Author Guest Post
Traveling
One of my favorite places to visit is Japan. It has amazing history and most of the people are very interesting. They are also small, whereas I am a healthy Western size. I was visiting Tokyo with a Japanese boyfriend who took me to a department store. He had translated my measurements and was asking a size negative two Japanese girl if a particular dress I liked was available in my size. She SNICKERED. Yes, she did. Then she did that rude thing where she looked me up and down. Then she batted her stupid eyelashes, whispered something to him, and giggled.
“We have to go to a different floor,” he told me, avoiding eye contact.
“Why?” I demanded, hands on my apparently overly ample hips.
“Uh...”
Now granted, English was not his first language so maybe this would have gone better if he’d been able to answer differently. However, when he answered,
“They have clothes there for big people like you,” my reaction was to INSIST that the dress we’d picked out would fit me. I snatched it from his hands, glared at the shop keeper, and marched into a change room. The fact that I barely fit into the little cubicle should have been a sign. If I stood on my tiptoes, I could actually look over the door.
By some miracle I got the dress on. Not comfortably, of course - I couldn’t breathe and the strength of the seams were being tested – but the point is that I got it ON. The problem was getting it off. I had gotten into it by slipping it over my head but I couldn’t get it back over my shoulders after. Mind over matter, I thought, holding my breath and pulling up with all my strength.
Almost...almost....and no. I was stuck with it halfway off.
You ever see those characters on Sesame Street whose arms are stuck straight up beside their heads? That was me. Except I didn’t want people to see me stuck like that so I was bent at the waste so that my gargantuan arms didn’t stick out over the change room door.
“Everything okay?” the shopkeeper asked.
“Well if fits beautifully but I’m not sure about the color,” I said.
“It’s black,” she pointed out.
You could see my feet underneath the dressing room so I strutted around (as well as I could in the 2 foot by 2 foot cubicle) and pretended to check myself out in the mirror. My arms had pins and needles and the room started to spin. The only comfort I had was that the room was so small that if I fainted, I’d just end up sliding slowly down the wall.
With a flash of brilliance, I felt around my purse with my outstretched arms and found my travel scissors. Yes, I cut my way out of the dress.
I’m older and heavier now, but more importantly, much wiser. The next time a snotty size negative two tries to makes me feel bad, I’m just going to sit on her.
About The Author
Michelle is passionate about theatre - watching, writing for, and acting in. Although she enjoys it all, she favours comedy. She is a black belt in karate, a classical pianist, and is addicted to pilates and pad thai.
Check out Michelle's website and blog at www.mlmorgan.net
AUTHOR WEBSITE
GOODREADS
Book Review
Tripping Through by Michelle L. Morgan
Publisher: Independent Self Publishing
Publication Date: October 5, 2013
Format: Paperback - 288 pages
Kindle - 4299 KB
ISBN: 978-1492297550
ASIN: B00FHNXY62
Genre: Chick Lit / Romantic Comedy
BUY THE BOOK: Tripping Through
Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for my honest review and participation in a virtual book tour event hosted by Chick Lit Plus Blog Tours.
Book Description:
Quirky, clumsy, and eager-to-please Karly has more than her fair share of bad luck.
Waaaay more.
We first meet our 29-year-old accountant in her loud (the fire alarm is going off) and smoky (she’s trying to bake) kitchen. During the chaos, Karly is dumped because of misunderstandings over a divorce lawyer she didn't hire and an affair she didn't have. This comes just weeks after performing a very efficient audit on a company…that wasn't actually a client.
Oops.
Single and unemployed, Karly continues tripping through life, both metaphorically and physically. She thinks her luck may be turning when she meets the perfect man but in true-to-Karly form, manages to scare him off. And he isn’t just “not returning her phone calls” scared but more “sprinting away across the parking lot screaming like a banshee” scared.
Crap.
Just as she thinks it can't get any worse, it inevitably does. Is Karly destined to lead a life of loneliness and poverty or does fate have something else in mind?
Book Excerpt:
Below is an excerpt where Karly has a team of movers in helping her pack up her apartment:
I’d finished labelling one of the kitchen boxes “2468LMNOP” and was pretending to study the contents of the next box-tin foil, sandwich bags, and saran wrap-to label it “correctly” as “3.14.” Why did I have this feeling I was forgetting something? Oh crap. Condoms! In the bedside table, in my sex drawer! Okay, maybe some people have more in their sex drawer than just rubbers but that's all I had. Maybe it didn't even warrant being called a sex drawer. In fact, I-Okay focus, Karly. The point was that I didn't want these guys packing my birth control up for me. Plus, they were in fun, colorful wrappers. I didn’t want these guys thinking about me having any sex, never mind fun sex.
I had to get back there and protect my virtue before the ninja movers discovered my dirty little secret. Okay, not that I thought that they thought I was a twenty-nine-year-old virgin that didn't wear any underclothes, but I just didn't want their large man hands handling any evidence to the contrary.
"We're all done packing up in the living room,” Ron announced. “Once you're done we can tape 'em up and get 'em in the truck. Or, if that'll take a while, we'll finish packing up your room."
I needed to keep them out of there.
"Oh no, it'll take me two seconds.”
I attacked the boxes with the marker. A diagonal line here, vertical line there, horizontal line, squiggle, underlined squiggle, dot, happy face, more undecipherable slashes of marker, and I was done.
"Wow. That's some complex system. How’d you come up with that?” Ninja Mover Three asked.
"Internet," I called out as I dashed to my room.
Ninja Mover Four was on his way out with five boxes so I was in the room alone but it wouldn't be for long. With speed and dexterity that would have impressed the CIA, I ran to the bedside table, threw open the drawer and grabbed the three condoms that were there. Phew! I had them. Now, to stash them somewhere. Crap. Why was this room almost completely empty?
"That's it in here, then, boys. Let's get the rest of the bedroom done,” I heard Ron say.
Oh God. I'd thought it would be embarrassing having the movers pack up my condoms but now, I thought it would worse to be caught panicked and frozen in the middle of my empty room with them clutched tightly in my sweaty hand.
Footsteps approached.
In an act of both inspiration and desperation, I yanked up my nightie and shoved the little packages in the back of my panties. My sweatshirt was just long enough to cover any weird lumps that might be poking out of me.
The crew arrived and finished packing up the room while I stood there, in a casual, I-don’t-have-prophylactics-up-my-derriere pose.
“I'm sure we've got everything but we should do an overall check together to make sure," Ron said to me.
"Sure.” I went to walk towards him, moving a little funny as the edges of the wrappers poked around uncomfortably. Oh God. Ouch. And did anyone else notice the crinkling sound coming from my hiney that happened only when I walked?
"You know, I'm happy skipping that part,” I said as I halted to a stop.
"It's actually company policy, to do a walk through with you so we can't get in trouble for leaving anything behind."
"Right.”
I had to block out the noise.
"HERE-WE-GO-INSPECTING-THE CLOSET-AND-HERE-I-SEE-THAT-IT-IS-INDEED-EMPTY!” I yelled in one stream of sound as I speed walked across the bedroom to the closet.
"Okay then." Ron was understandably looking at me like I was crazy.
"AND-HERE-I-AM-GOING-TO-INSPECT-THE BATHROOM-WHICH-I-SUSPECT-IS-ALSO-GOING-TO-BE-EMPTY-LIKE-THE-BEDROOM-JUST-WAS-AND-YES-YES-YES-IT-IS-IT-IS-INDEED!"
We inspected the rest of the apartment with me babble-yelling every time I had to walk. On the bright side, the sudden loss of control over my voice’s decibel level seemed to distract Ron from my funny walking, or from the fact that I still had my bunny slippers on as I stepped out of my empty apartment.
There was no time to get emotional as I locked up for the last time and loudly speed-rapped the first thing that came to my mind (“I’m a Little Tea Pot” – my niece’s request the last time I visited), as I passed the movers and got into my car.
I’d finished labelling one of the kitchen boxes “2468LMNOP” and was pretending to study the contents of the next box-tin foil, sandwich bags, and saran wrap-to label it “correctly” as “3.14.” Why did I have this feeling I was forgetting something? Oh crap. Condoms! In the bedside table, in my sex drawer! Okay, maybe some people have more in their sex drawer than just rubbers but that's all I had. Maybe it didn't even warrant being called a sex drawer. In fact, I-Okay focus, Karly. The point was that I didn't want these guys packing my birth control up for me. Plus, they were in fun, colorful wrappers. I didn’t want these guys thinking about me having any sex, never mind fun sex.
I had to get back there and protect my virtue before the ninja movers discovered my dirty little secret. Okay, not that I thought that they thought I was a twenty-nine-year-old virgin that didn't wear any underclothes, but I just didn't want their large man hands handling any evidence to the contrary.
"We're all done packing up in the living room,” Ron announced. “Once you're done we can tape 'em up and get 'em in the truck. Or, if that'll take a while, we'll finish packing up your room."
I needed to keep them out of there.
"Oh no, it'll take me two seconds.”
I attacked the boxes with the marker. A diagonal line here, vertical line there, horizontal line, squiggle, underlined squiggle, dot, happy face, more undecipherable slashes of marker, and I was done.
"Wow. That's some complex system. How’d you come up with that?” Ninja Mover Three asked.
"Internet," I called out as I dashed to my room.
Ninja Mover Four was on his way out with five boxes so I was in the room alone but it wouldn't be for long. With speed and dexterity that would have impressed the CIA, I ran to the bedside table, threw open the drawer and grabbed the three condoms that were there. Phew! I had them. Now, to stash them somewhere. Crap. Why was this room almost completely empty?
"That's it in here, then, boys. Let's get the rest of the bedroom done,” I heard Ron say.
Oh God. I'd thought it would be embarrassing having the movers pack up my condoms but now, I thought it would worse to be caught panicked and frozen in the middle of my empty room with them clutched tightly in my sweaty hand.
Footsteps approached.
In an act of both inspiration and desperation, I yanked up my nightie and shoved the little packages in the back of my panties. My sweatshirt was just long enough to cover any weird lumps that might be poking out of me.
The crew arrived and finished packing up the room while I stood there, in a casual, I-don’t-have-prophylactics-up-my-derriere pose.
“I'm sure we've got everything but we should do an overall check together to make sure," Ron said to me.
"Sure.” I went to walk towards him, moving a little funny as the edges of the wrappers poked around uncomfortably. Oh God. Ouch. And did anyone else notice the crinkling sound coming from my hiney that happened only when I walked?
"You know, I'm happy skipping that part,” I said as I halted to a stop.
"It's actually company policy, to do a walk through with you so we can't get in trouble for leaving anything behind."
"Right.”
I had to block out the noise.
"HERE-WE-GO-INSPECTING-THE CLOSET-AND-HERE-I-SEE-THAT-IT-IS-INDEED-EMPTY!” I yelled in one stream of sound as I speed walked across the bedroom to the closet.
"Okay then." Ron was understandably looking at me like I was crazy.
"AND-HERE-I-AM-GOING-TO-INSPECT-THE BATHROOM-WHICH-I-SUSPECT-IS-ALSO-GOING-TO-BE-EMPTY-LIKE-THE-BEDROOM-JUST-WAS-AND-YES-YES-YES-IT-IS-IT-IS-INDEED!"
We inspected the rest of the apartment with me babble-yelling every time I had to walk. On the bright side, the sudden loss of control over my voice’s decibel level seemed to distract Ron from my funny walking, or from the fact that I still had my bunny slippers on as I stepped out of my empty apartment.
There was no time to get emotional as I locked up for the last time and loudly speed-rapped the first thing that came to my mind (“I’m a Little Tea Pot” – my niece’s request the last time I visited), as I passed the movers and got into my car.
My Book Review:
Tripping Through is a thoroughly entertaining story that follows the daily misadventures and bad luck that occur in Karly's life.
Written in the first person narrative, the author weaves a lighthearted and humorous tale that easily draws the reader into the zany trials and tribulations that the twenty-nine year old accountant deals with in her personal life and career. I couldn't help but see a bit of myself in Karly, I could relate to her on many levels, as I too have been known to be clumsy, and have also found myself in situations where you would think I had nothing but bad luck like Karly did. Karly's unfortunate mishaps and bad luck is enough to make any normal person shake their head in amazement.
Tripping Through is an amusing story to read, in Karly, the author has created a fun character who is so endearing and hysterical, you can't help but really like her. I enjoyed following Karly on her journey to getting control of her life, she's just a normal girl like any one of us, you gotta love her spunk and ability to muddle through all the mishaps, drama, trials and tribulations that she went through, and cheer her on as her story unfolds.
With a quirky cast of characters and an entertaining storyline that rings with a touch of reality that we can all relate to at some time in our lives, Tripping Through is a fun, fast-paced, and humorous story that will make you chuckle and leave a smile on your face.
RATING: 4 STARS
Contest Giveaway
Virtual Book Tour
Tour Schedule:
November 10 - Chick Lit Goddess- Excerpt
November 11 - Ski-Wee’s Book Corner– Guest Post
November 11 - Ski-Wee’s Book Corner – Excerpt
November 12 - Authors and Readers Book Corner- Excerpt
November 12 - Jersey Girl Book Reviews - Review, Guest Post & Excerpt
November 13 - Doorflower- Guest Post
November 13 – Chick Lit Plus – Review
November 14 - Musings From an Addicted Reader- Review
November 17 - Polished and Bubbly – Review
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the excerpt, thank you.
ReplyDelete