kissa_bites | dinner with family and Writing Challenge answered on TMP

Today is hubby's 40th birthday. We had dinner out with the fam. Christ, do other people raise their children so mine looks like Emily Post and Miss Manners all rolled into one sitting there?

Two cosmos helped me make it through the night. Booze is the only way to handle it.

Scribbled an answer to raven's TMP writing challenge - writing to a photo. Feel free to wander on over to TheMasque.net and into the Portego to take a peek. I enjoyed the brain candy of writing without pressure or stress. It's possible that it showed *s*. I'm about as relaxed as I ever get right now. Feel free to join the challenge - it's a fun moment of time to work your craft.

Turning in early - g'night

The Challenge:

ListenToTheFallingRain... by *jozefm

Forty years ago, when Sally and John walked through that old house on the southern coast of Greece, the house and everything in it had been clean and dust free, albeit shabby. The cool terra-cotta tiles on the floor hadn't been cracked and pitted and the grout had been, well, it hadn't been white, but it wasn't that ill-kempt chocolate color. As John hauled their luggage up the dangerously creaking stairs, Sally ran her fingers over the dusty sofa and winced when she thought that she heard a rat's squeak. Crushed at the disrepair and the dashing of her fond plans to spend the first few days of the rest of their lives relaxing, Sally's lower lip trembled.

Forty years ago, during their wild, joyful...hopeful honeymoon, they'd murmured to each other of plans and wishes and horses and dreams. So many of those dreams had been passed by or shelved until the never-coming "later". But this dream, this one, wild, slow-burning dream, they'd kept. After so long, they were back; John had retired from a job he alternately loved and hated and they'd bought the house they'd once rented, sight unseen.

She was exhausted from the twenty hour flight from frigid Boise and another eight in the car careening around the terrifying cliffs, herds of stinky sheep and smoke belching Fiats. Depressed from the first sight of the crumbling gates and the front doorknob that had almost come off in her hand, Sally opened the back door, expecting only more disappointment.

There they were. The same chairs they'd sat in forty years ago. They were rusting now, with chipped paint and missing feet that made them wobble. Someone had replaced the glass-topped table with another one, but the chairs were the same. The view was the same. The smell of the salt air and the fresh breeze only faintly tinged with fish and coming rain was the same. Sally sighed softly, her blood pressure ticking down to almost peaceful. Elbow grease and a contractor or not, this was their dream. This was home.