Chicken Lottery -5minutefreewrite (x3)

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/the-weekend-freewrite-11-9-2019-part-3-the-dramatic-twist

Standing on the chair, she and Tom had scratched away at the bones.

What? What does standing on the chair have to do with anything? Why are these starting sentences always so convoluted? I guess they had scratched away at the bones on the ceiling? But this sentence construction is weird. Presumably, standing on the chair, she and Tom WERE SCRATCHING away at the bones…
Or, when they’d been standing on the chair, they had scratched away at the bones. But why that kind of past weirdness.

Or even, and I guess most simply. Standing on the chair, she and Tom scratched away at the bones.

Had means we’re talking about them in the now about something they did before but we’re more distant.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t mean to tell people that they should do writing differently. Apologies.

Standing on the chair, she and Tom had scratched away at the bones. Now, sitting in her living room, on that same chair, she remembered the day with vivid clarity. They had brought a dozen chicken bones into the room… chicken bones from the chicken they had just eaten. The chicken had been sent with instructions from the state lottery. Each bone was also a scratch-off ticket. Er, had been… But the instructions also stated that the scratch off substance wouldn’t scratch off below sea level. Which usually isn’t a problem, but she and Tom lived in a special kind of valley. A below-sea level valley. But not very below, so they just had to stand on chairs and hold the science-fiction scratch offs over their heads.

I know there are lots of you who don’t like government interference.

And then this one always has an I statement, which means it either has to be a quote if it’s going to fit in the freewrite, or it has to suddenly include the author’s voice as a character, when, from the first one, there would be no indication of first person. It baffles me. These aren’t random, they’re chosen, but they’re always chosen to make the writing style contort around them. I’d much prefer for the story to contort, but it’s not that. It’s a style contortion. Like Houdini.
the blue envelope on the floor
This, I like. I like the idea that there’s a distinct object that has to be important enough to show up at the beginning of the third act… or whatever. I mean, do we really write with story structure in mind… Is it apparent that I’m not doing 5/5/5? I’m just writing until I feel I can write no more. This feels like it’s just about it… but that blue envelope. Well, here She and Tom are in the present. I’m around, too, presumably, with my knowledge of your disdain for government interference… I feel like that’s just a comment on the oft-libertarian nature of many folks on blockchain platforms… this one. She and Tom looked… so, not the present, but the past, but the present past, not the past and looking further into the past, but rather the past tense where we set the story.

On the floor, there’s a blue envelope. It’s from the lottery. Tom has left her by now. Oops. I said they looked. I guess he’s there, too? I’ve confused myself. Tom and She looked at the blue envelope. It’s from the chicken bone lottery people of the great state of Kentucky Fried Chicken. A blue envelope often means a male child was born. Tom and She weren’t particularly woke, but they also thought gender reveal parties were gauche. Regardless, what baby the lottery was having didn’t seem to be important to either of them, so they left the blue envelope on the floor and went back to gazing into each others’ eyes while I stared at them and their disdain for government interference.