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~ Collections of stories, journals, and photography by Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle Writes

Tag Archives: characters

It’d Been Three Weeks Since

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Lorelle VanFossen in A Slice of Life

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characters, disabled, disaster, nuclear plant, slice of life, struggles, survival

It’d been 3 weeks since the power went out. Aunt Maggie ran out of bullets the second week. We thought we was being attacked by the villagers coming up into the mountains looking for food and supplies. We heard strange noises in the forest around the house and she charged out there and shot up the woods shouting her head off. Any one out there would have run for the valley if they heard her banshee screams, and saved us some bullets. But no one was there, save for a group of quail. She shot up a bunch of trees and killed a quail. Not even good eating. She blew it to pieces with the buckshot. Goodness me, she is so excitable. Uncle Max took the gun away and threatened to shoot her for running out of bullets. Maybe it was a good thing she used them all up. I don’t know. Was a bizarre day.

Every day since the power went out has been bizarre. Yeah, we are coping, but every day brings strange things to our mountain home. The first week, we were so busy taking stock of the stores and the inventory of supplies and figure out how to get the power back. We made many trips to town to ask around, but no one even knew where the power went out at. No one in the village had power, and anyone driving to the big city came back saying there was no power there and people didn’t know anything. We stopped going to the village when the gas tank got to a quarter tank. We couldn’t refill as the gas pumps ran on electricity, so that was miserable and strange.

Radios with batteries kept reporting something about a big blow out in the state capital or maybe beyond, something about a nuclear plant, so many people guessing at what was going on, getting more and more outrageous with their guesses, and we still didn’t know for sure. Honestly, people tend to just make things up when they don’t have the facts. By week two, I swear people were trying to out do others tall tales about what really happened. About then, we ran out of batteries, along with those bullets, so it didn’t matter any old how. Uncle Max had a shit fit and stormed out of the house kicking the dogs out of the way. So we don’t know much that don’t come by word of mouth through the neighbors who pass through every few days with checking on each other. It is amazing how fast word travels when you don’t have a working phone. The mountain gossip machine didn’t need electricity! Who cares about why we don’t have power. We now know things about our neighbors we wish we didn’t know. We gets our entertainment where and when we can. Woweeee.

We still have food as we’ve been careful, but all the fresh food ran in about a week and a half. We’re on dry food, saving the chicken, ducks, and cattle for the really bad times. Don’t know when that time will come, but mother is keeping an eye on things.

Cousin Phil started a fuss over the toilet paper and refused to use the newspaper, but he got over it. Well, he didn’t have much of a choice.

Alex, my brother, is the one struggling the most. He really loves being with people and he misses hanging out at the bar down in the village. It is making him crazy not having access to his beer and buds. He’s taken to roaming the woods around us, which is good as he takes out the dog and the two prowl around acting like a defense guard, and we feel safer. He wishes there were bullets, but he still carries his 15 knives around his belt and on his leg holsters.

My father stays out in the barn save for dinner and sleeping, though I think he would sleep in the barn with the animals if mother would let him. She stays in the kitchen the whole time, baking, roasting, cooking, and keeping an eye on the perishables and supplies, passing them out with tight lips and fists.

Me, I’m just hanging out in the corner of the living room, reading books, studying, and trying to stay active in my noggin, keeping the noodle active. It’s easier than trying to get the family to fiddle with my wheelchair outside. The motorized one’s batter stopped about day five and now I’m in the old fashioned one that I had when I was small, so it’s a little tight, but I’m fitting better now that we are stretching the food out to last longer. Moving me around is hard on the dirt and gravel outside. Alex is near useless and bitches the whole time, and my father just grunts and groans, so I just hide in the corner with my books and no one pays me any attention. It’s safer that way.

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His and Hers Isolation

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Lorelle VanFossen in A Slice of Life

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characters, covid-19, experiences, his and hers, perspectives, self-isolation, slice of life

His:

There was no one to talk to but her. The office at home used to feel huge, so he’d filled it with boxes of round-to-its and when-I-get-time-to-do-its, the clutter of a life lived outside of the home in an office kept pristine with plenty of chairs and tables for interaction, spreading out drawings, plans, spreadsheets. All those endless meetings he’d complained about that were the fuel that fired his imagination, his problem solving ability on overdrive. Without someone to bounce ideas off, to lean over their shoulder and point out an error or the right answer, it wasn’t the same. He was now trapped behind the desk, his face shoved into the computer monitor’s camera, trying to recreate the personal experience through online cameras, conference calls, and the phone. His biggest adventure was removing all the clutter on the wall behind him, and putting some of the boxes of whatevers and need-to-deal-withs on the floor out of view in the background of the web cam. Woop. Without the two hours of commute every day, he now had to fill those hours with something. What? How would he survive.

Hers:

Having spent the past 5 years immersed in virtual reality, the phone, email, and social media requests for her expertise were flooding the digital airwaves. She couldn’t remember the last time she was this busy. Endless meetings. six am to 8pm, non stop online meetings, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and even in Engage, AltspaceVr, Second Life, the list of virtual spaces was long. She was jealous of all the people with extra time. She dreamed of taking a few minutes to read her book abandoned by the side of the bed, her knitting next to her chair in the living room where her cup of tea poured 3 weeks ago turning moldy on the surface of the butterscotch liquid surface.

The Memories in the Corner of the Mind

18 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by Lorelle VanFossen in A Slice of Life

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characters, dreams, goals, judgement, memories, opportunities, past, poetry, regrets

Dark shadows dim recesses.
Flashes of light and insight.
What was so long ago shines dully
In waves of judgement.

Opportunities taken, moments lost.
Goals dreamed, hopes dashed.
What was so long ago seems cleaner purer
In waves of judgement.

When we look back, what shall we see.
Choices like dust motes drift by.
Was this right, wrong, good, or bad
Or was it just us being us?

Regrets are for the young.
They have time to redo, replace, rejuvenate.
Regrets for the old are memories
Of just being alive.

Can We Go Outside?

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Lorelle VanFossen in A Slice of Life

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characters, covid-19, isolation, perspectives, self-isolation

Light flooded the living room, a bright sunny day worthy of playing outside.

“Mama? Can we go outside?”

The answer was always the same. No. Not today. Not yesterday. Not the day before yesterday. Not tomorrow, though maybe in a few days.

Janice didn’t know what that meant. Days were wrapped with light mixed with dark, but she rarely saw the dark. She lived for the light. She lived to go out into the light, to feel the warmth on her skin, to breath in the leaves and trees, tilt her head in the direction of bird song and search through the branches for a glimpse of blue or red feathers.

She knew better to argue, so she turned around and looked for the cat. The cat always found the warmest spot in the 5th floor flat. If even a sliver of sun came through, the cat found it with her heat-seeking radar. Yes, there he was, a silver tabby, curled in a ball in the largest swath of sun. She laid down on the floor next to the cat, pulling him in close for a snug, then stared up into the ceiling.

Did mama ever have to spend weeks on end locked in the house waiting for illness to pass by their door? She’d asked and was told about war and hiding under desks to protect themselves from bombs falling out of the sky, but never hiding from something no one could see that was killing people.

What would she remember from this time when she was mama’s age, she wondered? What would she tell her child?

The first few days, she’d worried about invisible monsters breaking down the door and hurting the family. Now, she understood better and now worried about other things, school, friends, other family members, and her teachers. She didn’t worry much as they stayed connected all the time on the net, but she missed the hugs and arm punches, the teasing that she and her friends would do, but now they could only tease each other on the vid and not see or touch each other.

She understood. It’s just the way it was.

Finding Creativity and Artistry Anytime in Your Life

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by Lorelle VanFossen in My Stories

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acting, characters, comedy, creativity, ditzvids, entertainment, humor, inspiration, leslie, mentor, personalities, videos, youtube

Leslie Ditzy Vids YouTube Channel images.My friend, Leslie, is an inspiration to me. She used to drive me “batty” – her term for it – but now she has come into her own in her olderness and is not just an inspiration to me but a mentor and motivator.

The niece of an Oscar winning actress, Leslie has come out of her turtle shell casing and into her own as the queen of Ditzvids.

In a form distinctive and yet similar to Tracy Ullman, the actress and comedian famous for her various characters, Leslie continues to unveil a wide variety of characters adorned in antique hats, veils, glasses, sweaters, and other paraphernalia.

She explains to me often that the clothes make the character. She’ll try on different hats and wigs and suddenly feel the entity coming out of her. They have unusual and creative names, often representative of their personality.

There are so many characters she’s created that get me rolling on the floor and literally peeing my pants from laughing so hard. I’m not sure if these are funnier because I know Leslie and know how out of character (and sometimes “in character”) these are, or because they are just that funny.

Sandra Ledbedter is one of my favorite characters. In the video above, she prepares for vacation with her boyfriend in Hawaii, and her nerves, as well as her query personality, comes out beautifully. In the next video, she’s on vacation with her boyfriend in Hawaii and decides to use “modern technology” to send a video post card. Honestly, I could see my mother sending the same post card back home.

Sandra’s brother, Ernie, is a character she describes as literally taking her over. She fell into the “ARCHitech” personality so completely, she lost herself. The brilliance comes through in this unique video.

“Flatulance Air” is a unique airline, and this “safety” presentation for the flight is brilliant, an airline really run on gas.

Estrella the Smari Swarmi is a hoot, the Swarmi without a glass ball as someone took it. LOL!

In this video, Kiki states the truth that all of us over the age of 40 wish: Shoe designers, please make shoes for us to not only make us feel good but look good, whether or not we’re heading for the dance floor.

During the Olympics, she came up with an Olympic Swimmer character that won an Olympic Rhinestone.

Eugenie is a royal house maid for the queen – Elizabeth – and she invites you for tea.

Watching the Ditzvids from Leslie, I am reminded of how little creativity I have in my life and that I need to get more. She is shining and thriving with these beautiful video characters, stretching her imagination in every direction, embracing different parts of herself as well as other people.

Her courage to put these “out there” in the world is wonderful to watch. She gets judgmental about herself and her friends and their opinions of what she is doing, saying she knows that everyone thinks she’s looney and “off my meds” but she keeps producing them, improving constantly. I’ve previewed some of the future releases and trust me, she’s come up with some amazing characters and outfits.

I need to put myself out there more again. I need to risk with my creativity. I need to push myself to do more and experiment with my art, in all directions.

Thank you, my dear friend, Leslie, for pushing me to become more fully me. Just one of the many reasons I love you so much.

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Disclaimer

The writings herein solely represent the world of Lorelle VanFossen. Some of the names have been changed and the stories might be inaccurate and non-factual as they are from her imagination. After many years of technical writing, it's about time Lorelle was allowed to let her imagination run wild. Tough if you don't like it. ;-)

age altspacevr assignment ballots campaign characters cherokee cities classroom commentary covid-19 creative writing meetup death editorial education election elections elephant garlic festival family fiction foreign language forest grove writers workshop future of education future of teachers home hope how to vote intro introduction isolation israel language lexicon life lightning paper metaphors mortality north plains obama online online learning online teaching opportunities oregon perspectives poetry political politics president prompt prompts pumpkin ridge golf course role of the teacher romney Scrivener self-isolation short story slice of life small town life stories teachers teaching online time town town life travel trees vote voting weather welcome winter words writing writing assignment

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