Mom and the Opossum

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Today would have been my mom’s 77th birthday. But last year, just after she completed 76, she passed. ☹

So today a silly story about her.

***

Opossum

So, my mom used to lay down at the family room to watch TV and sleep in front of it. Then, it was normal to see us going there and trying to wake her up and tell her to go to bed. It was also normal that, without even opening her eyes, she would mumble something like “I’m not sleeping, just a minute” or “I’ll go soon, soon”, or else just simply “yeah, yeah”.

Some days we would insist until she got up and went to her bedroom, but others we wouldn’t, after all, she was the grown up and had the right to sleep wherever she wanted, right?

One of those days, she was still in the family room in the middle of the night, everyone else was sleeping on their beds, when she woke up to use the restroom. She got up, went to the restroom in the corridor, which was the closest to the family room, didn’t even bother to turn on the light, and sat down to pee. As the hot liquid started to squirt out of her, she heard splashing sounds.

What?

She releases a bit more and the splashing is there again, at the toilet. She gets up quickly, turns on the lights, looks at the toilet and screams.

We wake up and hurry to see what was happening.

An opossum was in the toilet, not too happy to have received a hot yellow shower.

Someone somehow managed to remove it, but by then we were all wide awake already.

We are not sure how the critter ended up there, but our guess was that it decided to go for a swim in the water tank and got lost in the pipes until it exited in our toilet, just to be pissed at (literally) by my mom.

Hard to tell who was the most scared that night. Hahaha

***

Miss you, mom!

***

PS. Last year, when I was in Brazil, I told this story to my cousin’s 4-year old daughter, and had to enact it several times with her. Each time each of us was a different character. Cute!

Brunch

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After having worked all day on Saturday, her plan was to sleep in on Sunday. She takes a quick shower, gets into her PJs and lays down. Sleep finds her in a second.

The next morning passes and she’s still in bed. Kids and hubby are hungry, having woken up early. But they know how hard she worked, so they let her be, have a quick snack and wait, assuming she’d wake up in time for a brunch.

Early afternoon and she’s still in bed.

Is something wrong with mom? A peek inside the bedroom is greeted with a loud snore. Well, at least she’s alive. Should we wake has up to cook us brunch? Nah… let her be. A protein bar would do for now….

Mid-afternoon.

On man, I’m so hungry, why doesn’t mom wake up? We missed breakfast and brunch already! What are we going to eat today? Linner?

4:30 PM she finally wakes up. All relaxed and refreshed.

Until that is she gets out of the bedroom and the family sends her directly to the kitchen. And thus her house work starts all over again, to be added to the office job tomorrow…

And life goes on…

This was written in response to last week’s Writer’s Digest Writing Prompt: Brunch

I must admit that brunch did not inspired me much, so it took me a while to write, and it ended up that brunch was just mentioned (and missed! 😉 in the story. But I guess i like the way it turned out.

Thunder

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Silas and Maeve looking at the window.

 “Look Maeve, a cloud dragon! It’s giant and fierce!”

“Oh cool! And look there, there’s another one over there.”

Wind is picking up.

“Wow!…. They’re getting closer to each other! Do you think they’re friends, or enemies?”

“Enemies for sure! Look, that first one seems to be frowning and opening his mouth.”

“Oooh. Will he breath fire on the other? I wanna see it!”

Booom! Crash! Thunder strikes.

Wind picks up even further. The clouds become flat and shapeless. All but one, from where the thunder comes.

First dragon wins the battle!

This post was written in response to the January 16: Story Challenge in 99-words, hosted by Carrot Ranch.

Recovery

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Cesar has been sick for many years. His lungs are weak, so are his kidneys.

Often, he gets an infection, and goes to the hospital. Some stays are short, some are long… He knows how scared his wife is of losing him, so he fights to always come back home to her.

She gets ill too. They both go to the hospital.

She perishes in a couple of days, while he is still fighting to get well.

He goes back to an empty house.

A new infection strikes, but he is done fighting. This time he does not recover.

This post was written in response to January 9: Story Challenge in 99-words, hosted by Carrot Ranch.

The story is real and the protagonists are my parents, who left us on February 6th and April 15th 2023.

(The picture does not show any of them, though. That was taken from Pixabay)

Cute baby

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Mario gets home from work and sees Coco playing with the ball.

“Oh, hi kiddo! How was your day? Fun?”

“Fu-un!”

“What are you doing? Playing with your new ball?”

“Ba-all!”

“On cool, I’m glad you liked it. I’ll go talk to mom, have a quick shower, then I come back to play with you, okay?”

“Okay!”

He goes to the kitchen and finds Rita cooking dinner.

“Hi sweetie.”

“Hey”

“Hum… that smells good! I’ll go shower, then play with Coco a bit before dinner. Did you feed him already?”

“Yes, but he didn’t eat much. I filled his plate with seeds, but ever since you built him that damn tether ball, the pulls the ball by the string and drops it at his plate, spiling all the seeds and making a huge mess. It’s unbearable. You better rearrange his perch so the ball is far from the plate.”

“Hahaha! But he’s so cute! He always talks with me. It’s like a real human child.”

“You say that because you’re not the one cleaning his mess. A human child we can train to clean up after themselves, but not a parrot. Now go get clean yourself. Dinner is almost ready”.  

This post was written in response to the weekly writing prompt from Writer’s Digest: Fur Baby

I decided to have mom and dad parenting a parrot, though, so no fur, rather feathers… 😉

Red Fox

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The chickens are loose, happily pecking on the ground of the farm.

One of them raises her head, trying to listen.

Silence.

She goes back to pecking.

From the woods at the end of the farm, a red fox watches. He’s hungry.

Slowly the fox steps closer to the field. The chicken gets alert again, looks around.

Silence.

Once she’s back feeding and relaxed, fox makes a run towards them. He’s fast. Like a red lightning, it passes by. Once you realize what’s happening, he’s gone.

One chicken goes missing. A trail of red dots leads to the forest.

This post was written in response to January2: Story Challenge in 99-words, hosted by Carrot Ranch

CWWC:  Which ways with snow or the color white

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Wow! It’s been about 5.5 years since I participated on a Cee’s Which Way Challenge.

I’m super glad she’s still on it. So to honor it, I’ll try to be back into posting responses to her challenges.

This week’s challenge asks for a which way picture with snow or a photo that has white in it. I’m going with one I took a few years ago, when we went hiking in the snow in Lake Chelan over a Christmas Holiday we spent there.

hiking in snow

Resolution Refusal

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Happy New Year!
A New year is a good place to change old habits and start new ones, right?

So, in the year that starts today, I’ll write every day!
Hum… I wonder how long this will actually last… there will be trips, I may get lazy…. No. Scratch that. No writing every day.

Then I’ll…. I’ll…. Eat healthy 90/10!
How much percent of my life happens in parties or between week before Halloween and 1st of the following year? More than 10, right? Okayyyy…. Scratch that too, then.

I’ll…. Draw every week!
That one worked a couple years ago. Actually for 2 consecutive years! But then this past year, I just didn’t feel like it. Will I feel like it this new year??? Nah… scratch again.

I’ll search for a job!
Ugh! No! Why did I even say that? Big Scratch.

You know what? I know!
My resolution this year is to not have any resolutions and live each day as it comes.

Nice one, right?

This post was written in response to the weekly writing prompt from Writer’s Digest (https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/resolution-refusal)

Happy 2024 (with the resolution to revive this blog)!

😉

Link to my Instagram account

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Hi again,

Today I added a link to my latest Instagram posts here at the left side.

This week I decided to participate in yet another challenge, called #DrawThisCity, in addition to the ones I was already participating on: Inktober52, DoodleTuesdayChallenge/FunnyPunnyFriday and FloraCreativeChallenge.

Today was the first day I post for DrawThisCity and it was on a drawing that combined it with the FloraCreativeChallenge. Flora’s challenge is base on what is celebrated on that date, and today apparently is Umbrella Day. The city for DrawThisCity was Semur-en-Auxois, in France. So I did a street in Semur-en-Auxois decorated in the Umbrella Sky fashion, with colorful umbrellas hanging above the road, and then I added 4 people walking with their own colorful umbrellas too. The image is pictured above.

The lines are a bit (?) wacky, I didn’t use too much shading, but in the end I guess it turned up ok. To have better lines and shading, I also need to have more patience… oh well…

Tomorrow I’ll try combining both again (with Inventions and Bruges).

Drawings in Instagram

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Hi, it’s been a while since last I posted.

Recently, I’ve been into drawing/painting. It all started with a few trips to a sip and paint studio, then Covid came and when forced to stay home I started painting at home too.

After creating a few masterpieces (?) I found out about Inktober and Inktober52 in Instagram and decided to try it, with paper and pencil. That was early 2021, and I not only manager to complete both Inktober (one drawing a day during the month of October) and Inktober52 (one drawing a week during the entire year) but I also started to participate in other different challenges, and started to adopt pens or watercolor as well.

And again this year…

One of the weekly challenges I recently found out about is called #magicmilkfoamwednesday, in which we’re supposed to draw on top of a host coffee milk foam. I likes this one so much that sometimes I take pictures on my own coffee to play the same was as well. They are not pretty, as I’m not good in drawing in a screen, but the idea is to get creative, rather than doing a work of art. At least that’s how I see it (some people do make works of art on those… ;o)

I’ll start to post here some of my Instagram drawings.

But today, the ones from my own coffee, which I haven’t published there.

Finding shapes in milk foam

Bainbridge Invitational

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This is her first competition ever. She’s been training in the Jump Rope team for a few months and now it’s the time to show what she has learned.
The competition is in Bainbridge Island, on the same day as her little sister’s best friend’s birthday party.
She goes with mom only then. Daddy will take her sister to the party.
To take the ferry on the day of they’ll have to get up so early, so they take an evening ferry the night before.
The view of Seattle is nice, with the Big Wheel all colorful.
Dinner at a restaurant, then hotel to get some rest.
This is the big day!
She wakes up, mom braids her hair and off they go.
She participates in 5 heats, in both speed and freestyle.
She’s not too fast.
She does a few cool tricks in the freestyle, but would that be enough?
Turns out it’s not. No medals today.
Her eyes are filled with tears…
Next time…

This post was written for the FFfAW Challenge – 178th, hosted by Priceless Joy.

The picture this week (at the right) was provided by Ted Strutz ans shows one the Washington State Ferries. I’ve been many times on those ferries and for the past 3 years at least once we go to Bainbridge Island for my daughter’s jump rope competition.

So the story is not really fiction today, as I tried to tell the story of her first competition ever.

The picture at the top was taken by me, from the ferry, the night before that first ever competition, on our way to Bainbridge.

To see more entries for the prompt, click on the blue frog below:

 

Update: I decided to add translations to my texts. This is the first translated post and I’ll be adding more as translations become available. To get to the translations, I’ll add a link like the below pointing to it. Enjoy!
Portuguese version: Competição em Bainbridge