Weekly Wordzzle Challenge: Week 129

It's week 129 of the Weekly (formerly known as "Saturday") Wordzzle Challenge.  Argent - whose wordzzle novel about the Demon Harold I look forward to eagerly every week - kindly sent some words for next week for which I'm very grateful, though they look like they may be kind of challenging. Sorry I'm posting so very late. Had another tough time tonight getting anything written.

Words for this week's 10-word challenge were: 

church, tongue in cheek, butterflies, charcoal, neurotic, save our schools, candles, solitaire, matches, chatter box  And for the mini: march, bald headed man, bones, photo album, mail box

My 10-word:

Wearing her Save our Schools T-shirt and jeans Miranda Longly approached St. John's Church, her mother's voice whispering in her ear that she was not properly dressed. She loved the t-shirt, though. A local artist who went by the name of Solitaire - something of a chatterbox, but incredibly talented - had done the art work - a  magical charcoal drawing of children chasing butterflies that gave a sense of color in spite of being black and white. It was really quite magical. Even so, she entered the church with some trepidation. Her deeply neurotic mother had taught her daughter to drag shame around with her like it was her best friend, so she worried that she was under dressed, worried that she might need matches to light the votive candles, worried that the priest would sense her apostacy and drive her out or demand that she immediately follow him into the confession booth. And as if on cue, Father Jerome, greeted her with a big smile, looking much as he had in her childhood. "Back so soon?" he chuckled, seemingly delighted by  his own tongue in cheek humor. His joke easing her fear, she relaxed a little and took a deep breath:  "I need to talk to you, Father. It's a matter of life and death...."



My mini:

Fredrika Simpson opened her mailbox eagerly. Today was the day the package with her first novel was due to arrive. It was called March Bones and was published under the pseudonym of Stan Credence.. She smiled at the photo of the smiling bald headed man on the back cover. She had taken it from an old family photo album. Dad would be so pleased that he was getting his day of fame, even if it was posthumous. 

My mega:

Megan Church sat looking through her grandmother's old photo albums.  It was hard to believe the vibrant young woman sitting in a field of flowers, her charcoal black hair flowing wild, eyes shining with delight at the two butterflies she was holding was her very neurotic mother. A few pages later, there was another photo of her mother standing next to a young man with a tie-died shirt bearing a skull and cross bones. He had long scraggly hair and something about him seemed familiar, though she didn't know why. It was hard to imagine her mother hanging out with him, though. Puzzling. Her grandmother across the room playing solitaire looked at her young granddaughter and said, "You're very quiet my little chatterbox.  What's on your mind?"  Looking at pictures she replied.  Who's this with my mother? Seeing the book Megan was holding, her grandma couldn't help smiling.  That's not your mother, dear. Those are pictures of your grandpa and me.  That was at one of the marches on Washington to protest the war. Wasn't Grandpa handsome? He was quite a rabble rouser in his day.  She could see Megan trying to compute that the handsome boy in these photos was once the same bald headed man she knew as Grandpa.  There was another photo of him standing with a crowd of people holding candles sitting under a big sign that said Save our Schools. Grandpa was really handsome, Megan muttered quietly. "Was?" her grandmother chuckled, tongue in cheek? "He's still handsome to me."  This one taken a few years later at the Forest Hill Tennis matches has always been one of my favorites." Hard to believe Grandpa and I were that young once, isn't it? she asked her granddaughter. For us too sometimes. And then sometimes I feel like I haven't aged a day.  But you want to see pictures of your mother.  That's this book... Here's one when she was about your age. She and your grandpa built a mail box together. It was a work of art. It stood in front of our old house for 25 years and gave me joy every time I looked at it. It had such love and wonderful memories built into it. You know I saved it when we moved... I'll show it to you later. It's in the attic somewhere, I think.... and off she went on story after story until she noticed the drooping eyes of her listener and quietly closed the books. "How about a nice cup of cocoa before bed?"  Thanks for listening to me. Afraid I did get to talking didn't I? Guess tonight I'm the chatterbox.  I love you, Megan. The the best grandchild a woman could ask for.

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Thank you to Argent for this week's words... 

Words for next week's 10-word challenge are: talented, oak, speaker, junk, wrapper, pencil, ocean, chatter, bullet, steamy

And for the mini: I-pad, Chinese whispers, CD, sparkling, cat food

Thank you for playing! Newcomers can check here for some guidelines (and they are only guidelines, not rules) to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week!