Regularly scheduled angst

As a handful of you may have noticed, I didn't post a cat video this Friday. I love a good cat video as much as the next girl. More, probably. 

But I'm dropping it as a weekly feature (nevermind that it was my ONLY weekly feature). The cat video quality out there is just...lacking. Sure, there's a hit once a month or so. Mostly, though, it's chortling, amateur videographers focused on their felines who bat disinterestedly at a pom-pom. For three straight minutes.

So, if I find an especially good one, I'll show you. Otherwise, it's back to my regularly scheduled angst.

Here's more of Greener Grass.

The first part is over there in the right sidebar, under I Like To Write.

*****

When she staggered off the bus at Hartman road, Tamara left the picture on the seat. 

She glanced up and down the sidewalk. She decided to head west. Or was it Northwest?

The evening was balmy. 

Nothing was sexier, Tamara thought, than a warm breeze. A warm breeze that spiraled up your bare arms and legs, that gently blew back your hair, the way a man's fingers might, if the man cared enough to touch you.

She remembered a trip to Key West with Dave. Pre-kids. Where they laid on the beach during the day and spent evenings in a waterfront bar, sipping fruity drinks and Coronas. The warm breeze and steel drums were their foreplay.

Dave.

She thought about him too much. His needs. His annoying idiosyncrasies. His absences. But she didn't think much about the man anymore. About what he felt or why she'd been convinced, once upon a time, that he was such a great catch.

She walked faster. Screw Dave. His wan hugs. His motherfucking mail. His ESPN and his job.

One night, after an argument over an all day golf game, he'd told her, flat out, that he didn't have enough for her. That he couldn't do his job, provide for the family, be a dad and be the husband she wanted. He needed downtime, he said. And Tamara was not downtime. She was more like work.

"Screw Dave," she muttered out loud.

She stumbled then, on a crack in the sidewalk or a stone or whatever. And she stopped and gasped. It was a sign, her stumble. Wasn't it?

When she was a girl–young, around four or five–she had a recurring dream. In her dream, she crept slowly from her warm bed and tiptoed out to the living room of the apartment she lived in with her parents and younger brother. She sensed a presence around her, but knew her family was sleeping.

She knew the presence to be a monster, one of those vague, hairy monsters like the one in Bugs Bunny with the heart-shaped head and the white sneakers. But she couldn't see him. So she roared, to summon him forth. And he appeared and chased her in circles around the living room until she woke up, weeping.

She yelled now, "Screw Dave! Screw Craig! Screw it all!"

No monsters appeared. Though someone did peak through their blinds.

Tamara whipped around and stared at the window where the blinds had rippled. "Screw you, too, 9874 Hartman Avenue!"

What was going on behind those dusty Venetians? Hissing arguments and desires the family members hid from each other and diarrhea-inducing fear and lust. Always the lust.

Possibly, though, a woman lived there alone. Watching whatever she wanted to watch on TV, eating tuna on bagels and oreos for every meal, desiring whoever she wanted to desire.

But no, the lawn was too perfect. Like Craig's, it was a thick carpet of green. 

So Tamara knew there were the fights and fear and secret lust.

...

Comments

[Laura]

I am DYING to see how this ends. You keep me anxiously hanging on until the next installment. I don't know how much longer I can wait! Good stuff. GOOD stuff.

[Cactus Petunia]

You just know that woman lives alone and shares the tuna on bagel with her cat while they watch Cat Video Friday together!
Sob. Pass the Oreos, would ya?

[Juliebee]

So so sad about cat video friday. so sad.

[Laura in LA]

Oh Angie, I thought of you this past week. I often listen to books on cd while making my daily commute to work. The one I recently finished up was just awful. Pitifully put together and beyond boring! I couldn't quit thinking of how much better your writing is than this so called New York Times best seller.

[kcinnova]

Aghhh!! You've left me hanging again! Darn it, I hate it when good writers make me want to turn the page...

If I had a working video camera, I could make and post a vid of my cat chasing her tail. I thought only dogs and kittens did that. And no, she hasn't had catnip lately.

[JCK]

This is GOOD. I'm especially drawn to the secret lust.

Seriously, I'm captured by her loneliness. It speaks to so many.

[vodkamom]

great- AS USUAL!!!!