My House

When Katherine and I wrote together this week, we decided to do a practice from The One-Minute Writer's blog. Her writing prompt on Sunday was:

What responsibility do you have that you'd like a break from? I thought of my house..

This house has an attitude problem. During the summer when friends and family come over, they are impressed by the beauty, light and spaciousness. The house truly shows off. But those who visit in the winter get to see the house in the downside of its mood disorder. It likes sunshine and that's it. Nothing else will do.

In the rain, it gets all moody and definitely doesn't keep to itself. Drip! Drip! It announces itself on the heads of all visitors who follow the walkway to my door. Drip! Drip! It pushes the water through the slates in the deck above my patio onto my table.

In winter, when snow falls on the roof, the house gets steaming mad and melts all the snow. Drip! Drip! When the temperature gets cold, the house holds the icicles and then in a moment of demented glee, it lets them go in a big crash on the walkway. If someone happens to be on the walkway at the time, all the better.

The house keeps busy at night too. It creates the best conditions for making a slippery, hard-to-see coating on the walkway. In January this year, the house could hardly contain a chuckle when one of the two visitors from Mexico slipped off one step to the next. Silly Mexicans, it thought, having no appreciation for their sunny country.

This year, the house was particularly annoyed at the long winter and lack of sun. With nothing but time on its hands, it dreamed up a diabolical plot. With the resident going in and out the back door, what about creating a new drip, right at the edge of the house where the path through the snow began? Clever, it thought. And so it did. The result was far better than expected. The resident got the first drip right on the top of her head and it splashed onto her glasses; she blurted out a curse.

The snow melted and the sun started appearing more and more each day. The house began to feel better and better. It became less irritated by visitors. It decided to read one of the books on one of the shelves, "Attitude Is Everything," in the long daylight hours. Maybe there was something to this changing your thinking idea. The sun came out, and the house slowly forgot about the rain, the snow, the clouds, and it closed the book.

"I'll think about that tomorrow."