Month: March 2022

The Other Side of the Fence

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

This one goes out to all those with crazy neighbors, specifically those who think you are out to get them. I have had a few over the years, most of which had no idea that they were in fact the nut case. I am not saying I am a great person to share a wall with, but, I am not insane.

The lady was crazy, or she had more money than sense and he hoped that this was not a sign of things to come.

It had started, quite simply, with a fence. After all, good fences make good neighbors. Him and his wife hadn’t lived in the area long, though they were once local years ago. They had moved back just short of retirement, and bought something on the pricier side, new construction, and it was a duplex.

The person who shared a wall with them was a real go getter, and with a child and a dog, fences were a high priority for her. The quote she had gotten was steep, but his portion was reasonable, and she had been willing to go around and ask others in development if they were interested, to get a better deal. Overall, he didn’t have to do much and really, that was the best kind of deal wasn’t it.

The problem wasn’t with her, it was the other neighbor, the one he didn’t share a wall with. He should have known that she was trouble from the initial assessment, when ti was explained to him, that upon hearing her other neighbor had not answered his door at the first ask, she was going to pay the entire fence herself.

He was a bit flummoxed, but went along, and when the day came to start he gave his payment up front and explained what he had understood from the developer’s about the rules for fence building.

When he returned home he was surprised to see he had no gate, and the fence was not in the agreed upon position, and there was a nasty email about riding roughshod over the plans made. A quick call to the builder explained the developer may have had plans, but they were not conveyed to the city, the neighbor had been irate, and demanded it be built on her yard alone, he was not to use it to attach a gate, and she would pay for it.

Dumbfounded, would be the best description of how he felt, and the builder wanted to know if he needed a refund, as his payment now covered more than the cost of his shared fence with the other neighbor. He quickly dismissed this notion, and asked if he could get a gate built, and get a few other small things done.

He tried to look at the bright side, a weekend worth’s of work done, and the cost of lumber was saved, he got a fence, and was not responsible for the upkeep for a large part of it. He felt the first stirrings of doubt over his new purchase, and hoped that this was just a misunderstanding, and not how this whole relationship was going to shake out. After all, there wasn’t that much space between their houses, and it would be horrible to spend the retirement at war with a crazy person

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Forget-Me-Not

~ annemcsommers ~ 4 Comments

Sorry for the delay, I thought I had scheduled this for release….but apparently not. The response to this weeks six-sentence story prompt and a continuation of last weeks story, this was written for the word prompt of CANVAS. I worked it a few times, but it still isn’t quite what I wanted. Tell me what you think?

She hadn’t lost hope, but it was starting to stretch a little, wear thin in places, as she had given her book to a contact heading to the city a month prior, and she hadn’t heard a word since.

She feared the worst had come to pass, not that the book had been seized, or hadn’t made it’s way to the clothier, or even that someone else had bought the fated garment, but that Elsa had not received her message, because Elsa was no longer alive to receive it.

It was improbable, as Elsa was quite well placed due to her family and job, but in these times it was alway a possibility, one far more likely than Elsa getting her message and choosing to ignore it, or of course, having moved on from a wretch like her.

It was another six weeks before the courier arrived again, and Jocelyn’s heart sank when the bag of ill gotten goods was finally emptied and not a single thing had come her way. She turned to leave, drown her sorrows in the near lethal rotgut that passed for a drink here, but before she made it to the door she was stopped by a hand on her arm, and was confused as the couriers empty bag was pushed into her hands.

Jocelyn’s heart leapt as she rushed back to her room with her prize, which she had to turn almost inside out before she found it, the small scrap of canvas bearing an oil painting of a pair of forget-me-nots, done in Elsa’s style, and she began to weep with the relief of it, Elsa still loved her.

Part 1

More than…

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

I have a love/hate relationship with things like International Women’s day. I love the concept, but more than anything it makes me sad that such a day is required, that we need a specific day to recognize the accomplishments of women, and the inequalities that they face. So this was supposed to be bright and happy, and then, well, I wrote it….

She was a woman, yes, but that was so little of what she was. She was a scientist, and a pioneer. She was a child, and a mother, and yes, at one point she was a wife. She was a divorcée before it was okay to divorced, and it changed nothing because she always did it all on her own anyways.

People always asked her about her accomplishments, and they prefaced the question with, “As a woman” as if that made her accomplishments something, different, or other. Sometimes it was said in reference to overcoming adversity, and others it was said as if her medal was nothing more than a participation ribbon given to her on the basis of sex.

Yes, she was a woman, but she was so very much more than that. What she wished for was that someday her children would live in a world where a day for women was not required, and it would just be another Tuesday.

A Work in Progress?

~ annemcsommers ~ 1 Comment

This was so depressing I went back and added the last paragraph when editing. It kind of follows a similar vein to Katherine the Great, in so for as people seem to spend a lot of time trying to do things to make themselves successful to be happy, when sometimes you just gotta take a minute to stop and smell the roses.

Caroline felt that at her core she was a work in progress. She was a person, but not complete. At 40, she still looked around when a child looked for an adult, not yet feeling that she was up to wearing that mantle of responsibility.

She wasn’t where she should be in her career. She didn’t own a car, or house, and she wasn’t close to having the money to do either. She didn’t travel or have luxury goods to explain her lack of the other.

She had no husband, children, or even a prospect of either., not that she wanted them them, and that was the hardest part to explain to other people. Caroline felt as if she was a variant, some small defect had left her just shy of fitting in any of the molds, and so went through life unformed, unfinished, and unfulfilled.

That wasn’t entirely true though, not really, because Caroline was happy. She was happy in her apartment, her dead end job, her hobbies, and her dog. Maybe, what she needed to do was not focus on reaching her finished state, but to redefine what it was she was aiming for. After all, success is what you make of it.