The Two Takes

Here's a funny story:  We had the idea to do a piece of short fiction this week with the help of a writing prompt generator we found online. One of us (me) tried the thing and when the first random story idea was "A Paladin Goes Gambling with a Prince" that person (still me) passed the link to the website over to their partner (him) to choose. I was thinking "I'm glad he's doing that, I don't know what I'd write with that prompt." and I didn't tell him any of that.  He chose, it came up with the same idea, and here we are. He's learning that this is what happened as he's reading this now, right along with you.  We wrote whatever came to us, one of us (me again) cheated a little. We both hope you enjoy them though.  Her Take: Obviously, it was the worst night of her life. The five-dollar-bill her mom had given her was creased and sweaty from being clamped in Chelsie’s angry palm and wouldn’t unfold as she tried to hand...

Photo by Cameron Fillery on Unsplash There are only a few topics where we would claim serious expertise, and this is one of them. Not because we have any kind of solution... oh, heavens no... just trust us when we say that we've done the research. His Take: I would rather have my lips glued together with a hot glue gun than have insomnia. It is truly one of the worst experiences ever. You’re dead tired, but you just can’t fall asleep. Spoiler for the end of this article: I don’t know how to cure it. Besides taking a sleeping pill, which is fine, but it’s not a permanent solution. I know that scientist around the world are pretty busy working on things that are a little more urgent than insomnia. But I can’t imagine how much money the world loses because of it. Let’s say your up all night, finally the times comes when, even if you COULD, you can’t go to sleep because it’s time to get ready for work. If you think you’re going to give your best performance at work that day, yo...

This week's blog started with a q uintessentially Central Wisconsin discussion about a bar. Him: "Hey, you know that bar that used to be right on the curve as you went into town? Is that still there?" Her: "You know, I can remember my Dad taking me and my brother in there so he could have a beer on the way home from hunting." You know, normal stuff. It led us to think about what things our parents did that seemed fine at the time, but just wouldn't fly today.. Her Take: As a child, I was almost, but not entirely, feral. I’m sure my folks wouldn’t love me saying that, but I think we can all agree they’re not reading this. (Unless one of you rats me out…) Don’t get me wrong, my parents did everything they could reasonably do. They worked hard, took good care of my brother and me, and, occasionally, they just needed us to not be in the house. So, we went outside. I remember being vaguely dirty almost all of the time starting at the age of s...

Photo by Jared Sluyter on Unsplash His Take: I love writing. And I love writing this blog. I’m gonna go a little “inside baseball” here, but I get to read Sue’s take, when you guys do, and I love it that way because sometimes we have two versions of the same opinion, sometimes we have very different opinions, and sometimes we take the subject in two totally different directions. I think this week is gonna be one of those weeks. Making friends isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Far from it. Most friends of mine come from work-either coworkers or customers, or people that I went to school with. In school, I ran with the Drama Club. Our motto was “please don’t punch us in the face, we’re in the arts.” My reason for joining the Drama Club was because I didn’t make the basketball team. If I remember right, I think the coach cut me halfway during the first practice. Since there was no extracurricular activity where you could talk about comic books and watch Star Wars, I went...