famousnorris-blog

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Mama’s Revenge

Image generated with AI. “Did I miss a message?” She knew her son’s intentions, she just thought he knew better, she didn’t want to get into a sniping match, so she shut up. Some things were better left unsaid. Mama didn’t like it when her boy kept her car out all night without asking. “I understand, I should have texted you to let you know, but it slipped my mind,” was a response, though not…

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Potato Salad

Image generated with AI When I go outside, summer smells like rain and cut grass. If I sit on my rocking chair on the back porch, I smell the deep green dirt and dead leaves of forest earth supporting my flowers. The deadfall of the yard, dotted with bright pink begonias and orange, fuchsia, and red impatiens emits the scent of the earth under the canopy of green. It is at least fifteen degrees…

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Promise and Truth

Image generated with AI Alice Krudworthy gave up on lying a long time ago. She quit making up shit, but would often omit certain details to bend the thinking of whomever she was talking to. “What did you have for dinner?” Someone would ask innocuously.  “Salad, with apples, chickpeas, avocados, tomatoes, and crab. I made a dressing with olive oil and rice vinegar,” she replied. She didn’t…

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Fall, Flail, or Fly?

Photo by Tasha Marie To be or not to be.  fall, flail, or fly? Ribs tight and hard, stomach in knots.  I don’t even see the setting sun, there are no colors left in the grey of dusk.  The ocean laps and pounds the jutting rock on which I stand.  I pull my hair to try to get an anchor. To feel something, but nothing comes to mind. To be or not to be.  fall, flail, or fly? The ocean bleeds…

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Wet Produce

Image generated with AI. Grocery shopping is a necessary evil. I don’t like shopping in the first place, and spending an exorbitant amount of money on sustenance seems like a sin. Life is so expensive, it doesn’t need to be so annoying to get the things I need and want. Ordering groceries online for pickup has saved me from one of my greatest pet peeves, wet produce. I know spraying vegetables…

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Word Wednesday: Whalesong from "chord, note, Baltic, crowd, bronze, odor"

AI generated image. “I never thought I’d be standing on the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the Baltic sea listening to whale songs, The notes and chords from their throats are stuff I only dreamed about,” Madeline watched the fog move over the waves.  The famous clicks and moans of the whales under the water were more eerie than she thought they’d be. They thrilled her. The symphony of…

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Hateful Liberation 

Mom and Dad were the loves of each other’s lives. They found each other during summers when Mom went to Clay county to visit her grandparents. Their love for each other never changed. Even after they divorced thirty-two years later after dad met and had an affair with CH, the most despicable woman I’d ever met. Dad made a mistake that Mom would have forgiven him for if CH hadn’t pushed him to…

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The Trap

A groundhog attacked the lily in the flower bed in the front of the house. For three years the lily had grown to the size of a bushel basket and was covered in buds. The varmint  didn’t eat the leaves. Oh no. It waited until the buds were ripe and ready to burst into the vibrant petals with peach colored centers fading out into cream colored velvet. Then it chomped them off before they could…

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Tincher’s Store

AI generated image. Tincher’s Store and Post Office was the train station once. It stood not a hundred feet from the railroad tracks, and its wide wooden porch doubled as a bus stop in the pouring rain. We had no idea how long ago it stopped being a train station, it was half a mile from our houses, and the bus wouldn’t take us all the way home. Mom and Dad didn’t give us money to stop there…

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Anxiety be damned

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen,” said Alan Watts from the podium, his closing remarks. He got a standing ovation. I was pissed. I didn’t disagree with him, but I was pissed. I hate having reality thrown up in my face. My anxiety is often debilitating. That’s why I take meds. Finally, the shrink found something that keeps me upright in the mornings…

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Public Communications

“I absolutely know what you want me to say,” said Thomas. He’d been with Celia all day and all evening. They’d worked all day together, been to the bar after work to celebrate with the public communications team, and now they were headed home. They were at the crossroads. “I can go right and head home, but turning left will take me to another level of knowing you Celia, and I just don’t want to…

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The Voice

“Hugh Henry you have the ability to choke the living shit out of every situation like an intergalactic missile,” His mother told him straight up. She was tired of listening to his tirade about why the symphony shouldn’t play next Sunday. He thought it was too frivolous, way too frivolous, to assemble the whole orchestra for a special performance on the levee in honor of the riverboats. His…

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Everlastingly

“Everlastingly,” Janet hissed the word out as long as she could to give it the onomatopoeia sound of the crashing waves she needed to hear. “Listen! The mighty being is awake and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder, everlastingly.” Janet quoted Wordsworth when she crossed the bridge to Emerald Isle. It was her ritual. She was CDO, OCD in alphabetical order, enough to lick her…

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Whitewater

So they threw them together into the stream and the two splashes they made were as one. They tossed the rings into the maelstrom of the churning rapidsTheir perfect union ended as it had begun, blessed and honored.Washed downstream in holy water,Their wedding rings lost in the turbulence on the river rocks beneath the white rapids aboveCarried below the foam away from turmoil.Friction,…

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Myrtle Beach with Dad

I hate to say it, but our family vacations with Dad were bad. He was the stick in the mud, the wet blanket, the damper of all flames, the downer. He provided all the eggshells on which we all had to walk.  Our Myrtle Beach vacation, the first time any of us saw the sea first hand including Mom and Dad first start out magical. He body-surfed and his laughter resounded like bells I’d never heard…

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What?

What? What’s wrong with you?  What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you hear me ask you first? What difference does that make? Are you going to answer me? Why wouldn’t I? What are you hiding? I’m not hiding anything? Aren’t you? How would you know? Why wouldn’t I know? Do you ever pay attention to me? Do you? Do  you? Why are you mocking me? Why are you being so childish? I’m…

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What I Know Is True

What do I know that’s true? I know that my family and money are important whether I like it or not. Even my sister and my brother, whom I rant and rave and write about all the time, even when I don’t like them, are all important to me. No one knows us like our family does. No one loves us like they do. Even under all the layers of discontent, there is a layer of love that cannot be lost. It goes…