Drabble for J.C. Martin Birthday Bash Blogfest

Birthday Bash Blogfest!

J.C Martin’s awesome blog is officially one year old.  To celebrate, she is hosting a blogfest.  Here are the rules as posted on her blog.

Write a story (or a personal account) that begins with the phrase:
“A lot can happen in a year…”

The catch? It must be a drabble, i.e. exactly 100 words long, no more, no less. The starter phrase will not be included in your word count.

Some guidelines:

• Proper nouns (names, etc.) count as just one word, e.g. ‘New Mexico’ is one word
• Hyphenated phrases count as one word, e.g. ‘self-defence’ is one word
• I shall be lax with conjunctions: you may count them as one word! 

I wrote two.

“Ding. You have new mail.” So I did. Mail from the new local literary magazine in town. The debate raged. Open it, don’t open it. I had submitted the poem two weeks earlier. Don’t’ think, Susan, just do it. I pounded it out and hit the send key. Done. No turning back. When I retired the prior year, writing was definitely not on my bucket list; and certainly not poetry. They accepted it for publication!  My first credit not on a blog site. Instead of making the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ lists recommended for retirees, I followed what makes me smile.

 

 

“Ray, what did we do about the heat problem last summer?”

“We didn’t know each other until eight months ago.”

Right. Last year at this time I had given up  finding my soul mate, immersed myself in school and basically hid from the world. 

 You never know  when you’ll find love.

I met Ray through an online chat site. We talked for a couple of days before we met. We took it slowly; my ex had left me shattered in pieces. I thought I would never be whole again. And now Ray is sitting across from me in our kitchen.