[Truly Scrumptious]

Lou-Anne believed in the power of positive thinking. She was a “glass is half full” kind of gal, oh yes she was. She wore her rose coloured glasses even in the dark, and could find a silver lining in the darkest, stormiest of clouds. When her husband snored loud enough to wake the dead in bed beside her, (not that the dead were in bed beside her, you understand. But the cemetery was not far away, and Lou-Anne thought if anything could wake those souls up, it would be Jeb’s snoring.) she said it was wonderful that she didn’t need an alarm clock, and that people overestimated their need for sleep anyway. The day the roof began to leak, she said it was nature’s way of providing her with a humidifier. When that leak became a substantial hole, she said she’d always wanted a skylight. When the deer started eating her sweet williams, she was secretly flattered that it was her flowers that had been chosen rather than her next door neighbour Vera’s very ugly, scrawny geraniums. When she burned the cookies she made for the bake sale, she cheerfully got out a wire hanger, her glue gun, a little glitter paint and some pipe cleaners, and made wind chimes. (The fact that when the wind blew, those wind chimes chimed against each other and broke into pieces was kind of a bonus, because it turned out that squirrels like burnt cookies, and she liked squirrels, even though Jeb called them “rodents with good PR.”) Even when Tiffani over at the Kut ‘n Kurl left Lou-Anne’s permanent solution on much too long while she was arguing with her boyfriend, Lou-Anne saw the bright side. She said she’d never need another perm for as long as she lived, and was going straight over to Kmart to buy herself something sparkly with all the money she’d save.

Yes, Lou-Anne was a “glass is half full” kind of gal, right up until the day Jeb came home from work and said that he didn’t care if it was Tuesday, he didn’t want meat loaf. Now, maybe it was because the cable had been out that day and Lou-Anne couldn’t watch her stories, or maybe she thought he was criticizing her meat loaf, (he wasn’t) but something inside Lou-Anne snapped and try as she did, she could find no positive spin, and she started to cry. She cried and cried and cried some more, until her face was as crumpled as the soggy tissues Jeb helplessly handed her, and that she threw on the floor. She started hiccupping horrible gasps similar to the sounds a mouse might make when the trap closed on him, sort of a mixture of terror and surprise. And still she kept crying.

The night they took Lou-Anne away was dark (because of course it was night) and hot and sticky (and truthfully, a bit stinky because of the abundant fertilizer) and with no hint of a breeze and was all in all the kind of night that could only dream of being a dark and stormy night with rain coming down in torrents, but the only thing coming down in torrents were big buckets of tears because it seemed Lou-Anne had been crying forever.