Treasured Tomatoes

As I prepare to write flash fiction every day for the month of April (my #AtoZChallenge commitment) I am practicing by using Sunday Photo Fiction. Check them out here.This is a weekly challenge. They provide an image, and we write a story of 200 words or less, inspired by that image. The picture is posted on Sunday, so I am incredibly late to join the party. 

(UPDATE: The Sunday Photo Fiction website changed their requirements to make it impossible for me, an anonymous blogger, to join the official link party. I'm EXTREMELY disappointed by this, but whatever. Their blog, their rules.) 
 
Here is the picture from Sunday, March 24:

Photo credit: pensivity101

Treasure stared at the tomato plants in front of her. It was just a row of plants along the side of the house. She liked the spots of red among the tall greens. She could breathe when she came out to the garden. Treasure squatted down, holding her little plastic bucket with both hands between her ample bosom. She felt a couple of the reddening tomatoes. They were quite hard still, not yet ready to bring in. Her eyebrows knitted in consternation. He wanted tomatoes! What could she do?

From the squat, she dropped onto the ground and sat cross-legged in front of the plants. She would wait. For riper tomatoes or for an idea. Her husband’s shouts into the phone came through the window above her. Gingerly, she reached up and touched the bruise on her cheekbone. She hated when he yelled. It never meant anything good for her. He had to have tomatoes.

Inspiration struck. She rose back into a squat and plucked a few of the larger, green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes. That would satisfy his appetite. 

Maybe. 

Hopefully.

With four tomatoes in her bucket, Treasure headed back inside, cringing at the volume of his anger.

Word count: 199

#AtoZChallenge Audience Participation!

For better or worse, I have registered for this year's A to Z blogging challenge. It will be my 3rd time, and I've always successfully completed it.

click here to sign up!

But this year, ... well, my April problems are not theme related. Suffice to say, April will be a busy month. (for more reasons than are mentioned in that blog link)

THEME: Fiction (with Audience Input)
 
In order to try to coordinate my blogging with Camp NaNoWriMo, I will do individual stories each day. I'm trying to hone my fiction skills, whatever that means, so each day I will make myself do something different.

Honestly, some stories might turn out to be fragments of stories, unfinished. I'll go where the muse takes me.

HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN:
I will start with one story for A, but in the comments each day, I want YOU to offer a suggestion. It could be a word or a phrase, a hint of a character, a setting, an event, ANYTHING. It doesn't specifically have to begin with the next day's letter, either. Hopefully there will be enough comments that I can build a stockpile for days when no one offers anything that inspires words.

If there are several prompts that work for my brain, I may add a voting question to the following day. So on Day C, if I like 3 prompts given in the comments, then on Day D you may find yourself voting for one of the 3, the winner of which I will write on a subsequent day.

Note that the story will not continue on the next day. 
I want to keep this as spontaneous as possible.
Also note, that my blog is not "Adult Content" so please stick to that in your comments, or your comment will be deleted.

Any questions? I hope to see you all during my VERY BUSY April! (what am I getting myself into?)

How Bad Can It Get?

Ha! Did I say April will be busy?
As soon as I published that post, they began work on the house next door. 
By work, I mean tearing down the house and building new.
By next door, I mean we share a wall.

Our house and their pile of rubble.

Apparently, when building, two columns of bricks go up - one for each house - but then they are encased in mutual cement. Or something.

The house is down now, but while they were pulling their wall away from ours it was loud. Like, earthquake shaking, jackhammering loud.

The day they started with the actual deconstruction (there were a couple days of prep-work), I had swept and mopped all three floors of our house that morning. Big mistake. So much dust floating around in the air that I don't think there's a point to mopping again until the new house is built!

(Not true. I'm pretty anal about my floors. I'll probably mop again next week.)
 

The living room. Later that day, after sweeping AGAIN!

 

Our stairs. After their house came down.

Dusty floors bother me but, we had a choice. They gave us advance warning and we opted to stay through the construction. I love our house and am not ready to move so soon. Dust isn't the end of the world.

I think the worst of the deconstruction noise and dust are over for now. We were forewarned the project will take 5 months. It's actually quite interesting to watch the process up close and personal. A little noise and dust is a minor inconvenience.

Would you stay, given the option? A lot of expats complain so much about construction, I wonder why they came to a developing country in the first place. Are we so strange to stick it out?

A Busy Month

...So to speak. 

Let's be honest. My "job" is writing. I write, I edit, on my own time. I keep the house reasonably clean, do the laundry, pick the papayas off the tree when they're ripe, and usually accompany Brett to the market. Sometimes I do separate grocery shopping.

I have it easy. I really do.

But I am faced with a conundrum about April activities.

Since completing NaNoWriMo in November, I have remained active on their website. I subscribe to their YouTube channel and join virtual write-ins. April is a "Camp NaNoWriMo" month, and there's a lot of chatter about it. Cool! For the Camp, basically, you set whatever kind of writing goal you want to - hours or words, novel or not. Just kind of a support group, it seems to be. I was all set to register for it, as soon as I can decide on a goal.

Then yesterday Brett came downstairs excited about registering for the A-to-Z Challenge.

Right. That's in April, too.

I've done the A-to-Z Challenge twice, and enjoyed it both times. It kept me on track, boosted my blogging habit, and I found interesting blogs to follow.

Now I'm stuck. Could I do both? Of course. But I'm also editing a book and slowly working on a couple other writing projects. Camp Nano would be an easy help for my projects, but daily blogging might be more of a time drain than I want to commit to!

What to do? What to do?

EUREKA!
Literally, while I was writing this, I realized that I CAN do both: I'll set my Camp goal around blogging daily! If I can. I haven't looked into it too much. 

I'm so glad I sat down to moan about having too many options! You may see a lot more of me next month!