Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 166: The pantry too was well supplied for her visit.
The pantry too was well supplied for her visit. Satisfied she wouldn’t go hungry and not feeling terribly hungry since she and Michael grabbed something to eat during their long between flight’s lay over, Gwen made certain that the front door locked and took her small overnight bag up to her room.
Her room was how she left it and there was comfort in familiarity. It was a warm welcome home. For a moment she puzzled over the blank corkboard and then she remembered she threw out the pictures before she left. She looked to the trash can and found that they were still there. She left them where they were and began to unpack.
The room felt a little stale so she opened the windows and decided to change the sheets. Soon enough the room felt like home again. As she spent most of the time she was here alone in the house, the alone-ness of it didn’t feel all that strange.
‘But I can see why dad would want to sell and move.’ He was only there when she and Sharron were home, so she imagined it felt rather empty when neither of them were. ‘Plus, it was always too big for just the three of us anyway.’
Oddly, she found herself missing her grandparents. Over the summer she got used to talking to them over meals and planning out the day and upcoming events. “I’ll be home soon enough,” she told herself. The thought stopped her cold.
Gwen smiled. She hadn’t thought of her grandparents’ place as home before. “It’s probably a good thing since I’m going to be living there for a while.”
She unpacked her small bag and took her toiletries to the shower. As she cleared them out before she left the shower shelf was bare. It felt strange to put full-sized high-end products on the shelf. Before she had only gotten the small travel sizes of the good products she liked and used less expensive drug store products. Since moving, her grandmother made certain to restock the more expensive ones.
As Gwen placed them, she realized it wasn’t just expense that kept her from buying them before. She enjoyed the products and could have budgeted for them. Most of her pay went to savings and she could have easily expanded. One of the reasons she never had was Lisa. Lisa had no interest in the high-end products and made fun of Gwen for enjoying them. As a result, Gwen only used the travel sized versions when there was a special event.
‘But I do like these better,’ she thought. And as she placed them, she knew it wasn’t just because they were high end. Before settling on these for her fancy events products, Gwen tried a lot of products. She rotated through the entire drugstore section and then tried out all of the different samples of higher end products. These are the products that gave her hair what she thought of as her best look and these were the scents she enjoyed the most.
“And they weren’t even the most expensive products I tried.” Gwen had, in fact, tried several much more expensive products and they didn’t work as well so she went back to these. Gwen frowned. She knew she had accommodated Lisa and Toby in a lot of things but hadn’t realized it went all the way down to her shower.
Uncomfortable with the thought, Gwen decided that she would postpone her shower until the morning. She turned out the bathroom light and went back to the bedroom.
Ten til Midnight 