Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 49

This is week 49 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works.

I'm really happy that Wordzzles has fallen on my one-year anniversary of blogging and grateful to all of you who play regularly. I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but I did a little something special (I hope it's special) coming up with the words for next week's challenge. Can you all guess what it is?

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: author, Wall Street, rage, lemons, channel changer, cookies and milk, candelabra, Pine Cone Motel, illusory, fluffer-doodle And the mini challenge: war, wooden shoes, flabbergast, chimera, vodka martini

Here's my ten-word offering for this week:

Frank Johnson, financial broker turned author, sat in his hideout at the Pine Cone Motel, where the police had stashed him for his own protection, mindlessly clicking from station to station with the channel changer and scanning the Wall Street Journal for news. He nibbled nervously at a meal of cookies and milk. He had expected some anger, but was stunned by the unbridled rage his former colleagues, several of whom had made death threats against him. He missed his beautiful, witty wife Sarah and their sweet life together. She was his heart and had encouraged him to go public with all that he knew. He missed her voice calling him Fluffer-doodle (it was their little joke because of his problem with excessive flatulence). The strength – the miracle - of her love and support had given him the courage to speak out about the illusory nature of what he had called in his book the “candelabra boom” – prosperity that was all flickering shadows and profits built on quicksand. So many lemons passed off as lemonaid by people who knew what they were doing. He had named names. The names were out to get him. He was scared. But Sarah was out their waiting for him. That knowledge kept him going and fed his spirit as cookies and milk or even bourbon could not do.

And here's my mini challenge:

I was totally flabbergasted when I woke up and saw a giant rabbit wearing armor, carrying a lance and shouting, “I declare war on foxes,” but then I realized it was a chimera born of a half dozen vodka martinis foolishly imbibed in quick succession. What still confuses me, though, is that the wooden shoes it was wearing were at the foot of my bed when I woke up the next morning. I’m still trying to figure out where they came from.

And for the mega challenge:

Sipping her third vodka martini, best selling author Miranda Muggleson was beginning to realize that fame was both fleeting and illusory. Her first book - Chimeras and Rabbits in Wooden Shoes - had been all the rage for about six months. She had done the talk show circuit. At one point you could click the channel changer to almost any station and you would have found her there. She had shared lemon meringue pie with Oprah, and enjoyed cookies and milk with Ellen DeGeneris, and even been wined and dined by Charlie Rose. The world had been her oyster. She had it made. Then she had taken most of her massive profits and invested them with a well know broker on Wall Street, dreaming of a future of mansions, candelabras and limousines. Now she was flabbergasted to discover that she had been taken. Her fortune had shrunk to a pittance and she was once again a nobody. Worst of all, she had gone from penthouse living to a room at the Pine Cone Motel. Time, she guessed to write another book. Maybe she would call this one: Fluffer-doodle Wars.

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This is the last week I'll be doing a Vanity Wordzzle. This is the first one I posted almost a year ago when Wordzzles started. It's one of my favorites that I ever did.

This week’s vanity wordzzle: Napoleon, Zeus, underpants, Madonna, cellulite, 47 flavors, Arnold Schwartzennager, Barbara Walters, "Don't come near me or I'll call the police," power

Strange dream. Being interviewed by Barbara Walters, dressed only in a bra and underpants, the cellulite rippling over my whole body in hideous, rolling waves of flesh, shame and humiliation numbing, but I had to be brave, to not show my embarrassment. That would be worse. She was interviewing three of us at once: Me, Napoleon Bonepart, and Zeus. Why I had to be with them, I don't know. Just to make my insecurity even deeper, I guess. Anyway, Barbara asks each of us to name someone we admire and tell why. Napoleon picks Arnold Schwartzenagger because he's strong, relentless and determined. Zeus says Madonna because she reminds him of Artemis only she's really sexy. I pick (I don't want to be predictable) LynnAndrews because she consistently manages to be simultaneously dim-witted and profound. Then she got personal and we each had a tearful catharsis just before the commercial break. The sponsor was Baskin Robbins so we each had to name our favorite of the 47 flavors. I picked Chocolate Chip, Zeus liked peach, Napoleon said Rocky Road, and Barbara said Strawberries 'N Cream. It was all so odd. Outside, a woman's voice shouted, "Don't come near me or I'll call the police," but we were taping, so instead of checking on her, they just closed the window. I started to protest but Barbara had asked her next question, her voice redolent with its profundity: "I'm curious, given your respective lives, how would each of you define power?" Zeus said it was control and authority and manipulating events. Napoleon thought it was military superiority. I said I thought those were illusions of power, that real power came from trusting and loving yourself, because then no one could threaten your inner peace. Needing to control others was just a response to the belief that otherwise they would control you. Power wasn't about control, it was about being. Napoleon just snorted when I said that and said I was a jerk. Zeus threw a thunderbolt and left the room. Barbara Walters said, "How interesting," in a nervous voice which made it clear that she felt she had lost control and didn't know how to get it back. Then inspiration struck: "Tell me, do you always do interviews on national TV in just your underwear?" Outside, the woman's screams grew louder.

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Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: ubiquitous, do you see what I see, getting a word in edgewise, wild goose chase, grandmother of five, Freemasons, Pacific Paradise, everything and nothing, insanity prevails

Mini Challenge: shortening the distance, it’s all about bloggers, the Fortress at Pigeon Falls, finding Pam, a raven’s nest

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!