My Love; My Life: Slipping Through My Fingers

Playing House

*time piece dress*
*Tightrope: The Greatest Showman*
*In the early years of America-especially in the western pioneer towns, people would bu what they needed at a mercantile; from food to clothes to toys etc. you could find it there & if they didn't have what you needed in stock you could ask them to find it & order it in the catalog. Again, the catalog-like the store, would hold everything from food to clothes to toys etc.-if you could think of it, they probably had it in there & because it's mail ordered, what you order usually would take a number of weeks or months for it to arrive at the store. The catalog itself, I would best describe by telling you to take your school year book, replace the hard cover with paperback, thinner-newspaper or farmers almanac like pages & add the a large amount of pages to it & you more or less achieved it-best example (which I failed to find) are visuals that could be found in shows like 'Little house on the prairie,' 'Dr. Quinn Medicine women,' & I'm sure many other western shows I don't know of.*
Setting: Santa Fe New Mexico; September 1847...

They arrived in Santa Fe within three weeks, Hyla's pregnancy seemed to speed up rapidly between the time they left Texas, arrived in New Mexico & ready to pop when September hit. Within that short amount of time, they arrived in Santa Fe New Mexico, built a home for themselves & got jobs-his of manual labor, hers of a servant of no specific placing for a rich family. Fernando does manual labor for a mechanical, while Hyla: cooks, cleans, does laundry, & teaches for the family, but lives elsewhere with Fernando, where she more or less does the same exact things...

"Make sure you wash the linens," the lady of the house tells her, "polish the silver, beat the rugs and open the drapery so that the natural light shines in."

"Yes ma'am," Hyla replies obediently

"Good," she states, "you will have dinner ready by seven o'clock, not a moment later," she goes on, "I want the children's lessons started directly after their morning ride," she continues, "Mr. Stoltz is at business meetings until six thirty, and I will be at Mrs. Pliff's garden party till four."

"Yes ma'am," Hyla response again as she follows the woman around as she gets ready & Hyla carries laundry basket around

"Remember not to let Cecilia rough house with her brother as she likes to," she informs her, "don't let James bring any animals into the house-last time he brought a filthy mutt into the house and tracked dirt all over my nice clean floors; especially the rugs, oh, my poor rugs, so filthy that I had to buy completely new ones and a new servant seeing as she was completely incapable of-" she stops ranting & clears her throat, "well, that why you're here-Don't let me down, or you'll severely regret it-do you understand?"

"Yes ma'am," Hyla tells her as she curves her tongue, swallows her pride, cultivates humility & ignores her hormonal mood to strangle the woman, "I'll be sure Peter-"

"Just make sure you notify me the moment you become useless," Mrs. Slotz tells her as she looks to her swollen stomach

"Of course ma'am," she tells her with a smile

With that her obedient smile disappears the moment Mrs. Stoltz is out the door & then she sets about her chores-getting the laundry out of the way before waking & getting the children dressed. Fighting with Peter, chasing James & Cecilia about the backyard, cooking dinner & finally returning home for the night after finishing the clean up. It's nearly eight when she arrives home to find Fernando practically passed out on the bed; they got themselves a two roomed home so as not to raise suspicions on how much money they-as complete strangers-actually had. Hyla just stares at Fernando's being, but says nothing for a moment before she goes to start on their dinner...

"I already ate," he speaks suddenly as she reaches the small kitchen area

"At the bar I suppose," she says quietly