Goal Reached

Hip-Hip Hooray!

I past another milestone with the new book I've started writing!

 

Here's a sample: (I've not edited the story yet, so please forgive my grammatical errors and the improper tenses you are surely going to find. [I had a hard time deciding how the story was going to be told, but I think I got it figured out.] Enjoy!)

It’s Sunday morning, and the long hunter green curtains of the Days Inn hotel are fighting hard to keep the bright morning sunlight out of my room. The room is not extraordinarily boring, though it also fails to raise any excitement. The wall color is lost somewhere between light beige and muddy cream. A cheap abstract print in orange and green hangs on the wall above the dark green bedspread I just crawled out of. The television is a flat screen newer than the one I have in the living room back in Illinois, and it is much better than the box T.V. that produces a dull colored picture on top of the wooden dresser in my bedroom.

Had this been a typical morning, I would have slept comfortably, and happily bounced out of bed to my own internal alarm clock at 4:30 in the morning. I was able to nap for about an hour on the plane from Chicago to Los Angeles, and now my body can’t adjust to the time change. No matter how hard I will myself to sleep after arriving to the hotel at three a.m. I couldn’t fall asleep with my body believing it was 5:00.

I tossed and turned until just before 6:00 when the gym finally opens. I wash my face, brush my teeth, slip into a pair of black Adidas shorts with a purple pinstripe and a solid purple tank that leaves just an inch of midriff exposed before combing my shiny long black hair into a high and tight ponytail. I apply my deodorant, and toss a hand towel from the bathroom towel rack over my shoulder. I tuck the plastic key card into the side of my white and navy tennis shoes, and take the stairs down to the hotel gym.

Maneuvering Sunset Boulevard at two am in the trail of a Saturday night had proven stressful and ridiculous. Not to mention the bone-head that gave my rental car a hard enough love-tap to scuff the bumper, and then he didn't feel the need to do more than give me a smile and wave as he veered past me- like that made everything okay.

Whatever, I pushed the annoyance away. It is what it is.

I’m looking forward to a long and hard morning in the gym followed by a day of relaxation poolside. I’m a small-town country girl, and the thrill of passing celebrity’s homes on a bus full of strangers eludes me. Los Angeles may seem like a dopey choice for a solo vacation if you’re not really into chasing celebrity, but my brother and co-workers had heavily insisted that I needed a vacation. Just so happens that a close family friend, and the Godfather to both me and my brother had retired, and I was planning a weekend trip to a L.A. to attend the retirement party in his honor. I simply added a week to my itinerary to get everyone off my back about needing a real vacation.

There hasn’t been a day I can recall where I haven’t worked since I was sixteen years old. Ten birthdays have passed, and I’ve worked through them all. I own a motocross training facility with my brother, and schedule myself six days a week, and always shows up on my day off to get ahead of the paperwork. A week with no work is going to be nearly im-poss-i-ble…but I’m willing to give it a try.

Fresh paint fumes fill the dark hallway that leads to the gym. A sickly feeling has already risen in the pit of my stomach as I approached the dark windows to the gym. Brown butcher paper hangs over the windows hiding the interior. A white sign with a smiling paint brush on it is taped to the door letting me know that the facility isbeing upgraded.

No work. No Gym. I'm going to die. I spun on my heel and headed to the front desk.