Tiny T: Episode 1
As he lay there on the warm, blurry threshold between asleep and awake, sunlight pressed hard against his eyelids and he needed a few moments to remember he wasn’t home. The pillows were smaller and plumper than normal, and more plentiful too. Who needs five pillows? He gently slammed his head back on one pillow then covered his bearded face with another. The sheets, while smooth enough for a hotel, only reminded him he was alone and far from home. Enough with the pillows! He stretched, glanced at his phone to note the time- 6:43 a.m.- and swung his legs over the bed’s edge.
Though shirtless, he only felt naked with out his gold chains. So he draped two or three over his head then walked to the double wooden doors leading to his rented room’s outdoor balcony. The cracked doors, thick with many years of paint, opened with much creaking and ushered in great, gold, pulsing streams of morning air. Now everything in the room was gilded. Glowing with the energy of the fresh new day.
He stepped out onto the slightly drooped and ancient hotel balcony, barely six feet wide and half as deep. Below him on the narrow streets, overflowing trash bins were clustered at every corner and every alleyway, awaiting another collection. Waiters in white shirts and long black aprons rode bicycles to their morning restaurant shifts. A few early-bird tourists, overdressed except for their sensible shoes, walked the skinny brick sidewalk in search of coffee, beignets, and adventure. Only cars driving and honking, a dog barking from behind a garden wall, and the voices of early workers were audible so far. No jazz quite yet. He surveyed the neighborhood calmly, wondering where she might be waking up, whether he might see her today. He hoped so.
Then he grinned. She was so beautiful. Nearly black hair, silky straight and bobbed to her shoulders. Olive skin. And a full, smile-ready mouth. How much more beautiful would she look in the daylight?
Then a motorized street-scrubber came barreling around the corner, replacing the liquor-vomit stench with an unnatural lemon-soap fragrance. It left in its wake a four-foot wide ribbon of wet, sudsy blacktop. He wondered if anything would scrub his memory so clean of her face. He hoped not.
The sudden sights and sounds of water broke his reverie and sent him hurrying back inside, to the bathroom. Wake up, man! I pity the fool who daydreams his life away!
“Well, maybe coffee tomorrow then?” She had offered. A safe enough idea. Tomorrow morning always seems so far away when you’re strolling through the French Quarter and have barely finished supper.
“Sure. That sounds great. But not Starbuck’s okay? Or Cafe Beignet either. Can’t do it,” he had said firmly, furrowing his dark brow, “I pity the fool who falls for those tourist traps.”
She had suppressed a giggle then, remembering how on her first-ever morning in New Orleans she had fallen for exactly that tourist trap and, fool that she was, pitied herself indeed. She had waited an hour for a three-dollar cup of coffee with no refills. “I know a great spot,” she had offered last night. “It’s on Royal Street near Jackson Square. Not too crowded, mostly locals, and it has great spinach croissants. How about we meet there tomorrow?” Anyone could tell by looking at this man that he prized fitness and nutrition; surely a spinach croissant would be appealing.
“That sounds real nice.” His heavy gaze returned now. “How about 7:30?”
“7:30 is perfect.” She had smiled at him with her entire face, even her eyes, allowing the gaze to root so deeply that she felt it tugging at her lungs.
Lively zydeco music spiraled and thrummed at them from an open-air souvenir shop. Our of the colorful, excited darkness a tipsy reveler had stumbled and nearly crashed into her. With ninja-like reflexes, this dark-skinned, muscle-bound stranger with a feather earring had just raised one thick arm and barricaded her in safety. It was an accident, of course, and the tipsy reveler had offered them some green and purple Mardi Gras beads as an apology.
She found it remarkable and hilarious that her new friend- What’s his name again? Tony? Terry? Tommy?- barely altering their warm, lungs-deep eye contact, had kept the beads for himself. Not only had he not made one lewd joke about how she might earn the beads; he just never offered them! Instead, he had draped the plastic trophies around his substantial neck like it was the most natural thing in the world. And she had to admit… they looked perfect nestled there between his other eleven or twelve necklaces, though these were the only ones made of plastic.
Thoroughly soaked now in the memory, she peeled one of the marshmallow earmuffs away just enough to glimpse the glowing red digits of the hotel alarm clock. 6:43. Plenty of time still to throw herself together and run over to the coffee shop.
She definitely wanted to. Wasn’t that what had kept her awake? But this looming road trip and no sleep… She knew she really should get some rest and drink some water instead of rushing out for caffeine and a meeting with a very, very distracting stranger.
So she laid there, torturing herself and fake-punching the pillows, for eight more minutes. Then she raced to the closet-sized bathroom, stared at the mirrored medicine-cabinet door, and commenced with an emergency grooming routine. This is crazy, she thought, I’m never gonna make it in time. And despite herself, she grinned.
Episode 1 is dedicated to Handsome,
my husband and my best friend,
in honor of all of our New Orleans adventures.
XOXOXOXO
Tiny T 31 Days Lookin for Love (intro)
Well, well… How exciting! Here we are on the cusp of October again, which means so much. So many fun rituals this month, so much raw beauty. This change of pace, this settling in of energies and shaking up of routines. I love it.
Among the October festivities, Sweet Nester of course is hosting her fun and exponentially bigger-every-year link up about 31 Days of Change. We here at the Lazy W are participating! Are you?
Perhaps you have already heard, but this year the topic is Tiny T. You know. This guy…
Tiny T has his own page now, did you see? Tiny T |
Tiny T is in need of some romance in his life, and his mind is made up. Love is on the front burner for him… All. Month. Long.
So please make a point to join the fun! Visit daily to stay current on his romantic misadventures. Give Tiny T advice. Ask him questions. Share in his sharing. This will sometimes be an audience participation story, and your votes will somewhat determine his fate, day by day, all month long. You loved those choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid, right? And you always wish for stories to go a certain way when you read them, especially romances, right? Well this is your chance to indulge again. Call all your friends. Sway the vote in your direction if you must, so Tiny T does your bidding. Help him out! There may even be an episode dedication in it for YOU.
Feel free to grab a Tiny T button to share, too. He worked really hard on it. He polished all of his gold rope for the photo, too. See how it shines like disco?
I Pity the Fool
Who Doesn’t Read this Series!
XOXOXOXO
Prayer Requests
Happy Sunday morning…I hope wherever you opened your eyes today was as beautiful and stimulating as what Handsome and I enjoyed here at the farm. The pond was a cool gray and thickly stacked with fog. The pastures were not quite frosted, but pale and dewy. The house was as fresh as the outdoors, having been aired out all of yesterday and all through the very still, quiet night, windows open to the first breaths of autumn. Our animals greeted us with contentment and affection. I could stay here* all day. Every day.
The Horse Whisperer: a Book Review
I am so excited! Tonight is our famous little Oklahoma book club’s discussion dinner of The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. True to our group’s name, Dinner Club With a Reading Problem, a feast is planned. This time around our hostess is Amber and she has arranged a ranch-style dinner of cubed beef sandwiches and all the luscious trimmings. The rest of us ladies are bringing sides, desserts, and drinks. Last night I made Pioneer Woman’s cilantro-jalapeno slaw, so it should be nice and flavorful by party time. Yum. I think Amber’s theme is perfect for a story set mostly in the ranch-lands of Montana. Just perfect.
I’ll take photos tonight and share more about book club soon… For now, a quick book review.
Sometimes I feel funny reviewing a piece of literature that is neither “classic” nor “new release,” but this title deserves some praise anyway. And who knows? It could end up becoming a modern classic. To me, at least, that’s how good it is.
The Horse Whisperer is a complex and moving story told about believable characters whose lives all eventually revolve around one horse and his girl. Or one girl and her horse, however you look at it. Right at the start of the book, horse and rider together suffer a life-threatening accident and are forever changed. The events that precipitate had me hooked immediately. The stories are layered, and despite their beauty both in emotion and the senses, not without a lot of pain.
Set primarily in the ranch-lands of Montana, a place I have never been except through the floriferous, enchanting descriptions written by Evans, The Horse Whisperer is absolutely transporting. Evans uses the topography and unique gifts of the land there to convey several messages about the characters. And then he explores each character with really satisfying, but not exhausting, depth.
Two creeks ran through the Booker brothers’ land and they gave the ranch its name, the Double Divide. They flowed from adjacent folds of the mountain front and in their first half mile they looked like twins. The ridge that ran between them here was low, at one point almost low enough for them to meet, but then it rose sharply in a rugged chain of interlocking bluffs, shouldering the creeks apart. Forced thus to seek their separate ways, they now became quite different.
He lends the readers a glimpse of lifestyles we are unlikely to know ourselves, both the life of a fast-paced big-city editor and the grittier, more remote, but perhaps not so simple life of a full-time cowboy.
Evans paints horses and horsemanship in the most honest and poetic light I have ever enjoyed. He illuminates the relationship between horse and man and leaves little room for doubt about what is at risk between the two, and what is available.
And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged.
Then this…
“He’s not going to look back if you don’t,” he said. “They’re the most forgiving creatures God ever made.”
The book offers romance, even passion and sex (making it unsuitable for young readers, although the horses may draw young readers in!), tumultuous parent-child struggles, questions about legacy and independence, survival, honesty, and of course healing. Redemption is huge in The Horse Whisperer. As the girl and horse who are so badly injured both begin to heal physically and emotionally, so do their attendant relationships. But nothing happens quite like I expected it to. The book is anything but formulaic. And I loved that. If you are able to successfully guess the ending without cheating, then you might be a psychic and should get your own television show.
If you aren’t tempted yet by the story, then be tempted by the writing itself…
Some bounced back to dance in shimmering reflection on the ceiling, while the rest slanted through tot he bottom of the pool where it formed undulating patterns, like a colony of pale blue snakes that lived and died and were constantly reborn.
A word of warning, and this goes beyond book-snobbery: The book is FAR DIFFERENT from the Robert Redford movie. They are two completely different experiences, as I am sure 100% of everyone who actually read the book will agree. I am not saying the movie is horrible… It is just not aligned with this book. It’s more like, someone skimmed the book and threw in a few details just to hit a “similarities minimum.” The ending is EXACTLY what most movie-watchers might expect or hope for. NOTHING like what the book throws at you. Which is an emotional sledgehammer.
Okay, I hope you make time to read this book! Read it to open and cleanse old wounds. Read it to spark some hope for a hopeless situation. Read it to fantasize. Read it to broaden your cultural awareness. Read it to soak in poetry. Read it for fun.
If you have already devoured The Horse Whisperer, what did you think? Spill your literary guts here!
Now I must be on my way. I have an ice chest to pack, teeth to brush, and a clean t-shirt to slip on. Famous little Oklahoma book club awaits!
“No. But you see, Annie, where there’s pain,
there’s still feeling.
And where there’s feeling, there’s hope.”
XOXOXOXO
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