The exercise:
Show me what you've got for: the offer.
T-minus six months until baby is due to arrive. Goodness me.
Kat's dad and I got the final beam constructed and installed tonight. The plan is to pick up the joists tomorrow and try to figure out what we're doing with them. Once that's sorted out we'll get them all attached and then we get to explore our options for the decking.
Can't wait to get this thing finished.
Mine:
The stink of the open-air sewers hung heavily in the air, assaulting us from every angle. Every surface seemed coated in it, greasy with the castoffs of a society too vainglorious to ever be seen in such a place. I may have belonged there but I should have gone alone.
I should never have brought my daughter.
We wound our way through the crowd of lost souls and diminishing futures, hand in hand. I did my best to shield her from contact, to keep her pure and untainted. There was no real hope for either though, not once we set foot in the market.
The stall I sought was at the far end of a narrow alley lined with snoring drunks. My daughter squeezed my fingers a little more tightly as we approached the three-toothed vendor but gave away no other indication that she might be scared. Such a brave one, my little girl.
"What you want, Rogers?" the vendor asked, cleaning the dirt out from beneath his fingernails with a rusting knife.
"The same as always, Oliver." It was difficult by then to not sound as resigned as I felt. "Food or work. Work or food. You got either?"
"No jobs today," Oliver said. He took a moment to hock a wad of dark saliva on the ground before continuing. "A bit of food though, if you can afford it."
"What's your price?" Some questions you ask even though you don't want to know the answer.
