"Elizabeth Dorset is an happily divorced woman. She hates her job, but loves her new house complete with pet chickens, and a neighbour that knows the score. Her ex husband is stalking her; she can't stand her only relative, and she finds an unlikely friend in an unlikely place. And finds that sometimes love really is in your own backyard."
This is the homepage for Pond Meadow Park. http://www.pondmeadowpark.org/ Any little bit goes towards it's upkeep and if and when I get this book published, I will more than gratefully give some of the proceeds to PMP for keeping it going.
This is the trail map:
I've changed the names and such to protect the innocent. ;)
So here goes, this is the first chapter of Backyard Fae (working title):
Like I was gonna do what my doctor said…so what if he’s sposta be an expert?!! What the HELL did he know about my life?! What was the worst that could happen? I dropped dead. Noone woulda missed me! ARGH!!!
Let’s go back a little bit here…I had a boring, mindless job. I am, okay, WAS, an accountant working at one of the big city firms. I got to handle thousands, millions of dollars each year; None of it my own, and it was all just on paper…pfft. That was the worst part, but not really…it was just tedious and boring as Hell. I didn’t have much of a life…an ex I couldn’t stand and I have no idea why I married him in the first place, except to get a pushy, needy mother the Hell off my back.
Hell, he wasn’t that good in bed: I wasn‘t either…he got his and left me alone on the couch. Guess it all goes back to the good girls won’t put out shit my mother indoctrinated me with growing up…that’s why I have my abhorrent Accounting Degree when I really wanted to hang out with Zahi Hawass or Howard Carter or Hiram Bingham or Heinrich Schliemann…well, you get the idea. I was NEVAH the girlie girl. Hated pink, hated ruffles, hated bows, ick…give me ripped blue jeans and a tie dyed or rock band tshirt and jesus sandals and I’m as happy as a pig in shit!
But I was told constantly that digging for dead dusty old shit wasn’t for girls…and to get a degree that I could actually use. That’s why I’m a disgruntled, disaffected, disheartened, disappointed accountant.
But at least I have my own little pied-a-tierre. It’s a little 3 bedroom Cape. I was able to sock money away for a mortgage and it was all paid off before a year was up. You'd think that I would be one, but I’m not a cat lady…I’m a chicken lady instead. The house came with a half an acre in the ‘burbs that’s all nice and fenced in. I added an electrical fence so that the varmints and the stupid neighbours’ dogs don’t help themselves to a free dinner.
I cook for me and my girls. It sucks to cook for only one…they seem quite happy. They have their own dishes with their names on ‘em. It’s not like I’m knee deep in birds though…I have a manageable flock of 4, used to be 5, mutt/barnyard mixes. No roosters/cockerels/crowing hens…some asshat complained that my little Leghorn cockerel, Rick Burleson, was making her migraines (ahem…hangovers) worse. So I left my hand raised baby boy, with a loaf of Portuguese Sweet Bread with raisins, thanks, at a petting zoo. NO! I didn’t ditch him! I asked if they would like him first and let them meet each other first. And I cried for WEEKS!
So I have a little buff Cochin/Silkie bantam, a Dark Brahma, another dippy Leghorn and an Easter Egger. And we all get along fine, until the C/S goes broody and all hell breaks loose. She becomes a flat screaming pancake and steals everyone else’s eggs to sit on…but with no rooster around, no chicks…and she goes broody every other friggin’ week…but that’s okay. The wonderful fresh, straight out of the chicken’s butt eggs make it all worthwhile…Won’t eat these birds, though. It would be like eating one of your kids…if I HAD kids, I guess. There’s nothing meaty about a Leghorn and her head is just as hollow. Wouldn’t eat the S/C mix cuz her bones, skin and meat is black…ick…they’re a delicacy in China, but no thanks. The Brahma makes an oven stuffer roaster look sickly and the E/E is good sized too.
Enough about my flock, let’s get back to me, lol…the expert/doctor/sawbones/butcher said I need to lose weight. Well, Hell! ROUND has always been a shape, hasn’t it? He says that my body mass index is 37...I told him couldn’t I wait ‘til 40 then sell? He didn’t get the joke. Sigh. Well, I AM only 5’2” and according to the height/weight charts I SHOULD be 6’7”. Bummer. I had been getting out of breath, not from smoking, thanks. NOT one of my bad habits. Jelly beans, Doritos, Yeah, definitely.Throw in meatball subs and DQ …need I say more?
So the quack tells me that I need to watch what I eat and see a dietician/nutritionist. Well fuckaduck. I watch what I eat…its spins around and around in the microwave…Insult to injury. The nutritionist looks like she needs to go to Cambodia or Somalia for a decent meal…I could play a tune on her ribs, ferchrissakes. So she has me doing a food diary…ack! I hafta write down everything I put in my mouth and how it makes me feel…hmm, let’s see annoyed that I hafta do this shit in the first place…carrot sticks will NEVER EVER replace cheese worms. If it’s whole grain, ya might as well eat the friggin box, they taste the same. At least I like veggies, and it was the winter heading into spring so I could scrounge plenty of those from the local farmers’ markets. Can’t grow anything but bread mould myself. Believe me I’ve tried everything from talking to the plants, cursing them out and crying…none of it worked. I’ve even killed an air plant, but then again, I had help because I think my ex peed in it or worse.
Speaking of socking money away, I had also saved some from doing all sorts of work in the summers growing up: cutting lawns, painting fences, planting someone else’s flowers. Never baby sat…never wanted to, couldn‘t stand the things. I even did a telephone switchboard, and a convenience store. I DID splurge every now and again, but I had a tendency to over-think what I bought and I’d return most everything. Yeah, I know I hated me too. And the store clerks cringed when they saw me coming…
Which brings me to my ex and what HE’s been up to. Which is basically not a damned thing! I busted my ass to put him through college. He “wanted to be an architect“, but he was really a professional student. He didn’t WANT to work. He enjoyed being the big man on campus. He had plenty of job offers; the school even set them up! He was just too lazy to get off his ass and do anything about them. Well, I had finally had enough. I was working 7 days a week. 40+ at the accounting firm, then I’d deliver subs, pizzas and other grub to all the munchie maniacs on Friday and Saturday nights. Sundays, I got to sleep in until a whopping 7:30 AM, then I delivered the Sunday local communist rag. Woohoo! After 10 years of that shit, I finally kicked him out. He had never been on ANY of my accounts, thankfully. I had read enough Ann Rule books and had SOME common sense. Then he had the absolute GALL to ask ME for alimony! I showed up to court with a ledger with every thin dime that he had sponged off me through the years and all of his excuses for not working. I let him have the shitty little condo that I had never liked, but I hadn’t want to spend anything on either, and was now just a roach motel, in fact I think the roaches didn‘t even wanna live with him. Actually, I stepped over a couple that were ratting him out to PETA about the conditions... He wouldn’t even move to clean the toilet, or the sink, or do dishes, or laundry, or just about anything else while I was out working my fingers to the bone. The last straw was when I heard him talking on the phone and he hung up when I poked my head into the single bedroom. No, I didn’t get to sleep there, which was fine by me. He was stupid enough to think that I’d believe that he was talking to a potential employer at 1 AM…Yeah Right…I didn’t just fall off the back of the turnip truck.
The next day I asked for a few hours off to tend to some personal business. Since I never took any time, I had more than enough prolly to walk around the world. And my boss knew that hubby was a jerk.
I came home early and found him in bed with some floozy that he had met on-line…the kind of people most found at a bowling alley, according to Sir John Gielgud in the original movie, "Arthur". He apologized up and down the line, but I took all my things, including the toilet paper, and rented a decent hotel room. I was kind enough to leave him a knife, fork, spoon, and a cereal bowl and a semi melted microwave dish that was about as flat as a corduroy road.
I went right to a lawyer whose business card I had taken when he was in for an audit…I had the divorce papers in the mail the very next day. Delivery Confirmation, Priority Overnight, Signature Needed. No way he was going to tell me that he never got them. I called him every day when I woke up, when I took a coffee break, at lunch, when I left at the end of the day, and when I got home, to have him send them back. I finally said "fuck it!", took another day off, and went to the apartment. I would have to burn my clothes and shoes, and be decontaminated by a hazmat team from the Atomic Energy Commission when I left.
There were Coney Island Whitefish schooling everywhere, cigarette butts on the tables, and it smelled like either a meth lab or there were tigers peeing on the rugs. I hadn’t even been gone two months yet! I “Cop Knocked” on the bedroom door to announce my presence. I really didn’t want to see the flavour of the month …of the day, or of the minute. He actually came out of the room. I brought a copy of the divorce papers for him to sign. I even brought a friend of my boss’ who worked in the Sheriff’s department for back up, or muscle, as the case might be. I had plenty of people that would help me out, if I asked.
He came out to the kitchen table, scratching his balls all the way…I figured he had crabs, ticks, fleas, or lice, or something worse that might cause gangrene and didn’t want to get too close. I took the papers out of a plastic bag, put down some paper towels I had brought with me for the occasion, and sat. I indicated where he was supposed to sign. He blinked at the light coming in through the open door, then at the papers. All the places he needed to sign were highlighted and had tape flags too, along with X’s next to the lines. I had to make it easy for the Neanderthal…no offense to actual Neanderthal people.
I handed him a stick pen I liberated from work. I used fountain pens because I loved how they wrote…And then the whining started. “How was he going to live? He had no money. He had no job. He was sick and couldn’t take care of himself“…I couldn’t help it if his sickness was laziness and it was terminal…I was amazed that he never hired anyone to breathe for him, or to hold his penis when he urinated, or to wipe his ass after he shit. Once again I had to ask myself what the Hell I had ever seen in him in the first place.
I could’ve lived happily, healthily, and richly as a spinster. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My mother (here we go again) introduced us. He went to her church. I could’ve cared less about that stuff. I think he went only to hit up old ladies for money with his cons…oops, sob stories. My mother said he was nice, polite and clean…requisites for her. I drooled over the biker types, but would never have approached one without a whip and a chair and a flea collar. Brain power was the most sexy to me anyways. He really WAS nice, and polite, and he never did anything to get dirty. He was just a “vanilla” person if that makes any sense. He wasn’t for me. My mother was head over heels in love with him and wanted him in the family at all costs. I KNEW that she had given him money to take me out the first time, and he asked her every time after that. I should’ve known, but didn’t find out until much later. He pressured me to marry him after a month, saying that we were soul mates. I KNEW that was bullshit, there was NO SUCH THING, but HE was pressuring me, my mother was pressuring me…and I buckled like a tectonic plate. My mother wanted the white gown, veil deal. Jeans and a tee were what I wanted. I was out-voted. We got married in HER church with all HER friends buzzing around like flies around shit. She was the star of the show and I let her do it. I didn’t invite any of my fellow employees: I was there under protest myself.
It didn’t take too long to realize that all of his “virtues” were really shortcomings. He was nice cuz he was a bullshit artist. Polite for the same reason. Clean cuz he never friggin' worked! He’d talk a good game about all these plans that were just waiting to come up…yeah right. You could only keep me in the dark and feed me shit for so long before I remembered that I wasn’t a mushroom…
