Bud Heavy

So a while back I made seven beaded buds as seeds for a project I ended up not liking. The last few days I've been trying to figure out what to do with them. Some of them I simply finished into tiny flowers with stems, like these:


But after finishing two of them I found myself bored, and wondering if perhaps I was staying too inside the box with my thinking. What else could a rose be, other than a rose?

And that's when I realized how fun rings are, like the first photo in this post. At first I tried to do the ring with silver wire, but I found it uncomfortable to wear. So I tried another with a beaded band and really liked it. (I'd already done the one with wire and my daughter stole it, I stole it back to take pictures but she may not let me keep it to sell!)

Then Birdiee of Bonne-Vie posted about her latest material desires, one of which was a fabulous thin-banded headband. I could picture a bud on a band so clearly! So I made this:
And next, a bracelet. After that I think I'm done with buds for a little while. I don't want to get burnt out on the concept.

The Tree of Knowledge: circuit board art

My husband and I have a bit of old electronics sitting around- which means circuit boards! I've always seen circuit boards as being a little piece of art. They shiny and full of interesting bumps and baubles and light catching properties. So I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to install the circuit boards and associated nifty bits into desk art.

This, my "Tree of Knowledge" is my first attempt. The tree grows right out of the circuit board- and look, there's a little nest with an... uh, egg!

Available on Etsy!

bitter drink: second installment

I'm still not completely satisfied with the flow of this part, but I feel like it's fine for a first draft. Once I see more of how the story progresses I may come back and tweak things- especially since I am having a HUGE amount of difficulty grasping Jude as a character.

_ _ _

Mara was completely unprepared for the morning when it came. Waking up in jeans and a push-up bra is never comfortable, especially after crying one's self to sleep. Mara felt pinched and squished and poked all over. Her back and shoulders and neck all stubbornly refused to unbend. Her alarm, normally viewed as a pleasant reminder to prepare for the day, seemed like a nagging chirping instead. Mara tried to stomach her annoyances and force herself to be bright and happy. Things could be worse. She could have caught her arm in the bars of her headboard overnight and yanked it off in a night terror, awaking to the horror of a bloody gaping hole in her side and impending death.
Oh, wait, that might not be worse.
Mara sighed and stood. She picked out a dress that covered every inch of her body from her neck downward. She wore thick tights and conservative Mary Jane shoes and her hair in a slightly matronly bun. Everything about her screamed “saving it for Jesus” except for the part where she had nothing left to save. She stared herself down in the mirror as she applied mascara and lip gloss. She ordered herself not to have a total meltdown at some inopportune and embarrassing time. She ordered herself to be okay. She had to be okay. There was no other option.
Mara sat down at the breakfast table glumly. Her dad poured her a glass of orange juice and tilted his head toward the pantry in a non-verbal question. Mara shook her head no.
Her dad stared at her for a minute. If he'd been a cartoon, there would have second hands ticking in his pupils. When the moment ended, he simply smiled and said, “I love you.”
Mara smiled in return, momentarily feeling a jab of real happiness. All too soon it was eclipsed with the awareness that her father said that while probably suspecting nothing more serious than her and Jude fighting over what color the grooms men's cummerbunds would be. Mara's hands started shaking involuntarily and she closed them over her glass, forcing herself to at least drink.
The rest of the morning routine passed in silence. In silence they drank, in silence they pulled on coats and hats and scarves. In silence they rode to the church, rubbing their hands against the vents for warmth and watching their breath freeze against the windows. In silence they walked into the church, Mara taking her usual seat in the front row and her father sitting on the pastor's bench with the elders, to the right of the stage. In silence Mara felt all of the oxygen vacuum itself out of the room. There was a rustling of skirts and one of the Elder's wives sat down beside Mara. Her name was Mrs. Templeton, a name which seemed preposterously formal. Her way of dressing and carrying herself was formal, too. Even her dinner parties seemed a few decades out of place. She smiled brightly at Mara and put her hand on Mara's leg. “So I hear you were accepted into the seminary. Your father must be very proud.”
Mara smiled uncomfortably, hoping that it just looked like humility and not embarrassment. “Yes, it will be a little strange sharing teachers with my dad.”
“Or being taught by him,” Mrs. Templeton said with another indulgent smile. “Do you think you'll follow in his footsteps? Become a pastor? Or are you and Jude going to be youth leaders together forever?”
Mara coughed lightly, trying to buy herself time. A few days ago she would have answered without any thought, on pure instinct. Mara forced herself to give the same answer she always did, hoping it sounded genuine this time. “I guess we'll just see where God leads us. I know that right now getting more schooling seems like the right thing to do.”
Mrs. Templeton nodded, obviously pleased. The worship team was headed to the stage giving Mara a good excuse to tune out of the conversation. Normally worship was something that Mara put her whole heart into. Over the past few months her love for it had started waning. It was hard to sing “How Great is Our God” the day after a friend's funeral. It's hard to sing about wanting to do nothing but give him glory when your only thoughts were about naked bodies intertwining. One bad choice after another had left Mara feeling like she didn't belong here anymore. She was not a proper Christian girl like the girls thronged behind her. She wasn't a good girl like the lead vocalist, she wasn't devoted like the women who were on their knees in prayer before the first stanza. Mara was just Mara, bent and broken on the inside. If people saw what was really in her heart they'd lose all respect for her. She'd failed them.
Fortunately the sermon passed quickly, and everyone seemed in a rush to get out after they were dismissed. Mara shook the usual number of hands and hugged the usual number of shoulders, but she wasn't dragged into any more uncomfortable conversations. Mara could smile and say “I'm well, thank you” even with a knife jutting out of the side of her head. Mara ducked out of the building as soon as she was sure she wouldn't be missed. The cold air felt good on her hot cheeks. Mara walked around the side of the building to the prayer garden. Normally it would be a labyrinth of flowers and shrubs and paved walkways- but in the winter it turned into a sheet of white studded with skeleton bushes in brown and gray. Mara brushed snow off of one of the benches and sat, trying to breathe slowly, trying to just exist without having to think about her life for a little while.
It wasn't long before she heard footsteps and knew she wasn't alone. Jude spoke before Mara even turned around or acknowledged his presence. “I didn't know if you'd want to sit together, after... you know.”
“After we spent the last week fighting every time we saw each other?” Mara felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. This conversation couldn't be going anywhere good.
“I just wish you could understand why I want to wait for the wedding. I want to provide a good life for you. Getting married right away, just because...”
Mara closed her eyes slowly and scooted over, giving Jude room to sit beside her. He stood awkwardly instead, shifting from foot to foot. “You need to understand something,” Mara said. “I'm pregnant.”
“You can't be pregnant. There was only the once. The odds...”
“I took a pregnancy test, and those sticks don't lie.” Mara felt tears creeping up her throat and swallowed hard. “I am pregnant.”
“We need to get married.”
Mara glared. “Back up. What happened to this not being the right time in our lives? What happened to you needing to get established in your new position and me needing to go soul searching and decide if I really want a career and wanting to buy a house and not being ready to juggle commitments to a wife and getting to know your job?”
“You're having a baby.”
Mara nodded, “I need time to absorb all of this.”
“We don't have time. If we wait months to get married people will know what's going on. Everything I have is staked on my reputation, I can't afford to lose it.”
“I need time.”
“You need to get a dress, we need to make phone calls, a guest list, the reception... weddings are hard to pull off even months in advance, at best we have weeks...”
“Weeks? Weeks?” Mara laughed, “there's no playing like we got pregnant on our honeymoon. I'm already like six weeks along, if we played it like the baby came two months early and it's fat and healthy people would know.”
“Okay. You're right. We need to think about the best way to handle this.”
Mara shook her head. “I don't know what to do.”
“We need to do the right thing. Get married. Provide a stable life for the baby.”
“I just need time. I'm not ready to have a baby. I'm not ready to give up seminary. I'm not ready to be a mom and nothing else.” Mara hated how cold her voice sounded, hated the implications of her words.
Jude sat down. “Are you talking about an abortion? Mara, you couldn't. I couldn't.”
“You wouldn't be the one getting the abortion.”
“I couldn't let you. I mean, how would it be, if three years down the road we decided to have kids and you'd aborted their sibling?”
Mara couldn't look at him, look at the sincerity in his face. All she could think about was how badly she needed to not be pregnant, how desperately she wanted to turn back the dial two months and start over, to have the life she wanted to have. She now understood why women got abortions. It wasn't about hating the child and not wanting it to live, it was about knowing that you may never love it or give it the life it deserved if you kept it.
Better to kill it than have it live all it's life with the rumors of how it ruined everything.
Mara breathed out slowly and stood. “I think we're both too emotional to talk right now. At least, I know that I am. Let's take a few days and think things through and then try to have this conversation again.”
“Mara...” Jude stood, grasping for her hands. Mara shook him off and walked away. She felt a little like she was dying. She wanted to run back, to say she wanted to get married and be a wife and a mother and nothing else, to let herself slide down the path of inevitability and Christian responsibility. But a smaller part of her was starting to come to life and cry out no, no, no, it was through going with the flow that she ended up here in the first place. Time to stop going with the flow. Time to make the decisions she wanted instead of constantly giving in.

Bitter Drink: first thousand words

So this is the novel I'm working on now. I won't explain the premise so I don't spoil the surprise.
_ _ _
She was surrounded by death. Not only had her best friend died suddenly two months ago, but everywhere she went she seemed to be haunted by things passing away. From the missing pet signs on the telephone poles to the fallen fruit littering the ditches on the side of the road to the zucchini plants in her garden that kept yielding wrinkly yellow gargoyle-like offerings... death was her constant companion. Everywhere, that was, but where she expected to find it.

Her uterus, it appeared, was full of life. Mara stared at the pregnancy test again, in disbelief. Two blue lines that looked like a blank expression. Two blue lines that dumbly said, “oh.” Two blue lines that some women prayed for in desperation and hoped for month after month. But they did not come when called, they could not be summoned or discarded at will. Mara knew that now with unsettling certainty. If she threw the test in the trash, they would still be there. If she stomped on it and crumbled it to bits, those two blue lines would persist in stating what was inviolately true. There was life in there, life that Mara wanted desperately to be elsewhere. Life that other women would rather have. Life that was being drained out of the world at every turn and channeled into this unwilling vessel.

Life that was probably the reason the smell of garlic haunted her everywhere.

Life that made her mouth taste like bile.

Shaking hands wondered what to do with this mocking strip of plastic. If she put it in the trash, someone else might find it. If she kept it in her room it would never let her rest. If she carried it out to the dumpster, even that didn't seem like a safe way to discard it. Where could it possibly go? She stashed it in her back pocket, planning to go to the mall and throw it away there. But it burned her like an overheated toaster sandwich and felt as unwieldy to carry. Certainly someone would see the lump on her butt and wonder what she could be carrying there. Mara let out a whimper of frustration and put the box, instructions, and test back into the bag they came in. She wrapped them up like a gift. She'd have to hide them in her room for the time being.

She'd have to live with it.

Once back in her bedroom she stumbled around in agitation. She sat at the desk, staring at everything and hating it all. She stood at the window and wondered when her father would be home. She held her phone and paced back and forth, alternately willing it to ring and commanding it not to. Left, right, ring, don't, left, right, ring, don't. Despair was quickly turning into rage. This wasn't the quaint rage of someone whose candy bar got stuck in the dispenser- this rage boiled and seethed and shook her like the ocean tide. This rage made the very marrow of her bones rattle with heat, it made her footsteps faster and her hands clench so hard the back casing popped off her phone, this rage so eclipsed her reason that rather than pick up the casing she threw the phone onto her desk so hard it knocked off her glass of pencils, shattering it.

And like the shards of glass now scattered on the floor, glistening dimly, her rage dissipated. She was left feeling fragmented and unable to collect herself. Logic told her to go downstairs and get a broom to clean up the mess. Emotion told her to scoop them up with her hands. Her ears told her that there was a car pulling into the drive and her brain screamed that the bag with the pregnancy test was still out in the open, on her bed. Mara grabbed the bag and stashed it in her dresser. She picked up her phone and carefully placed it on her desk, looking at the broken screen as it started to ring. One quivering finger hit the volume button, turning the ringer off.

The entryway door open and closed. There was the sound of grunting and boots knocking around as her dad went through the long process of disrobing from being outdoors in a Michigan winter. Mara sat down on the edge of her bed, paralyzed.

“Mara?” Her dad called out. “Where are you? I ran into Jude at the office and... Mara? I'd like to talk.”

Mara stared at her hands. Jude, office, and... and what? He came clean about everything? He ordered a steak and cheese sandwich? He said maybe it would be okay to move the wedding forward a year? And... what?

Footsteps on the stairs, sounding slower and more tired than usual. Mara squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to act as normal as possible, to stand up and walk into the hall, to smile and chat as if life weren't about to get bent completely out of proportion.

The door squeaked open. “Mara?” This time he spoke softly. His dad-radar must have sensed a disturbance, must have told him to handle this situation with care.

Mara wanted to open her eyes but found herself helpless to do so. Even without sight she could sense her dad walking into the room, sense him seeing the broken glass and the cracked screen of the phone. She could hear him deliberately slow his breath, hear the rustle of his clothes as he sat down beside her. Everything suddenly seemed less chaotic. He was a solid wall of warmth at her side, his arm around her shoulders.

Quietly, oh so quietly, he spoke. “I'm not going to ask you for an explanation. If you want to tell me, you know I want to hear. I want to help you. If you don't want me to help you, I couldn't if I tried.”

Mara could only think that even if he did try, he couldn't help her now. Tears flowed from her eyes. She buckled over, holding her chest against her knees. Her dad rubbed her back slowly, his breathing now more erratic. Mara sensed him holding back his own tears and it just made her cry that much harder. She couldn't undo the last twenty four hours, the last month, the last two months, the last year of her life. She couldn't go back now and order herself to hold true to her standards, to not compromise, to not fall. She couldn't keep her friend from dying or her boyfriend from being too desperate for her or her dad from being this solid rock that was getting shaken from within.

She couldn't get rid of those two nagging lines.

Mara cried for a long time, then she laid down. At some point her shoes were removed and her blankets pulled around her shoulders- but by that point she was asleep.