I dragged-limped over to them. They opened. There was a long hallway. The dark spots got bigger. I laid down - right in the middle of the hallway. At this point I realized it was either lay down or fall down. I chose to lay. A nurse spotted me. “Honey, are you alright?” she asked as she leaned over me. All I could do was raise my head, point at my foot, and say “I cut myself. My ankle.” 

I could see, out of the corner of my eye, my poor husband, followed by a medical team and a gurney, making their way to our car. I can only imagine their confusion, as they approached an empty vehicle, passenger door open and a trail of blood leading to yet another door. They hoisted me onto the gurney and started to wheel me into the emergency room. “BP 66 over 22!” I heard the nurse to my left yell to her cohorts. I shot straight upright on the bed. “Is that my blood pressure?” I asked, completely wild eyed. “Yes!” She practically yelled her response at me. “Well, that’s not good,” I informed her, just in case she was unsure. “I know,” she responded, “now lay back down.” 

And that’s it. That’s how I completely severed my Achilles tendon. At the time, I had no idea. I just thought I had cut myself badly, possibly severing an artery or something. It was later pointed out, while laying on a hospital bed, (by my husband, to the doctor on staff), that hey, that Vienna sausage looking thing coming out of my leg, looks like it might be a tendon. It was. I’ve not eaten a Vienna sausage since then, by the way. They stitched me up, and I met with a surgeon the next day. I had a tendon repair surgery, and spent about six weeks in a cast, followed by a couple more months in a walking boot, followed by a few more months of incredibly painful physical therapy, to learn how to use my foot again. I now have permanent surgical staples in my ankle holding my tendon together; reminding me on a daily basis that if you’re going to lose your temper and put your foot through a glass door, you should probably be wearing boots. 

Thoughts Worth Pondering

I have a love hate relationship with the television. Don’t get me wrong. There are few things better than a lazy, rainy Sunday spent on the couch wrapped in a blanket watching whatever Lifetime movies are on or any one of the Alien movies, or Shawshank Redemption. God. I love that movie. Ol’ Andy Dufrane. Get busy living or get busy dying…. one of my all time favorite movies. But sometimes, more often than not, it’s just an annoying noise in the background. Bored Housewives, Keeping Up with the Krazies; who watches this shit? Really? Does anyone? Most of the time all I hear is blah, blah, blah or more like muah muah muah (think Charlie Brown and his teacher). Background noise. 

The news is horrible. If you watch the “Evening News”, you get 28 minutes of horror, followed by a thirty second clip of the oldest woman alive skydiving or a Marine that saved a dog; and then you’re supposed to get all giddy about that shit. Nevermind that you were just subjected to the worst humanity has to offer: somebody shot somebody, somebody blew up somebody, somebody scammed somebody, but hey, here’s a puppy!!! 

And cable news? Forget it. 24 hour revolving door of death, murder, kill. But why don’t we all just get along? Hmmmmm…..

I like good movies. I like movies that make you think. One of my all time favorites in this particular think genre is called “Crash”. If you haven’t seen it, and you think you might possibly be a narrow minded nilly wilily; you should probably watch it. It might give you second thoughts. Then again, if you do happen to be a shallow asshole, then it probably won’t do much except confuse you.  

So my best advice to most of you, is to just turn it off. Turn. It. Off. Put down the t.v. remote, set aside the IPad, stop connecting to social media (it’s making you dumber) and go do something. Anything. Life doesn’t happen on the InterWebs. And it damn sure ain’t happening on the tel-o-vision. It happens every single day right outside your door. And if you’re lucky, it’s happening right now, inside your doors. Put your phone down, turn the tv off, and get freaky with your honey. Or go read your kids a book. Or go catch lightning bugs. And if you don’t live in the South and have lightning bugs, then move to the South. And then catch lightning bugs. 

‘Merica!!!

Happy post 4th of July celebrations. It’s Tuesday, so you should all be dragging yourselves back to work now, except you teachers, and we all know you don’t really work anyway. Ahem...

I used to get very involved in politics. Or put another way, I used to enjoy debating political policies while drinking beer and sitting around campfires. Being a democrat in a “red” state, I’ve had my fair share of heated talks, and have even been accused of being one of those “liberals”.  To be fair, if I lived in a more liberal area, I would probably be accused of being too conservative. Yes, compared to some of my peers in the rural South, I fall on the liberal side, but that’s mostly because I just happen to think people have a right to be happy, and do what they want to do, as long as what they are doing doesn’t somehow cause myself or others harm (physically, mentally, or otherwise). You want to drink beer on your front porch and jam out to Lynard Skynard? Fine. I don’t care. Just keep it turned down when I start blasting my CCR and dancing in the kitchen at two in the morning. My one neighbor is probably trying to sleep.

But then I just stopped. Not the dancing in my kitchen part; I still do that from time to time, but the engaging in fruitless political arguments (no longer debates) part. Either you discuss with like-minded individuals the best ways to solve the world’s problems, and then go back to business as usual, with nothing actually having been accomplished, or end up throwing said beer can at someone’s head because you think it might help dislodge it from their ass.

The idea of a democracy, or so how it was more or less explained to me, is that politicians are elected to represent the interests of the people. Hence, we LITERALLY call them “representatives”, as such, they should represent the interests of the population that voted them into office. But let’s take it a step further. I think there’s more to it than that. To me, at least in theory, a politician should take themselves out of the equation. No brainer, right? You are elected to serve the peoples; not yourself. But I like to think of it as akin to being the adult in a room full of small children. Let’s say you run a daycare, and the majority vote is ice cream for lunch, as it has been every day this week. Some of the children are even protesting loudly; two are screaming and wailing, one kid is refusing to breathe, and Timmy is picking his nose and closely examining the contents as a possible lunch alternative. However, as the adult, it is your job to say “No. No you can not have ice cream for lunch every day. It’s not good for you. Eat your vegetables and take a nap.”

Wake up, ‘Merica. It’s time some of you (us) remove our fingers and look around at the situation. For a great many of us, we have become polarized in our political stances. You’re either a Democrat or a Republican. Red or Blue. Liberal or Conservative. Right or Wrong. Hell or High Water. I can keep going if you’d like.

But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to shake things up. It’s time to decide what is best for this country. Maybe the time has come for a new party to emerge. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time in American history. Those crazy independents....damn, them!  Or maybe, the time has come to unite as a nation, put our petty little non-issues aside, and take measures that will benefit the majority of the people. For our own good. For our world. It’s not them or us. We are all in this shitstorm together, even though I know at times, it may feel like some piles are bigger than others. But don’t worry, everybody gets handed a handful at some point. Errbody.

Now who wants some ice cream?!?! Happy Birthday, America. I love you.