Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 58

This is week 58 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works. I had a hard time again this week. Guess it isn't the words.... maybe it's my brain. Agggh. Thanks again to Quilly for supplying this week's words.

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: acrobat; grocery store; ceiling fan; dandelion; bumble bee; alabaster; scissors; chartreuse; strenuously; cube Mini Challenge: iPod; poison ivy; computer; interpreter; optometrist

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

Standing under the slowly rotating ceiling fan and looking over her grocery list, Miranda was sure she had forgotten something important for her stepson’s first visit. Dandelion tea was there (that was for her), Bumble Bee tuna, mayonnaise, celery, cube steak, a bottle of Chartreuse (also for her), macaroni and cheese, children’s scissors, an Alabaster brand chocolate Easter bunny, jelly beans, candy eggs… EGGS! That’s what was missing… and food coloring… Charles had wanted to skip the Easter morning egg hunt but she had strenuously insisted on it. Those memories were among the happy ones from her own childhood and she hoped maybe they would help bond her to the little acrobat, imp, brat, angel who was her husband’s first and so far only child. She had wanted to get a dog too, but Charles had put his foot down at that. Still, she had great hopes for the visit. She so wanted little Chad to like her.

And here's my mini challenge:

His daughter’s iPod in hand, optometrist Dan Smith sat in front of his computer searching desperately for someone to serve as an interpreter for the coded messages she was receiving from someone called Poison Ivy. How was he to protect her when he couldn’t even speak the language?

The maxi Challenge:

The change from circus acrobat to grocery store owner had taken a significant amount of adjustment for Henri Chartreuse. He had strenuously resisted accepting the news when the optometrist - who happened to be his wife’s cousin – had told him he might have a brain tumor. He knew Ivy - Poison Ivy as he called her when he was cross – wanted him to retire from the high wire and briefly suspected her of plotting with the aforementioned cousin. In his heart, though, he had known something was wrong. They caught the tumor early and it had all gone very well, but his balance and agility had gone the way of the tumor. There would be no more circus life. He had thought about trying to work as an interpreter – he spoke three languages after all – but Ivy, Ivy of the alabaster skin and sky blue eyes, had wanted a store and he had never been able to refuse her anything, especially when she gave him that little smile and the sugary voice and called him Dandelion. “But Dandy-lion,” she had cooed… “a little store all our own out in the country where it is all peaceful and beautiful.“ So here he was in this little town in the middle of nowhere selling everything from Bumble Bee tuna to filet mignon, to ice cream. He’d gotten bored pretty quickly with just food so he had left that part of the business to Ivy while he expanded the store so it now carried everything from scissors, to Rubik’s Cubes, to i-pods, to ceiling fans, to computers. It was not a life he had planned on, but Ivy had been right. He was happy here. The community needed the goods they offered… and they needed also his stories of the larger world, of walking the tight rope, of elephants and jugglers and a world beyond the one they knew. On the whole he was a happy man. Sometime, he thought to himself, God gifts us in strange ways. A brain tumor seemed the end of the world when it had happened, but it had opened a new world to him… and through him and Ivy… to a host of others.

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Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: prefix, art festival, income tax, chicken noodle soup, jump rope, Dutch Treat, flowering plum tree, bats in the belfry, diamond earrings, tigers

Mini Challenge: book club, organic tea, the cow jumped over the moon, paragon of virtue, wench

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!!!!!