Skidding in Sideways

I'm excited to visit Jennifer Becton's blog, Skidding in Sideways, today! Yes, yes, yes, the topic is ice cream (I'm an addict ;), but the focus of this post is on the naming of unusual flavors, so I'd love to hear yours! Plus...there's a giveaway... I'll also be at Romantic Love Books, Magical Musings and Blake Snyder's Save the Cat blog this week (I should be burning calories from all this running around, LOL). I had a really fun weekend and will have pictures/stories to share as the week goes on. Hope yours is off to a great start. Also, for those of you familiar with kiddie holidays, today is Johnny Appleseed Day! (Yeah, I was elementary school teacher, why do you ask?) Because my heroine in Double Dipping teaches 2nd grade, I thought you might enjoy a short excerpt from the book that involves this particular holiday. Hope you'll like it! 

  Johnny Appleseed Day was on her heels. Although no special all-school event was scheduled to commemorate the notable September twenty-sixth birth date of John Chapman, eighteenth century apple-tree planter extraordinaire, Cait still needed to get things ready for her class. 

She jotted down a list of possible apple activities for tomorrow: 

*counting the number of seeds and graphing the results 

*tasting the differences between apple types and rating them 

*measuring their heights and circumferences in centimeters 

*slicing apples widthwise so the “star” is visible and dipping them in tempera paint to create apple-star patterns on paper 

*sticking toothpicks with raisins and marshmallows on them into the apples to make Scary Fruit Monsters 

*coring them, adding a cinnamon-sugar filling, then baking 

Since making Scary Fruit Monsters topped her personal favorite list, Cait circled the asterisk by it but soon found herself doodling on the edge of her paper. She deserved a moment of laziness this week. She needed it. It was imperative for her mental health to take time away from serious school tasks and worrying about Mom to...to...draw the perfect depiction of an enormous marshmallow-mouthed Macintosh with beady raisin eyes who, if given the opportunity, would plan a hostile takeover of Milwaukee. 

 

She tilted her head to consider its proportions on the page. Goodness, the thing kind of looked like their principal, Ronald Jaspers. 

“Nice piece of artwork you got there,” Garrett said, balancing a heavy-looking box on his shoulder. He'd entered the room so stealthily she didn't see him until he spoke. 

She covered up her drawing with the first folder she could grab and leaped from her desk. “Umm, hi. What's in the box?” 

“C'mon and see,” he said, setting the mass of cardboard down on one kid's desk and motioning her over...