something different

Okay, I'm gonna step away from venting for right now. Can't promise I won't return to venting, but as Joanna pointed out to me, this - my current physical reality - is temporary.  I will one day feel like myself again.  I just need to deal and leave it at that.  Thx Joanna!

So!  Something different... I wrote something for a contest I entered on 104.7 The Fish - Contemporary Christian radio station.  They're giving away a free playground/swingset!  All I had to do was write about my most memorable experience on a playground.  Hopefully, they'll love it, and I'll win!  They announce the winner Friday.

The hardest part in writing this was composing it in 100 words or less!  So, I wrote something up that is way over 100 words, and I'll post that here.  If you can believe it, I was able to get this down to exactly 100 words before I submitted it.  Anyway, all this is in the hopes that I will win the swingset pictured below.  Beth would LOVE IT as she LOVES to swing.  And mommy would love it as it would be something else to do in the back yard while I progressively get bigger and more uncomfortable.  We would purchase something like this, but they are soooo expensive!!!  Anyway, here's the pic and my entry.  Enjoy!

The swing.  A very simple invention, true; however, when you're eight, it's more of a mode of transportation.

Like a good book, a swing can take you wherever you want to go!  I would often run to the nearby park just to hop on a swing and fly through the air for hours and hours.  It was a way to escape to places I would never see - places like galaxies far, far away or lands where everyone lives happily ever after.

My favorite, and most painful, memory of being at the playground and swinging on the beloved swing involves pretending I was Dorothy and a tornado was coming to take me to the land of Oz. 

You know what's coming next, don't you?

That day, I sat on the swing and began to twist myself around and around and around and... You get the picture.  When I - "Dorothy" - saw the tornado nearing, I stopped my twisting and let the swing loose!  I screamed with delight as the "tornado" picked me up and spun me around toward the land of Oz.  Then, I screamed again. This time in pain.  You would have thought I had seen the Wicked Witch herself!  However, I was screaming because my long hair had just become entangled in the “tornado”.

Needless to say, I left a good chunk of my blond locks in Oz that day, and you would think I would never venture on another expedition via my precious swing ever again.  But if you supposed that, you would be wrong.  I did continue to visit my playground swing and transport to places unknown on wild adventures, as I do now with my four-year-old daughter - just not via "tornadoes" anymore.