Wonking Wednesday

If a thing is wonky, then it must perforce have been wrought by a wonker, am I right? It would perhaps behoove us to attempt to decrypt the actual meaning of wonky wonker wonkiness. Perhaps another day. Today, I'm just playing with stuff that seems shaded in wonkiness. Not, mind you, that I'm saying wonky is a bad thing. Not at all! It's just a trifle ... off. Wonks can (and should be) great fun.

We're going to wonk do a meme today -- not wonky -- in which you will be required to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. You may answer in the Comments section or port the meme to your own blog to play with.

Get ready, get set, go!

1. While driving through the Mississippi countryside, you spot a stately but rundown and seemingly abandoned plantation house sitting back off the road. Excited by the mystique of its tattered beauty, you decide to take a look. You pull off the macadam and onto the rutted dirt lane leading up to the house. You get out of the car, walk around the overgrown grounds full of huge old magnolia trees, camellia bushes untrimmed in decades, and what seems like acres of wild rose. It becomes clear that the house is uninhabited and has probably been abandoned for many years, so you climb the steps to the ornate and oversized front door and __________.

2. Entering the shabby, once grand house, you step into a foyer larger than your entire apartment back home, still furnished with moth-eaten settees, faded needlepoint chairs, and marble-topped tables. To your right are closed pocket doors barring access to the room behind them; to your left is another large room closed off by the same huge, antique pocket doors; and straight ahead of you is a sweeping staircase leading to the upper reaches of the home. You decide to __________.

3. Once you've made your decision and made your move, much to your surprise you find __________.

4. You end up staying in this gracious relic of a time long past for ___________.

5. When you leave, you are thinking ____________.

My answers:
1. Take a deep breath and turn the knob, promising myself I won't try and break in if the door is locked.
2. Take the stairs. The bedrooms are always upstairs, and they're always more revealing than parlors.
3. A lot of dust and a lot of mold in those upper rooms, but look! There are portraits on the walls. And diaries in the drawers.
4. Hours, until it starts getting dark.
5. Where did the people go? Who left this place to decay like this? How sad!

Also not wonky is the Best Blogging Buddies award bestowed upon me by Charles (sidebar, near the top). Thanks again, Charles! It is now incumbent upon me to pay it forward and bestow the award on five more fellow bloggers. It always chagrins me to have to choose only a few among so many vibrant and talented people, all of whom I adore and all of whom richly deserve every award there is. It was a hard task, and not so very different from simply sitting down Indian-style and chanting eenie-meenie-miney-mo, at the end of which it is to these ladies that the award is passed on:

ThatGreenyFlower - Because although she often doesn't realize it, she paints with words.
Roxan - Because she often provides an object lesson culled from her own life.
Pinks - Because her posts are always elegant and très thought provoking.
Leelee - Because she's such a sweetie -- and has such great taste in music.
Rubber Corn Dog - Because I adore her offbeat humor.

The recipients are to bestow the award on five more bloggers of their choice.

As always, Words Gone Wild are very wonky today. Some of them, TWISTED LINGUISTICS will attempt to defile define, and the rest will be left up to you to wonk.

earleir - The Earl of Leir, minor nobility.

befoer - I be your enemy. Rrrrrr.

listien - Chinese mouthwash.

particiapants - Colorful trousers worn to CIA office parties.

in the dairy isle at the gracery store - On the Isle of Cows is the store where grace and other indulgences can be purchased.

Agian - A tropical sea favored by geriatric cruise ships.

These are all yours. Have at 'em.

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