Wordzzle Challenge

Raven, at Views From Raven's Nest, has created this word puzzle, Wordzzle, for us to have a challenge and write to. The words/phrases to work with this week are:

Main Challenge (10): sugar bowl, cotton, wizard, fund-raising, Ben Hur, salmonella, luke warm, telescope, bank, walk-a-thon

Mini Challenge (5): challenge, sparkling cider, melancholy, snail mail, master carpenter

My Mega Challenge (15):

Ecila had a headache, again... for the 6th day in a row, and to make things worse, the laptop computer that she so depended on was giving her more troubles. She'd paid over $1000 for it once the taxes and such were added, and that was only just over a year and a half ago. She'd had a lot of problems with it that started around the one year mark, and had often wished she had purchased the extended warranty, but that was so much more money and she would not have had the money to buy the computer and the extended warranty too. Now, not only was it making a lot of nasty noises, but it also was having problems making a connection with the power cord, so often died from no power and took a lot of fiddling to get the connection to work. It was getting worse each day to where, as she now typed, she was not sure how long the battery would last or if she could get it to charge again this time. The noise of the thing was adding to the pain of her headache and her irritability was mounting. It was a good thing she was not able to use sugar any more since being recently diagnosed a diabetic, or she may well have thrown the sugar bowl through the window (no, not out the window, but through it). One of the parrots started to squack and this scared her as she was afraid that it could be a challenge not to get nasty if the noise continued... and was grateful when it didn't.

"Where is a wizard when I need one?" she wondered, not sure that a wizard could help even if there was one handy. "I so need a new computer and for this dam headache to go away."

With a cotton scarf wrapped around her head to keep her hair out of her face, she sat in her armchair working on the dieing machine while watching TV. She was planning a big fund-raising event for her Spiritual Centre and knew it would be good, but how could she raise some funds for herself? All the money left in her bank account would go to paying bills, and still she would be behind on them. She wasn't sure how they'd gotten so out of hand, other than they kept getting bigger and bigger while her income didn't follow that trend.

"As bad as this headache is, things could be worse. I remember when I had salmonella. That was waaaay worse." she thought to herself, hoping it would somehow make her feel better. She raised her cup, took the last sip of luke warm tea, and knew she'd soon need to make a trip to the kitchen for another hot cup of the delicious liquid. "Where is Ben Hur, or a knight in shining armor when a girl needs him?" she joked with her cat that slept in the chair with her.

Tomorrow she had a part in the service at her Spiritual Centre, and a Board Meeting after that. She doubted she would be feeling up to going there or anywhere if things didn't change drastically by then. Her dog wanted to go on a walk-a-thon, and that for sure would not be happening any time soon... unless the headache went away as suddenly as it had come. Ecila felt melancholy, she could sure enjoy a cold sparkling cider just now, though had nothing like that in her home, and knew that in the long run it would help nothing anyway. A tall glass of cold mineral water would have to do. She would go to the kitchen to get that mineral water, and she would be grateful to have it.

On the way back to her chair in the living room, grateful that the laptop was still working, she picked up her snail mail, all bills that she knew she needed to pay and of course would through her internet banking, but not now... not anything much just now with this headache.

"Will I need a master carpenter to cut this pain out of my head and neck?" she wondered. "I must get my mind off the pain if I ever want it to go away. We get what we think about, so I must stop thinking about the pain. I must replace it with thoughts of other things. Maybe I'll think about a telescope."

My Main Wordzzle Challenge (10):

Ben Hur was enjoying the luke warm feeling of the spring rain as it fell on him and all the others taking place in the Sugar Bowl Walk-a-thon. The walk was about fund-raising to lessen the risks of contracting salmonella in the modern world. As they walked, they passed someone dressed in a hand spun cotton hooded cape, dressed like a wizard, sitting on the river bank gazing off into the Universe through his (or her, it was hard to tell) telescope. Ben wondered what the person was seeing that was so captivating... then walked on.

My Mini Challenge (5):

The master carpenter, now off work for the day, guzzled the first few ounces of his cold sparkling cider, fining it a challenge to not drink the whole thing in one go. The handful of snail mail, all bills, made him feel melancholy. With such a good paying joy you'd think he would have no problems with the bills, but with a few ex-wives and all the alamony, well, life was not all he thought it should be. Yet he suddenly remembered "This too shall pass", and felt much better for the knowing.

And here is One Sentence using ALL of the 15 words/phrases:

Ben Hur, the melancholy master carpenter, sat drinking his luke warm sparkling cider as he thumbed through the snail mail; mostly a stack of bills and flyers for things like cotton, fund-raising, salmonella, his bank account, an upcoming walk-a-thon, and his new telescope... he was finding it a challenge not to throw the sugar bowl at the wizard in the street, yelling predictions of doom and gloom.