Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 72

This is week 72 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works. Lucky for you we have donated words for next week. I don't know who was controlling my brain last week, but yikes!

The words for this week's 10-word challenge were: corn pone, delegation, nectarines, happiness, 12 going on 13, prancing horses, magenta, butterflies, fragmentary, arthritis And for the mini: lavender cowboy, over the moon, preparation, zebra, area rug

My 10-word for this week:

Happiness for Margaret Magenta Simonson was being selected to be a member of the Corn Pone Delegation to the State Fair and getting to travel to Kansas City with Martin Milkin and his sister and her husband for a week of festivities. Being around Martin gave her butterflies in her tummy and made her feel like she was 12 going on 13, not 35 going on 36. The feelings, it seemed, were not unrequited. The first night of the convenion Martin took her out for a fancy dinner. They had a wonderful romantic meal, drank a special nectarine liquer and then went dancing. Being around Martin made Margaret forget her arthritis and shyness. He too seemed to recapture his youth and he danced around the floor like a prancing horse. It was a glorious evening and though due to the over-consumption of alcohol her memory of the moment was a bit fragmentary, much to her surprise and delight, he pulled out a diamond ring and proposed under the light of the full moon. The Fair was wonderful, the Corn Pone Delegation a great success. Though they married late in life, Margaret and Martin lived happily every after.

My mini:

Most people were surprised that Fred Franklin (aka the Lavender Cowboy of western movie fame), would live in an ornate mansion with an eclectic range of furnishing that ranged from massive Tudor pieces, to exquisite hand knotted Persian carpets that looked like area rugs in the vastness of the massive rooms, to extremely modern pieces and even one room with a zebra-skin rug and fabric pattern. In preparation for the magazine lay-out Helen had been granted a rare interview and tour of LC's (as he was called) home. To say that she was over the moon about not only the house but it's owner was to understate her feelings. She was infatuated, in love, in awe... It was something poor Fred had contended with for most of his life and it made him terribly uncomfortable. Helen's husband was not too happy about it either, but he knew it would pass when the issue was published. Her enthusiasm and passion for her work was part of what made him love her.

And the maxi:

Larry Crazner hated being the Lavender Cowboy. He had wanted to go with Magenta, but the film's director had been over the moon about some stupid folk song about a lavender cowboy and so he had been stuck with the stupid sissy name ever since. It still pissed him off. Not that the movies had been much better - all corn pone, prancing horses, heroes and villains and gushy love interests with flowers and butterflies. The movies had been aimed at kids 12 going on 13, he thought, though they had been pretty popular. They hadn't demanded much of him. He had engaged in rather fragmentary preparations, occasional public appearances and the delegation of most other duties to his assistant and his accountant...and anyone else he could foist them off on. Although his films had been produced in the days before there was a lot of marketing, there was at one point a collection of area rugs made in his likeness and that of his horse. Strange what people would buy, he thought. He had tried to break out of the Lavender Cowboy mold at one point, making a safari film. He had loved the experience of Africa and had found such great happiness in seeing elephants, lions and zebras in their natural habitat, that he had decided to make the veldt his home. The film had tanked, but Lavender Cowboy reruns left him with enough money to live in comfortable seclusion where no one remembered him or his horse which the same nutty director had insisted on naming Nectarine. Money being a bit tight, he had recently come out of retirement to do commercials for an arthritis cure. All in all, much as he had hated the role, it had given him a pretty good life and he was grateful for that. He was grateful too, that he had saved a few dozen of those area rugs. They were apparently collectors items now and would provide his son and grandchildren with a nice inheritance. Life had been good to him. Even his arthritis was paying off.

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Carol Peiffer (aka Pro Artz) has generously given me a few weeks off picking words. Here's her explanation of how she chose the first batch of 15 words: "#1: I opened everyone's response to the 7/11/09 challenge, positioned the writing on my screen, closed my eyes, moved my cursor, then chose the word closest to the cursor. If the word was one of the challenge words or a very ordinary word like "it," "is," "and," etc, I tried again. There were 16 responses, 17 including yours, so I took one word or phrase from each except yours and mine. "



Next week's 10 word challenge will be: riverboat, procrastinaton, drank, demons, invisible, candle, enough, film stars, summer job, computer

For the mini: general demeanor, surprisingly, masked man, reach, standards

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!!!!!