Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Cruisin' For A Bruisin'?

Is Mother Nature setting us up for a big fall? My guess is Yes. It's been all sunny and warmish, the snow is melting merrily away, and the birdies are singing in the trees. I just cut down last year's raspberry canes for Durwood and they were budding nicely. You know that means that we're in for more snow, more freezing rain, more of everything winter-y and yucky. It's Wisconsin, and we do winter in a big way and for way longer than the 3 months allotted for it on the calendar. This is just a tease before the final smackdown., you mark my words.

Still not much writing mojo around here, but I am still doing prompts, so here goes last night's effort.

March 8--San Blas Islands, Panama. It was like a movie set, right down to the uneven and rickety-looking dock that scribed a straggly T in the shallows at the shoreline. The soaring queen palms grew close enough that hammocks were strung from one trunk to the next and the row of thatched huts reminded Angela of the little molded plastic houses you bought when you played Monopoly. She had read in the cruise brochure that they would spend one day on the "private island" owned by the cruise lines, but riding toward it in one of the launches she was dismayed at how much like a set their destination actually was, how contrived and artificial it looked. She imagined the island teeming with the sudden influx of a few thousand people all determined, frantic to have fun, and then its rapid return to desolation as the sun set and the last launch sailed away.
She watched the loud and colorful tourists spilling out of the boats ahead of hers like grade-schoolers on a field trip destroy the peace of the little islet. "I think I"m getting a headache," she said to the launch driver, "I'll just ride back to the ship with you." He smiled.

Oh, Angela, now you are convinced that the cruise was a mistake. Tsk, tsk.
--Barbara

1 comment:

Bob said...

More winter?! Say it isn't so. On a completely unrelated note, I like that you've got a rotation schedule on the page. Cool beans.
Bob;-)