Marian Allen's Blog, page 361

Name That Dieting Skull Any Day, Old Chap

The post Looking for that perfect gift for the person who has everything? You’ll probably find it at the Tapir and Friends Animal Store. Like this Australopithecus skull. I know, right? It is the awesome of the awesome! You can also get animal-shaped jewelry, squeaky toys, statuettes, beaded food-shaped keyrings, shirts, 3-D puzzles and SO MUCH MORE. It’s crazycakes!

Want to know what day of the week it was on January 1, 203, calculated by our current calendar? I’ll tell you the answer, in case they ever ask it on Jeopardy. The answer is: “What was Saturday?” That’s only one of the many time-wasting useful resources you’ll find at CalculatorCat. Moon phases. World clock. Your age in dog years. And … GO!

Mom and I enjoy reading British mysteries and, of course, Terry Pratchett, but sometimes we go, “What?” when we encounter what is apparently a word or phrase that doesn’t translate well. Now I know I can go to The Very Best of British and possibly find an explanation. Thank you, Dr. Effingpot.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: There is a mix-up with somebody’s name.

MA

The post

The Mouse With Blue Eyes

The post The Mouse With Blue Eyes appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

I’m pleased as punch to announce the publication of ANNIE BLUE-EYES by Lynne Gardner Cook, a new release from Line By Lion Publications, the younger folks part of Three Fates Press, of which I am the third of the three. (Yes, that’s The Crone. Thank you.)

The Mouse With Blue Eyes

Annie Blue-Eyes is the tale of a young mouse who finds herself alone and far from home. Believing she has been abandoned by her family and her owner, she strikes out on her own in search of home and purpose. Aided by whispering spiders who communicate solely through poetry, she is given three tasks. These, she is told, will win her a secret key and protect her from mortal danger. Come along with Annie on her “fur-raising” adventures as she learns the value of friends and family.

You can buy Annie Blue-Eyes directly from our Line by Lion online catalog, or from Amazon, or for Kindle.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character is given three tasks to perform in order to achieve a goal.

MA

The post The Mouse With Blue Eyes appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

How To Dry Parsley In The Microwave

The post How To Dry Parsley In The Microwave appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

So I always grow plenty of parsley. I also dry plenty of parsley, so I have it all year ’round. Here’s how:

How To Dry Parsley In The Microwave

“They” say to cut your herbs in the morning when the dew (if any) has dried. Just cut it. Don’t cut ALL of it: cut the bigger stems out the outside and leave the little stems that are growing out from the middle of the plant. Those little ones will get to be big ones, and you can harvest parsley all season. Cool!

Bring it in. Wash it and pat it dry between paper towels. You want to wash it, because you never know what’s been walking on it or whizzing on it or whatever. Insects have lives, too, you know.

Pull the leaves off the stems. Put a paper towel onto a microwaveable plate. Spread leaves in a single layer on the paper towel. Don’t crowd them or overlap them or fold them over on themselves.

Microwave for one minute. Make sure the plate is revolving. If it isn’t, after the minute, turn the plate or the paper towel so the leaves are in a different position inside the microwave. They probably won’t be dry. Let them cool for a few (15?) seconds and microwave for another minute. Check for crispiness. You can feel by gently touching them if they’re dry or not. Put that batch aside to cool and do another batch.

In just a few minutes, you’ll have a couple of cups of perfectly dried parsley leaves, ready to crumble to powder or (my preference) store as whole leaves to crumble as needed.

As Charlie’s Aunt Ora Maye used to say, “Now ain’t that purty?”

TIP: Make sure the leaves don’t have any water standing on them when you put them in, or they’ll cook. Keep an eye on them and don’t over-dry them, or they’ll scorch or — very exciting — burst into flame and catch the paper towel on fire.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character accidentally sets something on fire.

MA

The post How To Dry Parsley In The Microwave appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

Cozy Food

The post Cozy Food appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

COZY FOOD

A book, not a category.

I know it isn’t Food Day on the blog, but this is an ANNOUNCEMENT!

You bemember I’ve been working on a series of cozy mysteries set on the fictional Spadena Street? You don’t? Well, I have.

ANYWAY, when Nancy Lynn Jarvis got the idea of publishing a cookbook of recipes by cozy writers, food being generally present in cozy mysteries, I contributed one of LeJune’s.

127 other writers contributed recipes, as well.

Pop on over to Amazon and pick up a copy in print or for Kindle. OR BOTH! WHY NOT BOTH?

Meanwhile, I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies on the topic of I Don’t Know Chicken Cornbread Casserole.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has an exciting announcement.

MA

The post Cozy Food appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

On Having Done @AprilAtoZ And @StoryADayMay

The post On Having Done @AprilAtoZ And @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

I did. Yes, I did. I did back-to-back month-long blog challenges.

And I’m glad! Glad, do you hear me? Glad! Glad! Glad!

– Thank you, I did the April A-to-Z challenge one year (maybe two), and I skipped it to do the Story A Day in May challenge, and this year I did both.

Why?

Well, that’s what I kept asking myself.

And here’s my answer:

Because I blog every day anyway, and doing the challenges puts me in company with other people who blog every day. Because it’s interesting to see how other people approach and fulfil the challenge.Because the A to Z challenge gives me practice in writing short posts and themed posts.Because Story A Day forces me to sit down at the same time every day and knock out a story without second-guessing myself over every little detail.

Each one is like an extended writing exercise done out in public, with people you don’t even know cheering you on. It’s great!

Will I do them both again next year? No. No way. Absolutely not. Are you kidding me?

In other words, YES.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character accepts two challenges.

MA

The post On Having Done @AprilAtoZ And @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

Uncle Shahtsi on #SampleSunday plus Hot Flash

The post Uncle Shahtsi on #SampleSunday plus Hot Flash appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

Uncle Shahtsi will not be happy.

So I was at this sales event, offering to GIVE AWAY these beautiful necklaces, and the only people who wanted them were those who thought they were bookmarks.

Do you think Uncle Shahtsi would be happy? Here’s his one appearance in SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING. He later talked me into writing a story with him as the narrator. Happy or not happy at my lack of takers? You tell me.

Oh, the label says Uncle Shahtsi’s genuine handmade Marner necklaces (Earth franchise). I was finger-knitting them right there. I said, “I can guarantee that they’re handmade, because I’m making them on my own hand right here, right now. People laughed, but they passed them by.

Oh again, this is the first of the month, so there’s a new Hot Flash on my Hot Flashes page.

Uncle Shahtsi from SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING

by Marian Allen

After we’d been walking a while we stopped at a booth to look at some jewelry.

“Notice anything?” Jackie asked me.

I made a great show of looking around, clutched his sleeve, and whispered, “Gee, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

“Seriously. –Nobody’s staring at you.”

Because he looked at the booth’s owner as he spoke, the Mocskan said, “Sepplasas?” – “Please?” in Tudolinguo, the Terran Union’s common language.

“I was talking to her,” Jackie said, also in Tudolinguo. “I was saying that nobody’s staring at her.”

The man sneered, showing long but blunted lower canines. “This is Muimmea. We’ve seen shave-tails before. Where do you think you are, up in the hills somewhere?”

“What’s a shave-tail?” I asked.

He looked at me more closely, then squinted. That didn’t seem to help, so he put on some rimless spectacles. “Terran, by the Mother Ruler of the Western Paradise! Terran, by your poor, flat face– No offense, lady.”

“No offense.”

“Can I…. “ He reached out a furry hand but stopped short of touching me.

“Go ahead.” You travel faster than light and go to another solar system, and what do you get? The same old same old.

He rested his pads on my arm, gently, with his claws retracted. His pads scratched a little as he moved his hand from one patch of my color to another, maybe a sign of age, I didn’t know.

“Are there a lot of you like this?” he asked.

“Just me.”

“Just you. Well, lady, shave-tails are Marneri who keep their fur cut close, and wear clothes. They usually run around with Terrans, but not always. Peculiar-looking– No offense.”

“No offense.”

“But, like I say, we see plenty of them here. So that’s why nobody stares at you – nobody looks too close at anybody in the city, and you look like a shave-tail if you don’t look at you too close–”

“No offense,” I said.

Jackie and I went back to looking at the jewelry. I bought him a case for his cigarettes and he bought me a bauble to clip in what little hair success had left me.

~ * ~

From Hell Alley to TerraNet comedy stardom. Connie Phelan’s goal is to be top dog in a high-status social group calling itself The Good Society. When the Society invites her to a planet where slavery is legal, Connie is faced with choices: Accept ownership of slaves who throw themselves on her mercy or refuse, leaving them free for an unscrupulous Socialite to abuse? Abandon Honey, an alcoholic hanger-on, or risk her own status in the group to support her? And who SHOULD go into that cannibal pot?

Kindle Price
$2.99

Click here to read the first chapter.

Buy in print.

Buy for KINDLE.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character can’t give something away.

MA

The post Uncle Shahtsi on #SampleSunday plus Hot Flash appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

31 Monkey Meets Katya @StoryADayMay

The post 31 Monkey Meets Katya @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

Katya Graymalkin here.

Today is the last day of Story A Day May. I’m very proud of Mom for writing a story every single morning this month! Next Caturday, I’ll be back on the job. Tomorrow is the first day of a new month, so Mom will have a new Hot Flash (micro-mini story) and a sample from one of her books or longer stories for Sample Sunday.

Here’s Mom’s story for today:

Monkey Meets Katya

by Marian Allen

Monkey, of course, is an immortal, so he can live more than one place at a time: one immortal place and any number of mortal places. He lives in the Water Curtain Cave on the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers, and one of the mortal places he lives is in small blue-and-white statue in the vestibule of Katya’s mom’s house.

His mortal-world attention flickers from one place to another, gathering amusement and impressions and sometimes getting them wrong. Even immortals can get the wrong impression, if they don’t pay attention.

“This poor cat, Katya, is much abused,” his immortal self said to his monkey lieutenants, back at the Water Curtain Cave over a delicious vegetarian meal. “The man of the house calls her a dog and a scoundrel. The woman won’t let her go outside and calls her names like Crazycakes. When the youngest daughter comes to visit, I hear the poor cat protesting and the girl laughing. I’m going to teach those people a lesson they’ll never forget!”

With that, Monkey reduced his Compliant Staff to the size of an embroidery needle and tucked it behind his ear. He mounted his auspicious luminosity and cloud-somersaulted to Katya’s house.

The man opened the door to come out.

Monkey spoke a few words and transformed into a fly. He flew into the house before the man closed the door, admired his own statue on the display shelf in the vestibule, and crawled beneath the interior door into the house, itself.

Here was more proof of the cat’s mistreatment: ugly blankets covered the furniture, lest it be “polluted” by her touch. She had no cat-bed to sleep in. She was expected to eat hard, dry food from bowls on the floor, when such a magnificent and long-suffering animal should, surely, eat from the table.

When Monkey had made his survey, he returned to his true form.

Katya, herself, entered the room. Before she could react to the sight of him, Monkey seized her and tossed her onto his auspicious luminosity, where she could observe the lesson he was teaching on her behalf.

He spoke words of transformation and took on the form of a mouse. With a mouse in the house, they’d appreciate the cat.

He ran into the kitchen and scuttled all over the floor until the woman saw him.

Instead of screaming, she said, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” and dove into the pantry, coming out with a small box and a dustpan.

The man came back in and asked what she was doing.

“There’s a mouse,” said the woman.

“What’s the damn cat good for?”

“Where is she? She might hurt it!”

“I don’t see her. Where’s the mouse?”

Together, they cornered the Monkey-mouse, the woman put the box over it and the dustpan under it, and the man took it to the edge of the woods and released it.

Monkey thought to himself, “How odd that such evil people are cruel to their cat but kind to a wild mouse. I’ll have to try something else.”

He transformed himself into a gnat and crawled through a crack in the back screen door, then transformed into a big fat fly, such as cats love to chase and catch. He buzzed around, bumping into light fixtures and windows.

“Look at the size of that fly! Not even a horse fly, just a big’un.” said the man.

“Goofy thing!” said the woman. “Get over to the door, you goof-ball.”

She shooed Monkey back to the screen door, opened it, and brushed him out.

“What strange people!”

He crept back in, took some hairs from his tail, chewed them, spat them out, and commanded, “Change!” Each bit of hair transformed into an ant, which immediately went for the most available food: the cat’s dish on the floor.

“Oh, no,” the woman said. “The ants are back! They’re all in Katya’s food! Poor kitty!”

She took up the dish, threw the ant-infested food into the grass, washed the dish, dried it, and filled it again. The man took a container and sprinkled the place where the bowl sat with powder.

Monkey said to himself, “They’re putting poison where the cat eats? This must be reported to the Jade Emperor in heaven!”

But before he could leave, the scent of the powder entered his nose. Lavender-scented baby powder.

“Yeah,” said the woman with satisfaction in her voice. “They can’t find the food through the magic smell of not-food. Ha!”

Monkey scratched his head and did what he should have done in the first place. After retrieving his ants and returning them, as hairs, to his tail, he mounted his auspicious luminosity and talked to Katya.

She said, “They put the blankets on the furniture so I can lounge on it without shedding all over it and making them mad. I don’t have a cat bed because I sleep wherever I want to. I don’t eat at the table with them because they eat three times a day and I eat whenever I’m hungry. They don’t let me go out because the coyotes might eat me or a mosquito might give me heartworm. I squawk when the girl pets me because … because that’s what I do.”

“They don’t abuse you?”

Katya laughed a cat laugh. “As if!”

So Monkey returned her to the house.

After that, perhaps he paid more attention when he observed a perceived injustice, or asked the “victim” before exacting punishment. But, being something like human, it’s more probable that he did not.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR ANIMALS: What human would you like to see taught a lesson, and how would you like to see it taught?

KG

The post 31 Monkey Meets Katya @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

30 SMILE, Mr. President @StoryADayMay #Steampunk

The post 30 SMILE, Mr. President @StoryADayMay #Steampunk appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

I’m not a Steampunk writer, but somehow this story took a Steampunkish turn. Just “ish” though. And it’s making me hungry.

SMILE, Mr. President

by Marian Allen

The annual convention of the Steam Motorcar Inventors’ League of England (North American Division) had never been so gloomy.

Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, had spoken and written so strongly against the pollution of coal-burning vehicles that public sentiment had turned against it. Parliament was debating – and would probably pass – laws against external combustion conveyances.

Sir Beauregard Beanblossom expressed the bitterness of them all when he said, “Folks can still burn coal in their fireplaces and kitchen stoves, oh, yes. Businesses can still belch out volcanoes’-worth of cinders and clinkers, but motorcars? Oooo, nasty!”

Ms. Daisy Lee sniffed and said, “Just because Her Majesty got a bit of something in her eye the last time she took a train, nobody can run a vehicle on coal anymore. It’s back to the horse-and-buggy days for the entire world.”

The familiar lament was interrupted by the entrance of the League’s youngest member.

Membership in the League was difficult to earn, but young Theodore Roosevelt‘s energy and penetrating insight had won him a place with a speed that some of the more plodding members resented.

Roosevelt was accompanied by four hotel footmen. Two of them cleared a demonstration table and made sure its thick cork cover was firmly in place. The other two tried, vainly, to take Roosevelt’s boxed armful from him and carry it (which was, after all, one of their jobs). Roosevelt thanked them and declined, winning the dispute as he lowered his burden with a thud that spoke of its weight.

In his surprisingly high-pitched voice, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my latest invention: a new kind of steam engine, that does not burn coal!“

He undid a latch on the lid of the box and folded down the sides. The engine he revealed looked almost identical to any other; the greatest visible difference was a pipe that seemed to pass through something that looked like a lady’s winter hand muff. A net the size of a man’s head was affixed to the back of the final length of pipe.

Roosevelt filled the radiator with water supplied by one of the footmen. With a flourish, he drew a roughly cylindrical object from his pocket and fed it into the firebox. He pressed the spark switch several times before his fuel caught fire, which was not unusual: getting the machine going was generally the hardest part of running one.

He added no coal. He added nothing.

A small explosion inside the firebox sent some members diving under tables.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Roosevelt called to them. “That’s what it does. Perfectly safe.” He, himself, stood next to the machine without flinching. Although the other League members knew Roosevelt would stand next to the machine even if he knew it might go off like a bomb, they re-seated themselves and attempted not to fidget.

Another small explosion. Another. Then, more and more quickly, more and more explosions. With each one, the pistons moved the rods, faster and faster, until Roosevelt adjusted the throttle to control the speed. From the smokestack came a thin black smoke and only the finest ash. From the back of the new pipe array shot small white irregular globes. The smell was divine.

“Popcorn!” Sir Beauregard pounded the table. “Popcorn, by Fulton!”

“I only attached the net to save Housekeeping the chore of sweeping it up,” said Roosevelt. “On the road, the popped kernels can simply scatter and be eaten by birds or allowed to go back to nature. For use in the cities, I plan to add an attachment that will use part of the energy generated to grind the popped kernels as they exit the firebox, to collect in bricks suitable for burning in the home.”

The rest of the convention was spent in studying Roosevelt’s invention, assembling another model from his parts and plans, arguing violently but happily over improvements and refinements, sketching applications, and drafting a letter to Parliament begging them to allow SMILE to present them with this new apparatus before they passed their conveyance law.

If Parliament approved, SMILE would hasten forward quickly to produce a prototype popcar.

Everyone agreed that young Theodore would be president of SMILE someday. President Roosevelt. It had a ring to it.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about smiles, or about something the letters SMILE could stand for.

MA

The post 30 SMILE, Mr. President @StoryADayMay #Steampunk appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

29 Weird @StoryADayMay

The post 29 Weird @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

How many days do we have in this month? Thirty-one??!? ~groan~ Are we there yet?

This one really belonged on this blog’s Food Day, yesterday, but I’m doing the pictures in the order I randomly numbered them, so it’s today. Bite me, Mr. Monk.

Weird

by Marian Allen

“Hey, Spice Girl! What’s weird today?” It was always the first thing Nelson said when he got in from work, eCig bobbling in the corner of his mouth.

Besides you? Lola thought, but she knew better than to say it out loud. Nelson only had a sense of humor where mocking other people was concerned.

“I made chili.”

“Oooo, that’s always weird! Have it on the table by the time I get back downstairs, right? On. The Table.”

He went up to change into the baggy pants and disgusting zombie t-shirt he wore around the house.

Lola checked the display on the kitchen phone: Line In Use. He didn’t even care enough to use his cell phone to call Her. Why should he? The house was his, the phone was his, the bank account was his, the food was his, and she, Lola, was his.

It had happened so gradually, she hadn’t seen it coming until the slope was so slippery she couldn’t claw her way back up.

His voice came back down the stairs: “How’s that chili coming?”

“Setting the table now.”

She put out the two place settings, making sure his liquid nicotine was where he could put his hand right on it if he needed it for an after-dinner “smoke.” Nasty. She had heard that second-hand vapor was as dangerous as second-hand smoke, but Nelson laughed at that.

Chili was supposed to be a one-pot meal, but that isn’t how it worked in Nelson’s house. She grew up in Cincinnati, and she liked spaghetti noodles in hers. He thought that was stupid, so she made the noodles separately and added them to her bowl. They both liked kidney beans, but he liked more than she did, so she made those separately and she added those after cooking. He liked sauce hot enough to peel paint and she liked hers medium, he liked chunks of steak and she liked finely ground beef, so she made separate pots of meat sauce.

The Line In Use display went off.

She dished up Nelson’s chili and poured a bowl full of oyster-shaped crackers for him.

“Ah! Good girl!” He dumped himself into his chair with a satisfied grunt and picked up his spoon while she was still assembling her own bowl. “Hope it’s really weird. I feel like a challenge tonight.”

He rolled a bite around in his mouth. “Not chocolate, I hope. That’s an old one.”

“Not chocolate.”

He took another two bites. “Cardamom!” Another bite. “Cardamom, right?”

“Right.”

“But there’s something else, isn’t there?”

“You’re good.” His second-favorite words.

Half-way through the bowl, he said, “Mint!”

“You are amazing.” The three little words he loved most to hear.

He finished the bowl and demanded another. By the time that was gone, he was sweating and red-faced.

“Hot enough to give me the trots,” he said. “Just like I like it.”

He clutched his liquid nicotine and took it into the downstairs bathroom with him so he could “smoke” while he watched a replay of last night’s football game on his phone.

Lola listened to his cheers and curses as she cleaned up. She poured the little food that was left down the disposal and ran crushed charcoal after it, washing the dishes in mild bleach, then detergent.

Nelson’s vocalizations stopped. Heavy footsteps stumbled to the couch and the television switched on.

She folded the dishtowel and went into the living room, where Nelson sprawled, face white and saggy.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Shut up.”

She went to bed once he slipped into a coma.

The nice policeman who responded to her tearful call the next morning said they were seeing more and more of these cases.

“Those damn eCigs need to be regulated,” he said. “Pardon my language. And I say that as somebody who don’t like the government in my personal business. Nicotine’s a poison, did you know that?”

“It is? And they let people just have it, just like that? Now, isn’t that weird?”

~ * ~

Speaking of Mr. Monk, do any of you alphabetize your herbs/spices? I used to. The kids used to laugh at me, but I was like, “They do it at the grocery store, don’t they?” We ate no fast food at home and very little out while the kids were growing up, and I sometimes had to throw a meal together in a flash, so being able to put my hand on what I wanted quickly made sense. Nowadays, I only have them separated into powdered and whole. That is not weird. It is not!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write something with spices in it.

MA

The post 29 Weird @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

28 Three Wishes @StoryADayMay

The post 28 Three Wishes @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.

So my husband says, out of nowhere, “Tempest in a teapot.” I said, “Why couldn’t you have said that an hour ago?” He said, “What’s the difference?” I said, “Because I’m already almost done with my story, and that teapot was my prompt! I had to think up a whole story idea all by myself, and I could have used yours!”

He was unsympathetic. I’m telling you, laziness is an invisible disability, and nobody sympathizes.

Three Wishes

by Marian Allen

When Alex was four, two things happened: He saw a cartoon called “Mr. Magoo’s 1001 Arabian Nights,” and his little family moved back to his parents’ home town to be close to their folks.

His mother’s mother, Gramma Tasha, had a copper thing she called a samovar, but Alex recognized it immediately as a genie’s lamp. Gramma Tasha said it was okay if he touched it, as long as it was on the counter, but never when it was on its special mat on the table.

He wouldn’t touch it, though. He was afraid of the enormous, noisy, confusing genie that he expected to come out, and he was afraid of wasting the power of change. Mom and dad had changed his house, his neighborhood, his friends, his schedule, his preschool – his whole life – and that was without a magic lamp, even! What if he asked to see his best friends again, and the genie took him back to his old house and just left him there?

No, this was going to take some thinking about.

The grownups laughed and teased him about his fascination with the samovar, but Gramma Tasha said, “He has the deep regard. He sees into the heart of it. He has the soul of a Russian.”

By the time he was six, he had begun a game: What would I wish for? It went like this: Cool bike! I could wish for that! Okay, what if I did? I would be too big for it in a couple of years, and I used up a wish on a couple of years of bike riding.

Gramma Tasha had him over to visit some afternoons and some overnights. They played dominoes and walked her ancient miniature bulldog, Snorkle. Gramma told him stories about a witch named Baba Yaga that gave him nightmares – He couldn’t get enough of them. They drank tea from the copper samovar.

As Alex grew up, he acknowledged that the teapot was only a teapot, but the What would I wish for? game continued to be a comfort and a useful mechanism. Was a wish actually achievable by his own efforts? No sense wasting a wish on it; he’d figure out how to get it directly. Was the wish an impossibility? Probably a bad idea, then, and wishing for it would end badly.

Dear Gramma Tasha died when Alex was in college, and she specifically left him the samovar in her will. He cried like a kid, right there in the lawyer’s office. If rubbing the lamp could have brought her back, alive and well and strong, he’d have used all three wishes to do it.

His mom kept the samovar in his room so he could treasure the sight of it when he came home on breaks.

When he graduated and got a job and moved into an apartment, the samovar went with him. He bought a cork hotpad painted with Russian-looking roosters in red and yellow, and centered the samovar on it on a table just inside the apartment door. Every time he came in, he dropped his keys into the kettle and gave it a practice rub.

It was a little joy.

What would I wish for?

What would make life perfect?

Enough money, whatever “enough” happened to be.

Contentment.

True love.

So far, he had the first two. Well, he had them insofar as was possible without the third.

An antique appraisal show came to town, and Alex, on a whim, took the samovar.

He knew, as you know, that this was where all his wishes would be granted. The young woman behind him in the final line was petite but “had some meat on her bones,” as Gramma Tasha would have said with approval. He hair was dark and curly, and her eyes were dark and bright. Her name was Makayla, named after her great-grandmother from “somewhere in Russia.”

The appraiser unwrapped the samovar with delight, which melted into a scowl as he turned it and saw the shiny spot.

“Did you try to polish it?” It was an accusation, not a question.

“I rub it.” Lest anyone should get the impression he did what he actually did, he lied, “I rub it for luck.”

“Well, you’ve destroyed the patina. It might have been worth ten or twenty dollars. As it is….” He shoved the samovar aside with the tips of his fingers. “Next.”

Consumed with shame, Alex didn’t register what Makayla was saying until she had said it.

“I changed my mind. I don’t want you to look at my antique, you … you … you kulak!”

Alex laughed, grabbed his precious samovar, and marched out of the show in step with Makayla.

“My Granny Tasha used to call people kulak when she wanted to insult them. She said it meant they had more money than sense.”

“That’s what Babushka said it meant. Babushka is what I was taught to call my great-grandma.”

They went out for tea. One memory led to another, one story to another, one thing to another. It took four years of careful, patient mutual education and compromise, but Alex finally secured the last of his three desires.

And he didn’t even have to waste a wish.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A tempest in a teapot.

MA

The post 28 Three Wishes @StoryADayMay appeared first on MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY.