Blogmas | Things That Make Me Feel Christmassy!

Hello!

As I went looking through other blogs in late October into early November, I was trying to find new ideas for Blogmas and this one seemed fun to do, but my only worry is, I’ve probably done this in the past… If I have, I’ll just link it at the bottom for a bonus post. If not, whoohoo for me!

I was going to list 16 things, but with my luck I wouldn’t even make it passed 10, so I thought it would be better to go safe and do a little free write, so I hope you enjoy what makes me happy during this time of the year.

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My sister and I are polar opposites when it comes to Christmas. She certainly enjoyed it growing up, as she was the loudest one of the bunch while opening gifts at our house and nana and papaw’s, but as she’s gotten older, her joy for the holiday is basically gone. She’ll still put up the tree, makes cookies with us and watch Christmas films, but she doesn’t feel very Christmassy inside, which is really but I’m not writing this to make her feel even more depressed about it by the way, there’s a reason for this I promise because I understand a lot of people out there do not like it, and I am trying to be respectable, including my sister, because I’ve been there. It is possible to absolutely despise holidays such as Christmas. I mean, you should see me going into the month of February, and Valentine’s Day. I am not one to be bothered with the lovey dovey stuff and I’ve been like this since probably middle school, and I definitely know I’m not alone with my thinking too, so if you don’t feel the love for a certain time of the year, that’s fine! You shouldn’t force yourself to feel something you don’t; the same goes for our guilt too!

For the last few years though, I’ve been increasingly obsessed with Christmas. I like almost everything about it, whereas when I was younger, I felt lost and it just seems like we switched our views about it somewhere going into high school and it’s honestly strange to explain, especially on a blog post. Anyways, with this year, my nephew Nolan is another year older and even though COVID-19 wants to crush everyone’s plans for the holidays, I don’t want to act like it already has, so I think that’s the other part of my intense feelings to want to celebrate Christmas like we always have in our family.

He really loved helping put up the family tree and usually, we wait until like the week of, to put it together so the fact that we did it the day after celebrating our Thanksgiving was interesting! Nolan helped me rearrange the limbs of the branches and gave them back to mimi (my mom) and Blondie who were storing each one on the stand. Once we got that done, he walked around in many circles with them to wrap the lights and tinsel from top to bottom. We even had a couple of short pieces that he would place inside and around the front end of the tree. He was utterly excited about his little addition!

Once we got to the ornaments, he literally saw each one and said, “BALL!” and we just hoped to sweet baby Jesus that he wouldn’t throw it! Thankfully, he didn’t but he would show each one to his parents, and was very cute about it! He loved putting them on the branches, and we were sure that he stayed safe on the ones with the hooks and pretty much gave him the ones that I tend to use, as they have string and ribbons around them. The final thing was when we got the nativity pieces and village out of the tote, Nolan was absolutely obsessed with them! He loves to arrange things in his own way and for the most part, the little houses my mom has always had under our tree, were standing on the windowsill in the living room for the better part of the visit. If the window is cracked open, he will actually leave a row of cars in that little section and we have many, many pictures of them. See below.

Recently, we baked our sugar cookies a week earlier than usual because my mom had the weekend off, and thankfully I said something or we might not had been able to do them this year.

It was a bit strange to add someone so little in our tradition. Last Christmas, Nolan was still at an age where he liked to put everything in his mouth and we just didn’t think he was ready for it. So, being able to include this year was exciting because it is something brand new to do. We’re all in agreement that he definitely enjoyed the cookies, the decorating part, not so much! Although, he did like the sprinkles. We even had to put some on his fourth cookie that he was holding tightly in between his hands. After finishing with the cookies, we switched tactics and was really glad he didn’t become confuse with it, because since I have finished with my projects, I have extra canvases left and we basically made him paint assortment of robots, snakes and various shaped cows. While he worked on his painting, the amount of focus on his face was so amazing to watch because his mommy was trying to get him to smile for pictures and he wasn’t paying her any attention at all. It was so cool and his painting turned out very beautiful!

Since the arrival of Nolan, he’s definitely been a factor to my festive side. Whenever he comes over and if I am not in my wheelchair at the moment, he will explore my room and point out certain things like my purple moon garland, he’ll say what they are and he knows his colors very well now, so anytime he spots anything purple, he’ll shout it out to anyone willing to hear him and he will sit up against the wall on my bed and chat with me a little.

He has so much energy radiating out of him that it is sort of easy to pull out a slice and hope you can get to that level with him enough so he keeps going with it. I am so excited to see him experience the snow, baking cookies, unwrapping presents from Santa, and enjoying papaw’s big breakfast he does every year. I am so thrilled to see the tinkle in his eyes for everything new and old, because obviously he is experiencing the holiday with new eyes! As this post was suppose to be about multiple things, I think I mainly love seeing the holiday like Christmas through his eyes. His innocence and the fact that he can talk more has really made a difference. He definitely has the same expressions that his mommy wear on her face when we were little, so that has been a little mind blowing for me!

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What makes you feel Christmassy? You can make me a little list or write a gigantic story like this through my comments or DM. Whatever you decide, I’ll enjoy either way.

Free Write | The Ghosts Of Lord Byron’s Past Regrets

Hello!

So, a couple of weeks ago I was scrolling through Twitter and I don’t really follow a lot of writing accounts, although I have days were I want to go on a follow spree but I have to stop myself in my thoughts because I hardly saw this in the chaos of my timeline! The one account I do follow is called Magic Realism Bot. When I first started reading the various prompts, I realized there are a lot of fantasy and sci-fi but mid-2019, they started asking for other subject suggestions and I think that was my main reason why I haven’t unfollowed in the last few months or so!

After we left for my nephew’s party on the 13th, I fell asleep and when I got up I saw this writing prompt and was immediately inspired to write, but I chose to wait it out a bit to collect my mind because honestly I was fully awake when I saw it. Before I start telling you my story, I want to mention that I haven’t written anything since Christmas so I hope you can forgive me for the many, many mistakes you’ll probably see below. I also hope you enjoy it as well!

And now, here is the prompt:

“You wake up and realize you have turned into Lord Byron.”

Setting is Greece in 1824, Byron is very sick and slowly dying; he’s laying in a makeshift bed in his army’s camp alone. He is hallucinating after the bloodletting operations went unsuccessful for the second time. 

“Where–where am I?”

“I should be with my mates.. on the grassy lands and making plans to attack our enemies.”

The hero, poet, soldier, womanizer is under strict orders to stay in his tent by his doctors. He thought the need to pray at first his illness appeared but he feared that God wouldn’t listen to his selfish cries. As sweat continued to pull down across his face and pain in his stomach became too much to ignore as time went on, he was without a clock or any of his exclusive pleasures to hide away from the shame inside. The longer the blood sat in his body, the more poison would spread and race to his heart. It would be its final resting place to infect and then he would be at peace, or at least he hoped he would.

Before this was to happen, he stirred in his bed covered in the now soaked blankets to keep warm, and closed his eyes reluctantly and fell into a deep sleep. He had hoped it wouldn’t be his last.

Suddenly the faint sounds of children giggling around him. A little girl playing with a long red ribbon, she’s running away from him with a smile across her face. “Wait, come back Augusta! I need you!” he shouted in his empty room. He never opened his eyes, hoping the girl would return if she knew he was asleep, instead the space became quiet again.

Bryon shifted in his bed again, this time turning on his left side, away from the slightly open flap of the tent and away from the curious eyes that would sometimes pear inside to see the non-flamboyant man withering in hell. Unbeknownst himself, he lifted his left arm to make room for the rest of his body and splitting the fresh stitches in the corner of his elbow. He was already experiencing strong pains, one more to add to the endless lists didn’t bother him.

“Oh yes, my Lord.” a seductive voice of an unknown woman appeared in the opposite corner. She was alone with him, enjoying each other’s company very much. A smirk emerged on his face in front of the vivid mirror in front of them. George saw himself in a glance and saw himself kissing a brunette maiden. He liked every hue as long as he was in control, that’s all he asked in their time together. This woman was different though. He knew she was adventurous but nothing could prepare him for the game she wanted to play.

“How about we take this off? Hmm?” He quietly spoke into her ear, and the slight nod reassured he could do anything he wanted with her.

She stood from the chair of the desk and furiously pulled his hands to her back but he continued the kissing on her neck. His fingers worked the way down the tight corset in her middle section of her body. After unlacing the last string away from the rough exterior, he tossed it to the floor. Now she was able to undress by herself now and this meant his hands could explore and wander around her body freely. Once every last garment was off, she turned attention back to him, but something was wrong.

A minute ago, the man was young and incredibly healthy. Now she stood in front of him in disgust. He looked as though they had just finished having sex as he was sweaty but the major difference was he looked miserable. He tried his best to keep standing but a sharp pain his stomach only grew worse and he couldn’t control his rage like she was the cause of it.

She wasn’t though.

The memory of having slept with Mary Shelley stayed playing over and over in his thoughts even after their little affair ended several years before. He remembered every feature, as she was quite the beauty back then as was he at the time too. He knew she was the woman in front of him. He looked down at his weakling body and thought of their ghost stories they read at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland. Could she picture him as her monster? Is this how she created him? Using the body of an worthless man like him right now?

As he tried to approach her one last time, the image of her naked body and the gold rimmed mirror on the wall behind her began fading away. The more steps he made, the quicker the reverie collapsed on itself. Colors of Mary ran through each other and created another landscape. This time the memories were harder to ignore because now he was in a field. He tried to focus on the ground and wondered if he was standing in the middle of a battlefield. The only thing that tore away from this notion was the piercing cry of a child. George squat down but this time not from the lingering pain he suffered.

The child was still screaming, but he had trouble concertating on the source behind it. And then, he yelled out, “Ada!” hoping that if it was in fact Ada in trouble, she would cry out for him again.

“Papa!” Ada returned the signal. The picture of his little girl flourished inside of him. He ran towards the direction she appeared to be in; all the while even more memories and of course overwhelming regrets sat inside his heart. He knew he had to save her. He tried to run faster but he would run out of breath and was forced to stop in his tracks. Ada never stopped shouting for him, nor did he in trying to catch up to her.

After running for a couple minutes, he saw a small child with lightly brown curls and dressed in the simplest dress. The ribbon in his first vision was attached to her hair in a beautiful bow and as he walked towards her, he soon realized this was not what it seemed at all.

He knew she was going to vanish like Mary had in the last flash of torture, this time he wouldn’t let it happen without speaking to her one last time.

“Ada!” Byron debating to walk closer to her, worrying that it would speed up the dreamscape again. “Come here sweetheart. Come over to me please.” He reached his arms out to her but she didn’t budge.

“Why didn’t you love me, Papa?” She spoke to him, never breaking eye contact with him. He was trapped in her gaze and it wasn’t like the moment he had Mary, as that was  pure pleasure to him. This was a burden he longed to forget when he was alone.

“I do love you, my darling daughter.” Byron said to her as he fell to his knees. “You are mine. You always will be…” The pain in his body raptured inside and it was greater than any pain he experienced before. He just couldn’t tell if it was his heart braking or the infection finally hitting its destination, either way he knew his heart was dying.

“I love you Papa!” Ada said with a small wave and then suddenly the look on her face turned to black and Byron snapped out of his dreams. He grunted as he shot up in his bed and tried to turn away to the large bottle of bourbon and spilled out of the bed and landed hard on the dead grass underneath him.

He knew this was the end but he was angry at himself and the memories.

He never got to tell his daughter how much he loved her too. Even though he was obsessed with his booze, war and women. Nothing could take away the love he felt for his sweet daughter. Tears flew down his cheeks along with the sweat that never stopped when he fell down. He was in pain, emotionally, mentally, and physically. He hoped to live to write to Ada about how much she meant to him truly but it wasn’t to be.

George growled into the Earth, and spoke out loud for the last time. “…I love you…”

 What do you think of this story? 

Writing Prompt: We Could Have Been Happy

Howdy!

We’re in February now and like everybody knows, it’s a month dedicated to love, so in my way of showing a bit of love on here is to write some romantic stories. Honestly, I got the idea to do this after I finished with my Christmas prompts. I just enjoyed coming up with those cute and funny little stories that I thought, “why don’t I continue this for the next holiday?” so here we are! The only issue is that I’m not sure if I’m going to skip the last week of the month or not. I am considering it because it would help me get ready for my plans for March.

All of the prompts were found on Pinterest. I’d even change my mind about a couple of them at the last minute because I didn’t think there was enough variety between them. I didn’t want to be too cheesy or sexual, so hopefully these will be a good medium for everybody! They are ALL free write stories–so if you see a mistake, try your best to ignore it! I’d also like to say that I have tried my best to keep them happy, but as you’ll see it hasn’t happened… Anyways, the first prompts goes like this.

At one point of time, we could have been happy.

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We moved too fast, at least that’s what she told me as she packed her stuff that she had recently shoved into my itty-bitty closet. I stood at the base of the bed we just made love in the night before. I was so confused. Why would she have sex with me if she knew she was going to break up with me the next day?

We were only dating three months, she fell just as quickly as I did. I mean, you couldn’t blame me for doing it either. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long time. And the fact that I spend a good chuck of my time in a room full of gorgeous women everyday, because of my job as a casting director, she could knock every single one of them out of the ball park. She was tall, brunette, and had the silkiest skin on the planet. She was a goddess and she knew it too.

I watch her pace back and forth attempting to explain her reasoning for breaking us up. She can’t look up at me, but I want her to so bad. I just want to see it on her face, if she’s really done with me, her eyes will say it before her mouth comes out with it. She walks to the closet and removes her clothes on the hangars, and throws them into her suitcase. I try my best to calm her down to meet her gaze, but she will not let me, she keeps pushing me away. I start to wonder to myself, what have I done? I couldn’t think of anything, but that doesn’t mean anything. I know how women are, they like to gossip to one another, so if there was a rumor going around about me and some girl I was casting in an upcoming film, she’d probably know about it before I do.

At one point of time, we could have been happy. Now instead I am standing in the doorway of my apartment feeling distraught. She’s gone. She was here for an hour never giving me a direct answer for her actions, and never told me goodbye. So, I’m here and I have no idea what to do next.

So, what do you think of this little free write, heartbreaking story?

Writing Prompt: The Assassin

So… This is not my regular “Monday” post but I’ve given myself a few days to think about how I wanted to go with this prompt and as much as I was tempted to use my current WIP (work in progress) story that I’ve tried to write since November 2016, I wanted to go in another direction and use my other idea I that have had stuck in the depths of my brain. There’s a lot of stuff back there, so the fact that it’s wanting to be up front is a bit crazy!

I found the prompt on Maris McKay’s blog again, and it was “The fireworks cover the sound of breaking glass. They climb out the window and start running with a grin on their face. Today is Independence Day.” I used the prompt in a different way than expected but I hope everyone still enjoys it 🙂

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I honestly don’t remember how I got here.

All I know is that I’m tumbled over on a very hard surface, the dirt on the ground seeps into the fresh cuts on my body and burns as I attempt to sit up again. I have to use both of my arms with the rest of the strength left in my body to move around. Once I flip around to my back and rearrange my lifeless legs forward, I began to wipe off the excess dirt off my arms and legs and look at my surroundings, searching for my chair.

The building is huge, but barely hanging on to itself. The windows are shattered and ceiling tiles are slowly pulling apart from each other and floating away by the wind outside. I quickly realize that I am in an old hangar that now holds the most random things, I knew about the junkies but not the large metal elements, that look like could be the innards of airplanes and cars. This should be interesting trying to find my wheelchair in this mess! As the thought creeps out of my head, an older man is standing in the back with a blank expression on his face.

“I’m surprised you’re alive!” He shouted while cleaning a metallic can in his hands. “I mean, considering that guy was kicking the living shit out of you.” He tosses the can into the fairly large stack of junk plastered up against the wall. He finally sighs and starts to work over to me.

“Well, I would be up by now, if I could find my chair.” The woman says, with a groan as her sides were certainly in a lot of pain right now. She was pretty sure one of her ribs was broken, but he didn’t need to know that.

The man stopped and looked at her funny, “what chair?” he said as he began to look around the place and search for anything that even resembling a chair of sorts. He did find pretty clean white car outside, but before he wondered who that belonged to, the blonde and bruised lady in front of him in the distance took his attention back to the fact that she was now looking for something in this pigsty.

“It’s mine.” She said as he continued to admire the car. “Also, I use a wheelchair to get around, and before that asshole started attacking me, he pulled me out of it and threw it somewhere in here.” At least I hope it’s in here. This statement made him look at her with a puzzled again, but before he could say another word a noise behind her startled them in the back of the place.

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Kady turned to her left side, but not before taking out what looked like three dark sticks from the side of right boots. That’s when the man noticed a gun located directly at her back around her waist on a  thin belt once she removed them and began to scoot on her hands, softly around the crooked maze in front of her.

Bang! Bang!

The mystery man took shelter, using the mess around them but realized she was exposed and defenseless, so unless she had a cool magic trick to make with those things in her hands, she was done for and his job was done. As he crouched down on the ground, he watched the scene play out between the two of them.

“Who’s there?!” Kady said, as her hand full of three lightly green colored darts laid in the palm of her hand behind her. “Roy, is that you coming back for more?” She knows if she’s not careful that she will not win this fight either, she thought about using her gun, but she doesn’t want to cause any more damage then she already has, so these are her only lifeline right now.

“How are you not dead Kady?!” A deep voice echoes off in front of her, and she takes a guess on where he could be located, and hopefully she’s right. Roy sounded a bit shake-y, like he knows he’s in trouble for offering to go after her in the first place. “You know I don’t want to do this.” He speaks again, wanting for an answer from her, but it’s quiet. He knows that’s never a good sign.

Swoosh! Clung.

He gasps loudly, staring wide-eyed at the pine tree lookalike dart stuck on the tin metal wall in front of him. The man is covered in sweat from head to toe, and he knows she’s close to him. He also knows he has some of her blood splattered onto his clothes but that’ll help prove to know he killed the #1 enemy on the block. However, he knew he needed to move or she’ll try to sneak up on him, which is what she did in a way, especially when the second dart arrived in a bad spot.

Ahh!

“Fucking bitch!” He shrieked as the next dart landed at his lower backside. He quickly wondered if they were laced with toxic poisons, but he didn’t want to dwell on that too much this time as he pulled it out with a fast tug and began to slowly walk away from his position.

Kady is lying on the ground directly behind a now groaning Roy. “Why were sent to kill me Roy? You better tell me, or I can reserve this last target for your head or your heart. It’s your choice.” Kady said as she scooted across the room, on her hands, her legs leaving inconvenient dragging marks as she continued on to her mission.  Finally, she spots an opening toward her right arm, but instead of striking the beast, she decides to change things up and patiently waits for his response.

“Marcus wanted it done.” He explained, with a sad tone in his voice. He was afraid of what he heard Kady could to a man who turned on her. “He said, after the fourth of July and we would get our independence day, and be free of you.” Wrong answer. He knew that wasn’t the smartest thing to say to an assassin but he was in lots of pain and it just came out. “He said, you were a nuance and that you wouldn’t be the only one. He’d go after your whole league.” Roy finally broke down into tears and collapsed on himself but was frightened again when Kady appeared on the other side of the crate like wall between them, with one last dart tightly locked in her hand.

Kady quietly smiled at him in the same way he did before running for cover. Roy tried to get up once last time to runaway from her but it wasn’t going to happen with his injury, so he knew he was an easy picking.

“Tell your boss that if he hurts anybody else, I will kill him.”  Kady said with one last jab, the dart stabbed him in the upper thigh and watched him wince in pain as his leg started to rapidly bleed through his jeans. Now, with her mission sort of finished, she asked him one last question. “By any chance do you know where my chair is?” She said in a charming voice. All Roy could do was obey and point north and watched her fade away from view and heard her grab ahold of the chair that was tipped over on its side, and gradually climb in it and once she was safely seated, she began to collect her darts but once she made it back to Roy for the last one, she slightly pinched the end of it and watched him groan on the floor, not so confident now. She pulled on it and once out, she wiped it on his shirt and slid them back into her boot. “You’ll need to think twice before messing with me Roy.”

After rolling away from the wounded Roy, she found the older man who had ran back into his office and was suddenly terrified of her now. “Call an ambulance for him, okay?” She calmly said to him, while he could only motion a nod to her. She nodded back and lifted the front of her chair over the cracked concrete and went towards her car. She smelled the fresh air as she searched her keys inside her other boot and it clicked twice, unlocking the door. She parked her chair by the front seat and wrapped her arms around the side of the seat and inside of the car to pull herself in to sit down. She quickly took the brakes off and folded it up and threw it in the backseat before starting up the car and closing the door to drive away.

So, what did you think of my “little” free write of the week?

Writing Prompt: The Dying Phoenix

Click picture to go to the website!

I swear I surprise myself every day! I haven’t been so inspired to write any stories since my last one in March, but I was literally scrolling through Pinterest and I found this and I had something within me and I just decided to roll with it. I’m treating this like a free write, so don’t shocked if you see any mistakes on here, okay?

The prompt banner says, “Write the story of a magical creature missing their species’ key feature (a siren without a voice, a unicorn without a horn, a dragon without fire, etc). At first I was inspired by the “a siren without a voice” but then I thought about looking into other mythical creatures and remembered Phoenixes and thought this would be kind of cool to explore a dying phoenix. So I hope you all enjoy this little story!

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I am dying.

We are all dying in our nests, awaiting to be reborn, and discover new worlds among men. It’s a lifetime achievement to be present in every birth, genius invention, and war. You are there as a sign that the circle continues and never ends, you give the humans hope for their future, but what happens when you are the one, who is constantly dying and on the urge of never awakening? There’s no direct answer to that, but yet I am living it.

My name is Sonnet. Yup, that is my name. It was given to me by my master, Edmund Groose (Gross). He was given a phoenix for his 44th birthday, after being ill for some time. He thought of me as a good sign, as phoenixes are generally always dying and coming back to life, but I was never a good luck bird to him or anyone else for that matter.

He told me while I was perched inside the bar in my bronze cage, that he gave me that name for his love of poetry, as he was infatuated with my brightly colored feathers, of purple and green. I looked like a peacock more than a phoenix honestly. I was to be his companion for 14 years, which is the exact lines of a written sonnet. After his untimely death, I was sent away to another master, and another, and another after him.

In all I had a total of 14 masters in my lifetime.

Now you might think this is unusual, but I never once died and was reborn with any of them. I was a young bird at the start and lived out the lives of the people around me, but was never the spectacle of the other phoenixes of the world. While I aged throughout the decades, my colors started to fade but never exploded into a ball of fire at the end of the day like some many others, I stayed and suffered through the fiery pain inside.

I was never unhappy with my situation though. I was going through what some many others were, I was slowly dying and I actually relished in that feeling. I was always afraid that once I made my first rebirth, if I’d still have my memories of my previous owner? Would I still want to look outside the window into the morning sunrise and be given freshly caught fish from the sea? I often wondered if I’d still feel the same as I always had after I came back and lived again.

The world had not changed too drastically from the time I was given to Edmund Groose in the 1800’s, as I wasn’t exposed to too much, as it was illegal to have such an exotic bird of my kind but I was basically a family heirloom to the Groose family. I never left the house or roughly my cage in the corner of the spare bedroom. It was a dark and gloomy room to let such a magnificent bird sleep, but when I was let out for some excercise, the room itself was big enough to fly around the columns on the walls and even sit on the windowsill to absorb as much sunlight as I could to hopefully bring back my beautiful hue on my body and even my spirit, but over time I realized that it wasn’t working and that I was officially dying for good.

The pain is beginning to be too much for me. I can hardly stand up on the bar at the top of my cage. The cage I was originally in, is breaking apart at the seams right along with me. I no longer have the strength to stand up, as the heat of the fire within me is burning the muscles and bones in my body. My feathers are slowly decaying, one by one falling and drifting down to the floor. Once there, the green shade had turned into a black and fragile texture to the touch.

I hope I die and never come back, for I’d like to be the one phoenix that never rises from the ashes. The enigma to other birds of my species to be afraid of what could happen to them, but the question remains, would they accept death or divert altogether?