Guest Blogger Stefanie Worth -- Another Chance at Normal

Stefanie Worth writes supernatural stories with happy -- but unexpected -- endings. Her upcoming novella, HeavenSent.com, is featured in the Holiday Brides anthology (due out Sept. 29th) and follows the trials of two co-workers who need the help of guardian angels to find each others' hearts. Comment today for a chance to win a copy of Holiday Brides and Stefanie's debut novel, Where Souls Collide.

I found myself sitting on the side of the bathtub last week in a paint splattered T-shirt and jeans rolled up to the knees with my feet in several inches of warm water at four o’clock in the morning. No, I didn’t wake up early; I hadn’t gone to bed yet. I was capping off my day:

A few hours of writing the evening before that rolled into a full day of work, home to kids and school supply shopping, shipping the oldest back to college, recovering from my mother’s out of town visit, fast food dinner, watching a Disney movie, working on my web site, and helping with summer study packets.

After all that, sure, I could go up the street and pay for a luxury foot massage at a reasonable time, but my wee hours self-pedicure is more than the peppermint lotion, pumice stone, baby oil and shea butter soap it consists of. The ritual is part of my normally scheduled life rehash to find a better way of being me.

I take my life pauses when (and where) I can get them. In these infrequent moments, I contemplate what I’ve left undone, forgotten to do, ignored or screwed up. I also look for what good I’ve left in the wake of being me. Then I move on to thinking about everything from who’s due to the dentist next, grants I need to submit at work, wondering what my “child” at college is doing right now and the title and conflict of my next story, to, oh yeah, did I schedule my mammogram?

Neither the events of my day nor the timing of this inner rewind would surprise my friends, though it might cause my co-workers to look at me askew. Those close to me have grown accustomed to my exhaustive to-do list, innate creative temperament and my acquired eccentricities. They get the package as my normal.

A definition of normal: conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.

Those outside the circle of what I do on any level seem to need a moment to process how these cogs fit together in some semblance of sanity. Some people will try to put themselves in my place, decide it’s not for them, and then diagnose me as being a little off kilter. Then I get to help them realize that no matter how different our norms might seem, some common thread brought us together, to this point of conversation. On more than one occasion, this happenstance hookup has served as an icebreaker and led people to follow their curiosity and probe deeper:

“So, what do you write?”
Supernatural stories.

“Nothing normal?”
Sigh.

Not unless you consider contemporary settings with everyday people working regular jobs out of the norm. Or if you think it’s unusual for these people to make some choices that please them and others that haunt them. Or if you feel there’s something wrong with an individual to desire fulfillment and set off on a journey to find it.

The extraordinary enters when I add the surety of second chances: The supernatural side of me grants wishes and offers reprieves, a power I suspect even the most ordinary of us wish we possessed. Even my real world abilities are limited to water-filled retrospectives and promises to try harder tomorrow. So, in a world where do-overs are rare, what thought, word or deed would you unravel and re-try in your quest for “normal”?

Stefanie