Friday, October 30, 2015

Sept/Oct Ravelry Challenge

I am a member of a Forum called, Ravelry.  A group on there that I am a prat of, has bi-monthly writing challenges.  They have three predetermined elements that you must incorporate into a story that is between 1,000 and 10,000 words long.  This months elements were:

  Person: Prisoner
  Place: Planet (other then Earth)
  Thing: Pizza

Those three elements fit perfectly into a story that my siblings and I were doing.

Bertie's Diary



Macatoutou, November 12, 2118 

Dear Diary,
  I swear, some days I could scream!  I just want to bust loose, go somewhere, DO something!  I know that I was looking forward to the adventure of starting a new life on Tasural, but I never expected THIS!!  When we had to crash land on this unknown planet (which we have since named Macatootu) I was kind of excited, but now?  The loneliness and solitude is enough to drive a person insane!  It's not that there aren't people here (there are 25, Captain Dan, Alessandro, Chiara, the 13 Robertsons and we 9 MacKays), but the monotony and sameness (if that is even a word) of everything gets to me.   We see the same people, the same sights, eat the same food.  I feel like a prisoner here.  We have been here for 9 months now.  I just want out!  I want to rise, fly, touch the sky!  I want nice, cheesy, bubbly hot pizza from 'Giovanni's'.  I want to go bowling with my friends at 'Bill's Place'.  I want to hang out with Lizzie and hold her adorable little girls.  I want to travel with Beth and go see our favorite places again.  Go hiking with Kitty on our favorite Mountain.  Run races with Marie in the rain.  Go horseback riding with Emmie and Lynn.  Lie in the backyard and watch shooting stars and laughing over the dumbest things, with Beth, Nate, Chloe and Trevor.  Don't get me wrong, Franz and Gertie are two of the best friends a girl could ever have.  And there are lots of things that we do together and have great enjoyment doing.  Like practicing archery, and having a contest to see whose arrows get farther.  Franz and I swordfighting.  Playing songs together, me on the violin, Gertie on the cello and Franz on the guitar.  But sometimes, you get tired  of seeing the same people, even if they are your best friends.  And I know that Franz and Gertie share these feelings.  They may not say anything, but I can see it in their eyes and sense it in their behavior.  And I don't always feel like this.  Sometimes I feel perfectly fine.  Franz, Gertie and I, have gone exploring together and guess what we found? AN ISLAND WITH REAL LIVE DRAGONS!!!!!!  And you know how much I love Dragons!!  On one of our visits there, we found a baby Dragon with a broken wing and I brought it home with me.  It took a while to convince some people (Eleanor in particular) to let me keep it, but I finally got them to agree.  We have determined that it is a male, so I have named him Fionn mac Uail, after the Irish hero.  And he is so adorable!  He isn't much bigger then my hand, and he will sit on my fingertips and make little rumbling noises (it sounds like a kitten purring).  He is a dark red and Franz likes teasing that he (Fionn), is the same color as my hair.  Franz has become an awful tease lately.  I know that one of his greatest pleasures these days is arousing my temper and he knows how to do it only too well.  He is such a plague!  The children are enjoying it for the most part.

  The 6 older ones (Christopher, Otto, Jordan, Anton, Jennifer and Louisa) are enjoying sneaking off to explore.  Captain Dan loves going after them and bringing them back.  Especially, Jen and Lou.  There is this animosity between them that is real, but then again it isn't.  They don't hate each other, but the girls will make nasty faces at him and sit there making their plans for sneaking off in a most audible whisper and Captain Dan sits there telling them how he will catch them.  He gets a lot of fun out of it.  The other day, he came home hauling a soaking wet girl under each arm.  They were making the nastiest faces I have ever seen at him and he had a very triumphant grin on his face.  Turns out he had caught them jumping off a cliff (he says it wasn't very high) into the water, and then swimming back to the shore for another jump.  You should have heard the lecture that Eleanor and Chiara (as the oldest females they are the pseudo 'mothers') gave them!  Gertie and I had to leave the room because Jen and Lou looked so repentant (not!) and Captain Dan was so triumphant!  Plus I have to admit, jumping off a cliff into the water does sound like fun!  That night, after the children were in bed, Franz, Gertie and I were teasing Captain Dan about sneaking off and doing it ourselves and telling him that he would never be able to catch us!  He just laughed and shook his finger at us and said that the 3 of us were worse then the 12 younger children put together!

  Zia and Erich have been attempting to catch parrots.  A very noisy green kind abound on this island.  Since we have been surrounded by them, I have been assured that Zia and Erich come by their mutual nickname of 'Parrots' honestly!  Neither, the parrots or Zia and Erich ever stop making noise!

  And since we are talking about the children's escapades, I'll tell you what the others have done lately.
  A couple of weeks ago, when we got up, it was fairly cold outside.  Jen and Lou (it was their turn, along with Jordan and Anton, to bring water from the spring) hadn't thought that they needed their shoes.  When they discovered that they did, Jordan and Anton very obligingly offered to bring their sisters their shoes.  We should have been warned by their extreme politeness.  A few minutes later, we heard Jen and Lou yelling in unison, "JORDAN! ANTON! I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!"  When we reached them, Jen and Lou were beating up the boys who were laughing so hard they couldn't even defend themselves.  They had put frogs in the girls' shoes.  Oh boy!!!  Well let's just say that I am glad I am not in the boys' shoes!  Not only did they get themselves into major trouble, but Jen and Lou are awful when they retaliate!!  I don't know what they did to the boys (if they even have), but they appear to be pretty satisfied with themselves.

As for Christopher and Otto (or Chrissy Lumby and Gussie, as Gertie and I call them), they attempted to sneak off into the woods in the morning and stay all day and all night.  I don't know how they thought they could get away with that!  They were only gone for about half an hour before Jack and Karl went after them.  They were promptly grounded for a week.
As for the younger four, Glory, Gretl, Luke and Curt, they have been pretty good.  Glory and Gretl keep catching spiders and bringing them into the house to show us their latest find.  We all would prefer that they kept them outside and are working on that with them.  And when we went to do the laundry the other day, we found rocks in Luke and Curt's pants pockets.  That's boys for you!  I am glad that we don't have Legos for them to string all over the house though!

I know that this entry has ended on a more cheerful note then it began.  But that is how I am.  Franz calls it, 'the rubber ball personality'.  Somedays I hate that I am that way and other days I love it.  But I know that the most important thing is to keep trusting in God and believing that He will give me the strength to make it through the rough times.  Well, Dear Diary, that is all for now.  Talk to you later.

Roberta Maisie MacKay



2 comments:

  1. "the rubber ball personality" - I like it. :) That happens to me sometimes, although it can go the other way too, and I end up more depressed than when I started. And it sounds like Jordan and Anton are typical boys. :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I had a lot of fun writing this.

      Yeah those boys. In case you can't tell, I have younger brothers so I am well versed in the ways of young boys!!

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