Day: April 25, 2024

Writer’s Workshop — The End

Fandango7 Comments
Badge by Patty, http://anothercookieplease.com

For his Writer’s Workshop this week, John Holton gives us six writing prompts and we are tasked with choosing one of the prompts (or as many as we want) and writing a post that addresses that (or those) prompt(s). I chose two of John’s prompts: (1) the word “genuine,” and (2) “write a post in exactly 10 sentences.”

I’m assuming that, when writing poetry, each of the ten lines in the poem below counts as a sentence, even though were this prose, it does not contain ten complete sentences. Is that fair or am I taking liberties?

I’ve also included my One Word Challenge word, “girlfiend” and today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt’s “The End of the Road.”

When first we met the dreams we shared
Held the promise of a remarkable life together
With hearts entwined, as boyfriend and girlfriend
A genuine love with bonds unbreakable
Punctuated by laughter, warmth, and companionship

When did the path we first walked along
Turn so dark, cold, and foreboding?
How did the echoes of our laughter
Get swallowed up by despair?
It seems, my love, we’ve reached the end of the road

Thursday Inspiration — Home Work

Fandango9 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the prompt word home.

I’ve always been handy around the house, able to do things from simple things like painting, hanging wallpaper, installing light fixtures and fans, and hanging window treatments, to other, more challenging tasks involving plumbing and electrical work.

When it comes to something like changing batteries in smoke detectors or even replacing old devices with new ones, I would take projects like that on in a New York minute. Ningún problema!

But now I’m old. And I’m somewhat handicapped due to my fractured hip, which has still not yet healed properly. And that depresses me.

Yesterday I wrote here about needing to upgrade all of our smoke detectors to combination smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. I want these new devices to be connected and controllable via WiFi to our smartphones. I told my wife that I was going to decide on the brand, order five of them, and install them myself.

That’s when Mrs. Fandango gave me a bit of reality check. We have nine-foot ceilings throughout our house except in the master bedroom, where the vaulted ceiling reaches 15 feet where the smoke detector is mounted. She said that not only would I need to climb up on ladders to reach the smoke alarms, but I’d have to disconnect them from the hardwired connections, remove the plate connected to the ceiling, install the new plate for the new devices, rewire the hardwired connection, install the device, and successfully climb down from the ladder. And do that five times.

“You’re too old,” she said, “and you shouldn’t be climbing up on ladders. If you want new smoke alarms and CO detectors, you need to hire someone to install them. Period.”

She’s right. How depressing is that?

A2Z Challenge — The Letter V

Fandango5 Comments

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

V is for Vicky D.

When I was in the ninth grade my “girlfriend” was Vicky. When I say she was my girlfriend that meant that we hung out together at school, would get together at her place some days after school, and if her older sister was willing to drive us, we would occasionally go to a movie on weekends. She was a very pretty girl but was a little on the chunky side and all we ever did that entire year sexually was make out. I remember a few times she let me feel her up over her blouse and bra, and one time I wanted her to touch me, so I grabbed her hand and put it between my legs, but she immediately removed it.

Anyway, after we finished ninth grade and graduated from junior high school, we lost touch. She and I went to different high schools and, well, you know how it is. I thought that I’d probably never see her again. But one night, when I was a sophomore in college, my phone rang, and when I answered it and said hello, I heard a female’s voice ask me if I was the guy in junior high school who had a thing with Vicky D.

“Vicky, is that you?” I asked and we quickly established that it was the same Vicky. She told me that I had popped into her head the other day when she was thinking back to ninth grade and was wondering how I was doing.

We talked on the phone for about an hour and she asked if she could come over to my place. I lived off-campus in a two-bedroom apartment with another guy, but told her I’d be happy to see her. We made arrangements for the coming Friday night for her to stop by and I convinced my roommate to plan to stay somewhere else that night. Just in case. I figured I was going to get laid that night. Why else after all those years would she want to come to my apartment rather than meet for coffee or for drinks or for dinner.

Friday night came around and at precisely 8 pm, there was a knock at my door. When I opened it, Vicky smiled, walked in and we hugged. She looked great. She now had long blonde hair in a Farrah Fawcett style even before the show “Charlie’s Angels” had aired its first episode. And she was most definitely no longer chunky.

I had gotten some pretzels and chips for us to snack on and beer to drink. The conversation between us seemed a bit awkward at first, but when we started reminiscing about our time in the ninth grade, we both became more relaxed.

I was in college and she was working at a doctor’s office as a medical secretary. We changed the topic of conversation from the ninth grade to what we were doing with our lives at the time and it became quickly apparent to both of us that we had very little in common and very different visions for where we saw ourselves in the future. So by close to midnight, Vicky looked at her watch and said she’d best be going.

I suggested if she was tired or had a few too many beers she was invited to spend the night. I was hoping that she might be up for some intimacy, but she thanked me for the offer, and that that it was not going to happen. And that was the last time I saw Vicky D.

As a bonus today, I’m linking to a post I wrote a while back titled “My First Vagina.” Even though the name of the girl involved in this story didn’t start with the letter V, the word “vagina” does. If you’re at all interested my reaction to seeing a vagina for the first time, click here.

Previous 2024 A2Z posts: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U

FOWC with Fandango — Girlfriend

Fandango15 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “girlfriend.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.