Limps into thread, whimpering...

I just turned in the third book. Later than a very late thing, but it's in, and my editor just called to say she was halfway through it and loving it. Big sigh of relief. Now I have to go flog myself for beinf deadline-avoidant.

Nothing except the six-month-old puppy, snoring blissfully, farting obnoxiously enough to wake me from a sound sleep.

Heh.

not even tender filet mignon, just some crap rump roast two days past the sell date

How much do I love this?! Awesome drabble, Erin.

Thanks, all. I kinda liked this one, too.

I kept hearing Buffy's "Men!" speech pattering though my head as I wrote it.

farm kids

Brenda hugged her calf when the man from Shop'n'Save made the last, record bid at the 4-H auction at the County Fair. We applauded, knowing how much Brenda has taken care of Curly the Calf.

Next week, Curly was in a little pen in the parking lot at Shop'n'Save. I rubbed Curly's nose as I went by.

Three days later, inside the store, my sister said, "Hey, here's Curly!" There was a photograph of beaming Brenda, Curly, and the big ribbon they'd won at the fair. We looked at the steaks and roasts and other cuts in the case below.

"Beautiful meat," I said. My sister nodded.

Now I have to go flog myself for being deadline-avoidant.

This reminded me of one of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

This one's a bit brutal. Closer to Erin's in spirit...

The Meat Market

Six teen-queens, short skirts, glittery lashes, teetering on high heels they can't manage. They look like dress-up dolls, alluring bits of jailbait. When I find out who let them in, the fucker dies.

One of them zeroes in on him. One always does. She needs to believe the big guitar or the big piano equals the size of his cock

He comes offstage, sweating, tired, and there she is. Before he has to be polite, I've got her by the arm, high up, where she can't twist loose.

"Come along, lamb chop. Out you go, before I roast your ass."

Gore warning. More just bleakness than anything, but there you go.

starkness

There's a lot of death on the rez. You get sort of used to it. No one mourns the dogs with their heads split open on the road. No one grieves the children with their bleeding wrists.

At some level, we're all just meat. The flesh we contain so tenuously within our skin -- just gristle and muscle and bone like a butcher's day's work.

I don't know if I know, any longer, how to be human. How to let humanity leak out of the chemicals soaking my brain, how to value the blood that pumps so relentlessly through these veins.

Liese, that's gorgeous. Dayum.

One question, and I'm not sure if this is another regional thing: can "grieve" be used that way? The same way "mourn" is, that is - active? Or does one have to grieve for something?

If it's regional, all the way cool - I've never heard it used that way and it's another new for me.

It looks like it's an acceptable usage: [link]

I'm not sure 'an acceptable usage" is an acceptable usage, though. Ugh. Brain fogged.

Heh. Cindy, I think all usages are acceptable, basically. I'm very Humpty Dumpty when it comes to that.

I just hadn't heard it before, and one of the cool things about everyone's work in here has been the new ways a word or a turn of phrase gets used in different parts of this country.