Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sillybration Week in My Little Corner: Post #4

Glimpses into the Life and Times of Mrs. Dunwoodie (Continued)

“I know Mrs. Dunwoodie volunteered her services in chiromancy at Mount Tiara’s Community Haunted House,” Mr. Fenster said. “But you know she thinks that means giving people a little adjustment by smacking ‘em upside the back of the head as they walk past, right?”


Ruthlessly following the HOA protocol Mrs. Dunwoodie positioned her Viking helmet on her head, armed herself with her ax and in denial of her own promethean personality destroyed all evidence of her neighbor’s decorative expressions of same.


“Being a skilled gradgrind, Mrs. Dunwoodie eventually gets under your skin and into your closets,” warned Mr. Fenster. “But you may not realize it until the skeletons are rattling out.”


“You may have heard Mrs. Dunwoodie referring to herself as a 21st Century woman,” said Mr. Fenster, “but the only thing neoteric about her is her knee replacement.”


“If my Viking helmet doesn’t discourage that cat burglar from terrorizing Mount Tiara, this ought to do the trick,” Mrs. Dunwoodie muttered, putting the final touches on the alarm system she’d devised featuring sounder grunts and squeals.


Mrs. Dunwoodie took first place in Mount Tiara Community Clinic’s third annual nosocomial gurney race but only because she hooked her Viking helmet by invisible wire to the zip line hidden in the ceiling.


“I asked Mrs. Dunwoodie why she kept looking over her shoulder at herself in the mirror as she ran on the treadmill,” Mr. Fenster said, choking on a chuckle. “And the surd woman said she was trying to follow the advice in Proverbs 14:7, the one that says ‘escape quickly from the company of fools; they’re a waste of your time, a waste of words’.”



I believe I have succeeded in confining her once again
but she's a slippery one. She might be ba-ack.
Dear brave reader. Let me congratulate you on surviving this onslaught of terrifying verbiage and the escapades of Mrs. Dunwoodie. I hope you can agree with Mr. Fenster when he confessed, “Although she’s an annoyance, I prefer Mrs. Dunwoodie on those days when her most prevalent personality is a flaneur rather than when it is a flaunter; with the former our eyesight is at least spared grievous injury.” 











Sunday, October 28, 2012

Sillybration Week in My Little Corner: Post #3


Glimpses into the Life and Times of Mrs. Dunwoodie (Continued)

“Better call the veterinarian to bring a neuroleptic from the horse stables down the canyon,” Mr. Fenster advised the paramedics trying to restrain a Viking regalia-clad Mrs. Dunwoodie from axing the trees around Mount Tiara’s community club house.


In releasing Mrs. Dunwoodie from protective custody and returning her belongings to her, including the Viking helmet, Mount Tiara’s law enforcement unwittingly participated in an epitasis resulting in a confrontation at the community’s gated entrance where our infamous heroine had taken it upon herself to stand guard against the postal service.


While visiting a cooperative agriculture center, Mrs. Dunwoodie assured the farmer, concerned about how his cows were uncharacteristically milling about and mooing loudly, that it was her numinous Viking helmet eliciting the bovine blessings.


“I thought Mrs. Dunwoodie said she had an appointment to see a foot doctor for orthopedic shoes but from the looks of it, he’s given her the same orthogonal pair worn by Frankenstein’s monster instead,” Mr. Fenster said as the woman lurched up the sidewalk to her front door.


“Yes, Mrs. Dunwoodie was once a Radio City Music Hall Chorus Girl, and no, she is not practicing her Mount Tiara Talent Show routine when she does that little hop and kick,” explained Mr. Fenster. “It’s a little tic she has whenever she heads in a dextral direction.”


“No, Mrs. Dunwoodie,” Mr. Fenster raised his hands in protest, “This is not the time for an intimate lesson in paleography, regardless of having had those tattoos applied in your long-ago seafaring days.”


Mount Tiara residents knew it was ten-foot pole time when Mrs. Dunwoodie started pawing the ground with her foot, the whites of her eyes turned sinopia and steam escaped from her nostrils.


“Please keep in mind that the red pomiform kettle on Mrs. Dunwoodie’s porch does not contain what it resembles, the bulge in her cheek is not a piece of bubblegum and her spittin’ aim is far from accurate,” warned Mr. Fenster as he led the way across the yard.



(To be continued…)

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Sillybration Week at My Little Corner: Post #2


Glimpses into the Life and Times of Mrs. Dunwoodie (Continued)

Coyote snickered, well, as much as a coyote with a mouthful of synthetic blond hair can snicker, at the thought of poor Mrs. Dunwoodie awakening poolside with a sunburned bald spot wondering who avulsed her wig.


“She won’t be taking this decumbent,” sighed old Mr. Fenster when dawn’s early light revealed the toilet paper streamers decorating his neighbor Mrs. Dunwoodie’s lawn and trees.


Far back in the dusty reaches of Mrs. Dunwoodie’s aging mind, a smidgen of inwit nestled, a smidgen which kept her from rushing out in broad daylight and rolling herself up in the toilet paper streamers festooning her yard.


“One good thing about Mrs. Dunwoodie wearing shorts this late in the summer is that when the hair on her legs begins to inspissate, I know to prepare for an unusually cold winter,” Mr. Fenster said to the furnace repair man.


Not only did the landscaping yob assault Mrs. Dunwoodie’s ears and sinuses as he used the leafblower for three hours, in his sloppy handling of the noisome machine he sent her brand new wig off on a new flight.


Because it was more like a bottomless pit than a handbag, in which Mrs. Dunwoodie subsumed everything but the kitchen sink, the Mount Tiara Women’s Club always avoided asking her to take the deposit to the bank.


“Too bad Mrs. Dunwoodie has no understanding of apollonian pie making,” Mr. Fenster said at the Labor Day block potluck as he spit out a nasty unidentifiable glob of pastry. “Savory and sweet should be combined to bring harmony to the tummy and she definitely did not bring it.”


Barely able to see out from under the old horned helmet, worn by her Viking ancestors in a time of spoliation and passed down through the generations, Mrs. Dunwoodie still managed to make quite an impression at the Mount Tiara Women’s Club Autumn Tea Extravaganza.


(To be continued…)


Monday, October 22, 2012

Sillybration Week in My Little Corner: Post #1


For some months now I’ve participated in today’s word on Brandilyn Collins: Seatbelt Suspense Facebook page. My creative juices spurted with truly frightening results and an ominous character came to life, one I hope you never have to meet face-to-face.


Watch out! Apparently she has escaped the confines of my word processing program and has taken over here on my blog.

And beware, readers. Other horrors await you should you decide to proceed. If monstrous words frighten you, if vocabulary of the weird and grotesque makes you squirm, if terminology dug from the depths of a thesaurus raises the hair on the back of your neck, then that is what you may face. You have been warned.



Glimpses into the Life and Times of Mrs. Dunwoodie

“The worst thing that could be said about the Mount Tiara condominium development was the tendency of the architects to platitudinize in their designing expression,” the real estate agent explained to the eager young couple looking for their first home, all blissfully unaware the worst thing was actually Mrs. Dunwoodie.


Having been elected the new Home Owners’ Association President, Mrs. Dunwoodie considered it her proof of being impeccant in all decisions regarding community improvements or lack thereof.


The HOA had never seen Mrs. Dunwoodie more philippic than when she campaigned for the removal of five weeds from her neighbor’s back yard.


Perhaps it was the spit spray accompanying the ten minutes of Mrs. Dunwoodie’s philippic that made it feel like a decennial flood but everyone wished they’d worn their high waders.


“Mrs. Dunwoodie has switched her philippic into high gear this time and nobody is getting a mora in edgewise,” observed Mr. Fenster at the HOA board meeting.


If Mrs. Dunwoodie had only taken the time to embrace mnemonics when she had a mind to do so, the money she’d stashed away in various nooks and crannies would be available to her now.


It came as no surprise to the residents of Mount Tiara, when the new neighbor offended Mrs. Dunwoodie by parking his work truck on the driveway rather than in the garage, that as a schoolgirl along with elocution she’d taken malediction as an elective subject.


(To be continued…)

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Creativity Attack


Halloween approaches. It’s an event of controversy for some. I wasn’t allowed to go trick or treating as a kid. My best recollection of the reason my parents gave had to do with it being a form of begging. When my kids were little, I felt uncomfortable associating with anything remotely pagan or demonic so placed restrictions on our participation. Over the years I’ve come to believe that dressing up in silly costumes has no more to do with demonization than playing at peek-a-boo has with becoming invisible.


On the other hand I want to use every opportunity to bring blessing and light into my little corner of the world, right? I’ve been trying to remember something I came across in The Message not too long ago that I want to incorporate into my front door seasonal décor. This morning through working on my Bible study lesson I was directed to Ephesians 5:11-16. Woohoo! There’s the verse!

“Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.

Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!”

A scary yet reassuring reminder not just for Halloween!

 And here's where the attack of creativity took me.

Front door side window.




Wind chimes catch more than the breeze.



Protected by a ziplock bag...
...the breeze makes the card twist and turn.




What’s your approach to Halloween?

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Not That One


My delight is five-fold in hosting a guest blogger today.
·        Delight #1:  She is the granddaughter of Francine Arnold, author of Not My Will, one of the first Christian novels I ever read and loved.
·        Delight #2:  Her talent as a fictional writer, in her own right, earns my high admiration.
·        Delight #3:  She offered to lend her exceptional talent to a post over here in my little corner.
·        Delight #4:  After giving her a few topical options, she chose hats (ecstatic sigh).
·        Delight #5:  Although not having read my Mad Hatter post, her fictional story reflects a glimmer of that experience, so to me this is a divinely-inspired piece.

Please help me welcome the one-and-only Jan Ackerson. And would you do me the honor of showing her your appreciation by visiting her blog One Hundred Words as soon as you can. Thank you and enjoy.


Not That One

On Sunday mornings, Betty stood with her mother at her closet, watching as she picked the hat she’d wear to church. There were four hat boxes—a white one, a blue striped one, a yellow one, and one with a red ribbon. Mother never picked the yellow one.

“Which hat today, Little Bee?”

Betty took her mother’s gloved hand and played with the pearl button at her wrist. “Mama, the yellow one?”

Her mother laughed. “Not that one, Bee.” She took the hat from the striped box.

“Why not, mama?”

Her mother paused, her hand at her throat. “Not that one.”





(Aaagh! Embarrassing update: I misspelled Jan's grandmother's name. It's actually Francena H. Arnold. I knew that; the book is on my bookshelf. Apologies galore.)