Announcement: 2017 September “Back Where I Come From” Challenge!

It is almost September!

Are you ready for the 2017 September Challenge?

This year’s theme is based on the song “Back Where I Come From“.

The questions are posted and ready for you to answer in advance so that you can schedule your posts. Or, you can do what I usually end up doing, and wait until the last possible minute to answer them. 🙂

Read more about it here: 2017 September “Back Where I Come From” Challenge.

There won’t be a linky for this challenge. Just leave your links in the comment section of each day’s post.

I look forward to reading your posts!

First Line Friday – After the Accident

Okay, so I’m a day late. What else is new these days?  🙂

This week’s First Line Friday line is:

“After the accident, unease grew like a mold in the corners of his mind.”

We are allowed to modify the line, so I did. “His” is now “her”.

After the accident, unease grew like a mold in the corners of her mind. Were they going to stop? It doesn’t look like they’re going to stop!

Her heart raced every time a car approached an intersection. It has been this way for her since the accident back in 1992.

She was driving home with her 22-month old daughter in the backseat.  They had been helping a friend with his election campaign.  They were on a curvy country road almost in sight of the driveway leading home.  She slowed down as she neared the intersection, but she didn’t have a stop sign, so kept on going.  A station wagon was approaching the stop sign on the right.  He did not stop.  He slammed into the passenger side of her car, careening her car down into a ditch and up the other side into a utility pole in a cow pasture. The baby screamed.

In a panic, she pried herself from behind the steering wheel, afraid of what she would find in the backseat. Was her baby harmed?  The baby was strapped in her carseat, but still…She crawled into the backseat to get to the baby. The man was approaching, calling out, “Are you okay?”

Mama Lion erupted like Mt. Vesuvius on that man. “Do I LOOK like I am okay?” Her car was totaled, the front end pushed so far in that the key couldn’t be pulled from the ignition and the steering wheel was jammed.  And the baby…Got to get to the baby!

She was angry and wanted to hit that man, the man that ran the stop sign and could have killed her child. Her sister was on the way home, too, and came upon the accident.  Sister’s blood pressure shot through the roof.

Someone had called the owner of the pasture where the accident happened as well as her parents. Her mother came and chewed into that man like a rabid dog defending her pups.  Then, her mama went and chewed up another man about it, too.

To this day, intersections fill her with dread. Are they going to stop? Are they going to hit me? Am I going to make it home? Sometimes the fear makes her ride the yellow line too closely. She wants to be able to get away if they don’t stop, doesn’t want to be hit again.

It has been 25 years since her accident. Her ribs still hurt and are a constant reminder to always, always watch the other drivers, especially those approaching intersections because chances are they aren’t watching and will not stop.

 

Please visit Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie for this and other fun writing challenges!

Image source: Pixabay.  Edits by Suzanne G. McClendon

Friendly Fill-Ins

This is a fun meme co-hosted by 15 and Meowing and McGuffy’s Reader. Be sure to visit and join in the fun!

Here are the fill-ins:

1. If someone were visiting my area, I would recommend a visit to _________________________.
2. My favorite room in my home is ____________________________.
3. Back-to-school time makes me think of _____________________.
4. My favourite year of school was ________, because __________.

Here are my responses:

If someone were visiting my area, I would recommend a visit to Gilbert’s Crossing, especially if I had completed that book at the time and they had read it. In the spring, I would definitely recommend a visit to the wildflower field at the First Presbyterian Church. Other than that, I can’t think of anything in our immediate area that I would recommend. About sixty miles away in one direction is the Houston Zoo. About 50 miles away in another direction is the beach. I would still recommend waiting for December for either one of those due to oppressive heat in the summer.

My favorite room in our home is what was formerly our grand-doggers’ room. When Battly died, we brought Petra into our room so that she wouldn’t be so lonely.  It has become a sanctuary for me, of sorts. It is where I go to do my Bible reading and devotion, read other books, and let the tears flow when I can’t hold them in anymore. Before it got so hot this summer, outside with the birds was my sanctuary.  I can’t safely sit out there in this heat.

Back-to-school time makes me think of cooler weather, which, of course, we don’t get here on the Texas Gulf Coast. Back home in South Carolina, going back to school meant that we’d soon have cooler weather and beautiful fall colors and THANKSGIVING!

My favorite part of the school year was Thanksgiving break, Christmas vacation, Easter holidays, Spring break, and my most favorite of all, the last day of school!  I loved learning, but I did not enjoy the torment given to me at school, mostly by other students, but in some instances, teachers, too. I looked forward to the last day, at least until my senior year. Then, I cried that whole last week of school. I cried, not so much for the fact that I was leaving school, but running headlong from the known into the unknown.

Have a blessed weekend, y’all!

Friday’s Hunt

Friday’s Hunt can be found over at Eden Hills.  How about joining in the fun? Click here to learn more about it.

The prompts for this week are:

1. Starts with F
2. New
3. Self (Portrait)

Starts with F:

Frog – Ludwig ©2017 Suzanne G. McClendon

New:

This is one of the newest pictures in my phone. It also counts for an “F” word, as the car is a Ford Fiesta – twofers!

Zoomie in the Rain ©2017 Suzanne G. McClendon

Self (Portrait):

One very tired Suz in H-Town! ©2016 Suzanne G. McClendon

Have a blessed weekend, y’all!

Friendly Fill-Ins

This is a fun meme co-hosted by 15 and Meowing and McGuffy’s Reader. Be sure to visit and join in the fun!

Here are the fill-ins:

1. Blind dates ____________________________.
2. _______________years ago, I ____________.
3. I admire ___________ because ___________.
4. _____________makes me think _____________.

Here are my responses:

Blind dates may be exciting, but they are too risky.

Forty-six years ago, I started first grade and it warped me for life! You can read more about that first day of school here on PS Annie!.

I admire David because he did not slink back into a corner after his strokes. He came out fighting. I admire our daddies because, though they had their moments, they did what was necessary to take care of their families.  I admire my grandma and granny because they were able to love in spite of all the hurt they had suffered at the hands of people that allegedly loved them.

Talk about South Carolina makes me think about how much I want to go home, if only for a visit.

Have a blessed weekend, y’all!