But I already do stuff like this.

Then there's no problem, is there? But if you say "I worry I'm going to run out of ideas", I take you as meaning precisely that. It's about the word choice - I'm paying you the respect of taking the word as I understand it as what you're trying to say. And that's what I'm answering: why should you run out of ideas, since the big picture stuff (I like that phrase, and may have to steal it) is there and possible in any glance between two strangers?

edit: just realised, that reads as still rather cranky, and I'm not, actually. It's just late-night literal.

Then there's no problem, is there?

Nope.

I think I'm going to have to try to excise "worry" from my vocabulary for awhile, until I'm sure I can use it in such a way that it's communicating what's actually going on in my head. Because it's just been crazy lately. This today was nothing compared to a conversation on Friday where a friend asked me if Annabel was walking or talking yet. I said no, not unless you count occasional staggering steps or vague maybe-words, and confessed to being just a tiny bit worried about it. By which I meant one of those back-of-the-mind niggles, fueled in part by the fact EVERY SINGLE PERSON I MEET THESE DAYS ASKS ME IF SHE'S WALKING OR TALKING! So she starts asking me why I'm worried, and I oblige by expanding on the point. Next thing I know I'd talked myself into being seriously worried when I wasn't before, and she's going all therapist on me! Oy.

So. Something's obviously broken in my ability to communicate on this particular topic. So I'm going to try my best just not to talk about it for awhile.

Yep, it's a cyclical problem. And crazy-making.

I know the feeling.

I do read an urgency in your posts about those sorts of things, Susan.

Look! It's Monday morning, and I have a drabble topic on time!!!

Challenge #48 (holding/container) is now closed. However, if you have a drabble that you've written but haven't posted yet, please feel free to post it.

Challenge #49 is a multiple-choice challenge. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Web site Look At Me. It's a gallery of found photos -- pictures that, quite literally, someone found, pictures that have no connection to the person who found them, and therefore are total strangers. Some of the photos have some information scribbled on the back or the border; in that instance, the Web site has included that information.

So. The Web site has over 450 photos right now, and every one would doubtless be evocative to *someone.* However, I'm offering up a list of 10 photos that I'd like you to choose from, just so we're all working from the same pool.

You don't have to drabble about the content of the photo itself; maybe it sparks a memory of your own, or sends you down a rabbit-hole after characters you didn't even know were in your brain.

Or, write about the contents of the photo. As always, the choice is up to you.

Feel free to write as many drabbles as you want on one specific photo, or write one drabble for each of the 10 -- again, whatever you want. When you post your drabble, please include the link to the specific photo that you're drabbling, so that people can connect drabble and image.

All that said (man, I'm long-winded today!), here are the photos for you to choose from:

Photo 1.

Photo 2.

Photo 3.

Photo 4.

Photo 5.

Photo 6.

Photo 7. (As a side note, this photo *blows me away.*)

Photo 8.

Photo 9.

Photo 10.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

For Photo 2, the women with the boat. [link]

"Aren't there any strong men around who can do this?"
"Oh, I can't do that, I might break a nail."
"I used to do all sorts of outdoorsy things, but then I decided I wanted to be more girly."

Hey, delicate flower of femininity. Real women have been known to go outside and haul heavy wooden boats around. In long skirts. While laughing. Get back to me on how that whole "girly" thing is working out for you.

For #7:

A Matter of State, 1952

"Do you have it? Did you bring it?"

He smiles, looks casual, clearing his throat as he speaks. The words are audible no farther than the distance between them. The need for secrecy is absolute: to the casual passerby, they must seem no more than two men taking a quick break from their respective Ministries. They learned their politics at Oxford, meeting men stronger than themselves, with louder causes.

The other says nothing. He's sweating and silent. Under his hand is a small packet of papers, England's secrets, passed from England to Russia on the warm grass of Hyde Park.

Photo #3

He could feel Stacie's heat as she hung on the arm of his chair, but he had no illusions, despite the charade she and Kath seemed determined to maintain. Kath had smiled and raised those kempt brows at him as she tucked herself small on the floor beside his chair, appearing to sit at his feet. But all the heat in those green eyes beamed right past him, directly at the fragrant Stacie, her voice low and husky from cigarettes, whisky and lust. When Edie called to them to "smile!" Charles was the only one to look up. The two women were too lost in each other to hear or acknowledge anyone else. The wink of the flashbulb intruded, though; each of them blinked and looked away, out among the mingled, though neither moved, and he could still feel the tension stretched between them like a live thing.

Photo #10.

The Bunny Brigade

The picture always made me laugh. Four sisters, all with kerchiefs wrapped around their heads, the ends tied into startling little bunny ears that protruded from the top like cloth TV antennas. My mother, Aunt Ruth, Aunt Rose, and Aunt Barbara in the low fashion of the forties. There's a stranger in the picture, a college friend of my mother's whose name I've forgotten. When will all their names be forgotten by anyone who remembers? Will this picture, too, end up someday in the dust bin for faded photographs like the dust bunnies that are shaken from a broom?

Fabulous idea for a drabble. I love all the ones that have been posted before. Connies made me laugh, Deb's made me want to know what happened next, Beverly's was wonderfully sultry and tense, and Sail's made me choke up.

Photo #5

It's easy to snigger at photos from that era. Everything was sublimely ugly - the clothes, the hair, the oh-so-fake wood paneling. Just one look, and you knew that room reeked of cigarette smoke.

But with pictures of my own childhood, it's different. The room wasn't ugly; it was where I watched cartoons, and where Dad begged me to sit through the Sunday afternoon Western (I bet you'll like this one). The clothes weren't ugly; they were my mom's clothes, and I coveted them. And yes, I can smell the cigarette smoke and Lemon Pledge, but it smells like home.