Bad Morning

Venting in the AM

 

 

Bad Morning

 

 

(All took place at the same time)

 

Orange juice spilled all over newspaper, clean tablecloth and fabric place mats

 

One hand held a brush, the other a potential ponytail of my sassy daughter

 

Said daughter doing everything but what I tell her

 

Breakfast in semi congealed state on plate

 

School bus honks outside-you’ve got to be shitting me!  He’s 3 minutes early!

 

(30 seconds later-Chaos center)

 

“What…go, go, go, go!  How did the juice spill?  Didn’t I tell you to stop playing around?  Every Godda-…every morning it’s the same thing!”  I fling placemats in sink, finish the hair, run to door with a bookbag and holding up my index finger for one more minute.  Attempts to smile, then I run back towards daughter who has the speed of a glacier.

 

“I didn’t spill it!  I didn’t do anything!  I’m going!!!”  Attitude out the a*s!  For a brief moment, we both stare hard at each other before she flounces out the door.  I tell her I that I love her-she hops on the bus and waves.  I feel my blood pressure going through the roof.

 

(A few minutes later)

 

I’ve scrubbed the placemats, removed the tablecloth, tossed some of the wet newspaper and placed the rest in the bin for recycling.  I look in the mirror and want to cry as wrinkles are creeping and bags are appearing under my eyes.  In fact, I start to cry but I just can’t.  I’m just…empty.  There’s going to be more mornings like this.  What I have to try and do is to keep this from poisoning the rest of my day.

 

I’ve already put it in my mind to call my boyfriend and cancel his coming over.  I’m tired, I have much to do.  I don’t have it in me to be bubbly, a conservationist, romantic or soothing.  I have just enough to shower, do some work, think about dinner and help my child with Math.  Being a girlfriend too isn’t going to happen today.

 

I don’t think so.  I don’t know.  He’s going to call soon and I love him; I just don’t feel like seeing him today.  He’ll be upset; we miss each other.  There will be other times, I guess

 

It takes so much energy to care…

Reviews

[SPINNING ON that dizzy ..]

Oh, as a caregiver, it is tough to start out a day like that. Try not to let it carry over into the rest of the day. That deep breath as you lean on the door and close her on the school bus - ahhhh. Maybe a plastic flannel back table cloth with no placemats cleans up quicker with a sponge... haha.... There are just too many mornings of maple syrup on the sleeve so we have to change on the way out the door... or my homework was right on the table, I thought you packed my lunch.... haha.... My daughter liked braids and gee sometimes they were a little tighter than other days (wink, wink) Our greatest joys are also our greatest challenges some days - aren't they?

[Chopstix]

Nice, interesting … well typically stories introduce conflict, work through a plot and comes to a resolution of the conflict. Since this piece does one and a half of these, it should be called something else. My limited vocabulary suggests “vignette,” but this seems to be more than a vignette. Good job.

Thematically, this piece shows pressures of modern life on single mother. Many things call for time and attention, but humans have limits.

Structure: Three segments indicated by time.

Style:

First section sentence fragments enhance breakfast table chaos. I like well placed sentence fragments on principal, but some of this seem, well, too fragged. For example, “Orange juice spilled all over newspaper” cries out for a “the” before “newspaper.” If, like me, you hate “the” overuse, you can opt for a possessive. I’d choose “yesterday’s” to show how far time slips for the narrator.

In the second section, I recommend dropping bold formatting to emphasize words. Trust your word choice.

Consider “grabbing her bookbag” instead of “with a bookbag”

Third section:

Although awkward word choice can be used to show mental fatigue, consider “conversationalist” in stead of “conservationist.”

All told, this seems like the first part of a larger work. If you can keep up using style mistakes to good effect, it would be something I’d like to continue reading.