Tag: Things That Make Me Go Mmmruh

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO MMMRUH!

Though she makes her film debut in Daryl From OnCar, our winsome blogger likes the movie Can’t Buy Me Love even better. When not watching eighties movies or Giants football, Miss Ruane co-hosts the radio show Better Times After 50 on AdviceRadio.com. Her short story “Jane Austen Meets the New York Giants” is published in the New York Times Bestselling anthology The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO MMMRUH!

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO MMMRUH!

The Most Heroic Battle

by Geralyn Ruane

I got engaged almost four years ago, and I think I’m going to be engaged forever. Or maybe my true love and I will have a romance like the one between Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Foxworth. Those crazy kids lived together for twenty years and then one day Montgomery looked across the kitchen table at Foxworth and said, “Let’s get married.” They were in their fifties but giddy as two runaways on prom night when they walked out of the courthouse. Mmmruh!

Married or not, however this romance of mine turns out, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Seriously. Not even for a weekend trapped in a cabin with Viggo. But I must admit, some days I wish my guy wanted to marry so desperately that those damn wolves at the door didn’t matter. And if you know us at all, you know we don’t try to shoot those wolves, or even shoo them away. Instead, we feed them, comb them for fleas, and make sure they’re warm and dry and de-wormed.

So, once the wolves are comfy, I ensconce myself in my writing room and think about the story taking shape in my head. I will spin a tale of a hero so desperate to marry his true love that he will brave fire and flood and filial disapproval, fighting and fighting until he has won the wedding the two lovers so desperately want. But how to make such a story engaging and believable, this heroic battle to wed? From Lydia and Wickham to Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, couples have been defiantly eloping throughout the ages. I need to fashion stronger hurdles for my lovers to leap.

Perhaps I could write a historical novel, and curse the heroine with the sign of the devil. Then the hero could still want her so much that he’s willing to fight off the family and the church and the whole village to escape the ignorance and start anew with his beloved.

Or I could shift the tale into the realm of royal feuding in the Dark Ages – maybe something with the Normans and Saxons. Were they even a part of the Dark Ages?

Or I could update the tale and have a Sunni fall in love with a Shiite in Baghdad.

Or I could glide into the mist of the paranormal, and make one of my lovers a vampire.

Or maybe I could try to write something similar to Ladyhawke, with the lovers doomed to exist as different species.

But I am clueless about historical detail, and cannot find sufficient motivation to do the research. Same about international politics. And the paranormal? I am way too disorganized to create a different dimension and then keep the details straight.

My passion for writing revolves around the here and now, and more specifically, my here and now. California, 2008. I suppose some could see this as limiting, but Flannery O’Connor’s love for the rural South didn’t do her such a bad turn. The truth is, I love ferreting out the incandescent romance glowing around the corner and under the staircase of the world in which I live.

But where can I find this desperate fight to wed, pulsing beneath the covers of a modern-day unmade bed? In a world where quick divorce makes marriage so do-able, are there any dragons left to slay on the way to the chapel? How can I make this believable, my heart-wrenching, blood-thrilling, toe-tingling love story about a man fighting until the death if need be to marry his true love?

I’ll make his true love a man.

Geralyn Ruane’s favorite romantic movie is Latter Days, the story of a young Mormon missionary who falls unexpectedly and undeniably in love with an L.A. party boy, thus triggering a passionate affair that rips both their worlds apart. And when she’s not watching incredibly romantic movies on LOGO, the channel dedicated to gay and lesbian programming, Geralyn co-hosts the radio show Better Times After 50 on AdviceRadio.com. Her short story “Jane Austen Meets the New York Giants” is published in the New York Times Bestselling anthology The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO MMMRUH!

The Never-Ending Story

by Geralyn Ruane

He laughed as he walked through the front door.

I was in the kitchen looking for the bay leaves when I heard the screen door open, then the sound of him laughing. I knew he had to be laughing at one of the cats, but which one and what it was this time didn’t matter. The love of my life was laughing as he walked into the house . . . mmmruh!

This is the kind of life I want to live, one in which cats are part of the family and we laugh as we come home. Mmmruh! Do I have everything I want? No. I’m not the one who’s going to look into the Mirror of Erised and see nothing but myself. I think a lot of us are like that – always wanting more and more, even when we get what we want most.

I remember when I was young, I thought, If only we had Atari, I’d never be bored again! Well, guess what? We got Atari one Christmas, and indeed I dedicated hours of my life to Space Invaders, Pitfall! and Ms. Pac-Man. But those video games hardly made me happy for ever after. Lots of things got me down, despite the game cartidges and joysticks. Like the dog Dempsey. At least, that’s what I’ve called her in my head for about thirty years.

When I was a kid, I was waiting in our old Chevy while my mom ran into the supermarket when I noticed a small Toto-like dog climb out the window of a nearby car. I darted out of the station wagon, grabbed the dog, and proudly returned her to her family when they came back to the car. I felt like a real hero.

“Actually,” the mom said, “we left the window open on purpose because we’re trying to get rid of her. Do you want her?”

My mom said No. After all, we already had Grady the big red dog and Pepsi the tabby cat. But I couldn’t stop dreaming about how cool it would have been if we’d adopted that little dog. I would have called her Dempsey.

• Nowadays, I rescue abandoned animals. Nowadays, I’d find little Dempsey girl a good home. So that’s one dream I made come true. Mmmruh!
• Ever since first grade, I wanted a pet goat. So, when I was twenty-three, I adopted one and named her Cordelia. Mmmruh!
• I used to dream I’d find a guy who loved me just the way I am, all uncool and unfashionable but unmistakably me. Not only did I find such a guy, but this is a guy who will crawl 200 yards beneath a strip mall just to save one ungrateful cat who doesn’t understand words like “fumigation,” “tenting,” or “toxic.” Mmmruh!

So, if I made these dreams come true, I can make my evolving dreams happen, too. And so can you. Let’s not be people who see life as a series of challenges to overcome, a litany of problems to survive. This too shall pass sucks as a personal mantra.

Let’s live life on a never-ending kaleidoscope of dreams to pursue. Mmmruh!

Geralyn Ruane’s new favorite numbers are 18 and 1. She co-hosts the radio show Better Times After 50 on AdviceRadio.com when she’s not drinking chocolate milk straight from the spoon or writing humorous women’s fiction. Her short story “Jane Austen Meets the New York Giants” is published in the New York Times Bestselling anthology The Right Words at the Right Time Volume 2.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO MMMRUH!

Jupiter’s Darling

by Geralyn Ruane

If this be slavery
Give me slavery!
If this be slavery
I don’t want to be free!

So sings Gower Champion in the 1955 Technicolor extravaganza Jupiter’s Darling, when the ravishing Esther Williams purchases him at a slave sale so that her cute little personal slave Marge Champion can have a hottie for a playmate. As her slaves frolic, Esther Williams sneaks out of Rome to get a gander at the strapping Hannibal, played by Howard Keel in a mighty short tunic. He is encamped just outside Rome, preparing to attack. When Hannibal captures the enamored bathing beauty, he is so spellbound by her sexy sass that he forgets all about sacking Rome. Instead, he wiles away his days sequestered in his tent with the irresistible prisoner, as his soldiers and elephants wait impatiently to strike. When towards the end of the movie the Roman vamp and the barbaric Hannibal fight, as lovers often do, she escapes, high-tailing it back to Rome – by way of the ocean. Yes, indeed, Esther Williams has to travel via ocean to get from the outskirts of Rome back to, uh, Rome. This might seem like a stretch – plot-wise, I mean, just to get the titian-haired nymph into the water, but the movie redeems itself with an underwater Statues-Come-to-Life number that is much more integral to the plot. Not to mention, one of the best underwater swimming-in-ancient-Rome scenes ever. Mmmruh!

Geralyn Ruane’s new favorite numbers are 18 and 1. She co-hosts the radio show Better Times After 50 on AdviceRadio.com when she’s not drinking chocolate milk straight from the spoon or writing humorous women’s fiction. Her short story “Jane Austen Meets the New York Giants” is published in the New York Times Bestselling anthology The Right Words at the Right Time Volume 2.