Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the prompts are supplied by Margaret Adamson and Friend and can be found here.

This week's words/prompts are:

1. choleric
2. investment
3. curlers
4. agenda
5. lolloping
6. anosmia

and/or:

1. pawnbrokers
2. ackee
3. hen
4. articulate
5. speeding
6. ruler

Here is my story:

As I came in the door, I called out, "I'm home! Did anything happen that I need to know about?" and was answered by my daughter Karen. "Really mum, why do you always think we get up to mischief the minute you leave the house?" I gave her 'that' look. "Don't look at me like that," she said. "It wasn't me who used your best curlers trying to make the dog look like a poodle."  "But it was you who tried to make toasted cheese sandwiches in the toaster and we never could get all the melted cheese off it." "That was last year and I've grown up since then. I have a different agenda for my life now. I am ten now you know!" She turned away huffily and I had to smile. Another new agenda? Life promised to be interesting through her teens. 

I placed my library bag on the kitchen counter just as my middle child Stevie came speeding in through the back door, our golden retriever lolloping alongside him. Those two were always running and never more than six inches apart. I was grateful, Stevie was autistic and inclined to jump into doing things without thinking and Einstein, the dog, was very watchful from the moment Stevie woke up each morning. Stevie started his rapid-fire speech barely stopping to catch a breath. I placed a hand on each shoulder and made him look at me. "Slowly, Stevie. You need to articulate. Say each word slowly." He took a deep breath and managed to say the new hen was laying eggs now, at last, before bolting out of the kitchen to the safety of his room. 

Once Stevie was gone, his other "shadow", our older boy Justin came in and asked how my trip to the library had been.  "Did you manage to turn on their computer without help this time?" "Didn't have to," I said. "The previous user left it turned on and all I did was move the mouse thingy and up popped a list of words she must have been looking at. Or he. Anyway, I wondered about some of the words myself, I'd never seen some of them. There was anosmia, which I looked up and found it was the loss of sense of smell. I've never even heard of such a thing. Another word was ackee, which turns out to be a type of fruit used in Jamaican cooking." 

"We have that Jamaican barbecue cookbook Aunty Janet gave us for Christmas," said Justin. "I'll have a look at it later, maybe there's some recipes with this ackee fruit in it, but where would we get ackee from?" "I'm sure I don't know," I said. "I'm not going all the way to Jamaica just to buy a fruit. How is Aunty Janet anyway? Did she drop in like she said she would?" "No," said Justin. "She phoned and said her new haircut was all wrong and she doesn't dare be seen in public. She's just as whiny as always." "I'd rather you said peevish instead of whiny, or the new word I learned for that list in the library. I wrote it down, where's that bit of paper?" I searched all my pockets and found it, with Choleric written in green texta. "Here Justin, choleric, that's another word for peevish and would you please get the green texta out of my bag and ask Stevie to return my favourite pen? And where is your Dad?"

"He's down at the pawnbrokers again. Looking for "investments", although I don't see how secondhand junk can be any sort of investment. Yo! Stevie! Mum wants her pen back!" "Don't yell at him, ask nicely so he learns how to ask too. Funny as it might be, we don't want him at school saying Yo! Teacher! I need a ruler!" Justin heaved a huge teenage sigh and walked down the hallway to Stevie's room. I heard the murmur of words and Justin came back with my favourite pen. 

"Cup of tea Mum? Dinner's already under control, I made spaghetti sauce while you were gone, I kept an eye on Stevie through the window. So what kind of investments do you think Dad might come home with this time?" Justin was our resident chef-in-training, now that I was studying Computer Basics at the local library and Karen wasn't quite past planning more than toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner. Stevie loved watching the cooking process but couldn't be trusted near an open flame since he also loved fires.