sidhe_faerie | Winter Bingo (Charloft)

Dana pulled a book off the bookshelf in her bedroom. Since she was newly single she might as well catch up on her reading.

She looked at the romance novel she had in her hand and rolled her eyes. She was done with romance. at least for now. She put it back and looked at the other books on the shelf.

She finally decided on a classic. It was safe and as exciting as warm milk but there wasn’t a speck of romance in the whole thing.

She got in bed and pulled the covers up and started to read. She managed a chapter before the book slid out of her hand to the floor with a thud.

Dana cradled the coffee mug in her hands. It was freezing. The heat was off again. She held the cup just trying to warm her hands before she got frostbite or something.

She breathed into the sky and wrinkled her nose at the frost in the air. She hoped that the heat would be fixed soon or all they would find of her is a popsicle in mismatched sweats.

She blew on the edge of the coffee to take a sip but hesitated. It wasn’t until she shivered that she decided that she had better drink the stuff before it was as cold as her hands.

She walked over and curled up on the sofa and dragged the wooly throw off the back of the sofa to cover up.

She could hear the plumber working on the old steam pipes. She smiled as she sipped her coffee. Now she just had to stay warm until it’s fixed.

Dana walked into her apartment and looked in the hall mirror. Her brown hair was everywhere. She shook her head and it only made the windblown look even worse.

She hated windy days. Her cheeks were chilled and her hair was an absolute mess. She looked like she had been in a tornado or something.

The wind wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t a gentle breeze either. The cold seemed to make it even more harsh.

Dana looked in the mirror again and sighed. She tried to fix her hair with her fingers and gave up when she encountered tangles.

There was only one thing that was going to fix her hair. Dana went to get her hair brush even though she thought she should just cut the whole mess off.

Dana headed for the salad bar at the cafeteria at work. She had made the New Year’s resolution to eat healthier. She looked at the offerings at the salad bar and sighed. She knew that by the time she had made it all the way around the bar she would have the unhealthiest collection of food she could get. Everything was loaded with fat and not healthy at all.

She decided to stick to the side with the fresh veggies. Even so, there was still the cheese and the salad dressing to contend with. Ugh and the bacon bits. She had a weakness for bacon bits.

She took a deep breath and pretended half of what was on the salad bar was not there. She managed to get a good selection of veggies and a light dressing but she couldn’t resist the bacon bits.

So much for trying to eat healthy.

Dana decided to treat herself. She had been really good lately and she felt like she deserved a present. The problem was that she couldn’t decide what she really wanted.

Was it a new romance novel? Or maybe the latest CD from her favorite singer? Then again there was a new DVD that she had wanted to get too. She just couldn’t decide.

She sat down on the sofa and put her feet up with a cup of hot chocolate and tried to figure it out. There was so many little things that she could treat herself with.

She wiggled her toes in the fuzzy slippers. They looked a little worn and there were bare spots in places. She decided in that moment she would give herself a new pair of fuzzy slippers. Maybe this time she would get some bunny slippers.

Dana wasn’t a fan of jewelry but she did wear one ring every day. it was her mother’s wedding ring. She wore it on the ring finger of her right hand. It was a simple gold band. There was no diamonds or engraving on the outside. On the inside of the ring, was their wedding date and initials.

When her parents got married, they didn’t have much money so there was only one wedding ring. They had saved for months to pay for it and have the engraving done. It was the only thing that her mother had insisted on when they were married.

Dana’s parents were married at the courthouse in borrowed clothes with just their family in attendance. It wasn’t a rushed ceremony but it was a cheap one. There was no announcement or reception.

Sometimes when Dana missed her parents, she would turn the ring on her finger and talk to them. They were both taken from her before she was ready. It gave her the connection that she needed when times got dark for her.

Lately, she had been turning the ring on her finger more than she liked. She could really use them these days.

Dana opened the box that she found on her desk at work. Inside she found a coffee mug with a big red heart on it. Inside the heart was her first name. It made her smile.

She looked around and saw that all the women in the office had similar mugs. The hearts were different colors but it was the same design.

She wondered who had sent her the mug. She shook the box and a card fell out on her desk. She read it.

“Happy Valentine’s Day from the company cupid.”

She laughed. It was a sweet gesture. It would probably be the only gift she would receive this year. Sometimes being single sucked.

She took her cup into the break room and rinsed it out before putting coffee in it. It was practical and her favorite color.

Dana laid her keys on the hall table as she walked through the front door of her apartment. She toed up her heels and threw her coat over the chair in the living room. She plopped down on the sofa in her expensive new dress.

She had given Harper Deale yet another chance and what does the idiot do? He took her to a boxing club for their first date in months. A Boxing club? What kind of date is that? It’s an ‘I had an extra ticket so here you go’ kind of a date.

Sometimes she wondered if he had any kind of sense at all. The better question was whether or not she has any sense for giving him yet another chance.

That was the last one but it probably wasn’t. She knew she would give him another at some point. She was insane by definition. She kept doing the same thing over and over again thinking she would a different result.

Dana had one of those choir bells on a shelf in the living room. It was brass with a wooden handle and a little dinged up. It was one of the few things that she cherished.

It had belonged to her father. He had used it every year when he rang the bell at the red kettles. He had done it for many years right up until he was too ill from the cancer.

She remembered going out with her mother to bring him a thermos of coffee. He always had a smile on his face and he was quick to wish everyone ‘Happy Holidays’. Those were some of her most favorite memories.

Now the bell rested silently, just like her father.

Dana looked through her mail as she walked through the front door. There was a letter from a legal office in the next state over. She put her keys and the other mail on the hall table and opened the envelope.

Inside was a letter from a lawyer she had never heard of telling her that her elderly great aunt was deceased. Aunt Molly was her father’s sister. She never married and she had no children.

The lawyer was sending the letter to inform her that she was in her Aunt Molly’s will as her sole heir. There was a list of assets on the letter. On the list,there was the house where her father had grown up.

She pulled out her phone and called the lawyers office to make an appointment to see him. She would have to take a few days off to take care of this but what concerned her more was that Aunt Molly hadn’t even been ill.

She should have expected it but it caught her by surprise. Aunt Molly was almost ninety years old but she was active and full of life the last time Dana had seen her.

Dana took the cup of warm raspberry apple cider out of the microwave and smiled as she smelled it. it was a secret pleasure of hers.

Every year she would get several bottles and stash them in the bottom of the fridge for the winter. She had just opened her last one.

She grabbed a bag of gingersnaps off the counter and went to sit on the sofa. She covered up with the throw on the sofa. She grabbed her current romance novel and started to read about the swarthy pirate sweeping the noblewoman off her feet.

She sipped the cider and nibbled on the gingersnaps through five chapters before calling it a night.

Dana opened the top drawer of the credenza. She pulled out her book of shadows and leafed through to the ritual for Candlemas. she put it on top of the credenza and started to pull out the supplies she needed for the ritual.

Dana had been practicing the craft since she was a child. Even though her parents went to the Unitarian Church they were Wiccan. They had taught her all the rituals and even some herbal healing.

The craft had given her solace when she was at her darkest moments. She smiled when she picked up her wand and started the ritual.

Dana looked out the window and saw the snow coming down hard and heavy. It was dead of winter but the rate the snow was coming down was ridiculous.

There was no way that she was going to make it to work today. She turned the television on and it confirmed that nobody was going anywhere. The roads were closed and so were all the government offices.

Dana went over to the coffee maker and poured a second cup. There was some good about being snowed in with a full fridge and a new can of coffee.

She went over and turned on her computer and clicked on her Netflix app. She pulled the blanket off the back of the sofa and enjoyed her day off.

Dana had several last minute calls for dates on Valentine’s Day. She decided that she would rather be alone than to be someone’s desperate attempt at not being alone.

She decided to be her own Valentine. She bought herself a rose and ordered from her favorite take out. She got in her flannel pajamas with the red hearts all over them and settled in to watch some old movies.

It was a good plan but her mind started to wander halfway through the first movie. She wondered if she would always be alone. She didn’t want to be but her choices were limited at the moment.

She decided the best Valentine present she could give herself would be to go to some new places and meet some new people. If she was more out in the world then the possibility of being alone for the rest of her life diminished.

She smiled and restarted the movie from where she had drifted off. She had a plan and some hope.

Dana sat at the airport waiting for Harper. She was picking him up after a conference in Texas.

As much as she didn't want to admit, she still had a soft spot for the vain idiot. That's why when he called asking her to meet his flight, she agreed. She really needed to have her head examined.

So now, she sat in the waiting area waiting for a flight that was almost an hour late.

She looked at the arrival board again and saw that the plane had arrived. She stood up and went to see if Harper was coming. She found him kissing Diane.

Edited 2015-03-03 00:14 (UTC)

When Dana got a call from her old college roommate, she was a little surprised. They hadn’t really gotten along in college. Marian was a horrible slob and a little man crazy at the time.

At the appointed time of the visit, there was a knock at Dana’s door. She opened it to find a woman who looked older than her years and beaten by life. Dana hugged her.

They sat down with a cup of coffee and caught up on everything that had happened to them over the past years. Marian had a lot to tell and most of it was heartbreaking.

Dana gave her one last hug and a promise to keep in touch at the end of the visit. They had exchanged all of their contact information.

When the door closed, Dana was overwhelmed with the thought that no matter how bad her life was there was always someone that had an even worse one. She was just sad it had to be someone she knew.

Dana had a special night planned. She was going to meet some girls from work for dinner. They had heard of a new restaurant that had opened in the next town over and wanted to try it out.

The girls were meeting her there, so Dana put on her favorite dress and a pair of killer shoes and headed out the door.

She arrived a little late but was instantly forgiven. The girls had more important things on their mind.

The girls had been flirting with some guys at the bar. They had flirted enough to get a bottle of champagne sent over.

It was definitely a good night for a little fun. The guys came over to the table after dinner and introduced themselves. One of them even took an interest in her. She got his number and his name.

Dana walked into the church yard and looked at all the luminaries on the graves. It was a tradition at the Unitarian Church to put luminaries on the graves in the church yard on Candlemas. It was a way to light the way out of the darkest days of winter. It was the responsibility of the family to set them up and clean up the mess the next day.

Dana walked over to two graves just after sundown and set up luminaries on each of the graves. Her parents were a part of the church all their lives and even though Dana wasn’t religious she respected theirs. She came back every year to their church just to put the luminaries on their graves.

The flames flickered as she lit them. She sat on the bench in the churchyard and watched the flames for a while.

Dana wondered what they would think of her and her life. She smiled. They would just want her to be happy. The problem was she wasn’t happy. She was just moving through life in a daze.

Dana said a silent prayer for the luminaries to light her way out of the darkness of her life.

It happened every time she had to wrap a present. She couldn’t find the tape. Sometimes she would tear apart the place to find it but only come up with a nearly empty tape dispenser. She hated that.

There were also the times when she couldn’t find anything or so she thought. She would go out and get tape only to open a drawer an hour later and find a full one. That was even worse than a nearly empty one.

One day when marries a rich man, she is going to have a gift wrapping room full of all kinds of tape. In the meantime, she would just have to keep searching for the tape just like she was searching for a husband. She was more likely to find the tape than a decent husband.

Dana laughed when she looked in the mirror of the changing room.

She had been shopping for over an hour when she found the white puffer jacket. She thought it was pretty on the hanger but when she tried it on, she looked like a Yeti.

She had two choices. Buy the jacket and embrace her inner Yeti or keep shopping until she found something else.

Dana sighed. She took off the jacket and put it back on the hanger. She decided to keep shopping. She didn't want to scare anyone. Well, she didn't want to scare anyone more than she usually did.

Dana’s neighbor’s cat sat on the fire escape in the snow flicking his tail and eyeing one of the birds on the cable line. Dana watched him trying figure out how to get to the birds without falling to his death. He had an annoyed look on his face.

Her neighbor, Mrs. Morton stuck her head out of her window and called to the cat. He didn’t even look at her. He was too busy to be bothered by his human.

Dana suddenly heard the sound of something shaking and the cat ran in through the open window like its tail was on fire.

Dana had always wondered if she should get a pet. She wouldn’t mind a cat or a small dog. The only problem was, unlike Mrs. Morton, Dana had a full time job that sometimes required her to do overtime. She wouldn’t realistically have time to care for anything properly.

Winter was not Dana's favorite time of year. She didn't like being cold. She really didn't like the ice and snow.

Some people thought winter was a wonderful time of year. They love the snow and the skiing. Not only that, but there was Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

Dana just wasn't into all of that. She was Wiccan and terminally single. She had no interest in winter sports of any kind.

Her plan? Pull a blanket over her head and wait it out. It would go away in about six weeks.

The problem was that it always came back to annoy her again. It was almost like Harper Deale like that.

Dana pulled a box out of the back of the closet and opened it. She hadn’t even looked in it for a long time. It was full of nick knacks and junk. She started to go through it. She was looking for something in particular.

In the box, there were some old salt and pepper shakers that had been her grandmother’s. They were little geese with little red hearts on them. Dana didn’t know what made her think of them but she wanted to put them on the window sill in the kitchen. That was where her grandmother had kept them.

Near the bottom of the box she found them. They were dirty and one of them even had something in it.

Dana took them into the kitchen and cleaned them up. She sat them on the window sill with their beaks touching and smiled. It was strange but they seemed to belong there.

It was on cold nights like this one when Dana wished she had someone to snuggle. It would be nice to be held and warm every once in a while.

Yes, that would be nice but with the good comes the bad. She would have to have this person in her space. In her life. That was something she really wasn’t ready for. She may never be ready for that.

So for now she would have to snuggle up in a warm blanket by herself. Maybe she should invest in an electric blanket. They’re warm and snuggly but the best part is that they don’t talk.

There is nothing worse than a cold and Dana had one. It had lasted over a week and she was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

All Dana could keep down for the past few days were tea and toast.

She had never had a cold like this one before. Several of her friends had already gotten over this nasty cold but she seemed to have it worse than anyone.

As Dana stood in the kitchen waiting on the toaster and the microwave, she wondered if she would ever look at a slice of toast again without thinking of sandpaper and snot. She really doubted it.

Winter Bingo (Charloft)

1. Book

2. Warm

3. Windy

4. Healthy

5. Present

6. Jewelry

7. Red

8. Boxing

9, Bell

10. Aunt

11. Cider

12. Craft

13. Freebie (Snow)

14. Valentine

15. Flight

16. Visit

17. Night

18. Luminaries

19. Tape

20. Yeti

21. Pet

22. Winter Break

23. Goose

24. Snuggle

25. Toast