Beach Fun: December Starter Sentence

<<'Tis the season!  And to get us in the mood my Writer's Guild started us off with "The tree we bought smelled great..." Oh what fun I had with this one!  Feel free to take pen in hand or fingers to keyboard and try it yourself!>>

The tree we bought smelled great.  Too bad I couldn’t say the same for whatever Mom was cooking in the oven.  She was practicing her “something red” dish for our upcoming holiday meal.  Unfortunately for us over the past year she’d discovered PINTEREST and thus had been, quote, “inspired” to try lots of new foods.

While her current inspiration wasn't the WORST smelling thing she’d ever cooked (that was when she poured some fish oil in a hot wok!  Stin-ky!), her current concoction of roasted beets had me wishing that somebody…anybody…would call me to go meet them somewhere for dinner!  Maybe I could feign a stomach ache.  No, then she’d put me to bed with a glass of flat ginger ale with instructions to sleep.  

“Come and get it,” Mom called from the kitchen.

Her call was met with deathly silence, as in no clattering of feet from my three teen-age brothers, who were never late for a meal.  Hmmm, curious, that.

“Come on, Holly,” Mom called.  “You don’t want dinner to get cold.”

Actually, I did.  Then I could stuff it in my sweatshirt pocket, where I kept a baggie for just such inedible-food emergencies, to be tossed in the trash at my earliest convenience.

The smell got worse as I walked into the kitchen.  Then I saw the plate piled high with roasted beets, their skin still on.  Think of a head of garlic, only the size of a baseball, and a very unappetizing shade of brownish-red.  The worst part, there were six of them.  And thus far, only two of us.

“Where are the boys?” I asked, hoping they were outside playing football.

“Chris is at Dan’s. Ben’s at Lawrence’s, and Kurt is at Michael’s.  As in the craft store.  He remembered he had to build a DNA model for tomorrow so went to get some things to make it.”

What a bunch of liars. I knew for a fact Dan had the flu, Lawrence was on a date with my best friend Anna, and Kurt had turned in his DNA project last month.  Those three were probably enjoying a big mac and large fry while I was faced with a pile of roasted beets. Those weasels!   I’m not the kind who gets mad, but boy was I going to get even for not taking me with them!

 Just then the back door slammed shut and in walked my three brothers, accompanied by the most wonderful smell…two large pepperoni pizzas!  We filled our plates and curled up on the sofas and ate in the glow of the Christmas tree lights.  After dinner we took a vote.  The “something red” for this year’s holiday meal would be…PIZZA!