The Small Things
A at about the age of 2 began to keep a bag that is filled with all the small items that she loves and that have found a special place in her heart. The bag itself was one of the first gifts that her sister ever gave to her and is special in its own way.
As she has grown the items have changed although there have also been a few that remain the same. I sometimes feel as if I’m snooping when I look inside to see what she currently has stashed away but I can’t resist a peek now and again.
I love to look at the items in it and figure out what makes them special, although sometimes I can’t. It’s gotten easier as she’s gotten older to figure things out but it still sometimes stumps me. It’s a peek into the mind of a child and I love to see the mishmash of things she treasures.
I regularly go through the kids rooms to get rid of toys they don’t use and bits of garbage that have found their way in but this bag no matter how much junk I think is in it doesn’t get touched.
She even has a couple of items in it from my own childhood, a fake key, a miniature glow worm and a Minnie mouse pin. For those things to have lasted through to her childhood they were obviously of value to me when I was young as well.
It has been a great thing to have for road trips and time away from home, as long as she has this bag she has something to do and something to comfort her. She doesn’t carry it with her everywhere anymore and not all of her important stuff goes in it now, now she has a purse.
Someday I know she’ll stop doing this altogether and I can’t help but feel I’ll miss the days when a broken shell or a silly shaped whistle are no longer counted as such prized possessions.
Writing Challenge 8
Write a story about an empty glass.
Mark scrubbed a hand over his face trying to stay awake and suppress the yawn threatening to overcome him. He was so tired not only tired off the middle off the night phone calls that gave him no time to rest but the constant reminder that he didn’t really matter to this investigation.
He was getting all the jobs no one else wanted to do, the ones that weren’t going to do a damn thing to help solve this case. He was stuck sitting here guarding an empty crime scene, the guy hadn’t come back to any of the other victims homes and he wouldn’t this time either.
A yawn managed to escape its way past his tightly sealed lips just as an older man with a cane and several heavy bags clumped his way up the stairwell. He made his way past Mark giving a small nod and continuing on. Mark watched as the man stopped and looked up at the next flight of stairs breathing hard.
Finally he started up on what were clearly some painful joints each stair a struggle, he almost lost his footing 3 stairs up and came very near to tumbling backward. Mark sighed and pushed up from the chair he had been sitting on and called out “would you like a hand up?”
The man looked back at Mark with a smile on his face “are you sure I wouldn’t be pulling you away from something important?” Mark shook his head thinking again how ridiculous it was for him to be sitting here at 3 in the morning guarding an empty crime scene. Besides maybe the old guy had heard or seen something that could help them out. “No not at all, here let me grab those bags for you”
“Why thank you son, these days you can’t be sure if even an officer of the law will assist an old man” he said holding out the bags to Mark “I’m just one more flight up, I’ve been staying with my daughter the past week and I tell you she may love her old man but that girl can be hard to live with after a few days I can’t tell you how glad I’m going to be to have a little bit of peace and quiet……” He continued to talk as he slowly made his way up the stairs.
Mark instantly began to tune the man out and regret his offer of help, not only was this as boring as sitting and staring at a blank wall but if this guy had been out of town for the past week he wouldn’t have any new information about what had happened here the night before.
Mark reached the top of the stairs and called back ”which one is it?” he’d just set the bags by the old man’s door and get back to his post.
“Oh it’s the one on the right, I’ll grab those bags from you in just a second” As if anticipating Mark to ditch the bags and run he continued talking ”set them down and I’ll never get these old knees of mine to bend far enough to pick them back up” he chuckled.
Mark grimaced to himself guess he’d just have to wait. He impatiently shifted from one foot to the other as the old guy finally made his way onto the landing and fished out his keys amidst a handful of tissue and promptly dropped them.”Oh dear would you mind” Mark bent over and swept up the keys “it’s the blue one” the man said Mark quickly identified the apartment key and unlocked the door rushing inside to set down the bags.
“I’ll just put these on the table” he said noticing as he walked the stale dusty odor in this room as if it had been a year and not a week since someone was last in the place. He heard the door shut behind him and turned about to say he couldn’t stay to chat.
Instead he heard a distinctive click followed by a loud pop. He recognized the sound instantly a revolver with a silencer and it had just been fired. He dropped the bags in his hand and reached for his side arm discovering his own gun missing. A hot wet feeling was sliding across his chest and Mark suddenly found himself frozen in place barely able to breathe as he slowly collapsed to the floor.
He realized with sudden clarity that he had made what was certainly going to be a fatal error
“Tsk tsk, you should perhaps be paying just a little bit more attention” the old man scolded as he reached over Mark pulling his cuffs from his belt and quickly and efficiently snapping them in place on his own wrists. “Pity there was a small detail I wasn’t able to attend to the other night and had to come back for it. I’m hopeful your friends over looked it as well or this whole night is going to seem rather pointless”
Mark struggled to breathe staring up at the old man who had most likely just killed him and realized now that he had been fooled by what was little more than makeup and a good act. Too late he had realized the absurdity of believing an old man would be arriving home so late. “What?” Mark managed to croak out; if he was going to die like this he wanted to know what could have been so important to come back for.
“What did I forget?” he asked, Mark could barely manage to nod in answer now. “Well my dear boy I knocked over a glass last night which happened to fall into a little space behind the cabinets downstairs. Silly really but I wasn’t able to get it in the limited amount of time I had left to finish my work and I’m quite certain my fingerprints are on it. I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize what I’m doing; I’m having way too much fun for that, so I must retrieve it before your friends do”
Mark moaned in protest his eyes slowly closing, he was even more tired now than before. He forced himself to think of what had been done in the apartment downstairs and with dismay recalled that most likely the glass hadn’t been found as none of the furniture had yet been moved when forensics left for the day.
His last thought before drifting into the waiting darkness was the shocked realization that he was about to die because of an empty glass left behind a cabinet.
A Sunny Disagreement
I’m a little bit sun burnt from yesterday and already I’ve had a few disapproving comments that I wasn’t careful enough with sunscreen. I did make sure both girls were wearing sunscreen and I was wearing sunscreen myself I just happened to miss a few sections, namely my backside.
You can tell exactly how much of my bottom my bathing suit covers. It’s my back and upper thighs that are burnt. I don’t however think it’s as bad as people make it out to seem. I certainly don't think it's enough to question or critisize my approach to sun protection. It’s the first sunburn I’ve had in years and it’s not even a particularly severe burn.
To be honest I don’t like to wear sunscreen and I only do under certain conditions. I’m a little on the fence about sunscreen use. I worry about the environmental impact of sunscreens, the health impact of so much chemical exposure and the lack of scientific evidence either for or against sunscreen.
That’s not to say I’m not sun smart or that I don’t protect myself. An entire day spent at the beach is one of those few days that I do use sunscreen. That or any other time that I will be out all day. Normally I simply avoid being outside when the sun is at its hottest, I always wear a hat and try to stay in the shade as much as possible.
I regularly check the local UV report and base the amount of time I spend outside on it. I normally would have also brought beach umbrellas with us for a beach day but it was rather last minute planning and I forgot to bring them.
Many people may not agree with it but for me and my family it’s the right approach. I’ve been encouraged by our pediatrician that there is nothing wrong with how I deal with sun exposure and like everything else in life I simply try to balance things out. I’m a strong believer that very little is actually bad for you when balanced right.
I do believe there is such a thing as too much sun but I also believe there is such a thing as too little.
It still bothers me a bit that people can be so judgmental about such little things, as if I am doing something abhorrent by not slathering my kids in sunscreen constantly. I’ve done my research and have made my decision to use sunscreen as little as possible on many different factors.
If someone else decides that my approach to sunscreen or anything else for that matter isn’t right for them I’m not going to try and convince them that they are wrong. I respect their decisions are right for them even if they are not right for me and they should do the same. We don’t need to agree on what’s right for our individual selves, we should simply live and let live.
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