My dog ate my homework!

I'm having a hard time writing my post tonight, but only because I can't get my mind off my WIP. Thank you all again for your suggestions about how to make a cheating wife seem sympathetic. I've been brainstorming directions for each of your points and have been coming up with a lot of good possibilities.

In lieu of a blog post, I'd like to post another snippet about my grandma. I wrote this one this morning as my 100-word writing warm-up. It's something I remembered while I was thinking about the children who hang around in this neighborhood:

The neighborhood kids called her a witch. They'd ride their bikes up and down her street, making wide sweeps past her driveway, advising each other to "Watch out. The witch lives there." I don't remember if I witnessed this happen or if I was merely told about it later, about these kids who bestowed upon her such a thoughtless title, but what I do know is that I could never understand why. There was nothing witchy about my kind grandma, a woman who always helped out the neighborhood kids, bought what they were selling, gave them prime chocolate every Halloween...

An old woman

My grandma died about seven months ago. I was thinking about her today--about how she was sometimes lonely and afraid during the last years of her life--and this extremely rough little scene (long sentence, really) came to mind. It's not about her so much as it is inspired by her. I'm not sure what, if anything, I'll do with it, but maybe someday I'll build a short story around it--or a poem:

An old woman sits alone in a dark living room, the glow from the television illuminating her face, the remote in her hand, clicking idly from channel to channel, life flashing by in bursts of color and sound, frightened, not knowing, not understanding--how did I end up this way?--forgotten and alone in days that pass by too quickly, in nights that linger too long.