It was Thursday morning and I was getting ready to for bed, I work nights so while most of the world starts their day I am ending mine with a glass of fine zinfandel and a last minute twitter update. Thursdays are the days when the winner of the weekly writing contest that I enter is announced so I was refreshing the search bar every 5 or 6 seconds in anticipation of the announcement. I have entered this contest 10 times and been a finalist four times. I was feeling like I had lost my touch because for 5 weeks now I hadn’t placed or even felt like I was any good at writing, so it was with much trepidation that I went to Tracey's blog to check for the names of the winners that way I could tweet them my congratulations before going off to bed and fantasizing about becoming a famous author that spends her time flitting from beach to beach looking for interesting people to make up stories about. You know what I mean, the kind of stories every woman likes to write, for example, that woman is way too beautiful in that bikini, she makes me feel like a whale so obviously in my next horror story she is going to be the seductress that enchants men in order to eat their brains – that’ll teach those men to think twice about only dating skinny women, or one of my favorites – That gorgeous man with god like abs did not just sneer in disgust at me as I sit here in the sun trying to look stunning, obviously he will be the mentally challenged rookie cop that has a flatulence problem in my next horror story. Not that any of these thoughts ever actually occur to me, I am just giving you examples of what could go through the mind of a horror story novelist.
Oops, I believe I have strayed from the point of this story so without further delay I will tell you that I felt my heart sink when I noticed that my name was not among that of the finalists in the winners announcement, it was official, I was a looser and probably should consider that my talents lay elsewhere…
I knew it, I thought to myself, I just cannot compete with the talented writers that enter Tracey’s weekly contest, they are just too damn good. Okay, lets scroll down further and see who won…
Wait…is that my name?? Holy…for the love of…am I delusional? Quite suddenly I had the urge to squeal and I did so with great enthusiasm! My dog, hearing me squeal, went from sound sleep to high alert in point one seconds...he jumped up, teeth at the ready to bite whoever was invading his home. After spinning around several times, knocking over the coffee table and attacking an innocent plant he determined that his mother must be being attacked by an invisible entity so he ran over and threw himself at the first thing he found laying on the floor, it just so happened to be a very expensive bra that I had removed in anticipation of heading to bed. O CRAP! “Baddog! Put that down!! Release…release…for the love of god RELEASE!” I now found myself in a tug of war with a very determined bull terrier. I could hear fabric tearing and my head was filled with the image of dollar signs floating away and boobs sagging to my belly button as I tried to promise my dog anything he wanted if he would just let go of the bra. Meanwhile, my pug dog, feeling left out of the action decided to join in by launching herself at the biggest target available - my butt…”Don’t worry mom! I will help you!!” she seemed to be saying in her little puggly way.
At this point, with a pug hanging from my ass and a bull terrier shredding my custom fit Nordstrom bra I decided that I had lost this battle and calmly let go of the bra, placed the pug back down on the couch and headed for the fridge for a larger glass of zinfandel.
My bullie, sensing his victory, dropped the bra and returned to his slumber. I later discovered that he had only damaged the one strap, a little safety pin and it should be as good as new, besides don’t all woman have one side that is a little lower than the other? I won the writing contest and that was what really mattered. Finally, someone enjoyed something that I had written, victory was mine. I could go to bed a happy woman.
Now, every time the safety pin pops and stabs me in the boob I will be reminded that I can write and that one day I could be sitting on a beach somewhere looking for interesting people to write stories about
