frogs_of_war

I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but since I posted the other parts...



Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Labor Day, part three
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: 1.1 k
Summary: Ty enjoys Damien and reminds his married friends that they can enjoy each other

Masterlist

If you chose to lance your blisters (less painful than trying to walk on an full one), always make sure you clean the needle right before you use it and don't try to guess which one you'd cleaned the night before. Instead of being healed, my little toe still hurts. No weird lines or pink or swelling, so I guess it's on the mend, but it still hurts more than it did on Monday when I was lazy/stupid.

And that thing between my mom and my sister. It was all a misunderstanding. My sister is fine coming to my mom's to eat a meal. I'm glad I didn't let my mom talk me into saying anything.


Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Labor Day, part one
Status: WIP

Why are my short stories never short? I am working on a prompt from onecrazycanuck (the pregnant kitty) and it's turned into more than a dozen handwritten pages and I'm not done yet.


Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Vacation, part two
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: 1.3 k
Summary: Kenneth can't win, but gets some

 I'm pretty good at guessing my presents, so I try not to even look at them before it's time to open them. On my birthday, my husband and daughter wrapped my only present while I was washing dishes after dinner, and then set it on my desk and told me it had been such hard work I couldn't open it for at least an hour. I tried not to look at it as we played a game we got for Christmas (Geek Out, but with our own rules), but it was right at my elbow. It was a box shaped like a book. Ok. But maybe there was something inside since I was told not to shake it.

After the game was over, we had cake and then I opened the gift. It was a box shaped like a book (with peacocks and prettiness on the outside) and inside the box was a... tablet computer with detachable keyboard. It fit inside exactly. 

I've been playing around on it, adding and deleting and all that. (No apps yet, I kind of scared to go there) I had to read the directions before I could close anything (if I had a smart phone I might know all this all ready, but a tablet is better). 

This is very high on the list of best presents ever.

Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Ty's Birthday, part three
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: 1.2 k
Summary: Damien dodges unwanted attention and gets attention he wants.

Damien looked around the room. Cottage was misstating things. This wasn’t some old building converted for summer lodgers. This was brand new and completely up to date while still being in a cottage style. Probably for the best as Ty was having to bend to get through the front door. Short ceilings would have made this the vacation from hell.

( Anyone want to join me? )

I've been putting up ninja Christmas Drabbles based on Christmas songs as comments to people's posts. If you haven't got one and would like one (and you're on my friend's list), post before Christmas. I still have three without homes (and more if I can figure out vague songs like Silver Bells or specific songs like Rudolph). I'll post them all soon.

Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Ty's Birthday, part one
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: .8 k
Summary: Kenneth waits in the airport

Kenneth sat down on the bench. Kids ran past. The airport was crowded with them. And they all must be going on the next few flights because this was past the security lines. Damien leaned on Kenneth’s arm. “Will I like it?”

( He could be older than he looks )

I feel like I've lost my muse. Nothing I've written recently has moved me. (I'm in the middle of a dozen stories, but have finished nothing, which is why I haven't posted lately). I feel like the muse has been gone a while, but when I looked back over my summer posts, I enjoyed rereading the familiar stories I wrote the end of July/beginning of August, so it can't have fled too far. August was when I started working 40+ hours and copy editing Be My Queen, so perhaps my daughter's right when she said I'm just tired. But I don't want to be tired. I want to be myself again. I want to be someone who can complete a thought. I want to be able to sit down and enjoy a book too. So not happening.

The only thing I've been enthusiastic far in months was the last few days of my vacation when my daughter and her boyfriend had me help them with Halloween costumes. I made him a Jon Snow cloak and a leather tunic. He was Odin. My daughter was the woman who Irish soldiers saw washing their clothes if they were going to die in battle (it starts with an M, but she isn't here to ask). I made he a circle skirt out of a flannel top sheet and explained how to cut a shawl from a piece of knit fabric. 

I heard a line that makes me want to write, only I haven't figured out what yet. Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”  (if I don't say where it's from it can't be counted a spoiler, can it?) I just love this line. Betrayal has always been a black mark. A line that can't be crossed and still keep a character lovable, but maybe not anymore: A young man who goes back to a place he left. Someone who tells who his lover is to save his own life. Two people promise to run away together, but one never shows. The possibilities are endless, but nothing's grabbed me yet.



Title: Trifecta
Chapter: Independence Day, part two
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: 1 k
Summary: Kenneth keeps busy

Masterlist

Kenneth surveyed the street. Ty, Flannigan and one of Flannigan’s neighbors had carried workbenches into the street and were now arguing over how long the fuses needed to be between the fireworks. They did this every year, not just the setting up, but the disagreeing over what had happened the year before. Ty brought out his phone and the three watched a video.

( Where to? )

Wouldn't a person know better than to stand outside someone's window with a  fan blowing in and smoke? That's what woke me up this morning. Rude.






Ty stood behind Damien’s shoulder and tried to look intimidating. Sure the theater relied on repeat customers, but did everyone need to flirt with Damien? And no he wasn’t going next door for drinks later. He was going home with Ty and Kenneth.

( Who, again? )

I'm playing phone tag with the PT people. They got my info last Wednesday, but didn't call until Monday when I was back at work. I called them today and got 'leave your name' message. They'll probably call back when I'm working. Calling them during my lunch isn't going to work either as I can't get an actual person. I was hoping to get an appointment scheduled for next week, but since my next weekday off is next Wednesday...





Masterlist

Kenneth stacked the dishes and took them into the kitchen. Ty brought in his plate and kissed Kenneth’s cheek. “Good luck.”

Kenneth was going to need it. ( That isn’t the kind of place that’s fun alone )

 Let's see if this works. Yesterday it took almost an hour to get the chapter posted in all three places (not counting editing). Today I got it up in the other two places in less than five minutes (the trick, I think, to AO3 is to paste from Scrivener into Rick Text. Yesterday it took me more than five minutes to get the spacing right). What took me the most time was DW refused to let me cut more than a line (either in Rich Text or HTML) and I couldn't just add the cut in lj because the 'edit entry' button sent me to some feed somewhere. Plus every time I toggled from Rich Text to HTML, more gobbledygook was added between paragraphs. I had to cut all of it and paste in /br to make it work.

Lets see what happens today.

 The other day a woman asked about a wedding bouquet (we didn't have what she wanted for her tables because we sold the last one months ago). I was pretty sure by the casual way she said it, that she wasn't even really price shopping. But I gave her the honest answer that bouquets start at $50 (and that fifty was for a former coworker, all the rest are higher). She lamented how expensive everything gets where weddings are involved.

I should have just let it go, but her comment wasn't strictly true. All hand held bouquets are expensive. A mother spent $25 last week on one for her grade school daughter's first play. It's not the flowers so much (the exact same flowers when in a little vase for less than $20), it's that you have to hold everything in you hand and get it perfect  and keep it perfect as you wrap the end in ribbon. If something slips, or looks wrong at one angle, you have to take the whole thing apart. The little bouquet (a cut down glad surrounded by five roses edged with three alstro (four flowers on each)) took a good ten minutes to arrange and wrap. The same thing took two minutes to put in a vase including the ribbon around it and the price tag. I made several because the bouquet was pretty.

So I said they were labor intensive. She said they weren't. She could throw one together quickly and then she gave a sketch of what she'd do, which is the more time consuming way. I said good idea. But really you can't just through something together if someone is paying for it. Especially not for a bride's big day. Pictures of the bouquet will last longer than the marriage even if the couple die, still together, of old age. 

I think we were using different time scales. At work, anything over five minutes is a long time. 45 minutes for a wrist corsage is an eternity. Spending ten minutes on a $75 arrangement is too long. We have stuff to do. Get busy. Our regular $35 arrangement (a dozen roses, baby's breath and ferns with a matching bow in a cheap vase) takes about 2½-3 minutes if the bow's already done. Or another minute for that.

A guy came in Wednesday and needed  20 roses for his anniversary. He'd had everything planned for a weekend away, but their child got sick, and his wife said not to spend anything since they lost all that money on reservations and the giant flower arrangement he'd bought for the room. But he wanted to get her something. I talked him into one dozen roses, a lily and  six rose bouquet, and two spares (and out of both my last two red rose bunches. He asked when he needed to come back. I said, give me ten minutes. He was very surprised that it wouldn't take all day. I made it while he shopped. That's what I do.



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