toxicfur's Diaries
Print Story Picture-Perfect Thanksgiving
Family
By toxicfur (Sun Nov 25, 2012 at 02:17:48 PM EST) (all tags)
Where to begin? A lot led up to the first truly joyful holiday I've had in many years, and this year, I understand my grandmother a little bit more.

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Print Story Breaking the "no politics" rule
Politics
By toxicfur (Fri Nov 02, 2012 at 09:30:05 AM EST) (all tags)
Today, on my way to work, I met Elizabeth Warren, who's running for senate in my state.

(16 comments, 136 words in story) Full Story

Print Story 38
Diary
By toxicfur (Sun Jul 15, 2012 at 02:31:25 PM EST) (all tags)
On the sixth of this month, I turned 38. Here is where I am: I have an exceedingly comfortable life, for the most part. I have a nice house. I have a great job. I have the material possessions that I need and that bring me pleasure. I have two dogs and a cat. I have this nagging fear that I've reached whatever it is I was striving for all through my 20s and early 30s. I'm here. I made it. Now what?

When I look in the mirror without my glasses, I see Mama. The shape of her blue eyes and the way they crinkled at the edges when she smiled. The way she held her mouth as she peered at herself in the mornings and arranged her hair. The line of her jaw and the shape of her nose and the color of her skin. I look into the mirror and Mama looks out at me, and every single time, my heart breaks with longing, and I whisper, "Mama."


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Print Story Happy (early) birthday to me
Diary
By toxicfur (Sun Jul 01, 2012 at 02:23:15 PM EST) (all tags)
It started with the real beginning of summer here in the Boston area, and with ana getting a bike. For ana's birthday celebration, we biked down Memorial Drive and across to Kendall Square for a movie and dinner, and then biked back through Cambridge to my house.

"This feels really good," I said to myself.

I hadn't been biking much. I used to bike every day to the T stop when it was just over a mile each way. But here in Cambridge, the T stop is a 10 minute walk, and it takes longer to get my bike out and then find a space to lock it up than it does to walk. So biking had become something I did when I needed to be at the campus that's just a couple of miles away, or even less frequently, when I decided to bike instead of walk the mile to Harvard Square.


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Print Story Ask HuSi: Website stuff
Diary
By toxicfur (Fri May 11, 2012 at 08:30:17 PM EST) (all tags)
So I've been thinking more and more about trying to sell (or at least publish) stuff under my own name. And the more I think about it, the more I realize it might be helpful if I had a place where I could post samples of my writing, etc. under my own name.

After doing a bit of research on what this would entail, I have more questions than I do answers.


(16 comments, 268 words in story) Full Story

Print Story For those of you not on facebook
Diary
By toxicfur (Tue May 08, 2012 at 11:14:41 PM EST) (all tags)
The following is what I posted in response to the vote in North Carolina today. Amendment 1, which will outlaw not only gay marriage (which was already not recognized by statute) but also domestic partnerships and civil unions, passed. Part of the reason for my writing this was because a couple of people in my facebook friends list - a sister-in-law and the sister-in-law of my brother (along with some other people who don't matter as much) - posted some stuff about (in one case) how I need praying for, and (in another case) how marriage is between one man and one woman as God intended.

It enraged me, and it deeply hurt me. This was my response.


(30 comments, 847 words in story) Full Story

Print Story A draft
Diary
By toxicfur (Sun Apr 08, 2012 at 01:45:39 PM EST) (all tags)
I'm working on The Memoir, a book-length expansion of the diaries I wrote while taking care of my mom before she died. I've gotten feedback that it starts too slow (true) and that the reader doesn't get a sense of who my mom is until well into the book.

I'm trying to fix that. This is basically an extended note to myself of what I need to put somewhere after the prologue, before the switch comes between me going home to be with my mom as she died and me actually taking care of my mom while she died, much more slowly than expected. It's not right yet, but it's a start.


(2 comments, 1663 words in story) Full Story

Print Story A Shiny Quarter
Diary
By toxicfur (Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 02:21:49 PM EST) (all tags)
Thursday night, I went out with coworkers and a former coworker for our semi-regular post-office drinking session. We started out at Five Horse Tavern in Davis Square, then wandered down the street to the Saloon, then ended up at Mike's, where I nibbled at onion rings and drank a PBR in a plastic cup and drank water so I wouldn't be too hung over the next day. I got buzzed into the bathroom at Mike's and as I relieved myself of at least two of the drinks I'd had so far, I saw a dime glinting on the floor, penetrating the haze that seems to gather around my vision when I've been drinking.

I almost reached to pick it up, and then I realized that it was a dime, just ten cents, on a bathroom floor in a dive crowded with semi-drunk college students. I left it there.


(7 comments, 1019 words in story) Full Story

Print Story Escape
Diary
By toxicfur (Sun Mar 04, 2012 at 02:34:56 PM EST) (all tags)
Kindergarten: Harrells Christian Academy. My grandmother was a teacher there, had been teaching there for years, since it was first established in the wake of the desegregation laws that were first enforced throughout North Carolina in the early 1970s. Harrells was an all-white school, and, for eastern, rural North Carolina, it was a wealthy school.

First grade: Wallace Elementary School. I don't know the reasons why Mama and Daddy sent me to public school after I'd been at Harrells for a couple of weeks, though I suspect it had to do with money. It most certainly had to do with money. Mama had just had my second brother, and we were a family of five instead a family of four.

Second and third grade: Liberty School. Between first and second grade, we moved to my dad's hometown. I hated it, though I had a best friend named Jessica who, like me, had a pet rabbit. Mine was named Wiggles; hers was named Rabbit Redford.

Fourth and fifth grade: Wallace Elementary School. When Daddy couldn't find a job and we were forced to live in my paternal grandparents' house for several months, my parents decided to move back to Wallace. We'd have free housing, thanks to Granddaddy. Daddy would be able to get a job at the textile mill. We'd be close to Grandmama.


(5 comments, 1889 words in story) Full Story

Print Story 3 Minutes Each
Zombies
By toxicfur (Sun Feb 19, 2012 at 02:14:22 PM EST) (all tags)
Today, I'm back to Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away. Five 3-minute prompts. At some point, I should flesh at least a couple of these out, I think...

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