Baby, it's cold outside!!! This morning as I wake up, the temperature is 21, feels like 11. This may be the coldest day yet that I have experienced since moving to Alabama, almost two years ago. How are you all doing temperature-wise? Anybody colder than this? I'm sure some of you are! Anybody looking at a White Christmas? We're warming up to the 70's and rain for Christmas Eve. Sigh...Crazy weather!
Well, I'm going to look for LAYERS to wear as I head out to work this morning. But before I do, I leave you with my next chapter...
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CHAPTER 9: SOMETHING WEIRD IS DEFINITELY GOING ON
There were no squeals of delight in the living room downstairs. For only a few moments later, Howard Gordon returned through the front door, still wearing his corduroy jacket, and his wife ran up to him, hissing, "Howard! What is wrong with you? Where's the suit?"
"It isn't there!" Howard hissed back.
"Well, why not? Didn't you put it in the trunk before we left?"
"I did!" he insisted, then, "At least I thought I did. But I'm telling you, it's not there now!"
"Are you telling me...You forgot?" Roberta accused. "You forgot? On purpose?"
"I didn't! At least, not on purpose. I mean, there was so much to remember: the cake, the presents, the wine…"
"I remembered the cake and the presents and the wine!" Roberta shot back. "All you had to remember was the suit. And you forgot it! Oh! Oh! How typical!"
"Typical?" Howard questioned defensively. "How so?"
"You never face your issues, do you, Howard? If you don't want to deal with something, you just conveniently shove it under a rug! How…how Freudian!"
"Now wait just one darn-tootin' second," Howard objected. "Technically, it's not 'Freudian…'" and he launched into a psychiatric evaluation of his own behavior.
Lizzie was only vaguely aware of the argument in the foyer as she worked her video game controller from the living room couch, but it made her uneasy. Apparently it made her mother uneasy as well, for Jo came from the kitchen to stand with Howard and Roberta in the foyer and after a few more frenzied whispers, she was offering the Gordons her assurance that it was "no big deal" and that the issue had probably been completely forgotten anyway. Lizzie could not tell what they were talking about, but she knew something was wrong.
Upstairs, Gordo was aware of nothing but his own troubled thoughts. He sat on the edge of Lizzie's bed, staring at the long line of Barbies and Kens atop the dresser. The sight depressed him. He liked Lizzie, he really did, but sometimes he fervently wished she was a boy. If he was doomed to have only one good friend, why couldn't it be a guy, like he was? Why did he have to get stuck playing Barbies all the time? He felt sure he was bound to end up with a manifestation of gender issues. At least that's what he had heard his parents secretly murmuring on more than one occasion.
Gordo wished for a friend of the same gender. At least a part of him wished that, if only to please his parents. Deep down, though, he knew that, in general, he found boys much too competitive and confrontational. What he really imagined would suit him best would be another friend who was a girl, but not quite as frilly and emotional as Lizzie. A girl who was, maybe, a little rough around the edges. A girl with some spunk, who liked her Mary Kate and Ashley handbag in a leopard print, rather than bubblegum pink. Yeah. Even a girl like that would be nice as a friend.
These were Gordo's thoughts, which were almost a hope, almost a wish, as he let his eyes drift from the line of Barbies to the view of the night sky from Lizzie's open bedroom window. He saw the full moon, and he saw a star. If Lizzie were here, she would sing "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…" and make a wish. Gordo sighed. He was too practical to wish upon a star. Yet even as he sighed, somewhere deep inside him, he dared to wish.
He wished, and sitting in Lizzie's bedroom at the far end of the house, he did not hear what was going on in the rooms below him. But Lizzie did. She heard the grownups continue to whisper at the front door, and she sensed that something was wrong. Her dad soon joined the group, and in a voice that was not a whisper, said, "Hey! What's going on here?"
The others "shh"ed him, and cast glances at Lizzie and Matt in the living room. Okay, Lizzie thought. Something weird is definitely going on here. She was starting to feel paranoid.
But that feeling did not last long, for as soon as her father spoke and the others "shh"ed him, there was a bold knock on the door, and her mother threw up her hands, wondering, "Now who could THAT be?" as she reached for the doorknob.
In the very next instant, Lizzie heard her mom exclaim "Oh my God! I don't believe it! I just don't believe it!"
"Don't believe what?" Roberta and Howard and Sam asked in unison.
"I don't believe who's at the door! Would you like to guess? Could any of you ever in a million years guess who is at the door?" And here, dramatically, she threw open the door and announced in a loud, astonished voice, "It's Santa Claus!"
