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Category: Writing Prompts
I found some topics on Pinterest grouped monthly. Thought I’d give it a whirl.
December Writing Challenge Day 4 (Day 34) Star. Neil Gaimon writes in Stardust that a star is a person until it falls to Earth. His take is very interesting, and I strongly persuade you to read it. I say stars are magical celestial beings and we all get to be one for a little while. I think they’re shaped like giant kidney stones made of solid diamond, that’s why they sparkle so. I think stars are our hopes and dreams that were fulfilled before we lost our belief in magic. I think stars are the people we lost and missed and they decided to suspend themselves for a few minutes while we look. I think stars are beautiful no matter what they are and it wouldn’t hurt us at all to look towards them more often. …
December Writing Challenge Day 3 (Day 33) Suicide. Geez. What a topic. I like to make light of things but there’s not a light side to this. So I plan to tread carefully, and let me apologize ahead of time if I inadvertently step wrong with my words. I am rarely eloquent. I am always sincere when it comes to something serious. Suicide will touch most of us at one time or another. I got a little practice while working as a dispatcher. As much as you can, in any case. We had these books, a protocol of questions to ask your caller for pretty much any life or death situation. But the callers always wanted to ask us the questions. And it was always the same: “WHY???” The short answer was we didn’t know, and it wasn’t for us to know. The long answer is as follows: Debt and gambling problems. People think they are worth more dead than they are alive and that their loved ones would be better off without them. So they take matters into their own hands and we’re left holding the pieces. Pain. I once knew a mighty fine man. When he was younger, he played professional baseball. He hurt his back. He was never the same. Time went by, he became successful at his career. He married and raised children. The pain never left him. So, at the brink of retirement…
December Writing Challenge Day 1 Day 31 for me. Battery operated. I bought sixteen batteries the other day. I have two left. I filled a few of the candle light things that I set in windowsills and then two in a remote. Gone. It’s disgusting. And the little candles are already dead because I accidently left them on all night. Two different nights, since I’m in the business of full disclosure. But crap, we go to bed at 9, soooo… Seems like everything is battery operated anymore. And I’m sure when I was little my parents thought the same thing. I once had a “remote control” racecar. Remote control is in quotations because it had a cord, about ten feet long, that ran from the car to the controller, so that you had to constantly be on the move running behind it. I had some rechargeable batteries that I used for my Mp3 player but I’ve lost them. The charging port is still here somewhere, though. I saw it the other day. You would think there would be some sort of solar replacement in this day and age for everything that takes Duracells. And by the way, Duracell is the way to go. Don’t waste your time with anything else. Well. That’s about all I’ve got for this little topic. …
November Writing Challenge Day 30 Her couch. My couch? Well, my couch is dark brown cushy leather with nailhead studs, scattered with red damask pillows and a monogrammed blanket. It will take you hostage on chilly winter days or rainy summer ones. It is slowly beginning to show wear that I like to think gives it a little character. I say this because I can’t afford to buy new stuff for at least five more years. When it was new, if I sat back on it, my feet wouldn’t touch the floor. I’m short, sure, but it made me feel so petite. Now I’ve wallered (wallowed, I suppose is the correct spelling) it down and the cushions have compacted some. I remember picking out the furniture before a bithday dinner one night. It wasn’t my birthday, it was one to be endured because my friend’s family was coming and I couldn’t get my drink on. So I pre-gamed with a different friend. Somehow shopping for living room furniture seemed like the thing to do to fill the little bit of time before supper. I knew what I wanted, so it didn’t take but a quick perusal of the showroom until I happened upon the set. I got a “free” TV with my purchase and my salesman could not understand when I flipped my hand over the choices. “Whatever, it…
November Writing Challenge Day 29 In the fridge. My refrigerator is enormous. That’s good, because I cook a lot. I eat a lot, too. Here it is before Thanksgiving. I took a picture to show Taj, because he was all about me marinating my turkey and I’m like, but where am I going to put it after I marinate it? It’s not like Ziploc makes bags that big. And while he was all sealed up I could pile stuff around him. If he was in a pan, well, that ain’t gonna work. Yes, that’s a ham and turkey. No, I don’t feed twenty. Just me and Shug and my friend Brenda this year. I don’t know how to cook “small”, I don’t even know what that means. The best part of staying home for Thanksgiving is the leftovers. (And no bra. And the wine. All the wine.) It’s a long story of why we stay home and why family doesn’t come, so I’ll spare you. So anyway, today it’s full of leftovers. I’m so sick of looking at them, eating them, trying to create recipes…ugh. One more meal and I will freeze what I can and the the dogs will feast. Or gorge. Bug acts like he doesn’t know where to…
November Writing Challenge Day 28 I turn the page. I have not had a book in my hand in dayyyysssss. Days, I tell you. I’ve been too busy decorating, cleaning, cooking, and working. I’ve even done a little shopping. I can’t concentrate long enough to read, because I’m so far behind on blogging. (For instance, it’s the 30th. I just finished the 27th and now here I am on here). Our book club is meeting here tomorrow night and I haven’t even cracked open the first page of this month’s selection. I have been working on the Holly Madison book for over a week. I figured I would have it read in two days, I’ve been looking forward to reading it forever and a day! Not to mention all the others I’ve started and abandoned. I’ll mention them, maybe someone can tell me whether It’s worth pressing on: The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace, Eve, by William Paul Young (same guy who wrote The Shack), Dragonfly in Amber (2nd Outlander…they’re just so enormous It’s daunting), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, and the Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. It’s shameful! I can only console myself in that I’ve been very busy doing worthwhile or necessary tasks. I’ll catch up in February when I leave…
November Writing Challenge Day 27 I have plans. I’m also a liar. I have no plans. It’s something I say in jest, like girls in the 80’s said they had to wash their hair. Whenever someone asks me to go do something outside of my hermit shell, they probably get this stock response. I mean, I have general plans, like, I’m going to write a blog every day for a year, whether I have pictures to go with it or not, I’m going to read a minimum of 52 books a year (I’m not above cheating. If I knock out a Stephen King, I’m probably gonna read something short and sweet to counterbalance time lost), and I’m going to see my stylist Friday. I’m gonna need a new vehicle within a year or so, so I’m kinda planning on going looking at Nissans soon. I’m already married, so I don’t have plans on the romantic front unless you count where we’re going to eat Friday night. I’m fairly content in this house, so I don’t have plans to move. I even like my job just fine, so I’m not looking for anything elsewhere. I haven’t carried a day planner in years. Of course, I don’t have much to plan. Board meeting once…
November Writing Challenge Day 26 Liar. I know a whole bunch of ’em, don’t you? One in particular springs to mind that would have cost me my job if Co-op if there hadn’t been so much evidence to the contrary of what he was saying. You’re supposed to live your life so that if anyone ever said anything bad about you, no one would believe them. Well, this guy did…so it didn’t look so good for the truth tellers (already enemies) when the chips began to fall until the truth came out. “The truth will stand when the world is on fire.” People who had known me for ten years shunned me. For months I was truly an outcast among friends and FAMILY. But I kept my head high and my eyes straight ahead as things got worse. I spoke the truth and I knew it and God knew it and that was all that mattered to me. I remember going to lunch by myself for weeks because no one would have anything to do with me and I just cried and cried. People thought I cost him his job. No, that was years in the making. A file an inch thick. I’m sure there are people who still don’t believe what was proven but that’s fine. I threatened to have t-shirts printed…
November Writing Challenge Day 25 Smoke. Not an easy one to write about, as we’re nearing the one year mark for the Chimney Tops Fire, but I’ll do my best. Last year on this day there was smoke in the valley. There was smoke on the hills and hollers, both. There was smoke everywhere. It’s a year later and nobody can believe it. Friends from out of town ask how things are…and I don’t remember until I’m reminded. Life has gone on, pretty much as scheduled, since summer and green once again took over the hillsides. For me, anyway. But I’m not in Gatlinburg every day. I’m not in Gatlinburg at all. I don’t see the devastation or the rebuilding in person. I’m not depending on the generosity of others to help me face another day as I struggle to have half as much as I used to. I was talking to one of my friends who works for dispatch the other day, and she brought up a new kind of post traumatic stress disorder that hadn’t even occurred to me. People who were right there in the smoke and the fire and the mayhem are having trouble being around it again. As you would. So here we are at the anniversary, and everybody’s memories are being jarred again and again by news…
November Writing Challenge Day 24 Something was off. It’s understandable. Everything had been so on for so long it was a relief, actually. It was the TV. Thank God. It seemed as if I had watched every sporting even for the past ten years. It could have been worse, it could have been hunting shows. The only thing more boring than watching men sit in blinds all day was watching men hit little bitty white balls all over gently rolling green hills. And golf I could sleep through, so really, it wasn’t that bad. So the TV was off, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized something else was off…the house had a very distinct abandoned feeling. I crept down the hall. There was dust on the floor. How long had I been asleep? Not just the TV, but everything was off. No whirring of the fridge, no air unit thermostat clicking. Then I noticed the windows were open. No, that wasn’t right, they had been blasted out. Glass shards lay everywhere, like they had just exploded from…what, exactly? And then I remembered. Oak Ridge had been bombed. But…I had survived? How was that even possible? I had counted myself lucky since I was little that if something happened at the Lab, I wouldn’t know it. Life is but a vapor, indeed. I was secure…
