GallimauFriday

Check out The Hermit’s new political vid. Davis Fleetwood hooks into an emotion I tried to explain here, but y’all thought I was talking about music or something. And I was thinking about it again this morning on the drive to work. On NPR, they were yapping about the housing crash, about how devastating an experience it is to have your house on the market right now. “I’m so exhausted,” the woman said. “I never know when the real estate agent is going to show up, so every morning, I have to Windex the windows before I go to work.”

I thought about Davis’s video, and everything snapped into perspective.

Join me below the fold for

FROGS!

ZAFTIG WOMEN!

A FRIDAY SNIPPET!

and more, because there’s always me, too.

Received today: three tadpoles. This is what they’re going to look like . . .

and this is what they look like now.

But give them time.

***

I thought about doing a Friday Flickr Babes post tonight. For fun, I decided to search for a physical match for my romance’s heroine, Lori. She’s dark-haired, olive-skinned, and heavy. Not morbidly obese, but definitely heavy. And sexy. Heavy + sexy = zaftig, so I did a Flickr search for “zaftig” and came up with nothing.

Google Image search, however, led me to this young woman (from Fat Admirer Confidential):

She’s close to my vision of Lori. Maybe she’s a little heavier than Lori (in the arms, especially), but still — close.

What if I searched Flickr for “plump sexy”? No, that was a fat waste of time. (Sorry.) I tried “plump,” “fat sexy,” and since Lori’s part Italian, “Italian sexy,” and then since I didn’t feel like looking at dozens of shirtless eurotrash guys, “Italian sexy woman,” and still no Lori. Then it occurred to me whom I’d had in mind.

Plump.

Dark.

Italian.

Sexy.

Claudia Cardinale.

That’s my Lori. (Okay, okay . . . maybe something in between.)

Karen asks: what about Sophia Loren?

Hmm. Good point.

And here’s your Friday Snippet, featuring — who else? — Lori.

(From somewhere in the middle of Chapter Four. Unpublished, not the final edit, all rights reserved, yatta yatta yatta.)

***

Something chimed. Odd sound for a beeper, Lori thought, but Brad popped open a cell phone and turned away from her.

“Hi.”

Ugh. She didn’t like that Hi. It sounded too familiar.

“I suppose. No. No. No, of course not. Grrrrrr.”

She laughed. She had never heard him growl before.

“Just a friend. No. No. One of my bosses, if you must know. No. No, Ma.”

His — his mom? She watched his neck redden and stared at his back. Under his scrubs, his muscles seemed to tense. She resisted the urge to run a finger up his spine. The succubus in her argued for much worse.

“Tomorrow. Fine. Fine.”

Brad’s Fines didn’t sound fine at all.

He lowered his voice and she had to strain to hear. “Sure. I wasn’t planning to, but yeah, sure, whatever. Okay. Okay. Okay.” Big sigh. She thought she heard — she couldn’t be certain, but it sounded like, “The ultras or the pluses? I can never remember.” And then, louder, “Bye. Yeah, I love you too.” Click.

That had to rank as the most aggressive I love you ever.

He turned back towards her, face red. “Sorry. My mom wants me over for dinner this Friday night.”

“‘Ultras or pluses?’” she said, and from the way his face went from red to magenta, she knew she had guessed right.

The poor bastard’s mother made him buy her feminine napkins.

He shoved aside the large intestine model and stood. He was already in motion, halfway to the door, when she said, “It could be worse! You could still be living with her!” Without turning, he paused for an instant, and she thought, Oh, crap. Maybe he just moved out.

She jumped up to follow him.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” she said, but the door closed before she could finish her sentence.

There was nothing left to do but slap her forehead against the door, whispering, “Shit, shit, shit. You had to open your mouth. Shit.”

D.