Award Speech

He scribbled it on the grocery receipt Laura left in the fruit bowl on the table. The oranges were starting to go soft, so a discolored smudge was at the top of the thin paper, near the store name and date: Frederick's Foodsaver, February 23, 2009. In his neat handwriting he began writing: Jimmy, Tom, Lucy, macaroni and cheese, chess, Japan, Twinkies (not low-fat), and the late Jim Henson. He stuffed it inside his jean jacket, put on his stocking cap and as he got into his car he wished he would have remembered to get the rest of the Twinkies back from Laura, those award shows never had Hostess.

This paragraph was prompted by The One-Minute Writer's prompt for today: You've just won an Academy Award. What will you say in your acceptance speech?
Check out her blog: http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

The Makeshift Treehouse

Mattie hadn't been back to the treehouse since the weekend her step-grandmother came to visit and then ended up leaving in an ambulance. At the dinner table the six of them, Mattie, her mother and step-father, Greg and his friend Tommy and Grandma Jess, ate hamburger pie made with Bisquick and green beans. Greg was the first to see Grandma Jess roll her eyes back and open her mouth just wide enough to allow the gray-colored sludge to roll down her chin. He watched with his own mouth open, eyes wide, frozen as if seeing the water in a stopped up toliet creep to the top of the bowl. Mattie saw Greg and poked him in the arm to get him to close his mouth. Then Grandma Jess started to shrug her shoulders in fast, jittery movements and Mattie's mom jumped up and put both arms around her to keep her from falling out of the chair. Later, when Greg was put in charge while their parents stayed at the hospital until after dark, Mattie went out to the treehouse with the leftover hamburger pie. She divided it out onto her plastic dinner plates, mashing each portion with a wooden spoon, trying to get it to look like it had on Grandma Jess's face.

Personalized

Faye was a horror. A selfish, passive-aggressive, black-haired beauty that stayed with Neil just until he dropped out of the welding program at the community college and then she left him. She broke every personalized coffee mug that he had given her. She washed his clothes with olive oil. She even threw his Macadamia nuts on the floor and crushed them with her tiny little feet. But Neil just sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed, reading the letters to the editor and sucking on a handful of sunflower seeds. And finally when he heard her car door shut, Neil spit his seeds on the floor and uncrossed his legs, resting them up on the table—right next to the broken handle of the first mug he gave Faye.

Desserts

"Ice cream," she whined.
"Cake!" he pounded his fists on the counter.
"Rainbow Sherbert!" she insisted.
"Devil's food." he plugged his ears.
"I'm allergic to chocolate." she screamed in his face.
"I'm allergic to you." he kept his ears plugged so the words sounded funny only to him. He laughed.
"You think this is funny?" she pried his hands away from his head. One slipped and he slapped himself.
"Yes." But he didn't really.
"Forget it. Fine. Devil's food." she grabbed her keys.
"You're driving?" he rubbed the side of his face.
"So?" she put her hands on her hips.
"Okay." he shrugged his shoulders.
"What?"
"Nothing. I was just thinking."
"Thinking what?
"I'm not sure Devil's food sounds that good anymore."

The Day Trip

She'd gone over it in her head enough that by the time she left the kids, she felt okay with the situation. Dixie's thirteenth birthday was on Monday and Diane was four months away from her eighth birthday, and according to a magazine she flipped through at the grocery store, the maturity level of teenagers was increasing faster than it had twenty years ago. Of course she hadn't heard what Diane whispered to Dixie just as she reminded them to bolt the door as she closed it. Maybe if she did, she wouldn't have gone or maybe if she did, she wouldn't have come back.