Quote I Love: No Books?

(c) istockphoto.com

“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!” ― John Waters

Three-Word Scenario: My first gift for him

I’ve mentioned my these three-word scenarios before. It’s a fun exercise for me, a great way to keep my brain actively coming up with new ideas while I’m revising a novel. I’ve decided to keep all my scenarios under 200 words.

My sweetie picked the three words this time:

The scenario I came up with is more the start of something, or perhaps the ending of an m/m romance between friends, a sweet moment in time that could lead to more.

Christmas Eve. Out first together in a real home.

Outside it was raining, the ground covered in mud—not the snow I’d always imagined—and Tommy was late getting home from work. I shouldn’t have been this happy. I shouldn’t have been sitting on the floor of the living room staring up at the Christmas tree with its blue twinkling lights and candy canes, smiling like peace on earth really was just a wish away.

I carefully secured the end of the wrapping paper around the 1970’s alien action figure set. A garage-sale find that had taken me four Saturdays of walking through one suburban housing development after another, scouring through boxes of old toys in search of the little plastic green aliens. Tommy’d had the same set as a kid. Since we’d both run away from less-than-stellar homes as teens, neither of us had any childhood mementos to remind us of the few good days we had in our youths.

The smile grew as I imagined his face when he opened the box.

My first gift for him. The first time I’d had money to spend on something this frivolous. Only, to Tommy it wouldn’t be that at all.

Word Count: 200 (just made it!)

Dang, now I have a new story I want to write.

Leave a comment if you have an idea for a 3-word scenario I can use in the future. I’d love to hear your ideas.

This scenario was cross-posted at Loose End this week.

 

Never Laugh at a Cheesy Catalog until You’ve Seen Every Last Item

Lately I’ve gotten a huge influx of mail-order catalogs. The kind with bizarre items you can’t believe someone thought up, let alone had made into an actual product.

Rosie has this silly and adorable habit of paging through those catalogs and giggling as she finds gem after gem.

Like this…it’s called the Butt Putt.


Image source

Can you believe that name? And to top that off, it farts when you sink the ball in the hole.

So, there’s my sweetie sitting on the couch, turning pages, laughing, and showing me item after item while I was trying to read my email. Good thing I find her laugh infectious and her 12-year-old-boy humor cute.

Then she stopped laughing and said, “Oh, that’s kinda cool.”

I was scared.

Seriously scared.

I didn’t want to end up with some sort of farting alarm clock.

Then she showed me this…


Image source

And she was right, it was kinda cool. Of all the things I’ve looked at to hold my Kindle while I read in bed, I think this one looks like it might be both useful and comfy.

Anyone have anything like this? Or something similar you can recommend? I’m not sure I can bring myself to order from the catalog with the Butt Putt.

Ah, maybe I will.

 

Friday Photos: Game Night

Haven’t shared any game night pics in a while. Here’s what we’ve been playing…

The first one’s an oldie from my childhood. My sweetie and I are going through our games to see which ones we want to keep. Hadn’t played Life in years, so we thought we’d give it a go.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Mine’s the car with the 2 hubbies and a daughter. Rosie’s is the one with 2 wives and a son. She didn’t want the kid (I guess she thought he’d mess with her girls’ honeymoon), but the game made her take him so the poor kid had to sit all the way in the back.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

The 3-D version of Blokus is tough!

The rest of the games are from my uncle’s game club. Thanks for teaching us new games, T!

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Coloretto is a great little card game. Easy to learn and the version we bought has a set of rules for two players.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Vikings is one I did not expect to like, but I just loved it. You can play it with two people (we are always on the lookout for new 2-player games), but sadly we can’t buy our own copy. It’s not available for purchase anymore.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Jaipur is another card game that allows for two-person play.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

For Braggart, you make up a “story” with the cards in your hand, and it can be quite humorous to see what people come up with. Or what they are forced to play. Great for a group.

This was the best hand played all night:

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

“While wearing nothing more than my boots and a smile…I covered myself in oil to wrestle with…a party of drunken dwarves…and I am probably a better person for it.”

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Acquire is another one I did not expect to like. It was fun predicting where the board was going and which companies would hit it big. Sometimes your plans worked out. Sometimes you got screwed. Sort of like real life. There were five women playing with one adorable young guy that looked half my age. He was sweet and patient as he taught all of us newbs how to play. I didn’t tell him I was already writing a story in my head about him meeting someone special during an all-nighter at the gaming club. I could see them sitting across from each other, some very sweet touches between them under the table as they tried to flirt with serious gaming still going on all around them.

The Case of the Mysterious Bag in my Parents’ Basement

Yep, my Dad’s at it again. You won’t believe this one.

My entire family was sitting around the dinner table after my mom and dad had returned from a weekend trip (during which I had stopped over to feed their cat).

Me: So, Dad, what was that lumpy plastic bag downstairs by the cat’s food?

Dad: All the poop I saved.

Me: (almost chokes on a mouthful of dinner roll) What?

Dad: That cat puts out more than she takes in, so I did an experiment.

Me: What do you mean, experiment?

Dad: I bought a new bag of cat food and when it was all gone, I weighed all her poop to compare.

Me: Say what?

Dad: I weighed the poop and compared it to the weight of the cat food. 2 lbs of cat food. 3 lbs of poop. Something is wrong with that cat.

Me: Did you weigh just the poop?

Dad: What do you mean? I scooped it out and kept it in the bag.

Me: Did you weigh her urine?

Dad: Well, I guess. But that can’t weigh that much.

My sister: I think it does.

Dad: Nah. Probably not that much.

Me: You use scoopable litter. That clumps around the urine and weighs a lot.

Dad: I don’t think so. And I factored in the weight of the litter on the poop.

Me: How did you do that?

My sis: He counted the kernels on each turd.

All I kept thinking with each bite of my food was I cannot believe we are having this conversation.

He’s going to redo the experiment without the urine and report back.